Page 38 of Famous for a Living

I stop. Or at least, I am aware I’ve stopped because the trees have stopped moving. My legs long ago became two stumps.

My hands fly up. “Do you just hate me? Are you taking me out into the woods to kill me?”

Zaiah’s boots pause at my words.

He turns and looks at me as though noticing me for the first time.

Both brows raise in puzzlement.

“I thought New Yorkers liked to walk. I thought that was your thing.”

“Not when it’s ten degrees and you’ve lost all feeling in your legs. Not then!”

At this his gaze drifts down to my legs—which beneath my knee-length coat are covered by a pair of cable-knitted black tights and fur-lined tan boots. The fur is matted and jutting out in all directions with little frozen icicle spikes. It isn’t my fault my feet are numb either. I learned my lesson the previous day and went for the warmest boots I could find. I think it’s perfectly understandable I hadn’t anticipated having to wade through snow up a mountain.

For the first time, Zaiah seems to notice this. His expression shifts into sympathy. Even a bit of embarrassment. “You said you liked the weather. You said you liked all the snow.”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted to take a fifteen-mile bath in it.”

He glances around at the miles of trees around us. Puts his hands on his hips.

Stares at me.

My forehead wrinkles. What?

Starting at my boots, his eyes move up my body. But it’s nothing romantic. No.

What he’s doing is looking me over as though I’m a child who said I’m tired of walking (which, fine, I did say that), but we’re in the middle of nowhere without a stroller and now he, the parent, has to decide if he’ll just have to throw me over his shoulder and carry me.

He sighs. Takes a step toward me.

Hang on now.

I raise my hands. “I’m not saying I give up. I just . . . I just want to know how much longer.”

Wow. I hear my own words. I’ve actually done the “Are we there yet?” thing kids do to their parents on a road trip.

He takes another step toward me.

My hands rise higher. He can’t be serious. He can’t really be about to haul me up like a toddler.

Absolutely not.

I don’t care if I lose my legs to hypothermia, there is absolutely no way I’m going to be carried around on my first day of work.

I’d die of humiliation right here.

I open my mouth, about to tell him to “halt right there,” when he stops just before me. Drops down on one knee.

What the—?

He pulls off one of his thick gloves, and before I know it, he’s swiping the snow off the cuff of my boots. Then, the instant heat blooms in my cheeks, I feel him reaching one hand in my boot, his warm fingers against my pink, frozen-to-the-touch ankles. He scoops out slush from my calf and tosses it into the snow.

No, this is worse. Just throw me over your shoulder.

“I can do that. You don’t need to do that,” I begin faintly.

He ignores me. “We’re almost there. Do you think you can make it a few more minutes?”