A Texas Rescue Christmas

Chapter Four

The storm was getting worse. Becky’s time was getting shorter, her body getting colder, her lungs struggling as the air temperature dropped lower and lower. She wanted to sleep, oh, so very badly. Staying conscious in the constant, inescapable cold had worn her out in a way she’d never experienced. If only she could sink down among the oak’s roots and sleep...

She would die. When she finally closed her eyes today, they would not open again.

She wasn’t ready for that.

There was so much she hadn’t experienced. Her entire life, she’d been waiting to start living. Wrapped in her demure cashmere sweaters, standing still by her mother’s side, she’d been waiting for permission.

Waiting to meet a wonderful man. Waiting to have her own home, a permanent home, the kind that children would return to every Christmas, even when they were grown with families of their own. Waiting to live a life Becky knew existed for other people, one full of ups and downs, one she wanted to experience for herself.

Now, she was waiting for a miracle.

She curled her arms around herself a little tighter and slid down the tree trunk. She looked up at the little roof that had kept the worst of the sleet off her head and shoulders. She was afraid her meager attempt at shelter had only delayed the inevitable. Really afraid.

She couldn’t stay on her feet any longer, but she kept her eyes open, because she did not want to die yet. One little miracle, that was all she needed.

“Rebecca Cargill!”

She shuddered in misery as she imagined an angry male voice shouting her name. When the brain froze, did one suffer delusions before dying?

“Rebecca!”

Goodness, that sounded so real.

“Where are you, darlin’?”

It was a miracle. Somewhere close by, an angry man was her miracle.

Here, I’m here, she tried to call. Her jaw had been so tightly clenched against the cold, she couldn’t force the muscles to relax so she could speak.

I’m here, I’m here, don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave.

She hugged the tree trunk instead of herself. Using her arms as much as her legs, she hauled herself back to her feet.

“Rebecca. Good God.”

Before she could turn around, she was swept off her feet, wrenched away from her tree and held against a man’s chest instead. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck, not because it felt like he might drop her, but because she was so grateful he was here. But her whole body was so stiff, her arms wouldn’t obey her brain.

“Stay with me, darlin’. We’ll get you warmed up. Just stay with me.”

Did he think she’d rather stay with that tree? That tree had not cared that she was there. Now that she was not alone, she realized how very lonely she’d been. Hour after hour, she’d been the only living creature. Even the birds and insects had disappeared into their own shelters. It had been Becky and a tree. And ice.

His boots crunched over the ground as he carried her, and he seemed to take very long strides and move very quickly. It was disorienting, to suddenly be with another human being. She was no longer alone. Thank God, she was not alone.

“Okay, Rebecca? Are you with me?”

I’m trying to answer you. Give me a minute. Her jaw didn’t want to unclench, but she nodded.

He looked down at her then, and over the scarf that covered the lower half of his face, under the brim of his cowboy hat, she tried to make eye contact, but he wore wide ski goggles.

Goggles. The concept burst into her brain like they were a new invention. How convenient goggles would have been while riding in the cold wind. Every inch of his face was covered, which made him seem incredibly smart to her. And beautiful. The mere fact that he was here made him the most beautiful person on earth.

“Was that a nod,” he asked, “or just a shiver?”

She tried to smile at her beautiful rescuer, and she thought she’d succeeded in making her frozen facial muscles move, but he only looked away again, and kept walking.

He can’t see my face, either.

She hadn’t been smart enough to prepare for this weather, so she’d had to make do. She’d pulled her ski hat down low and her collar up high, but her eyes had been exposed, so a few hours ago, she’d taken the long strings of her ski cap and wrapped them across her eyes and tied them behind her head. She could see out through the slit in between them.

They’d reached an ATV, a black one, and the man set her on the seat. “Let me get you a blanket— Hey!”

She had no balance. She’d tried to grab for the handlebar, but her disobedient body hadn’t responded and she’d started to do a face plant into the ground. The man had reflexes like some kind of ninja, because he caught her. Keeping one hand on her, he tugged at some gear behind the seat and produced a blanket. It looked like a giant sheet of aluminum foil, but Becky knew it was a thermal blanket.

Despite the term “thermal,” it didn’t look warm, and when the man sat behind her on the ATV and started tucking it around her shoulders, it didn’t feel warm, either. He positioned her in his lap, moving her so that she sat sideways. He pulled her arms, one by one, over his shoulders, and she tried to hold on to his neck as she pressed her face into his icy coat.

He started the engine. “Just a few more minutes. Stay with me a little longer, Rebecca.”

I’m not going anywhere, she tried to say. It sounded more like, “Nnn...ing...anywhere,” but her rescuer chuckled and she felt the wonderful rise and fall of his chest through his coat. He tucked the top of her head under his chin and started the engine.

At the first bump, she found her arms were too weak to hold on, but he kept her from falling. With one arm wrapped tightly around her, he steered the vehicle one-handed. The metallic blanket kept some of the wind off her, but she was not warm, and it would take hours of this driving to get back to the ranch house. She wouldn’t last.

She couldn’t fight the cold any longer, but at least she would not die alone. A strange sort of contentment filled her.

I got my miracle. I was found.

Rebecca closed her eyes. Secure in her rescuer’s arms, she drifted into black oblivion.

* * *

Trey felt the woman’s arms slip, limp, from his neck.

He kept driving, keeping a sharp eye out for the landmarks that had not changed. There was an old cabin a half-mile away, built near the banks of a creek. It had been abandoned for the past hundred years, except for the ranch hands who’d found it better shelter than none when caught in a sudden rain, and the rancher’s sons who’d found it to be a handy hide-out. The creek had not moved, of course, so Trey felt absolutely certain of where he was, where everything was around him.

Thank God. If there was ever a time he couldn’t afford to get lost, now was it.

“Rebecca. Keep breathing.” He gave her a little shake. “Breathe, damn it. That’s all you gotta do, honey. Breathe.”

The cabin was situated within a trio of the largest mesquite trees Trey had come across in either Texas or Oklahoma. Someone had added a corrugated metal roof decades ago, for which Trey was grateful. It probably wouldn’t leak. The fireplace was stone, and it looked to be standing fairly straight after all these years. Trey parked the ATV under a mesquite, knowing it would still become coated in ice, but the need to care for equipment as well as one could had been ingrained in him since birth.

He held Rebecca in his arms and stepped warily onto the narrow porch. Nearly half the boards were missing, but the ones that remained held his weight as he lifted the simple wooden crossbeam and opened the door. Setting Rebecca on the floor on top of the silver blanket was like laying down a rag doll. Hypothermia could be deadly and quick. He had no time. He ran back to the ATV, grabbed everything with both arms and ran back into the cabin.

He shouted her name and ordered her to breathe as he unpacked the single sleeping bag and laid it on top of a second metallic thermal blanket. Then he started to strip. Basic survival rules required skin-to-skin contact to stay warm. There was no time to gather wood and build a fire. Traveling farther was out of the question.

He shed layers, starting at the bottom. His boots, her boots. Socks. Pants. Any cloth in direct contact with skin held moisture, so their underwear had to go, too. Modesty meant nothing when death was threatening.

The air was freezing in the cabin, but he didn’t dare slip her into the sleeping bag until every last stitch of clothing was off. If he slid her legs into the bag while her coat was still on, the coat could drip water onto the bag, and then they’d never get warm in a damp cocoon.

“C’mon, Rebecca. Wake up. Help me out.”

She responded to his voice by stirring on the silver blanket, but that looked like it was all he was going to get from her. Still, it was something. She wasn’t deeply unconscious. Maybe she was just exhausted, if he was lucky.

He took off the last of his clothing and went to work on hers. Damn it all to hell, it was cold, and he started to shiver, although he’d taken off her hat, gloves and coat in seconds. He would’ve had a hard time getting all the tiny pearl buttons of her sweater undone in any circumstances—it was a garment guaranteed to make a man think a girl was off-limits—but with the shivering and the cold and the seconds ticking by, he quit on the second button and ripped the shirt down the front.

It took two shaking hands to undo her bra clasp and toss the damp elastic to the side. Immediately, in a move that was more about speed than gentleness, he rolled her into the sleeping bag, yanked the zipper closed from her feet to her waist, then jumped in beside her and yanked the zipper shut the rest of the way. The one-man bag was designed to cover the head and left only a circle for the face. Although there were two of them sharing the circle, he pulled the opening’s drawstring, making that circle even smaller, keeping just that extra bit of cold out.

He’d just zipped his naked self in with an ice cube. He’d once had a girlfriend whose feet were always so cold, she slept in wool socks. This woman was cold like that all over. It scared him, honestly, to feel skin so cold over an entire body.

“Time to warm up,” he said, and he started moving his hands over that icy skin, trying to stimulate her circulation without damaging any skin that might have gotten frostbite.

She didn’t move. He kept at it. She would warm up, because he wouldn’t let her do otherwise. This was the most effective method possible. The cabin protected them from the worst of the weather, although the chinks in between the log walls were plentiful. They shared a sleeping bag that was undoubtedly rated for far colder conditions than this. They would survive, even without a fire.

And without their clothes. Trey hated himself for thinking about such a thing in the circumstances, but as he pulled Rebecca tightly against himself, he was quite aware that she was a woman. He’d heard a soldier in Oklahoma complain over a glass of beer about survival training with men. His instructor had required everyone to go through the hypothermia drill, the entire hypothermia drill, to force the men to overcome their aversion to sharing body heat like this.

Trey tucked Rebecca’s legs between his. She was an ice cube, but she was a smooth and feminine ice cube. Frankly, if he had to share some “full frontal” with a stranger, he couldn’t deny that a young woman was a highly preferable hypothermia partner. Still, they’d probably be embarrassed as hell about this someday—which was better than being dead.

“Come on, wake up and share this awkward moment with me. Rebecca, wake up and talk to me.”

They were on their sides, facing each other, nearly nose to nose. As he stroked up her back to the nape of her neck, he drew his head away a little bit to take a look at her face, now that it wasn’t hidden under hat and strings and collar.

His hand stopped. She was almost unnaturally beautiful. Her face was heart-shaped, framed by bangs. Her brows and long lashes were a rich brown. But the hypothermia made her skin appear to be white porcelain, and her lips were blue with cold. The effect was startling, like holding a life-sized version of the porcelain angel that his mother put on their Christmas tree.

Acting on instinct, Trey pressed his mouth to hers, keeping his eyes open, staying for a long moment to allow the heat of his mouth to warm hers. He didn’t want this beautiful woman to have blue lips.

When he felt her lips softening under his, he lifted his head and brushed her hair behind her ear. Her lips looked a little less blue in her perfect, heart-shaped face. He wondered what color her eyes were.

“Come on, sleeping beauty. It’s time to wake up. Let me see if your eyes are as beautiful as the rest of you.”

Trey closed his eyes when he kissed her this time, as though it were a real kiss.

Rebecca woke up.

Chapter Five

When Becky had closed her eyes, she hadn’t expected to ever open them again, yet here she was, awake. She was alive, but she was still cold. Shivering, and sick of it.

The first millisecond of opening her eyes was spent on realizing she was alive. The second millisecond was much more interesting. She was looking right at the jaw of a man, a real man with a five-o’clock shadow and a firm mouth. But as she stared at that mouth, the man kissed her.

Her eyes fluttered shut once more. His lips were soft, but the greatest miracle of all was that they were warm. Oh, so warm—and she craved heat right now.

She loved that mouth, so she kissed it tenderly, then opened to taste his upper lip, his lower. If his lips were warm, than his tongue was warmer, and she lost herself in a good, hot French kiss.

He pulled away, and she opened her eyes once more to focus on his mouth as he spoke.

“Okay, then. I’d say you’re awake.”

She looked into eyes as blue as the summer sky.

But she was still cold, and it felt as though she would never stop shivering again. His warm hand stroked down her back, stilling her momentarily as it passed, and then she shivered again.

Her breasts brushed against the warm skin of his chest. His warm skin was just that. Just skin. Nothing else. Awareness came swiftly. Her breasts were bare. Startled, she made a sudden movement, her legs sliding against his, smooth against rough. She was bare everywhere.

“Oh, dear. We’re—we’re—”

“Kind of awkward, isn’t it? But we won’t freeze to death.”

She looked away from his blue eyes to focus on her surroundings. They were hiding in some kind of cocoon, but she could see through the opening. Somehow, he’d magically surrounded them with a log cabin while she’d been sleeping.

“Where are we?”

Gosh, that was such a cowardly question for her to ask. She should have addressed the fact that they were utterly naked, but she went with the log cabin. She was like Mother, after all, ignoring the difficult and unpleasant issues, even if they were more important. When her mother had heard that her latest paramour was already married, she’d pointed to a purse and asked about its designer. Becky was nude and so was this man, but she was asking about location.

“We’re in the old Tate cabin. It was built more than a century ago. Lucky for us, they built them to last back then.”

She could see outside through some of the spaces between the logs. She could feel outside, gusts of damp cold. She burrowed into the sleeping bag, which meant she tucked herself more tightly against his naked body.

“The wind can come right through this cabin,” she said against the warmth of his throat.

“Some of it does. We’d be worse off if we didn’t have these walls. That storm is getting bad outside.”

Well, that was blunt. “How are we going to get back to the ranch?”

“You mean the house? We’re not. We’re going to stay right here, and stay warm.”

“And naked?” There, she’d addressed the elephant in the room. She wasn’t a total coward.

“It’s the best way for us to stay warm.”

Becky cared about being warm more than anything else. “I’m so tired of shivering. It hurts.”

“I imagine it would. Hadn’t thought about it before. Having your muscles clench like that would wear you out. Don’t worry, you’ll stop shivering. You’re no longer unconscious, so that’s an improvement. I’m glad you’re awake.”

His large hands roamed all over her body, as she realized they’d been doing this entire time.

“Are you really glad I’m awake?” she muttered. “Because it seems while I was asleep, you got me naked.”

“Strictly survival, Miss Cargill. When I undress a woman for fun, I like her to be awake and fully participating.”

Undressing for fun. She knew people got naked to have sex, of course, but she’d never considered that the actual taking off of clothes was one of the fun parts. He made it sound worth trying.

“And kissing me? That was strictly survival, too?”

“Your lips were blue.”

The way his gaze dropped to her lips when he said it made her stop shivering for a second. He was a darned good-looking man, in that outdoorsy, cowboy kind of way. And he’d found her. He was her miracle.

“What’s your name?” she asked, watching him as he watched her lips.

“Trey Waterson.”

“Tell me, Trey, are my lips still blue?” It was the single most provocative thing she’d ever said in her life, and she’d said it to a naked man. She bit her lip, wishing the words back.

He drew his palm up her spine and over her shoulder, to rest on her neck. With his thumb, he caressed her jaw as he frowned at her mouth, taking her question seriously.

“They’re more pink, but still too pale.”

He bent his head, and kissed her again, softly, slowly, and without the openmouthed hunger she’d had. It was a lovely kiss, all the same, and she felt rewarded for having been daring.

Then he rested his head next to hers, so they simply looked at one another in the last of the winter twilight. They could have been friends sharing the same pillow, settling in for a long slumber-party chat. The corners of his mouth curved upward in a bit of a smile. “You’re going to make it, you know.”

She was still shivering, but at his words, she realized the waves of shivers were coming and going, their intensity diminishing with each return. Her jaw wasn’t clenched to prevent her teeth from chattering. Her arm was wrapped around his warm body instead of clinging to the bark of a tree.

“Thank you.” How terribly inadequate that sounded. “I mean, thank you for my life. Not ‘thank you’ like you just passed the mashed potatoes. There ought to be a better word to say. Thank you so much, because I really didn’t want to die.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“It was practically suicidal, the way I left. I can see that now, but I wasn’t trying to kill myself, honest.”

“You were just running away. People don’t think real hard when they do that.”

She shivered, and pressed her entire body closer to him for shelter. For protection. She hid her face between his warm neck and the sleeping bag.

His hand swept down her back, firmly over her backside, too, to the back of her thigh. He lifted her thigh just a tiny bit, adjusted the position of her leg. “Can you feel your feet? Your toes?”

She flexed her ankle and tried to wiggle her toes. They didn’t exactly respond with individual wiggles, but she felt them pressing into his calf muscle. “They’re still there. I’ll never take my feet for granted again. You should have seen me out there, clomping around like I had cement boots. It’s so hard to walk when you can’t feel your feet.”

“I wouldn’t have let you stay out there long enough to clomp anywhere.”

She almost smiled at that, remembering how he’d scooped her off her feet before she’d seen him coming. Her shivers subsided, and she moved to be able to see his face once more. Night had come, but their eyes had been adjusting all along, and moonlight poured through the cracks along with the cold air.

“Thank you,” she repeated.

His soothing hand had just traveled over her shoulder. He stopped and squeezed her upper arm. “You don’t have to keep saying that.”

“I need to. I’m so grateful, you can’t imagine.”

With a sigh, he turned a bit so he was laying more on his back. “All right, then. Get it out of your system.”

He looked like he was waiting patiently for something. “Thank you?” she said tentatively.

He nodded, solemn. “You’re welcome, Rebecca.”

She stared at him in the moonlight.

After a minute, he raised an eyebrow. “Is that it? Are we done?”

She gasped, a tiny sound of indignation. “Are you joking about this?”

He started to laugh.

She gave his shoulder a little shove. “If it weren’t for you, I would have died.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” As if that was the end of it, he started maneuvering around in the bag. “I’m going to unzip this for a second—”

“No! I’m not warm enough.”

“Just far enough to get my hand out. You need to drink this water before it freezes solid. Your body is working hard to warm up. It needs water.” He grabbed for a canteen that was in a pile of other stuff, jostling them both. She felt her breasts bounce a little against his arm. She was embarrassed, but he didn’t seem to notice as he brought the canteen back inside and zipped the bag.

“I think we’ll have to sit up so you can drink,” he said. “Ready? One, two, three.”

Of course, they had to move at the same time. One person couldn’t sit up in the sleeping bag if the other was laying down. She tried, but curling up into a sitting position was more than her body was ready to do yet.

“It’s okay. Let’s try that again.” Trey put his arm underneath her and lifted her with him as he sat up.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I knew there were more thank-yous in there. Drink up.”

She felt those blue eyes on her as she chugged, suddenly realizing how terribly thirsty she was. When she finished, he wasn’t looking at her any longer. Instead, he was frowning at the night sky beyond the cracks in the log wall.

“The wind has stopped, but the clouds have cleared up,” he said. “We’re in for a cold one.”

“It looks nicer than this afternoon.”

He made a negative movement of his head and hand. She felt every bit of it, sitting so close to him. “Cloud cover keeps some of the earth’s heat in. Today’s clouds dumped their sleet and left, so now there’s nothing to stop the temperatures from falling.” He took the canteen from her and unzipped the bag, efficiently setting it outside again.

“Falling? It’s going to get colder than it already is?” She could feel the fear crawling up her throat.

He looked at her with concern. After a long second, he kissed her forehead. “Listen to me. Outside, the temperature may fall, but you are not going to get colder. You and I are going to stay right here, safe and sound and warm.”

He laid her back gently, following her down and settling her body against his again. Safe and sound and warm. As a seduction, no man could have had her more completely in his thrall. There was something about him that made her feel restless inside, reckless. They were alive, the only two people in the world, and she couldn’t get enough of his deep voice and his soothing hands.

She set her hand on the back of his neck and tilted her face to his. She wanted to be kissed and held and warm. She let her eyes drift shut, anticipating the feel of his mouth.

“It’s not us I’m worried about,” he said. “It’s the cattle.”

“Oh.” She blinked, feeling a little sheepish. Cows had never crossed her mind, but apparently, even if virginal little Becky Cargill was naked, a man’s thoughts didn’t stay on her. Hopefully, he hadn’t noticed that she’d been about to kiss him. “What—um, what do cows do when it’s this cold?”