A Bride For The Mountain Man

Other than her penchant for over-easy eggs paired with buttered toast every Sunday morning, she didn’t participate in dangerous activities. Her weekends weren’t spent skydiving or bungee jumping, she drove a Volvo S60 and not a sports car and most nights, she was tucked securely into bed with a book no later than ten. As far as her career went, until two weeks ago, she’d worked as a stager for a high-end, prestigious construction and realty company in the San Francisco Bay area. Dressing up the interiors of spectacular houses, apartments and condos to make them more desirable for prospective buyers held very little risk.

And oh, how she’d loved her job.

The creativity involved, the process of designing each room around the architecture and the lighting and the scavenger hunt in locating the perfect accompaniments to bring her vision to reality. She supposed something unfortunate could have occurred if she’d been on a jobsite at the wrong moment, but truly, the vast majority of her time was either spent in her office or canvassing the city in search of the right furniture, artwork, rugs and anything else she had deemed necessary.

If Meredith had spent any amount of time considering her demise, a whopper of an earthquake would’ve topped the list, due to where she lived. Everyday tragedies, such as car accidents, house fires and random acts of violence would have been noted, as well. To be complete, she would’ve included illness as an additional possibility.

But getting lost in the mountains of Colorado while the heavens unleashed a torrential, icy downpour outside her rental car? In the middle of October, no less? Nope. The predicament she currently found herself in wouldn’t have landed a spot on her personal scenarios-of-death list. This trip was meant to be an opportunity to catch up with an old friend, relax, indulge in some skiing and most important...make peace with her past and reassess her future.

If everything had gone according to plan, she would have arrived at her friend Rachel Foster’s house over an hour ago and would certainly be enjoying a glass of wine this very second. Naturally, Rachel had offered to pick her up from the airport, but Meredith wanted to have a car at her disposal. She had GPS, Rachel’s address and her phone number. That and the Honda Accord she rented was all she needed.

Except the weather had turned on a dime shortly after she’d left the airport, going from cold to freezing temperatures and drizzling rain to an icy mess, as if Mother Nature had flipped the “storm switch” out of boredom or anger.

She shouldn’t be surprised, really. While the vast majority of Meredith’s life had gone precisely according to plan, recently fate seemed determined to push her off course onto one bumpy, twisty road after another.

A small, semihysterical laugh, born from desperation and fear, escaped her. No, maybe she hadn’t sensed disaster looming when she’d boarded her plane in San Francisco earlier that afternoon, but all things being considered, she should have.

Squinting her eyes in an attempt to focus on the narrow mountain road, Meredith looked for a clearing to turn the car around. Obviously, she’d gone left when she should’ve gone right or vice versa. Not that she had any idea of exactly where she’d erred. Because of her location, the weather or a combination of both, her phone had lost its signal thirty-plus minutes ago.

No GPS. No way to search for directions from her current location. No way to call or text Rachel or to reach out for help. She was on her own.

And didn’t that feel like some type of a sick joke?

To make matters worse, as late afternoon crawled its way toward dusk, snowflakes had joined the wintry mix and now whipped through the air, their numbers seemingly multiplying by the minute. They fell hard and fast, covering the ground in a growing sheath of white. She was, as her much loved and dearly departed grandmother used to say, in quite the pretty pickle.

Meredith drew her bottom lip into her mouth and tried to hold back the panic rippling through her blood. Barely able to see through the windshield, driving as slow as she could manage in deference to the slick, icy road, she said a silent prayer for her safety. Then, right on the heels of that, she gave herself a swift, mental kick in the butt.

“Be smart,” she said. “Stop feeling and start thinking. There will be plenty of time to fall apart later.”

Right. Assuming she lived, she could give in to hysterics as much as she wanted once she got out of this mess. And the first step had to be reversing her direction, so she could attempt to find one of the houses she’d driven past and hope for a kind Samaritan who would be willing to take her in until the weather cleared. Locating Rachel’s house at this point was akin to finding a solitary needle in a hundred—no, make that a thousand—haystacks.

Leaning forward in her seat and completely removing her foot from the gas pedal, Meredith peered through the windshield. The sky was darkening quickly, the sun’s already dimming glow further diminished by clouds and snow, rain and ice.

She couldn’t even see far enough in front of her to know if she was approaching a bend in the road or a cross street she could use for a U-turn. Other than her headlights, there weren’t any lights to be seen, whether from oncoming cars, houses or businesses that might be tucked off the road.

The terror that Meredith had worked so hard to contain engulfed her in a rush, sending a tremor of shivers through her body.

Where the hell was she?

How had she managed to find what had to be one of the very few mountain roads in a tourist town filled with skiers that wasn’t populated with residences, hotels or any other signs of human existence?

She couldn’t see a damn thing, so she braked to a full stop, the tires sliding precariously on the icy road before obeying her command. With the car engaged in Park, she switched on the emergency lights—just in case she was fortunate enough for another vehicle to come along—opened the door and stepped outside.

Okay, yeah, it was cold. The type of cold that hurt.

Edging to the side of the road, she walked forward, looking for what she hadn’t been able to see from the car: a wide, relatively flat and clear space she could use to turn the car around.

In mere seconds, her hands were tingling from the frigid temperature and the slashing wintry mix. She hadn’t been thinking clearly. She should have grabbed her coat from the back seat before leaving the car. She didn’t bother turning back. She wouldn’t be out here for long.

Tugging down her sleeves to use as makeshift gloves, eyes downcast, she trudged forward. In careful, small steps, she navigated a path through the thickening snow and around the outer layer of trees—a mix of deciduous and coniferous, mainly aspen, pine, spruce and fir—that blanketed this section of the mountainside.

Earlier, before the drastic change in the weather and becoming hopelessly lost, she’d marveled at the natural beauty of these trees, of their rich and varied shades of green and gold, with splashes of red, atop a canopy of pure white leftover from a prior snowfall. Now, they were nothing more than another set of obstacles, blocking her route and her vision. Still beautiful, without doubt, but entirely unhelpful.

Her arms, legs and feet were already numb. Her cheeks already raw, her lips chapped and her hair a mass of wet, frozen strands.

She couldn’t have traveled more than twenty feet from the car, but what would’ve been an inconsequential distance in the full light of day and under normal circumstances might as well have been two hundred miles. It was just too cold, too gray and shadowed, too windy, too...everything. Each step she took away from the car increased her brewing panic. She kept at it for a few more minutes, without any luck, before deciding she’d gone far enough.

If there was an easy spot to turn around, she couldn’t see it.

Okay. No biggie. She’d just keep driving in the same direction and hope she’d come across a house, a hotel, a gas station or a restaurant. An igloo. Somewhere, anywhere, that would offer safety until the storm passed.

“Please, please let there be shelter just up the road,” she whispered into the frigid air as she stumbled in retreat toward her waiting car. Somewhere with food would be a tremendous bonus, as she hadn’t eaten anything that day. She never did before getting on a plane.

A burger dripping with melted cheese would taste like heaven. Or a large pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Or...her stomach grumbled in response to her thoughts, which made the entire situation seem even worse. She’d never had to ignore her body’s natural reminder for sustenance.

If she was hungry, she ate. It had always been that simple.

Back in the Accord, Meredith aimed the vents in her direction and cranked up the heat. She closed her eyes and breathed through her shivers and chattering teeth, letting the solid stream of warm air soak into her skin and begin to dry her hair and clothes. Just that fast, she regained some of her optimism. She might be hungry, but she certainly wouldn’t starve. She had shelter and warmth right here. Even if she was stuck in the car until morning, she would survive.

She would be fine.

With that mantra running through her head, she rebuckled her seat belt, put the car into Drive and cautiously pressed on the gas pedal. The car rocked as the tires fought for traction on the icy layer of snow but didn’t actually move forward.

Biting her lip, Meredith applied a miniscule amount of more pressure to the gas pedal and, when that didn’t work, a little more yet. The tires spun uselessly for another instant—no more than a second or two—before the car lurched into actual motion. Without conscious thought, she gripped the steering wheel tighter and drove, using the brakes far more often than the gas to retain some semblance of control.

And even her current speed of a sleepy, lazy tortoise felt too fast, too reckless.

She drove slowly, not so much following the road as the dense line of dark trees along either side of the car. As she did, the sun continued its unrelenting descent and the snow kept falling, faster and thicker, decreasing her scant visibility to the point of near blindness. The gusting, rushing gales of wind battered against the car with such ferocious strength that being swept off the road ranked as a real possibility. Terrifying, yes, but also...lonely.

Not in the “oh, I wish I had someone to talk to” sense of lonely, but in the “if this goes bad, I could legitimately die out here, by myself, and no one would know.”

Her parents wouldn’t have a clue, nor would her brothers or friends or prior coworkers. No one, except for Rachel and her husband, Cole, would even think to try to contact her for days, if not for weeks. She was supposed to be on vacation, after all.

More than that, though. This trip was about a lot more than a simple getaway.

After an inferno of an exchange with her father, Arthur Jensen had made it clear that for the next year, no matter the circumstance she found herself in, he would not intervene. The rest of the family wouldn’t, either.

It was what she had wanted, had asked for and then demanded when he’d initially taken her request as a joke. But she hadn’t guessed how upset her father would become, the awful truth that slipped out in his anger, which further upset her or, when he finally capitulated, the strict set of rules he put in place. She recognized why. He didn’t believe she’d agree, but oh, she had. Because really, what else was she to do?

But she certainly hadn’t foreseen a freak autumn snowstorm, losing her way in a wholly unfamiliar and apparently remote location or the possibility of death on the horizon. And even if her father could somehow know of her predicament and even if he hadn’t declared her as, for all intents and purposes, an orphan for the next year, he couldn’t help her now anyway.

No one could.

“Stop it,” she said, loud and clear. “I am not going to die out here.”

She’d no sooner spoken the words than the faintest shimmer of light appeared ahead and to the right. So faint, she almost wondered if her eyes were playing tricks on her, and what she thought she saw was nothing more than a panic-induced mirage...her personal oasis in the desert. Could be that, she thought, or it could be just as it appeared: a sanctuary. She wouldn’t know for sure until she got closer, but hope and relief tempered the rapid beat of her heart.

Neither lasted long. Seemingly out of nowhere, the narrow, uphill road curved sharply to the right and Meredith, in an instinctive attempt to correct her direction, yanked the steering wheel too hard. The car whiplashed to the side before settling into a spin and, now facing the opposite direction, picked up speed and careened downhill.