Page 46 of A DIY Christmas Miracle
Instead of joining Will, I stayed where I was because unless the whole engine block was missing, I wouldn’t be able to tell what was wrong, anyway.
The hood was closed with a dull thud, and Will’s defeated face appeared in my field of vision.
Fuck. It didn’t look like he’d been able to fix the problem. Undoing the seat belt, I opened the passenger door. “What’s the verdict?”
“I have no idea what’s wrong,” Will said with a shrug. “Let’s go back into the cabin. It won’t do us any good to stay out here in the cold. Once we’re inside, I’ll call for a tow.”
Just great. I sighed, grabbed my backpack and my new messenger bag — I wouldn’t leave my most precious gift in the truck unattended — and trudged through the cold, damp snow back to our cabin, hoping to hell the towing service would be able to get here soon.
Chapter 16
Eli
“Say what?” I stared at Will in horror. He was standing right in front of me, his whole body slumped dejectedly. My harsh tone probably wasn’t helping, but… What. The. Actual. Fuck?
“When I spoke to the towing company, they advised me they couldn’t send anyone out here till tomorrow at the earliest,” he said quietly, repeating what he’d already told me, eyes fixed on something over my shoulder so he didn’t have to look me in the eye.
“But it’s not even noon,” I said. “How can they possibly be booked for the whole day?”
Will shrugged helplessly, then flopped down next to me on the couch. I’d have expected him to keep more distance between us, but he moved even closer to me. So close I could feel the warmth radiating off of him.
“They said they’re the only towing company in the area and they’re busy because of the holidays,” he said in a calm voice. Then, out of the blue, he placed his hand on my thigh and started drawing lazy circles with his thumb.
I blinked, my eyes fixed on his slender fingers. What was he doing? Why was he caressing me? Did he think that would calm me down?
Okay, granted, it kinda worked. I felt the tension the whole situation had brought on slowly draining away. But in its stead, a completely different tension started building inside of me. The tension that always flooded my system when Will was around. It was as if all my senses sharpened to feel Will’s every touch, notice every gesture, and remember every word he said.
“Maybe we should call our friends,” I blurted, my voice not sounding as strong as I wanted it to. Instead, it was laced with what felt like desperation.
Probably because I was feeling desperate. I was stranded in a cabin with Will. All alone.
Fuck.
Why now?
Why not a week ago?
“And what are our friends supposed to do?” Will gently squeezed my thigh before withdrawing his hand and pulling his feet up until he sat crisscross applesauce on the sofa, face turned toward me.
“Come pick us up?” I suggested, even though I knew it wasn’t that easy. What was the point of them picking us up now if someone had to come back out here tomorrow to do the handover thing with the towing company? “Or… maybe Josh can have a look at the truck. He’s a mechanic, after all.”
“But is Josh a mechanic that takes his tools on vacation?”
I shook my head, signaling defeat.
Ok, so maybe my ideas were half-assed and wouldn’t work, but did Will have to shove that fact in my face? I just wanted to make this whole ordeal more pleasant for him — which meant getting us home so he could finally be rid of me. Okay, granted, I was trying to save myself, too. To save my heart. Becausethissituation? It reminded me too much of a romance novel I’d read maybe two weeks ago. It was giving me ideas.Hope.
The protagonists had been on their way to a high school reunion when their car broke down in the middle of nowhere. It’d been early in the evening but no towing company had wanted to drive out that far, so the two of them had had to make themselves comfortable in the car. Where they stayed all. Night. Long. In very,veryclose proximity. Constantly brushing against each other until they realized how much they wanted each other.
I sighed quietly. At least Will’s pickup hadn’t started in the first place. I didn’t even want to imagine what it would’ve been like to get stranded in a vehicle in freezing temperatures in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Canada. We could have easily frozen to death. Or… we could’ve had to snuggle up in a nest of our clothes, our naked bodies intertwined, sharing our body heat in order to avoid death by hypothermia…
“Do you want me to start a fire?” I finally asked, nodding toward the fireplace, just in case it wasn’t obvious I hadn’t meant to start a random fire in the cabin. “If we’re not getting out of here today, we might as well get comfortable, right?”
The smile Will gifted me with made my foolish heart skip a beat. Wasn’t it bruised enough already? Did it have to be so stupid to read too much into every single smile?
Unfortunately, my heart didn’t care what my mind was saying. That my mind was trying to save us from further heartbreak. My heart only cared about Will’s smile, the sparkle in his eyes, and the teeny, tiny laugh lines around his eyes.
“Sure. Meanwhile, I’ll go get a couple of logs from the shed and our bags from the car.”
