Marooned With The Maverick

“I am fine.” She shivered some more. Her hair was plastered on her cheeks and down her neck. She swiped at a soggy hunk of it, shoving it back behind her ear. “Just fine.” She scowled at him.

Whoa. For a minute there, she’d almost seemed friendly—but then she must have remembered that she hated his ass. She turned her back on him and started weaving her way through the crush of horses and cattle. The Lab followed her, panting happily, wagging his muddy tail.

It should have been warmer in there, with all the steaming, milling livestock. But it really wasn’t. How could it be, with that far door wide-open and both of them soaking wet? He slapped the bony butt of a little red heifer who’d backed in too close. She let out a cranky “moo,” and ambled away—not far, though. There wasn’t really anywhere to go.

He found a hay bale against the wall and sat on it as he pondered what he ought to do to make things a little more comfortable. He hesitated to go over and shut the other door. The smell of wet livestock and manure would get pretty strong if he did that.

As he considered what to do next, he watched the dripping brown-haired woman who had spent the past four years avoiding him and now happened to be stuck with him until the rain ended and the floodwaters receded.

Willa was keeping busy shivering and ignoring him, wandering from steer to goat to barn cat to bay mare, petting them all and talking to them low and soft, as though she had a personal relationship with each and every four-legged creature on her family’s place. And maybe she did.

She’d always been a fanciful type, even way back when they were kids. He knew this from actual observation.

Collin had run wild as a kid. He was the youngest, sixth of six boys, and his mom was worn-out by the time he came along. She didn’t have the energy to keep after him. He went where he wanted and came home when he felt like it. He wandered far and wide. Often, he found himself on Christensen land. Now and then, he’d run into Willa. She would be singing little songs to herself, or making crowns out of wildflowers, or reading fairy-tale books.

She’d never seemed to like him much, even then. Once she’d yelled at him to stop spying on her.

He hadn’t been spying. A kid wasn’t spying just because he stretched out in the tall grass and watched a neighbor girl talking to herself as she walked her big-haired brunette Barbie doll around in a circle.

Collin tried to get more comfortable on the hay bale. He scooted to the wall, leaned his head back against the rough boards, closed his eyes and tried not to think how cold he was, tried not to wish he’d grabbed a snack to take with him when he’d run out of the house. His stomach grumbled. He ignored it.

It would have been nice if he could drop off to sleep for a little and forget everything. But no such luck. He would just start to doze when a fit of shivering would snap him awake and he would realize anew that they were smack-dab in the middle of one hell of a disaster. He hoped that no one in town had drowned, that the hands and the animals on the Triple T were safe. He couldn’t help wondering how much of both the town or his family’s ranch would be left standing when the floodwaters receded.

And how much of the state was affected? What about Thunder Canyon, where his family had gone? Were they underwater, too?

Eventually, he gave up trying to sleep and opened his eyes. Willa stood at the window that faced southwest, the one not far from where two spotted pigs were snorting over an upturned bucket of feed. With the white Lab at her feet, she stared out through the endless curtain of the rain. He rubbed his arms to try and warm up a little and knew she must be staring at her parents’ place. The Christensen house was about level with the barn, on high ground, atop the next hill over.

He knew he was asking for more rejection to try and talk to her, but he was just tired and dejected enough to do it anyway. “The house should be safe,” he said. He didn’t mention her brother Gage’s house, which was down the slope of the hill behind her parents’ place. It wouldn’t be visible from Willa’s vantage point, which was just as well. As Collin remembered, it was a ways down the hill and probably already below the rising waterline.

She surprised him by replying. “Yes. I can see it. It’s okay, for now….” She sounded strange, he thought. Kind of dreamy and far away. She had a few scratches on her arms. And a bruise on her cheekbone. But like him, no serious injuries. They’d been very fortunate. So far. She added, “It’s all so unbelievable, don’t you think? Like maybe this isn’t even actually happening. Maybe I’m just dreaming it.”

“Sorry, Willa.” He meant that. He was sorry. “I think it’s really happening.”

She sent him a glance. For once, her mouth didn’t pinch up at the sight of him. “I lost my phone.” A shiver went through her and her teeth chattered together. “Do you happen to have yours with you?”

“It’s in my truck, I think. But there must be towers down. I was getting no signal when I tried using it at a little after two.”

Willa sighed and turned back to the window. “Life is so … fragile, really, isn’t it? I mean, you go along, doing what you need to do, thinking you’re taking care of business, that you’re in control. But you’re not in control, not really.” Outside, lightning flared. Thunder rolled out. “Anything could happen,” she said. “It could rain and rain and never stop….” Her lips looked kind of blue, he thought.

He really needed to come up with a way to warm her up a little. Rising, he began to work his way around the barn, looking for a blanket or a tarp or something.

Willa kept talking. “Oh, Collin. I keep thinking of the children in my class last year. And the ones in our summer school program. I can just close my eyes and see each one of their sweet, smiling faces. I hope they’re all safe and dry. Our school, the elementary school? It’s on the south side of town. That’s not good news. And my house is on the south side, too….”

He pushed a goat out of the way as he came to a spot where the wall jogged at a ninety-degree angle. Around that corner was a door. He opened it. “Willa, there’s a tack room here.”

She sighed again. “Yes. That’s right. And a feed room over there.” She put out a hand in the general direction of the other shut door farther down the wall. And then she started in again, about life and the flood and the safety of her friends, her neighbors and her students.

Collin took a look around the tack room. There were the usual rows of hooks holding ropes and bridles and bits. He was a saddle maker by trade and he grinned at the sight of one of his own saddles racked nice and neat, lined up with several others on the wall. There was a window. And another door, allowing outside access.

The floor in there was wood, not mixed clay and sand as it was out in the main part of the barn. And the walls were paneled in pine.

And then he saw the stack of saddle blankets atop a big cedar storage trunk. He went over and grabbed one. Shooing out the goat that had followed him in there, he shut the door and made his way through the milling animals to Willa.

She didn’t even flinch when he wrapped the blanket around her. “Thank you.”

He took her by the shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go….” She went where he guided her, back through the cattle and horses and goats, with the dog right behind them. He let the dog in the tack room with them, and then shut the door to keep the rest of the animals out. There were a few hay bales. He sat her down on one and knelt in front of her.

She frowned down at him. “What are you doing?”

He held her gaze. “Don’t get freaky on me, okay?”

She looked at him in that pinched, suspicious way again. “Why not?”

“You need to get out of those wet clothes. There are plenty of blankets. You can wrap yourself up in them and get dry.”

“But … my clothes won’t dry.”

“It doesn’t matter. Right now, you need to get dry.”

She considered that idea—and shook her head. “I’ll take off my boots and socks. I’ll be all right.”

He decided not to argue with her. “Fine. You need help?”

“No, thank you.” All prim and proper and so polite. “I’ll manage.”

“Are you thirsty?”

She gaped at him. “Thirsty?” And then she let out a wild little laugh. “In this?” She stuck out a hand toward the water streaming down the lone window.

“Are you?”

And she frowned again. “Well, yes. Now that you mention it, I suppose I am.”

He rose. “I’ll see if I can find some clean containers in the barn. We can catch some of the rainwater, so we won’t get dehydrated.”

She blinked up at him. “Yes. That makes sense. I’ll help.” She started to rise.

He took her shoulders again and gently pushed her back down. “Get out of your boots and shoes—and wrap this around your feet.” He held out another blanket.

She took it, her gaze colliding with his. Holding. “What about you?”

“Let me see about setting out containers for water. Then I’ll grab a few blankets and try and warm up a little, too.”

Half an hour later, he had his boots and socks off. They’d pushed four hay bales together and spread a blanket over them. Side by side, wrapped in more blankets, they passed a bucket of water back and forth.

When they’d both drunk their fill, there was still plenty left in the bucket. He set it on the floor, where Buster promptly stuck his nose in it and started lapping. “You don’t happen to have a nice T-bone handy, do you, Willa?”

She chuckled. There wasn’t a lot of humor in the sound, but he took heart that at least she wasn’t staring blindly into space anymore. “Plenty on the hoof right outside that door.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the door that led into the barn.

He scooted back to the wall for something to lean against. “Not that hungry yet.”

“I didn’t think so.” She scooted back, too, settling alongside him, and then spent a moment readjusting the blanket she’d wrapped around her feet. “There.” She leaned back and let out a long breath. “I believe I am actually beginning to thaw out.”

“That was the plan.” Outside, the rain kept falling. The sky remained that same dim gray it had been all day. “Got any idea what time it is?”

“I don’t know. Six, maybe? Seven?” She sounded … softer. A little sleepy. That was good. Rest wouldn’t hurt either of them. “Won’t be dark for hours yet….”

He was feeling kind of drowsy, too, now that he wasn’t chilled to the bone anymore and most of the adrenaline rush from the various near-death events of the day had faded a little. He let his eyelids droop shut.

But then she spoke again. “It’s really very strange, Collin, being here with you like this.”

He grunted. “This whole day has been pretty strange.”

“Yes, it has. And scary. And awful. But, well, that’s not what I meant.”

He knew exactly what she meant. And why was it women always had to dig up stuff that was better left alone? He kept nice and quiet and hoped she wasn’t going there.

But she was. “Maybe this is a good chance to clear the air a little between us.”

“The air is plenty clear from where I’m sitting.”

“Well, Collin, for me, it’s just not.”

“Willa, I—”

“No. Wait. I would like a chance to say what’s on my mind.”

He didn’t let out a groan of protest, but he wanted to.

And she kept right on. “It was very … humiliating for me, that night at the Ace in the Hole.” The Ace was on Sawmill Street. It was the only bar in town. People went there to forget their troubles and usually only ended up creating a whole new set of them. “It was my first time there, did you know? My twenty-first birthday.” She sounded all sad and wistful.

He’d known. “I think you mentioned that at the time, yeah.”

“Derek had just dumped me for a Delta Gamma.” Straight-arrow Derek Andrews was her high school sweetheart. They’d graduated the same year and headed off to the University of Idaho together. “Collin, did you hear me?”

“Every word,” he muttered.

“Did you know it was over between me and Derek?”

“Well, Willa, I kinda had a feeling something might have gone wrong with your love life, yeah.”

“You led me on,” she accused. “You know that you did.” He’d seen her coming a mile away. Good-girl Willa Christensen, out to find a bad boy just for the night. “And then you …” Her voice got all wobbly. “You turned me down flat.”

“Come on, Willa. It wasn’t a good idea. You know that as well as I do.”

“Then why did you dance with me all those times? Why did you flirt with me and buy me two beers? You acted like you were interested. More than interested. And then, when I tried to kiss you, you laughed at me. You said I wasn’t your type. You said I should go home and behave myself.”

He’d had some crazy idea at the time that he was doing her a favor, keeping her from doing something she wouldn’t be happy about later. But with Willa, no good deed of his ever went unpunished. And was she going to start crying? He hated it when a woman started crying.

She sniffled in her blankets, a small, lost little sound. “I still can’t believe I did that—made a pass at you. I mean, you never liked me and I never cared much for you and we both know that.” That wasn’t true—not on his part anyway. Far from it. But he wasn’t in the mood to dispute the point at the moment. He only wanted her not to start crying—and he thought maybe he was getting his wish when she squirmed in her blankets and grumbled, “Everyone knows how you are. You’ll sleep with anyone—except me, apparently.”

Mad. Now she was getting mad. As far as he was concerned, mad was good. Mad was great. Anything but weepy worked for him.

She huffed, “I just don’t know what got into me that night.”

He couldn’t resist. “Well, Willa, we both know it wasn’t me.”

She made another huffing sound. “Oh, you think you’re so funny. And you’re not. You’re very annoying and you always have been.”

“Always?” he taunted.

“Always,” she humphed.

He scoffed at her. “How would you know a thing about me the last four years? Since that night at the Ace, all I see is the backside of you. I come in a room—and you turn tail and run.”

“And why shouldn’t I? You are a complete tool and you never cared about anything or anyone in your whole life but yourself.”

“Which is girl talk for ‘You didn’t sleep with me,’“ he said in his slowest, laziest, most insolent tone.

“You are not the least bit clever, you know that?”

“You don’t think so, huh?”

“No, I do not. And it just so happens that I’m glad we never hooked up that night. You’re the last person in the world I should ever be sleeping with.”

He tried not to grin. “No argument there. Because I’m not having sex with you no matter how hard you beg me.”

“Oh, please. I mean just, simply, please.” She sat up straight then. Dragging her blankets along with her, she scooted to the edge of the hay bales, as far from him as she could get without swinging her bare feet to the floor. Once there, she snapped, “You do not have worry. I want nothing to do with you.”

He freed a hand from his blankets and made a show of wiping his brow—even though she wasn’t looking at him. “Whew.”

“In case you didn’t know, it just so happens that I have a fiancé, thank you very much.”

“A fiancé?” That was news to Collin. The information bothered him. A lot—and that it bothered him bugged him to no end.

“Yes,” she said. “Well. Sort of.”

“Willa, get real. You do or you don’t.”

“His name is Dane Everhart and he’s an assistant coach at the University of Colorado. We met at UI. We’ve been dating on and off for three years. Dane loves me and knows I’m the one for him and wants only to marry me and, er, give me the world.”

“Hold on just a minute. Answer the question. You’re saying you’re engaged?”

She fiddled with her blankets and refused to turn around and look at him. “Well, no. Not exactly. But I could be. I promised to give Dane an answer by the end of the summer.”

He stared at the back of her head. Her hair was a tangle of wild, muddy curls from her dip in the floodwaters. It should have looked like crap. But it didn’t. It looked like she’d been having crazy good sex with someone—and then fallen asleep all loose and soft and satisfied.

And why the hell was he thinking about sex right now? Was he losing his mind? Probably. A few hours trapped in a barn with Willa Christensen could do that to a man, could drive him clean out of his head.

He sat up, too, then, and sneered, “You’re in love with this guy, and you’re not going to see him until September?”

“So? What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, I mean, if you’re in love with him, how can you stand to be apart from him? How can he stand to be away from you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Are you in love with him, Willa?”

She squared her slim shoulders. “I just told you that you wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s right. I wouldn’t. If I loved a woman, I’d want her with me. Where I could touch her and be with her and hold her all night long.”

Willa gasped. She tried to hide the small, sharp sound, but he heard it. “Oh, please. As if you know anything about being in love, Collin Traub.”

“I said if I was in love.”

“Well. Humph. As it happens, Dane has gone to Australia until the end of the month. He gets only a short summer break before practice begins again. And do you know how he’s spending his limited free time? I will tell you how he’s spending it. At a special sports camp. He’s helping Australian children learn about American football. Because he’s a good man, a man who cares about other people. That’s how he is. That’s who he is …”

There was more. Lots more.

Collin let her heated words wash over him. The point, as far as he saw it, was that she hadn’t answered the main question. She hadn’t come out and said, “Yes. I’m in love with Dane Everhart.”

He felt absurdly satisfied with what she hadn’t said. She could rant all night about the wonderfulness of this Dane character while talking trash about him. At least she was acting like the Willa he’d always known. At least she was full of fire and vinegar and not shaking with cold, shock and fear anymore.

Collin smiled to himself, settled back against the wall and closed his eyes.

Chapter Three

Willa felt Collin’s presence behind her acutely.

But she didn’t turn to him. She sat on the edge of the pushed-together hay bales and stared resolutely out the tack room’s one window as waves of never-ending rain flowed down the glass.

She finished what she had to say about Dane. “It just so happens that Dane would have liked to have taken me with him. But he was going to be very busy with the Australian children and I had things I could be doing here at home. We have summer school at Rust Creek Falls Elementary, in case you didn’t know and I …” Her voice trailed off.

Collin hadn’t said a word for a couple of minutes, maybe more. Had he fallen asleep, for heaven’s sake?

She wouldn’t put it past him. He was such an exasperating, impossible man. Always had been. And no doubt always would be.

So why am I starting to feel ashamed of myself?

Willa’s cheeks were flaming. She tucked her chin down into the scratchy saddle blanket he’d wrapped around her. At least he couldn’t see her embarrassment at her own behavior—not as long as she didn’t turn and face him.

Which she was not going to do right now, thank you very much.

Stretched out on the floor by the hay bales, Buster huffed out a long sigh. Willa bent down and scratched him on the head. His tail bounced happily against the rough plank floor.

She gathered her blankets close again. All right, she probably shouldn’t have gone off on Collin like that. No matter how humiliating her history with the guy, he’d been there when she desperately needed him. He’d saved her life a few hours ago, at no small risk to himself.

Plus, well, she hadn’t really been honest while she was getting all up in his face just now, had she? She hadn’t bothered to mention that she had serious reservations about her and Dane. Dane was the greatest guy in the world and he did want to marry her, very much. But Rust Creek Falls was her home and he wasn’t about to give up his wonderful career at CU. And more important than geography, Dane somehow didn’t quite feel like her guy.

Whatever her guy should feel like. She wasn’t sure. She just had a certain intuition that Dane wasn’t it.

And worse than her doubts about her future with an ideal man like Dane, well, there was that longtime thing she’d had for Collin—oh, not anymore. Of course not. That night at the Ace in the Hole had put an end to her ridiculous schoolgirl crush on the town bad boy. But before that night she used to fantasize about him now and then.

Or maybe even more often than now and then.

She used to wonder what it would be like if bad-boy Collin were to kiss her. Or do more than kiss her …

Not that it mattered now. None of her past silliness over Collin mattered to anyone. It had been a fantasy, that was all. Her fantasy. He’d never been the least interested in her. He’d made that painfully clear on the night he led her on and then laughed in her face.

And really, after all that had happened today, her four-year grudge against him for not having sex with her was beginning to seem nothing short of petty. She really needed to let the past go. She needed to be … a bigger person than she’d been so far about this. She needed to be a better person.

And she needed to start doing that now.

Willa cleared her throat. “Um. Collin?”

He shifted a little, back there against the wall. “What now, Willa?” His voice was scratchy and deep. Lazy. What was it about him? He just always made her think of wrinkled sheets and forbidden passion.

In a purely impersonal, objective way, of course.

“I, um, well …”

“Come on. Spit it out.”

She made herself say it. “I’m sorry, okay?” She hauled her blanket-wrapped legs back up on the hay bales and wiggled around until she was facing him again. He lay sprawled under his blankets, his head propped against the wall, his eyes shut, his eyelashes black as coal, thicker than any girl’s, his full mouth lax and lazy, just like his voice had been, the shadow of a beard on his cheeks. A curl of that impossibly thick black hair of his hung over his forehead. She clutched her blankets tighter to keep from reaching out and smoothing it back. “I shouldn’t have jumped all over you like that. I shouldn’t have called you a tool. That was … small-minded and mean-spirited of me, especially after all you’ve done for me today.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. And he didn’t open his eyes. Again, she wondered if he’d dropped off to sleep and she had to resist the urge to reach out and shake him. But then those bad-boy lips curved upward in a slow smile. “So you don’t think I’m a tool, then?”

“Um. No. No, of course not. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. I am.”

“And you think maybe you could stop racing off like your hair’s on fire every time you see me coming?”

A fresh wave of embarrassment had her cheeks flaming all over again. But what did it matter? He couldn’t see her blush. His eyes were shut. Also, she truly wanted to make amends. “Ahem. Yes. Fair enough. I will do that. I will stop avoiding you.”

“Well, all right then. I accept your apology.” He patted the empty space beside him. “Stretch out. Try and get some sleep. I’m thinking we’re going to be busy when the rain stops and the water goes down.”

His words brought reality crashing back down on her. She hung her head. “Oh, Collin. It seems like it’s never going to stop. I know my brother’s house is already underwater. And what if it just keeps rising, what if we—?”