“The reason I’m here, Dane Bradford, is because your attorney sent mine this nasty little letter demanding that I remove my stuff within ten days, and this weekend was better than next weekend. However, no thanks to you, I still had to close the shop early to beat traffic and the bad weather.”
He actually smiled at the thought of her having to do that. “And I bet it almost killed you to close your shop early. Heaven forbid. You probably had to cancel a couple of appointments. Something I could never get you to do for me.”
Sienna rolled her eyes. They’d had this same argument over and over again and it all boiled down to the same thing. He thought her job meant more to her than he did because of all the time she’d put into it. But what really irked her with that accusation was that before she’d even entertained the idea of quitting her job and embarking on her own business, they had talked about it and what it would mean. She would have to work her butt off and network to build a new clientele; and then there would be time spent working on decorating proposals, spending long hours in many beautiful homes of the rich and famous. And he had understood and had been supportive...at least in the beginning.
But then he began complaining that she was spending too much time away from home, away from him. Things only got worse from there, and now she was a woman who had gotten married at twenty-four and was getting divorced at twenty-seven.
“Look, Dane, it’s too late to look back, reflect and complain. In twelve days you’ll be free of me and I’ll be free of you. I’m sure there’s a woman out there who has the time and patience to—”
“Now, that’s a word you don’t know the meaning of, Sienna,” Dane interrupted. “Patience. You were always in a rush, and your tolerance level for the least little thing was zero. Yeah, I know I probably annoyed the hell out of you at times. But then there were times you annoyed me, as well. Neither of us is perfect.”
Sienna let out a deep breath. “I never said I was perfect, Dane.”
“No, but you sure as hell acted like you thought you were, didn’t you?”
Chapter 3
Dane’s question struck a nerve. Considering her background, how could he assume Sienna thought she was perfect? She had come from a dysfunctional family if ever there was one. Her mother hadn’t loved her father, her father loved all women except her mother, and neither seemed to love their only child. Sienna had always combated lack of love with doing the right thing, thinking that if she did, her parents would eventually love her. It didn’t work. But still, she had gone through high school and college being the good girl, thinking being good would eventually pay off and earn her the love she’d always craved.
In her mind, it had when she’d met Dane, the man least likely to fall in love with her. He was the son of the millionaire Bradfords who’d made money in land development. She hadn’t been his family’s choice and they made sure she knew it every chance they got. Whenever she was around them, they made her feel inadequate, like she didn’t measure up to their society friends, and since she didn’t come from a family with a prestigious background, she wasn’t good enough for their son.
She bet they wished they’d never hired the company she’d been working for to decorate their home. That’s how she and Dane had met. She’d been going over fabric swatches with his mother and he’d walked in after playing a game of tennis. The rest was history. But the question of the hour was: Had she been so busy trying to succeed the past year and a half, trying to be the perfect business owner, that she eventually alienated the one person who’d mattered most to her?
“Can’t answer that. Can you?” Dane said, breaking into her thoughts. “Maybe that will give you something to think about twelve days from now when you put your John Hancock on the divorce papers. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something to do,” he said, walking around her toward the bedroom.
“Wait. You never said why you’re here!”
He stopped. The intensity of his gaze sent shivers of heat through her entire body. And it didn’t help matters that he was wearing jeans and a dark brown leather bomber jacket that made him look sexy as hell...as usual. “I was here a couple of weekends ago and left something behind. I came to get it.”
“Were you alone?” The words rushed out before she could hold them back and immediately she wanted to smack herself. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she cared...even if she did.
He hooked his thumbs in his jeans and continued to hold her gaze. “Would it matter to you if I weren’t?”
She couldn’t look at him, certain he would see her lie when she replied, “No, it wouldn’t matter. What you do is none of my business.”
“That’s what I thought.” And then he walked off toward the bedroom and closed the door.
Sienna frowned. That was another thing she didn’t like about Dane. He never stayed around to finish one of their arguments. Thanks to her parents she was a pro at it, but Dane would always walk away after giving some smart parting remark that only made her that much more angry. He didn’t know how to fight fair. He didn’t know how to fight at all. He’d come from a family too dignified for such nonsense.
Moving toward the kitchen to see if there was anything of hers in there, Sienna happened to glance out the window.
“Oh, my God,” she said, rushing over to the window. It was snowing already. No, it wasn’t just snowing... There was a full-scale blizzard going on outside. What happened to the seventy-two-hour warning?
She heard Dane when he came out of the bedroom. He looked beyond her and out the window, uttering one hell of a curse word before quickly walking to the door, slinging it open and stepping outside.
In just that short period of time, everything was beginning to turn white. The last time they’d had a sudden snowstorm such as this had been a few years ago. It had been so bad the media had nicknamed it the “Beast from the East.”
It seemed the Beast was back and it had turned downright spiteful. Not only was it acting ugly outside, it had placed Sienna in one hell of a predicament. She was stranded in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains with her soon-to-be ex. Things couldn’t get any more bizarre than that.
Chapter 4
Moments later, when Dane stepped back into the cabin, slamming the door behind him, Sienna could tell he was so mad he could barely breathe.
“What’s wrong, Dane? You being forced to cancel a date tonight?” she asked snidely. A part of her was still upset at the thought that he might have brought someone here a couple of weekends ago when they weren’t officially divorced yet. The mere fact they had been separated for six months didn’t count. She hadn’t gone out with anyone. Indulging in a relationship with another man hadn’t even crossed her mind.
He took a step toward her and she refused to back up. She was determined to maintain her ground and her composure, although the intense look in his eyes was causing crazy things to happen to her body, like it normally did whenever they were alone for any period of time. There may have been a number of things wrong with their marriage, but lack of sexual chemistry had never been one of them.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked, his voice shaking in anger.
She tilted her head to one side. “Other than I’m being forced to remain here with you for a couple of hours, no, I don’t know what it means.”
She saw his hands ball into fists at his sides and knew he was probably fighting the urge to strangle her. “We’re not talking about hours, Sienna. Try days. Haven’t you been listening to the weather reports?”
She glared at him. “Haven’t you? I’m not here by myself.”
“Yes, but I thought I could come up here and in ten minutes max get what I came for, and leave before the bad weather kicked in.”
Sienna regretted that she hadn’t been listening to the weather reports, at least not in detail. She’d known that a snowstorm was headed toward the mountains within seventy-two hours, which was why she’d thought, like Dane, that she had time to rush and get in and out before the nasty weather hit. Anything other than that, she was clueless. And what was he saying about them being up here for days instead of hours? “Yes, I did listen to the weather reports, but evidently I missed something.”
He shook his head. “Evidently you missed a lot, if you think this storm is going to blow over in a couple of hours. According to forecasters, what you see isn’t the worst of it, and because of that unusual cold front hovering about in the east, it may last for days.”
She swallowed deeply. The thought of spending days alone in a cabin with Dane didn’t sit well with her. “How many days are we talking about?”