Between Strangers
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Linda Conrad
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18,5K
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11
One
Unbelievable. It looked as if driving the next twenty miles to the State Line Truckstop was going to take more than three hours.
Or rather, it would take that long if he didn’t get stuck in a snowdrift, and if the state police hadn’t closed all the side roads the same way they’d done with the interstate.
Lance White Eagle Steele jacked up the heater in his newly purchased four-wheel-drive SUV, wishing for a thermos of hot coffee. He’d been so sure this two-lane road would be a good shortcut, getting him around a major section of snow-closed interstate high way. It had never occurred to him that it might take six times longer to navigate the icy backcountry roads through what had turned into a blinding blizzard.
Well, at least he was on his way home. Thinking of the ranch and the warmth of the people waiting there for his return, he realized that another few hours or an extra day wouldn’t matter much. He would still be able to make it back to Montana in time for the annual Christmas Eve party.
For a few frustrating moments back there at O’Hare, Lance had worried that he would be forced to miss Christmas on the ranch altogether. His bad timing was perfect. He’d come in from New Orleans and planned to make a connecting flight to Great Falls. Only, just as he’d arrived, all flights had been canceled due to the midwinter snowstorm.
The bad news hadn’t stopped there. The entire upper Midwest was socked in and, according to weather forecasts, flights might continue to be delayed for days. Three waves of low-pressure systems were chasing each other, barreling across the skies and burying the Great Plains in mountains of snow.
The crowds at O’Hare had begun to bed down on the floors, expecting to be stuck there for some time. But Lance had been determined to get home for that party.
Patting his leather winter jacket at a spot above his breast pocket, he was heartened by the solid feel of the ring box he carried. Everything would be okay. He just knew it. Soon his whole life would be headed down the right course, just as he was now headed down the right roads to get himself home.
It had been a fairly simple matter to convince the rental car agent to sell him a slightly used SUV so he could get out of the overcrowded airport and be on his way home. Good references and a really high credit line on his card worked wonders toward convincing the man that his paperwork for the sale could be faxed the week after next when government offices reopened after the holidays.
Lance squinted out the windshield as the snowfall worsened, blocking his view of the poorly lit road ahead. He turned on the wipers, rubbed at the foggy glass and did his best. This was turning out to be one of the worst snowstorms he’d ever seen. And in ten years of traveling the rodeo circuits throughout the American West, he’d seen quite a few.
Using the edge of his hand, he swiped another path across the inside of the fogged glass in front of him. The defroster and heater were working overtime, and Lance gave a silent prayer of thanks for being inside and warm instead of out there in the bitter December wind.
He cleared enough of a spot to see just in time…giving him a last second opportunity to swerve and avoid hitting a bulky dark shape at the side of the road.
“Damn,” he grumbled while he guided his wheels toward the other lane.
As his car skidded past, the dark form became a human being hunched against the wind and carrying an oversize load wrapped in a blanket. Checking his rearview mirror, Lance spotted the outlined shadow of a car at the side of the road a few yards back and figured the guy must have broken down.
Poor bastard would soon freeze to death out here. Talk about bad luck. Lance had been driving these back roads for six hours now and hadn’t run into a single soul who was stupid enough to be out in such a blizzard.
As much as he needed to keep going, Lance certainly couldn’t leave a fellow traveler stranded on a deserted country road in this weather. During emergencies, people had to stick together for survival. If he’d been stuck, he would hope someone would have stopped to help.
Lance was pretty handy at car repairs, maybe he could help the guy get his car going. And maybe it wouldn’t take too long for him to be on his way home again.
Stopping in the road, but leaving the engine running, Lance opened the car door and stepped out onto the highway. A strong gust of Arctic wind blasted him as ice crunched under his boots. He hung on to his Stetson and tried to peer through the blowing snow while he fought his way back to the stranded motorist.
Through the haze of snow flurries and sleet, he managed a clearer glimpse of the person coming toward him. Lance was stunned to realize it was a woman.
Her head was covered by a thin scarf made of some drab-colored material. And she was burdened down with an oversize bundle that she’d covered with an old army blanket.
She came closer and after another second he finally caught his first glimpse of her eyes. They were light brown and a little overly bright in the low light of the snowstorm. Her face was thin and her lips were pursed with the effort to breathe.
Her clothes were covered with snow and getting wetter by the minute. While her face was devoid of makeup, her skin was smooth and what hair he could see looked like a fine golden halo around her face. She looked like an angel in distress.
The woman must be totally insane to be out here alone in this storm. Or maybe she was on drugs. He figured he’d better watch his step with her.
“What’s wrong with your car?” he yelled over the howling wind.
She was still breathing hard from the exertion of walking against the wind while carrying the heavy-looking bundle. Her every gasp was outlined in the crystallized air.
“I’m afraid it’s done for,” she wheezed. “I know there’s plenty of gas, and I just had the battery charged at a gas station in Minneapolis. But it stopped dead in the middle of the road. And after I coasted to the side, the engine refused to turn over again. Nothing happens when I crank the key. Absolutely nothing.”
“Get in my car before you freeze to death out here,” he shouted. “I’ll take a look at it. Give me your keys.”
As she came nearer, the woman’s eyes became wary, hesitant. “I have…” she gulped as she handed over the car keys and held up her burden.
Heaven help her, he muttered under his breath. Whatever she had with her wasn’t worth her life. Why didn’t she just set the thing down somewhere and come back for it later?
He skated back to the SUV he’d left idling in the middle of the deserted road and ripped open the back door. “Throw it in the back seat and get the hell inside now!”
She tossed him a quick, glaring look and shook her head. “I have to keep her close to my body until she warms up some.” As she unwrapped a tiny edge of the blanket to show him, he saw the top of a woolly baby’s cap that was almost covering curly blond hair.
Lance nearly lost his footing altogether as he raced to help the woman get herself and her child into the front seat by the heater. Whatever in the world would possess a woman to take a kid out in such a storm?
Though a little frightened and somewhat hesitant to accept help from a complete stranger, Marcy Griffin had no choice but to climb into the front seat of the cowboy’s SUV. Another fifteen minutes in this cold and the baby might’ve gotten chilled through and be on her way to pneumonia.
It was a terrible decision to have to make: risk getting involved with a stranger who could be a crazed maniac, or take a chance on the life and health of her precious daughter. Actually, there hadn’t been much of a choice.
The man wearing the cowboy hat had shut the car doors to keep the interior warm and then headed back through the storm to look at her car. Marcy looked down at the child in her arms and found that her baby was still sleeping soundly.
It would be just as well if Angie slept right through this ordeal. Marcy knew her child was hungry, cold and tired, and she wished with all her might that things could be different, for her daughter’s sake.
But at least the two of them were still alive. And one way or another, they were headed toward a better life. That was the most important thing right now.
Ten minutes later, just as Marcy was beginning to feel her fingers and toes again, the cowboy opened the rear passenger door and began installing Angie’s car seat.
“You were right,” he told her. “Your car is a goner. I think you must’ve cracked the block.”
“If we’re going to ride with you, can you get Angie’s things out of my trunk, please?”
“Things?”
“Diapers, baby food, bottles…” Marcy couldn’t see his expression under the brim of the hat, but she imagined he was scowling at his bad luck, stopping for such high-maintenance passengers.
“I’ll get them moved over,” he muttered. “You make sure the baby’s seat is secure and get her loaded in. I’ll be right back.”
She scrambled out and made short work of getting Angie buckled into her seat. Angie shifted around and nestled down in the familiar form-fitting cocoon but never opened her eyes. She’d been so quiet for so long that Marcy put her cheek against the child’s forehead, hoping to find that nothing was seriously wrong with her. Thankfully, Angie’s temperature seemed fine.
There was no third seat in the SUV and it didn’t take the cowboy long to fill up the cargo space with their things. Once they were all buckled in and cautiously on their way, Marcy closed her eyes and gave a silent prayer of thanks for their rescue.
Peeking out through half-closed lids to check on the stranger who’d picked them up, she decided to thank him for being their hero only when they were safe and sound and she was sure he wasn’t really a serial killer. Marcy studied his profile while he concentrated on the slick road.
What kind of man was this?
He’d pushed the hat back on his forehead so he could get a better view out the windshield. She remembered thinking how tall and broad-shouldered he was as they’d been standing out on the side of the road.
Now she could see that he was also powerfully built. He had what could only be described as a commanding presence. Just by breathing, he seemed to suck up all the oxygen and space surrounding his body, and Marcy could imagine him as a leader of troops. A man others would respect.
Thank heaven. Perhaps they would all get out of this storm safely.
Looking closer, she noted the jet-black, slightly too long hair under his gray cowboy hat…and quickly scanned the rugged angles and jutting jawline of his face. The lighting wasn’t very good, but his bronzed skin, high cheekbones and Roman nose all looked Native American.
Which was why the first thing out of his mouth surprised her so much.
“The name’s Lance Steele,” he said without looking directly at her. “What’ll I call you?”
“Oh, please excuse me. Things have been so…” She caught herself and began again. “My name’s Marcy Griffin. And my baby is Angelina…. ‘Angie’ most of the time unless I’m frustrated and trying to get her attention.” In her daughter’s entire nine months of life, Marcy hadn’t come that close to apologizing for simply being alive—the way she would’ve done in her best-forgotten past.
She had no intention of ever allowing herself to become such a wimp again.
The corner of his mouth cracked slightly but not enough to actually call it a smile. “Is the kid…Angie…okay? She’s not sick, is she?”
“She’s fine. It’s just been a long, hard day for her.”
“Where are you two headed? And what the devil were you thinking to bring a child out in a—” He screwed up his mouth and looked as if he was about to spew a raft of curse words at her.
After he breathed deeply and rolled his shoulders for a second or two, he seemed a little more in control. “Sorry. But you two should be someplace dry and warm right now. Not out becoming stranded in one of the worst blizzards in history. Where’s your husband? What will he have to say when he finds out how much danger you two were in?”
The flash of a reminder about Mike made her forget to be careful and thoughtful before she answered the questions of a cowboy who had yet to completely prove he wasn’t a maniac. “If my ex-husband cared one way or the other about being a father in the first place…or if he’d ever bothered to meet the baby he helped to create…I’m sure he would have nothing good to say about anything I did.”
She folded her arms across her chest and stared out at the inhospitable landscape. Well, that little speech was more than she’d said to anyone in months. And it had been much more venomous than was strictly necessary. She had better find a less combative way to get to know their rescuer.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a sigh. “I realize you don’t know anything about my divorce. Angie and I are on our own. I’m trying to get to a new job. It’s really a great opportunity. But we have to be there by the first of January. I thought we had lots of time, but…”
“How far away is this new job?” he interrupted.
“Not that far, under normal circumstances. Cheyenne…in Wyoming.”
“Yeah, I know where it is. I’ve spent a lot of time in Cheyenne.”
“Is that your home? You aren’t headed there now, are you?”
The slight shake of his head was almost imperceptible. “Nope. I’m headed for a ranch outside Great Falls. That’s my home.”
He’d said the word home with such obvious reverence, she just knew some lucky woman must be waiting there for his return. Marcy didn’t think she’d better question him any further right now, however, especially on the subject of who he was fighting his way home to see.
Out of nowhere, a loud cracking sound split through the piercing noise of the howling winds. Lance slowly put his foot on the brake and the SUV came to a sliding stop…within a foot of a huge pine tree that had landed across the road directly in their path.
Both of them sat in stunned silence, looking out the windshield at nothing but pine needles and bark in every direction. There was total quiet for what seemed like a half hour, but it was probably only a few seconds.
“Stay put. I’ll go move it out of the way,” Lance growled.
“Is it the whole tree?”
He shook his head in frustration. “It’s just a damned big branch. I’ll handle it.” He got out and slammed the door behind him.
He knew he shouldn’t take his frustrations out on a perfect stranger. None of this was her fault. Whether she was in the SUV or not hadn’t caused the wind to take off the biggest branch he’d ever seen and lay it end to end blocking the road.
Okay, so there was nothing he’d like better than to never have seen her and her baby standing by the roadside in the first place. He had a timetable of his own and no time to deal with someone else’s problems.
But that little outburst of hers about the no-good scum of a husband abandoning them both before the baby was even born had made him furious. He’d known plenty of bums like that from his rodeo days. Men who would play around with women and then disappear when things got serious.
But knowing about it didn’t make hearing the truth from the woman’s side any easier. It was despicable. The thought of having a family right in the palm of your hand and casually tossing it aside rather than cherishing every minute made him angry and itching to hit something.
Nothing on earth would make him abandon these two to the storm. He didn’t know why he’d been hapless enough to be saddled with them, but it looked as if fate had stepped in yet again and changed his plans. At the very least, he would take them to a truck stop and make sure they were safe.
Pulling his hat lower and hunching down inside his jacket, Lance stepped out of the warmth of the running car and into a polar blast of Arctic air. The temperature must’ve dropped twenty degrees in the past hour.
He tried not to breathe too deeply in the sharp raw cold, knowing all too well how his lungs would burn if he did. A man couldn’t be a wrangler on a ranch in northern Montana without being fully aware of all the dangers lurking in the long, hard winters there.
By the time he made it around the hood through the blinding, blowing snow to the downed tree branch, he felt the bone-chilling cold penetrating all the way down to his internal organs. He quickly discovered that the pine branch was lying across the entire two lanes, making it impossible for the SUV to go around. The limb was thick, full of bushy needles and loaded with heavy snow.
There was nothing to do but drag it out of the way. But two major tugs against the full weight of the branch told him moving it by hand was out of the question. Man, what he’d give for a cross-cut saw just about now.
“Can I help?” Marcy’s question grabbed his attention.
“I told you to stay put,” he yelled against the wind. “The temperature out here has dropped beyond dangerous. Get back in the car.”
“You’ll never move anything that heavy by yourself,” she said, ignoring his question in a voice raised above the roar of the storm. “Can we use the SUV to push it out of the way?”
“No.” But her question gave him an idea.
Before buying the SUV, when he’d been checking out the compartment that held the spare tire, he was a little surprised to find jumper cables, a fold-up metal shovel, a cable-size rope and a thick blanket all stuffed in around the spare. The rental agent told him it was standard procedure to keep emergency supplies like those in every car they rented out during the dead of winter.
“That’ll have to work,” he grumbled to himself as he stomped to the cargo compartment of the SUV.
By the time he’d retrieved the rope from the compartment, Marcy was beside him again. “What’re you going to do?”
“We can’t push it out of the way. But maybe we can pull it aside far enough to drive around,” he told her.
Like most newer cars and trucks, this one didn’t have decent steel bumpers. But it did have a heavy-duty hitch installed to the frame under the rear bumper.
Lance glanced over at Marcy and caught the shiver that pulsed through her body. She wasn’t dressed warmly enough for this kind of weather. That coat of hers was worn out.
There was no question which of them would do what. “Do you think you can turn the SUV around so that it’s headed in the other direction? I’ll attach the rope and make sure it’ll hold.”
“Yes…yes, of course…” she stuttered.
When she was safely in the driver’s seat, he finally relaxed his shoulders. At least her feet wouldn’t be subject to frostbite while inside the warm vehicle.
He stepped aside and guided her by hand movements to a point he figured would be the best for moving the branch. After he’d made sure the rope was securely tied to both tree and SUV, he waved her ahead. She cracked the driver’s-side window to hear him over the wind.
She tried to inch ahead but the wheels were spinning against the icy patches and the building snow crystals. She couldn’t manage to get any traction.
“Let me try it,” he hollered.
Instead of scooting over the center console, Marcy hopped out of the driver’s door and started around the hood to the passenger side. She raised her hands to cover her mouth against the biting cold, and he got his first good look at her gloves.
Or her utter lack of adequate gloves would be a truer description of what he’d seen as she dashed past. He had originally thought she’d been wearing woolen mittens. Now he was shocked to see holes where her fingers poked through the thin material. She would have frostbite for sure.
Marcy climbed inside through the other door, and he slid into the driver’s seat. It didn’t take him but five more minutes to rock the SUV ahead, dragging the branch out of one lane. Two more minutes and the rope was untied and crammed back in the compartment with the spare. Then he successfully managed to turn the SUV once again so they could be on their way.
He eased the SUV down the road past the bulk of the tree. Once they were clear, he slowed and put it in Park.
Turning to face her, he tried to remain calm as he said, “Marcy, give me your hands.”
“What?” She swiveled and blinked at his odd demand.
Holding his own hands out, palms up, he cocked his head and waited.
She tentatively started to lay her hands in his, but looked wary and confused. It was all he could do not to break down and beg her to quickly do as he’d asked. He didn’t want to scare her, but this was too important.
