Renegade Father by RaeAnne Thayne

Author:RaeAnne Thayne
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2001-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

She never knew it was possible to be so cold.

Living through thirty-two Montana winters had given Annie plenty of experience in bitter temperatures—early mornings when she had to chop through six inches of ice in the water troughs so the stock could drink, when her gloves would stick to any surface they touched, when the air was so clear and so frigid that every sound seemed to carry for miles.

But she had never been as bone-deep cold as she was right now. Every breath was torture, as if her lungs were caught in a vice lined with razor blades that sliced tighter with each inhalation.

Her wet hair had frozen solid now they were out of the water and she could hear it crackle when she turned her head, which she didn’t do much since even the slightest movement sent stinging pain cutting through every nerve ending.

She clung to the saddle with fingers that had long ago lost sensation, afraid that if she let go she would fall to the ground and shatter into a million tiny, jagged shards of ice.

Just when she wasn’t sure she could make it another step, the small line shack appeared through the trees. Its simple log walls matched the weathered gray of the tree trunks all around but was more glorious to her than any grand cathedral.

“Here we are,” Joe said behind her.

She was mortally terrified she wouldn’t have the strength to dismount by herself but he took the dilemma out of her hands by lifting her down, just as if she weighed nothing and wasn’t encumbered by another thirty pounds of ice-crusted clothing.

The door to the line shack wasn’t locked and the interior was even more humble than the outside. The air smelled dank with disuse and the one-room shack had few furnishings—just an iron bedstead, an old plank table with a couple of rickety chairs and a few crates nailed to the wall for storage.

She thought it looked wonderful, especially after Joe went to one of the crates and pulled out a pile of blankets.

“Remind me to buy Colt a beer,” he said. “Dry firewood already laid out in the woodstove, warm blankets to bundle up in, even a kerosene lantern. All the comforts of home.”

He handed her two fatigue green army surplus blankets and a brightly colored wool one with a slit in the middle to be worn like a poncho. A ruana, Manny and Ruben called them. “Here, take off those wet clothes and wrap up in these while I try to start a fire.”

She tried to do as he said. She really did. But in the short time it took him to light the lantern and coax a merry little blaze to life in the potbellied stove, she had only been able to take off her coat and pull her sweater over her head.

The buttons on her soaking wet cotton work shirt and on her blue jeans completely defeated her stiff, unwieldy fingers.

He added a medium-sized log to the stove, then turned back to her, his hands on the buttons of his own wet shirt.

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