Page 23 of Snowed In with Benefits

“Why is he a zombie?” I ask, laughing.

“Because whoever he was pointing at that day didn’t get the message. Smokey died in that fire, but he always comes back.”

“I see.” I kind of do, anyway. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or just the relaxed vibes in the room, but I’m willing to accept virtually any explanation at this point. A zombie bear makes sense to some part of my brain, so we’re going with that part of my brain right now.

“How many do you have?” I ask him. I want to reach out and trace the tattoos with my fingers, but we aren’t exactly close like that. Maybe after another drink I’d let myself do it.

He shrugs. “Couldn’t tell you. I lost count about five years ago.”

“You must really like getting tattooed.”

His jaw clenches slightly and his eyes lose their sparkle again. Damn it, what do I keep saying that kills the vibe? He pulls his sleeves down gruffly and gives me a tight smile.

“Yeah, I guess.” He looks around the table at the others, downs the rest of his whiskey, and tips his empty glass at me. “Looks like it’s about time to turn in.”

“Goodnight,” I tell him, a little confused, trying to figure out just what I said wrong. Beau waves at the others and leaves the room.

“Yeah,” Emmett sighs. “It’s about that time. Goodnight, Josie. Hunter.”

“Goodnight.”

Well, that sucks. I was kind of hoping to get to know them both a little better. Guess I blew it, but I can blame it on the alcohol tonight. Speaking of which… my glass is empty. I give it a morose look, and, as I’m looking at it, it magically fills up again.

“One more won’t hurt,” Hunter says, winking at me. He pours his own glass and clinks it against mine.

“They seem…” I trail off, looking for the right word. I wave my hand aimlessly, as if stirring the air will help me find it.

“Yeah, a little. They’ll be fine,” he says, not waiting for me to find the word, but not offering one, either. At least it seems like he knows what I’m trying to say.

I find myself feeling comfortable with him, cozy in the kitchen with his clothes wrapped around me. I can’t remember the last time I really felt comfortable with somebody. Even with Preston, I always felt like I was living a performance. Now, with the alcohol in my system, out here in the middle of nowhere, I’m finally starting to relax.

“How do you guys live out here?”

He tilts his head at me. “What do you mean?”

I gesture at the window where the snow has piled so high and stuck so firmly that only the smallest circle in the middle of the window is clear. “I mean, you’re so far off the grid. How do you get supplies? What do you do when things go wrong?”

“Supplies are easy,” he says with a grin. “We work with some local suppliers. They throw an extra carton of whatever on the truck, we pay them to drop it off here on their way to town. That works for a lot of things. But we aren’t trapped up here most of the time. We do make runs into town a few times a month.”

“But, I mean, if you run out of something and you can’t get to town for whatever reason… like a snowstorm… it’s not like you have neighbors to borrow from.”

He shrugs. “We try to avoid that, but if it does happen, we just do without.”

That shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. These are mountain men, firefighters, strong masculine entities, of course they can go without once in a while. Still, I find myself a little awed at their tenacity.

“So what if something goes wrong? Like your truck breaks down or you need to replace a stove or someone gets hurt?”

He grins at me. I think he’s amused by my questions, but I’m too buzzed to care right now. I can be amusing for a minute, that’s fine.

“If the truck breaks down, we figure it out. If we can’t figure it out, we’ll use the other truck to tow it to a shop. If we can figure it out and we need parts, we’ll wait until we’re heading into town anyway and put the parts on our list.”

“And the house?”

He shrugs, his eyes twinkling. “Emmett can fix virtually anything around here. I’ve seen him put the front steps back together after a bad storm, re-shingle the roof, and replace a broken window. The pipes and electricity are still good, but if they ever go bad, he’ll know what to do.”

“But what if someone gets hurt? Do ambulances come up this far?”

“I’m sure we could get an ambulance up here in half an hour if we really needed to, but we’re all EMT trained. If it isn’t going to kill a person in five minutes or less, we can patch them up long enough to get them to the hospital.”