“It was. I sometimes think that it may have been better to get the news all at once. No waiting. But that's ridiculous. Bad news is bad news whether you have to wait for it or whether it comes all at once.”
He nodded and seemed to drift away somewhere.
She leaned forward and peeked inside the pots on the wood stove. The water was beginning to boil. “We need more snow.”
He chuckled and then grabbed his hat that had been drying by the fire. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Sweet Montana Rescue: Chapter Five
She couldn’t convince Nash to abandon the idea of going back for the blankets. It had been over an hour since he’d left. Now Harper frantically paced the floor and kept looking out of the window to see if she could see the lights of the snowmobile.
To keep her mind busy, she continued to melt snow, boil water, and pour each bucket full into the tub until a few inches of hot water covered the bottom. When Nash first mentioned a bath to her, she balked at the thought. Nothing was turned on at the cabin so she knew the they didn’t have running water. But as the ache in her shoulder and her thigh began to throb, she came around to the idea. Even a quick bath might ease what she knew were going to be epic bruises on her body by morning.
She climbed into the bath with a cup from the kitchen and poured the hot water over her body. It would cool quickly so she didn’t have much time. To her surprise, just the running of the water over her bruises pulled out some of the kinks. She carefully scrubbed her head where she’d felt the blood and then drained the tub.
Nash had left a clean towel out for her just in case he wasn’t back when she was done bathing, so she used that dry off and she put the clothes she’d worn that day back on. When she emerged from the bathroom, Nash was still not back.
Although she’d kept herself busy, looking through cabinets for provisions he’d brought with him, the worry never stopped, and now Harper was fighting a full-blown panic attack along with hunger pangs. It had taken them about a half hour to get up the mountain in the snowmobile, and then another fifteen minutes to get back to the cabin.
“The snow is deeper,” she said to herself as she walked around the kitchen, looking for something to nibble on and tamp down the growls her stomach was making. She hadn’t eaten anything since she’d had that banana at lunch and now she was starving. When she didn’t find anything edible, she leaned against the counter. “In the darkness, he’s going to have had a hard time finding my car.”
But none of her reasons for his delay rang true. She was probably overreacting, but Harper’s overreacting was winning over logic. It had only been two hours, but even she knew the storm was building strength.
Maybe something had gone wrong. She hated the helpless feeling. If only she hadn’t made a big deal about sharing the sleeping bag. It wasn’t such a bad idea for survival, even though she’d be sharing it with a handsome stranger. If Nash got hurt, she’d never forgive herself.
She rubbed her thigh to ease the throbbing. It was swollen and she’d seen the nasty bruise while in the bath. At first, she thought that perhaps she'd bumped it trying to get onto the snowmobile. She now realized she was probably in shock at the time and she’d gotten more banged up than she’d initially thought.
The few hours that had passed continued to roll through her mind just as if she were still rolling down the embankment in the car. She could've died. She wasn't entirely sure that she understood that until just now. And then what would've happened? Just like her parents, Gail and her grandmother would have to wait for word.
She turned and pulled the curtain away from the window to see if she could see headlights down the road or near the spot where her car had tumbled. From the front porch, Harper knew you could see that cliff on a sunny day. Right now, she couldn’t see anything but snow.
She chuckled and shook her head. But there was no humor. “He's a survivalist, Harper,” she said quietly to herself. “He not the Abominable Snowman. And even the snowmobile has its limits.”
* * *
Even for Nash, repelling down to Harper’s car and then climbing back up with the few items he’d managed to grab from the trunk and find in her car proved daunting. But he’d finally made it back to the road and secured everything to the snowmobile.
He was going to have to be careful navigating back to the cabin. He had a headlight on the snowmobile, but the snow was much deeper than it had been earlier and he’d have to drive quicker in order to keep it from sinking in the deep snow. He’d have to stay in the path he’d made earlier when he’d rescued Harper.
What the hell was he doing? He’d come here because he wanted to be alone. He liked being alone. And now a beautiful woman was probably naked in the tub he’d be bathing in all summer. He’d had to get out of there. Getting the linens had been an easy excuse for him to escape all the images he’d had of Harper.
The woman was beautiful. No, stunning. And he’d bet she didn’t even know it by the way she carried herself. She worked in a world surrounded by crisis, and yet, Nash had seen how vulnerable she was. Something about her drew him to her.
He didn’t want to think about it, or about her flowing dark hair that had been straight when he’d seen her at the police station but that had sprung up into waves and curls after getting
