Page 35 of Claimed on the Ridge

The guardedness is gone. The managed exposure, the controlled distance. All of it burns off in a reaction that's pointed and aimed directly at my head.

"The roads are dangerous," I say again. "That's a fact."

"Funny thing about cages, Alex. They always start with concern." She steps toward me instead of away. Closing distance to fight, not to flee. "You talked to Bryan. You made a plan. You decided when I can and can't leave, and you did it without asking me."

She sets her mug on the counter hard enough that coffee splashes over the rim. Her hands are shaking, and the tremor isn't fear. This is anger, pure and directed, and the force of it brings color up her throat and across her jaw.

"I've been managed before." Her voice drops low, stripped of the banter, the warmth, every layer of armor she wears. "I've had a man tell me the roads aren't safe. The weather's bad.The timing isn't right. There's always a reason I can't leave. The reason always sounds like concern. It never is."

The distance between us has collapsed to nothing. She's close enough that I can smell her skin under the flannel, warm and specific. I register the flush on her jaw, her breathing coming shallow and fast. She is furious and an arm's length away, and the fury makes me want her so badly my hands ache.

"I'm not him," I say. Low. Flat.

"Then stop acting like him."

The sentence lands where she aimed it. I fold my arms and lean back against the counter. If my hands are free right now, they're going to end up on her. Putting my hands on her in the middle of this argument would prove every point she just made.

"I don't give people information and let them decide," I say through my teeth. "I decide. That's how I run this lodge, this family, this mountain. That's how I'm built."

"I know." She holds my gaze without flinching, and the irony of that, this woman who jumps at loud noises staring me down in my own kitchen, puts a crack in every argument I'm holding. "I'm telling you it doesn't work on me."

The first instinct is resistance. The roads are dangerous. Someone hurt her. Keeping her off that pass isn't control, it's common sense.

But the resistance runs straight into my father's voice, saying the exact same words with the exact same certainty. The taste of that recognition is bile.

"The roads are dangerous." A third time, and the repetition is its own surrender because I can hear myself running out of ways to say it that don't prove her point. "You should have heard it from me. Before I told Bryan. Before I decided for you."

My arms stay folded. My teeth stay locked. Every line of me says that ground wasn't given. It was taken.

"I've had enough men make decisions about my life to last several lifetimes," she says. "I don't need another one. Even one I like."

The'even one I like'lands like a fist to the sternum. "If you decide to drive off this mountain," I say, "I'll tell you the route. I'll check your tires. And I'll spend every minute after you leave wanting to follow you."

"That's controlling."

"That's honest. I said I'd let you decide. I didn't say I'd like it."

She picks up her mug. Her hand is steady now. She drinks, watching me over the rim, testing whether what I gave her was real or rehearsed.

"For the record," she says, "if I decide to leave in a blizzard, that's my terrible decision to make."

"For the record, I'll be the one shoveling your truck out of a ditch."

"I don't get stuck."

"Everyone gets stuck."

"Not everyone has my motivation."

The word reaches bone. Motivation. She means survival.

She walks past me toward the main room, close enough that her shoulder brushes my arm. The scent of her skin, warm under the flannel, stays in the air after she rounds the corner. The kitchen smells like her now. That's going to be a problem too.

I don't follow her. I go outside.

The cold burns my throat on the first breath. I walk the perimeter of the lodge and check the generator housing. The fuel lines are solid. The tie-downs on the equipment shed haven't budged. The snow is packed hard from the storm and my boots leave shallow prints that fill in behind me.

Kendall's truck sits where she parked it, the cab half-buried under drift. The engine block will be cold. If she tried to start itright now, it'd take a while to turn over, and she'd need to dig out before she could move.