Kitabı oku: «Snowbound»

“Stay.”

He sounded rusty, as if he didn’t know how to ask for what he wanted. He tried again. “Talk to me. Tell me about…” What? Her life? What she expected the “right” man to be like? “A movie. I haven’t been to one in a long time. What’s the last one you went to?”

Fiona relaxed, as he’d hoped she would. While he measured sugar, she told him about a thriller with a huge budget, big stars and an unlikely plot.

They hadn’t even been there twenty-four hours.

How, in such a short time, had he got to the point where he had a thought like I need her? He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t touched her beyond a hand on the shoulder, didn’t know that she felt anything at all for him.

He didn’t need her. That had been a ridiculous thought. But he wouldn’t mind if snow kept falling for another day or two.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janice Kay Johnson is the author of nearly sixty books for adults and children. She has been a finalist for the Romance Writers of America RITA^® Award for four of her novels. A former librarian, she lives north of Seattle, Washington, and is an active volunteer at, and board member of, Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter. When not fostering kittens or writing, she gardens, quilts, reads and e-mails her two daughters, who are both in Southern California.

Dear Reader,

I confess to thinking it’s great fun to tweak classic romance plots – you know, secret baby, marriage of convenience, snowbound hero and heroine… And I admit to having a special fondness for the snowbound plotline. There are so few ways, in the modern world, we can isolate two people, trapping them together for days and days as the sexual tension rises to an unbearable level…

But let’s face it, the odds aren’t great, are they? Every time I read one of those books, I’d think about how, with my luck, I’d be more likely to end up snowbound with a sexy guy and his wife and kids. Since I write (and love) romance, that’s not a workable scenario. So what can I throw into the stew to give it an unexpected taste? Not a baby – newborn babies are a common element in the classic take. They nap so conveniently, you know. I didn’t want convenient for this book, I wanted inconvenient. No, what if our heroine were to have a teenager with her? Ooh, better yet: what about eight teenagers?

Yes, the plucky heroine is chaperoning a high school trip when in the midst of a blizzard she finds herself snowbound at a Cascade Mountain lodge with eight feuding, funny, sometimes depressed teenagers for whom she’s responsible – and their reluctant host is a brooding man hiding out from the world after returning from being wounded in Iraq. Now, there’s a mix!

I hope you have as much fun reading Snowbound as I did writing it.

Best,

Janice Kay Johnson

Snowbound

JANICE KAY JOHNSON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

FIONA MACPHERSON was starting to get scared.

The rhythmic thwap, thwap, thwap of the tire chains helped her shut out the chatter of the eight teenagers behind her. With the snow falling so hard, she felt as if she and the kids were in a bubble, darkness all around, the headlights only reaching a few feet ahead. Snow rushed at the windshield, a white, ever-moving veil.

She shouldn’t have taken this route—a thin line on the map that promised to cut north of the projected path of the storm.

“This way’s good,” Dieter Schoenecker had said, when she told her vanload of students what she intended to do. “We cross-country ski at a place up near High Rock Springs.”

Hadn’t she been a high school teacher long enough to know better than to take a sixteen-year-old’s word for anything?

Not fair. She was responsible, not Dieter, and she had had some doubts about whether the line on the map was too skinny. But it was a highway, it headed westbound, and they should have been able to make it across the Cascade Mountains before the blizzard arrived.

Only, they hadn’t. They’d left Redmond, out in the high desert country of eastern Oregon, hours ago, right after the Knowledge Champs competition had ended. They should have been close to home in Hawes Ferry south of Portland by now, or at least descending into the far tamer country in western Oregon. Instead they were in the thick of the storm. Fiona was struggling to maintain twenty miles an hour. It had been at least two hours since she’d seen another vehicle.

We should have turned back when we stopped to put on chains, she thought. And when they realized they no longer had cell phone reception.

The voices behind her had died out, Fiona realized.

“You okay, Ms. Mac?” one of the boys asked.

Despite the fact that her neck and shoulders ached and her eyes watered from the strain, she called back, “Yep. You hanging in there?”

Nobody had time to answer. A jolt shuddered through the van as it hit something and came to a stop, throwing Fiona against her seat belt.

“What happened?” Amy cried.

“We probably went off the road,” Dieter said.

Fiona made everyone but Dieter stay in the van. She and he put on parkas and got out. With the engine turned off, it was utterly silent outside, the headlights catching the ghostly, slow fall of the snow and the white world they found themselves in. Tree boughs were cloaked with white, as were rocks and shrubs and ground.

“Awesome,” he said.

She opened her mouth to snap at him, then stopped herself. He was young. She should be grateful he didn’t realize how frightening their situation was.

With the single beam of light from the flashlight that had been in the glove compartment, they could see that the van’s right front wheel rested against a mound. Turning, she cast the thin beam in a semicircle and realized that the road—or what must surely be road—curved. She’d gone straight.

“Try reversing,” Dieter suggested. “A couple of us can push, too.”

Moments later, they were on the road again. Fiona waited until the boys clambered back in, bringing a burst of cold with them and shaking off snow. This time, Dieter got in the front seat.

“You know the rules,” she began.

“Yeah, but maybe I can help you see.”

After a moment, she nodded, then with a hand that had a fine tremor put the van in gear and started forward.

Where were the snowplows? she wondered in frustration, but knew—they would be working on the more traveled highways.

I’ve endangered these children’s lives with my bad decision. She felt as if ice were running though her veins.

“What if we get stuck?” Amy asked, in a high, frightened voice.

“We’ve done fine so far.”

“But…”

Dieter said, “They don’t close passes without sending, like, a state patrolman over it to be sure no one is stranded.”

Fiona was momentarily reassured until she thought about how many roads there would be to patrol. And, because this snowfall was so heavy, anyone coming behind them might find the highway totally impassable.

Out of the van back there, she’d realized how bitterly cold it was tonight. If they got stuck, she could run the engine and the heater off and on, but none of them were dressed for more than a dash from the parking lot into a building. She, Dieter and Hopper were the only ones with real winter parkas.

“Tell me if you see any sign of habitation,” she said softly to Dieter.

Leaning forward, staring at the same white kaleidoscope she was, he nodded.

Fiona blinked hard to ease the strain on her eyes.

Stay on the road, keep going and sooner or later they’d break free of the storm.

It was the staying on the road part that was the real challenge.

JOHN FALLON hadn’t intended this trip to be a race against the storm. Once he heard the weather reports, he’d decided to move up the shopping expedition to town he had planned for next week. But the storm wasn’t supposed to hit until the middle of the night or the following morning.

He was coming out of the country store with his arms full of groceries when he saw white flakes swirling from the sky. Given that he had an hour’s drive deeper into the mountains and the blizzard, the sight wasn’t welcome.

Nodding at townsfolk when he had to, he took the time to pick up his mail, go to the tiny liquor store and then to top his Toyota 4Runner’s tanks at the Chevron station before setting out for the lodge. With the snow coming down harder, he skipped his usual stop at the library to pick out new books and check his e-mail.

Within half an hour, he was cursing under his breath. The snow was falling heavily—more like a midwinter storm than a pre-Thanksgiving one. Good thing he’d stocked up. If it kept on like this, the plows might take a week to get to his place. The Thunder Mountain Lodge, of which he was now proprietor, was the last dwelling on the west side of the mountains. Just past the lodge, the highway closed for the winter unless the snowfall was light.

If this storm was any indication, snowfall was going to break records this season.

He wouldn’t mind. When he bought the lodge in December last year, John had intended to keep it operating, but he hadn’t done much advertising and he found himself looking forward to midweeks when he had the place to himself.

Families were the most annoying. Cross-country skiers, snowshoers, hikers; they were okay. They tended to be out all day and come back tired. They’d eat quickly and gratefully, maybe sit in front of the blaze in the huge, river-rock fireplace that was the lodge’s heart, then disappear into their rooms. But families… They were another story. The mothers always wanted to talk and the kids yelled and ran around and knocked things over. Families wanted suggestions for activities, baby bottles heated at odd hours, snacks for the kids after the kitchen was closed.

He’d had a particularly hellish group in August. Ironically a church group. Teenagers. They’d taken over the lodge as well as all five of his cabins strung along the river. They sang songs, they built bonfires, they flirted and wrestled and ate like there was no tomorrow. They swarmed.

John just wanted to be alone. Didn’t seem like too much to ask, did it? He’d bought the damn place because it was about as isolated as you could get without roaming with Kodiaks in Alaska. Paying guests would give him enough income to get by, he’d figured. He would cook, serve, clean. Give him something to do. Otherwise, he’d keep to himself.

He just hadn’t realized how busy Thunder Mountain Lodge was. One person after another told him, “We love the lodge. We come every year. It has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth.” He also heard how refreshed they were after their stay.

They should have been here at the same time as the church group.

He had closed up the cabins for the winter, on the advice of the old curmudgeon he’d bought the lodge from, turning off the water and wrapping pipes. He’d done that just a few weeks ago. The lodge itself had six guest rooms along with his quarters in the back, plenty for the backcountry skiers and snowshoers who came in the winter. He had a couple scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Something told him they wouldn’t be coming.

Wouldn’t break his heart.

But he did wish he’d gotten down to town and back a few hours earlier.

The last half hour was a bitch, with the snow piling up at record speed and visibility close to zero. His mind kept flashing back to the sandstorms in Iraq, as blinding and bewildering.

Damn it, don’t do this. Focus.

He knew every turn, every landmark. Even so, with the advent of darkness, he almost missed his turn. The massive, wood-burned sign that read Thunder Mountain Lodge carried a swag of snow and was already buried up to the bottom of the letters.

The lodge was half a mile farther, down a winding driveway that dropped toward the river. This privately owned land was heavily forested, the old growth here one of the attractions.

John had left the shed doors open and now drove right in. He was going to have to get out the shovel if he wanted to close them.

Unload first.

Making several trips, he carried the groceries and booze into the big, empty kitchen. Mail he left on the farmhouse table that sat in the middle. Once he’d put away the perishables in the restaurant-quality refrigerator, John put his parka and gloves back on and went out to shovel enough to close the shed doors. Having already worked up a sweat, he cleared a path to the front steps and the steps themselves, too, even though he’d likely have to redo them come morning if he needed to go out.

Then he stood for a minute in the dark, only the porch light and dim glow coming from the windows, and listened to the eerie hush snow brought when it wrapped the world in white batting.

For that brief moment, his soul felt at peace.

IN BACK, at least two of the girls were crying, one quietly, one not so quietly. Fiona simply didn’t have the energy to try to reassure them. In fact, she’d have liked to cry herself.

They’d gone off the road twice more. With all three boys pushing, each time they’d made it back onto pavement. This last time, the snow had been knee deep. That meant the undercarriage was pushing through snow. Clammy with panic, Fiona started forward again. Now even the sound of the chains was muffled. Thank God, the highway didn’t seem to run next to a river or creek. If they slid down an incline…

Don’t think about it.

For the thousandth time, she told herself, if we keep going, we’ll eventually come out of the mountains. Studying the map all those hours ago, she’d noticed a couple of little towns dotting the line of the highway once it crossed the pass and descended toward the Willamette Valley and Portland. There would be lights. Heat. Food and safety. Although it had been scarcely noticeable at the time, they must have gone over the pass an hour or more ago, because the road was definitely descending now, although not steeply.

But it seemed, if anything, that the snow was falling harder. Or perhaps her eyes were just so tired, she was less capable of seeing through that driving veil of white. Her neck and shoulders and arms were rigid. Somebody would probably have to pry her fingers from the steering wheel.

Her frozen fingers, she thought morbidly. After the van disappeared into a snowbank and its tracks filled in. Or perhaps her fingers wouldn’t be frozen anymore, if nobody found the missing teacher and her pupils until spring.

“Wait a minute!” Dieter jerked. “Did you see that?”

She braked. “What?”

“I think…wait. Let me get out.” He reached back for his parka, grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment and sprang out, disappearing immediately in the dark.

Fiona just sat, too exhausted to move. Too exhausted to worry, even when he didn’t come back for several minutes.

“Where’d he go?”

“Why are we stopped?”

One of the girls, voice high and rising, “Are we stuck?”

Fiona was too exhausted to answer, as well.

The passenger door opened again, and Dieter said exultantly, “There’s tire tracks. And a turn here. I think there’s a sign. I bet it’s Thunder Mountain Lodge. Remember how I told you my family comes up here?”

Tire tracks.

“What if whoever made the tracks came out?” Kelli asked. “And they’re, like, gone, and even if we find the lodge it’s cold and dark?”

A lodge. Fiona’s mind moved sluggishly over the idea.

“We could build a fire,” she said.

Voice pitched so only Fiona would hear him, Dieter said, “If this is Thunder Mountain, the next town is something like another hour. And that’s when the road’s plowed. I don’t remember much in between.”

The others were offering opinions, but she ignored them.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to back up. Can you guide me?”

He left the passenger door open and talked her through backing up ten yards or so. Then he shone the flashlight on the tracks in the snow. Now Fiona could see them, too. A vehicle had come from the other direction and turned into an opening between trees.

Please God, she thought, let the driver have known where he was going. Don’t let me follow someone else as desperate as we are.

“See?” Dieter turned the beam on a dark bulk to the right as she turned into the road or driveway or whatever it was. “Let me go look.”

She watched as he plowed his way through and took a swipe at whatever it was with his bare hand. Clumps of snow cascaded down, exposing writing that the dim beam picked out.

He yelled, “It is Thunder Mountain Lodge. Cool!”

When he got back in, Fiona asked, “Please tell me it’s not another five miles.”

He laughed exultantly. “Nope. It’s like…I don’t know, a quarter of a mile. Half a mile?”

“Okay,” she said. “Here goes.”

Whatever vehicle had gone before her had obviously passed by a while back; it was a miracle that Dieter had spotted the tracks, vanishing fast under fresh snowfall. She kept losing sight of them in the white blur.

The kids in back were talking excitedly now that salvation was at hand. Dieter started telling them about this great old lodge, the ancient trees and the river just below.

“There’s this huge fireplace,” he was saying, when the van lurched and the front end seemed to drop.

One of the girls screamed. Fiona braked, out of instinct—they had already come to a dead stop. Dieter jumped out again, coming back to shake his head.

“I don’t know if we can get it out.”

“Can you still see the tire tracks?”

He looked. “Yeah.”

“It can’t be that far. We’ll walk.” She turned. “Everyone, bring your stuff, especially if you have any food left over from lunch or dinner.” They had stopped at a hamburger joint on the way out of Redmond. “Put on all the clothes you brought.”

She took her purse, but left the tote that held only the schedule for the day, competition rules and her notes on questions she would drill students on in the expectation they’d be asked the same ones again someday. Once everybody was out, she made them line up single file behind Dieter, bringing up the end herself. Then, feeling silly, she locked the van.

“Lead on,” she called.

Her face felt the cold first, then her feet. Was this the right decision? she worried, as they stumbled through the dark and falling snow led by—God help them—a sixteen-year-old boy’s memory of a winter vacation.

Well, she had no choice—not after she’d gotten the van stuck. Within minutes, she was almost too cold to care.

“I see lights!” Dieter exclaimed.

Fiona blinked away the flakes clinging to her lashes and peered numbly ahead. Was that a dim glow, or a mirage?

“Keep going,” she ordered, her face feeling stiff.

Gradually she saw them: golden squares of windows. Not brightly lit, but as if there might be lights on deeper inside the lodge. Or maybe firelight was providing the illumination.

They were staggering, a ragged line of kids and Fiona, when they reached porch steps. Freshly shoveled, she saw in amazement, as if someone had been expecting them.

On the porch that seemed to run the width of the rustic lodge, her students clustered, waiting for her.

The door was massive, the knocker a cast-iron bear. She lifted it and let it fall. Once. Twice. Then again.

She was about to reach for the handle to find out if the door was locked when the porch light came on, all but blinding her, and the door swung open.

Framed in the opening was a man with a scarred face who said, “What in hell?”

Fiona’s knees weakened and she grabbed for the door frame. “Can we please come in?”

WATCHING THEM file past him, not just a couple of stranded travelers but a whole damn crowd of them, John felt a wave of incredulity. What kind of idiots had been taking the pass in this blizzard? How in God’s name had they found the lodge?

And how long was he going to be stuck with them?

They all went straight to the fireplace and huddled in front of the fire with their hands out toward it as if asking for a blessing. None made any move to shed jackets, and he realized studying their backs that most of them weren’t dressed for the weather at all. Athletic shoes and jeans were soaked to their knees and probably frozen, too.

Was he going to have to deal with frostbite?

“How far did you walk?”

One guy turned his head. “Just, I don’t know, halfway from the turn?”

The voice gave him away. He was a kid. John looked down the line. They were all kids!

“Isn’t there an adult with you?”

“Me.” The woman who’d been the first to come in turned to face him, pushing back the hood on her parka. Dark, curly hair framed a face on which he could read exhaustion. Her eyes, though, were the pale, clear grey of the river water cutting between snowbanks. She was young, not much older than her charges, her body as slight as those of the teenage girls. “My name is Fiona MacPherson. Thank you for taking us in.”

“What were you doing out on the road?”

She explained. They’d competed in a high school Knowledge Champs tournament in Redmond, and were returning home over the mountains.

“We came over this morning on Highway22,” she explained, sounding meek. “But the weather reports said a storm was coming from the south, so I thought I’d take a more northerly route back.”

“This highway closes in the winter. You’re probably the last ones over it.”

“I didn’t know that.”

And parents trusted her to be in charge? He shook his head.

“You’re damn lucky to have made it.” John waved off whatever she was going to say. “You all need to get out of your wet clothes. I don’t suppose you have anything to change into?”

Eight—no, nine—heads shook in unison.

“Get your shoes and socks off. I’ll see what I can find.”

He started with the lost and found. Seemed like every week somebody left something. Sunglasses, single gloves, bras hanging on the towel rack in the shared bathroom, long underwear left carelessly on the bed, you name it, he’d found it. If one of the girls wanted birth control pills, he could offer her a month’s supply. Bottles containing half a dozen other prescription drugs. Pillows, watches, but mostly clothes.

John dragged the boxes out and distributed socks, one pair of men’s slippers, sweatpants, a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and miscellaneous other garments. Then, irritated at the necessity, he raided his own drawers and closet for jeans, socks and sweaters.

Without arguing, they sat down on chairs and the floor as close to the fire as they could get and changed, nobody worrying about modesty. Not even the teacher, who wore bikini underwear and had spectacular legs that she quickly shivvied into a pair of those skintight, stretchy pants cross-country skiers wore these days. They looked fine on her, he saw, while trying not to notice.

“We were so lucky to find you,” she told him, apparently unaware that he’d noticed her changing. “I couldn’t see anything. But Dieter—” she gestured toward one of the boys “—saw tire tracks. I don’t know how. Then he spotted your sign. He and his family have stayed here before.”

“You’re not the old guy who was here then,” the kid said.

“I bought the lodge last year.”

“It’s a cool place! My family and me, we’ve come a couple times. Once in the summer, when we stayed in one of the cabins. Last time we skied.”

“It’s not skiing when you have to plod instead of riding up the hill,” one of the girls sniffed. Literally—her nose was bright red and dripping.

“Sure it is,” the first boy argued. He was at that ungainly stage when his hands and feet were out-sized and the rest of him skinny. Crooked features added up to a puppy-dog friendly face. “You don’t think when they invented skiing they had quad chairlifts, do you?”

“My great-great-whatever came west in a covered wagon, too,” she retorted, with another sniff. “I’d rather fly United, thanks.”

The rest chimed in with opinions; John didn’t listen. He looked at the teacher. “Anyone going to miss you?”

“Oh Lord! Yes! We were having trouble with cell phone coverage.” She gave him a hopeful look. “Do you have a land line?”

“Out here? No. And cell phone coverage is lousy for miles around even when the weather’s good. Unfortunately, my shortwave radio had an accident and I haven’t got it fixed.” If what his idiot guest had done to it with spilled coffee could be called an accident. And he should have taken the damn thing to town to be worked on, but hadn’t felt any urgency. Stupid, when a guest could have an emergency at any time.

“Well, we’ll try again anyway. Kids, anyone who brought a phone. If you reach someone, tell them to start a phone tree.”

Six out of the eight kids pulled tiny flip phones out of a pocket or bag. John suddenly felt old. When he was sixteen, nobody’d had a phone. Or wanted one.

The teacher was the only one who got lucky, although he gathered the reception wasn’t good. The kids all put theirs away, shaking their heads.

She kept raising her voice. “Yes, Thunder Mountain. You’ll call the parents?” Pause. “It’s snowing there, too?”

That caused a stir.

“Wow.”

“Cool.”

“We don’t get snow that much. I wish I was home.”

“We have more here.”

“Snowball fight!” another boy said. This one’s face caused a shift in John’s chest. He looked too much like the teenage boys hanging around on dusty streets in Baghdad. He might be Hawaiian or Polynesian. Something just a little exotic, skin brown and eyes dark and tilted.

“Yeah!” The third boy, short and stocky with spiky blond hair. Sweatpants from the lost and found bagged on him. “I will so take you down.”

Girls giggled. Like a litter of puppies driven by instincts they didn’t understand, the boys began shoving and wrestling.

Dark heads, laughter. A group of boys much like this, clowning around. A mud-brick wall. Rusty dust puffing under their feet, a couple of dirty soccer balls lying forgotten.

With a physical wrench, John pulled himself from the past. He tolerated guests at the lodge. Teenage boys, he avoided. Their very presence brought back things he couldn’t let himself remember. How was he going to endure this group?

The teacher—Fiona?—evidently sensed his longing. After telling the kids that the principal would call all their parents, she said to John, “I hope you won’t be stuck with us for long. Um… Do you have any idea when this storm is supposed to end?”

“A couple of days, at least. And I’m at the bottom of the highway department’s list for plowing. Could be a week before they get here.”

The longest week of his life.

Just like that, he was propelled into another flashback.

He was driving a truck, the sun scorching through the window and sweat dripping from his helmet, dust from the convoy ahead turning his and everyone else’s face to gray masks their mamas wouldn’t have recognized. Women walking along the side of the road in dark robes—how in hell did they stand the heat inside them? Kids giving the convoy wary, sidelong looks. Men staring with flat hostility. M-16 in his lap, John scanned the people, the side of the road, the rooftops of the sand-colored mud buildings for anything that looked wrong.

As quickly, the vivid memory faded and he was back in the lodge, only the teacher looking at him a little strangely.

Not the longest week of his life, he apologized silently, if anyone was listening. He’d lived a year of longer ones. Survived them.

If living half in the past, hiding out in the present, could be called survival.