Page 15 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

I don’t look over at him as I reply. “Because it’s the right thing to do. She was in an accident.”

“And we could take her down to the emergency room right now, if you’d let us,” Dax points out. “We could gas up the truck, have her down there by this evening.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Why? Because of whoever she’s running from?” Dax presses.

Honestly, much as I’d like to have some quick comeback to that, nothing springs to mind. I don’t know exactly who she’s fleeing, but whoever it is, they had to have quite a grip on her for her to be considering marriage—to be on the brink of walking down the aisle, no less. And now she’s here instead, in the middle of nowhere, right on my doorstep. I’m not going to send her back out into the grips of whoever that guy is—it’s not who I am.

And, yeah, alright, maybe part of it is jealousy. Because there was a time, when I first knew her, that I thought I might be the one walking down the aisle with her.

Not that I ever imagined it seriously, of course, we were only together a few months. And I know logically she would have moved on—a girl like that, she would be snapped up the moment she was single, too good to waste. But being faced with thereality of it is something else entirely, and I’m not willing to just brush it off like it’s nothing, especially when whoever sent her running has her so terrified to be found again.

“What exactly are we doing out here, anyway?” Chuck asks, changing the subject. He knows when he’s not going to get an answer out of me, and this is, without a doubt, one of those times. They don’t need to know about our history together. It’s just not worth it, and I’m not about to let them try and coax the story out of me—the story of the mess I made with the best woman I ever had. God knows I’ve gone over it enough times in my head as it is…

“We’re moving her car,” I remind him. “She wants it off the side of the road, in case someone spots it and figures out where she is.”

“Damn, she’s got you whipped already, huh?” Dax teases me, and I shoot a look at him. I know kidding around is a better response than any I got before—he was stalking around, pissed as hell, most of yesterday, clearly wanting nothing more than to get rid of her before she could cause any more trouble—but I don’t like being talked to like I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.

“Whoever she’s trying to get away from,” I remind him. “We don’t want them finding this place any more than she does. It’s in our best interest too.”

“Or we could just do what she asked us to in the first place,” Dax suggests. “Get her out of here. Let her hitchhike her way to wherever she wants to go?—”

“Dax,” Chuck cuts in, trying to stop the conversation swerving in that direction again.

“Look at the weather,” I remind him. “And look at the state of her. She’s not well enough to be out on the roads, not by a long shot. And who knows what kind of psychos could be driving around. Even if it’s not the guy who’s looking for her, if someone spots some woman, injured, on the side of the road…”

I trail off and shake my head. No way am I letting her leave our place until I know what’s going on. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming when I tried to get it out of her before, but I can’t blame her for that, not after everything that’s happened between us. I blew whatever bond of trust we had, and now I have to find some way to get it back if I’m going to make sense of this one way or another.

We make our way through the forest—it’s stopped snowing, and some of the snowfall has begun to melt, leaving it icy but less treacherous overall. The cold is starting to lift, much to my relief, but I guess that means whoever has been looking for her might be out on these roads soon enough.

My mind has been racing as I try to put the pieces together—I’ve been tossing and turning for the last two nights on the couch in the living room, where I’ve been sleeping since she’s been in my bed.

Who could she be so afraid of? A psycho ex? Sure, but fleeing into the mountains like this, it seems overboard, even for something like that. And if that was the case, why would she not just call the cops and get his ass put away? What does he have on her—or someone else—that has her too scared to do anything but run?

Finally, we reach the car—it’s covered by a few inches of snow, but nothing too serious.

“You have that hot water?” I ask Chuck. He nods, pulling the flask from his pocket, and I grab it, pouring it over one of the wheels, which has frozen into a puddle on the ground below. With a hiss and a puff of steam, it slides free, and I hand the bottle back to him.

“Dax, you take the front,” I tell him—it’s the lightest, and least likely to put any serious weight on his leg, but there’s no way he would leave us to do this alone. “Chuck and I will take the back…”

We move into position. It takes a couple of attempts to get a decent grip on the car, given how cold it is, and how it’s iced-over in a few places, but we manage it—Dax goes backwards into the woods, steering us between the trees as Chuck and I guide the car down the hill a few yards.

“Woah, woah!” Dax yells out, and we stop—he drops his end, and shakes his head.

“The earth just drops away here,” he warns us, wiping a little sweat from his brow. “We’ll need to steer it to the right a bit.”

“Sure, sure,” I call back. “That way. Okay, let’s?—”

But before we can get started again, the sound of an engine draws our attention. This part of the world doesn’t get a whole lot of people passing through it, so any visitors are enough to attract attention. Usually, it’s loggers or hunters, mostly in beat-up vans or cars that look as though they’ve been through more than the three of us put together.

So, when a sleek, dark-blue car mounts the hill and starts on its way toward us, we all exchange glances. It doesn’t belong here. Either someone is very, very lost…

Or this could be the people who Charli is so worried about finding her.

The car slows down as it pulls up next to us. Charli’s vehicle is obscured among a few trees, but it’s probably still visible enough to attract attention from anyone on their way by.

A man rolls down the window as he draws to a halt beside us—an older guy, dark hair, thinning at the temples and on his scalp, with an expensive watch and heavy furrows in his brow.

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