Page 42 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

CHAPTER NINE

Jill

“Shouldn’t we have reached the trail head by now?” I asked.

I was freezing. The snow was falling harder and my hair, where it stuck out from under my hat, was damp. It wouldn’t be long before my jeans were the same, and I’d only be colder.

“Maybe,” Alex said, squeezing my hand tighter. That hand, those fingers laced through mine, was the only thing keeping me from totally freaking the fuck out. He’d left his own gloves and coat in the car and had to be colder than me, but he hadn’t complained. “I’m going to try calling May again.”

“We’ve been walking downhill a lot longer than we walked uphill, so we must have missed the trail head. We should head back up and go west.”

“Assuming we walked uphill to the east of the trail head,” he said. “I wasn’t exactly paying attention, were you?”

I hadn’t been paying attention, because I’d been having a hissy fit, letting my emotions take the driver’s seat. I never led with my emotions, but sitting in that car, in that enclosed space, smelling him, feeling the heat of his body, and then him being…Gah, just being him. It had been too much.

“Why don’t we try up and west for twenty minutes. If we don’t see the trail head, we’ll head east for twenty-five minutes and then down.”

“The trail head is smaller than my office. We could be out here for days trying to find it.”

“We’re going to be out here for days if we don’t try to find it,” I said. “It would take us days to get back to town.”

“If we keep heading down, we’ll find a road, eventually.”

“Maybe. But how long will we walk until we find it?”

He was driving me crazy. Why did he always have to take control? Why could he never accept he might be wrong about something?

My foot slipped on snow and wet leaves. My stomach dropped as I lost my balance. I dug in with my back foot, but there was no traction, just more wet leaves and snow. I slid, my arms pinwheeling.

I had one moment of utter panic before I felt Alex’s hand wrap around my arm. He yanked me upright and back toward him.

I relaxed for a millisecond, before I he went wobbly.

“Aw, shit,” he said.

Together, we slid down the side of the mountain, a mountain that felt immeasurably steeper when we were slipping and tumbling down it than it had when we were walking down it.

Alex didn’t let go of my arm as we slid, and his heavier weight meant he was quickly sliding past me and pulling me with him.

We were moving so fast, it was nearly impossible to see where we were heading or to control our slide. I clawed my hands and reached out to my sides, hoping for something, anything, that might slow our descent, because I kept picturing us hurtling toward a cliff and right off the side of the mountain.

Alex’s grip on my arm loosened. “Don’t let go,” I ground out, as loudly as I could.

“Pulling. You. Down,” Alex said, the words spaced with his breath.

Why did he always have to argue with me about everything. “Just hold on.”

Miraculously, he didn’t let go and, even more miraculously, I managed to grab a sapling and slow us enough to safely wrap myself around a larger tree. Our downward momentum stopped.

“Damn,” Alex said. “That was scary as fuck.” He very carefully crawled up to me and then leaned against the tree next to me. “Thanks for saving my life.”

“Are you grateful enough to go back to Atlanta?” I didn’t really mean it, but he seemed way too serious.

He grinned over at me. “Nope.”

I smiled back, so happy to be alive that I couldn’t be mad or even annoyed. He reached over and brushed my hair out of my face. “You lost your hat.”

I reached up to find that he was right. My hand-knitted, knobbly, wool hat was somewhere up the mountain.

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