My head aches. I groan, and the throbbing is enough to make me want to just fall back into the pillows and soft flannelette sheets and sleep all day.
Wait, what? Flannelette?
My eyes spring open, and I sit bolt upright in bed. It appears that I’ve traded places with a lumberjack because the log cabin walls, rustic four-poster bed and roaring fireplace in the corner tell me I’m not in Kansas anymore.
I remember driving away from Calgary like a maniac, wielding a couple of candy bars and a bottle of whiskey. I remember snow, mountains, and turning off the highway because the sign for the Fairmont Hotel looked as inviting a place as any to rest my head, and really, what the hell else could I do? I may have wanted a little time out from life, but I had no intention of freezing to death in the Canadian wilderness. I had no desire to wake in a lumberjack’s cabin either, but here I am.
I glance around the room, suppressing a shudder, and then I check the ring finger of my left hand to make sure I didn’t marry some damn tree-tapping Canadian redneck asshole, because clearly there is no other explanation for waking up in a place as country as this. And I’m from Nashville, so I know country.
I press my hand to my temple. It stings, and I throw the covers back. Holy shit. Where the hell are my clothes? Oh my god, why am I naked? I pull the sheet from the bed and wrap it around me like a toga, then I run for the bathroom, or what I hope is the bathroom because I’m about to puke all over it regardless.
When I’m done praising the porcelain gods, I slowly get to my feet and glance in the mirror.
“Jesus Christ,” I shout, when I realize the oval mirror above the sink is wreathed in deer antlers, as if it is a perfectly acceptable design fixture. I think I saw a B-grade Paris Hilton movie like this once. I shudder and look at the wound on my forehead. It’s a scratch, really. A little bruised and there’s a bit of a lump, but it feels a lot worse than it looks. Someone has been nice enough to cover it with a butterfly bandage, so I guess they didn’t want me to bleed to death in my sleep. That’s something, at least.
I need to find my clothes and get the hell out of here. I have no idea where I’ll go, but I can’t stay here.
From outside, a car engine roars, and I glance around for anything to use as a weapon. The cabinets are empty, save for an electric razor resting in a cradle, a heap of pain meds, and some topical ointment for sore muscles. I pick up the razor and turn it on. It looks like some space-age implement from the set of a sci-fi film. There are no sharp blades—just three rounded heads. Shit. What kind of metrosexual, mountain-man serial-killer owns this house?
As quietly as I can, I close the bathroom door, but it’s one of those heavy sliding barn doors that makes a godawful racket when it moves, and it doesn’t even have a damn lock. Two sets of feet thunder through the house toward me. I lift the hem of my sheet dress and tie it off in a knot so that I don’t trip, and I throw myself against the door to barricade it. Within seconds, the bedroom door is being opened.
“Where is she?” says a muffled voice.
“I don’t know.” This one is clearer, probably the leader. “Bathroom, maybe?”
“Can we eat? I’m starving.”
“Give me a minute,” the leader says. He’s closer now, probably on the other side of the door. “I want to check on our little hostage first.”
Hostage?
I squeeze the razor so tightly my knuckles turn white. And then the door is being slid back and I have no choice but to charge. I let out a battle cry and slam into a wall of muscle, taking him down to the ground with the buzzing razor at his throat.
“Ah, Jesus. Fuck! Why does everyone go for the goddamn shoulder?”
I straddle him and thrust the razor into his beard at the base of his neck, cutting off a portion of hair whilst screaming, “You’ll never take me alive.”
I stare down into a handsome face. Really handsome—this guy is not your average mountain man. There’s something familiar about him, too, but I can’t place it. Blue eyes stare up at me, and they’re full of … laughter? This bastard is laughing at me.
“What did you say?” Dimples pop out of his cheeks. One second he’s laughing at me, the next … bam … dimples, and my ovaries are gone, vanished, exploded into a fiery mess of ash and debris. Which is a shame, really. Because we’d make some really cute babies. Holy shit. How much did I drink?
“Are you laughing at me?” I straighten. He chokes back another dark chuckle. “Oh my god, you’re laughing at me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re really scary to everyone else.”
“To everyone else? Exactly how many men do you think I get kidnapped by?”
“Kidnapped?” He wraps his big hand around my small one and eases the razor out of my grasp. He switches it off and throws it across the room. It scatters under the bed, out of reach. “I’m not sure. That’s not exactly what this is.”
“Well what would you call it?”
“Foreplay, maybe? You are straddling me in nothing but a bedsheet, and I’m er … up for the challenge, shall we say?”
“Eww, gross,” the other man says from the doorway, but I’m not willing to take my gaze off dimples for a single second.
I narrow my eyes. “I thought that was your belt buckle.”
He just grins and flexes his hips, and I feel the full length of him pressed against me. My mouth drops open. Definitely bigger than a belt buckle. I scramble off his lap and scamper across the room on all fours, grabbing a throw rug off a chair by the fireplace and covering my body with it. “Oh god.”
He raises his brows. “Not god, though you’re welcome to call me that during sex. ’Most everyone does.”
My mouth gapes open. “Who are you? And what the hell am I doing here?”
“You tell me, Stella Hart. See, my brother, Emmett, and I”—he indicates to the man staring slack-jawed in the doorway who hasn’t moved since I came out wielding a razor—“were at a concert last night, and after sitting through one hell of a shitty support act, the main attraction canceled at the last minute. So, with disappointment in our hearts and greasy fast food in our bellies, we make the long hour-drive home through a snowstorm only to find you, drunk and disorderly, and crashed into my mountain.”
“Your mountain?”
He makes a face, as if he’s conceding that fact. “My snowdrift.”
“I’m confused.”
“I’m not surprised—you do have a pretty serious bump on your head. Not to mention the amount of alcohol you consumed. I’d think anyone would be a little fuzzy on the details after they drank half a bottle of whiskey. You shouldn’t drink and drive, Stella.”
“I wasn’t drunk; I had three sips. And you shouldn’t kidnap strange women and drag them back to your creepy-ass cabin in the woods.”
“I carried you, I’m not a caveman, and you should be thanking me. Your car was still running. One wrong move and it could have brought the side of the mountain down on all of us. I saved your life.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” He makes no attempt to stand up yet, which is really weird considering he’s stretched out on the rustic wood floor, and I’m huddled against an arm chair wearing only a blanket and a sheet. “Feel free to start thanking me anytime.” His eyes roam over me, as if he were thinking of all the ways I might thank him with my body, and for a beat I have half a mind to do just that, but it seems like we forgot we had an audience because the man standing in the doorway—Emmett, I think—opens his mouth to speak.
“You shouldn’t run out of concerts like that. W-we had tickets. Santa bought them for me. He paid good money for those tickets.”
“I … I’m really sorry.” I pull the blanket tighter against me, and glance between the man still lying on the floor and Emmett. It’s clear he has a disability, and I feel terrible for ruining something he was so clearly looking forward to. “Are you … are you a fan?”
“Yeah, your number one. But you shouldn’t run out on people.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to.” I frown. “I just … I couldn’t sing.”
“Why not?”
I look at the stranger that I was straddling all of thirty seconds ago. His gaze says he knows too much. “I’m not sure. I just—I had to get away.”
Emmett frowns. “But we came to see you.”
“Okay, Emmett, that’s enough. Let’s leave Stella to get dressed so she can be on her way.”
“Fine,” Emmett says, but his shoulders sag as he walks away. I stare at his brother on the floor.
“You’re not going to leave, too?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m kind of stuck. See, when you crash-tackled me to the ground, wielding a razor and screaming that I’ll never take you alive, you screwed my shoulder royally. I’ve just come from a grueling training and massage-therapy session. It hurts like a bitch.”
“I … Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I guess I deserved it, after kidnapping you and all.”
“Oh my god.” I sit down heavily on the bed. “I’m really am sorry about your shoulder.”
“Ah, what’s one more week of recovery in the beginning of the season?”
“You’re a sports star?”
“Van Ross, center for the Crushers.”
“You play hockey?”
He laughs. “Sometimes. Other days I just beat the shit out of people on the ice.”
I don’t know why, but this makes me smile.
“Why is it you women get all hot and bothered over the hockey fights?”
“I don’t … I wasn’t getting hot for anything.”
“Right. So I just misinterpreted that smile, then, did I?”
I shake my head. “Van, where are my clothes, and why am I not wearing them?”
“Oh. We had to snuggle, naked, to keep you from getting hyperthermia.”
My blood turns cold, and I feel all the color drain from my face. “What?”
“Besides, that spangled gold thing you call a dress was drenched in whiskey and covered in blood. That might only look like a scratch, but head wounds bleed like a bitch. I didn’t want you staining my bedsheets. At least not in that way.”
I frown, ignoring the crude innuendo. “This is your bed?”
“Yep.” He lets out a huge exhalation and gets to his feet, wincing as if he’s in pain. He slowly walks to the bathroom and pulls a bottle of meds from the cabinet, running the water and swallowing several mouthfuls from his cupped hands. He stares at me in the mirror and looks me over as if the blanket weren’t even there. I blush right to the very roots of my hair. I’m used to men looking at me as if I’m an object, what I’m not used to is liking it.
I glance at the rumpled sheet that gives nothing away. “Where did you sleep?”
“In my bed.”
“As in this bed, or another bed in this house that you may own?”
“Relax, sweetheart, after you thawed out a little, I put my clothes back on and didn’t peek once.” He turns to face me, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Except, of course, for when I was taking yours off.” I swallow hard. “I bet I’m the only man that can lay claim to that, eh?”
I frown, but before I can say anything to the contrary, he turns and tilts his chin up to get a closer look in the mirror. “Goddamn it, woman. What the hell did you do to my beard? You just cost me two hundred bucks. That fucker Torres is going to hold this shit over me for the rest of the season.”
“Hey, that was not my fault. You could have left a note on the pillow that read, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to murder you.’”
He glares at me in the mirror. “I’ll remember that next time I get done saving you from freezing your ass off.”
I sigh in exasperation. “What exactly am I supposed to wear if my clothes are ruined?”
“Oh, there are some things on the chair in the far corner of the room. I had to take a stab at your size. I could probably find more in the lost and found.”
“The lost and found? What is that?”
“It’s, er . . . where all the stuff goes from sleepovers.”
“Sleepovers?”
“Come on, Stella. I know you’re the founder of the Virgins ‘R’ Us club, but surely you’re not that clueless.”
“I’m not—” My retort is cut off abruptly by Van’s brother bursting through the bedroom door again.
“You said we were making pancakes, Van. You know I’m not allowed to turn on the stove without you.”
“Right. I’m coming.”
“Does Stella want pancakes?”
“I think Stella needs to get back to her life, bud. I’m betting she’s got a bunch of people to apologize to this morning, what with the media shitstorm surrounding last night’s no-show.”
I swallow, hard. “Actually, Stella would love some pancakes.”
Van raises a brow, but those dimples pop out again, and I glare at him as he walks to the door. Emmett scrambles out and down the stairs, and Van turns to look at me. “Course, you’re welcome to stay for dinner too.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Me?” He smirks. What is it with this guy and his stupid, sexy smirk? “Nice?”
“Why didn’t you call the police, or an ambulance?”
“Because I figured I’d have paps all over my damn mountain, and I don’t want that. Reporters are an unfortunate side effect of what I do, but we don’t deal with paparazzi. This is Emmett's home, too. We don’t need that kind of attention in our face.”
“Well, you’re lucky. Not all of us have a mountain to retreat to,” I murmur.
“What are you running from, Stella Hart?”
I grimace but put on a straight face. Just when I’m about to answer, Emmett calls out from the bottom of the stairs, and Van grins as if he knows I’m sighing with relief.
“Saved by the bell, eh?” He turns and makes his way to the door. “Feel free to take a shower. Breakfast will be ready when you’re done.”
“I really can’t stay long . . .”
“The roads are pretty thick with snow, and your SUV is totaled. Where else are you gonna go?”
Damn him. He has a point. I sigh and finger the soft flannel of the shirt folded on the wingback chair. On top of the pile sits a pair of cotton panties, the tags still on, and it dawns on me again that I’m not wearing any. “Van, what happened to my panties?”
He grins. “I took one look at them and they just disintegrated into thin air. That happens quite a bit when I’m around.”
I gape and grab a cushion from the chair, hurling it at him. He’s fast, and the door slams before my downy missile has time to hit the mark.
Goddamn hockey players.