Chapter 8
Moore
“Let me help you get dressed,” he said to her, unsure how to convey all the feelings inside him, especially in front of Luke.
Who clearly wanted to kill him.
His teenage promise was a juvenile vow that had carried over through getting Cammie pregnant, their marriage and divorce, finding Gia, being cheated on at their wedding reception by her, and all of the guys Third Date Colleen had dated and cursed.
Never, not once, had he even hinted to Colleen how he felt about her.
And now, at the moment he needed his best friend the most, Luke was treating him like a criminal.
“I can do it,” she whispered, standing shakily. He hovered, creating an invisible forcefield between him and Luke, because damned if his friend’s laser-like glare wasn’t enough to split him in half, cauterized neatly.
They were adults. Mature adults who could live their lives however they wanted. Surely Luke could understand unexpected love?
Clutching the comforter around her, Colleen shuffled to the bathroom. Moore followed, carrying the clothes Kell had brought. As soon as they were out of earshot, he whispered, “What an uneventful rescue.”
A wan smile was all he got in return.
“Thanks for everything, Moore.” Taking the clothes, she turned the doorknob and opened the narrow bathroom door. Briefly, her eyes met his.
Sorrow filled them.
“Thanks for being such a good friend.”
A wave of emotion swept over him, unidentifiable but definitely not good. As his brain scrambled to find the right words, he opened his mouth, but all he got was a door shut in his face.
Spine tingling with a deep fear he didn’t know his heart could generate, he stood around the corner from his angry best friend and wondered what Colleen meant by that.
He’d been about to kiss her, to reconnect out of sight, and instead she–
“Hey. Moore. Get over here.” Luke’s order was cold and harsh, punitive and angry. When he was in a mood like this, nothing but time would shake him out of it, but Moore had never been on the receiving end of this much fury from his friend.
Before he turned the corner, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. An uncontrollable inner trembling began. Three breaths weren’t enough.
He suspected a thousand wouldn’t be, either.
Rustling sounds from inside the bathroom ended with a couple of grunts of pain from Colleen and he wanted to ask if she was okay, but why ask?
He knew the answer.
No. No, she wasn’t. Neither was he.
Did she regret last night? Was it not as important to her as it was to him?
Had he misread her signals? Taking the leap felt so good, so huge, so right, and when she’d responded to him measure for measure, beat for beat, with an intensity that made his heart sing and his body so grateful to connect, he felt transformed.
Last night had been a metamorphosis for them both.
Hadn’t it?
Kell must have pulled back the curtains, because when he opened his eyes, daylight was streaming in. It wasn’t sunny, though, just dull and white. In the distance, he thought he heard the faint sound of sirens. Ambulance and police, likely.
Kell held out a mug of something with steam rising off it, eyes caring.
Unlike Luke, who looked like he was ready to walk Moore to the electric chair, stand back, and enjoy the show.
“Here. Caffeinate. You went through it all, too,” Kell said without a trace of joking in his voice.
“I did.”
“Thank you for saving her, Moore,” Kell said somberly. “We saw the truck–we went into the pond.”
“Oh, geez.” That explained their wet legs.
“When we didn’t find–” Kell paused to clear his throat, “–bodies, we assumed you’d both found a way out. Snow’s so thick, it covered your tracks. This is the closest cabin to the crash.”
“Yeah.”
“Must have been hard to find in the blinding snow.”
Moore knew exactly what Kell was doing, laying out all the ways Moore had helped Colleen, trying to force it through Luke’s thick skull that he was a good guy and hadn’t suddenly become Satan because he’d slept with Luke’s sister.
In fact, Moore would have done the same thing, but Kell was handling it just fine, so why interfere?
“It was hard. I did what I needed to do.”
“You did way more than what was needed,” Luke snapped.
He rushed toward Moore, so fast and in his face that there wasn’t time to take a single breath.
“What the hell, Moore? She was injured. She was in a car accident. She nearly died, and you decided now was the time to break your promise and sleep with my sister?”
“What promise?” Kell inquired.
“Go away,” Luke barked at him.
Kell had a good four inches on his brother, and probably forty or fifty pounds of muscle. When he’d come home at twenty-three from his year in Washington, D.C. and rejected city life, he’d gone full lumberjack, bulking up fast and becoming the biggest man in the Luview family.
But not the most stubborn.
Luke was no shrinking violet, either.
“Not going away. You made a promise not to sleep with Colleen?” Kell asked Moore.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“When we were fourteen.”
“Quit talking, Moore,” Luke said through gritted teeth.
Moore looked at Kell, who asked Luke, “Why? Why would you make him take a vow at fourteen?”
“He broke it.”
“You’re grown men now! I mean,” Kell stroked his beard as if pondering a deep philosophical principle, “I can think of lots of reasons why a man wouldn’t want to schtup my sister–”
“Gross,” Luke growled.
“–and then there’s the Third Date Colleen curse–”
“SHUT UP, KELL!” Luke and Moore shouted in unison.
In the silence that fell, they all heard a distinct thump from the bathroom, then a very weak, “Hey, guys?”
All three of them rushed to the bathroom, Luke grabbing the doorknob then pausing.
“Collie? You need help?”
“Yeah,” she said weakly. “My legs decided to go on strike.”
“Damn it,” Luke muttered. “I knew I should have brought one of the paramedics with us. But she’s walking and her neck seems fine–”
“Why aren’t they here?” Moore asked.
“Out searching. Like us. Kell called them.” Luke sighed and asked, “Are you dressed?”
“Mostly.”
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
Moore’s heart cracked in half as Luke carefully opened the door to find Colleen slumped on the floor, her borrowed jeans around her ankles, the rest of her dressed.
“I was fine until my brain had to do the pant cuffs. Shoulder and wrist no worky.”
“Is that your official nursing medical term?” Moore joked, but Colleen had lost color and looked like she might throw up.
“I’m fine,” she protested.
“You’re anything but fine,” Luke said, swooping in before Moore could reach her, his buddy’s possessiveness of his sister crystal clear.
Luke’s two-way radio made a sound.
“The ambulance is here,” Luke said. “Taking you straight out there.”
“I have no pants on.”
“Kell, get the comforter spread out on the bed.”
“I’ll do it,” Moore jumped in, doing what Luke had ordered Kell to do, refusing to be shut out from helping Colleen.
Luke carried her to the bed and set her on the comforter, then wrapped her like a newborn and began to pick her back up.
“I can help,” Moore said.
Luke gave him a flat stare. “You have no shoes.”
Moore muttered a curse.
“Let me check the truck. Might be some old boots in there,” Kell offered.
Luke turned away from Moore, Colleen in his arms, her hand sagging across his shoulder.
“Colleen–” he began, but she didn’t even open her eyes.
“Thanks, Moore. You were there when I needed you most.”
As Kell opened the door for Luke, the flat white landscape made Moore pause. At least eighteen inches of snow blanketed the ground, cut only by the path Luke and Kell had made on their trek to the cabin. Way off in the distance, through bare trees, he saw a red light flashing rhythmically.
“Ambulance?”
“Yeah. Quarter mile or so.”
“Be careful with her,” he called out to Luke, looking down at his feet and cursing them.
“Someone has to!” Luke shouted back, making Moore’s fingers curl into fists, shame radiating through him. He’d done nothing wrong. Colleen had done nothing wrong. They’d shared a beautiful night–and morning, too–and Luke’s asinine complex about this was the last thing he needed to deal with.
“I’ll be back, with boots if I have them. Look around, maybe they leave their hunting boots here. Otherwise, find something you can wrap your feet with, unless you want me to carry you out to the truck,” Kell said.
Moore looked at him, expecting amusement, but found he was serious.
“You’re not carrying me.”
“I can if I need to.”
“Show off.”
Kell headed outside, Luke a hundred feet ahead now, moving slowly.
“Hey, Moore?” Kell said, turning and stepping back up onto the porch.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. Seriously. Not many people could have done what you did. Blind and in freezing water. When we found that truck, we thought–we just waded straight into the pond, expecting to find you dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“You know what I mean. No one should go out to find their sister and encounter the truck like that. Then go into icy water thinking you’ll, you know. Especially Luke, of all people.”
“Right.” A big, long sigh rushed out of him. “But we didn’t find that. Thanks to you.”
“Yep.”
“Luke’s being squirrelly and angry about whatever this promise you made to him is about. But he’s indebted to you, too. Once he comes around, he’ll be fine. This has been hard on him.”
Stomach sinking, Moore looked over Kell’s shoulder, Luke’s red-jacketed form like a bloodstain against the white snow.
“Just tell me she’s going to be okay. I don’t give a damn about Luke’s anger.
Colleen came too close to dying. Her life was in my hands.
I don’t save lives for a living like Luke and Colleen do.
I just–I just…” A bitter tightness threatened his composure, the bridge of his nose flooding with a rare feeling.
Tears.
No. Hell no. He wasn’t about to fall apart now.