Stranded in the Woods Read online

  THE SNOW WAS A LOT worse than Penny had realized.

  It was more than a half hour later when she finally climbed behind the seat of the pickup truck they kept for Holiday Acres business.

  As she was backing out of the parking space, she had to pause to talk to Scott and Olivia, who were just now leaving for the Mistletoe Cottage, one of the luxury vacation cottages on their property. Scott and Olivia suggested she stay at home, which Penny just ignored.

  Evidently, everyone she knew believed she was completely incapable of handling basic life duties like driving in the snow.

  Sometimes it bothered her. She might be a little absentminded, but that didn’t mean she was incompetent. It just meant there were things more important to her than order and schedule.

  But as she pulled the truck out onto the road, she really wished she’d started out two hours ago when she’d originally planned.

  The snow was terrible—big, thick flakes coming down hard and fast and covering her windshield before she could get the wipers up to swipe them away. The forecasters had predicted a light dusting of snow today, the edges of a snowstorm that was supposed to go north of them. Evidently the path of the storm had shifted and had hit them fully instead.

  The road through the tree farm was perfectly straight and flat, so the large tires of the pickup rolled over the accumulated snow fairly easily. When she got to the stop sign, she could have turned left and gotten to town in less than five minutes, but she was traveling in the other direction, so she turned right. As soon as she made the turn onto the winding road that ran through the wooded part of their property where the cottages were, she had to grip the steering wheel and pray.

  Her family might own the biggest Christmas store in three surrounding states, but it only snowed occasionally in this part of Virginia, and when it did, it was usually just a couple of inches that melted off by the next day.

  She didn’t have a lot of practice driving in snow like this, and she didn’t like it.

  If everyone hadn’t spent the morning trying to convince her that she shouldn’t take this trip today, she might have turned around to go home. But she didn’t want to confirm to herself and to the rest of world that she was truly incompetent at life, so she kept going.

  She made slow progress and eventually passed the driveways to each of the cottages the Holidays owned. Once she left their property, the two-lane road continued for several miles through the woods before it reached an intersection with a large state road. The plows would already be working on clearing that larger road, so if she could make it that far, she would be fine.

  She just needed to reach that intersection.

  The snow was coming down even worse now than it had been ten minutes ago, if that was possible, and the wind had picked up and was blowing heavy gusts of snow against her windshield. It felt like there was a layer of ice beneath the snow because her tires kept slipping as the truck pushed its way through.

  It didn’t seem possible to be in danger of slipping and in danger of getting stuck at the exact same time, but that was how it felt.

  She definitely shouldn’t have started out on this trip this afternoon.

  Everyone else had been right.

  She had been wrong.

  Penny didn’t spend much time trying to defend the indefensible, so she was usually quick about admitting she was wrong.

  Not that there was anyone around to admit this to at the moment.

  She was so far from the main house now that it would be foolish to try to turn around since she’d almost certainly get stuck making the maneuver. She was still in the middle of the woods and had a distance to drive before she got to a gas station or restaurant.

  She took a quick assessment of her location and realized the closest building to where she was would be Kent Matheson’s cabin.

  The turnoff to his place was just ahead.

  Kent had remained one of her closest friends until shortly after she’d graduated college and their fathers had gotten into a huge fight that had led to a long-standing feud between their two families. But even before the fight, Penny had been in college in Charlottesville, and Kent had moved into his cabin, so they weren’t as close as they used to be.

  After the fight, he’d refused to talk to her at all.

  Now he didn’t talk to anyone, as far as she could tell. Maybe to his brothers but that was it. He never socialized with anyone in town. He never did anything but come into town once a week to buy groceries and supplies. He was a graphic artist and did all his work online, so he could live a mostly isolated existence.

  Obviously she hadn’t meant as much to him as he’d meant to her.

  The last time she’d talked to him had been four years ago, after their fathers had both died in the same tragic accident. She hadn’t gotten a chance to speak to him at his father’s funeral, so she’d stopped by his cabin the following day.

  He hadn’t even opened the door.

  When she’d kept knocking and calling out for him, he’d finally growled out from behind the door, “Go away, Penny.”

  “But I wanted to talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “We were kids. We’re not kids anymore. And I don’t want to talk right now. Go away.”

  So she’d gone away, hoping he didn’t know she was crying, and she had never tried to talk to him again.

  If he wanted to be a reclusive jerk, then that was his choice. She couldn’t do anything about it. She certainly wasn’t going to keep making efforts toward a former friend who wouldn’t even open the door to her.

  Kent had had a difficult childhood with a cold, hard father, but still...

  There had been no reason for him to treat her like that.

  She deserved better, and she’d always believed in not accepting less from men than she deserved (which might be one of the reasons why she’d only had a couple of boyfriends).

  She wasn’t resentful toward Kent the way Olivia was toward Scott. Penny still had fond memories of hanging out with him for hours, drawing and talking and sitting in companionable silence, but he wasn’t part of her life anymore.

  It was sad. She wished it were different.

  But it wasn’t.

  She was so worried about the condition of the roads and her ability to keep driving, however, that she slowed down when she reached the turn toward his cabin.

  She had a choice now.

  Keep going and hope she didn’t get stuck on the side of the road. Or turn off here and see if Kent would let her stay for a few hours until the snow slacked off and she was able to get back home.

  The stubborn part of her nature wanted to keep going. To prove she could do this and to avoid asking Kent for help.

  But stubbornness had never been the strongest force in Penny’s character.

  And her intuition was screaming at her now—telling her not to be stupid. So she slowly made the turn onto the long, winding drive that led to his cabin.

  She managed the turn, although she almost squealed when the truck felt like it was moving out of her control. She straightened it out and continued, but the drive was uphill and the snow was deep. About halfway up, as she was trying to straighten out from a curve, the vehicle slid slowly but irretrievably into the ditch on the side of the road. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get it to move either forward or backward. She thought about getting out to push, but she was close enough to the cabin now that it would be easier to just walk.

  She buttoned her coat up all the way, straightened her snow hat, hooked her big bag on her shoulder, and opened the door to brave the elements.

  She was wearing tall boots, but they only provided a limited amount of protection in this weather.

  The wind whipped against her face and the snow blew into her eyes as she trudged forward up the hill. It would normally just be a two-minute walk from the truck to Kent’s cabin, but it was going to take her a lot longer because she was hav
ing so much trouble walking through the snow.

  She’d been struggling for about three minutes when it occurred to her that it might be smart to call Kent and let him know she was coming.

  He might be in the shower. He might be sleeping. He might not even be home, although that would be very unlikely given his hermit-like habits.

  So she dug her phone out of her bag and searched for his number, which she still had in her contacts, although she hadn’t used it in years.

  She’d just found it and had hit the button to connect the call when her boot slipped and her foot slid out from beneath her.

  She tried to catch herself before she fell, causing both her arms to flail out. The phone flew out of her hand, and she landed hard in the snow, soaking the front of her body and burying her face in a drift.

  She scrambled up as soon as she could, but she was freezing now and her whole body ached from the fall, particularly a muscle in her leg that she must have pulled.

  She was freezing and flustered and convinced that everyone in the world was right about her. What the heck was she even doing here when she should be safe at home?

  Plus she had lost her darn phone.

  She stumbled over in the direction it had been thrown, but she couldn’t find it. She couldn’t even see a hole in the snow that it must have made when it landed because the wind was pushing the snow around so much.

  The phone was just gone.

  She spent a couple of minutes looking for it before she gave up.

  She had to get inside soon. This was terrible and just getting worse.

  She’d made it up farther when she fell again, this time jarring her hands and shoulders painfully. She wanted to sit down and cry, but that would be the stupidest thing of all, so she hauled herself up again.

  She’d taken three more steps when she heard a voice drifting over on the wind.

  It sounded like it was saying her name.

  Maybe she was imagining it. Or it was like a mirage—auditory rather than visual—a voice she was conjuring up in her desperation.

  Then she heard it again.

  A male voice. “Penny?”

  Her throat was so sore that when she tried to respond to the voice, all that came out was a squeak.

  “Penny? Penny, are you out there somewhere?”

  Kent. It was Kent. She was sure of it.

  “Yes!” she screamed at the top of her voice. This time she was able to generate a gratifyingly loud sound. “I’m here!”

  “Damn it, woman! What the hell are you doing out here in the snow?”

  He sounded very bad-tempered, but she didn’t even care. She was so relieved to hear him that she just called out again, “I’m here!”

  After less than a minute, she could see him, a big, dark figure against the white, like some sort of hairy monster of the woods. Bigfoot or a yeti.

  She wasn’t sure why she had that impression, and it didn’t matter. He was here. She wasn’t going to freeze to death all alone in the snow.

  “What the hell, Penny?” he growled, striding closer to her.

  He was moving better than she was, but his legs were a lot longer.

  “You can interrogate me later,” she said, still speaking loudly over the wind. “For now, just help me get inside.”

  He might have responded. She assumed he would have. But she never got a chance to hear what he might have said.

  Because her foot slipped out from beneath her as she took her next step, and she fell on her face again.

  Two

  KENT HAD BEEN HAVING a perfectly decent day until his phone rang.

  His phone almost never rang.

  He ran his business as a graphic artist entirely online, and all communication was done through email or messaging. He never gave his clients a phone number so they wouldn’t call and pester him. His brothers would occasionally call him but usually in the evenings. And his Uncle Russ called once a week like clockwork on Sunday afternoons.

  Today wasn’t a Sunday, however. And his brothers never called on a random Thursday afternoon. No one else should be calling him for any reason.

  So he literally jumped when the phone rang in his one-room cabin.

  He’d woken up early that morning like usual and gone down to the road to run in the dark for an hour as he always did. After he’d showered and dressed, he’d started working on his current project, and the only breaks he’d taken were to bring in some extra firewood when it started to snow and to make a sandwich for lunch.

  He’d made good progress and had been enjoying himself as much as he ever did anymore when the phone rang and ruined it.

  He almost ignored it, but it was so strange for him to get a call at all that he finally got up and walked over to look at the screen.

  Penny Holiday.

  What the hell?

  He hadn’t talked to her since that day four years ago when she’d come to visit and he hadn’t opened the door to her.

  He hadn’t been in fit state to talk to anyone that day. He’d been at the end of his rope emotionally—the place where he was likely to lose it completely. Say something unforgiveable. Or do something. He wouldn’t have been able to control himself. He’d already started to withdraw from the world back then, but he hadn’t wanted to lose control with Penny.

  And if he’d opened the door to her that day, he would have done so. Hurt her. Lost her forever.

  She’d been a friend to him since they were in elementary school, and they’d discovered they both loved to draw. She’d been a year younger than him, but it hadn’t mattered. They’d hung out for hours that year and all the years that followed, drawing and painting and molding in clay. Sometimes they’d talked, and sometimes they hadn’t said a word, and either way it had been comfortable, companionable.

  Four years ago, he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, so he hadn’t opened the door.

  She’d been crying when she left, and that memory still left a knot in his gut, but that was better than his saying something that could never be taken back.

  Or doing something. Something that might be even worse.

  She hadn’t made any attempt to contact him since that day. Like everyone else, she must have resigned herself to the fact that Kent wasn’t looking for friends or companions.

  Even old ones.

  Even someone who had meant as much to him as Penny had.

  So there was absolutely no reason for her to be calling him on a winter afternoon. It was so strange to see her name on his phone that he ended up answering the call.

  No one was there.

  “Hello?” When no one answered, he said, “Hello, Penny?”

  Her voice didn’t sound on the other end of the line. No noise at all came through.

  “Penny?”

  Maybe it was a pocket dial. Maybe she’d left him in her contacts the way he’d left her, and she’d just accidently hit his number and then immediately hung up when she’d realized it.

  What else could it be?

  Penny wasn’t going to want to talk to him after all this time, and he really shouldn’t have gotten so excited about seeing her name on his phone.

  The call was still connected, however. She hadn’t hung up. She just wasn’t there.

  It was snowing hard now. Several inches had accumulated on the ground, and it was still coming down fast. Holiday Acres was only a few miles away from his cabin, and Penny still lived and worked there.

  He knew that much since he occasionally steered conversations with his brothers or with Russ to find out what she was up to.

  The last time he’d done so, Russ had snidely commented that if he wanted to know how Penny was doing he should get his ass out the door and come over to see her.

  That had effectively ended the conversation because Kent had hung up on his uncle, but Russ had called back the following Sunday and acted like nothing had happened.

  If Penny had been driving out in this snow, it was possible that she’d gotten into trouble and had called him for h
elp. Other than a pocket dial, that was the only explanation Kent could come up with for the call.

  He opened his front door and stepped out into the snow, looking down his driveway as far as he could see. The wind was blowing so hard right now that there were blizzard conditions, and Kent couldn’t see beyond the first curve anyway.

  “Penny?” he called out. It was stupid. She wasn’t likely to be out there anywhere. But he raised his voice and shouted again, “Penny?”

  Nothing but wind and a lot of snow.

  Giving it one more try, he shouted, “Penny, are you out there somewhere?”

  To his shock, he heard a female voice on the wind replying, “Yes! I’m here!”

  Kent was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, and he only took the time to put his boots on. She couldn’t be very far, and he didn’t want to waste time digging out his coat and gloves.

  What the hell was she doing out there in snow like this? No one should be out there in this kind of weather.

  He was so worried about her that he heard himself demanding as he clomped his way through the snow, “Damn it, woman, what the hell are you doing out here in the snow?”

  Penny sometimes got absorbed in what she was doing and forgot about practicalities. Someone at Holiday Acres should know that about her and have stopped her from coming out in this weather. What the hell was everyone thinking over there?

  He heard her calling out again, and she sounded closer now. When he turned the next curve, he saw her, a bundled form carrying a ridiculously large bag and limping forward through a veil of white flakes.

  “What the hell, Penny?” he roared. She was covered with snow. How long had she been out here, and why hadn’t she called him sooner?

  Penny didn’t say anything in response. She just fell forward into the snow.

  He’d reached her by then, and he bent over to grab her by the shoulders and haul her up.

  “Hey!” She was blinking quickly and spitting out snow. “Be careful! I’m not a sack of potatoes, you know.”

  He couldn’t see any of her body beneath the long, heavy coat she wore, but her wool cap was askew, her reddish-brown hair was soaked and caked with snow, and her cheeks were as red as her lips normally were. She was scowling at him dramatically.