A Week in the Snow by Gwen Masters

room for Rebecca to sit, and looked back at her when she got settled.
    Together they listened to the sound of approaching snowploughs.
    “I hate to do this,” he said slowly, “but we need to make a detour before we go back to the house.”
    “Okay?”
    “I cut my hand on your window over there, and I might need a stitch or two.”
Rebecca’s knees went weak, a reaction that caught her completely by surprise. She immediately reached for his hand. “You’re hurt?”
    “It’s not bad, but it’s not the kind of thing that will heal on its own.”
    “Then it’s bad.”
    “No, it’s not.”
    “Yes, it is!”
    Richard shook his head. “It isn’t bleeding anymore.”
    Rebecca climbed off of the snowmobile and motioned for him to move. “I’ll drive.”
    He looked up at her for a long moment. “Are you mad?”
    “No. I’m worried.”
    “I’m fine, Rebecca,” he soothed. “Really, I am.”
    “You got hurt on my car,” she said, as if that explained everything.
    “Don’t do the guilt thing. Don’t do the worry thing, either. I’m okay. If it was really bad, I would have told you as soon as it happened.”
    “That sounds suspiciously like a little white lie,” she challenged, a grin playing around the corner of her mouth.
    Richard blushed. “I’m fine.”
    She took his bandaged hand in hers and gently turned it over. She lifted the tape a little bit and tried to see under the gauze, but she was afraid to pull it too much. If he said he needed stitches, she believed him. He wasn’t the kind to overreact.
    “Let’s get you to the hospital,” she said, reaching for the key.
    “Rebecca, honey.”
    The endearment made her go perfectly still. Jesus Christ, she had known the man for a few days, and under the least ideal circumstances, but already he was getting to her in a way that nobody had in a very, very long time.
    “It’s a few stitches,” he said softly. “That’s all. Why are you so upset?”
    “Because…” She tried to find the words but was appalled to find only tears instead. She dashed them away with the back of her glove. What had got into her?
    “I’m okay,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her, even though his bandaged hand hurt like hell. He held her until she looked up into his eyes.
    “I’m upset because if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be hurt,” she said. “You had to break that window to get me out and now you’ve hurt yourself on the glass…”
    “And if you hadn’t bought a car with electric windows, instead of the old-school crank ones, this would never have happened?”
    His teasing made her smile. “You know what I mean.”
    “If you hadn’t come along, I wouldn’t have just got cut. Okay. I wouldn’t have had some of the best sex of my life, either.”
    That won a broader smile. “Best, huh?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Want some more?”
    “Once I know I’m not going to bleed to death.”
    Rebecca smacked him on the shoulder. “I thought you were fine?”
    He dropped a kiss on her nose. “You drive.”
    With his careful directions, they made it to the hospital in less than five minutes, though it normally would have been a fifteen-minute drive. They cut through open fields and backyards, sometimes drawing the attention of the people inside those homes, who looked at them with furrowed brows through frost-edged windows. When they reached the hospital, it was a little jarring to see a perfectly cleared parking lot at the end of a cleared street. Rebecca had almost let herself forget there was asphalt underneath the blanket of white.
    She parked the snowmobile beside the parking lot and they walked in together.
    Richard took her hand as soon as they started walking, held it as he walked into the hospital, and only let go when he had to sit down and talk to the triage nurse. The nurse glanced at her with interest and might have asked about her, had she not been more interested in what Richard had done to his hand.
    Rebecca stood beside him as the