Page 7 of Rocky Mountain Desire
Maybe it was the memory of just how turned-on he’d gotten before he knew who she was. Plus the realization she wasn’t his sister, not by any stretch of the imagination, and wasn’t ever going to be, changed everything.
Hope turned from packing her load into her crowded backseat and reached to accept her supplies from him. As she tucked them into the vehicle, he couldn’t help but notice it looked a little worse for wear. Even as he passed over the final armful, he took a closer glance at the tiny car. It was filled to the brim with bags and boxes. There was no way she could see out her back window.
“You use a shoehorn to get yourself in there?”
Hope straightened from where she’d been rearranging things to make them fit. She smacked into the doorframe and cursed before snapping her mouth shut and rubbing the back of her head.
“It’s big enough for me. And I don’t usually haul this much stuff, but with the holiday season being the best time for sales, I didn’t want…” She grinned sheepishly. “I guess that’s as close to a confession as you’ll hear. I didn’t want to lose a sale just because I’d left something behind. With this weather, the ladies aren’t coming to the shop as often as they used to.”
The sharp wind slapped him in the neck and Matt flipped up his collar. “I don’t blame them for not going out. I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to.”
“I know. Me neither.” Hope forced the passenger door shut before turning and rubbing her gloves together briskly. “Thanks for the help. See you around.”
Matt eyed her tires with continued suspicion as she manoeuvred her way back to the driver’s side, slipping on the hard-packed snow underfoot and barely catching herself in time. She got behind the wheel, adjusted a few of the bags beside her, did up her seatbelt.
He couldn’t stand it any longer. He knocked on the passenger window.
She paused then opened her driver door a crack. “I don’t have power windows and I can’t reach the crank.”
He should have thought of that. He hurried around, worried all the heat she’d built up inside was escaping. When he made it to her door and leaned in close, only a faint bit of warmth greeted him.
“You sure you’re okay heading back to town? Why didn’t you turn on the heater?”
“Herbie takes a while to warm up. I’ll be fine. Really.”
She wiggled the door and he reluctantly moved away. The brittleclinkof the locks connecting made him cringe. Why was she driving a clunker like this anyway? And she’d named it?
At least she was a competent driver. She backed past him smoothly, waving a gloved hand. Her headlights clicked on, and the tiny vehicle slipped along the long gravel drive to the highway.
Matt watched until the red of her taillights disappeared when she turned, only she didn’t head right, down the road that led toward town, but left, and his remaining limited patience vanished.
He spun and headed for his truck. She didn’t have to know he was following her, but until she was home, he couldn’t relax.
And while he would have done the same for any woman under these circumstances, for some reason knowing it was Hope ahead of him turned the Good Samaritan act into something infinitely more complicated.
Hope twisted the air-selection button. Car manufacturers needed to realize when it was this cold, a setting to blast heat at feet, body and windshield simultaneously was more than a whim, it was a necessity. Either she had a trickle of heat on her rapidly numbing torso and toes, or she had enough air pressure to keep the front window from fogging over and blocking her view. There was no selection in her ancient beater for all three to run at once.
She gripped the wheel tighter, staring into the darkness, and counted gate entrances. She never would have made the trip in the dark, on a night this cold, if she hadn’t already been three quarters of the way there. It made no sense to go home and have to drive all the way out in the morning to deliver the package Mrs. Bailey had ordered. The gas savings alone was worth the inconvenience of adding to her already long day.
She just wished it wasn’t so dark, so cold, and that the secondary roads were plowed a little better. The locals with four-by-four trucks would have no troubles, but her wheel clearance wasn’t nearly as high. She hit another rut and her car shimmied from side to side.
Ignoring her rising sense of foreboding, she turned on the side road leading toward the Baileys’ and a half dozen other homes. The plows hadn’t touched the fresh snowfall from the morning yet—there must be no school buses on this route—which meant the remote country lane would be one of the last to get cleared.
She pulled to a stop in dismay. The only people moving that dayhadbeen driving four-by-fours, leaving two narrow wheel tracks the length of the gravel highway. There was no way she could get Herbie down that road, not even for the two miles it would take. The lights of her farmhouse destination twinkled in the distance, and for one crazy second she debated walking. Reason beat away that idea quick. It was cold enough she’d have frostbite if she was lucky and made the trip without any problems. If she did get into trouble? No way. She wasn’t stupid.
So much for her time-saving, money-saving plan. Hope sighed in frustration and turned her car toward the main highway. No use backtracking past the Coleman’s. She was now far enough out that taking the secondary route into town would be quicker than looping back.
The vehicle was still cold, but as she drove, the memory of bumping into Matt warmed her from the inside out. Good Lord, he must believe her to be a total klutz, along with being a fool.
Her embarrassing blunder last summer had faded enough she now found the situation amusing. His shocked response to her mistaken impression that he was coming on toherhad made one thing crystal clear. He was not on the menu. Not now, not ever.
It didn’t stop her from getting tingles in inappropriate places, daydreaming about his hands moving from her arms to other locations. He was hard, solid and muscular everywhere, and she’d wanted so much to just wrap herself around him and satisfy her curiosity.
Wrong word. Totally wrong word for what she felt. Fascination? Obsession?
She snorted and gave herself a mental kick. He was the last person in Rocky who would ever consider dating her, not after the shitty way her sister had treated him. Not after Helen and him had been together for years. Dating someone in the same family wasn’t unusual, not in a town as small as theirs where there just weren’t enough people in the dating pool, but he was off-limits for more than one reason. She had to get that through her head.
But the daydreaming remained kinda fun.
