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being the
wiser. Now they were going to discover my theft. They might even come
after me. But I wasn’t going to back down.
    And
now I was trapped here with him ,
an enigmatic, knee-melting man who wanted nothing to do with me.
    To
my parents I was invisible. To this man I was…a threat?
Somehow dangerous? That helped me get some perspective. Well, I would
just have to weather him like we were going to weather this storm.
    He
had all three of my cases and my laptop when he came through the
door, his cheeks red, looking windblown and covered in snow. He
stamped it off his boots, then glared at me. “Your car is
pretty stuck. We won’t be able to do anything about it until it
stops snowing.” He sounded so pissed I didn’t dare say
anything. “The pass is definitely closed by now. There won’t
be any traffic in or out until this blows over and the plows come
through.” He pulled off his cap and his mussed hair tumbled
around his face. He pushed it back. “The storm is going to be
massive, but I’ve got enough firewood, plus a generator in case
the power goes out.”
    Awww,
that was sweet, trying to put me at ease. I bet he wasn’t even
aware he was doing it. That information made me think that most of
his mad might be about something else and not necessarily about me.
He avoided my gaze and I was kinda relieved. He was so intense. After
brushing off the snow, he picked up my cases and disappeared through
the door towards the kitchen. Must be where the bedrooms were.
    When
he came back out, he leaned one of his broad shoulders against the
door jamb. “Are you hungry?” he asked, obviously still
thoroughly disgruntled.
    “I’m
starving.” I hadn’t eaten anything since I left
California fifteen hours ago…where it had been sunny and dry.
    He
strode into the room and, without a word, scooped me up into his arms
and grabbed a pillow. He’d done more than his share of heavy
lifting today. Before I could even wonder why I was so tempted to
nestle into his chest, he deposited me at the kitchen table and
tucked the pillow he’d snagged under my foot. Yep, he was
definitely some kind of medical guy. No normal man thinks of that
kind of thing.
    “How
old are you?” he asked abruptly before going over to the fridge
and pulling out a glass dish with lasagna in it, spooning it out onto
a plate he got out of the cupboard, then nuking it. He also set a
piece of garlic bread into the toaster oven on the counter.
    “Old
enough to know better.”
    He
turned, pinning me with an I’m-not-accepting-that-for-an-answer
look.
    “Don’t
you know that you never ask a woman her age or her weight?”
    “One
ten soaking wet.”
    He
was absolutely correct. “How did you know that?”
    “Practice.
Age?”
    “Twenty-two,”
I said as he assembled my dinner and set it down in front of me. “How
old are you?”
    “Old
enough to know better.”
    That
made me laugh and his face changed. He got this soft look in his
eyes.
    “How
old, Dakota?” I blew on the lasagna and took a bite. It was
delicious.
    He
opened the fridge and pulled out a cola and popped the top.
“Twenty-six just this past May.”
    I
finished chewing and took a drink of the soda he set down “So,
you climb?”
    He
looked at me blankly.
    “The
gear, the ease that you showed coming down and going up that cliff
face.”
    “I
cave climb, and I’ve done some summits.” He pulled out a
chair and straddled it.
    “I
don’t particularly like heights or tight, enclosed spaces.”
    “It
doesn’t affect me. It must be my Indian heritage. Bound to the
earth.”
    “You’re
Native American?”
    “On
my mother’s side.”
    That
explained those gorgeous cheekbones.
    I
dug into my food while he rose, grabbed a jacket hanging on a peg and
opened the door to the deck and stepped out. I watched the snow
coming down in a continual fall of white. With his arms full of wood,
he kicked the deck door shut and went past me into the living room.
Then I heard the distinctive