smiled up at him.
“Can we turn on the tree?” he wanted to know.
He hadn’t been talking to her. “We don’t have electricity yet,” she reminded him anyway. “Why don’t you read Frosty?” With the suggestion, she handed him his new favorite picture book. “And I’ll get you something to eat.”
Concern suddenly swept his little face. Dropping the book, he shoved off the blanket and headed for the wall of drape-covered windows.
“Is there a problem with the furnace, too?” she asked Erik, wondering what her little boy was up to. Wondering, too, if a problem with the furnace was what the larger male wasn’t sharing. “It’s oil. Not electric. Shouldn’t it be working?”
Tyler pulled back the living room drapes. Dawn lightened the window, but the coating of frost and ice on the glass made it impossible to make out anything beyond it.
The logs landed with quiet thuds at the far end of the hearth. “The furnace is oil, but the fan and pump are electric. You need power to pump the oil and push out the hot air.”
Great, she thought. “Oh,” she said.
Tyler let go of the drape. The heavy fabric still swung slightly as he ran to the dining room window next to it and pulled back the drape there.
“How come I can’t see it?” he asked.
“See what, honey?”
“The snowman. He has lights.”
“Hey, Tyler. I heard your mom say she’d get your breakfast. How about we get that out of the way before we tackle anything else?”
At the obvious change of subject, Rory’s glance darted to Erik. It was met with the quick shake of his head and the pinch of his brow.
He moved to her side, his voice low. “I don’t think you’ll want him to see it yet. Give me time to fix it first. I haven’t been all the way around the building, but some of those gusts last night were pretty strong. You might want to take a look from the store porch.
“So,” he continued, brushing off his hands as he walked over to the child smiling up at him. “Why don’t you show me what kind of cereal we’re having?”
Totally distracted by his friend’s attention, Tyler dutifully led the way to the pantry while Rory grabbed a flashlight and headed for the door into the store. On the way, she could hear Erik asking questions about flakes versus puffs and Tyler answering like an expert before she closed the inner door and hurried by flashlight beam to the outer one.
She’d barely opened the store’s front door and screen and crossed her arms against the freezing air when she froze herself.
The world outside had been transformed into a wonderland as disheartening as it was beautiful. In the pale twilight, the stubbles of her lawn appeared to be a blanket of clear marbles. Across the ice-glazed street, every bough on every tall pine, every branch of every winter-bare tree, every leaf on every bush had been encased in a robe of ice.
In between, the ice-coated electric line sagged heavily from pole to pole—except for where it dangled loose a few feet from the tangle of branches of an oak tree now uprooted from her yard and lying across the road, blocking it completely.
Near the entrance to her driveway, half of the maple tree that would shade it in summer lay squarely in it.
Clouds filtered the cold sunrise, but the sky to the east was lightening enough to add hints of color to the gray when she carefully edged her way over the icy boards to the end of the porch and looked toward the meadow. It was there that she saw the snowman that now rested in parts not far from the still upright and remarkably unbroken apple tree. The white chicken-wire, light-encrusted balls had separated when they’d blown over and were now frozen in place with boughs that had flown in from the grove of pines beyond.
Erik had suspected that seeing the dismembered decoration would have upset her little boy. He was right. And though what she saw distressed her, too—especially when she thought of what had to be an identical mess of toppled debris on the other side of the building—she wouldn’t let herself think about how she was going to clean it all up right now. Mother Nature froze it, and she’d thaw it, too. She’d worry then about taking care of the scattered and broken boughs, branches and trees. Right now she couldn’t let herself think about anything beyond going back inside, making sure the guys were fed and figuring out how to make coffee without any power.
The rest of it was just too daunting.
“Thank you,” she said softly on her way past Erik the moment she walked back in.
He stood at the island, Tyler a few feet away at the silverware drawer. “No problem.” He searched her face quickly, looking to see how she was taking what she had seen.
Not sure what to make of the deceptive calm she diligently maintained around her child, he turned with two boxes in his hands. “Cereal?”
“Sure.” Doing her best to ignore the knot of anxiety in her stomach, she reached for bowls and bananas. “What kind are you having, Ty?”
“Both,” her son announced.
“We’re mixing ’em,” Erik explained.
The camp light now stood on the kitchen counter. In that relative brightness, Tyler’s eyes fairly danced.
The dark slash of Erik’s eyebrow arched. “Is that a problem?”
For a moment she thought the suggestion must have been Erik’s, until she considered that Tyler could have come up with the idea and Erik had decided to let him think the notion a good one. Looking between the two of them, she decided it could go either way. And either way, as protective as Erik had been of her son’s feelings moments ago, and sensing that what that mountain of muscle really needed was to be outside and moving, she couldn’t think of a thing to say but, “Of course not.”
Being deprived of his usual five-mile morning run did nothing to help Erik escape the restiveness nagging like a toothache as he headed into the early morning light. The bracing air felt good, though. He didn’t even mind that the ground felt like a skating rink beneath his boots. His balance on it was as sure as on a yawing sailboat—managing that shift and roll was second nature to him.
Where he was out of his element was figuring out how to stay objective about the woman inside when he’d been kept awake half the night by her scent on her sheets and thoughts of her tantalizing little body playing havoc with his own.
When he had first agreed to help her, he hadn’t considered how much her education would require beyond a business plan and inventory. But the scope of his responsibility had finally hit him. It had taken both of his grandparents to maintain their store and their home. For her to make it here, she’d need to be as self-reliant as they had been.
What he also hadn’t considered until a while ago was how much more difficult her tasks might be because part of her focus would almost always be on her child.
Ten minutes and another trip to the basement later, she had power—which was one less thing he needed to be concerned about before
