boots slipped on the ice that coated the doorstep, sending her back to her knees. Her hands rapidly grew too numb to maintain a grip on the limp form. In desperation, she hooked her arm around the stranger’s neck and dragged the dead weight backward like a swimmer, crawling and sliding until his body cleared the threshold. Unable to do more, she shoved his long, denim-clad legs to the side so that she could swing the door closed.
In the sudden stillness after the storm was shut out, Dana’s rasping breaths seemed unnaturally loud. The fire on the hearth crackled, the clock on the mantel ticked and the snow hissed distantly against the windows. Everything was just as she’d left it mere minutes ago. Cozy and quiet, exactly as she wanted it.
Except for the body on her floor.
No, not a dead body kind of body. He had groaned, and he was still shivering enough to knock puffs of snow onto the floor around him, so he couldn’t be dead.
Yet.
Dana toed off her boots and ran for the phone. Snatching up the receiver, she dialed 911. Surely the emergency services would still be working, despite the storm. And even if the ambulance couldn’t get here immediately, at least she could talk to a doctor and find out what to do….
It took her a moment to realize the call wasn’t going through. Nothing was. The line was dead.
“Oh, no.” She jiggled the button. She dialed again. She checked to make sure the phone was plugged into the jack. Still nothing. The storm must have knocked out the phone lines.
Now what? They were miles from the highway. The resort pickup truck was four-wheel drive and might have had a chance with the snow, but it was standard transmission, and she didn’t know how to handle a stick shift. And until the snowplow cleared the roads, there was no way she could risk driving her car anywhere. Not that she’d be capable of loading someone this man’s size into her subcompact by herself even if the roads were clear.
Panic that she hadn’t had the time to feel before now knotted her stomach as she went back to the stranger’s side. At least she had assumed this was a stranger. No one she knew had been planning to make the trip up here—her family knew better than to disturb her when she was on a deadline. That’s why she had come here in the first place, wasn’t it? For peace and quiet and a complete lack of distractions.
Distractions? she thought wildly, feeling a bubble of hysteria tickle her throat. Hoo, boy, when it came to distractions, this one was a doozy.
Taking a deep breath to regain her control, Dana tore off her coat, then peered at the man’s face. Snow clung in a wet shroud to his hair and had solidified into beads of ice on his eyebrows. His hawk-sharp nose, his prominent cheekbones, his square jaw all looked as if they could have been carved from a glacier. Beneath the frost-tipped edges of his mustache, his lips were blue.
Dana’s stomach did a quick lurch. She was right. He was a stranger. She had never seen this man’s face before. If she had, she definitely would have remembered.
“Mister?” she said. She gently shook his shoulder. “Hey, mister, can you hear me?”
No reply. But she hadn’t really expected one. If her clumsy efforts to get him into the cabin hadn’t roused him, it was doubtful her voice would.
She glanced at the coat he wore. It was long and navy-blue, made of wool that was fashionable but not very practical in weather like this, even with the collar turned up to shield his neck. His leather gloves wouldn’t provide much protection from the cold, either. Nor would his jeans or his sneakers.
Why would anyone set off through a snowstorm with no hat or boots? What kind of man wore jeans and sneakers with an expensive overcoat and kidskin gloves?
And what on earth did it matter? Whoever he was, whatever he was, he had to get warmed up. Now. She didn’t need a doctor or a paramedic to tell her that much.
Dana dropped to her knees at his side and tugged off his gloves, grimacing at the coldness of his hands. She spared a few seconds to breathe on them, chafing each one in turn between her palms before she turned to his other clothes.
Getting his damp coat off was a challenge. He was a tall man, and despite the complete laxness of his limbs, he was rock solid and outweighed her by at least eighty pounds. By the time she managed to extract his arms from his sleeves, she realized she would have no hope of getting him to the couch or the bed. Leaving him lying on his coat, she grasped his ankles and dragged him closer to the fireplace.
When she saw the dying blaze on the hearth she remembered why she had ventured outside in the first place.
“Oh, great,” she muttered. She threw on the last of the wood, then sprinted to her bedroom and returned with an armful of blankets.
Was his shivering getting worse? Yes, it was, she realized. Taking off his coat was a good start, but she still needed to get him out of his wet clothes, or whatever body heat he still retained would drain away. She dumped the blankets on the floor and pulled off his shoes and socks, then looked at his jeans. The denim was thick, but it was as encrusted with snow as his overcoat. There was no way around it, the jeans would have to come off.
To her credit, Dana didn’t hesitate. Much. This was no time to worry about proprieties. Under the circumstances she had no choice. Kneeling at his side, she unfastened the stud at the waistband of his jeans. When she grasped the tab of the zipper, she paused to glance at his face.
“Mister?” she said loudly. “Can you hear me?”
The snow and ice crystals that frosted his hair and mustache were beginning to thaw, revealing their color to be as dark as the charred logs in the fireplace. Water drops trickled over the ridge of his jaw, down his neck and into the collar of the blue chambray shirt he wore. Apart from his shivering, he still didn’t move.
“Sorry,” she continued, lowering the zipper. “But I have to do this. For your own good.” She slipped her fingers under his waistband and tried to tug the jeans down. Her knuckles rubbed over his hipbones, and she was startled by the warmth she felt…both the warmth of his skin and the warmth of the ridiculous blush that sprang to her cheeks.
But she wouldn’t permit herself to be embarrassed, not even when the jeans slid neatly past the top of his plain white briefs and bunched just inches from the junction of his legs, refusing to slide any lower. Dana studiously ignored the large, masculine bulge that had stopped the descent of the denim. She struggled unsuccessfully to ease the garment down for another awkward, blush-inducing minute.
“This isn’t working,” she muttered. “Maybe it isn’t really necessary.” But she knew it was. The melting snow was already seeping through the denim in dark patches of dampness.
Finally she got to her feet and straddled his legs, gaining enough leverage to yank his jeans the rest of the way off. She tossed them aside and went to work on his shirt. She didn’t want to think about the silky black hair that feathered his chest and trailed down his flat abdomen, or the muscles that ridged his arms. She couldn’t regard him as a man, not at a time like this.
But he was too large and heavy to be anything else. It took all her strength to roll him off his shirt and coat and onto the thick quilt she positioned beside him. By the time she had tucked the last blanket carefully around his shoulders, she was out of breath. “There,” she said. “That’s the best I can do. I just hope it’s enough to keep you going until I can get help.”
She
