Chapter Ten
A spen dragged Colt on a relentless march through store after store in search of the “perfect” items for her welcome basket. Shopping ranked below getting a tooth drilled or a family birthday party on the list of things he wanted to do less—unless the store sold hunting equipment.
But watching Aspen light up in delight at quirky little trinkets and turn them over in her hands with such a thoughtful expression gave him more insight into how her mind worked.
She took all the purchases out of the bags and arranged them on the granite kitchen island. There had to be at least two of everything. Standing back, she brought her fist to her mouth as she pondered what she’d bought.
Three different scents of candles were grouped together, and she picked up the first one, giving it a sniff for what must have been the tenth time.
“I’m not convinced this is the right scent.” She set it aside.
He leaned against the counter, watching her process of elimination. “What’s the matter with it?”
“Too many notes of vanilla.”
He read the label. “Says cinnamon roll.”
“Yes, but there’s a hint of vanilla, which my client hates. He prefers spicier.”
“How do you know his preference of scents? That’s a little personal, don’t you think?”
She fixed her gaze on him. “That’s my job.”
“Well, does your job include eating lunch? It’s getting cold.”
They’d stopped off at an Italian restaurant in the foothills. The joint was a well-known spot for holiday parties and anniversaries. Colt had even heard about one of Willow’s old boyfriends taking his new lady and popping the question there. For a week, it was all his sister could rant about, even though she hadn’t wanted the guy on a permanent basis.
Colt had never been there, and Aspen declared that she didn’t have time to sit down and eat, so he’d ordered ahead and picked up the food. It sat in a bag at the end of the island.
At his comment, Aspen abandoned the gift basket she was in the middle of creating and grabbed the food instead. “You’re right. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
He twitched his head toward the living room. “What do you say we eat in front of the fire?”
She turned those big green eyes on him. Whenever she did, his heart gave a little hitch. He didn’t know what that was about, but he filed it away with the other questions he would think about at a later date. Like once he was back on the Black Heart Ranch, living his normal life.
Aspen carried the bag into the living room and sank to the floor in front of the fireplace. The flames burned low, leaving plenty of glowing red coals. All they needed was a few logs to get it going again.
He jerked a thumb toward the front door. “You set out the food. I’ll go outside and grab a couple more logs for the fire.”
She nodded and peeked inside one takeout container. “Ooh! Breadsticks!”
He swung back. “Don’t eat them all before I get back.”
As she laughed, she tossed her head, sending her soft curls tumbling around her ears and drawing his attention to the small diamond studs in her lobes. Every single thing about this woman oozed femininity.
He stared at her for a beat longer than he should before he headed outside. When he opened the door, a low, hard thunk sounded.
He stopped on the porch, swinging his head right and then left, straining to detect what it was.
He spent a lot of time in the mountains and knew all the sounds, from chainsaws to the call of birds of prey. That thunk wasn’t one he recognized.
It sounded hollow like a dead tree falling…but echoed with something metallic too. Maybe a branch fell on the metal roof of a distant neighboring property.
No more noises reached him, so he hurried down the steps and rounded the back of the cabin to the neatly stacked pile of wood. There was enough wood here to last any couple for most of the winter, which might be something for Aspen to note in her portfolio.
Planning ahead, he filled his arms with the split wood. If things got heated up between him and Aspen again, the last thing he wanted to do was stop and come outside for another load.
When he turned toward the cabin again, a light tremor in the ground made him stop in his tracks.
The ground was vibrating.
Fuck!
That could only mean one thing.
He dropped the logs and sprinted up the steps. He burst into the house, calling Aspen’s name.
She rushed out of the living room, eyes wide with fear and her chest heaving at what she must hear in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
In three strides, he grabbed her by the shoulders. “We need to get out of the cabin—now! There’s an avalanche!”
She stumbled forward, the soles of her boots biting into the wood floor. Thank god she had her boots on. He snatched her coat on the way out, thrusting it into her arms as they bolted into the cold.
Snow swirled in the air around them, but her frantic voice reached him over the roar of the entire mountainside coming down.
Panic trembled in her voice. “The ground—it’s shaking!”
A low, deafening rumble rolled down the mountain, vibrating through the soles of his boots and into his chest. Ice froze the blood in his veins as he spun toward the sound.
A wall of snow thundered down the mountain, swallowing trees and everything else in its path.
There was no time for escape. They’d be lucky to survive.
The snow began to shift under their feet. Trees cracked and splintered as they were ripped out of the ground like matchsticks.
His voice boomed out over the roar. “Aspen! Move diagonal to the slide—toward the cliff’s edge!”
Her hand shot out. He clasped it, gripping tight, but the shifting snow made every step more treacherous. He was not letting her die this way. She’d battled her way back from cancer, and this would not take her out.
The snow buckled beneath them. The world tilted, knocking his feet out from under him. Aspen’s fingers were ripped out of his grasp.
“Aspen!” He flipped onto his stomach, clawing at the snow in an attempt to crawl up. His gaze darted around as he watched a wall of white engulf the cabin, obliterating it from view.
The truck disappeared next, swallowed by the pummeling slide.
Raw terror tore through his chest, threatening to swallow him too.
Aspen was gone. Swallowed by an ocean of white.
“Aspen!” His voice cracked. The wind stole his bellow. “Aspen!” He scrambled forward. “Stay calm, do you hear me? I’m coming! I’ll find you!”
Fear dug its icy fingers into him harder than it ever had on a battlefield.
* * * * *
The ground vanished under Aspen’s feet as the roar of the avalanche consumed her. The deafening roar filled her head, rattling her teeth in her jaw and her skull. The heavy weight of the entire world seemed to press down on her, making it impossible to move.
The brutal snow packed around her, squeezing her tight from every side. By some small mercy, a small pocket of air around her head allowed her to breathe. Where was she?
Where was Colt?
All sense of direction had fled the minute the world shifted under her feet and flipped and flattened her to the ground. Every instinct inside her screamed to try to kick herself free, to battle her way—
Where? Up or down? She didn’t have a damn clue where she was in relation to the universe.
She forced herself to remain still, to be calm even as terror clawed up her throat. She wiggled her fingers and found that she wasn’t touching snow. The air pocket must be larger than she thought.
She tilted her head back, gulping in shallow breaths. The snow around her ribs pressed inward, making it difficult to expand them. Her heart thudded hard and loud in her ears. Suddenly, she realized that the avalanche had ground to a halt.
The snow was silent now. Eerie and still.
“Colt.” Her voice cracked. The sound muffled and deadened by the crypt of snow hemming her in from all sides. She lifted her hand, stretching in a direction she hoped was upward.
She believed in Colt. He’d know what to do. He’d find her and rescue her.
The need to start screaming burned in her lungs, but she battled against the urge.
A rough noise came from someplace to her right. She slowly turned her head.
A soft thunk, thunk, thunk continued to fill her ears, growing louder by the minute.
He was digging her out!
How had he found her so fast? The man was even more amazing than she thought.
The color of the snow changed from dark gray to light as more and more of it was removed from over her head. When a hole appeared, she tipped her head up, a smile of joy and relief stretching over her face.
The smile froze.
It wasn’t Colt.
She stared at the man’s face harder. Her scrambled mind tried to place him.
Oh god. She did recognize him. What was he doing here? He was a friend or relative of Vivian. He was at her friend’s funeral.
Disjointed pieces clicked into place.
It was Vivian’s nephew. Aspen had met him a few times before.
She cast around for his name, but she couldn’t grasp hold of it. Gary? Grant?
“Gideon!”
He jerked his arm back. He held a shovel.
“Gideon, what are you doing here?”
He reached into the snow, tough hands digging into her underarms as he hauled her out of the deep drift.
“Gideon!”
“Shut up, dammit.”
The tone of his voice made it clear: this wasn’t a rescue.
As soon as her head cleared the surface, she sucked in deep gulps of oxygen. Was she imagining her friend’s nephew was here? Her brain must be oxygen-deprived if she was seeing people.
She searched the blinding white landscape for Colt, but her gaze landed time and time again on Gideon. She hadn’t seen him since the reading of the will.
He glared down at her, eyes fixed on her face and a twisting snarl on his lips.
She opened her mouth to scream for Colt, but pain rocketed through her skull, wiping out the whole world.
Aspen had no sense of time or place. She only knew that her clothes were wet, and she was shivering from the cold. Her eyelids felt as if they were weighted down by tons of snow and uprooted trees and whatever else that avalanche had torn off the mountainside.
She peeled her eyelids open. They immediately snapped shut. She tried one more time.
This time they stayed propped open. Her vision cleared and she focused on a seat right in front of her.
An airplane.
Her airplane.
She turned her head, and a wave of dizziness slammed her. The face of Vivian’s nephew swam in her vision for several heartbeats before she forced her mind to clear.
Gideon was really here. And they were really onboard her plane.
This was no coincidence.
The pieces of the puzzle slipped away. Her mind was too foggy to fit them together. She knew Vivian’s nephew had pulled her out of her tomb of snow, but why?
Where was Colt?
Panic jittered through her, and she curled her fingers into the armrests.
This could not be good. Gideon didn’t even like her. She’d never forget the expression on his face when Vivian’s will was read…and he learned he didn’t gain more than a pittance from his aunt’s death.
“I see my plane is fixed.” Her mouth was as dry as cotton.
Gideon’s light blue eyes blazed through her. “I’m the one who broke it. Makes it much easier to fix.”
Another wave of panic slammed her with as much force as that avalanche. She floundered the same way, fighting to figure out up from down.
Was Colt alive? She had to stall and pray that he was—and that he would find her.
She slowly turned her head to meet Gideon’s gaze. “What are we doing on my plane?”
“You mean the plane that you bought with my aunt’s money?”
If she answered him, he’d only grow more agitated by what he had lost, even though Vivian had never intended to make him the beneficiary of her legacy.
Aspen’s damp clothes clung to her chilled skin. She was still shivering from cold and fear, but the last thing she wanted to do was show weakness to Gideon.
“Where are we going?” she asked him.
His hair was messy and oily, plastered to his head like he hadn’t washed it in a long time. His beard grew in patches on his cheeks and jaw, leaving bare spots in between.
“We’re going to the cabin in Montana. Remember the cabin you were going to look at for your clients?”
She racked her brain for which cabin that would be. She and Colt visited two out of the three before taking off for Lake Tahoe.
“A cabin way off the beaten path is the best place to take you.” He nodded as if solidifying his plan in his deranged mind. “I’d say it’s an excellent choice. No one will hear you scream there.”
He had to mean the third cabin that she’d never visited. If he knew she had been headed to Montana, he was tracking her moves.
Her gut dipped in fear. She had screamed Colt’s name right before the snow swallowed her up. When she heard digging, she expected to find her lover standing over her, prepared to pull her out of the snow and into his warm, strong arms.
No, this was no coincidence, she thought for the second time, knowing it in her gut now. Gideon had set this all up.
A wild light burned in his pale eyes as he watched her closely. “Thanks to you, Aspen, I have nothing. You took it all. Now I’m going to do the same to you.”
Her mind cast around the plane cabin for something to defend herself with. Some heavy object to bash him over the head the same way he’d bashed her back on that mountain. But there was nothing except the sleek overhead compartments, empty of anything she could use.
She needed to get out of here. She opened her mouth, thinking to scream for her small flight crew. But Gideon reached inside his coat and withdrew a small pistol.
“You’re not going anywhere, Aspen. Fasten your seatbelt. It’s going to be a short flight.”
“No!” Her voice projected as a hot rasp.
What if Colt was dead?
The thought hit Aspen like a punch to the chest.
Impossible. Colt was a SEAL. He had survival skills that most people couldn’t even fathom. He knew how to fight, and he was the one who told her how to survive the avalanche.
Doubt crept in. Goose bumps pebbled her body at the icy whisper in her ear—the one that told her that Colt might not have survived at all.
Gideon might have gotten to him first.
If Gideon knew exactly where to find her, that meant he had been watching the cabin. That avalanche wasn’t just an act of nature. It was a deliberate act meant to hurt her.
She and Colt walked right into the trap.
Colt, where are you?
Her mind screamed for her lover…the man who was more than just a great travel companion or fun in bed.
She cared about Colt.
Now she felt helpless, suffocated by the possibility that Colt was dead, just as she had felt trapped back on that mountain, buried in the avalanche.
Colt wouldn’t give up on her, and she was not giving up on Colt.
She wasn’t giving up on them.