Page 16 of Snowbound

I’ll be surprised if she’s really stuck at all.

I head upstairs, pull on my pants and a shirt, dig out my thickest winter coat and hat, and march off into the storm. Fortunately, Williams Street is only a few roads away. If I take the shortcut down Gilmore Crescent, it won’t take me long to get there.

By the time I turn up Ford Road, a thick layer of snow has settled on my shoulders. I shiver, shaking it off, and when I look up again, the red lights on the back of my truck start coming into view, ominous beams through the snow like evil eyes, or a warning.

The wind whips at my face, and I stomp hard through the drift, trying to get out some of my anger before I’m faced with Carly. This is all her fault, but she probably doesn’t deserve to be shouted at. Probably.

When I get to the truck, I see Carly shaking inside. To my relief, she does have the heat on, so it’s probably from tears rather than cold.

She’d better not try to justify this to me. There’s no way her meeting can be important enough to steal from the man who’s taking you into his home.

I knock hard on the window, and she jumps. Slowly, I open the door and glare at her. “Thank you for coming,” she sniffles. “I’m so sorry about all of this. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just?—”

“Save it,” I say. “Get out.”

Her shoulders slump, and I add, “And get in the passenger seat,” before she thinks that I really am leaving her out here in the cold forever.

She gets out of the truck, her tail between her legs. She slouches round to the passenger seat, and I slam the driver’s door shut, then take a step back to look at the situation.

More than anything, I think it’s the humiliation that made her call me. She clearly didn’t hit the deer, and she isn’t really stuck at all. It looks like slamming on the brakes made her spin out of control, which clearly panicked her and sent her off the side of the road. But the wheels are barely even snowed in, so I don’t think I’m going to have to do any digging.

I do a full circle of the truck, making sure that nothing is damaged. Then I jump into the driver’s seat and rev the engine. The truck lurches forward unhappily, its wheels spinning in the snow.

“Come on,” I mutter under my breath. Carly sits, staring at her feet, her fists clenched beside her. She has nothing to say, and she’s right about that.

I press harder on the gas, and the truck lurches forward again, jumping out of the snow and back onto the road. “There we go. Okay.”

I look at Carly and see silent tears falling from her eyes. I shouldn’t forgive her. I should throw her to Mrs. Andrews. I should say damn it all, I don’t care if she gets home safe or has nowhere to stay.

But much as I want to do that, I can’t.

“Let’s get you home,” I huff.

“Home?” she asks, the crease between her eyebrows deepening. “What do you mean home?”

“Do you want to stay at my house or not?”

She nods slowly. “Are you sure?”

“It’s either that or you freeze to death. Whichever you prefer.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly and doesn’t say another word.

This time, when she closes the door behind her to my guest room, I feel certain that she’s going to stay there. But I learned a long time ago that people aren’t to be trusted, so I make sure to take my truck keys with me to bed and slip them under my pillow.

Just in case.

CHAPTER10

CARLY

The first thing I do when I wake up is pick up my phone. Gabe was generous enough to lend me a charger. But somehow, when I look it’s still only at forty-five percent.

Daylight streams through the window, casting a bright glow over the walls and bed. Suppressing a yawn, I look at my phone again. Ten forty-five. With a jolt, I jump out of bed. How did it get so late?

As my brain starts to kick back in, I notice the missed calls and messages from my client. This is bad. This is really bad. I have to leave this place today.

Hands shaking. I go to the window and open the curtains. The world outside is completely white. The snow is piled up as high as a person, probably taller than me, and anything that could serve to give away where I am is completely shrouded in a blanket of white.

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