Chapter 3
Three
Oh, my holy Jesus, the bear is attacking the car!
Ivy clutched at her chest, certain she was having a heart attack and her body would be found frozen, in this car, sometime in the spring.
The bear spoke. Wait, not a bear. A gigantic, bearded dude stood in the beam of her headlights.
Somehow that wasn’t any better. Was he a crazy mountain man? One of those preppers? Some lunatic in need of a wife, who would kidnap her and hold her hostage, never to be heard from again?
“Are you okay?” His voice was muffled by the snow and the vehicle.
He didn’t sound crazy. Squinting at him through the falling snow, Ivy didn’t think he looked crazy either. But what did crazy look like, anyway? It wasn’t always frothing at the mouth. Look at her Aunt Lucile. She was crazy as a Betsy bug and mean with it, and nobody’d ever know it to look at her.
“Lady, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
Get ahold of yourself, woman. Whoever this guy was, he wanted to help. Which was a damn sight better than freezing to death on this mountain.
“I’m okay. I can’t get out.”
“Are your legs pinned?”
He was big enough he looked like he could rip the vehicle apart with his bare hands. “No, the doors are just blocked.” She’d been too afraid to move much for fear that a shift in weight would send her Blazer hurtling the rest of the way down the mountain.
“Is it just you?”
Ivy hesitated. Was he making sure there was only her to incapacitate? Oh, get a grip! It’s a rational question in a rescue situation. “Just me.”
“Sit tight.”
Like she was gonna do anything else?
He moved back into the trees. Where was he going? For help? Maybe they were close to a town and could call a tow truck. Would a tow truck even get out in all of this mess? Could a tow truck get her out?
She jolted again as he knocked on the back window.
“Unlock the doors.”
Ivy’s hand hovered over the auto lock. He could be a lunatic axe murderer.
A lunatic axe murderer, who just happened to drive by an hour after you went over and risked his life to climb down, on the off chance he’d find somebody to kill? You are paranoid, my dear. This is further proof you made the right decision in not writing romance.
She hit unlock.
Her rescuer wrestled with the back hatch for a minute before popping the liftgate window. “The back’s jammed, but the window will open. You’ll need to climb out this way.”
Ivy was still in the driver’s seat. “Is it safe to move? What if the car rocks and slides further?”
“It’s wedged pretty good. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Either way, it’s not safe for you to stay here.” The low rumble of his voice was matter-of-fact and strangely soothing. He was clearly a man used to giving orders. “Just move slow and steady.”
Searching for some kind of calm, she unbuckled her seatbelt and immediately fell onto the steering wheel and the deflated airbag. “Oooph.”
“You okay?”
“Probably bruised from the seatbelt. Could’ve been a lot worse.”
With excruciating care, Ivy worked her way out of the driver’s seat and over the center console so she could retrieve her purse from where it had landed in the floorboard.
The SUV groaned a little but didn’t move.
Her phone had ended up on the far side of the dash, well out of range while she’d been pinned in the driver’s seat.
She groped for it now, stretching her fingers across the vinyl until they closed around the case.
Her crow of victory was cut short as she saw the screen matched the spiderwebbing of the windshield.
It didn’t light at the press of the home button.
Great. She really was at the mercy of this stranger.
Tossing the ruined phone into her purse, she shoved it through the gap between the front seats and hauled herself over the console, into the back.
Her bags had flown forward in the crash.
Oh, dear God, her laptop! Not that there was anything worth a damn on the current book, but she had years of ideas accumulated on that hard drive.
Resisting the urge to try to open the case and check, she looped the strap over her head and wore the bag cross-body.
She looked at the suitcase, currently lying at the base of the driver’s seat.
So lucky that didn’t hit my head.
“If I shove my suitcase up, can you grab it?”
The grumpy lumberjack—it was what he looked like in the flannel shirt and shearling trucker jacket, with that thick, dark beard—made a grunt she took as assent.
It took some doing to wrestle the bag ahead of her and push it up and over the backseat, so he could reach across the cargo space and grab it.
But though the Blazer creaked and groaned, it didn’t actually move. That made Ivy feel better.
Climbing out herself took a little more effort.
She felt like a fish, flopping over the back of the seat in a graceless heap.
The motion jarred the assortment of bruises starting to make themselves known in the wake of fading adrenaline.
Her hands were shaking as she curled them over the edge of the liftgate and stood against the back of the second row seat.
It was just enough to get her head and shoulders out of the SUV.
“Anything hurt? Broken?” the lumberjack asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good.” Before she could do so much as blink, he slid his massive hands beneath her arms, plucked her right out of the Chevy, and set her down.
Ivy’s feet immediately splayed like a baby deer.
Instinctively, she curled her hands into his jacket and hung on.
His arms tightened around her, effectively pulling her closer as he steadied them both.
She was frozen through, but she’d have sworn she felt the heat of him through all their layers of clothes.
He was just so big and solid. Her heart kicked into a fresh gallop, this time from something other than fear, as she held on longer than she should.
Too embarrassed to meet his eyes, she turned her gaze toward the Blazer. The blood drained out of her head, leaving her dizzy as she took in exactly how precarious her position had been. “Holy shit. That’s bad.”
“It’s all right. You’re safe. I’ve gotcha.” Though his voice was brusque, his hold on her was surprisingly gentle.
Ivy risked looking up at his face. She couldn’t see much in the almost dark, past that mountain man beard. His mouth was pulled into a frown and his dark brows drew together over dark eyes that seemed to look right through her. Her skin flushed.
“Thank you.” Flustered, she planted her feet and pushed away, though he didn’t actually let her go until she was stable. “Did you see the bear?”
He tensed. “What bear?”
“There was a bear in the road. I swerved to avoid it.”
“Probably long gone now.”
Ivy blew out a breath. “That’s a relief.
Maybe there will be enough signal up top to call a…
wrecker.” She trailed off as she realized exactly how far up the top really was.
The glow of headlights illuminated the edge far, far above their heads.
It wasn’t straight vertical, but near enough.
“How the hell did you even get down here?”
“Rappelled.”
She scanned him, looking for a harness. “With no gear?”
“I’ve got climbing rope.”
And obviously he knew what he was doing if he’d made it all the way down here, but still. “You could’ve broken your neck.”
His lips curved just a little, as if he found the idea of that amusing. “I didn’t.”
Something about that cockiness had a hysterical laugh bubbling up in her throat.
What if this was all a hallucination? What if she’d gotten a concussion during the wreck and her mind had conjured up Michael Keenan himself to rescue her?
He looked about like she thought Michael would since he’d gone off the grid.
What if, even now, she was still trapped in that front seat, bleeding to death from a head wound?
He was talking again. “—no way a wrecker could even get out right now. There wouldn’t be enough traction in these conditions to actually pull your vehicle out.
And that’s assuming they can actually get it out at all.
Snow’s just getting worse and town is twenty miles away.
We need to get out of here and to shelter. My cabin’s not far.”
A prickle of worry skittered across her skin.
He wasn’t wrong. She’d freeze to death if she stayed out here.
If this wasn’t a hallucination, that meant she’d be trapped with this guy in the middle of freaking nowhere for who knew how long.
She didn’t know this man, her phone was toast, and she had no other option but to trust him.
He’d risked his life for an absolute stranger, not even knowing whether someone was in the car.
Surely, that was another check in the Not An Axe Murderer column.
And, come on, this was Tennessee. The snow couldn’t last that long.
Working up what she hoped was a confident smile, Ivy looked at the rope he’d evidently used to climb down. “Okay then. Lead the way.”
That was a fake-it-til-you-make-it smile if Harrison had ever seen one.
He’d been running ascent scenarios since he got her out of the SUV.
She was shaky but not terribly injured, best he could tell.
Her red wool coat and jeans were meant for the city, but at least she wasn’t wearing some ridiculous high-heeled shoes or designer boots.
The rubber-soled Wallabees would give some decent traction.
The safest way would be to send her up first.
“You ever do any rock climbing?”
She went brows up. “Does the climbing wall at the gym back in college and grad school count?”
She couldn’t be that far out of school. “Better than nothing.” He pulled out the para-cord and began to uncoil it. “I’m gonna fashion an emergency harness for you and belay you up the incline.”
“You’re gonna trust my weight to that?”