Simms, want to tell me what persuaded you to drive up here with nothing more reliable than a set of all-weather radials and a road map to get you where you’re going?”
“I’m on my way to visit my sister in Whistling Valley.”
“That’s another seven hours’ drive away. You’d better stop in Sentinel Pass and get yourself outfitted with a set of decent tire chains if you seriously want to get there in one piece.”
“Yes.” She squirmed under his scrutiny, aware that while he seemed to be learning quite a bit about her she knew next to nothing about him. “You haven’t told me your name yet.”
“Morgan. If you knew you were coming up here for Christmas, why the hell didn’t you plan ahead? BCAA or any travel agency could have warned you what sort of conditions to expect.” He took another bite of his breakfast bar, then added scathingly, “Maybe then you’d have chosen clothing more appropriate than that flimsy bit of a coat and those pitiful excuses for winter boots you’re currently wearing.”
He was worse than a pit bull, once he got his teeth into something. Clearly, he found her apparent incompetence morbidly fascinating. “I didn’t have time to plan ahead, Mr. Morgan. This trip came about very suddenly.”
“I see.” He crushed the wrapping from his breakfast into a ball, tossed it, backhanded, into the open knapsack and unearthed a bottle of mineral water.
She shook her head as he unscrewed the cap and offered her a drink. She wasn’t about to let a drop of liquid past her lips until she was assured of more civilized washroom facilities. It was all very well for a man to make do but for a woman....
“Some sort of family emergency?”
“What?”
“This sudden decision to visit your sister, was it—?”
“Oh!” She tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat and hunched her shoulders against the cold, which seemed even more pervasive than it had been the night before. “Yes. She hurt her back in a ski-lift accident and at first it seemed that her injuries were serious.”
“But now that you’re up to your own neck in trouble they don’t seem so bad?”
“No,” Jessica retorted, bristling at the implied criticism. “I phoned the hospital again before I left the hotel yesterday and learned her condition’s been upgraded to satisfactory.” She sighed, exasperation adding to the tension already gripping her. “It’s just that Selena’s always been prone to getting herself into difficulties of one kind or another.”
“Must run in the family,” he said mockingly, and took another swig of the water.
She was spared having to field his last observation by the rumble of a heavy engine outside the east end of the shed.
He shoved away from the tailgate and recapped the bottle. “Sounds as if the rescue squad have made it through already. Couldn’t have been much of a slide, after all.”
They were heaven-sent words.
“Thank goodness!” She scrambled down after him. “And thank you, Mr. Morgan. You undoubtedly saved my life and I’m very grateful.”
“I undoubtedly did, Miss Jessica, and you’re welcome.”
“Have a very merry Christmas.”
She thought perhaps a shadow crossed his face then, but all he said was, “No need to race back to your car. It’ll take a while before they clear a way out for us.”
“It’s a miracle to me that they even knew where to come looking.”
“They have sensors strung all along the vulnerable stretches of highway. The minute one gets wiped out, they know there’s been a slide and they usually don’t waste much time getting to it.”
“I see.” She pulled the collar of her coat more snugly around her neck. “Well, I think I’ll wait in my car, just the same. The cold’s making its presence felt again.”
“As you like.” He closed the tailgate and raised the rear window of the Jeep. “Just don’t fire up your engine until we see daylight. Wouldn’t want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning when we’ve made it this far, would we?”
“I’m well aware of the danger from exhaust fumes, Mr. Morgan,” she said loftily, resenting his confident assumption that, because she’d been ill prepared to cope with an avalanche, she must be some sort of congenital idiot.
Half an hour later, however, she was half convinced his assessment might not be far wrong. By then enough passage had been cleared for one of the road crew to come into the shed to check on its occupants.
“Start her up, ma’am,” he said kindly, stopping at her window. “You’ll be on your way in about ten minutes, but you might as well be warm while you wait.”
After a bit of coaxing, her car sputtered to life and shortly after she heard the roar of the Jeep’s engine. Outside, she could see that although the sun had not yet risen above the surrounding mountains the sky was such an intense blue that its reflection trapped hints of mauve in the snow heaped up along the road.
Perhaps if she hadn’t been so mesmerized by the sight of freedom she’d have noticed sooner that her troubles were far from at an end. Only when one of the road crew waved her forward did she switch her attention to her car and see the red warning light on her dashboard.
Instinct led her to do exactly the right thing and switch off the car’s ignition immediately. The damage, however, was already done, as evidenced by the puff of steam escaping from under the hood.
Behind her the Jeep’s horn blasted impatiently, but even a fool could have seen that her car wasn’t going anywhere.
With mounting dismay, Jessica watched as her sleeping companion jumped down from the Jeep, exasperation and resignation evident in every line of him, and, in a dismaying rerun of last night’s fiasco, approached her window.
“Don’t tell me,” he jeered, coming to a halt beside her. “Either you’ve forgotten how to take your foot off the brake or your damned car’s broken down.”
CHAPTER TWO
ANY hopes Jessica might have entertained that the extent of the problem was not too serious the almighty Mr. Morgan quickly put to rout.
He surveyed her engine, which continued to puff out little clouds of steam like a mini-volcano on the verge of erupting. “It figures,” he drawled, rolling his eyes heavenward, and beckoned the road crew to come see for themselves the latest misfortune she’d brought down on her hopelessly inept head.
“Release the hood,” one of them called out to her, and, after they had it propped open, they clustered around the innards of her car with the rapt attention all men seemed to foster for such things. There followed a muttered discussion to which Jessica, still slumped disconsolately behind the steering wheel, was not privy.
Eventually, the Morgan man came back and leaned one elbow on the roof. “Might as well face it, Jessica Simms,” he announced conversationally, his voice floating through the window which she’d opened a crack. “The
