and put a stack of magazines at his elbow. “Need anything else?”
“If I do, I’ll holler. Go on and have that cocoa.”
Caleb went ahead of her to the kitchen. The ingredients were in the pot. All he had to do was turn on the stove.
Kristen leaned a hip against the counter and faced him. The kitchen was small, and they were close.
She could see the outline of his whiskers, which had darkened with the day. Masculine. Attractive. She swallowed, looked down and watched his competent, cowboy hands as he prepared the hot drink. He worked without much thought, a man accustomed to caring for himself.
A frisson of pity surprised her. Caleb had cared for himself basically all his life. No mama or daddy to guide him the way she’d had. No one to call and make sure he was safe in a storm. No one to come to his rescue or kiss his boo-boos or listen to his dreams. Yet behind the gruff exterior, he’d become a good, steady man, fiercely loyal to the one person who’d treated him well. And Mom claimed he spent his Saturday mornings with a group of troubled teens, the way Pops had done for him.
A chunk of her heart melted.
He handed her a cup of steaming chocolate. A handful of mini marshmallows floated on top, the way she liked it.
She sipped, watching him over the top of her cup.
He sipped his, returning her stare.
Neither spoke for a long time.
Only the click of the dialysis monitors and Rip’s gentle snore broke the silence. It was a surprisingly comfortable silence. Eye to eye, sipping at the sweet liquid in the warm, cozy kitchen while, outside, winter tormented the earth.
When she sipped and came up with a marshmallow mustache, Caleb lips tilted. He handed her a paper towel. “I owe you an apology.”
“It’s okay.”
“Pops was right. I bark when I’m worried. It’s getting nasty outside.”
“The drive out here wasn’t too bad.”
“That’s changing rapidly.” He hitched his head toward the outdoors. “Look outside.”
Kristen set her cup on the counter and went to the double windows in the living room. Caleb followed, standing close enough that his leather-and-woods scent circled around her, heady.
“Oh, no.”
Sleet pounded the earth, already turning the yard white.
“That’s not snow.”
Snow, she could handle. “Do you think the roads are freezing over yet?”
“The ground was already frozen. Add freezing rain and then sleet and you’re looking at roads of solid ice.”
Tension sprang up in Kristen’s shoulders. Driving home in the dark in an ice storm could spell disaster.
* * *
Caleb had one nerve cell left and it was sparking like a broken highline.
Having Kristen here in his house day after day was both glorious and awful. He was like a puppy, eager to see her but terrified of being kicked.
The woman had a boyfriend. But ever since his talk with Pops, Caleb kept imagining Kristen in a lacy wedding gown.
Now here she was in the flesh, and he kept having the same vision. Only the wedding wasn’t for her and some rich doc. It was for him and her, followed rapidly by a breath-grabbing vision of her rocking his baby in a wooden rocker with a sweet Madonna smile on her lips.
He was going seriously nuts.
To add to his torment, curtains of sleet hammered his house and gave no sign of letting up.
To make one final check of the animals, he left the house, Rip at his side, while R2-D2 filtered Pops’s blood. He slipped a few times, almost fell. Once he went down but managed to grab the shed door and pull himself back to his feet. He went inside the small shed to test-fire the generator. Just in case.
He started back to the house, shocked at how much the conditions had deteriorated since he’d first come outside. Ice pellets sluiced down the collar of his coat. Sleet stung his cheeks. He shivered, moving as fast as he could without taking another tumble.
They were in for a doozy of an ice storm. He had to get Kristen home. Fast.
By the time Greg’s treatment was complete, the TV on the wall was warning motorists to stay off the roads.
“You need to get out of here,” he told Kristen.
She frowned at the windows. “That bad?”
“Vicious.”
He helped her gather her supplies, stewing, thinking. Was it safe for her to drive?
Greg had followed them into the living room. He stood at the front windows. “Looks too treacherous, Kristen. Maybe you ought to stay here until this settles down.”
Caleb’s heart slammed against his rib cage. Yes. No!
He wasn’t the sort of man who encroached on another man’s territory. Having Kristen under his roof any longer than it took to do the treatments would kill him...as in hammer him in the head dead. He’d implode like one of those buildings loaded with dynamite. Only the dynamite inside him was all the words he wanted to say, the love he wanted to share.
“I’ll make it.” Kristen wound the plaid scarf around her pretty neck. “It’s not that far into town.”
Four miles might as well be a thousand on wet ice.
“Maybe I should drive you.”
She gave him one of those insulted, I-am-woman looks and exited the house.
With more misgivings than a debutante in a pigpen, Caleb watched from the porch. Sleet swirled up in his face, pitted his cheeks. His eyes burned from the cold.
She’d walked less than two yards when her vinyl clogs slipped. Her arms windmilled.
Bolting from the porch in one leap, he skidded behind her in time to stick out his arms, but not in time to brace his legs.
Kristen fell back against him. He circled her waist. His boots slipped.
They went down. Hard.
All he could feel was the frozen ground, Kristen’s puffy coat and the freezing rain melting against his scalp.
He battled to a stand, somehow bringing her up with him. The ground was slicker than a used-car salesman. Any second, one of them could unbalance the other and down they’d go.
“Are you hurt?” He turned her to face him.
“No.”
“What about your leg...” He
