Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Colleen
BAM!
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“COLLEEN!! MOORE!!”
Cold.
Ice filled her lungs as Colleen sat straight up, the covers falling off her, disoriented by being startled out of a sound sleep, her shoulder screaming until her neck pulled in and she gasped with pain.
“Wha…? Where are–wha…?”
“COLLEEN!”
She shrieked, wanting whoever was shouting to stop, her head suddenly throbbing hard, so painful that she closed her eyes tight, rotating her shoulder and crying out as it shrieked back.
“ARE YOU IN THERE?” The front door knob rattled as she looked to her right to find a very confused, very naked Moore in bed with her.
Hold on.
Was this another one of her dreams?
“Well,” he said, looking around the room with the same frantic cluelessness she felt.
“Guess we’re rescued.” The one-room cabin with the kitchen to their left, the bathroom to the right, all felt like a condensed cube, as if Luke and Kell were about to peel off the foil wrapper and plunk them in hot water.
“LUKE?” she called out.
“COLLEEN! OPEN THE DOOR!”
“I CAN’T!” she replied before realizing that was the worst possible way to reply to her brother.
The cop.
Before she could say a word, before Moore could move, the door came crashing in.
And her brothers Luke and Kell flew into the room.
Luke landed at the foot of the bed, his head snapping up. Kell stood a few feet inside the cabin, looking like an enormous bear who’d just been gored in the butt by a boar.
“MY EYES! MY EYES!” Kell bellowed, turning away and holding his hands over his face, then walking straight into a chair and falling over it head first, heavy tan work boots flailing mid-air.
“Moore? Colleen? What the hell is this?” Luke demanded.
“I can explain,” Moore said, leaping out of bed.
Luke stared at him, bug-eyed. “You’re naked!”
Moore grabbed the comforter off the bed as Kell righted himself and looked over at them, making eye contact with Colleen.
Who was now completely naked and exposed on the bed, as Moore covered himself with the quilt he’d just taken.
“COVER YOURSELF! MY EYES!” Kell shouted again.
Moore, ever the gentleman, sacrificed himself to toss the comforter back over her. Crouching to find the nearest item to cover himself with, he stood up holding her shredded sweater in front of him.
By this point, Luke had stood up, backed up, and had his hands on his hips, a murderous look on his face as he screamed at Moore, “What the hell did you do to my sister?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious what he did with her,” Kell muttered, clearing his throat suggestively.
“SHUT UP, KELL!” Colleen and Luke shouted in unison.
“Geez. It’s like I’m nine again,” he snapped back at them, but he took a seat in a chair closer to Moore and wisely shut up, watching the scene intently.
Colleen froze, covered with the comforter now, Moore awkward beyond belief as he covered his crotch with her wool sweater, which hung in ribbons around his thighs.
“EXPLAIN,” Luke barked.
“I was driving on Route 28 when I hit some ice. Moore told me his uncle’s cabin was–”
“Not you. Him!” Luke cut her off and stormed toward Moore, stopping inches from his face, finger pointed at him. “Why are you NAKED, in a BED, with my SISTER?”
“He saved my life!” Colleen retorted, fury building up in her. Still groggy from the abrupt awakening, she was quickly being shocked into full awareness.
“With his penis?” Kell said under his breath.
“SHUT UP, KELL!” they screamed again. Moore just glared at him, tilting his head for emphasis.
Kell simply grinned, crossing his arms over his broad chest and settling in with infuriating amusement. “Wish I had popcorn.”
“You can find it back in Luview!” Colleen said shrilly. “How about you go get some right now?”
“Make yourself useful and shut the door, too,” Luke growled at him.
Kell stood and did as asked, then sauntered back to the chair, clearly not giving up his front-row seat to what was nothing but pure entertainment to him.
Colleen would never, ever hear the end of this.
“I didn’t know you two were a thing,” Kell ventured, eyes pinging between the two of them.
“They’re not,” Luke said in a deadly voice that made a nerve in Colleen’s spine shoot from base to top, settling hard in the back of her skull.
“What we are or aren’t is none of your business,” she said to Luke, standing up on her knees then losing her balance and falling backwards, her arms and legs sticking out from the covers, shoulder sending nerve pain to her scalp.
Luke looked at her and did a double take, rushing to the bed. His hand went to her ankle, which was covered with bruises.
“You’re injured!”
“Badly.”
Instead of the expression of sympathy for her truck accident that she expected, Luke just gently released her ankle, patting her shin with a tender touch.
Then charged Moore.
When you’ve been friends with someone your entire life, from preschool to your thirties, and you’ve spent all those decades wrestling, fighting, making up, exploring outdoors, and being on sports teams and Boy Scouts together, you pick up on subtle physical signals that otherwise might be missed.
Which was how Moore so readily dodged Luke.
He seemed to know instinctively that his best buddy was on the attack, and when Luke stumbled into empty air as naked Moore lifted up in a high jump that landed him on the bed, slamming hard on the balls of his feet, it made Kell burst out laughing.
Except that Newton’s third law law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and when Moore hit the mattress hard, he bounced Colleen off.
Harder.
Onto the bare wood floor of the cabin, where she felt a distinct snap in her wrist as she made contact.
Screaming felt good, even if pain provoked it, her cry longer and more vibrant than it otherwise would have been. Made of steel and with the pain tolerance of an Amazonian warrior, she normally would have held it in, but this was too much.
The worst day of her life followed by the best night of her life followed by her baby brothers busting in on her in flagrante delicto with a man her brother thought he could beat up.
To… what? Save her honor?
That ship had sailed so long ago, it had a pirate flag attached to it.
“LUKE!” she cried out as Kell hovered above her, tossing the blanket over her naked body. “Leave him alone!” She followed this pissed-off declaration with another scream. “You just broke my damn wrist!”
“ME?” Luke yelled back indignantly. Moore was dancing around the table, Luke on the other side of it. Was he baring his teeth?
“Yeah, you! Moore wouldn’t have jumped and would someone just HELP ME?”
All three men halted.
“Did you just ask for help?” Kell said in a tone of marvel.
“Yes!”
Luke and Kell made eye contact over her prone body. “She must be really hurt if she’s asking for help.”
Moore abandoned his table shield and crawled over the bed to the side she’d fallen on, crouching next to her. His hand went to her arm, which made her groan. The white hot, piercing pain was nothing like what she’d felt yesterday after the crash.
This was acute.
And worst of all, unnecessary.
“GET OUT! BOTH OF YOU!” she bellowed between seething gasps of pain.
“But–” As Luke’s protest began, Kell’s hand went to his shoulder, her youngest brother whispering something into her stupidest brother’s ear that made Luke roll his eyes, mouth going flat with contempt. “That’s a big crock of–”
Kell whispered something else that shut Luke up. The long-suffering sigh that came out of his invasive, overprotective, busybody mouth made Colleen want to choke him with his police hat.
“You,” Luke said to Moore, accusing finger pointing at him. “Get dressed and get outside.”
“I’m helping Colleen.”
“Oh, you helped her plenty.”
“He saved my LIFE, you asshole!” she screamed at Luke, hating her inferior position on the floor, but she didn’t have much choice.
Standing would mean being totally naked in front of her brothers.
Again.
“What does that mean?” Luke asked in a gruff voice.
“Just what I said. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Moore.”
“Dead?”
“You found the truck, I assume?” she asked as she battled to control her breath, the pain getting worse. “Upside down?”
“It’s buried under eighteen inches of snow. Bad angle, too. Even the snowplow guys missed it last night. Hell of a wreck. You totaled dad’s truck. Roads must have gotten bad here.”
“Upside down in a pond, right?”
Kell glanced down at his and Luke’s feet. That’s when Colleen realized their legs were wet. Both men wore thick down coats, Luke in his bright red Luview police jacket and red cop hat.
“Yes.”
“I was trapped in the water. Upside down. Moore got me loose before I drowned. Kicked off his shoes to swim in through the passenger’s window and release me.
Then he walked all the way from there to here, shoeless, in the storm, carrying me.
He found this cabin. He saved my life,” she spat out, hoping it shamed them.
How dare they barge in here and attack Moore? The guy who saved her, Luke’s lifelong friend, who’d been injured in the crash, too.
But nooooo. All her jackass brother seemed to care about was some chaotic macho b.s.
Luke had the decency to close his eyes and wince, pinching the bridge of his nose as if regulating the flow of information to his brain.
“How’d you get in this place?” he demanded of Moore. “This isn’t your uncle’s cabin.”
“A window. Easy to jiggle the lock open.”
“Breaking and entering? I could have you arrested for this.”
“Moore entered someone, alright,” Kell said under his breath.
“LUKE!” she screamed again, wishing she had a vase or a shot put or anything she could throw at him to cause damage.
Examining the room, Luke prowled around, looking carefully in the kitchen, eyes jumping to the nice, hot woodstove. While he did his whole cop act, Kell bent down, frowning at Colleen with a look of concern that made him resemble their mother.
“You hungry?”
“We had a lovely dinner of peanut butter and rum.”