“Oh, okay.” Her voice wavers a bit.
There’s a quiet between us, the only sounds besides the occasional passing car are my feet compressing the fresh snow.
“But why do youkeephelping me?”
“Because you’re a good person. And sometimes good people get steamrolled by the wrong ones. I hate seeing it.” What I don’t add—what I choke down hard—is that I want her for myself.
Am I glad Gerald’s out of the picture? Absolutely. Does it gut me that he broke her in the process? Also yes.
“I don’t have money for a room,” she whispers.
“See those clouds rolling in?” I nod toward the black sky, stormfront spilling toward us. “That storm took out the road into Hallow’s Cove. Half my hotel’s empty. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor—one snowman can’t keep an eye on all those rooms.”
That earns me a laugh, and it warms me better than any fire ever could.
But Daphne? She’s damn near frozen. So I pick up the pace to get her somewhere warm quick.
By the time I reach the truck, the snow’s coming down thick and fast, stinging against any exposed skin. She’s trembling hard now, despite being pressed tight against me. I open the passenger door and settle her carefully inside.
Her teeth are chattering so loudly it’s cartoonish, almost slapstick, and for a second I can’t help but grin. But then she looks at me, her eyes watery and vulnerable, and the grin slips into something softer.
I drape her coat over her shoulders, and she pulls the collar up tightly around her neck.
“Don’t get used to this, I’m not usually in the business of rescuing damsels in distress.”
Her lips twitch, like she wants to sass me back but her sadness can’t quite get there. Instead, she whispers, “Somehow I doubt that’s true.”
She places her hand on top of my own on the truck’s door frame.
“Thank you, I don’t know what I’d be doing if not for you right now—really, I mean it.”
“No worries,” I chuff as I close the door.
And for the first time in my life, I’m grateful for a snowstorm.
I make my way around the front end to the driver’s side and brush the quickly building snow off the metal handle before climbing in. I turn the key I pull out of my shorts and fiddle witha few knobs as the heater groans to life. The air it blows smells a bit mustier than I might want, but to be honest, I don’t ever really turn it on.
“Sorry, doesn’t get used much,” I tell her.
“No it’s fine, why would a yeti worry about heat?” she says, shivering.
“Also, don’t judge the mess.” I stuff a few empty bags of beef jerky into the side door quickly. “I don’t really shuttle too many people around in this old thing.”
She peeks sideways at me over the lifted collar of her coat. “You should have seen our family car growing up, you’ve got nothing on my mom.”
“Must have been bad,” I survey my own interior, and every piece of trash that I’ve managed to ignore for the past two years seems to be lit under flashing lights now.
“Well, when you live in it, there’s not much chance for it to stay clean.” She jokes as if that’s something that everyone would understand.
“That must’ve been hard—” I start, not knowing how to respond.
“Oh, no sympathy please. I limit myself to sharing one sob story a day, and you’ve already seen me break up with my fiance, so you’ll have to pity me another time,” she says sarcastically.
I don’t know what to say, so I just start driving over to the gondola stand, and I let the grumble of the vintage Ford’s engine and the pelting of snow on the windshield be our soundtrack.
I park the car in the lot and turn off the engine just as it finally warms. The windows are starting to fog near the edges, and Daphne has dropped her shoulders a bit further away from her ears than before.
“But I’m serious, you don’t have to do this,” she says softly.
