Free Mountain's Captive by Michelle M. Pillow Page A

smiled ruefully at her wit. “And I don’t think he’ll answer me right away.”
    “Naturally.” Chloe sighed. Then with a gleam in her eye, she said, “Wait, I have my cell phone.”
    Everest laughed and shook his head. “Won’t work.”
    Chloe grinned shrewdly at that. Her tone was a bit gloating, as she declared, “It bounces off of a satellite. It will work.”
    “Feel free to try. It’ll give you something to do.” Everest set his cup in the sink and rinsed it out. “But the signal first goes to a tower and then a satellite. There are no towers around here. And, before you ask, the cable lines will be down so there will be no working place to plug in a modem to send emails. We are effectively cut off from the rest of the world.”
    “How about the smoke signal?” Chloe mumbled, as she sunk wearily into a chair. She glared at him as he shook his head to her rhetorical question. “Then I’m trapped here.”
    “Only for a few months, worst case three. I am sure your fiancé will wait for you.” Everest didn’t know why the idea of her with another man aggravated him. “It really isn’t so bad. Hey, maybe you’ll be able to get some work done without any distractions.”
    “Yeah, he’ll wait.” Chloe laid her head on the table. Paul would wait, but in two months it would be too late. Her father’s will was clear. It stipulated that she had to be married by her thirtieth birthday. That was in four weeks. “Any chance we could be out of here in four weeks?”
    “A slim one,” Everest answered. Suddenly, he grew edgy at the notion of her staying with him. This was going to be the longest winter of his life. Walking to the kitchen door her turned to her. “Make yourself at home. Food is in the pantry. I’m going to chop some firewood and bring it to the porch.”
    Chloe nodded her head without looking up. Her blue eyes glared into the grains of the hard wood table. What was she going to do?

Chapter Eleven
    I t was a long and boring day for Chloe. Everest spent most of the morning outside cutting firewood. She watched him for only a moment before forcing herself to turn away. He was too damned sexy swinging his thick arms over his head with the ax. Then he had disappeared into one of the outer sheds. Around noon, he came in for a sandwich and then left again. The worst part was, he did all of this with hardly a word to her.
    Chloe didn’t know what to do. She was bored out of her mind and the only thing she could think of involved Everest. Cursing her dirty mind, she tried to keep herself busy.
    He had said to make herself at home, but she didn’t know what that meant. She had wanted to unpack her clothes, but didn’t know where to put them. She knew she should work on her new novel, but couldn’t get into it. She usually worked on a large table, spreading the mess of her research papers around her living room in miniature stacks of organization. Though, to everyone else it looked like a tree exploded.
    She doubted Everest would welcome such a mess into his neatly organized life. He was perhaps the cleanest man she had ever met. But what else did he have to do, being trapped alone in the mountains all year round?
    So instead she spent the hours wandering his home, familiarizing herself with her surroundings. Even the man’s kitchen and bathroom cabinets were neatly arranged and organized to annoying perfection. Chloe thought of her own messy apartment and was ashamed. Then, with nothing better to do, she decided she would try cooking. She wasn’t a gourmet chef, but surely she could handle a simple meal for two. She had snooped through the kitchen so she had a basic idea where he kept everything. Everest would have to come back to eat sometime and she felt she had better do something to make her stay with him as painless as possible.
    Everest hadn’t asked her to invade his home or his privacy. She had to remind herself that he was a man used to being alone. Their marriage, after all, was