Shivering, and cursing his body and the flu virus raging within him, Chappy trudged after the dog. “Ten minutes,” he muttered. “That’s all you’re getting, dog. Because this is crazy.”
Not even five minutes later, the snow making every step an effort, Chappy was ready to turn around and go back to his cabin when, surprisingly, he thought he saw something in the distance.
He stopped in his tracks and blinked. The dog was standing in the middle of Chappy’s long driveway. They were almost at the end of it, where the path met what the map called a road. As he stood there, the shape in the distance slowly got closer.
It was a person.
Chappy couldn’t have been more shocked. What the hell was a person doing out here in this storm? It made no sense. Just as it made no sense that the dog had led Chappy right to him. If he’d ignored the dog or waited a little longer to see what kind of animal was making the noise or if he’d taken a few extra minutes to put on more clothes, the person probably would’ve walked right by the driveway to his cabin.
The chances that Chappy was here, at the exact moment when some stranger in distress was about to pass, had to be astronomical.
The person had yet to look up, keeping his head tucked to his chest and looking down at his feet while he walked. He was shuffling more than walking, really, as he followed the weak path of the flashlight in his hand, barely illuminating more than a foot in front of him. The snow was around six inches deep now and falling faster and harder than before.
It wasn’t until the person was about six feet away that he finally looked up.
Chappy saw huge blue eyes in a pale white face.
“Oh!” the person exclaimed in surprise.
“What the hell are you doing?” he nearly growled. He hadn’t given any thought to what he might say to this stranger, but his surprise and unease at seeing anyone out in this storm had taken over.
“Um . . . walking?” the person said.
Two things hit Chappy at once. The person in front of him was female—and the dog who had literally led him to her was nowhere to be seen.
“What are you doing?” she retorted when he didn’t respond.
The question sounded just as stupid coming from her as it probably had coming from his own lips. Shaking his head a little, Chappy said, “Come on, we need to get inside.”
To his surprise, the woman didn’t move and, instead, simply stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t know you.”
Chappy wanted to laugh. “I don’t know you either. You could be a serial killer who chops off my head as soon as we get inside my cabin. But at the moment, I’m willing to take that chance. It’s freezing out here, I feel like crap, and we haven’t even seen the worst of this storm. You coming, or do you want to die out here?” he asked grumpily.
He was amazed when she still hesitated for a beat before saying, “I’m Carlise. Most people mispronounce my name when they see it because they add an extra L that isn’t there.”
Chappy blinked. “What?” he asked inanely.
“C-a-r-l-i-s-e. That’s how it’s spelled. Car-leese.”
Chappy couldn’t believe they were standing in the middle of a damn blizzard introducing themselves, but he simply shrugged. “I’m Riggs.”
He had no idea why he’d told her his given name instead of his nickname. He could tell her that literally everyone called him Chappy, but this wasn’t the time or place to go into more detail.
“It’s nice to meet you, Riggs. You said your cabin is near here?”
“At the end of this path,” he said, turning and pointing back the way he had come. Of course, neither of them could see anything but snowflakes swirling in the beam of his flashlight.
“I would be very grateful if you’d allow me to take shelter for a while,” Carlise said stiffly and formally. “And I promise I’m not a serial killer. Are you?”
“What would you do if I said yes?” Chappy asked.
She shrugged. “Keep walking, following my dog friend until I got to another cabin.”
“There isn’t another cabin out here. I’m the end of the line.”
“Oh.”
That was it. All she said. Just Oh. Chappy sighed. “I’m not a serial killer either,” he told her. “You’ll be safe with me.”
He could see her shoulders sag with relief. She was far too trusting. Or maybe just too desperate to question anything he said at the moment.
Chappy was suddenly angry, but not with her. More with the situation. He didn’t know how she’d come to be wandering around out here in the middle of nowhere, but just as he couldn’t shut his door on the dog, he couldn’t leave a woman stranded in a storm. She’d probably be dead in under an hour.
“Come on,” he said a little more gruffly than he intended. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing.” Chappy started walking, looking over his shoulder to see her following as he headed back toward the cabin.
“Where’d the dog go?” she asked after a couple of minutes.
“Don’t know.”
“Is it yours?”
“I’ve never seen him before tonight,” Chappy told her. “And there’s no way I’d let any pet of mine get as skinny as he is.”
“Do you think he’ll be okay?”
He didn’t know that either. And Chappy couldn’t help but be worried himself. He hadn’t seen the mutt since he’d started talking to Carlise. It didn’t sit well with him that the dog would be out by himself in the storm. “I hope so,” he said softly, not sure what else to say to her question.
They walked in silence the rest of the way toward the cabin, and Chappy found himself both grateful and confused. Why wasn’t she asking more questions? She should be trying to figure out where she was, asking more about him, wanting to know when she could get out of here, asking for a phone . . . something. But instead, she simply walked behind him, using his footsteps to help her tromp through the snow, and kept her mouth shut.
By the time Chappy saw his cabin, he was more than thankful and less concerned about the woman’s lack of conversation. He was shivering violently and couldn’t think about much beyond getting inside and in front of the fire to warm up.
He stepped up onto the porch and sighed in relief. He heard Carlise coming up behind him as he jerked open the door.
“You didn’t lock it?” she asked.
Chappy snorted. “It’s not as if someone was going to steal anything while I was gone,” he said a little sarcastically as he stepped inside. The warmth of the cabin felt like heaven. And the roaring in his ears from the wind abruptly ceased as he shut the door behind Carlise.
She hadn’t moved, except to step out of his way so he could shut the door. She looked around with wary eyes. His cabin was one room. There was a queen-size bed along one wall, a couch in the middle of the room facing a large fireplace, a small kitchen along the wall opposite the bed, and a door to the bathroom in the back wall.
Besides the couch and the bed, there was a bookcase, a dresser, a small side table next to the couch, a two-person table near the kitchen, and a large rectangular rug on the floor in front of the fireplace. That was it. The log walls were bare of any decorations, and there weren’t any pictures or other knickknacks to mess up the place.