“I have chains,” she said.
“Calder said that wouldn’t cut it.”
“Right,” she said.
“It’ll be fine. It’ll be fun. We’ll sing,” he said, because if he couldn’t feel normal he’d try to trick himself into thinking it was normal.
She shot him a look. “We will not sing.”
He followed her into the barn while she untacked her horse.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t sing. Actually, you’re pretty terrible at it.”
“You’re no Miranda Lambert.”
“Lucky for you,” she said. “I might get a little crazy and light something of yours on fire.”
He chuckled, ignoring the way that her hair moved when she brushed it back off her face. Ignoring the tightening low in his gut that accompanied it.
“I guess I’ll get ready then.”
She moved, and he caught her scent, and then she stopped dead, her luminous brown eyes connecting with his. It was like a band of tension had stretched tight between them, drawing them together.
“You better do that,” he said, taking a step back, breaking the tension. Because, oh, hell no. He did not need this. Not now. Not ever.
Most of all, Chloe didn’t need him lusting after her.
He couldn’t offer her anything. He had watched his own father go through marriage after marriage, making a hash of it.
The only real reason his marriage to Chloe’s mother had lasted was her sheer grit and stubbornness.
And...
Chloe’s mother was about the best thing that had ever happened to his family. He couldn’t imagine taking a risk like that. Detonating a bomb in the middle of what they had.
No.
Just about every way of getting laid was a hell of a lot cheaper. He was not going to go there.
No matter how beautiful his stepsister was, he was never going to touch her. No matter that he’d spent seven years wanting her.
If he had to spend the next seven wanting her, he’d do just that. But he wasn’t going to have her.
And that was his final word on that to himself.
BY THE TIME they were on the road, Chloe was feeling antsy. And by the time the stretch of road in front of them began to grow thick with snow, she was feeling even more antsy. And it wasn’t even the proximity to Tanner.
“This is looking ugly,” she commented as they went around the corner and the tires on Tanner’s four-wheel-drive clung fast to the ground. Much to her relief.
“Yeah, but we should be fine,” Tanner said. Normally she found his confidence...well, pretty sexy, sadly for her. Right about now she was dubious about it.
“I’m glad that you have so much confidence,” she said. “I’m not sure that I do.”
“I know how to drive in all weather,” he said. “Need I remind you, I’m a very experienced driver.”
“Is that a euphemism for old?”
He looked over at her. “Maybe.”
“Well, you are certainly old.”
She didn’t know why she was jabbing him like that. Maybe to put a bigger gap between the two of them. Maybe for her own benefit, because she was being maudlin and a little bit silly about him.
But then, she often was. No matter how hard she tried not to be.
The drive had been fine so far. Punctuated by such in-depth observations as Oh, an elk crossing sign. And The trees are so tall.
They’d stopped for gas and Fritos. The Fritos had been a mere excuse for Chloe to get out of the car for a while.
Tanner seemed tense, too, and Chloe couldn’t figure out why. Maybe he wasn’t as confident about driving on these roads as he said he was.
Up ahead, there was a tunnel carved deep into the mountain, the snow building up steadily around it, making Chloe feel vaguely nauseous as they went through it.
“That’s sketchy,” she said, gripping the door handle as they drove through, the car passing underneath the earth for one second.
Two. Three.
She held her breath going through the tunnel, it was a habit of hers from childhood, and now a sort of superstition she wasn’t about to break when the snow looked like it might tumble down avalanche-style at any moment.
“It’ll be fine,” he said.
They came out the other side, and when they did, a massive bank of packed snow dropped down over the exit to the tunnel.
“Well, fuck,” he said, pressing down on the brakes and looking back behind them. More snow tumbled down off the mountain, covering the tunnel completely.
“We could have been stuck in there,” she said.
“No,” he said, he shook his head. “I would’ve dug us out.”
“Right,” she scoffed. “With your bare hands?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I have a shovel in the back.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem very safe.”
As soon as the words exited her mouth, a tree came unrooted from its spot on the hill, pushed down by the wet snow, and it tumbled down the mountain, falling down over the tunnel exit, on all the packed snow.
“Shit!”
“No kidding,” she said. “You wouldn’t have been digging that out of the way with your shovel.”
The look he gave her was searing enough to melt the snow, and she ignored the little flip in her stomach. “Let’s just hope we make it the rest of the way without incident. I bet you’re really glad that you’re not driving your Civic.”
“Pretty glad,” she said.
They drove on, yellow caution lights flashing over the top of a sign that warned of slick road conditions, and then farther ahead was a temporary road sign with orange lights on it. It proclaimed the mountain pass closed.
“Well, hell,” he said. “We’re supposed to go up the mountain pass.”
“Now
