Desperation kept Shelley Young plowing through the blinding
snow. Of course, she'd seen the weather forecast, but she'd
left Boulder anyway, praying that she'd outrun the storm as
she headed down Route 76 toward Yuma. In other words, the
middle of nowhere. A part of Colorado she'd avoided since
she'd broken up with Matt Whitlock five years ago. She'd
been in love with him, but she'd finally figured out that he
couldn't give her the things she wanted most—marriage
and children. Walking away from him had wrenched her heart,
but she'd made a clean break, moving her accounting business
a hundred and forty miles away to Boulder, where she'd been
living ever since.
"It's all for the best," her mom would have said.
For a while Shelley had believed it, but she'd been wrong.
Because now she was back—to beg Matt Whitlock for
help. Only she'd gotten caught in a storm that blanked out
every recognizable feature of the flat eastern Colorado
landscape.
This was an area of sudden, violent weather. Thunderstorms
in the summer and snowstorms in the winter.
Like now. But what did she expect? In the time it took to
read a couple of heart-stopping sentences, her life had
fallen to pieces—and plowing through the blinding snow
was just one more trial she had to get through to put it
back together.
If she could put it back together.
Although the windshield wipers swept back and forth in front
of her, they didn't help much. If only she'd noted the
odometer reading when she'd left Boulder, she'd have a
better idea where she was, but she'd been too focused on
getting here to check anything on the dashboard besides the
gas gauge.
She almost missed the turn-off for the Silver Stallion
Ranch, but from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of
the familiar metal archway above the stone gateposts.
Skidding as she applied the brakes, she peered up the narrow
drive that led to the ranch complex. There were no tire
tracks, which meant no one had been up or down the access
road since the storm had started.
Her heart gave a painful lurch. After she'd come so far, was
Matt away? Or was he just holed up in the ranch house,
waiting out the bad weather?
Clamping her hands onto the wheel, she turned in between the
gateposts and started up the lane. Once this had been
familiar territory. Now she might as well be traveling
through an arctic wasteland.
When the car skidded on hidden ice, she cautiously tapped
the brake, wondering when Matt had last plowed the drive. It
felt as if he hadn't spread a fresh layer of gravel since
she'd been here.
What did the lack of upkeep mean? Was he low on funds? Or
had he withdrawn even more into the shell she'd watched him
building around himself?
With a sick feeling, she looked back over her shoulder,
questioning her decision to come here in the first place.
But she'd had nowhere else to turn, and retracing her path
would be tricky.
She managed to drive perhaps another fifty yards before the
car hit an obstruction hidden in the snow. When she tried to
back up, she fishtailed into the ditch at the side of the road.
If she'd been a man, she would have responded with a string
of curses, but she made do with one ladylike "damn."
She was good at keeping her temper under control. Maybe that
was part of her problem. She was too polite to make a fuss,
which was one of the reasons she hadn't contacted Matt five
years ago when…
She took her bottom lip between her teeth, unwilling to
finish the thought. She'd have to get to that soon enough.
Her cell phone was in her purse, but when she pulled it out,
she got another nasty surprise. Usually she charged it
overnight, but that was one more detail she'd neglected in
the past few days. Now the battery was dead as a tree stump.
"Damn!"
She'd just have to walk the rest of the way to the ranch house.
With a sigh, she looked in the back seat. Her overnight bag
was there, but carrying it through the snow was out of the
question. After slinging the strap of her purse across her
chest, she yanked her wool hat down more firmly over her
dark hair, pulled her scarf up over her nose and climbed out
of the car.
Immediately, the wind whipped against her slender frame,
making her grab the car door to brace herself. When she felt
steady on her feet, she raised her arm to shield her eyes
from the stinging flakes and started plodding up the drive,
glad that at least the snow wasn't higher than the top of
her boots.
Up at the ranch house, Matt Whitlock shut off the alarm that
had warned him that someone was on the road to the main
complex. Someone he obviously wasn't expecting.
Now who would be out in a storm like this?
A traveler who needed to take shelter from the driving snow?
Or someone using the weather as an excuse to sneak up on him?
He made a snorting sound. There was a time in his life when
he would have considered that last thought over-the-top
paranoid. From bitter experience, he'd learned that paranoia
could be entirely justified.
He turned toward the window, looking out at the sea of
white. From here, he couldn't even see the bunkhouse where
his one remaining hand, Ed Janey, lived. It was tempting to
stay inside and let the trespasser make the next move.
Still, whoever was out there could be in trouble if he
hadn't figured on a sudden storm. If Matt didn't want to
find a frozen body in the road tomorrow morning, he'd better
go out and have a look.
Or maybe he'd encounter a deer looking for shelter.
With a sense of resignation, he made his way to the mudroom
that he used more than the front entrance of the ranch house.
Along one wall was a bench where he sat down to lace up
sturdy boots. Next, he strapped on a holster and pulled his
Sig Sauer from the gun cabinet. Not the weapon of choice for
most ranchers, but it seemed more useful than a rifle under
the circumstances. After clicking in a magazine, he
holstered the weapon, then took a down coat and a
broad-brimmed hat from pegs on the wall. Prepared for the
storm—and for trouble— he stepped out of the
house into the storm.
A stinging blast of snow hit him in the face, and he shook
his head. The smart thing would be to go back inside, but he
was out here now, and he might as well find out who the
devil was stupid enough to be traveling on a February day
like this.
"Oh, when the saints come marching in,"
Shelley sang as she struggled up the road toward the ranch.
Belting out the lively hymn helped keep her mind off her
precarious situation, but she gave up when she realized she
needed all her energy just to keep plowing through the snow.
In the distance, she thought she saw a light, but it might
simply be a mirage.
Born and bred in Colorado, she was used to extremes of
weather, but it had been a long time since she'd gone out in
a storm like this. If she'd been thinking about her own
safety, she would have waited a couple of days before
heading for Matt's ranch, but her problem had been too
urgent to put off. And it hadn't been something she could
talk about over the phone.
Now she was wondering if she had a chance of making it to
the house.
Her foot collided with yet another hidden obstruction, and
she almost went down—but managed to stay on her feet
by windmilling her arms.
After taking a moment to catch her breath, she started
forward again. As the light faded, the temperature dropped,
and numbing cold began to penetrate her coat.
Tears blurred her vision, but she blinked them away. If she
let herself get worked up, she was going to start
screaming— or sobbing, and that wasn't going to do her
any good.
Instead, she kept putting one foot in front of the other as
she lowered her head against the wind and followed the road
as best she could toward the ranch complex.
The wind kicked up, blowing the snow into drifts that
blocked her way. She judged that she had covered about half
the distance between the car and the house when she
blundered off the driveway and into the ditch—which
was piled with snow.
For a long moment, she lay where she was—panting. Then
she forced herself up because she knew that if she stayed
where she was, she'd end up freezing to death. Lips set in a
grim line, she scrambled back onto the road, but now her
steps were slower, and she knew she was in serious danger of
going down again.
Matt was several hundred yards from the house when he saw
something through a curtain of falling snow. A person,
struggling up the driveway that led to the ranch yard.
"This way," he called out.
There was no response, and he knew the wind had drowned out
the sound of his voice. As he watched, the guy pitched over
into a snowdrift and lay still.
Matt picked up his pace. The damn fool was in trouble—
whoever it was.
"Just stay there. I'm coming," he called out, then
laughed harshly at himself. It didn't look like the
interloper was going anywhere under his own power.
Matt tramped onward through the blizzard, finally reaching
the guy, who had fallen in the snow and didn't have the
strength to get up.
Squatting down, he turned the man over and pulled down the
scarf that covered his face.
When large green eyes blinked open, he made a strangled sound.
"Shelley?"
"Matt…" she gasped out as she focused on his
face. "Thank God."
"What are you doing here?"
She blinked, and her lips moved, but she apparently didn't
have the strength to answer.
"Come on." He helped her to her feet and slung his
arm around her waist, holding her erect.
"Can you walk?"
"I…think so."
He was cursing himself for not bringing a four-wheeler down
the road, but he'd been too intent on sneaking up on the
intruder. Now he was stuck walking Shelley back to the house.
Holding her firmly against his side, he turned and retraced
his steps, following his own trail through the snow.
It was still falling like a son of a bitch, and it was hard
to see where he was going. But he pushed his surprise guest
onward as fast as he could make her walk because he knew he
had to get her out of the cold and wind as soon as possible.
As he held her upright, images from the past assaulted
him— starting with a very nervous Shelley Young, just
out of college, interviewing for the job of his accountant.
She'd worn her brown hair longer then. He skipped a few
months and saw himself and Shelley in his office, going over
the computer files. The two of them at the breakfast table.
Walking hand and hand along the creek. Down by the
corral—feeding carrots to the horses.
He tried to keep one more vivid picture out of his
mind— him and Shelley naked in bed, in each other's
arms, clinging desperately together because they both sensed
that the relationship was never going to work out, and
neither of them was willing to admit it.
He squeezed his eyes closed, struggling against that last
image and against his own reaction. If he was smart, he
would put her into a four-wheel SUV and drive her back to
Boulder, where she was living now.
But he couldn't do it. She must have come here for a reason,
and he needed to find out what it was. Still, he knew he had
his own reasons for bringing her inside.
If he could have her here for just a little while, maybe
that would be enough to last him another five lonely years.
When they finally reached the house, he muttered a prayer of
thanks as he helped her through the door. Once they were in
the warmth of the house, he sat her down on the bench in the
mudroom and pulled off her boots, coat and purse.
"Matt?"
"It's okay. What are you doing here?"
She shook her head, and he could tell she wasn't exactly
with it.
After tossing his own coat on the floor and pulling off his
boots, he picked Shelley up in his arms and carried her
through the kitchen, then down the hall to the room where he
had slept when he was a kid.
He'd long ago moved into the master bedroom where he had
more space to spread out, but he'd kept this room in case he
needed it. Yeah, sure. For what?
Well, at least he didn't have to put Shelley in his bed.
That was something.
He propped her against his hip then pulled the covers aside
and eased her onto the bed. When she was lying down, he
reached for her feet. They were cold and wet, so he pulled
her socks off and inspected her toes, which were red but not
frostbitten. When he found that the hems of her jeans were
wet, he opened the snap at her waist, pulled down her zipper
and dragged the pants down her legs.
"You're undressing me," she murmured, her lips
curving in a silly grin.
"We need to get you warm and dry," he answered,
peeling down her thermal underwear and discarding it along
with her jeans, struggling to ignore his reaction to her
slim legs, feminine thighs and the triangle of dark hair he
could see through the thin fabric of her panties.
Luckily, her shirt was still dry, so he dragged the sheet
and blanket over her, covering the tempting image of her
lying in bed.
"You need to sleep."
"I need you."
Her arms whipped out and circled his neck, pulling him down
so that he flopped on top of her.
"Shelley."
"I need you, Matt," she whispered, her voice quavery.
"For what? Why did you come here?"
She made a muffled sound.
When he lifted his head to gaze down at her, she still
looked dazed and confused, and he knew he should climb off
the bed and beat a retreat into the other room.
As he hesitated, she cupped the back of his head and brought
his mouth to hers, and he couldn't make himself pull away.
When his lips touched down on hers, a jolt of sensation shot
through him.
Somewhere in his mind, he knew none of this should be
happening. He shouldn't be in a bed with her—holding
her— for so many reasons.
Yet at this moment in time, none of the reasons mattered.
The only thing his brain had room for was that she was lying
in his embrace.
He broke the kiss and lifted his head. Her lips were parted
now, her breath shallow, her eyes full of hope—and, he
thought, pain.
"What is it?"
"Just be with me."