Not a Chance(3)

"I'm telling you that they aren't there. They defaulted on their mortgage payment and the bank seized the property. No one knows where they are."

Arden tossed her hair over her shoulder. "You don't know what you're talking about, Travis. I saw them at The Store just last week. Or sometime not too long ago."

"Keep arguing, Princess. It will just make my victory that much sweeter."

"You know what, you can just go to hell. You've been obnoxious and uncivil to me this whole time and I'm sick of it."

Travis laughed out of frustration. If anyone had been "obnoxious and uncivil" it was her. He was just about to tell her so when the truck lurched to the side. They were headed down a steep hill on V Highway and lost traction on a patch of ice. They weren't going very fast and, surprisingly, the princess handled the thing fairly well. So when they wound up in the ditch it wasn't a hard crash.

Their heads jerked forward and back and they sat there breathing heavy for a moment. Travis had been in worse wrecks, so he didn't feel shaken. He looked at Arden and she turned to face him, her jaw set and her eyes narrowed. "Some rescuer you are," she said. Then she hopped out of the truck and started walking, leaving Travis gawking after her.

He gathered his wits and stepped out of the truck. He recoiled at the first onslaught of ice cold wind. He grabbed his coat off the bench and shoved into it. Then he grabbed hers and chased after her. When he caught up with her he put the coat over her shoulders. She shoved her arms through and didn't so much as thank him. Travis couldn't stand the girl, but, after looking down at her thin, three-inch heels, he felt a pang of compassion. They were at least a mile from the Raymer's. The thought of her poor feet made him cringe.

The two of them trudged forward, head on with the wind and snow. Once she stumbled. He caught her before she could fall and then she shoved him away. After what felt like an hour, they finally came upon a mailbox that marked the driveway to the Raymer's. It wound about a quarter of a mile into the woods. Arden stumbled again and reached out for Travis's arm. He reached around her waist and draped her arm over his shoulders so that he could support her the rest of the way. Thankfully she didn't pull away.

At last they arrived at the house. It was dark and had that neglected look that houses get when they haven't been lived in for a while. A yellow piece of paper stuck to the door. Travis turned the knob. Locked. He took a step back and placed a swift kick with the bottom of his boot right next to the door knob breaking it open with a shower of splinters.

Travis and Arden stumbled into the house, pushing the door closed behind them and falling to the floor on hands and knees. They sat with their backs to opposite walls, facing each other.

"Told you," Travis said.

Arden flipped him off.





CHAPTER TWO



Travis and Arden leaned against opposite walls, both breathing heavily. "That was some pretty fancy driving," Travis said. "You should run in the demolition derby over in Rogersville."

"Fuck you!" she said, with less force than she probably wanted being as she was exhausted.

Travis raised his brows in surprise. "Nice language, Princess."

"Listen, asshole, you couldn't have gotten us any farther than I did, so why don't you just back off." She sat up straighter and reached for her feet, wincing as she slid first one shoe off and then the other.

It was dark in the house, so Travis flipped on his cell phone. It was hard to tell in the bluish light, but her feet appeared to be uninjured. He leaned forward to look at them.

"They hurt really bad," she said.

He refrained from commenting on her shoes because she couldn't have known she would have been hiking in them. But still, why did women do that to themselves?

"It's like this dull throb that keeps getting worse and worse."

He looked up at her, annoyed. All this fussing over cold feet.

She met his gaze. "I saw this survival show and this guy was walking through some frozen tundra and he got frost-bite on his feet and his toes, like, fell off." Her look of desperation was so amusing, Travis had to stop himself from grinning.

He reached for one of her feet, but she jerked it back. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Trying to shut you up." He snatched the foot back and wrapped his hands around it, completely covering it. He held it for a long time, gently massaging with his thumbs until most of the chill had left. Then he took the other foot and did the same with it. Arden leaned her head back on the wall and closed her eyes.

"That feels so good," she said. And he imagined doing this to her in bed, expanding that look of pleasure on her face, hearing her moan with desire and beg him for more. Before he realized it, he had moved from massaging her foot to stroking her calf and she hadn't stopped him. Maybe this night would turn out better than he'd originally thought.