He was amazed when she still hesitated for a beat before saying, “I’m Carlise. Most people mispronounce my name when they see it because they add an extra L that isn’t there.”
Chappy blinked. “What?” he asked inanely.
“C-a-r-l-i-s-e. That’s how it’s spelled. Car-leese.”
Chappy couldn’t believe they were standing in the middle of a damn blizzard introducing themselves, but he simply shrugged. “I’m Riggs.”
He had no idea why he’d told her his given name instead of his nickname. He could tell her that literally everyone called him Chappy, but this wasn’t the time or place to go into more detail.
“It’s nice to meet you, Riggs. You said your cabin is near here?”
“At the end of this path,” he said, turning and pointing back the way he had come. Of course, neither of them could see anything but snowflakes swirling in the beam of his flashlight.
“I would be very grateful if you’d allow me to take shelter for a while,” Carlise said stiffly and formally. “And I promise I’m not a serial killer. Are you?”
“What would you do if I said yes?” Chappy asked.
She shrugged. “Keep walking, following my dog friend until I got to another cabin.”
“There isn’t another cabin out here. I’m the end of the line.”
“Oh.”
That was it. All she said. Just Oh. Chappy sighed. “I’m not a serial killer either,” he told her. “You’ll be safe with me.”
He could see her shoulders sag with relief. She was far too trusting. Or maybe just too desperate to question anything he said at the moment.
Chappy was suddenly angry, but not with her. More with the situation. He didn’t know how she’d come to be wandering around out here in the middle of nowhere, but just as he couldn’t shut his door on the dog, he couldn’t leave a woman stranded in a storm. She’d probably be dead in under an hour.
“Come on,” he said a little more gruffly than he intended. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing.” Chappy started walking, looking over his shoulder to see her following as he headed back toward the cabin.
“Where’d the dog go?” she asked after a couple of minutes.
“Don’t know.”
“Is it yours?”
“I’ve never seen him before tonight,” Chappy told her. “And there’s no way I’d let any pet of mine get as skinny as he is.”
“Do you think he’ll be okay?”
He didn’t know that either. And Chappy couldn’t help but be worried himself. He hadn’t seen the mutt since he’d started talking to Carlise. It didn’t sit well with him that the dog would be out by himself in the storm. “I hope so,” he said softly, not sure what else to say to her question.
They walked in silence the rest of the way toward the cabin, and Chappy found himself both grateful and confused. Why wasn’t she asking more questions? She should be trying to figure out where she was, asking more about him, wanting to know when she could get out of here, asking for a phone . . . something. But instead, she simply walked behind him, using his footsteps to help her tromp through the snow, and kept her mouth shut.
By the time Chappy saw his cabin, he was more than thankful and less concerned about the woman’s lack of conversation. He was shivering violently and couldn’t think about much beyond getting inside and in front of the fire to warm up.
He stepped up onto the porch and sighed in relief. He heard Carlise coming up behind him as he jerked open the door.
“You didn’t lock it?” she asked.
Chappy snorted. “It’s not as if someone was going to steal anything while I was gone,” he said a little sarcastically as he stepped inside. The warmth of the cabin felt like heaven. And the roaring in his ears from the wind abruptly ceased as he shut the door behind Carlise.
She hadn’t moved, except to step out of his way so he could shut the door. She looked around with wary eyes. His cabin was one room. There was a queen-size bed along one wall, a couch in the middle of the room facing a large fireplace, a small kitchen along the wall opposite the bed, and a door to the bathroom in the back wall.
Besides the couch and the bed, there was a bookcase, a dresser, a small side table next to the couch, a two-person table near the kitchen, and a large rectangular rug on the floor in front of the fireplace. That was it. The log walls were bare of any decorations, and there weren’t any pictures or other knickknacks to mess up the place.