Snowbound Bride. Cathy Thacker Gillen

from head to toe.

      “Still stuck, hmm?” he drawled, looking over at her almost insolently.

      In this town, in her dress, in her whole life, Nora thought. “Maybe we should just give up and cut me out of this dress,” Nora suggested.

      Sam continued to look her up and down as Nora grew ever warmer. “Oh, I think we can do better than that,” he quipped. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

      Nora barely had time to draw a brush through the wind-mussed layers of her dark hair before he returned with a button hook and a pair of tweezers.

      “Don’t look so worried,” Sam said cheerfully as he stepped behind Nora. His eyes met and held hers in the mirror. “I’m an experienced hand at this. I’m sure I can free you from this dress.”

      Something about the utterly male way he was looking at her made Nora sure he could, too. And that might be even more dangerous. “You didn’t have much luck earlier, back at the tourist station,” she said breathlessly as he placed his hands lightly on her shoulders.

      “Ah, but I didn’t have the right tools then,” he told her. “Now I do.”

      Nora raised a skeptical brow as the back of his hand brushed the bare skin at the nape of her neck. She froze beneath the onslaught of his touch, the warmth and gentleness of his skin pressed against hers. He had just come close to her, and she was ablaze already. She could barely breathe.

      Aware that her heart was beating wildly in her chest, she forced herself to concentrate not on what they shouldn’t be doing—ever—but on what he was actually doing now. Aloud, she asked, “A button hook and tweezers are the right tools for an occasion such as this?”

      Sam’s gaze met hers, and his handsome golden-brown eyes lit enthusiastically. “You’d be surprised what can be accomplished with these two items, under the right circumstances,” he said with mock grave ness, as he bent his head and once again concentrated on his task.

      Nora hitched in a breath, realizing that, friend or foe, it didn’t seem to matter. With every second that passed, she became even more extraordinarily aware of him.

      “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she told him defiantly, as she noticed that her knees were trembling, and that the shiver ghosting down her spine had nothing to do with the cold weather outside and everything to do with the heat generated by Sam.

      “Actually,” Sam drawled, as he ever-so-carefully grasped the jammed fabric with the tweezers and slid the end of the button hook between the fabric and the teeth of the zipper to gently move them in tandem. “I do.”

      Nora’s brow lifted as he continued to labor over the back of her dress with delicate finesse. What did he know that she didn’t?

      “I came in here on a mission,” he explained.

      Nora waited until he’d finished whatever it was he was doing to her zipper, then spun around to confront him face-to-face. “That mission being?”

      “To find out if you need help of some sort. Because if you do,” Sam vowed, setting both button hook and tweezers aside, “I’m here to give it.”

      EVEN KNOWING what Nora did about the error of her ways, she was tempted to let herself be rescued. But letting a man jump in to save her from all life’s hard ships was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. It was high time she stood on her own two feet and said adios to all well-meaning, overbearing men. Her chin took on a challenging tilt. “And if I don’t need help?” she asserted calmly, her heart pounding.

      Sam shrugged. “Then you don’t,” he retorted mildly, though it was clear he did not think that was the case.

      Nora sighed. She could see Sam was not going to be an easy man to dissuade. No doubt he would shadow her as long as she remained in Clover Creek. “You know,” she said, stepping back to lean against the far wall, her hands pressed flat behind her, “since we’re alone, I have a bone to pick with you.”

      Sam took up a post against the opposite wall, only a few feet away. He folded his arms in front of him and kept his eyes trained on her face. “That bone being?”

      Nora tilted her face up to his and drew a deep breath. “So far, this has been one of the worst days of my life. And you are not making things any easier on me with all your prying questions.”

      He nodded, accepting that. Then said, with a devilish gleam in his eyes, “It was never my intention to make it easy on you.”

      Her heartbeating all the harder, Nora met his eyes.

      “Why not?”

      Sam dropped his hands to his sides and continued regarding her steadily. “’Cause my gut instinct tells me it’s the fact you’ve been way too sheltered in the past that has you running away now.”

      Nora struggled to hold her rising temper in check. She hated it when a man presumed to know—via ESP or, worse, experience with other women!—what was on her mind. “How do you know I’m running away?” she demanded.

      “Isn’t it obvious?” Sam straightened and pushed away from the wall. “You’ve been acting like you had something to hide since the first moment we met. Now, I don’t know what hurt you so. And don’t bother to deny it. You have been hurt. I can see it in your eyes whenever the subject of your wedding comes up. But I’d like to find out,” he told her as he slowly stepped toward her.

      “So I’ve been hurt,” Nora retorted nervously, straightening as he neared. “Everyone has.”

      “That’s true.” Sam planted a hand against the wall on either side of her. “But not everyone takes off in their wedding dress in the midst of what will soon be a blizzard—”

      Nora interrupted hotly, in self-defense. “I didn’t know it was going to snow!”

      Sam looked down at her as if he found that very hard to swallow. He shook his head wordlessly and leaned in even closer. “How could you not have known that?” he asked, very, very softly, the heat of his body emanating to hers.

      Nora flushed and responded wryly, “Because, Mr. I-Gotta-Have-All-the-Answers, I wasn’t listening to the weather reports this morning, or last night, for that matter!”

      “Why not?” His voice was hushed, seductive, his breath warm on her skin, as he placed his hands on the bare curves of her shoulders and forced her to look up at him.

      Nora ignored the sensual feeling of his palms on her bare skin. They were slightly chapped and callused, as though he knew firsthand the value of hard physical work, but tender, too, as if he knew how to love. Irritated with herself—after all, she had no business thinking like that!—Nora shook off the sensual image of her body, in his hands.

      “Because I had a ton of other important things to do!” she answered, with a regal toss of her head. “I had to get up early and shower and go to the hairdresser, and then over to the church, to dress and get my official wedding portrait done.” She stopped and bit her lip, aware that he was suddenly looking very much as though he wanted to do a whole lot more than simply hold her in front of him. He wanted to kiss her! Not just once, but probably again and again and again!

      Sam grinned and lifted a skeptical golden-brown brow. “Are you saying the rest of your wedding party didn’t know it was going to snow, either?”

      “Maybe not.” Nora swallowed around the sudden tightness of her throat. Looking deep into Sam’s eyes, she could almost believe he wanted only to help her. “After all, the snowstorm is not supposed to hit Pi—uh…” She made a strangled sound, as she realized she’d inadvertently said far too much, and cut herself off in midsentence.

      “Pittsburgh?” Sam supplied, his hands following the curve of her shoulders and caressing her bare arms.

      Nora glared at him defiantly and tried to ignore the enticing scent that was him. “What makes you think the wedding was supposed to take place in