Snow Angels (2 page)

Yeah.

It was the worst.

Not a bear, but an even greater predator.

There, pressed up against the door, cornered by his snarling protector, be-speckled with snow, and clutching a mangy backpack, was a woman.

He could tell she was a woman, even though she wore multiple coats and sweaters in layers and a knit hat pulled down over her ears. Long black hair escaped from the cap, trailing over her shoulders. But it was the eyes that gave her away, wide and round and fringed with thick lashes. And her chin. It was delicate, dimpled, and quivering. Her lips were parted and her exquisite face pale.

Bo glanced back at him as if crowing,
look what I caught!
And edged forward with an ominous growl.

The girl clutched her backpack closer and issued a panicked little peep. She tried to press back into the door, making herself as tiny as she could, but there was no give. Besides, she was tiny enough. Like a woodland sprite.

He would have thought her a fairy come in from the woods if he’d had a hint of whimsy in him. And if she hadn’t been wearing everything she owned. He didn’t know much about fairies, but he was pretty sure they had some fashion sense.

Bo’s growl became a snarl, a snap, and the girl warbled a wail. “Please!” she cried. “Call him off!”

Wade snapped his fingers, fully expecting Bo to heel. He’d been methodically trained by a world-renown expert. He always behaved.

But he didn’t. His hackles rose, and he took another menacing step toward the girl. A tear tracked down her cheek, and her entire body shook. “P-please!”

“Bo!
Fuß
!” he said, hoping the command to heel in the language he’d learned as a puppy penetrated. Bo licked his muzzle, gave a canine whine, and padded to Wade’s side. “
Braver Hund
.” Wade ruffled the scruff of Bo’s beck and gave him a scratch. “Good dog.”

The girl collapsed against the door, but her attention didn’t waver from Bo, whose hackles were still up. Wade didn’t understand his dog’s reaction. He’d always been friendly to strangers before, more likely to whap them to death with his tail than to so much as growl. His gaze fell on the small cage at the girl’s feet and he froze. He could see a hint of the creature inside and he suddenly understood.

Hell
.

She had a cat.

Perfect
.

Not only was his solitude shattered by an unwanted female guest—a bedraggled homeless ragamuffin—she’d brought a cat.

Damn. He hated cats.

Lyssa swallowed the lump in her throat. As bad as this day had been, she hadn’t thought it could get any worse. After skidding on an icy patch of road and plowing her little Honda into a ditch—a full mile from her destination. After plodding through the dark, struggling to find her way by the wavering beam of a failing flashlight, praying to God she was heading in the right direction and wouldn’t end up freezing to death a few feet from the remote cabin. After wading through the ever-increasing drifts as the gentle flakes had become a blinding torrent of falling snow….

This.

Her worst nightmare.

Oh yes, the dog. Snapping and snarling and looking as though he wanted to rip out her throat.

She’d always been afraid of dogs, ever since she was little.

But the dog wasn’t the half of it.

He
was here too.

Half-naked.

Her gaze flickered over his broad, brown chest. God, he was magnificent. His biceps bulged as he clenched his slipping towel—were those pink hearts?—and his pecs rippled as he shifted his stance. His abdomen was a cut six-pack that women drooled over.

Still, it wasn’t only his body that drew her. His face was riveting as well. Tight features—a square jaw, dark unruly curls, and glittering eyes.

She didn’t need to stare. She knew every line.

Her calendar had remained on Mr. December all year.

It was one thing staring at him endlessly as he hung on her wall next to her refrigerator. It was another thing entirely to see him in the flesh. He was much…larger in the flesh. And his muscles rippled in the flesh. In three dimensions, he took on a sizzling presence, an aura, and a power, that his flat glossy photo did not possess. The intensity of his energy almost made her swallow her tongue.

“Who are you?” he barked.

“L-lyssa.” Why, oh why, did she need to sound so breathless?

It hardly mattered. He didn’t wait for her to respond, certainly didn’t hear her. “What the hell are you doing here?” he barked again.

Honestly. He barked more than his dog.

Annoyance trickled through her at his tone, the way he bristled and glared at her with resentment. This was not how she’d imagined meeting him in her fantasies. This was not how she’d imagined it at all.

Fantasies were notoriously unreliable.

When she didn’t answer him quickly enough—fantasizing again…ogling a little, perhaps—he rephrased the question. “How did you get here?”

She shrugged. “I walked.”

He gaped at her. “You…what?”

“I walked.” She poked her thumb over her shoulder. “My car went off the road and into a ditch. So I walked.”

His nose curled. “Well, you’re not staying here.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. “I…what?”

“You’re not staying.” His voice was cold, clipped. “You need to leave.”

“It’s dark! It’s snowing and cold!” She shuddered.

His frown became a downright glower. He looked out the window, as though he didn’t believe her when she said it got dark at night. “Fuck.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Wait here,” he snapped. “Don’t move.” He clutched his pink-hearted towel to his loins and stormed into the shadowed hallway toward the bedrooms, presumably to dress.

The dog, however, remained. Guarding her. He sat, his attention riveted on her, issuing soft growls at the back of his throat as though she might forget he was there and ready to tear her limb from limb should she so much as flinch.

Glancing at the cold fireplace, she sighed. If
they
hadn’t been here, she would’ve had her feet up by now, toasting them against a roaring flame and watching the steam rise off her soaking socks. Biby would be lapping tuna. She would be sipping tea.

Instead, she was trapped here by the door, shivering at the cold waves seeping through the cracks. It wasn’t her imagination. The temperature had dropped ten degrees as she’d made the trek from her car. She felt nearly frozen through.

But she couldn’t prance over there and start a fire. Not with that slavering creature in the way. And she certainly wouldn’t leave Biby unguarded.

As though she knew Lyssa was thinking of doing so, the cat let go a strangled yowl. The dog sat up straighter and licked his chops. His eyes brightened, narrowed, fixated on the cage, a little metal and plastic. It was the only thing keeping Biby from the maw of the hulking beast.

She shouldn’t have come. Why hadn’t someone warned her?

Seriously. Val should have said something.
“Oh sure. You can stay at my cabin…but my brother, you know, the one whose photo you drool over like a hungry baby? Yeah. He’s there too.”

But Val hadn’t warned her. Hadn’t said a word.

So she’d come. Here. To this remote speck of real estate where she hoped she could find some peace and quiet, where she’d hoped she could finally say good-bye….

In retrospect, she should have suspected. She should have been able to read Val’s smile.

That was the trouble with
knowing
things.

It always surprised you when you didn’t. When you got it wrong.

Jax chuckled in her ear and she pushed his presence away. The last thing she needed now was comments from the peanut gallery. It was bad enough that she often had the cast of
Ben Hur
in her head. She really didn’t need them mocking her idiocy as well.

Wade stalked back into the room buttoning a flannel shirt over his chest. A hint of regret dribbled through her, but she ignored it. She wasn’t here to get it on with Val’s hunky-hero, calendar-model brother. And, judging from the way he glared at her, it wouldn’t matter much if she was.

He set his fists to his hips and looked her up and down. “You can stay the night, but tomorrow at first light, you’re gone.”

“My car is in a ditch,” she reminded him.

His frown darkened. “We’ll dig it out. My jeep has a winch.”

“Could you…?”

His eyes narrowed. “Could I what?”

God, he was cranky. “Could you start a fire? My toes are like ice.”

He glanced at her feet.

“It was a long walk.”

“Shit.” He raked his hair again—he seemed to like doing that—and stomped to the fireplace. It took him only a moment, as the logs were already laid. She gazed at the flickering flames longingly.

“Could you…call off your dog?”

“Shit.” His favorite word, apparently. “Bo. Come here.”

The dog padded to his side, but Lyssa waited until he grasped its collar, before she picked up Biby’s cage and edged around the room toward the fire. When the warmth hit her, she sighed.
Bliss
.

She stripped off one coat and then the next. And her jacket and her sweater and her hoodie. She’d put on all her winter gear, everything she could find in her trunk, not knowing how far she would have to walk. She was glad she had, but now it needed to come off. She dropped each piece into a pile at her feet, and then toed off her boots as well, wincing as a sharp sting sliced through her foot. She didn’t think there was any frostbite, but her lower extremities were numb. She stripped off her socks and peered at the alarmingly white skin.

“Rub them,”
Jax suggested.

Lyssa blew out a breath as she sat on the ottoman and did so. Normally she tried to ignore Jax because disembodied voices jabbering incessantly in her ear annoyed her. But this sounded like good advice.

She winced at the first stroke, and then winced again as the heat soaked in, awakening the nerves. Tingles shot up her leg.

“Your pants are wet.”

Something soft dropped to the seat beside her and Lyssa blinked. She’d been so focused on tuning Jax out, she almost hadn’t heard Wade’s grumble.

“What?”

“Your pants are wet.” He nodded at the item he’d tossed. She held it up. Sweatpants. A million sizes too big, but they had a drawstring. “You should change.”

Lyssa nodded, and then stared at him. “Well?”

He arched a perfect brow. “Well what?”

“Turn around.”

She might have imagined that hint of a flush on his cheeks, but he did turn and she quickly peeled off her sopping jeans and slipped into the warm, dry sweatpants. Yup. A million sizes too big. But they were warm. And they were dry. And it was heavenly.

“Thank you.”

He grunted and headed for the kitchenette. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished.” She was. The lightheadedness warned that her blood sugar was dropping. She settled into the armchair by the fire and pulled Biby out of her cage, cradling her in her lap and sinking her fingers into her snowy white fur. The cat nestled in and though she kept her attention firmly on the dog—and vice versa—began to purr.

After slamming around in the kitchen in a manner that effectively telegraphed his annoyance, he brought her a plate upon which he had slapped a sandwich. He thrust it at her. “I’m Wade,” he offered, although it was a grudging offer.

Lyssa accepted the plate, took a bite and nearly groaned in ecstasy. She was hungrier than she had thought. She smiled her thanks and mumbled through a mouthful of roast beef and lettuce, “I know.”

He stiffened. Every muscle in his body went taut. His eyes narrowed. “You…know?”

She swallowed. “Yeah. Mr. December. Are there any chips?”

He didn’t answer. At least not about the chips, although she really would have liked some. “You know about the calendar?”

Lyssa didn’t snort, but it was an effort. Everyone knew about the calendar. All her friends had one.

Wade stepped away, studying her the way an entomologist studied a bug wriggling on a pin. But Lyssa didn’t wriggle. She took another bite—the sandwich was manna from heaven. She pulled off a piece of beef and fed it to her cat. Biby nearly took a chunk of her fingers with it.

Wade’s gaze flicked down. He paled. “You let it out?”

The way he said it, one would think she’d unleashed the seven plagues.

“Biby doesn’t like being caged.”

He gestured to the other side of the room. “I have a dog.”

Lyssa tipped her head to the side. “Biby won’t hurt him.” And then, she added, under her breath, “Too much.” If he behaved himself.

Biby was a fighter. She’d been feral before Jax had taken her in, a true wildcat tamed only by her ravenous passion for bacon. Lyssa had been mortified at the appearance of this small furry be-clawed creature in her home. She’d never had a fondness for cats. But Biby had won her over. Eventually. She’d even been able to overlook the shredded couches and hair-nibbling and dead birds miraculously appearing on the dining room table. She’d actually come to love the belligerent feline.

So, when Jax died, Lyssa kept her.

Couldn’t bear to think of letting her go, much less dropping her at a shelter.

Jax wouldn’t have wanted that.

This she knew beyond all doubt.

Because he’d told her.

Wade’s gut churned with warring annoyance and…shit. Was that attraction?

No. It couldn’t be.

He’d watched her strip away her armor, coat after coat and then gaped as the most enticing, petite figure emerged.

The spear of lust had surprised him. He’d felt nothing—
nothing
—down there since that IED had taken out his squad. And had nearly taken his lower half.

But his lack of desire wasn’t only physical. At least, that’s what the V.A. psychologists had told him. Many soldiers suffered from it, they said…a symptom of PTSD, they said.

Wade knew the truth.

It wasn’t fucking PTSD dampening his natural need for a woman.

It was guilt.

A guilt he could never escape.