Snowbound Bride

Good idea, Nora thought, if only because it’d stop all the wedding talk.

“The only problem is, there’s something wrong with the zipper,” Nora confided. “We may have to cut me out of it. So if I could borrow some scissors and enlist a little help, after I dash out to my car to get a change of clothes, I’ll—”

Clara patted her arm. “Now, now, I’m sure we can fix it without making any cuts in this beautiful fabric. Kim, darling, help Nora get her clothes out of her car and then show Nora to a dressing room and help her out of that gown.”

“Right, Gran,” Kimberlee said, giving a thumbs-up sign before leading the way.

“YOU’RE just going to have to ignore Sam,” Kimberlee told Nora as she worked on the jammed zipper in the back of Nora’s dress.

Nora turned, the trailing satin hem of her wedding gown swishing softly across the parquet floor of the large, old-fashioned fitting room. “What do you mean?”

Kimberlee tossed the length of her golden-brown hair off her shoulders. She paused and took a tiny drop of liquid soap and ever so delicately worked it into the teeth of the zipper. “I saw those looks he was giving you,” Kimberlee said, catching Nora’s glance in the three-way mirror before peering down at the zipper seam. “The way he questioned you.”

Nora flushed. “I think he’s just curious.”

Kimberlee shook her head. In an electric-purple jumper and ribbed white turtleneck, purple tights and cute leather ankle boots, she looked pretty enough to be on the cover of a teen magazine. “It’s more than that. He thinks it’s his job to take care of everyone!”

Alarm bells went off in Nora’s head. Perspiration broke her skin. “Because he’s the sheriff?” Nora asked warily—aware that she was flushing again, an even brighter pink.

“Because he’s Sam.”

“You’re saying he’s controlling?” Nora asked, as casually as possible.

“To the max,” Kimberlee affirmed emotionally. “It’s because of Mom and Dad and the way they—” At the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside the fitting room, Kimberlee stopped short and stuck her head out into the hall to see who was there. Almost immediately, she flushed a bright red. “Sam!”

Sam looked at his younger sister grimly as he stepped inside the spacious fitting room. Obviously, Nora thought, Sam did not appreciate whatever it was his younger sister had been about to reveal. Which was too bad, because Nora found herself wanting to know everything there was to know about Sam that Sam didn’t want revealed.

“You’re needed out front to help ring up the purchases,” Sam told Kimberlee firmly.

Kimberlee gave her older brother a pouty look. “Can’t you help out? After all, you used to work in the store, too, when you were my age. You know how to do it.”

Sam leaned against the door frame, clearly in no hurry to go anywhere. “I’m not disputing that, but Gran wants you.”

“Ha!” Kimberlee said. “I think you just want to be back here with Nora.” Kimberlee gave Nora a commiserating look as she flounced out. “Good luck. You’re going to need it with Mr. Impossible here!”

“Mr. Impossible?” Nora echoed when Kimberlee had left.

“It’s one of the nicer things she’s called me lately,” Sam said dryly as Nora surreptitiously measured the dwindling distance between them as he advanced all the way into the room.

He had dispensed with the Stetson and shearling coat and brushed the snow from his pants and shoes. And though Nora should’ve expected that—if Sam Whittaker were spending any time at all inside the heated building—she hadn’t expected the way he would look in the snug-fitting khaki uniform. He had an all-business stance that suggested he didn’t take trouble from anyone, but it was more than just that, and the come-hither look in his eyes, that had her pulse racing. It was his commanding height, the dwarfing width of his shoulders. The muscular tightness of his lean hips and long legs. And, most of all, the way he was looking at her now that made her tingle from head to toe.

“Still stuck, hmm?” he drawled, looking over at her almost insolently.

In this town, in her dress, in her whole life, Nora thought. “Maybe we should just give up and cut me out of this dress,” Nora suggested.

Sam continued to look her up and down as Nora grew ever warmer. “Oh, I think we can do better than that,” he quipped. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Nora barely had time to draw a brush through the wind-mussed layers of her dark hair before he returned with a button hook and a pair of tweezers.

“Don’t look so worried,” Sam said cheerfully as he stepped behind Nora. His eyes met and held hers in the mirror. “I’m an experienced hand at this. I’m sure I can free you from this dress.”

Something about the utterly male way he was looking at her made Nora sure he could, too. And that might be even more dangerous. “You didn’t have much luck earlier, back at the tourist station,” she said breathlessly as he placed his hands lightly on her shoulders.

“Ah, but I didn’t have the right tools then,” he told her. “Now I do.”

Nora raised a skeptical brow as the back of his hand brushed the bare skin at the nape of her neck. She froze beneath the onslaught of his touch, the warmth and gentleness of his skin pressed against hers. He had just come close to her, and she was ablaze already. She could barely breathe.

Aware that her heart was beating wildly in her chest, she forced herself to concentrate not on what they shouldn’t be doing—ever—but on what he was actually doing now. Aloud, she asked, “A button hook and tweezers are the right tools for an occasion such as this?”

Sam’s gaze met hers, and his handsome golden-brown eyes lit enthusiastically. “You’d be surprised what can be accomplished with these two items, under the right circumstances,” he said with mock grave ness, as he bent his head and once again concentrated on his task.

Nora hitched in a breath, realizing that, friend or foe, it didn’t seem to matter. With every second that passed, she became even more extraordinarily aware of him.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she told him defiantly, as she noticed that her knees were trembling, and that the shiver ghosting down her spine had nothing to do with the cold weather outside and everything to do with the heat generated by Sam.

“Actually,” Sam drawled, as he ever-so-carefully grasped the jammed fabric with the tweezers and slid the end of the button hook between the fabric and the teeth of the zipper to gently move them in tandem. “I do.”

Nora’s brow lifted as he continued to labor over the back of her dress with delicate finesse. What did he know that she didn’t?

“I came in here on a mission,” he explained.

Nora waited until he’d finished whatever it was he was doing to her zipper, then spun around to confront him face-to-face. “That mission being?”

“To find out if you need help of some sort. Because if you do,” Sam vowed, setting both button hook and tweezers aside, “I’m here to give it.”

EVEN KNOWING what Nora did about the error of her ways, she was tempted to let herself be rescued. But letting a man jump in to save her from all life’s hard ships was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. It was high time she stood on her own two feet and said adios to all well-meaning, overbearing men. Her chin took on a challenging tilt. “And if I don’t need help?” she asserted calmly, her heart pounding.

Sam shrugged. “Then you don’t,” he retorted mildly, though it was clear he did not think that was the case.

Nora sighed. She could see Sam was not going to be an easy man to dissuade. No doubt he would shadow her as long as she remained in Clover Creek. “You know,” she said, stepping back to lean against the far wall, her hands pressed flat behind her, “since we’re alone, I have a bone to pick with you.”

Sam took up a post against the opposite wall, only a few feet away. He folded his arms in front of him and kept his eyes trained on her face. “That bone being?”

Nora tilted her face up to his and drew a deep breath. “So far, this has been one of the worst days of my life. And you are not making things any easier on me with all your prying questions.”

He nodded, accepting that. Then said, with a devilish gleam in his eyes, “It was never my intention to make it easy on you.”

Her heartbeating all the harder, Nora met his eyes.

“Why not?”

Sam dropped his hands to his sides and continued regarding her steadily. “’Cause my gut instinct tells me it’s the fact you’ve been way too sheltered in the past that has you running away now.”

Nora struggled to hold her rising temper in check. She hated it when a man presumed to know—via ESP or, worse, experience with other women!—what was on her mind. “How do you know I’m running away?” she demanded.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sam straightened and pushed away from the wall. “You’ve been acting like you had something to hide since the first moment we met. Now, I don’t know what hurt you so. And don’t bother to deny it. You have been hurt. I can see it in your eyes whenever the subject of your wedding comes up. But I’d like to find out,” he told her as he slowly stepped toward her.

“So I’ve been hurt,” Nora retorted nervously, straightening as he neared. “Everyone has.”