AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The chocolate bar slipped through her fingers and her eyes drifted closed. ‘Not really hungry. Tired now…’ she murmured, and he cursed softly under his breath as he rescued the chocolate.
‘You need to eat, Miranda. It will warm you up.’ He pulled the wrapper off the chocolate, pushed the bar into her hands again and closed her fingers around it. ‘Eat!’
Her eyes opened at his sharp command and she stared blankly at the chocolate bar as if she’d never seen one before and then took a reluctant nibble.
Jake removed her sodden coat, which would have struggled to give protection against a light shower in the city, let alone heavy snow in the mountains.
‘Don’t take my coat off.’ She mumbled her protest and tried to stop him but he’d already dropped it on the ground and was dragging extra layers from his rucksack.
‘You need to put these on. You need dry clothes. Put on this fleece and then this waterproof shell.’
She stared at
the clothes he dropped onto her lap and he gave a sigh and picked them up, deciding that he was going to have to dress her himself. So he pulled the fleece over her head and then manoeuvred her arms through the sleeves, then did the same thing again with another layer and finally zipped her into his spare coat.
It was like dressing a doll. She was limp and unresisting and his coat swamped her, but at least it was dry and weatherproof. He wrapped a scarf around her mouth and nose to warm the air she was breathing, running through the options in his head. Helicopter evacuation? Not in this weather. Which meant calling the team out. But it would take them a couple of hours to reach this point and that was two hours during which Miranda could grow even colder.
‘All right.’ Pleased to see that she’d finished the chocolate bar, he handed her another and reached into his rucksack for the insulated flask that he always carried. ‘This is the situation. We basically have two choices. I can contact the mountain rescue team and then put up a shelter and we can lie naked in a sleeping bag together while we wait. That should warm you up.’
Her eyes slid to his and he saw a glimmer of humour. ‘Is that an indecent proposal?’
Something in her slightly cynical tone made him smile. She had a sense of humour and that was a good sign. ‘Believe it or not, it wasn’t. Skin to skin contact is the fastest way of rewarming a casualty.’
Her teeth were chattering as she nibbled reluctantly on the second chocolate bar. ‘That’s the most original seduction line I’ve ever heard and, believe me, I’ve heard a few.’ Her voice was weak and rasping. ‘And I’m not a casualty.’
He decided not to point out that she was fast becoming one. ‘The second choice is that we walk down. But that requires you to get up and move your legs. Are you up to it?’
‘Of course.’ More alert now, she rubbed the snow out of her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘What do you think I am? Pathetic?’
No, hypothermic.
He was relieved to see that she suddenly seemed to be waking up. ‘So tell me what you’re doing out here on a day like this.’ Concern made his voice sharper than he’d intended. ‘Do you have a death wish?’
‘No. And the day was nothing like this earlier this morning. It was sunny.’ Despite the extra layers he’d given her, her teeth were still chattering and her breath clouded the freezing air. ‘And I was out for a walk, just like you.’
Jake glanced down at her feet and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Not like me,’ he pointed out gently. ‘You’re wearing trainers.’
Her hands still clutching the chocolate bar, the girl stared down at her feet and gave a wan smile. ‘Well, they were all I had. I don’t possess walking boots. I thought I’d be all right providing I stuck to the path.’
‘Is this the same path that has just disappeared under a layer of snow? And didn’t you possess gloves either?’ Jake gave a sigh and reached inside his rucksack again. ‘If you don’t own walking boots then you shouldn’t be out on the mountains, especially not at the height of winter. What were you thinking of?’
For a moment those incredible eyes were haunted by ghosts and then she turned her head away. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said huskily. ‘This and that. Stuff.’
Stuff?
Something about the set of her profile made him frown and want to question her further but then he reminded himself that hesitation could make the difference between life and death in the mountains. This wasn’t the time for polite conversation. ‘Finish the chocolate.’ He laid a pair of gloves on her lap. ‘And then put these on before you develop frostbite in your fingers. Have you any idea what the temperature is today?’
She finished the last of the chocolate and then slowly wriggled her hands into the gloves. ‘No, but it certainly isn’t the Bahamas, that’s for sure. The sun was shining when I left.’
It was a common mistake, Jake reflected. Believing that a cloudless blue sky would last. A significant proportion of the calls to the mountain rescue team were made by people who had underestimated the changeability of the weather. ‘You shouldn’t be out here on your own in this weather. It’s Christmas Day, you should be home with family, eating turkey.’ The moment the words left his mouth he wanted to kick himself. Presumably, if that had been an option she would have taken it, and her next words confirmed his suspicion.
‘I don’t have any family.’ She spoke the words calmly,
as if it wasn’t that great a problem. ‘But you’re completely right, of course. Coming out here was a stupid thing to do. It’s just that it was beautiful and I needed to think and—’
‘And you didn’t want to sit in by yourself on Christmas Day. You don’t have to explain to me.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘All around the country at this precise moment in time, people are opening presents they don’t want from relatives they haven’t seen all year and gaining pounds that they’re going to spend the next few months failing to lose.’
‘So is that what you’re doing up here in the wilderness? Avoiding presents and weight gain?’ Her gaze rested on his shoulders and then lifted to his mouth and lingered there for a moment. Then she lifted her eyes to his again and he felt something stir inside him. The urge to kiss her was so powerful that he forced himself to take a step backwards, reminding himself that this wasn’t the time or the place.
