Chapter 9
S CARLETT
I don’t know whether to cry or laugh or just hit the dashboard with my fist until I break something.
I scream at the dashboard and hit it a couple of times before realizing I bruise easily and shouldn’t make a bad situation even worse.
Why?
Why does it have to happen to me?
I wanted to go home, soak my feet in hot water, eat in peace, drink some wine, and forget about the bad Santa I had spent the evening with.
Instead, I’m now in the middle of nowhere, without a working phone, at the mercy of some good Samaritan who may roll by in their ride down this empty road.
If nothing happens in the next five minutes, I might need to go back on foot about two miles up the road and get some help at the venue.
What a terrible situation.
I unfasten my seatbelt and search the back of my car in the hopes of finding a blanket or something.
I have no coat, no boots. And no blanket.
I hate myself right now.
For someone who is so organized in class and easily multitasks all the time, I surely let the ball drop when it came to my own person.
Or maybe staying on top of things all the time drains me and makes me forget about myself.
I should get going. Just move. There’s no point in sitting here in the car, feeling sorry for myself.
As I often tell the kids, every challenging situation in life is filled with valuable lessons.
I’ll know better next time.
And it’s time to stop being so stingy and get a new car.
A bit concerned, I reach down, pull my shoes off, and wiggle my toes. I massage them with affection and look at them twice as later, I might experience frostbite.
Yeah, right.
It might be that cold, but I feel like chuckling.
I’m still focused on my feet when a harsh knock on the driver’s window throws me into the fangs of panic.
“Ahh…” I shout, reflexively jerking my arm up to protect myself from… nothing.
A man looks at me through the foggy window.
I tilt my head down and peer up at him with increased interest.
Wait a minute.
I know this man.
Those eyes almost got me in trouble back at the venue.
No. Is this him? Is this what he looks like?
The light shafts coming from his headlights highlight his silhouette.
It’s him.
My heart beats in the most awkward places of my body.
I feel it everywhere.
Quick, uneven beats forecasting trouble.
“Can you open the door?” he says in his unmistakable rasp before looking to his right as if another car is about to pass us up.
I glance over my shoulder as well.
His black truck blocks the road, and no car comes toward us.
It’s only us. Him, and me. And the harsh winter. And my broken down car.
My shoulders jolt slightly from the frigid cold.
Eventually, he shifts his gaze to me, his gloved hands propped on the metal frame of my car.
I lift my finger as if to say, ‘Give me a second,’ and lower myself to put my heels on.
I unlock the door, and he looks at me with those mystifying gray eyes that give me shivers on top of the ones I’m getting from the cold.
We look at each other as if musing over something that has nothing to do with me being stuck in a ditch and wearing light clothes like like it’s summer.
“What happened?” he asks, his eyes taking me with a fervor that again has nothing to do with my situation.
I’ve never been stared at like that.
As if my soul is for the taken.
As if he knows more about me.
Like a billion more things about me. The littlest, most intimate secrets.
How I prefer to sleep on my stomach, with a body pillow between my legs to help alleviate the tension in my spine.
How I secretly yearn to have a daughter and teach her all the things I've learned the hard way in life.
How I love Christmas but hate organizing events.
How I love teaching little kids but not dealing with a burly, surly Santa.
How I love having my feet massaged, but I've never had someone do it for me. Having a professional do it for me has proven to be more difficult as I always fall asleep on the massage table.
He tilts his chin toward the hood of my car.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asks before bringing his eyes back to me.
It’s like I’m drinking ambrosia from them.
They look fantastic in the light coming from his car.
He’s like a shapeshifter.
A wolf that morphed into a gorgeous man and now is about to kidnap me, toss me over his shoulder, take me to a cabin, and eat me out until I pass out.
My imagination runs wild, but we are not at story time.
“The car broke down, and I lost control of the wheel. My phone battery died, too. So that’s where I am. I was waiting for someone to come along and help me. I wasn’t expecting you. Wait. Didn’t you leave a little earlier?”
His eyes narrow with a mischievous smile only men like him get away with.
I can’t stop looking at him.
He looks like he’s lived off modeling jobs his entire life. Dark hair swept back. Dark stubble paired up well with his ‘I don’t give a fuck attitude.’
Lips that could take you from soft to tender to a blaze in need of an extinguisher. I don’t have to look twice at him to know he knows his way around a woman’s body.
No wonder he was so brazen back at the venue.
What made him come, though?
And what happened to little Colley’s cousin?
“Can you open the hood for me?” he asks, and I look at him like he’s asked me to drop my panties for him.
He tilts his chin toward the inside of my car, and I shift my focus to the dashboard.
I know there’s a hood release hatch somewhere.
“Step out of the car,” he says in the voice of someone with authority, glancing away again––checking the road, I suppose.
Maybe ensuring no one witnesses him making me disappear.
I haven’t even touched that bottle, and I’m naughty like I have.
“You didn’t drink anything, I hope,” he says when he notices the bottle of red wine on the passenger seat.
“I was about to before you interrupted me,” I retort.
“Funny,” he says, unimpressed.
I push out of my seat and he makes room for me to step past him before he opens the hood of my car and checks the engine.
I wait, shifting my weight from one foot to another.
My heart shudders in my chest. It’s that cold.
“You need to take it to a repair shop. Do you know a good repair shop in your area?” he asks, different than the man who gave me a hard time inside.
He’s all business, and I quickly sober up.
He didn’t even ask me to get in his car, although I’m frosted like a twig.
He didn’t offer to take me home.
With my luck, I’ll probably wait here for the towing truck and get dropped off at home by them.
“Yeah… There’s a place I know,” I say, my voice cold like his. “I can’t call anyone right now. I don’t have a phone,” I say evenly while hopping from one foot to another.
It’s freakishly cold.
“Do you mind if I call someone for you?” he asks, and again, it strikes me how distant he is.
It’s like I’ve never had his hard cock under my rear or felt the fire of his gaze moving over my chest and legs.
It feels like he’s broken up with me before asking me out.
The thought puts me in a bad mood. Who needed more mixed messages from life?
I surely didn’t.
“Sure. You can do that. And while you’re at it, can you call a cab for me?” I toss at him, icicles floating in my voice. “I’m not sure the truck driver has room for me or even is allowed to take me home.”
I press my lips together and hold his gaze like an unyielding warrior, ready to sacrifice my soul in this battle.
He doesn’t owe me anything, but whatever issues he has––and I have issues, too––he shouldn’t take it out on me.
His stare stays on me as if he wants to make sure he got that right.
Yes, he did. He knows I’m angry. And good for him that he is so perceptive.
A tinge of warmth flashes through his moonlight eyes, his side-eyed stare and arched eyebrow only making him more attractive.
He has a strong jaw and chiseled-to-perfection cheekbones, and I begin to wonder. Who is this man? And why is he here?
He was supposed to be long gone.
I can’t imagine no one is waiting for him somewhere.
From a woman with a sexy body rocking the most fashionable set of lingerie meant to drive a man like him crazy to a soft, sweet one wearing regular clothes and a smile while setting dinner for him, anything is possible.
And yet he is here with me tonight after being tasked with a job that he––cross his heart––hated.
He reaches inside his pocket, retrieves his phone, and walks away from me, making a call while I study his athletic frame.
I knew that even with that Santa suit on, he must’ve had a rock hard body.
He is more than fit. He looks like he’s fighting in a boxing ring for a living.
His words travel to me, muted and diffuse, while my mind drifts back to a time when I wasn’t a teacher and worked multiple jobs, hoping to get to a better place.
That place has never materialized. Although I have become a teacher, I do love my work, and surely I’m grateful for my house, but someone has moved the goalposts, and it wasn’t me.
Apparently, I want and need different things now, and looking at the man talking on the phone with his back turned to me, I realize that I wouldn’t say no to someone like him, only with a calmer attitude, more patience, sunnier disposition, and obviously, someone entirely different than him.
Ugh.
I give up.
He hangs up and closes the distance between us.
I’m numb from cold, no longer shaking, no longer feeling my feet.
“Get your things,” he says. “You’re coming with me.”
I look at him, even more frozen than before.
Would it kill him to talk like normal people do? To simply ask me if I wanted to do this?
“Where are we going?” I ask when he ignores my defiant attitude, opens the door, and picks up my bag and bottle of wine. “Is there anything else you need from your car?” he tosses at me, handing me my stuff and holding the door.
“No. The key is in the ignition.”
“As it should be. No one is gonna steal your car. Trust me on that one,” he says in a fatherly voice. “Now move. I have to be someplace else,” he says, heading toward his truck.
This would be the moment to take my defiance to that place where I’d do something stupid, like refusing to go with him and waiting for the towing truck to arrive while freezing to death, or maybe going back and getting help at the venue.
But the thought of his comfortable big truck, despite his questionable attitude, makes me step on my pride and follow him.
“Are you gonna be okay?” he throws at me, a few steps ahead of me. “Walking in those shoes?”
Yes, I’m fine.
No, I’m not fine.
I test the frozen snow with the tip of my shoe, already swinging my arms in the air to maintain my balance.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” I say, taking small, comical steps while ruining my shoes.
He glances at me over his shoulder and catches me just when I try to catch myself and stop myself from tumbling forward and face planting into the snow.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters, spinning around and coming in hot.
I stop, not knowing what to expect from him when, without wasting any time, he slides his arm behind my legs and picks me up like I’m a feather.
“Oh…” I chirp, instinctively winding my arms around his muscular neck.
As weird as it seems, this is probably the first smidgen of comfort I have experienced this evening.
He moves with ease, carrying me like I’m a love letter.
“Open the passenger door,” he commands, and I do that, making a sacrifice as the handler is arctic cold against my touch.
He pushes the door with his shoulder and deposits me on the passenger seat. I couldn’t have been more right.
His truck looks and feels like a palace, with room for legs, a pleasant scent of cologne and mints, and the temperature perfectly adjusted to fight off the merciless cold outside.
The dashboard is lighted, the engine purring, the windshield clean. The inside of his car is clean. It looks like a private jet, and as much as I don’t want to go gaga over his ride, it’s hard not to, considering my experience with my car.
He hops in and side-eyes me.
“You good?” he asks, as I work on fastening my seat belt.
“Yes. Thank you,” I murmur when his hand slides over mine, and he finishes the job for me.