He reached her, his eyes still burning into hers.
A nervous laugh escaped her. “Justin, you look so…” The sentence trailed off. She didn’t know quite how to finish it.
He lifted a hand. With a light finger, he guided a stray coil of hair behind her ear. A little shiver went through her. “Cold?”
“No. No, not at all. Justin, are you okay?”
His hand dropped to his side and he stepped back. “So, today we’re really getting out of here.”
She nodded. “If we’re lucky, the plow should be here in the next few hours.”
He turned from her, abruptly. “Let’s get the coffee going.”
She caught his arm. “Justin…”
He swung back, his eyes dark. Turbulent. His bicep was rock-hard with tension beneath her hand. “What?”
She let go, fast. “I…well, you almost seem angry. I just don’t get it.”
He kept staring at her, giving her that strange, hot, dark devouring look, for an endless, tense moment and then…
His eyes changed. Softened. His wonderful, sensual mouth went soft, too. “Hell.” And he reached out and pulled her into his strong arms, squeezing the breath right out of her.
“Justin, what—?”
“I don’t want to lose you.” The rough, whispered words seemed dredged up from the deepest part of him.
“Oh, Justin.” She held on, tight as he was holding her. “You won’t. Of course, you won’t.”
A low, pained sound came from him and he crushed her so close, as if he would push himself right into her, meld their separate bodies into one undividable whole.
An image flashed into her mind: of the boy he once was, a boy all alone when he shouldn’t have been, standing at a wide window, watching the snow come down, wondering what was going to happen to him.
“You can count on me,” she whispered, meaning it with every fiber of her being. “You can hold on to me. I’ll always be here.”
He held her close for an endless moment more and then, with a shuddering sigh, his arms relaxed. She raised her head to meet his eyes and a rueful half smile lifted a corner of his mouth.
“Damned if I wasn’t kind of getting to like it here.”
She surged up, pressed a kiss on his beard-shadowed jaw. “Me, too. Oh, Justin…me, too.”
Over morning coffee and the inevitable sandwiches, she relayed Addy’s dinner invitation.
His eyes shifted away for a split second, and then he shook his head. “Wish I could. But I need to get back to Bozeman, ASAP. In my business, there are a hundred issues to deal with on a daily basis. I’ve been away since Saturday morning and that’s three days too long.”
She set down her stale sandwich and resisted the urge to work on him to stay. The guy had a demanding job and if they were going to get anywhere together, she’d have to learn to live with that—and on second thought, there were no ifs about it. The way he’d held her, as if he’d never let her go, out in the reception room a while ago, had banished all doubts on that score.
“I’m disappointed,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But I do understand.”
“Will you thank Adele for the invitation—and express my regrets?”
“You know I will—and it could be tough to get home at this point. You realize that?” Well, okay, she couldn’t help hoping that maybe bad road conditions would keep him in town tonight, after all. He could stay at her place.
They could catch up on their spooning.
She might even make a quick trip to the drugstore, take care of the contraception problem. She’d never bought a condom in her life and old Mr. Dodson, the pharmacist, might give her the lifted eyebrow when she plunked the box down at the cash register counter. But it would definitely be worth the slight embarrassment, to make tonight extra special, a night to remember.
Always…
But then Justin said, “It’s not even twenty miles. And by later today, at least, I’m sure they’ll have the highway cleared.”
He was probably right. Darn it.
The plow came within the hour. By then, Caleb had called a second time to tell her not to worry about Buttercup. A couple of hands would be over a little later with the snowblower and other necessary equipment to free the mare from the shed out back. Emelda Ross had called, as well, just to check and see that Katie was all right.
Katie and Justin, still dressed in their rummage sale clothes, bundled in the coats and gloves they’d arrived in, shovels in hand, waited on the porch as the plow lumbered up the street. It turned into the museum parking lot and kept on coming, right up to the steps. Katie waved at the driver, a local man whose wife and kids paid frequent visits to the library, and shouted, “Thanks!”
The driver gave her a wave in return and then backed to the street again. The plow, which had already made the Elk Avenue curve, headed east at a crawl, toward what was known as New Town, clearing the high white drifts into yet higher piles at the sides of the street as it went.
Justin turned to her. “Well. What next?”
A dragging feeling of sadness engulfed her: for all they had shared in the dim rooms behind them, for the uncertain future—which, she told herself firmly, wasn’t uncertain at all.
She and the man beside her had found something special. Nothing could change that. “Where’s your car parked?” she asked with a cheery smile.
“In the lot behind the town hall.”
“It’s not far, and mine’s there, too. Let’s get the steps cleared off and put the shovels away and then we’ll start walking.”
All along Main Street, folks were out with their shovels. The roar of snowblowers filled the icy air. People called out and waved as Katie and Justin walked by.
“Katie, how you doin’?”
“Some storm, eh?”
“Talk about your New Year’s surprise!”
“Come on. This is nothin’. Five or six feet. Piece a cake.”
“And they say it’s turning warm right away. In the fifties by Friday. What do you think of that?”
They waved back and called greetings and when they reached the hall, they found the front steps already cleared and the driveway to the back parking lot passable, as well.
They went in the front to ask after the things they’d left behind the night of the storm. Rhonda Culpepper, well past sixty with a white streak in her improbably black hair, waited at her usual post behind the reception desk.
Rhonda
