“No one has seen her for hours?”

Trey looked at the sky with a rancher’s eye. The storm, as bad as it was, looked like it was just getting started. “You’re sure she didn’t leave for a hotel in town? Maybe hitch a ride with some other guest?”

“This is hers.” Emily held up a lady’s purse. Even Trey knew a woman wouldn’t leave without her purse. Emily handed him a Massachusetts driver’s license. “Here’s what she looks like.”

Her signature was precise and legible. Rebecca Cargill. A pretty woman. Brown hair, with thick, straight bangs. As Trey took a moment to let the image settle into his brain, something about the expression on her face resonated with him. There was strain beneath that smile, a brave smile for the camera. I know how you felt, darlin’. I was afraid I wouldn’t pass the damned exam, either.

* * *

Texas Rescue: Rescuing hearts … one Texan at a time!

A Texas Rescue Christmas
Caro Carson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate and US Army officer, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. After reading romances no matter where in the world the army sent her, Caro began a career in the pharmaceutical industry. Little did she know the years she spent discussing science with physicians would provide excellent story material for her new career as a romance author. Now Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in the great state of Florida, a location which has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

For William Edward,

A brave and brilliant boy

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

James Waterson III left his family’s ranch at the glorious age of eighteen, ready to exceed the already high expectations of his friends and family, teachers and coaches. James the third, better known as Trey among the ranch hands and football fans, the recruiters and reporters, was going to conquer college football as the star of Oklahoma Tech University. He’d so easily conquered high school football, the NFL was already aware of his name.

At the age of twenty, Trey was washed up.

What’s wrong with that boy? He blew his big chance.

What’s wrong with him? He was so bright when I had him in class.

What’s wrong with the Waterson kid? He must’ve gotten into drugs.

What a waste, what a shame, why, why, why?

His parents, of course, had left the family ranch in Texas to visit him in Oklahoma numerous times. They’d consulted with his coaches and met with his professors, and no one could understand why Trey Waterson, the promising freshman recruit, could no longer remember the play calls and passing routes now that he was a sophomore.

Well, Mr. Waterson, I’m not saying your son can’t handle stress, but we’ve seen kids freeze up when they get in a big stadium. We’re talking about a crowd of one hundred thousand.

No one could deny that Trey’s test grades were no longer easy As, but struggling Ds and failing Fs.

To be honest, Mrs. Waterson, he was supposed to come to my office for tutoring directly after class, but he never showed. As I told the athletic director, I can’t help a kid who refuses to be helped.

Trey’s parents had believed him. He wasn’t trying to skip class. He was not experimenting with drugs. They remembered the hit he’d taken in the last quarter of a home game, and worried that he was somehow suffering, months later.

We take good care of our players. Your son had a CT scan and passed a neurological exam that very week. Everything looks completely normal. No damage from that game, and no brain tumors or anything else that would explain the changes in his behavior.

That had been the most disheartening news of all. Trey was healthy, according to the doctors. An MRI was ordered, anyway; Trey was told it was “unremarkable.” He could balance on each foot. He could touch his nose with his index finger and stick out his tongue straight and name the current President of the United States.

When he finally found his professor’s office and correctly described how to calculate the area within the shape created by rotating a parabola around the z-axis, Trey believed the doctors, too. There was nothing wrong with him. He was just having a hard time, somehow. Not sleeping well, for some reason.

After their conversation, the professor gave him the exam, letting him make up the missed test just because Trey was the future of the Oklahoma Tech football program.

Trey failed the math test.

He understood the mathematical theory, but he couldn’t calculate three times six. Five plus twelve. He sat in the professor’s office and sweated clean through his shirt. He thought he was going to vomit from the fear, the sheer terror, of not being certain if he was counting on his fingers correctly. Seventeen times four? Not enough fingers, he knew that much.

We’re sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Waterson. I know your son passed the drug screen, but these boys get pretty clever about hiding substances in urine samples. Now, now, hold up. We’re not accusing him of taking drugs, but he has been cut from the football team. He has until May to bring his grade point average up to the school standard.

Trey came home for spring break, in time to help with the annual calf branding. As coordinated as ever, he threw lassoes and branded calves, day after day. He felt so damned normal, he wondered why he’d fallen apart. After spring break, he’d go back. He’d make up all the work he’d missed. He’d survive his nineteenth year. Then he picked up the branding iron, held it over the calf’s hide and forgot which way was up. He was on the James Hill Ranch. The brand was a straightforward three initials: JHR. The iron didn’t look right.

Trey had spun the brand the other way, but it looked just as wrong as it had at first glance.

Hurry up, the iron’s cooling.

He must be holding the iron correctly, then, if they were telling him to hurry. James Waterson III permanently branded a calf on his own family’s ranch with the symbol upside down.

He returned to Oklahoma Tech, failed all his courses, turned twenty years old and never returned home again.

It was much easier to lie to his parents on the phone. He had a good apartment, a good job, a good life. No, he wasn’t going to go back to school next year, but that was okay, because he’d rather work with his hands. That became his big excuse: he’d rather work with his hands. His parents didn’t need to know that he was spreading mulch for a landscaping firm.

His mother was worried sick, but he could fool her once a year when his parents came to visit. Before their arrival, he would practice driving from his one-bedroom apartment to their hotel and back, daily, until he could do it without getting lost. He’d preplan the restaurants they’d go to, and rehearse those routes, too. He’d smile and drop names as if he had lots of friends, and then his parents would leave after four or five days, and Trey would go back to his life of isolation and safe routine.

But now, he had to go back to the James Hill Ranch.

Trey looked at the wedding invitation in his hand, at its classic ivory vellum and deep black engraving. It contained little squares of tissue paper and extra envelopes, a confusing piece of correspondence until he’d laid all the parts out on his kitchen counter.

Miss Patricia Ann Cargill

and

Mr. Luke Edward Waterson

request the honor of your presence

at their marriage.

The groom was his younger brother. His one and only brother. The wedding would be held on the ranch, one third of which Trey owned as his birthright. There was no acceptable excuse to miss his brother’s wedding.

Ready or not, after ten years away from home, Trey Waterson had to return to the James Hill Ranch.

It was enough to make a grown man break out in a cold sweat.

* * *

Becky Cargill perched in her first-class seat, ice water in her hand, and sweated unladylike buckets. She’d never been so nervous in her life. Then again, she’d never tried to run away from home before.

The flight attendants were extra solicitous, even by the standards of the first-class cabin, but Becky didn’t know if that meant she looked as ill as she felt, or if they’d simply seen her name on the passenger manifest. Becky meant nothing, but her last name, Cargill...well, that meant money. Of course, not everyone named Cargill was a relative of the Texas Cargill oil barons, just as not every Rockefeller or DuPont was one of those Rockefellers or DuPonts, but Becky’s mother had indeed been married to one of those Cargills, and she made sure no one ever forgot.

Becky’s birth father was not a Cargill, but when the man known to one and all as Daddy Cargill had been her stepfather, when he’d been in the first weeks of passionate fascination with Becky’s mother, he’d let his new stepdaughter use his last name. Her mother wouldn’t let her drop it now. Not ever.

Becky was her mother’s little trophy, always dressed like a doll, the picture of sweetness and innocence. Her mother would turn on the charm for the Right Kind of People. I’m Charlene Maynard—or Lexington, whichever of her subsequent husbands’ names was most in vogue, and then she’d gesture toward Becky—and this, of course, is my sweet little girl, Becky Cargill. By having a different last name from her mother, Becky was a useful sort of calling card, proof her mother had been accepted into more than one dynasty as a wife for the Right Kind of Man.

It was only recently that Becky had started to see that she’d been part of the reason men proposed to her mother. Mr. Lexington, for example, had enjoyed being photographed as the doting stepfather of a Cargill. In society page photos, it implied an alliance between the Lexingtons and the Cargills existed. For the Maynards, the appeal had been slightly different. That family had several young sons. Wouldn’t Becky Cargill someday grow into just the Right Kind of Girl for one of their many boys?

Until she did, Becky was to be seen but not heard. She was to smile and not cry. She was to be pure and virginal and obedient at all times. Becky fingered the pearl button that kept her Peter Pan collar demurely fastened at her throat. Her style had not changed much since her mother had divorced Daddy Cargill. Becky had been nine years old at the time.

Now, she was twenty-four.

No one ever guessed her age. Her mother made certain of that, too. Becky had been shocked this summer when her mother had started dropping delicate hints to the Right Kind of Men that although Becky was indeed young, she was approaching a certain desirable age.

Shock had turned to devastation this winter weekend when her mother had, rather viciously, told her it was time for her to show her appreciation for the lifestyle which she’d been privileged to enjoy. Hector Ferrique, old enough to be Becky’s grandfather, was the owner of the Cape Cod vacation home in which they’d been living this year. Apparently, it was time to thank Hector for the free use of his spare mansion, and for the first time in her pure and virginal life, Becky was expected to do the thanking.

Hector will arrive this evening, and we’re all flying to the Caribbean to spend the Christmas holiday. I’ve packed your things.

The flight attendants noticed when Becky fished in the seat pocket for the air-sickness bag. “Can I get you anything else? Perhaps a ginger ale or some crackers?”

Why don’t you line up about five of those little bottles of scotch on my tray table?

But, no. She’d never had five shots of any kind of alcohol. She was on her own for the first time, and she was going to need all her wits about her. Besides, she’d probably get carded, as usual, and that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. She might possibly cry. Or get angry.

“The ice water is just fine, thank you. Can you tell me why the plane hasn’t left the gate yet?”

“They are waiting on the weather forecast for Austin. They won’t let us take off if the destination airport is going to close due to ice and snow.”

Becky looked out the window at the snow-covered Boston airport. “It snows every day.”

“Yes, but it’s unusual in Texas.” The flight attendant tapped her wristwatch in a cheerful, apologetic manner. “They’ll update the airport status on the hour, and then we’ll know if we’re cleared for take-off. Don’t worry, Miss Cargill, we’ve got agents standing by to help you make alternate transportation arrangements if the flight is cancelled. You’ll have first priority, of course. We’ll get you home for the holidays.”

Of course, since her last name was Cargill, the flight attendant had assumed Texas was home. Becky simply smiled, a display of pink lip-glossed sweetness, and the attendant moved on to the businessman in the next row, tapping her wristwatch, repeating her apology.

Becky dabbed at her upper lip with her napkin, mortified at the nervous sweat she couldn’t control. She could feel a single bead of moisture rolling slowly down her chest, between her breasts, but, of course, she would not dab there.

Mother must have noticed my absence by now. She’ll call the airport, and I’ll be taken right off the plane, like a child. They won’t card me first, not when she calls and says her daughter is on the plane without her permission.

Miraculously, the pilot came over the speakers and announced that they were going to take off. Becky’s stomach went from fearful nausea to desperately hopeful butterflies. Within minutes, they began taxiing down the runway. She was leaving Boston, and her mother, and the horrible man to whom Becky was expected to sacrifice her virginity.

The pilot’s voice was female, and somehow, that made Becky feel better. The only person Becky knew who could possibly defend her against Hector Ferrique was also a female, and a female pilot was going to get her there safely in an ice storm. With any luck at all, the snow and ice would arrive immediately after they landed, and it would become impossible for her mother to chase her down.

The plane lifted off. Becky had gotten away. Now, she needed to stay away. Even if the Austin airport closed after Becky arrived, her mother could and would find her and drag her back, unless Becky could find someone strong enough to stand up to her. There was only one person in her life who’d ever seemed stronger than Mother, and that was Daddy Cargill’s real daughter, Patricia.

The year that Becky was nine, the year that her mother had married Daddy Cargill, was the year that Becky had worshipped her new stepsister, Patricia. Eight years older than she, Patricia had swept home from boarding school on weekends and vacations to keep Becky’s mother in check. Heavens, she’d kept her own father in check. Becky had watched in wide-eyed wonder as Patricia had plucked the key to the innermost vault of the wine cellar right out of Mother’s hand. I do think there are plenty of other vintages for you to enjoy. Let’s save the Cote de Nuits for an appropriate occasion, shall we?

Then Patricia had given Becky a whole can of Dr Pepper and let her drink it in her bedroom. Sitting at Patricia’s tri-fold vanity mirror, Becky had played with real, red lipstick.

The divorce was inevitable between their parents, of course, and one day, while Patricia was away at her boarding school, Becky and her mother had moved out. Becky had cried and said she wanted to be a Cargill. Her mother had agreed that keeping the name would be wise, which wasn’t what Becky had meant at all.

This morning, as Becky’s mother had announced that Hector Ferrique would be coming to visit his own beach house, the newspaper had announced that Patricia Cargill was getting married in Austin.

Becky had seized on those lines of newsprint, using them as her excuse to get to the airport. How easy to finally use that Cargill name, the one she’d been borrowing since fourth grade, to change the chauffeur’s schedule. “No, my flight leaves this morning. Mother’s will be later this afternoon. My sister, Patricia Cargill, is getting married in Austin this weekend. I’ll be at the wedding while Mother and Hector are in Bimini. No, just the three blue bags are mine. The rest are Mother’s. Thank you.”

Becky was hoping the Cargill name would let her crash a wedding she hadn’t been invited to. If her mother came to drag her away, Becky hoped the bride would kick her former stepmother out of the reception—but let her former stepsister stay. Indefinitely. As plans went, it was weak, but it was all a pure and virginal and obedient person like herself had been able to come up with on a moment’s notice.

Please, Patricia, don’t kick me out. I’m still just little Becky Cargill, and I’ve got nowhere else to go.

Chapter Two

Becky peered through the gray haze of winter weather at the endless county road. She spotted another gate for a ranch up ahead. Two posts and a crossbeam in the air, that was the standard ranch entrance in Texas. She’d already turned her rental car into two properties that weren’t the James Hill Ranch. At the first, she’d gotten flustered and made the tiny car’s engine produce horrid sounds as she put it in Reverse. After she’d driven through the second wrong gate, which had clearly been labeled the River Mack Ranch, making her feel like an idiot, she’d tried to make a U-turn to avoid the reverse gear. The U-turn had worked, but all her belongings had been thrown around as the car bounced over rough ground before making it back onto the road.

Becky could make out a letter J on the fence beside the upcoming gate. If the J stood for James, then she hadn’t gotten lost after all, although the clunky GPS system, emblazoned with the rental car company’s logo and bolted onto the car’s dash, had gone silent many miles ago. She was officially out in the middle of nowhere on a two-lane road that had no name, only numerical digits the GPS voice had rattled off before losing its satellite connection.

Her phone, however, still had a signal. It rang again, shrill after being jarred out of the leather purse Becky had stuffed it in. Her mother was calling. She should answer.

Becky gripped the steering wheel. She couldn’t answer the phone. She rarely drove anywhere, and she’d never driven this kind of car, so she had to concentrate. Snow had been falling, rare enough in December, apparently, to make it the sole topic of conversation in the Austin airport. The snow was beginning to look more wet, like sleet.

She would not panic. She’d just keep two hands on the wheel, and she would not answer the phone. I’m twenty-four years old. I can drive a car in bad weather.

She hadn’t wanted to. At the airport, her request for a taxi to the James Hill Ranch had been met with so many chuckles and “you’re not from around here, are you?” responses, she’d given up and gotten in line for the first rental car desk she saw.

Too late, she realized that her mother would be able to use the credit card transaction to find her. Becky had never seen a credit card bill, but she knew her mother could check it, somehow, almost immediately. She hadn’t dared to use her credit card without permission since she was twenty-one. That year, her mother had placed her in a ski school in Aspen with teenagers who belonged to the Right Kind of Families. When her fellow students had learned Becky was actually of legal drinking age, they’d convinced her to buy the booze to go with their energy drinks. The next morning, her mother had asked her to produce the liter of vodka that she’d purchased in town at precisely 8:19 p.m. the evening before. Becky had been confined to her hotel room the rest of the trip—and she’d learned a valuable lesson about credit cards.

The phone rang once more. Her mother had probably tracked her credit card already. Why did you rent such a low-budget car? Look at you, arriving at the Cargills in a rental car like a poor relation. You could have at least taken a limo, for God’s sake.

Becky hadn’t gone to Daddy Cargill’s mansion. She read more sections of the newspaper than her mother did. Outside of the society pages, there’d been a featured real estate listing for the infamous mansion. Photos of the outrageously tacky décor had accompanied the article. Patricia no longer lived there, and obviously had not for years.

Patricia was getting married at the James Hill Ranch. That was Becky’s destination. Her best hope for sanctuary.

“Shoot!” Becky realized she was driving right past the gate. She hit the brakes and turned the wheel, but the snowfall had become ice, and the car spun wildly. Her seat belt held her in place, but her head thunked against the side window before the car came to a halt, facing the wrong way.

I will not cry.

The car’s engine made that awful sound as she put it into Reverse.

I will not cry.

Everything in the car—up to and including her teeth—rattled as she traveled over a cattle guard on her way through a second, more elegant gate of wrough iron and limestone pillars.

I will not cry.

She presented herself at the door. She’d never before seen a housekeeper who answered a door while wearing jeans. She’d never been greeted by a staff member with “howdy” instead of “good morning, miss.” Becky requested that Miss Cargill be notified that her sister, Miss Cargill, had arrived.

“Sure, uh-huh,” said the older woman in jeans. “Come in, sweetheart. It’s freezing out there.”

Too late, Becky surmised that this was not a housekeeper. She’d probably just given orders to a relative of the groom. The woman did not introduce herself, however. She just launched right into a conversation as if they were acquainted.

“If you’re here for the wedding, I’ve got some bad news. It’s been cancelled. Didn’t you get a message from your sister? I swear, she called a hundred people yesterday herself.

“The pastor was afraid to drive, and the caterers were in a tizzy. Luke and Patricia, they decided they didn’t want to miss their honeymoon, what with the airports closing and all. They’re taking some gigantic sailboat from Galveston all the way around Florida to the Bahamas. Anyway, they took their license to a justice of the peace first thing this morning and got married. Now Luke’s parents are driving them all the way to the port to make their boat on time. But we’re supposed to cut into their cake and send them a video of us doing it, so stick around, honey.”

Patricia was gone.

Becky’s cell phone rang, shrill.

“May I use your powder room?” Becky asked, smiling sweetly, although her pink lip gloss had faded away hours ago.

She locked herself in the bathroom, and she cried.

* * *

“Why, it’s James Waterson the third, as I live and breathe! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? I swear, you are even taller than your brother. What are you now? Six-three? Six-four?”

Trey steeled himself against the onslaught. He hadn’t had a chance to scrutinize the woman’s face, yet she was hugging him and patting him on the cheek, treating him like he was a growing boy when he’d just passed his thirty-first birthday. Clearly, she knew him, but he did not know her. If she’d just hold still and let him look at her face for a moment—but she chatted away, turned and dragged him from the door.

He hadn’t had a chance to look about as he’d come in. He preferred to pause and get his bearings when he entered a new building, but this stranger gave him no chance. Trey looked around, consciously choosing to focus on what his eyes could see and deliberately ignoring the sounds hitting his ear. He was tired from the strain of travel, and he could only take in so much.

The woman pulled him into the high-raftered great room, and Trey, still concentrating on visual information, immediately focused on the fireplace. It was decorated for a wedding with a swag of fluffy white material and silver Texas stars, but he knew what it would look like without all that. He knew that fireplace.

Massive, its limestone edifice rose from floor to ceiling in a severe rectangle that would have been boring if the limestone variations hadn’t been unique from stone to stone. Trey had lain before roaring fires, staring up at the limestone, idly noting which were white and beige and yellow, which were solid, which were veined. From infancy, he’d done so, he supposed. He last remembered doing it with a girl while in high school, drinking his mother’s hot chocolate before sneaking his sweetheart out to the barn for some unchaperoned time.

Yes, he knew that fireplace.

Suddenly, the whole room fell into place. Hell, the whole house made sense. Trey knew where he was. It was effortless. The kitchen was through there. The mudroom beyond that. His bedroom was down the hall. The dogs needed to be fed outside that door, every morning, before school.

There was nothing confusing about it.

God, he knew where he was. Not just how to navigate from here to there. Not just enough to keep from looking like a fool. He really and truly knew where in the world he was.

“Can you believe they ran off like that? I mean, you can’t blame them with the storm coming and everything, but...” The woman squeezed his arm conspiratorially. “Okay, I blame them a little. I think most women would want the wedding. You could always take a trip some other time. I mean, it’s the bride’s big show with the white gown, being the center of attention, the flowers, the cake, you know? But Patricia, she’s some kind of sailboat nut. I don’t even know what you call those people. Instead of horse crazy, are they boat crazy? Anyhow, you would have thought your brother had never wanted anything more in his entire life than to get on a sailboat and go visitin’ islands.”

With a woman? Someone he loved enough to pledge his life to? Trey didn’t find that so hard to understand. It sounded as if Luke had made the choice between wearing a tux for one day or spending a month on tropical seas with the woman he wanted the most. His little brother had never been stupid.

Then again, once upon a time, Trey hadn’t been stupid, either. Now, he didn’t recognize the person he was talking to. He tried to place the woman’s face as she chattered on.

“Luke’s always been a cattle rancher, not a sailor. I guess people do crazy things when they’re in love. I hope it lasts. Lord knows, none of my marriages have. I don’t blame you for not coming to any of them.”

Trey had been invited to her weddings? That sick, sweaty feeling started between his shoulder blades.

The sound of the mudroom door slamming centered him once more. It was a sound Trey hadn’t heard in ten years, yet it sounded utterly familiar, instantly recognizable without any effort.

The man’s voice that followed was new to him. “No luck, sugar,” it boomed.

“Oh, dear. Trey, come meet your new uncle.”

Uncle. That meant this woman was his aunt. Trey looked at her, and suddenly it was so incredibly obvious. She was his mother’s sister, his aunt June. How could he have forgotten that he had an aunt June?

He felt stupid.

The kitchen, however, he remembered. He hadn’t stepped fully into the room, hadn’t put both boots on the black-and-white-checkered floor, when he felt that utterly certain feeling once more. His brain worked for once. He didn’t just recognize the kitchen, he knew every inch. This drawer held the silverware, that cupboard held the big pots, and the cold cereal was on the bottom shelf of the pantry. He knew all that without trying, and it made him realize how little he usually knew about other rooms. He’d been adrift in every room he’d been in for the past ten years.

His new uncle shook hands, then shook his head at Aunt June. “No sign of her, sugar.”

Another woman, younger than Aunt June, came in from outside. He could see her through the doorway to the mudroom, stamping her boots and smacking icy droplets off her jacket sleeves. “It’s turning into sleet out there, bad.”

He didn’t know her.

She knew him. “Ohmigod, Trey! I haven’t seen you in ages.” She dumped her coat on the mudroom floor and came rushing at him, arms open. They closed about him in a hug, unfamiliar in every way.

Don’t panic. Think. Aunt June has daughters. Think of their names.

Aunt June patted his arm and started laughing. “I don’t think he recognizes you, Emily. It’s been ten years, at least. You were in pigtails and braces last time he saw you.”

He had a cousin named Emily, of course.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just to prove that he knew something, he opened the correct cabinet to pull out coffee mugs. His brother hadn’t moved their mother’s traditional coffee machine. It sat on the same counter it had always sat on. Trey knew the filters would be in the cupboard above it.

“Can I make y’all some coffee?” he said, his voice sounding gruff to his own ears. He owned a third of the house, and he had company. He ought to make some attempt to be a host.

“That’s a good idea,” Emily said. “I need to warm up before I keep looking.”

And...he was lost again. The emotions of these three people were hard for him to keep track of. Everyone was happy one moment, worried the next.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, determined to make sense of the world. He started counting scoops of coffee into the filter basket. One, two, three, four—

“This girl named Becky disappeared.”

Six, seven—crap. He’d lost count. Trey decided the amount of coffee looked about right, shoved it into place and hit the power button.

“You gonna put some water in there, sugar?” Aunt June asked, laughing.

Damn it.

But everyone was happy again for a moment, chuckling about old age and forgetfulness.

Then, they weren’t happy. As Trey filled the carafe with water, his aunt started explaining who was missing. A young lady had arrived for the wedding, Patricia’s sister, or so she’d said. They hadn’t known Patricia had a sister.

“Just as sweet as can be,” his aunt said.

“Pretty as a picture,” his uncle said.

“She seemed nervous to me,” Emily said. “Then she stood in a corner, and I saw her listening to something on her cell phone. She just put on her coat and mittens and hat, and walked out the door. I thought she was going to her car to get something, but she never came back.”

Aunt June looked out the picture window above the kitchen sink, angling her head so she could cast worried looks at the sky. “It’s been hours.”

The coffeepot was brewing perfectly, making soothing noises. The scent of fresh coffee filled the kitchen. Trey knew where he was. He knew who everyone was around him. He ought to be content, but apparently, the part of him who’d been born a cowboy wasn’t dead. Someone on the ranch was unaccounted for, and that meant trouble.

“No one has seen her for hours?” he asked, and he looked at the sky with a rancher’s eye. The storm, as bad as it was, looked like it was just getting started. “You’re sure she didn’t leave for a hotel in town? Maybe hitch a ride with some other guest?”

“This is hers.” Emily held up a lady’s purse. Even Trey knew a woman wouldn’t leave without her purse. Emily handed him a Massachusetts driver’s license. “Here’s what she looks like.”

Her signature was neat and legible. Rebecca Cargill. A pretty woman. Brown hair, with thick, straight bangs. As Trey took a moment to let the image settle into his brain, something about the expression on her face resonated with him. There was strain beneath that smile, a brave smile for the camera. I know how you feel, darlin’. I was afraid I wouldn’t pass the damned exam, either.

She could have been stressed over any number of things, of course. It was fanciful of him to imagine he knew what the look on her face meant.

“I’m sure she’s found shelter by now,” Aunt Jane said.

Trey looked up from the driver’s license in his hand. “If she hasn’t, she’ll die tonight. It’s too cold to survive without shelter.”

Aunt Jane made a horrified little sound, and Trey cursed himself. He hadn’t always been so blunt. Hell, people had called him charming in high school and college. Now he had to work not to blurt out every thought that passed through his thick head.

His new uncle put a protective arm around his wife. “She’s probably fallen asleep in the hayloft in the barn, and she just hasn’t heard us calling for her. She’ll be fine.”

Emily darted a look at her mother, then pressed a cell phone into Trey’s hand. “Here’s her phone. It’s not password protected. I didn’t want to be nosy, but I thought there’d be more photos of her.”

Trey started sliding his thumb over the screen, skimming through the photos stored on the phone. They weren’t very personal. Seascapes of some rocky shoreline that looked nothing like the Texas coast. Distant children wading in the surf, silhouetted against a sunrise. A couple walking away from the camera, holding hands.

Finally, he saw a more typical snapshot of a woman holding a mutt. Trey was able to mentally compare this woman with the one in the driver’s license. Not Rebecca Cargill.

He slid his thumb across the screen once more. The next shot was also of the mutt, but this time, it was held by the woman on the driver’s license. Same pretty face. Same brown bangs. Same strain beneath the smile.

“She looks so young,” his aunt said, looking over his shoulder. “I can’t believe her license says she’s twenty-four, can you?”

Emily was looking over his other shoulder. “I thought we could use that photo if we needed to call the sheriff.”

That snapped Trey into action. He handed Emily the phone as he addressed his aunt and uncle. “You haven’t called the sheriff? Dark’s coming. There isn’t much time to get a search party out here.”

“Your foreman, Gus, he’s got the ranch hands doing the searching. They’ve been stomping all over the grounds. She couldn’t have gone that far on foot.”

His foreman? Trey didn’t have a foreman. Luke did. Trey hadn’t set foot on the ranch in a decade. With his parents traveling ten months out of the year as retirees, Luke was the Waterson who ran the James Hill Ranch. Luke had decided to promote their longtime ranch hand, Gus, to foreman. Trey had only agreed over the phone. He supposed it was just by virtue of being a Waterson that Aunt June addressed him as if he were still part of the James Hill.

Trey turned to Emily. “The sheriff’s got helicopters. We don’t. Call them.”

She ran to the house phone, the one that still hung on the kitchen wall as it had for the past twenty years or more.

His aunt patted his arm. “Honey, even the big Austin airport has been closed for hours now. They aren’t puttin’ anything up in the sky while ice is coming down out of it.”

“That may be true, but we’ll let the sheriff’s office make that decision. I’m not a pilot. I’m just—”

He stopped himself, then turned on his heel and headed back to the front door, past his father’s arm chair, past his mother’s lamp, the one he and his brother had broken and glued back together. He picked up his sheepskin coat where he’d left it and shrugged it on.

Aunt Jane followed him. “You’re just what?”

He chose a Stetson from the few hanging on pegs by the door. Whether his father’s or his brother’s, it didn’t matter. The men in the family were all built the same. It would fit.

“I’m the only Waterson around here right now, and I’ll be damned if a young woman is going to die on this ranch on my brother’s wedding day.”

He crammed the hat on his head, and headed out the door.

Chapter Three

I am not going to die today.

Becky forced herself to stop sliding down the tree trunk.

Stand up, Becky. Straight. At least pretend you’ve got some confidence, for God’s sake.

The landscape of central Texas all looked the same. As far as she could see, stretches of scraggly brown grasses were broken up by scraggly waist-high bushes. The only color she saw was her own pastel-pink ski parka, chosen by her mother for appearance, not survival.

Who am I going to impress with this fake Cargill confidence, Mama? But she stayed on her feet.

She spotted an occasional cactus, which proved that Hollywood didn’t lie when it put a cactus in a cowboy movie. But there was no shelter. As she’d driven the ATV four-wheeler away from the barn, ice had crunched under her wheels. Although the exposed skin of her face had been stung by the wind almost immediately, she’d kept driving, feeling like the control she had over the loud engine was the last bit of control she had in the world.

She’d turned up her collar and buried her chin in her jacket, and kept going. Somewhere. Away from the house that her mother would find. Far from the house and the barn and the sheds, she’d crossed acres of ground that shined in the afternoon sun, for they were completely covered in a thick but beautifully reflective sheet of ice. By the time the next bank of storm clouds had rolled in, hiding the sun and killing the enchantment of her ice world, she’d been low on gas.

She’d turned around—a U-turn that was easy in the right kind of ranch vehicle—and started heading back, but she hadn’t made it far before the engine had run out of fuel.

That had been hours ago. Literally, hours ago. Forced to seek shelter as the wind picked up and fresh sleet started to fall, she’d left the bright blue ATV out in plain sight—as if she’d had a choice—and she’d headed for a line of trees. Gnarled oaks had seemed not too far away, and clusters of shockingly green cedar trees were interspersed among them. They weren’t much, but they were more shelter than the ATV provided.

They weren’t close, either. She’d begun sweating as she crunched her way across the uneven land, so she’d unzipped her coat to let any moisture evaporate. One thing she’d learned while skiing in Aspen was that getting wet when it was freezing outside led to intolerable cold. Even the most devil-may-care snowboarders would have to get off the mountain and change into dry clothes when they worked up a sweat.

The Aspen ski school had included some lessons on building emergency shelters. Too bad Becky didn’t have ski poles and skis with her, because they’d been used to build every kind. Too bad there was no snow. In Aspen, the snow had been so deep, they’d dug a trench that they could sit in to escape from the wind.

Actually, the instructors had dug the trench. The rich kids and Becky had just sat in it. Some survival training. Maybe she would have learned more if her mother hadn’t tracked her credit card so closely.

I’m going to die because some teenagers convinced me to buy them vodka. I missed the rest of the survival lessons because of vodka. And Mother.

She wouldn’t cry. The tears would freeze on her cheeks.

She huddled against the trunk of the largest oak. It provided a little protection from the wind, at least, but the bare branches blocked nothing from above. Ice was falling from the sky, and it was falling on her.

She was so cold. She could just slide down this tree, take a little nap...and never wake up.

Stand up. Straight. For God’s sake, Becky, your shoes can’t hurt that badly. You will stay in this receiving line and shake hands with the club president before I give you permission to leave.

Becky stomped her boots to stay awake. With each thump of the ground, she heard the thud and she felt the jarring impact, but she realized, in an almost emotionless acknowledgment of fact, that she could no longer feel her feet.

I could possibly die today.

It would be so unfair if she died. Damsels in distress were supposed to be rewarded for trying to avoid a fate worse than death.

Well, she’d avoided going to the Bahamas with Hector Ferrique, all right, but she couldn’t say if that fate really would have been worse than this one. For starters, although it sounded repulsive, she didn’t know how difficult it was to have sex with a man one didn’t like. She didn’t know how difficult it was to have sex at all.

I’m going to die a frozen, twenty-four-year-old virgin. Out here, no one will find my body for months. Maybe years.

Terror made her colder. She would not give in to terror.

She needed to find some way to cover her head, because the snow or rain or sleet or whatever it was had started soaking through her ski hat. Its high-tech material was water-resistant, but apparently not water-proof. It could only repel the sleet for so many hours.

Becky looked around for smaller, broken branches on the ground and gathered them up, clomping her way from one to the other on her numb feet like a frozen Frankenstein. Her arms were growing numb, too, so she stuffed the twigs and thin branches haphazardly into a fork in the tree’s lowest branch.

The bare sticks weren’t going to block many drops of icy rain. Becky looked at the green cypress trees. She remembered them from her elementary school days. They were tall and narrow, green from ground to the top, and when she was a little girl, she’d been very aware that adults complained about them incessantly. She stumbled her way toward one now, thinking its evergreen branches would be useful stacked on top of her bare sticks.

The cypress tree disagreed. Becky got as good a grip as she could manage, but the flat, fan-like greenery slipped through her gloves like it was coated with wax or oil. Frustration made her eyes sting with more tears she couldn’t shed. The exertion of tugging and pulling was making her too warm in her coat, yet her feet weren’t warming up at all with the activity.

She tried a new approach, stomping on the lowest branches with her clumsy Frankenstein feet. She lost her balance several times and grabbed at the slick greenery to stay upright, but she succeeded in breaking a few branches off at the trunk.

In triumph, she carried them back to her twig roof and layered them on top. Then she hunkered underneath her little roof, hugged the oak tree’s trunk to keep the wind from whirling around her, and she waited.

For what?

There was nothing to wait for. Help was not coming. No one knew her at that ranch house. Her mother had left her a message about how she’d tracked her to the Austin airport, but it would take her time to get here and more time to figure out that Becky had gone to the groom’s ranch, not the Cargill mansion. It was getting dark already. Mother would not find her tonight.

I left the ATV out where anyone could see it overhead.

There was nothing flying overhead, however. No planes. No helicopters. Nothing would come searching for her by air, not while this storm raged. It could be another day or more before anyone at this ranch realized an ATV was even missing. When the storm was over, when they could search for her, it would be too late.

Sweet little Becky Cargill, the good and obedient child, had defied everyone’s expectations and run away.

Now sweet little Becky was going to die.

* * *

Trey could find Rebecca Cargill. Of that, he had no doubt. The only question was, would he find her before she succumbed to the cold?

Hang in there, miss. I’ll be there soon.

All he needed to do was guess where there was.

Had she left the house on foot, Gus and the ranch hands would have found her by now. Trey checked the barn as a formality, but he knew she hadn’t taken a horse. The cowboys would have noticed one was missing, and the horse itself would have had the sense to buck her off and run back to the warmth of the barn.

That left the ATVs. Trey walked out the other side of the barn, turned up his collar against the biting cold and crossed the yard in long, rapid strides to the outbuilding where they’d always kept two ATVs. Sure enough, one was missing.

She’d left the spare two-gallon gas can on the floor. The sight of that gas can sitting on the concrete slab, forgotten, chilled Trey in a way the weather could not. If the gasoline was here, then she’d run out of gas there. The only way she’d make it back to the ranch was if he went and got her.

He’d known that, too, standing in the black-and-white kitchen.

He shut the shed door against the howl of the storm and started tying supplies onto the back of the second ATV. It only took him minutes, thanks to the miracle of having his memories of the ranch. He’d gone camping with his brother, when his brother had wanted to learn how to build a campfire. Gone fishing with his father, when his biggest problem had been deciding if he liked baseball or football better. Gone riding the fence line after his last football game as a high school senior, checking all seventy-five thousand acres of the main section of the ranch with the foreman. He knew how to survive outdoors on the James Hill Ranch.

Trey rolled the ATV out of the shed, shut the door as Miss Rebecca Cargill had, sat on the ATV as she had and started the engine. Tracks led in every direction from the shed, and with the ground hard with ice, none of them look fresher than any other. Instead, he looked to the horizon and tried to view the ranch through her eyes, so he could guess which way she’d decided to go.

The strained girl in the driver’s license photo had needed to get away. She’d shown up to a wedding where no one knew she existed, and a phone call had sent her right back out the door. He couldn’t imagine what from, but she’d run. He didn’t know why, but she’d wanted to be alone. Badly. Immediately.

Straight. She wouldn’t have headed to any of the scenic spots like a visitor would, nor had she gone to check the water level in the creek like a ranch hand. She’d only needed to get away from some kind of situation that had no other solution, so she’d left her phone and her purse and her life, pointed the ATV away from the house and gone.

She’d driven as fast as she could, eating up the gas. She’d wanted space. Freedom. So as Trey drove, he chose the most obvious routes and the most level ground, keeping the last signs of civilization at his back. At every decision point, he chose the easiest path, the one that would allow him to get as far away as quickly as he could. And when his gas tank was on empty, he saw the bright blue ATV parked in the middle of one of the most remote pastures on his land.

He’d found Rebecca Cargill, because he’d known that she’d been running from a fate she couldn’t control. He understood that emotion.

The year that he’d turned nineteen, he had done the same.

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?”

“The foreman knew this weather was coming. He probably got a good portion into the calving sheds. The rest would’ve been driven into one of the pastures that has a deep gully. The cattle huddle in there to get out of the wind and basically do what we’re doing.”

“Nice to know I don’t have the common sense of a cow. I drove into a wide-open space. I was so stupid. It would have served me right if—”

His finger pressed her lips, cutting her off. “Don’t say that. Ever. Do you hear me?”

She was so surprised at his ferocity, she couldn’t even nod. She just stared at him, his face a shadow in the night.

“You got yourself out of the wind as much as possible. You built yourself a shelter. You stayed alive. Give yourself some credit, Rebecca. You’ve got common sense and you must have a giant heap of willpower, because you were still alive when I found you. Thank you for staying alive until I could get there.”

He moved his finger away from her lips only to cup her head in his hand. He angled her so he could kiss her, not so softly this time.

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