their midst. They’d have to share her, they said. And then it was thank God she was just a bit of a package, and Kern, how did he manage at night with such a squirmer?
The Jeep was finally braked in front of the neon signs of a motel in Gatlinburg. Kern grabbed up the keys and finally looked back at her. “You’re going to keep her safe for me for a moment, boys?”
“We decided to keep her, period,” one of the men quipped and the others laughed. Kern, expressionless, simply strode off into the motel office and returned a few minutes later to hand the room key to the man sitting in the passenger seat. “I took care of your transportation in the morning, ten o’clock. And breakfast’s on the house. It’s only one room, but there’ll be extra blankets. You guys can make do.” His words were clipped, and then the others were rapidly unfolding from the Jeep, following the lead of the first from the passenger seat.
The last hesitated. “Kern, I thought you were coming with us. There’s still no power beyond the valley, is there? And the roads weren’t clear…”
“We’ll manage,” Kern said curtly. “Just go on, get out of the rain. Get some rest. We all need it.” When the door closed and the last of the men were racing for the cover of their room, Kern turned back to Trisha, huddled and shivering in the backseat. “Get up here, Tish.”
She crawled forward obediently, not willing to be bounced any more than she had to be in the crude back compartment, too tired to argue anyway, and wordlessly grateful she did not have to pass the night in a room with the five other men. It didn’t take much intelligence to gather that there were simply no rooms left in the valley. Emergency accommodations only stretched so far in the thinly populated area, and the rain would have made it that much worse.
She glanced at Kern as he started the engine and put the Jeep in gear. Her arms were huddled across her chest from the increasing chill of damp clothes, but the real shivering came from inside. Her nerves felt like rubber bands, stretched to the breaking point, an absolute wretchedness that was beyond tears and beyond trying to calm herself down rationally. There’d been three days of stress and high-powered emotions, and she simply couldn’t cope with anything more.
He didn’t talk. He glanced at her once and switched on the heater, his face almost gray-white under the few streetlights they passed. They passed through the town and started the familiar climb of the mountain road. It was less than half an hour before they came to the spot where she had parked her rented car. It seemed a year.
“Kern…”
He must have seen it, too, for his answer was rapid and his speed didn’t alter. “We’re going home. If I were you, I wouldn’t argue.”
It wasn’t that. In her car were clothes and her purse-and she looked back, watching the little red car disappear when they rounded the curve. And then just ahead there was a barricade where rocks had fallen. Kern stopped the car and she saw his figure by headlights pushing aside the barrier so they could get through. A huge rock had tumbled in the road along with other debris; the Jeep vaulted over them obediently, cocked just for one minute at a tilted angle that made her clutch the seat for balance.
They had just cleared that and turned a curve when Kern jammed on the brakes, throwing a hand in front of her to keep Trisha from falling forward. “Damn it,” he murmured as he slammed out of the vehicle again. It was a tree this time, stretched too far across the road for him to get over or around. She saw again his towering figure in the headlights trying to push the bulky obstruction, and something-finally-calmed inside. With a flick back of her hair she opened her door and ran out to help him, the rain drenching her all over again.
“Get back in there!” Kern shouted at her.
She paid no attention, trying to see in the darkness what they had to do. The trunk of the tree wasn’t so very large, but it was tall, and the little mountain of wet black branches seemed insurmountable, far too heavy to actually move for two or even four people. But they didn’t have to move it, just get around it…if they wanted to get home. And Trisha felt a momentum inside that brooked no other rational thought: she was going to get home.
Kern was pulling from the opposite side and Trisha waded in to help, involuntarily calling out when a rough sharp branch caught and scratched at her side.
“If you get hurt, I’m going to darned well murder you, Tish!”
“That was the intention anyway, wasn’t it. Kern? To murder me when we get home?” she shouted back. “Why don’t you tell me what to do instead of just glowering at me?”
Gasping, breathless, fifteen minutes later she raced back again for the cover of the Jeep with Kern just beside her. When she slammed the door she reached with both hands to lift the heavy weight of drenched hair from her face, but there was exhilaration in her expression. They had managed to move enough debris to get through, and Kern beside her sat a ridiculously long minute just looking at her before he started the Jeep again. There was just a twist of an unwilling smile guarded in that dark beard, the first she had seen since he’d found her, but it was there.
“You look like absolute hell!” he said, growling.
“Next time I’ll wear something more appropriate for a fire,” she promised lightly.
He started the Jeep. “Pardon?”
“Nothing, Kern. I don’t understand what all of this is about-why everything’s in the road-”
“A good-sized fire makes its own wind; trees start crashing into trees. There can even be an earthquake effect if it’s a good enough blaze. This one, thank God, wasn’t that bad. But bad enough.”
So it was not impossible, then, to talk for two and a half seconds. She closed her eyes and huddled down in the seat for the last of the ride, finally almost too tired to care that she was soaked and cold and frightened. She was not wanted and he was still angry, and she hadn’t even an inkling of an idea how she was going to cope, the thread of her heartbeat saying she simply couldn’t.
When the Jeep stopped again her eyes flickered open. They were home. No lights shone from the shadowed house and there was no sign of life, but the rain was finally dwindling to sporadic sprinkles, and the clouds shifting above were letting through the light of a crescent moon. She felt a sense of relief so intense that she simply closed her eyes for a moment, her limbs finally feeling like dead weight, and she was barely aware that Kern had gotten out until the passenger door opened beside her.
Obediently she turned her legs out, and just as obediently she told her mind to unfold the rest of her body, to get out and walk. All systems balked inside, as though to say, Sorry, Tish, we’ve just had enough. Large hands suddenly reached in and pulled her out, and for one insane minute she felt her forehead suspended to his chest as if that were her only contact with reality.
“You’re worse than a basket case!”
“You can’t hit a lady when she’s down,” Trisha murmured vaguely. Limbs like water were shifted and she found herself carried again, unable to protest, her eyes insisting on staying closed. She was dipped down so that his hand could reach the door handle, and then they were out of the endless moisture-dry, warm and close in the back hall. He set her tentatively on her feet, one arm still supporting her under her shoulder. “If you can stand for just a minute, Tish, I can get a lantern. We’re out of power at least until tomorrow…”
“Of course,” she murmured, “I’m perfectly fine.”
It sounded good, but the moment his arms left her her knees promptly buckled. Before she could fall she was swooped up again.
“They don’t seem to work,” she told him, apologizing faintly.
“You’re making it damned difficult, Tish,” he murmured in her ear. “You know damn well I still feel like murdering you.” But it really no longer sounded that way. And it really no longer felt that way as he carried her blindly through the house, groping at doorways up the completely black darkness of the stairway. His grip before had been rough, communicating anger, dominance and a kind of frightening awareness of the physical power of the man. But that same power now was simply holding her, sheltering her. The limpness in her mind and body she no longer minded, stopped trying to fight it, curling to the safe haven of his chest.
The mattress suddenly met her back. Vaguely she was aware of his hands tugging at her jeans, shrugging them off her. She was shivering again suddenly, aware of him in a different way. He leaned over her to work at the buttons on her shirt, fumbling with the wet material. Then with exasperation he arched up and pressed a swift kiss on her lips. “You know I’d never hurt you,” he murmured. The blouse ripped open, the buttons an effort he was not willing to make. From a long way off she knew she was shivering violently, and then a warm blanket was curled around her, her hair smoothed back with his palm, and another kiss brushed on her lips before he got up from the bed. “I’ll get you warm, Tish. I’ll be right back.”
And he was there again soon, though by the time he curled next to her, snuggling the blanket over both of
