Free Ice by Linda Howard

through some particularly heavy undergrowth and halted so abruptly she plowed into his back. “Finally,” he said, reaching back to steady her. “Here’s the road. There’s about a three-foot drop down to it, so be careful.”
    He bent down, gripped a sapling, and used it to steady himself as he jumped down the low embankment. His feet skidded on the ice, but with the aid of the sapling he stayed upright. Gingerly he turned, reached up, and grasped Lolly around the waist, then lowered her to the road with easy strength. “Watch your step,” he warned. “There’s a shallow ditch here. Walk on the weedy strip between the ditch and the pavement; it’s better footing.”
    Head down, Lolly concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Surely they had gone more than a half mile; shouldn’t they have reached his truck by now? She had grown up on this mountain, knew it like the back of her hand, most of the time, but the darkness, the cold, the unrelenting series of shocks, had all left her disoriented and she had no real idea where they were. Her hands and feet hurt somuch from the cold she felt as if she could barely shuffle forward. She couldn’t do anything about her feet, and Gabriel gripped one of her hands so she couldn’t do anything about it, either, but her other hand she wormed under the poncho and several other layers of clothing to reach the bare skin of her warm belly. She could barely feel the warmth on her fingers, but her belly could definitely feel the cold of her hand. There, that was a little better.
    Now and then she darted a glance at the man who was leading her, though in the darkness she couldn’t make out much more than his height and the width of his shoulders—that, and the determination with which he faced the storm head-on. She remembered the way he’d looked when he’d popped up in her window, though. He was older, obviously; so was she. A lot of years had passed since he’d graduated—fifteen of them!—and they’d both changed.
    He was no longer a cocky teenager with the world at his feet; he was a grown man, a widower with a son, as she’d heard during one of her trips to Wilson Creek. Becoming a father and losing his wife were life-changing events; no way could he be the same person he was when they were in school. She wasn’t, and she hadn’t been through anything as traumatic as losing a spouse. There was nothing traumatic in her life at all. Instead she’d quietly made her way, made a settled life for herself, shed a lot of her insecurities and shyness.
    She had butted heads with him for as long as shecould remember, and right now … she wasn’t sure why. Was it because she’d always had such a ferocious crush on him, and never expected him to like her in any way, so she’d protected herself by developing a shield of hostility? Teenagers were such tangled pits of angst and emotion, anything was possible. Looking back, she felt slightly bemused by their teenage selves.
    If there would ever be any time for putting the past behind them, that time was now. She leaned slightly toward him and said, “Thank you,” her voice raised so he could hear her over the rain and the wind.
    “Thank me if those psychos don’t come after us and we get off the mountain before the trees start to fall,” he said without looking at her.
    Okay, that sounded a little abrupt, but she did something that, fifteen years ago, she could never have done: she mentally shrugged and let it go. Under the circumstances, he was allowed to feel testy.
    They were walking right into the wind now, which gave her some bearings. Lolly glanced up, but not for long; the rain stung her face like icy pellets, the wind stole her breath with its chill. The wind was from the north, so if it was in her face then they were walking north, which meant they were on the long slope before a very sharp curve that would take them southeast.
    They weren’t that far from the house at all.
    They had some time before