Snowbound Baby

He waited for a response but got none. Fool woman! Just like a mare he’d bought two years ago. Didn’t have a whit of common sense.

He gave her another thirty seconds. Still nothing.

“Suit yourself,” he called, then turned and began re-climbing the hill, the howling wind nearly blowing him down again. He knew it couldn’t be any warmer than ten degrees. When the sun set even that scant heat would disappear. With the wind chill it would be so far below zero the number would be irrelevant. Anyone without proper shelter would freeze to death. Even if that kid had a blanket—four blankets—she and her baby would freeze to death.

Shoot!

He let the wind blow him back down to her car, then tapped on the window and jumped out of the way as the glass lowered, just in case she aimed the barrel of the gun at him again.

“It’s going to be below zero tonight. You are not going to survive in that car.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t!” Getting angry now, he tried her door but it was locked. “If you didn’t have a baby, I wouldn’t give a flying fig about you freezing to death. But you’ve got a kid. You have to be reasonable.”

“I am reasonable.” She sighed and rolled down the window. Cooper couldn’t help noticing her blond hair, clear pink skin and cornflower blue eyes. “Look, I called a friend. Any minute now I’ll be rescued.”

At that Cooper laughed. “Rescued? Haven’t you heard the weather?”

Her pretty eyes narrowed. “Yes and no. I heard about a snowstorm, but it’s always snowing here. I live on the other side of this mountain. I’m so used to the snow I hardly pay attention.”

“Well, you should have paid attention because this is a blizzard.” He drew in a quick breath and his lungs rebelled at the cold. “The temperatures are falling faster than normal. They’re predicting two feet of snow. If your friend is smart, he’ll stay home.”

Waiting for her reply, he blew on his hands. Even with gloves his fingers were going numb.

When she said nothing, his patience suddenly evaporated and he yelled, “Come out in thirty seconds or I’ll break your car window to save your kid.”

He swore he heard her sigh with disgust, but decided it had to be the wind. Then she kicked open her door and pushed herself out. A blast of air caught her pale hair and fanned it away from her head.

More concerned with getting them safely to shelter, he barely noticed the pretty feathery locks. “Where’s your hat?”

She turned and her blue eyes pinned him with an exasperated look. “It’s in the car.”

“Good, put it on and let’s get the hell going. It’s cold.”

She said, “Right,” then bent and reached inside her vehicle. Her red leather jacket only came to her waist and when she stretched he got a full view of the enticing curve of her bottom.

Cooper quickly turned away. Since she had a baby, the woman was obviously married, and staring at her behind, no matter how nicely rounded, was inappropriate.

The wind kicked up. From the back of her car, the woman pulled out a white plastic contraption lined with pink and navy blue plaid padding. She set it on the driver’s seat, then reached into the back again and extracted a baby wearing a pink snowsuit and wrapped in a pink blanket. She sat the kid in the padding of the white plastic thing. When she looped a handle from beneath and snapped it into place, Cooper guessed the contraption was some kind of baby carrier.

“I should take her,” Cooper said, assuming the baby was a girl because of all the pink.

“I’ll carry her,” the woman disagreed, leaving the baby on the front seat of her car so she could dig out an enormous diaper bag. Pink plaid to match the travel seat, it was stuffed to capacity and looked more like a trash can with a strap. “You take this.”

She shoved the two-ton diaper bag into Cooper’s arms just as a gust of wind hit him and he nearly fell backward. But he didn’t. He didn’t fall. He didn’t curse. He didn’t even yelp. Instead he saw the nice, quiet evening he could have had blow away on a frigid blast of air.

He nodded up the hill. “The cabins are this way.”

He turned to begin the upward trek, but she caught his arm with her glove-covered fingers.

Everything inside of Cooper stilled. It had been so long since anybody had dared to touch him—except in a fight—that his hands automatically curled into fists. But before he instinctively took a punch, he looked into her round blue eyes and a tingling sensation exploded in his gut. Now he understood why she mistrusted him. She was gorgeous and he was about to spend the night with her.

With her body shielding the open car door and Daphne from the wind, Zoe Montgomery stared at the man in front of her, pretending her shivers were from cold, not from fear. She shouldn’t have touched him. Until she’d touched him he’d seemed like a grumpy Kola bear. Now he looked like an angry panther. His green eyes glittered, his hands were fisted and his body was stiff, poised and ready to strike.

Tall and lean, with a black Stetson pulled low over his eyes, her rescuer was definitely all male, but he also had an air of trouble. For all she knew he could be an escaped convict. Well, actually, he’d said he drove a truck and she’d seen an eighteen-wheeler pass her about ten minutes after her car had simply stopped. But truckers weren’t always reputable. Some were hellions who took advantage of roaming the country doing all kinds of crazy things and this guy obviously had a hair trigger.

Still, not all truckers were bad. Some were Good Samaritans. Touchy though he was, this man could be one of those who saw it as his responsibility to help anyone on the road when problems hit.

Also, her options were limited. Whoever he was, he was right. If her car hadn’t died because it was old, but because it couldn’t handle the snow on the mountain, then LuAnn—her rescuer—wasn’t getting up here, either. And if the temperature was about to plummet, Zoe knew she and Daphne would freeze to death in the car.

She wasn’t sure she was any safer in a cabin with a stranger, but technically she didn’t have to “stay” with him. There were lots of hunting cabins on this mountain. Many of them were in clusters. He could sleep in one. She and Daphne could sleep in another.

She took a silent, life-sustaining breath. Not only was that a safe plan, but also it was a smart plan. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who wanted anyone invading his space, and she didn’t need anyone helping her. When her ex-husband had discovered Zoe was pregnant and left her, she’d gotten a crash course in taking care of herself. Brad had moved on so quickly, he hadn’t bothered divorcing her. She’d had to divorce him. And even though there was a court order filed for child support, Brad didn’t honor it.

Zoe knew some men saw responsibility as a frightening trap, but more than that, she’d learned the value of standing on her own two feet and she wasn’t letting anybody steal her independence away from her. She liked taking care of herself. This trucker didn’t want her around and she didn’t want him around. Separate cabins worked.

She pulled her fingers off his forearm and smiled slightly to take the sting out of her forwardness of touching him. “Or we could go down the mountain with the wind rather than against it. I live around here, remember? This part of the mountain is used almost exclusively for hunting. We’re bound to find more cabins on the way down. In fact, we’ll probably find clusters of cabins,” she added, preparing him for the fact that they would stay in different shelters, if he hadn’t already decided that himself.

He grunted as he hoisted the diaper bag on his shoulder where it settled beside his backpack. Then he turned and began walking down the hill.

Zoe grabbed Daphne’s baby carrier from the front seat of the car, slammed the door, and followed him. The wind picked up. Swirling along the ground, it gathered fallen snow and propelled icy crystals upward, causing them to slap against Zoe’s face. She pulled Daphne’s blanket loosely over her head to shield her from the blasts, then lifted the carrier to chest height and slanted it toward her to provide even more protection for her baby.

“By the way, I’m Zoe Montgomery,” she shouted to be heard above the wind. “And this is my daughter, Daphne.”

For several seconds the trucker said nothing and Zoe worried that he wouldn’t tell her his name. Not that she really needed to know his name, but if he wouldn’t tell it, there could be a reason. Which took her back to her concern that he might be a criminal. Or worse, he could be a sex offender who had unspeakable plans for her. His not telling her his name was not a good sign.

Adrenaline pumped into her bloodstream and she remembered the gun in her jacket pocket. As a single mother, who lived alone on the edge of a small town that was too close to the turnpike, she frequently carried. Her cousins had shown her everything she needed to know about guns when they’d taught her to hunt, so she wasn’t an amateur. And she also wasn’t a hothead. She wouldn’t arbitrarily shoot this trucker, but if he tried anything she wouldn’t hesitate to defend herself and her daughter.

But right now, because they weren’t too far from her car, simply running back to her vehicle and locking herself in was much smarter than shooting somebody.

She was formulating her plan of how to most effectively bolt when he said, “I’m Cooper Bryant.”

So grateful she nearly collapsed with relief, Zoe said, “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Cooper Bryant.”

But Cooper Bryant said nothing. Either he didn’t agree that it was nice to meet her or he wasn’t the kind of guy to make small talk. Fine. She’d already figured out he was a loner. She respected that. He would probably jump for joy when she told him she preferred her own cabin and was perfectly capable of keeping a fire going all night.

They struggled another ten feet down the mountain. With every step they took, the temperature seemed to fall. The inside of Zoe’s nose began to freeze. She huddled the baby carrier closer to her chest, protecting Daphne. She didn’t need a thermometer to know it was much colder than it was even ten minutes ago. This storm was worse than any she’d ever seen.

The stranger beside her tapped her arm. Rather than try to speak above the wind that now roared through the trees and hollows, he pointed to the left. Cuddling Daphne’s carrier against her, Zoe squinted, trying to make out what he apparently saw, but the only things in her line of vision were the black trunks of barren trees and swirling white snow. Visibility was down to about three feet. And that was another problem. If the wind and snow took away their ability to see, they could easily get lost in the woods.

She shook her head, indicating she saw nothing, and he caught her arm and hauled her across the road and up the slope into the woods.

Clinging to the baby carrier, which bounced precariously because of the trucker’s hold on her arm, Zoe barely kept up with him. Fear churned through her at the way he was dragging her as if she were a kidnap victim. In her head she said every prayer she knew, hoping she hadn’t gotten herself and her baby into terrible trouble, as the stranger propelled her through the woods, almost toppling her when he turned her to walk into the oncoming wind again. She gasped for breath, and righted herself, tightening her hold on Daphne. But as she did, she suddenly saw what he must have seen—what had motivated him to shove her through the forest.

A house!

Even if they had to spend the night, they would have a bathroom, food…and be among people! She wouldn’t be alone with him!