I’d just straightened up the pile of mats when a scraping sound caught my attention. Raising the blinds, I looked out the window and saw Rachel standing in the middle of the road, shovel in hand, pushing the snow into big piles. She’d got about ten feet of road cleared in addition to her car.

Did she really think she could plow the fucking road between here and the highway? It was miles of road!

“Son of a bitch.” I ran out of the room. Three steps later, I almost tripped over Blue in the hallway. He’d taken up a post between me and the doorway, almost like he couldn’t decide who he should be guarding. “Hey, boy. You okay?”

Blue sat up with a whine and swung his head toward the front door.

“Yeah, I think we gotta talk some sense in her. She can’t plow the fucking road all by herself. Come on.” I grabbed my coat next to the door and pulled it on over my naked chest. My shirt was balled up somewhere in Cole’s home gym. I shoved my bare feet into my boots next to the door and half-assedly laced them up. Blue whined next to me, urging me to hurry. I ripped open the door, and Blue bounded out, with me close on his heels.

“What the hell are you doing, woman!” I shouted before I met up with Rachel.

She glanced at me then bent down to pet Blue. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re fucking insane. You do know there’s like five miles of road between us and the highway, right? Are you planning on plowing the whole fucking thing by hand?”

“I have to do something!” Rachel waved an agitated hand as she stood back up to face me. “I can’t just sit here and wait for someone to call or show up. I have people waiting on me—my family is counting on me.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think the same fucking thing isn’t happening to me right now? I was supposed to be at work today too. Our scariest fucking client is expecting a bike delivery today, and I’m not gonna be there to stand between him and my brother. That’s my job! That’s what I’ve done my whole life, and today I’m not gonna be there. I won’t be there to protect him.”

Rachel stared back at me with wide eyes, and her mouth opened and closed like a fish.

I sighed as some of my anger melted away at Rachel’s bewilderment.

I hadn’t meant to reveal so much. My shit was my shit. No one else needed to know what was really going on in my life—least of all a piece of ass I’d hooked up with for a night. I just had so much anger pent up. Booze hadn’t helped. Exercise hadn’t helped. Really the only thing that’d worked was when I had her naked and under me, but that’d never happen again.

I needed to get my shit under control.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” I reached over and gently took the snow shovel out of her hands. “We all have shit—that’s all I’m saying. Well, that, and there’s no way either of us is going to be able to dig our way out of this mess. There’s too much road between us and the highway. It’s dangerous. We’re better off waiting until the plow comes. I don’t know where the hell Cole’s business manager is, but he still hasn’t called me back. If you’d like, I can call around and see if I can find another service.”

Rachel bit her lip and looked down the long, snow-covered road, her brow wrinkled.

“I’ll even pay.”

Rachel’s eyes shot to mine. “It’s not the money that’s bothering me. Well, it is, ‘cause I can’t afford it, but I’m worried about the weather. There’s supposed to be another system moving in this afternoon. If we can’t get out of here by noon, I doubt you’ll find another outfit willing to come out in the middle of another storm. We could be trapped here overnight again.”

I nodded slowly. “I’ll get on the horn and see if we can get you home to your little boy sooner than later.”

“Thank you.”