Rugged Rescue (Get Wilde Book 1) Read online

  Rugged Rescue

  Get Wilde #1

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Rugged Rescue

  Mailing List

  Hello, hot stuff!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  More from Yours Truly

  Books by Amelia Wilde

  Rugged Rescue

  Dawson Flint was always too rough, too rowdy, too much man. He wasn’t good for me.

  I told myself I didn’t need him. I told myself I didn’t want him. I told myself I’d find another man. A better man.

  But when I’m out of options in the winter’s biggest snowstorm, it’s not some city boy who rescues me. It’s Dawson Flint.

  He’s as wild as he ever was. His hands on my body unleash my deepest, darkest desires.

  It’s just one night.

  And one night only…

  Originally Published as A Bad Boy Christmas Rescue in Bad Boys Under the Mistletoe: A Begging for Bad Boys Collection, a time-limited multi-author bundle.

  Mailing List

  It might get a little wild on my mailing list, but I promise you’ll love it. Join now and get a free copy of my full-length bad boy novel Hate Loving You! Click the link below or paste it into your browser and tell me where I should send it.

  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/6gs7mekjvp

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  Hello, hot stuff!

  Welcome to my series of sweet, dirty short stories and novellas! These are bite-sized love stories for when you need a taste of that happily-ever-after vibe. Take a moment for yourself…and, as always, enjoy!

  1

  India

  I hoist the overloaded shopping basket up onto the counter at Richardson’s, possibly the only family-owned grocery store left in America, but Ernie, the owner and part-time cashier, has his full attention diverted in the direction of the massive front windows, his forehead wrinkled with worry.

  “I didn’t want to close before six, but…” He gives a little shake of his head.

  “It’s pretty horrendous out there, that’s for sure,” I respond.

  I almost spun off the road on the way here. The way the snow is coming down, it’ll be nothing short of a miracle if I make it back to my parents’ house in one piece. I’ve only been in the store for fifteen minutes, and there’s at least another three inches piled up on their Subaru.

  To say I regret making this trip into town becomes a bigger understatement by the second.

  There are no other customers in the store, and the overriding silence is punctuated only by the monotonous beep accompanying each item that Ernie efficiently glides over the electronic scanner. I shift my weight nervously from foot to foot.

  “Glad you made it in safely,” he says.

  “I had to get out of the house,” I say with a grim smile.

  He nods sagely and tucks an onion and a package of butter into the paper bag. “Holiday cabin fever?”

  My parents shop here every week and I’ve known Ernie since I was a little girl. “Something like that.”

  I hand him my credit card across the counter and he finishes ringing up the sale, glancing out at the snow again. “I hate to close up early…”

  “You have to, Ernie. You’ll get snowed in if you don’t.”

  Ernie comes around the counter to hand me my two bags, stuffed with last minute items from my mom’s shopping list and several impulse buys, and follows me toward the door.

  “You need any help cleaning off the car?”

  I give him a confident smile. “You close up. I’ve got it.”

  I haven’t been out in the driving snow for ten seconds before I thoroughly regret rejecting his offer. I brace myself against the blustering wind and step off the curb into six inches of snow, my socks soaked inside my boots. How the hell did I get into Richardson’s in one piece?

  I didn’t bother locking the car, thank God, so all I have to do is pry the passenger door open with frozen fingers and throw the bags in, then grab the extra-long combination ice scraper/snow brush from where I left it leaning against the seat. I lean into the vehicle once more to insert and turn the key in the ignition, the engine rumbling to life. Hood pulled up over my red hat, complete with pom, I tackle the snow that’s piled up on top of the car.

  The only reason I’m even able to get the new snow scraped off the windshield is because the car had sat in the garage all day, keeping it pristine from the flakes. They started falling gently around ten this morning. Idiot me thought it would be a winter wonderland in town, not a damn nightmare.

  I clear the back windshield and then shake off the snow clinging to my coat before sliding into the driver’s seat, tossing the scraper into the back seat. I run the wipers to clear the quarter-inch or so of snow that’s fallen in the short amount of time it took me to move from the front of the car to the back. In the rearview mirror, the Bayside Inn’s vacancy sign blinks. They’ve got room. I could just leave my car right here, book myself a suite, and climb into a sudsy warm bubble bath with…

  With images of my mother’s teary, disappointed eyes dancing in my head. I’m only here for a week. It’s only three miles back to the house. I can make it.

  I resolutely shift the car into reverse and cautiously back the trustworthy Subaru out onto Main Street. There is not a single other car in sight. Everyone else must have gotten the memo to stay inside.

  Good Lord, I can’t see a damn thing.

  I’m maybe a mile out of town when the wipers stop providing any help against the thick falling snow. No matter how hard I squint my eyes, I can’t see the difference between the road and the swirling snowflakes. My jaw clenches. If I die for two bags of groceries…

  I’m traveling at an absolute crawl, ten miles an hour on the fast side. If anybody comes from the opposite way, I’m screwed. If it’s a semi-truck, I’m completely screwed. My heart leaps in my chest every time I think I see the flicker of headlights through the blinding storm, but a car never materializes. When I get back, I’m going to have an enormous glass of wine. Maybe I’ll just drink straight out of the bottle. My head throbs and my hands are sore from gripping the wheel so tightly.

  I’m going by the feel of the tires on the road, just trying to follow along in what’s left of the previous vehicle’s tire tracks, when it happens.

  A truck—all I can tell is that it’s lifted and bigger than me—comes screaming from the other direction, only he’s not quite in his lane. By the time I see that one of his front tires has to be driving along in one of my tire tracks, he’s almost on top of me.

  The scream catches in my throat and my hands jerk the wheel to the right, my high school driving teacher’s voice echoing in my head. “Do your best to remain calm. The worst thing that can happen is that you overcorrect, sending you into the oncoming traffic…” My hands scrabble for the wheel, but I can’t hold it tightly enough to spin the wheel back into the road, and the next thing I know, the front of the car is slamming down into a snowbank in the ditch next to the road.

  My heart punches at the inside of my rib cage, painfully fast, and I can’t catch my breath thanks to my adrenaline-fueled panic.

  Joy to the World plays softly from the radio inside the sudden silence of the ca
r.

  Joy, my ass.

  I inhale a deep breath and then lean my forehead against the steering wheel on top of my hands, still encased in my mom’s purple gloves. Merry Christmas to me.

  2

  Dawson

  My first instinct is to drive on past and just steer my Jeep into my driveway, which I almost miss because the fucking snow is so heavy. There aren’t any footprints outside the car in the ditch. Whoever was inside it must have walked away a long time ago.

  Just then, the snow seemed to taper off. Movement. I see movement.

  “Shit.”

  This means I’m going to have to wade through the thigh-high snow to see if they’re too damned senseless to call a tow truck. And it’s cold out.

  I pull the nose of the Jeep off to the side of the road, just at the tree line, and turn up the heat to full blast. It’s going to be fucking miserable out there.

  I shrug on my jacket over the hoodie I was wearing at the bar. I opened today because I’m open every damn day except for Christmas, but nobody came. Fucking storm. I got sick of standing behind the bar watching the news coming and going on the six TV screens so I shut down early.

  Only to find this.

  There’s a shovel in the back of my Jeep, and I grab it just for good measure. Whoever this idiot is, I’m probably going to have to dig him out.

  The frigid, bone-chilling wind is howling, shooting the snowflakes into my eyes like tiny little daggers, and the fifteen steps over to the car are a slog. My jeans are fucking caked after two steps and it doesn’t matter at all that I’m wearing work boots that are supposed to be goddamn waterproof. I left my gloves at home and curse myself for that decision with every step I take.

  When I finally get to the car, the skin on my face feels like it’s been rubbed with sandpaper. I crouch down and tap on the window with my knuckles. There’s so much snow that I can’t see in, so I reach up with one elbow and swipe it off so I can look inside.

  My heart picks up the pace a little as I peer into the dim interior of the car. Maybe I fucked up. Maybe this was a more serious accident than I thought.

  Whoever it is—a girl, I think, with her dark hair tucked in the most ridiculous red hat I’ve ever seen—is looking at the driver’s side window, like there’s anything to see there but more fallen snow. When she finally turns her head, her mouth goes into a round O, and her big, green eyes open so wide that her eyebrows almost disappear into her hat.

  My stomach plummets into my toes.

  Well, I’ll be fucked. It’s India Patrick, trapped in her car right next to my driveway.

  An intense jolt of adrenaline rushes down from my chest all the way to my fingertips, and for several long moments as we stare at each other, I don’t feel the cold.

  Then I fucking feel it, like a wet blanket covering me, and I raise my hand to the window again, pounding louder with the side of my fist.

  “Hey! You okay?”

  I don’t even know if she can hear me over the fucking wind, but she presses her lips together. “Yes!” she shouts back, and then her eyes narrow, the corners of her mouth turning down. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Can you open your door?”

  “I’m fine,” she says, giving me a wave like I’ve just pulled over on the side of the highway in midsummer and she’s already changed a flat tire.

  “Is somebody coming for you?”

  She glances down at the phone in her lap. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s fucking stupid enough to get into a car right now and drive to get her. If she hasn’t called a tow truck yet…hell, even if she has, they might not get here for hours on a day like today. A day that’s quickly becoming night. It’s well past four o’clock, and even if there were no clouds, we’d be losing more sunlight with every passing second.

  India shakes her head, and I’m stabbed in the chest with another memory of her shaking her head, the night I showed up on her doorstep in my best fucking suit with the most dazzling bouquet of flowers I could afford, and she turned me down because—

  Pain spikes through my toes. I don’t have time to dwell on this shit right now.

  “Can you open your door?” The wind tears the words from my mouth, but somehow she hears me.

  “No.”

  I wade around to the driver’s side and brush off another opening in the window so that she can see that I haven’t just disappeared, and then I stab the shovel into the snow at the side of the door.

  She watches me with wide eyes and pink flushed cheeks, like she can’t fucking believe she’s going to have to rely on me for anything. Especially now, ten years after I last saw her.

  The wind drives the snow even harder into my eyes. Nobody can be out here for much longer, not even me, and I throw the snow to the side as fast as I can. By the time I reach down and yank the door open—it takes everything I have, especially with my frozen hands—she’s waiting. She’s put on some black jacket that looks like it was made for city living, and she’s clutching two shopping bags in her arms.

  “You get hungry on the way home?”

  She twists her body, throwing her legs out of the car, and immediately sinks into the snow. Instinctively, I reach out and grab her elbow, steadying her. It’s only then that I realize how cold it must have been—the car isn’t running. Her teeth are chattering.

  “Starving,” she says, green eyes glinting in the fading light. “Can I get a ride home?”

  3

  India

  I’m frozen solid and I have to pee, and I’m wondering how much longer I can survive in this hellscape, when a sound breaks through the chattering of my teeth. I’ve been thinking of Christmas carols and listening to the high-pitched screaming wind, when the interior of the car brightens up a bit.

  The driver-side window is still covered in snow. Is the storm stopping? I cut my eyes back toward the passenger side and nearly die of a heart attack.

  There’s a clearing in the snow covering the window—that’s where the light is coming from—and a face peering in at me.

  My breath comes fast and hard because things are clicking into place. I don’t recognize him and then, all at once, I do. How could I ever, even for a moment, forget those eyes? Forget that face?

  No, it’s not that I forgot. It’s that I never expected, in a million years, to see that face looking in at me while snow whips and whirls around him.

  A warmth floods my chest, and for a moment I don’t move, can’t speak, can’t do anything. Hard on its heels is a twisting shame.

  No, no, no. Dawson Flint is the last person on earth I want to owe anything to, even now.

  He raises his fist to the window and bangs on the glass. “Hey! You okay?”

  His smooth voice, even muffled by the storm, breaks something inside of me and forces me into action.

  “Yes!” I shout back. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Can you open your door?”

  “I’m fine.” Then, because I’m the world’s most stubborn, idiotic person, I give him a little wave like I’ve already solved this problem. Any other time, I would have, I swear to—

  “Is somebody coming for you?”

  There’s nobody coming, and one last look at my phone tells me nothing except that I’m running out of battery. My parents told me to call a tow truck—they don’t have anything that can handle the roads right now—and the one guy I called said it would be another four hours before he could make it out.

  Four. Hours.

  That’s what I’m looking at.

  I drag my eyes back to Dawson’s and shake my head, the heat in my cheeks ratcheting up another notch. God, this is so damned embarrassing.

  “Can you open your door?”

  “No.”

  He disappears from the window, and for what seems like a long time, I think he’s gone. If I was him, I’d walk away from me, too, and just leave me here to wait for the tow truck guy. If he ever shows up. I’d deserve it, too.

  You were young and stupid and—

  I
shake my head, dismissing the rationalization entirely. Dawson might have been an asshole with too many tattoos, but I was just as bad. Worse, even.

  Then another opening appears in the snow, this time on the driver-side window, and there he is, driving a shovel down into the piles of snow outside my door.

  I can see the shape of his muscles even underneath the jacket and hoodie he wears, and my mouth waters. I have to look away. There’s nothing to look at, so instead I reach across to the passenger seat and rearrange the grocery bags, tug my coat back on over my shoulders. Back when I first went off the road, forty-five minutes ago, the heat was blasting in the Subaru and the rush of survival made me feel like I was on fire. I zip up the jacket. There’s nothing to be done about the hat. I pulled it out of my mom’s bin of winter stuff at home, never imagining that I would run into Dawson Flint.

  Oh, God.

  And I really have to pee.

  When he takes the shovel in one hand and reaches down to pull open the door, the wind takes my breath away. Still, I don’t want him to think I’m some weakling, so I throw my legs out of the car and jump out, sinking right into the deep snow.

  He catches my elbow, steadying me, and it feels like looking over the edge at the Grand Canyon—a pleasant vertigo that I fight against with every cell of my being. How can he still have this effect on me? How?

  “You get hungry on the way home?” One corner of his mouth turns upward, and it’s all I can do not to grin at him like some lovesick puppy. The only thing that saves me is that my teeth are chattering, and I clutch the bags of groceries to my chest a little harder. I will be damned if I let them freeze solid out there. I could have died for this shit.