Be Mine at Christmas(51)
Author: Brenda Novak

They had a visitor, all right. But it wasn’t their father….

Angling his head, he scanned the drive for a vehicle.

Other than his own Land Rover, which he’d parked outside because there wasn’t room in the garage, he couldn’t see one. How had she gotten so far into the mountains without a car, and dressed like that? “Can I help you?” he said uncertainly.

Chocolate-dark eyes, framed with the longest lashes he’d ever seen, appealed to him from a café au lait face. She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, and she was pretty. Really pretty. It was like finding Salma Hayek on his doorstep. But he was fairly confident the lack of color in her lips wasn’t a good thing.

“I—I’m Cierra,” she said, rolling the r’s, and reached out to give him a piece of paper that’d been crushed in one hand. Before he could accept it, however, she swayed and would’ve fallen had he not let it go and caught her instead.

“Brent!”

A clang, and subsequent cursing, indicated that Brent had dropped his wrench. A few seconds later, Ken could hear his younger brother jogging toward him. Nothing Brent did was ever very subtle. He was only twenty-one and still in college, but he was bigger than Ken, although, at six feet two inches and two hundred and ten pounds, Ken had never been considered small—except, maybe, when analysts compared him to the front line in football.

While he held her, Cierra’s eyelashes fluttered as though she was fighting for consciousness but, a second later, she lost that battle and her eyes drifted shut.

“What is it?” Brent asked, coming up from behind.

Ken turned to show him, and watched his brother’s mouth fall open.

“Wow!” he breathed. “That’s exactly what I wanted for Christmas. How’d you know?”

There was no time to acknowledge his joke. “Grab the purse she just dropped and fix a place to put her. I think she’s suffering from hypothermia.”

Brent dashed inside, just ahead of Ken, straight to the master bedroom, where Ken had left his bags when they arrived a few hours earlier, and peeled the plastic cover off the mattress. The cabin had been closed up for so long it had a musty odor, but that would go away once they aired out the place. At least covering the furniture had kept it from getting too dusty.

“That’s good enough for now,” Ken said so Brent wouldn’t waste time trying to put on the sheets. “Take off her shoes.”

“What about her jacket?”

“No, that’s okay. It hasn’t started snowing again, so just her feet are wet.”

Brent removed her sneakers so Ken could put her on the bed. She was coming around. Moving her head from side to side, she muttered in Spanish. Then her eyes opened, and she gazed up at them with a sort of mute resignation that unsettled Ken. Wouldn’t most women be frightened if they woke to the sight of two large men—total strangers—while sequestered in a remote cabin?

This girl didn’t seem to be scared. But if heading back outside into the weather was her only other option, he could understand that. Or maybe she was even closer to death than he’d thought.

“We’ve got to get her warm.” He grabbed the blankets they’d dumped at the foot of the bed and waved for Brent to lie down on one side of her while he lay down on the other. Sandwiching her between them with the bedding piled on top was the quickest way he could think of to raise her body temperature. At least her clothes were pretty dry. Otherwise, she probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.

She didn’t fight their proximity. Her eyes closed again and she remained perfectly still, cold as marble but malleable as a doll.

“She going to be okay?” Brent whispered after several minutes had passed and she hadn’t spoken or moved.

Ken pressed two fingers to the side of her throat. “Heart’s beating.”

“That’s good.” Brent pulled back just enough to get a better look at her face. “Where do you think she came from?”

“Mexico.”

“Quit being a smart-ass. I mean today.”

“How should I know?” Ken responded with a chuckle. Because of the age difference between them, they’d never been especially close but that was changing. Ken couldn’t wait until Brent graduated from Boise State. Already, they were talking about teaming up to run a series of football camps for kids in the summer.

After a short pause, Brent spoke again. “This seems a little weird.”

Ken raised his head. “Having a beautiful woman appear out of nowhere?”

“Sleeping three to a bed…with you.”

Ken might’ve laughed, but he couldn’t. He was too busy gasping as their visitor not only moved but slipped her frozen fingers under his shirt and right up against his skin. Her teeth chattered as she attempted to burrow so close he got the impression she’d climb inside his skin if she could.

Brent arched his eyebrows, obviously demanding an explanation.

“I’d say she’s doing better,” Ken said when he could bring his voice down an octave.

This met with no small amount of suspicion on his brother’s part. “How much better?”

“Don’t get excited. She’s figured out how, uh, to maximize the heat I’m offering, that’s all.”

Brent sounded sulky when he answered. “I’m offering heat, too.”

Because she’d pulled away at his initial reaction, Ken covered her hands with his to let her know it was fine to take what she needed. He’d survived worse. “Yeah, but I’m always the lucky one.”

“You’re not supposed to get lucky. What about Isolde?” Brent challenged.

Fascinated by the number of women who congregated around professional athletes, his brother always asked about his love life. Brent had been cut from the college team and would never experience the NFL for himself, so Ken usually indulged him. But he didn’t like talking about his former girlfriend. “I broke it off before I moved back here, and you know it.”

“It’s for good, then?”

Although Ken had spent two years with Isolde, even brought her to Dundee last Christmas, he’d given her up when he rejected the New York Jets’ offer to renew his contract. She dreamed of a life in the Big Apple and had aspirations in fashion design; he dreamed of raising a family while owning several businesses in his hometown, including a dude ranch in the mountains he loved. He was even toying with the idea of helping their stepfather coach football at the high school he’d attended, which would feed into his summer camps with Brent. “It’s over for good.”