Page 12 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

“Looks like you finally made it back here okay,” I mutter to him, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring up at him angrily. He’s standing at the other side of the bed, clearly unsure of what to do. Half of me wants him to pull me into his arms and hold me; the other half wants to land a sharp slap on his face for daring to land in my line of sight again, after what he did to me.

“We don’t need to talk about that right now.”

There’s a firmness to his voice that leaves no room for argument, much as I would like to make one. I roll my eyes skyward.

“And what, you expect me to believe that all of this is just a coincidence?”

“What is?”

“You finding me after the crash. Bringing me back to this cabin where we…”

I trail off. He moves to the side of the bed, pulling open one of the cabinets on the bedside table and withdrawing a small first aid kit.

“Yes,” he replies as he plants it on the bed next to me. “I do. Because it is. It’s just a coincidence. Here, give me your arm, I need to clean up those grazes…”

Before I can say another word, he reaches out and takes my hand, pulling it toward him—I wince as the extension stretches the grazes on my skin. I guess I’m lucky I’m not in a worse state—my head hurts, sure, and there’s an achiness all through mybody, but nothing that seems too serious. If I’d been out there much longer in the cold, I’m not sure I could say the same thing, and I have them to thank for getting me out of there before anything more serious happened…

Unless, of course, they’re working with him. James. That’s the part I can’t shake. It seems like way too much of a coincidence for anyone to find me out here, let alone Callum. And no matter how much of a fight they put up to try and convince me that they’re innocent, I’m just not sure I buy it.

He pulls out some swabs and soaks them in iodine, the sharp, piercing smell making my nose wrinkle. Dabbing at the grazes on my arm, he wipes away the blood and debris that’s gotten trapped there, and I twist my head away, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to let how much it hurts show on my face.

“You want to get changed?”

I glance over at him. “Into what?” I point out. “Not like I packed any more clothes.”

“I can grab something for you,” he replies with a shrug. “Here, wait a second…”

He gets to his feet and heads to the wardrobe, pulling out some clothes—it strikes me, in that moment, that I must be in his room. I don’t know why, but it suddenly seems so…so intimate in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I know it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me—judging by the way the other guys reacted, it’s not as though they would have wanted me in their space—but knowing that right now I’m in his bed…it’s more than a little strange, to say the least.

Finally, he comes back to the bed with some sweatpants and a large shirt. I recognize them at once as his.

“You really haven’t updated your wardrobe since we were?—”

“I’ll let you get changed,” he tells me, and he turns his back on me, crossing his arms and facing the door before I can make any smart comments. I stare at the back of his head.

“You really expect me to get changed while you’re in the room?”

“I heard how you were talking about getting out of here,” he reminds me. “I’m not taking the chance. I can’t see anything, don’t worry.”

I sigh—I almost want to dig my heels in and tell him that I’m not about to strip down and give him a show right then and there, but I know I’m being ridiculous. He can’t see me from where he’s standing, and besides, I have been in this wedding dress way too long. It’s constricting, the corset digging into my waist and my hips, like I’m being put on display for someone else’s benefit. Not exactly a sensation I find myself craving, I have to admit.

As quickly as I can, I reach back to undo the buttons on the dress—I manage the first few without too much trouble, but as I reach the middle of my back, my arm twinges.

“Ow!” I cry out, and his head whips around.

“Are you okay?”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to look.”

“Do you need help?” he presses, ignoring my comment. I almost want to brush him off again, but I’ll be stuck in this wedding dress if I don’t get someone to help me out of it. It took a couple of people to button me into it, and I don’t know what I was thinking, imagining that I could just get out of it in a matter of moments.

“Can you help me with the buttons?” I ask at last, turning my back to him. “Just the ones to the bottom of the corset…”

He does as he’s told at once, and I can feel his fingers popping the buttons with ease, making certain not to touch my skin. And it reminds me, though I know it shouldn’t, of all the times he undressed me before. Now, if there was one thing that he wasseriouslygood at, it was the physical side of our relationship. Even when he struggled to control or contain his emotions, he could always communicate with his touch, and I’ve found myself craving it more times than I’d care to count in the years we’ve been apart.

And now, here he is, undoing the buttons on my wedding dress—his fingers grazing against my skin just slightly, a reminder of how good we once were together.

But this wedding dress was meant for a different man entirely—a man who I am still supposed to be on the run from. And Callum abandoned me, in this very cabin, all those years ago. I’m not willing to just forgive and forget, not about any of it. I’ve been naive for too long, and that ends here.

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