Poor Daisy looks like she’s going to have a heart attack. She shoots up, her eyes widening. “What are you doing?” She demands. “Get the Hell off him!”
“No.”
She launches herself at Cole, trying to pull him off me. I’ve got to hand it to her—she’s a fighter. She comes at him like a wildcat. Unfortunately, he’s used to dealing with moose about fourteen times her weight, so he probably barely notices as she grabs his arm and tries to drag him away.
“What is wrong with you?” She hisses. “Have you lived in the woods so long you’ve turned into a fucking bear? Get off him!”
“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” He growls at me. “We left you alone for half an hour! You can’t keep your hands off her for that long?”
I put my hands up. “I didn’t do anything!”
“He wasn’t groping me,” Daisy pipes up. “He was comforting me!”
“He hit on you while you have a fucking head injury,” Cole snarls.
“I don’t! Riven said I was fine. And I was the one snuggling up to him, not the other way around.” She tries again to shove Cole off me. “Get off him, you fucking brute.”
“It’s alright, babe,” I say. “We do this all the time. He’s pretty easy to take down, look.” I grab him by the ankle and yank, hard. Cole swears as he topples down on top of me.
“Fuck,” I grunt as all the air gets knocked out my lungs. “Jesus. You need to go on a diet, man. No more moose pie for you.”
He shoves himself upright, eyes burning. “Come to the barn,” he mutters. “Riven wants to talk to you.”
Daisy offers me her hand. I don’t need it, but I’m certainly not going to say no to any opportunity to touch her. I wrap my fingers around her tiny wrist, letting her help me to my feet, then brush myself off.
“See? No harm done. Cole wouldn’t hurt a fly, really.”
“Sure.” She sounds sceptical. “Where are we going?”
“Not you,” Cole orders. “Stay.” He pushes her back onto the sofa cushions.
She sputters. “I’m not a dog!”
“We’re going to talk about you. You can’t come.”
“We’re going to look at your car,” I explain, glaring at him. “You may as well stay here in the warm. Here.” I pull a blanket out of the basket next to the sofa and wrap it around her. “Eat your cinnamon bun. We’ll be back soon.”
Her eyes narrow. This is not a girl who likes being told what to do. Noted. I smile at her as angelically as I can, until she sits back down, her eyes still suspicious.
Bored of this interaction, Cole turns on his heel and leaves, heading for the door.
I catch up with him halfway to the barn, stumbling through the snow. It’s coming down thick, now. We don’t have a lot of time. “Can you tone it down a bit?” I ask, as he storms ahead. “I was just telling her she was safe here. I don’t think your random act of violence is really going to convince her.”
“You shouldn’t have tried to kiss her when she was drugged up and crying,” he mutters.
“I wasn’t going to kiss her.”
“You were.”
“I wasn’t! I was drying off her face! She was upset!”
He cuts me a cold look. “You’ve never seen a pretty girl you didn’t try to kiss.”
“It’s actually the other way around. A pretty girl never saw me and decided not to kiss me. That’s hardly my fault, I’m just immensely kissable.”
“Really?” He looks unimpressed. “You didn’t even think about it?”
I scoff. “Well, I didn’t say that.”
Of course I thought about it. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we saw her. She looked adorable with her huge brown eyes, her cheeks pink from the cold. And then we got her inside, and I could see her the rest of her. She’s stunning. All curves and flowing hair. When she snuggled up with me on the couch, I got a close-up view of her soft pink mouth. So yes, I thought about kissing her. But I think about a lot of things. I wasn’t actually going to do it. I’m not enough of an asshole to kiss a scared, crying girl.
Cole’s reaction is pretty interesting, though. Considering how much he seems to dislike Daisy, he certainly is protective over her.
I grin up at him. “That’s sweet, you know. You swooped in like her knight in shining armour. It kinda seems like you like her—”
I grunt as he shoves me sideways into a pile of snow.
Cole towed Daisy’s car into our storage barn. It’s a big wooden building that we keep all of our vehicles and supplies in. One corner is full with chopped firewood covered with a tarp. In the other, we’ve got food; tinned and dried goods, and a ton of frozen meat. Daisy’s car is parked up next to Cole’s truck. Riven’s got his head stuck in the bonnet.
“Well?” I pull the barn door shut.
“It’s dead.” He kicks the tyre. “It needs a heavy-duty mechanic. There’s no way she can get it looked at until after the storm ends.” He frowns. “Even then, she won’t get far without giving up her license.”
I remember the panic in her eyes as she lunged for her wallet. “Maybe it’s out of date? And she thought we’d get her in trouble?”
“We’re not traffic wardens,” he mutters. “She didn’t have any Swedish cash, either. Just English.” I can see his mind ticking over as he tries to put the puzzle together.
Riven’s always like this. He loves problem-solving. I guess that’s what makes him such a good doctor. I’m personally of the opinion that when a gorgeous girl ends up in your house, you shouldn’t question it.
“She doesn’t know the language,” he says slowly. “She doesn’t have the right clothes, she didn’t get her tyres changed. It’s like she wasn’t planning this.” He glances at me. “Did she tell you what she does?”
“Says she’s a teacher.”
“What sort of teacher?”
“Dunno. When I pushed her, she just froze up. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Isn’t it the middle of the school year? She just abandoned her students to come drive out, completely unprepared, into the wilderness? It’s like she suddenly had to drop everything and run.”
“Sounds like she’s in trouble with the law,” Cole grits out. “We need to get her the Hell out of here.”
“This isn’t just your house,” I point out.
When we first came across the cabin, it was more of a dilapidated shed. Between the three of us, we fixed it up into a real home; we installed plumbing and a generator, rebuilt all the walls and windows, added in the solar panels and under-floor heating. Riven covered the costs, and we split the labour between us. It’s not like Cole can make any decisions about house guests all by himself.
“We should vote,” I decide. “I vote that the sexy British chick stays as long as possible. Riven?”
We both turn to look at him. He presses his lips together. “I think, if she wants to stay, she should answer some of our questions. Or at least let us see some form of identification.”
I throw my hands up. “Well, I think you’re both being dicks. If she were a guy, would you be acting so bloody suspicious?”
Neither of them respond. They know the answer. If Daisy were a guy, she would probably already be asleep in a guest bed.
“Well, then,” I say. “Maybe stop being so sexist.”
Cole snorts. “Right. Because that’s why you want her to stay. You’re championing women’s rights.”
“I think women have the right not to freeze to death, yes,” I bite back. “For God’s sake, pull yourself together. She needs help. It’s not her fault she’s pretty.”
Riven rubs his eyes. “She can stay until the storm passes,” he decides. “Then Cole can tow her car into the town to get fixed, and she can book into a hotel.”
“That could be days,” Cole growls.
I toss him a grin. “I’m sure we’ll find a few ways to pass the time.”
We have an old collapsible guest bed tucked away in the back of the barn, so we take it with us back to the cabin. When we get inside, though, it turns out it’s not necessary; Daisy’s fallen asleep on the sofa, curled in a tiny ball under the blanket. Riv heads back to his office to do some work. Cole goes to clear stuff out of the junk room. I just stay in the lounge for a while, warming up by the fire, and watching the light flicker over her face.
