Montana Passions: Stranded With the Groom / All He Ever Wanted / Prescription: Love

Once she’d spent twenty minutes in the ladies’ room using various items from the brown paper bag, Katie went to the storage area and chose a bulky sweater and a pair of worn corduroy pants. She even found thick gray socks and jogging shoes that were only a half size too big.

“Lookin’ good,” Justin remarked with a wink when she returned to the kitchen where he sat reading yesterday’s newspaper.

“The fit leaves something to be desired—but I have to admit, I’m a lot more comfortable.”

“And less cranky.”

“Yes. That, too.” She gave him a smile, thinking how even-tempered and helpful he’d been since she got them into this mess. Really, she could have been stranded with worse. She added, in an effort to show him her friendlier side, “While I was choosing my outfit, I found some old board games. Maybe we can haul them out later. I play a mean game of checkers.”

“Sounds good.” The paper rustled as he turned the page.

“Justin…”

He lowered the paper and gave her an easy smile.

“I just want you to know I appreciate how well you’re taking all this.”

He gestured toward the snow beyond the window. “This is nothing, believe me.”

Really, this positive-attitude approach could be carried too far. “Oh. So you’re telling me this kind of thing happens to you all the time?”

“Only once before.”

“Oh. Well. Only once. That’s nothing—and you’re joking, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m not. When I was thirteen, we lived in this vacation-home development in northern Nevada. I got snowed-in there alone for a week.”

She couldn’t have heard right. “Alone for a week—at thirteen?” He nodded. “But what about your mom?”

“She was supposed to be home, but she didn’t make it. The situation was similar to yesterday’s—a sudden storm that turned out much worse than predicted. It got bad fast and she couldn’t get to me.”

“But…where was she?”

His expression turned doubtful. “You sure you want to hear this? It’s not that exciting. And as you can see by looking at me today, I got through it just fine.”

She’d been planning to go check on Buttercup. But that could wait a minute or two. She pulled out a chair and slid into it. “I do want to hear. Honestly.”

He studied her for a long moment, as if gauging the sincerity of her request. Finally, he folded the paper and set it aside. “At the time, we were living in this one-room cabin not far from Lake Tahoe.”

“You and your mom?”

“That’s right. The cabin was one of those ski chalet designs. On a two-acre lot. Intended as a vacation home. It had a single big, open room with lots of windows, the roof pitched high, a sleeping loft above?”

“Yes. I can picture it.”

“My mother was in real estate at that point. She went off to show someone another cabin identical to ours. A bad storm blew in. She couldn’t get back to me, so I was stuck on my own. It was…a learning experience, let me tell you.”

“Yikes. I can’t even imagine.”

“Yeah. It was pretty grim, looking back on it. The phone line went dead the first day. Then, the next day, the power went out. But I had plenty of candles and a woodstove for heat. I kept the fire going and tucked into the canned goods when I got hungry.”

“But what did you do, alone for all that time?”

One corner of his full mouth quirked up. “I got pretty damn bored, now you mention it. Bored enough that I taught myself solitaire with a dog-eared deck of cards I found in a kitchen drawer. When that got old, I started working my way through all my schoolbooks. For a thirteen-year-old boy to do every problem in his math book for recreation, that’s desperation.”

“But there was plenty of canned food, you said?”

He made a low sound in his throat. “For some reason, my mom had a case each of canned peaches and cream of mushroom soup. To this day, I can’t stand the sight or smell of either.”

“I’ll bet—but what I can’t imagine is how you made it through something like that.” She scanned his face. “Thirteen,” she said softly. “It’s too horrible. You must have been scared to death.”

He shrugged. “The wood lasted ‘til the end of the sixth day. I got out the axe and chopped up my mother’s oak-veneer kitchen table and chairs. Once I’d burned them, I kind of lost heart. The fire died and I piled every blanket in the place on my bed and burrowed in there for the duration. I have to admit, by that time I was getting pretty damn terrified.”

“But then you were rescued.”

“That’s right. The snowplow arrived at noon the next day with my mother, in her Blazer, right behind it. She was seriously freaked, I can tell you.”

Katie almost wished his mother could have been there, with them, right then. She’d have had a thing or two to say to her. “Your mother was freaked. What about you? You were the child, for heaven’s sake. How could she leave you alone like that?”

He let out a low chuckle. “Katie. Settle down.”

Easier said than done. His story had seriously hit home for her. She shifted in her chair, crossing her legs and then uncrossing them, feeling antsy and angry and definitely not settled down. “I’m sorry, but it just, well, it fries me, you know? Children are so vulnerable. Parents have to look out for them, take care of them, pay them some attention now and then…”

He sat back in his chair. “Why do I get the feeling you’re talking about more than what happened to me when I was thirteen?”

She wrapped her arms around her middle and looked out the window at the falling snow, blinking against the glare of all that shimmery white.

“Katie?”

She faced him. “You’re right,” she confessed. “I was thinking about how things were for me, before Addy came and got me, when my parents were still alive.”

“Rough?” Those blue eyes had a softness in them, as if he understood—and from what he’d just told her, she had a feeling he did.

She hugged herself harder. “I rarely saw them. They enjoyed traveling. They had a flat in London, the family brownstone in Philadelphia, villas in France and Italy. And where they didn’t have a flat or a villa, they had friends who had one. You know the words. ‘Globe-trotting.’ ‘Jet-setting.’ My parents were the beautiful people. They came from fine families and the money was always there. They never had to work. So they didn’t. They didn’t even have to take care of their child. There were nannies and governesses, plenty of hired help for that.”

“So you weren’t left alone,” Justin said, his eyes direct. Knowing.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“But you were lonely.”

“Exactly.” She looked down. Her arms were wrapped so tightly around her middle, they made her rib cage ache. With a slow, deep breath, she let go of herself and folded her hands on the tabletop. “I never knew a real family—‘til Addy and Caleb.” She smiled to herself. “And Riley. He was all grown up by the time I came to them, twenty-three, when I moved to the ranch. How many young guys in their twenties have time for a gawky fourteen-year-old girl? Not many. But Riley did. He was so good to me, you know?” Justin made a sound of understanding low in his throat. “What the Douglases gave me was something so important. The two big things I’d never had. Their time. Their attention. Riley taught me to ride—”

“On Buttercup.” He grinned.

“That’s right.” She glanced toward the door to the back porch, thinking she should get out there and check on the old mare. Soon.

But it was so…comfortable. Sitting here with Justin, talking about the things that had made them who they were. “So you don’t blame your mother for leaving you alone in that cabin?”