Rebecca York - Powerhouse

Along one wall was a bench where he sat down to lace up sturdy boots. Next, he strapped on a holster and pulled his Sig Sauer from the gun cabinet. Not the weapon of choice for most ranchers, but it seemed more useful than a rifle under the circumstances. After clicking in a magazine, he holstered the weapon, then took a down coat and a broad-brimmed hat from pegs on the wall. Prepared for the storm—and for trouble—he stepped out of the house into the storm.

A stinging blast of snow hit him in the face, and he shook his head. The smart thing would be to go back inside, but he was out here now, and he might as well find out who the devil was stupid enough to be traveling on a February day like this.

“OH, WHEN the saints come marching in,” Shelley sang as she struggled up the road toward the ranch.

Belting out the lively hymn helped keep her mind off her precarious situation, but she gave up when she realized she needed all her energy just to keep plowing through the snow. In the distance, she thought she saw a light, but it might simply be a mirage.

Born and bred in Colorado, she was used to extremes of weather, but it had been a long time since she’d gone out in a storm like this. If she’d been thinking about her own safety, she would have waited a couple of days before heading for Matt’s ranch, but her problem had been too urgent to put off. And it hadn’t been something she could talk about over the phone.

Now she was wondering if she had a chance of making it to the house.

Her foot collided with yet another hidden obstruction, and she almost went down—but managed to stay on her feet by windmilling her arms.

After taking a moment to catch her breath, she started forward again. As the light faded, the temperature dropped, and numbing cold began to penetrate her coat.

Tears blurred her vision, but she blinked them away. If she let herself get worked up, she was going to start screaming—or sobbing, and that wasn’t going to do her any good.

Instead, she kept putting one foot in front of the other as she lowered her head against the wind and followed the road as best she could toward the ranch complex.

The wind kicked up, blowing the snow into drifts that blocked her way. She judged that she had covered about half the distance between the car and the house when she blundered off the driveway and into the ditch—which was piled with snow.

For a long moment, she lay where she was—panting. Then she forced herself up because she knew that if she stayed where she was, she’d end up freezing to death. Lips set in a grim line, she scrambled back onto the road, but now her steps were slower, and she knew she was in serious danger of going down again.

MATT WAS several hundred yards from the house when he saw something through a curtain of falling snow. A person, struggling up the driveway that led to the ranch yard. “This way,” he called out.

There was no response, and he knew the wind had drowned out the sound of his voice. As he watched, the guy pitched over into a snowdrift and lay still.

Matt picked up his pace. The damn fool was in trouble—whoever it was.

“Just stay there. I’m coming,” he called out, then laughed harshly at himself. It didn’t look like the interloper was going anywhere under his own power.

Matt tramped onward through the blizzard, finally reaching the guy, who had fallen in the snow and didn’t have the strength to get up.

Squatting down, he turned the man over and pulled down the scarf that covered his face.

When large green eyes blinked open, he made a strangled sound.

“Shelley?”

“Matt …” she gasped out as she focused on his face. “Thank God.”

“What are you doing here?”

She blinked, and her lips moved, but she apparently didn’t have the strength to answer.

“Come on.” He helped her to her feet and slung his arm around her waist, holding her erect.

“Can you walk?”

“I … think so.”

He was cursing himself for not bringing a four-wheeler down the road, but he’d been too intent on sneaking up on the intruder. Now he was stuck walking Shelley back to the house.

Holding her firmly against his side, he turned and retraced his steps, following his own trail through the snow.

It was still falling like a son of a bitch, and it was hard to see where he was going. But he pushed his surprise guest onward as fast as he could make her walk because he knew he had to get her out of the cold and wind as soon as possible.

As he held her upright, images from the past assaulted him—starting with a very nervous Shelley Young, just out of college, interviewing for the job of his accountant. She’d worn her brown hair longer then. He skipped a few months and saw himself and Shelley in his office, going over the computer files. The two of them at the breakfast table. Walking hand and hand along the creek. Down by the corral—feeding carrots to the horses.

He tried to keep one more vivid picture out of his mind—him and Shelley naked in bed, in each other’s arms, clinging desperately together because they both sensed that the relationship was never going to work out, and neither of them was willing to admit it.

He squeezed his eyes closed, struggling against that last image and against his own reaction. If he was smart, he would put her into a four-wheel SUV and drive her back to Boulder, where she was living now.

But he couldn’t do it. She must have come here for a reason, and he needed to find out what it was. Still, he knew he had his own reasons for bringing her inside.

If he could have her here for just a little while, maybe that would be enough to last him another five lonely years.

When they finally reached the house, he muttered a prayer of thanks as he helped her through the door. Once they were in the warmth of the house, he sat her down on the bench in the mudroom and pulled off her boots, coat and purse.

“Matt?”

“It’s okay. What are you doing here?” She shook her head, and he could tell she wasn’t exactly with it.

After tossing his own coat on the floor and pulling off his boots, he picked Shelley up in his arms and carried her through the kitchen, then down the hall to the room where he had slept when he was a kid.

He’d long ago moved into the master bedroom where he had more space to spread out, but he’d kept this room in case he needed it. Yeah, sure. For what?

Well, at least he didn’t have to put Shelley in his bed. That was something.

He propped her against his hip then pulled the covers aside and eased her onto the bed. When she was lying down, he reached for her feet. They were cold and wet, so he pulled her socks off and inspected her toes, which were red but not frostbitten. When he found that the hems of her jeans were wet, he opened the snap at her waist, pulled down her zipper and dragged the pants down her legs.

“You’re undressing me,” she murmured, her lips curving in a silly grin.

“We need to get you warm and dry,” he answered, peeling down her thermal underwear and discarding it along with her jeans, struggling to ignore his reaction to her slim legs, feminine thighs and the triangle of dark hair he could see through the thin fabric of her panties.

Luckily, her shirt was still dry, so he dragged the sheet and blanket over her, covering the tempting image of her lying in bed.

“You need to sleep.” “I need you.”

Her arms whipped out and circled his neck, pulling him down so that he flopped on top of her. “Shelley.”

“I need you, Matt,” she whispered, her voice quavery. “For what? Why did you come here?” She made a muffled sound.

When he lifted his head to gaze down at her, she still looked dazed and confused, and he knew he should climb off the bed and beat a retreat into the other room.