eye one minute and a sexy grin the next?
What on earth had her assuming he wouldn’t have a woman in his life? Naturally, he’d be seeing someone. It’s been fifty-five months, Rachel. Hadn’t he quoted the exact time frame last week?
She and Charlie climbed from the car. Her nose picked up friendly scents—cows, barns, wood smoke and the perfume of beauty: mountain snow and wind and night.
A sweet-faced Latino woman with a braid that touched the curve of her spine answered Rachel’s knock. “Mrs. Brant?” She smiled down at Charlie. “I’m Inez, the housekeeper. Ash let us know you’d be on your way.” She offered a set of keys. “For the cottage. There’s room to park around the side. Follow the graded area. Ash plowed it out this morning.”
So. He’d been expecting her today.
“Thank you.” She took the keys and then, following the sheared path rapidly filling with snow, towed the trailer around to the guesthouse.
Someone, probably Inez, had turned on the lights; the windows glowed with warm welcome. Rachel pulled up and shut off the motor. “Home sweet home,” she murmured.
Charlie leaned forward. “Do I get to pick my bedroom?”
“Absolutely.”
Warmth greeted them the moment she opened the door. Had Ash left the heat on all day in anticipation of her arrival?
Charlie kicked off his boots and ran for the stairs.
“Remember, you have math to do,” she called, as he scrambled puplike to the loft. His feet thundered back and forth. She gave him a minute.
“I’m taking this one, Mom,” came his shout. “It’s got a window bench and everything! You can have the fireplace.”
Rachel shook her head. A fireplace in a bedroom? She couldn’t wait to see.
A thought rooted. Had Ash and his wife…?
She hurried into the snowy night. If she was to save an extra day’s rent on the trailer, they would need to return the U-Haul to the dealership by six-thirty.
The snow had mutated into a storm. A white wall that hit before she reached the county road three miles from the ranch. Three miles of snow and wind battering the car, swaying the empty trailer and swallowing the headlights. Please. Show me the track, the ditches.
“Mom?” Charlie’s voice, small and frightened from the rear seat. “It’s really, really snowy.”
“We’ll go slow, baby. We’ll get there.”
“Maybe we should go back to Mr. Ash’s place.”
She would, if she could turn around, if she knew for certain the road would still be in front of her when she pointed the nose of the car in the other direction. Best to keep going.
She drove five miles an hour. The wipers strained against snow buildup and wind blasts.
A shape emerged in the headlights.
“Mom, look out!”
She saw the red eyes a millisecond before the deer leaped—one long, high bound—into snow and night. But already she’d reacted to the animal’s sudden appearance. Braking, swinging the steering wheel to the right to miss the animal.
The Sunburst’s front tires thumped against a thick drift that spewed snow up and over hood and roof.
“Nooo!”
The rear wheels spun on the icy pavement. She jerked against her seat belt as the car shifted sideways and slid. Slid with the ease of a skater, nose-first down into the ditch.
She heard the scream of metal before she realized the trailer had ripped from the hitch.
“Charlie!”
The U-Haul slammed into the rear of the Sunburst.
Ash left town at 6:55 p.m., earlier than planned. A couple days ago, he’d seen the sun dogs—rainbowlike spots on each side of the sun—and knew a storm brewed before the radio confirmed the weather system hailing from the north this afternoon.
When he’d phoned home, Inez told him Rachel had arrived.
That he inhaled long and loud hearing the news meant he didn’t favor the idea of anyone out in this weather. It had nothing to do with her. Nothing.
Hell, he’d practically forgotten her when he’d left the grocery store and taken the steaks over to Meggie’s house. And when he and his teenage nephew, Beau, stood, bundled up in parkas and wool hats, grilling the meat on her outdoor barbecue, he hadn’t thought of Rachel at all.
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