The Feisty One: A Billionaire Bride Pact Romance Read online

  Her terror had her gripping the steering wheel and coaxing the car into faster speeds. Rental cars out of Idaho Falls had to have good tires, right? They had snow in that place six months out of the year. Greatest snow on earth and all that bunk or… wait, was that Utah? It didn’t matter. All she had to do was keep the car on this nice asphalt driveway and then hopefully get through the gate. What if the gate was locked and didn’t open automatically? Oh, heavens. It had looked pretty strong. Could she ram it? She shook her head. If she couldn’t get through the gate, she’d climb it and run down the main road until someone came along to help her. She could call the police and get some help. Duh! The police. She pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  A deer came out of nowhere. Maryn screamed. She yanked the steering wheel to the left with slick hands. Panic clawed at her throat as the deer stared into her headlights with his huge eyes. Please don’t let me kill him, she prayed.

  Her car squealed off the road and Maryn’s stomach dropped as it cruised down a slight embankment. A tree loomed in front of her. “No,” she cried out, trying to correct, but it was too late. The tree smacked the front of her car with a loud bang. The seatbelt caught her, yanking at her chest then the airbag slammed her back against the seat.

  Coughing out the dust, Maryn sat stunned for a minute. She tried to beat the airbag out of her way and it slowly deflated. Reaching around and jamming the gearshift into reverse, she pressed down on the gas pedal, but sadly the wheels just spun and squealed in protest. She gunned it from drive to reverse for several minutes with equally frustrating results. This was not good.

  Where was that dang phone? She must’ve dropped it when the airbag blasted into her. Pushing the annoying balloon of plastic out of the way, she groped with her fingers along the floor until she finally connected with slick metal and held it up.

  Please, let me be able to get some help. No service. Not even one blasted bar. She sighed with disgust. Just what she needed. She’d only had one bar as she drove into this cursed place and the storm was probably wiping out any signal. Dropping the phone back into her jacket pocket, she evaluated her options. Stay and wait for Tucker to find her, stay and wait for a bear to eat her, or be a tough woman and hike her butt out of this nightmare?

  The snow had already covered her car. She couldn’t even look outside and see if the bear, Tucker Shaffer, or the guard dog were hunting her down. She shivered and turned on the windshield wipers, feeling marginally better when she could at least look at the tree that had squished her rental car.

  She had to be close to the gate. No matter how cold and wet it was outside, she wasn’t parking her tush here any longer. The bear was supposedly on the property and she was like a sitting duck in this wrecked car. Plus, there was no way she was facing Tucker again. If she could get through the gate, she’d be rescued. She would flag someone down on the main road and be safe at her hotel within an hour. Soon she’d be drinking hot cocoa, talking to Alyssa on the phone, and laughing about how crazy this all was.

  What would she tell Alyssa and James about all of this insanity? Remembering the great impression she’d originally had of Tucker made her wonder if she would include anything about those photos and his psycho-man reaction in her article. She’d promised him she wouldn’t share anything about the third floor, and she always kept her promises, but that was before he went crazy on her. She shook her head. Who cared about the stupid article right now? All she wanted was to get away from this snowy purgatory.

  Gingerly opening the door, she swung her head around and listened for a minute. It was deceitfully calm as the thick snow covered any sound and wiped out all visibility. Sliding out from under the airbag, she evaluated her injuries. Her elbow and knee were both aching from the fall in the driveway, but besides knocking the air out of her and probably bruising her chest, the seatbelt and airbag had done their jobs.

  She hugged herself for warmth and cursed her thin jacket and high-heeled boots as she started down the pavement that should lead to the gate and escape. The road twisted and turned. She started to wonder if she’d taken a wrong path. There had been numerous paved paths leading off the main one when she drove through this afternoon. In this thick snow, she couldn’t see the asphalt, covered with inches of snow, except where her boots left a thin trail.

  She had to be on the right path. Any other option could mean death. Death. The closest she’d ever come to that terrifying word was being mugged last summer, but all the punk had really wanted was some cash to buy alcohol. He’d barely roughed her up and though he’d threatened to hurt her, as soon as she gave him money, he’d taken off. Why had she ever left the city? A mugging was nothing compared to this.

  Her gaze darted around the thick snow and even thicker trees. A shiver raced through her that had nothing to do with the fact that she couldn’t feel her toes. If she didn’t get out of here soon, she’d freeze or a bear would rip her to shreds. Suddenly, Tucker Shaffer’s house of crazies didn’t sound so bad.

  “What happened?” Mama Porter’s voice was as soft as the hand on his shoulder.

  Tuck concentrated on the red car peeling out of his driveway. “She saw…” He shook his head and gestured to the desk, cursing himself for not hiding or burning those pictures. “And I behaved badly.” That was a huge understatement. Why didn’t he control his temper? All the old fears and insecurities had arisen, but most of all was the worry of what she thought of him. Instead of trying to fix the situation, he’d turned into a growling jerk.

  “Why didn’t you explain?”

  Tuck gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Explain what? That I killed those children? That would surely make everything better.”

  “You talk yourself into being a monster, but you’re not.” Mama Porter gently patted his shoulder and then left. There wasn’t anything she or anyone else could say.

  Tuck raised his head and watched the snow fall from the heavens. He shouldn’t have let Maryn go out in this, but she was probably safer in the elements than in the house with him. He buried his head in his hands and wallowed in self-pity. His PR people were going to be so ticked at him, but he didn’t really care. He was too upset at himself for terrifying Maryn. He’d started to believe they had a chance to become friends at least. What could he have done differently? Besides keeping her out of his rooms. He couldn’t have explained. There was no excuse for what he’d done that day and the fear in her eyes would’ve only grown. That fear had ripped at his insides. He shook his head and cursed again.

  His phone rang. He didn’t answer it. It rang again and again. Finally, he swiped the screen open and barked, “What?”

  “I’ve lost track of the bear in this storm,” Johnson informed him.

  A clutch of fear hit him. What if Maryn encountered that bear? She’d be safe, as long as she stayed in the car. “Johnson, Maryn left. Did you get her out of the gate?”

  “That’s the other problem. When I got back to the gatehouse, there was no sign that she had left. I backtracked and found her car. Looks like she hit a tree, but… she isn’t in the car.”

  Tucker jumped to his feet, grabbed a sweatshirt off a chair, and ran down the stairs. “Find her,” he ordered Johnson.

  He headed all the way to the basement and unlocked his safe, grabbing a .33 caliber big bore rifle. Sprinting to his lower garage, he jumped onto a four-wheeler and yelled at Braxton, who had followed him, “Call the sheriff. Get Search and Rescue on their way. Maryn’s out in the storm and there’s a grizzly on the loose.”

  He peeled out of the garage and wished he hadn’t heard Braxton’s words, “She’ll be dead before the sheriff gets here.”

  Maryn hated cold. Her feet and hands were so numb she wasn’t sure they were part of her body anymore. She couldn’t stop shivering as her temperature seemed to drop more with each second. Even her face hurt, every flake stinging like a bee sting. Snow was not pretty anymore. It was evil.

  When she got home to California, she would refuse any assignment that was
n’t on a tropical island. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her waste of material, stylish jacket and plunged on. That stupid gate should be in sight, any time now. She started begging the Lord to help her out of this situation.

  The fence appeared next to the road. No, no, no! She couldn’t have gotten lost. This should be the gate. How had she not noticed that she’d veered off the main road? Fear clawed at her throat, tasting metallic. How was she going to get out of here? She’d have to stay next to the fence and hope she was going toward the gate, not circling back to the mansion of scary guy. Actually, she’d take her chances with him right now.

  Could she climb the fence? She looked up. It was wrought iron, straight up, with spiky bars at the top. She didn’t hear a hum so it probably wasn’t electric, but who knew what kind of newfangled contraption Tucker Shaffer might be capable of.

  She ripped a pine cone off a nearby tree and chucked it at the fence. It bounced off without bursting into flames or getting zapped by blue lightning. Wrapping her stiff hands around the cold iron, she tried to scramble up. The slick metal seemed to laugh at her as she slid right back to the ground. Crap. Her hands ached like she was a ninety-year old with arthritis. She forced herself to try again, but couldn’t get her fingers to even grip the metal. She rubbed her fingers together to bring back some circulation but it didn’t help. No hope but to find that stupid gate.

  An uneven thumping sound came from behind her. Maryn searched the whiteness. The sun had gone down shortly after she started walking and the approaching night didn’t give much reassurance of any kind of visibility with this blasted snowstorm. She couldn’t see anything, but the hair on the back of her neck stood up as she heard breathing.

  No. She was imagining things. It wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t Tucker Shaffer. Though at this point she’d take Tucker over the bear. A man could at least be reasoned with, right? Maybe. He’d been pretty terrifying.

  Just hold onto the fence and keep walking. Maryn started pleading with a merciful Father in Heaven to please, please get her out of this mess. She started making all kinds of bargains—she’d call her mother every week and she’d settle down and marry James, even though she didn’t really love him, but it would make him happy and since she was going to dedicate her life to service as soon as she was safe and warm, marrying James was a good first step. Then they’d both give up writing articles about celebrities and go to work for Beckham and Alyssa and their charity stuff. James would hate that, but she was making a sacrifice to marry him so he could make sacrifices too.

  The thumping and the breathing were growing louder and louder. Maryn wanted to sob. The hand brushing a new bar every few seconds was stiff and shaking terribly. She couldn’t hold on any longer. It was all she could do to simply drag her frozen fingers along the metal so she wouldn’t get lost. Her feet were just blocks of ice at the end of her legs. Shaking so hard, her teeth were knocking together, she couldn’t see anything past the cold. Even her eyelashes were frozen and heavy. Trying to blink, she could barely see past the ice coating her lashes.

  She stumbled over a log or something and went down to her knees. Wet snow seeped through her pants. More cold. Insult to injury, but still she wanted to stay on the ground and bawl. Slowly climbing back to her feet, she peered through the snow and trees but couldn’t see anything. The horrible chills encompassing her body were nothing to the terror she felt of a bear finding her.

  Could the bear smell her? Was he tracking her? She tried to climb the fence one more time, but couldn’t even force her hands around the metal. She slid straight to the ground. Slowly bringing her hands to her lips she blew on them to try to restore some movement. Her arms and legs trembled from exhaustion, cold, and terror. She couldn’t take it any longer. Unable to force herself to her feet again, she curled into a ball and prayed more diligently. Let the bear pass me by. Please let him not see me in the storm. Hide me, please, please, please. I’ll turn into a stinking saint, I promise.

  She tried to hold her breath, but it was coming so quick and fast she was pretty sure she was going to pass out. Maybe that was okay. If she was going to die at least she’d be blacked out when the bear swiped her head off. Her entire body shook uncontrollably. She cowered against the fence, wanting to bury her head and not see the monster that was coming, but she couldn’t do it. Her eyes stayed peeled open, staring into the expanse of white.

  A huge brown shape appeared. Maryn bit down so she wouldn’t scream and alert the bear to her presence. As the animal loomed ever closer, Maryn gasped and then started laughing uncontrollably. It was a dog, a huge dog, but still not a bear. A dog she could handle. Even if it wasn’t a friendly sort and bit her, it wouldn’t shred her to bits.

  The dog cocked his head to the side when he noticed Maryn then trotted over to her with tail a wagging and licked her face. Maryn wrapped her arms around his neck and burrowed into his warmth. “Hey there, buddy. You are a sight for sore eyes. Can you help me get to the gate?”

  The dog barked as if to say yes. Maryn chuckled and forced herself to stand, luckily her feet held her up even though she couldn’t feel them anymore.

  This dog was a gift from above. She said a quick prayer of gratitude, but then stiffened. The thumping and breathing was still coming from her left. She swung around to face whatever was coming, clinging to the dog’s collar for support. Please, no. She’d felt safe for half a minute before that illusion was ripped away. Cold sweat trickled down her chest as she backed away, tugging on the dog who had started barking.

  “Quiet, buddy. Let’s just find some trees to hide behind or… something.” She was a city girl, no clue what to do to protect herself and her new friend.

  The bear lumbered into view and all the fear and terror of knowing he was coming didn’t compare with the real life horror of staring at an eight-foot grizzly. His paws were immense and nothing in any movie could have prepared her for the claws on the end of those paws. Drool came from his open mouth with teeth that didn’t seem to stop. He zeroed in on her and Maryn couldn’t even formulate a prayer, all she could hope for was a quick end as her body quivered in fear.

  Maryn did the only thing she could possibly do at that moment. She opened her mouth and screamed and screamed and screamed.

  The bear seemed to regard her for a moment. The pause stretched her already thin nerves to the breaking point. The dog bared his teeth, growled fearlessly and then leapt at the bear.

  “No!” Maryn yelled, reaching out, but only grasping air.

  The bear knocked the dog out of the way, batting him like a toy. The dog slammed into the fence and whimpered. His beautiful brown coat shredded and blood dripping down into the white snow.

  “Oh, no,” Maryn whispered. The poor animal. She ran toward him, but saw the bear raising his paw again. Maryn turned and dove, but she was too slow. The bear’s claws lifted her higher off the ground as he swatted her. White-hot pain sliced through her lower back. She could feel every one of those claws as they raked along her skin. Her screaming didn’t stop as she hit the ground and splayed there in shock for half a second.

  She forced herself to roll over and scamper on hands and knees away from the bear, trying to find somewhere, anywhere to hide. Her back was on fire, the warm blood oozing down her skin in stark contrast to how chilled the rest of her body was.

  She glanced back. The bear was moving her direction with his paw raised again. “No!” Maryn shrieked, pushing to her feet and running. She prayed for some hope of safety that may never come. The bear’s claws dug into her side and threw her against the fence. She slid down to the ground, a cry of anguish ripping from her body. Curling into a tighter ball, she returned to prayer, but really had no hope of deliverance. Now it was a prayer of, Please forgive me and take me to be with Thee. Please make this pain stop and get this over quick. She didn’t feel fear of leaving this world, but she didn’t want the bear to hit her again. Anything but that.

  A blur of red shot out of the forest along with the loud
retort of a gun. Maryn glanced up through bleary eyes. Tucker jumped off a four-wheeler and ran, placing himself between her and the bear.

  “No,” she whimpered. No matter how grumpy Tucker had been with her, she couldn’t stand to see another human be battered like she was.

  The bear reared up and let loose a roar that Maryn felt in every inch of her body. Tears streamed down her face, a mixture of the pain she was enduring and dreading Tucker being hurt. The bear would kill him then finish her and there was nothing she could do.

  Tucker stood there so courageous and tall, like no man or animal could challenge him. Maryn momentarily forgot her agony as she stared. His hair blew back from his face and his dark eyes were full of determination. Tucker was stronger than Superman to her in that moment and braver than an unarmed warrior against the entire army. Time seemed to freeze as the bear faced off against her personal Beast.

  The bear raised his paw and Maryn could hardly stand to watch. Tucker’s jaw hardened as he levelled the gun and pulled the trigger. The bear was thrown back toward the trees. The retort of the rifle thundered through the forest and seemed to pulse in Maryn’s head.

  Tucker fired again. The bear collapsed into a heap of fur and didn’t move. Tucker fired one more time then walked over and pushed at the bear with his boot. Seemingly satisfied, he strode back to her. Maryn glanced up and whimpered.

  “Oh, Maryn.” Tucker set the gun down and lifted her into his arms. His touch on her back sent more pain firing through her body. She buried her head in his chest, not wanting to look at that awful bear. Johnson was calling out to them, but it was coming through a tunnel. Tucker settled onto the four-wheeler and cradled her between his legs as he accelerated away from the carnage.

  Maryn glanced up into his handsome face and whispered, “Thank you.”