Unfortunately, her bladder was screaming at her.

It took her another five minutes, but she finally talked herself into making a run for the bathroom. Throwing off the covers, she leapt from the bed and sprinted through the small house to its lone bathroom. She cranked up the shower to the hottest setting to try to build up steam, and dashed through her morning routine despite the shivers wracking her body. When the water in the shower finally reached a reasonable temperature, she jumped beneath the spray.

It took a full two minutes before she felt heat return to her beleaguered limbs. And when she stepped out of the shower, she gloried in the steam that filled the small bathroom. Mostly dry, she gazed at the door leading to the rest of the house.

“It’s like I know there are a thousand snakes on the other side of it, yet I have no choice but to go out there,” she muttered before laughing at herself. “This is ridiculous!”

Wrapped in a towel, Natalie took a deep breath for courage and opened the door. Yep. It was as bad as she’d expected. She darted back to the bedroom and made a beeline for the dresser. After yanking her undergarments on, which wasn’t easy—she was shaking more violently than a single leaf in an autumn breeze—she found her warmest pair of wool pants.

Next, she piled on four shirts, a sweater, and a coat that didn’t want to fit over the bulk of her cleverly “layered” clothes. The only shoes she’d brought were not going to cut it, and she was kicking herself for that now. Her toes were going to turn black and fall off with frostbite before this Montana adventure was over.

Once she’d clothed herself as best as she could, she moved over to the blasted furnace, which was really just a glorified space heater. Not knowing what else to do, she slammed it hard with palm of her hand and stood there shaking as she waited for a miracle.

Nothing happened.

“All right. Time to go shopping.”

She’d never thought she’d be the type of woman to wear hopelessly unattractive long underwear, but if she was going to survive a Montana winter, she’d dang well better get used to the things. She didn’t even care what color they were, just as long as they kept her warm.

Rushing outside, she gazed at her “new” car, a small blue Toyota probably from the Pleistocene era. It had most certainly seen better days, but it was hers and the heater worked, and nothing at the moment was more beautiful than the thought of a burst of warm air blasting from the vents. It took the old metal heap about five minutes before the heat actually began flowing, but once the warmth hit her, she smiled in delight.

“Not so bad,” she muttered. It occurred to her that maybe she was talking to herself just a little too much. “Oh well.”

Driving into the almost comically small town, Natalie was surprised by the lack of traffic. No one seemed to be around. What was going on? These people had to be used to driving in the snow. But all she’d seen on the roads were big plows clearing the streets.

She reached a stop sign and tapped on her brakes, and in the blink of an eye everything began to go wrong. Though her taps were growing urgent—hell, they were stomps now—the car wasn’t responding, and in front of her was a gigantic black truck.

“No. No. No!”

Nope. That didn’t work. Her car kept on going, and she crashed into the back of the behemoth. And even though she was going less than fifteen miles per hour, her tiny Toyota had no chance of surviving.

Her car went beneath the truck’s bumper. Her hood crinkled, and steam flew up into the air as her radiator was impaled. The impact jolted her head forward, but the small car’s air bags didn’t deploy for some reason and she felt the sting of her forehead connecting with the steering wheel.

Dammit! She hadn’t even insured the car yet! Now what in the heck was she going to do? Tears sprang to her eyes, but with a will borne of hard times, she blinked them away and stepped out of what was once a running car. At least she hadn’t suffered more than a couple of bruises and a huge dent to her pride. She really hoped the bulk of the physical damage was only to her car and not the other vehicle.

“What in the hell are you doing out on the road if you can’t even do as simple a task as stopping at a big red sign? Did you decide that today would be a great day to plow into a complete stranger?”

Instant fury filled her. Natalie’s eyes burned as she watched Hawk Winchester stalk toward her, his face a mask of irritation.

“Yeah. I just learned how to drive. I thought, what the hell—I’ll go screaming through this incredibly small town, and then I’ll blow through a stop sign and kill my car on the back of some idiot’s butt-ugly truck!”

Sure, she might regret her quick temper later, but right now, she was ready to throw a kicking, screaming, and gleefully adolescent temper tantrum. Too much had happened in the last fifteen hours, and this was just the icing on a very frozen cake. At least her fury was masking the fact that she was still freezing. There was nothing like an exploding temper to heat the blood.

“Why would you be driving a car without snow chains in this weather?”

“I just moved in last night, as you well know, and I haven’t had time to buy chains, not that it’s any of your business!”

“Well, maybe you should have walked. Of course, that’s another disaster waiting to happen in those absurd shoes you’re wearing.”

Natalie had been mad enough before, but his disdainful look made her want to smack the crap out of the man. She had never, ever had the urge to close her fingers into a fist and slug anyone, but at this moment her mind was urging her to do just that.

Too bad her fingers were freezing and incapable of forming a fist.

“You are the most pompous, self-absorbed man I have ever met in my life.” She’d thought of him as gorgeous the night before, but now he counted as monstrous, like his truck. “Just bill me for the damage.” She spun around and did her best to storm off. Not easy in heels and all that snow, and without a working car. But she was so done with this conversation, done with speaking to this man, and done with a ridiculous town that didn’t even have an open store on a freaking Thursday, for goodness’ sake.

“You can’t just go off like that. We haven’t even exchanged insurance information yet!” he yelled, but she wasn’t listening.

“Call the cops on me, then!”

She was feeling pretty damn good about her exit until her feet decided they weren’t going to cooperate. She didn’t even have a chance to stop the fall.

“Natalie!”

He couldn’t catch her this time. One minute she was walking away. The next, everything went black . . .

chapter

3

Hawk reached Natalie just in time to see her head slam into the ground and her eyes roll back in her head. Damn! Possible concussion. He lifted her in his arms and raced back to his truck, where the heater was still running. “Come on, Natalie. Open your eyes,” he commanded.

She began to stir. “What happened?” Her eyes fluttered open, then widened when she saw him only a few inches from her face.

“You fell down and hit your head,” he said, and then he ran his hands over her ankles and wrists.

“Ouch!”

“That’s what I thought. You bruised your wrist, too.”

Dammit! It was Thanksgiving and he was already running late. His mother was going to kill him.

“I’ll take you to the doc. Give me a minute to move your car out of the road.”

Leaving her on the front seat of his truck, he jogged back to her car. She’d crushed her radiator, and there was no chance that the heap of metal would start now. After he put the car in neutral, it took him a few tries for his feet to gain traction on the ground, but he managed to roll the car to the curb before jogging back to his truck. He found Natalie there huddled in a ball, her entire body shivering.

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about the car,” he told her. “But the doc should look at you.” He knew he didn’t sound very reassuring. Normally, it was his job to reassure people who’d been in accidents, as he was a damn fine paramedic as well as being fire chief. So why was he so tongue-tied all of a sudden?

“I’m fine. If you can just drop me off at my house . . .” she said, her voice alarmingly quiet.

“Not gonna happen.”

He didn’t say anything else. He threw his truck into drive and headed out of town. The doc didn’t live far from his parents. Maybe he’d even get a piece of the doc’s wife’s sweet apple pie. That woman had the best pie in the county—hell, maybe the country—though he’d never say such a thing to his mother, or he’d be banned from her table.

Hawk’s gaze strayed repeatedly over to Natalie as he cruised the snow-covered country roads. Forcing his eyes forward, his thoughts strayed to the conversation he’d had with the town meddlers.

We have a perfect tenant for your house. That should have been Hawk’s first clue that the women had been up to no good. When he’d received a phone call from his mother demanding that he make the new teacher feel welcome in their little town, he’d been suspicious, but apparently not enough to say no to letting her use his rental house.

What in the hell did his mother and her best friend, Bethel, think? That he was going to make Natalie some blueberry muffins and show up on her front porch carrying a basket? Hawk didn’t do that. And he certainly didn’t mingle with fiery-tempered red-haired schoolteachers. Not ever.