driver to have a merry Christmas. She hurried across the street then, pinching her thin coat together in the front to fight off the chill. The man at the rental place, after insisting she get every extra insurance coverage they offered, assured her she was doing the right thing.
“If anything can get you up to Front Range this time of year, this baby can,” the round man assured while hoisting his pants from his lower hips to his upper belly.
“Thank you.” Now there was just one last thing to do. Text Easton Sparks and let him know she was on her way. That way, if she got lost or stuck or stranded—and hopefully she would not—he could alert someone. Like the authorities to come and collect her dead, frozen body.
No, Ivy. Claim it. Things will be fine.
She tapped Easton’s number into her texting app and typed out a quick message.
This is Ivy Ingles. The cab wouldn’t take me all the way, so I’m driving there myself in a huge SUV. Please…
She paused there. Please, what?
Yet just as she began to consider her options, her thumb accidentally bumped the screen.
Oh no. Please don’t…
The device let out a small but certain swish. A beat of paranoia rushed through her as she realized it sent before she was finished. She read over the sent message in a frenzy, assuring that auto correct hadn’t done anything crazy. When she found that it hadn’t, Ivy hovered her thumbs over the keypad once more, preparing to finish the last sentence of her text when a reply popped in beneath it.
A reply from Easton.
Please what, Ivy? C’mon, don’t be shy…
She growled and shook her head. “I’m not replying to that at all,” she declared. “He knows I’m coming. That’s enough for now.” And with that, she put her navigation app to work and headed toward her final interview.
She was just six miles into her forty-minute trek when another text came in. This one, also, from Easton. Had she not had her phone propped on the dash and, had his message not been so very short, Ivy couldn’t have read the reply until she was stopped. As it was, the quick flash at the top of the screen showed her just what he’d said. Two short words that put a little warmth in her heart in the frigid day.
Drive safe.
Chapter 3
Why in heavens name did he have to have such a bleeding heart? The blizzard was coming in strong now, making it hard to distinguish one white-covered surface from the next. Some were higher, some were lower, some were close up and others farther away, but in the flurry of thick flakes, it was hard to decipher which was which.
“Where in the crud are you, Ivy?” he grumbled, hands clenched tight around the wheel. Two hours had passed. Two full hours. At best, it should have taken her no more than an hour, maybe an hour and a half to get from the main airport to the campground under conditions like these. He’d watched. He’d waited. But no one had come.
There’d been no point trying to call her. She’d have lost reception before hitting the mouth of the canyon. Only once she was close to the campground would she be able to get reception once more.
Without any visible tire tracks in either direction, the road was that much harder to see. Easton squinted his eyes, relying on memory once he recognized the very high structure to his right. Point High Rock. Okay, he wasn’t that much further from the mouth of the canyon, which was both comforting and frightening. When would he spot this so-called huge SUV she was sporting?
But then it came into view. Kind of. The shape of such an SUV beneath a thin but thorough layer of snow. As he lowered his gaze, he spotted a set of glowing dots, muted by a coating of flakes as well. A sudden movement from the covered mound took him by surprise, until he recognized what it was—windshield wipers.
His own wipers, frantically sweeping back and forth, a hundred times to her one, gave him a glimpse of the woman behind the wheel before the snow took over once more.
A wave of relief pushed through him. She was okay, thank goodness. He had to hand it to her—the woman was ambitious. And, if his eyes hadn’t deceived him through the blur of fogged glass and puffy flakes, she was fairly pretty as well.
Trouble was, as she’d likely discovered today