said Caleb. “Heard some old character named Green stepped up to play the preacher. Got right into the part. Even called himself ‘Reverend.’”
“Yep,” Katie agreed, keeping it light, but thinking of Justin. Of his low, teasing voice through the darkness that night they’d talked and talked. Of his kiss. Of his hands on her body. She should have gotten his number. But no. He’d said he’d call. And of course he would. “That ‘wedding’ was…really something.”
Maybe tonight, she thought. At least by tomorrow.…
The talk moved on to other subjects. After coffee and dessert, Caleb and Addy urged her to stay. They didn’t want her driving home on the icy roads in the dark.
She said she really had to get back. The roads to town had been cleared and salted and the snow hadn’t started up again. She’d be just fine.
It was after eleven when she let herself into her two-story farmhouse-style Victorian on Cedar Street.
She’d been home earlier, after Justin left her in the town hall parking lot, and she’d turned up the thermostat then, so the house was cozy-warm and welcoming. Switching on lamps as she went, she headed for the phone in the kitchen in back, where she found the message light on her machine glowing a steady red.
No one had called.
He didn’t call Wednesday morning, either. Katie went to the library at nine and jumped every time the phone rang, though there was really no reason he’d call her at work when all he had to do was look up her home number in the book.
Still, whenever the phone rang, her heart would race and the clerk would answer.
And it wouldn’t be him.
Emelda, who put in a lot of volunteer hours at the library, arrived at two. “It’s going to be fifty degrees today, can you believe it?” she marveled as she peeled off her muffler and hung up her heavy coat. “Snow’s already melting. It’ll be gone in no time if this keeps up.” She clucked her tongue and got to work shelving some new novels Katie had waiting.
At three, Emelda took over the check-out desk so the clerk, Lindy Peters, could have a break. The phone rang just as Lindy left the desk. Katie raced over and grabbed it on the second ring, though Emelda was moving down the counter toward it.
“Thunder Canyon Public Library,” Katie answered, absurdly breathless. “May I help you?”
It was only someone wanting the library hours for the week. Katie repeated them and said goodbye.
Emelda shook her silver-gray head. “I swear you are jumpy as a frog on a hot rock today. I would have gotten that.”
Katie hardly heard her. Her mind was full of Justin. What was he doing now? Had he gotten back to Bozeman safely? Well, of course he had. And it had barely been twenty-four hours since he left her at the town hall—well, okay, twenty-six hours, thirty-plus minutes, to be more exact. Not that long, not really. No doubt he had a mountain of work to catch up on. He probably wouldn’t be able to get away to see her until the weekend. He’d be calling—soon—to set something up.
“Katie? Did you hear a single word I said?”
“Oh. Emelda. Sorry, I…” She was saved from having to make some lame excuse for her distracted behavior when a little girl with a towering stack of picture books, her mother right behind her, stepped up to the counter.
After that, Katie managed to keep herself from rushing to grab the phone every time it rang.
Besides, by then she was feeling more and more certain that Justin would be calling her house, not the library. There was probably a message waiting for her at home right now.
When she got home at five-fifteen there were two messages, but neither was from Justin.
She simply had to stop obsessing over this. He’d said he’d call and he would. Justin was an honest man.
That night she hosted the Historical Society meeting at her house. As she served up the coffee and cookies and listened to everyone bemoan the storm that had ruined their museum reception, and trade news on Ben Saunders’s rapidly improving health, she couldn’t help expecting the phone to ring.
It didn’t. Not that night, not Thursday morning, not during her prelunch hours at the library, either.
She met Addy for their usual Thursday lunch date at the Hitching Post. Addy mentioned that she thought Katie seemed distracted.
Katie met Addy’s eyes across the table and longed to tell her everything—of the magic time she’d known with Justin when they were marooned in the museum, of the shattering beauty of the one night she’d spent in his arms.
Of how she couldn’t stop longing, every second of the day, for his call.
But no. It was all too new. She didn’t want to share what she was feeling with anyone. Not yet. Not until…
Well, soon. But not now.
She reassured Addy that she was fine.
And then Justin didn’t call the rest of the day, or in the evening, either.
By Friday morning she was beginning to wonder if something really might have happened to him, if he’d had some kind of accident on the way home to Bozeman. Whatever had kept him from calling her, she prayed he was all right.
She pored over the special edition of the Thunder Canyon Nugget that had come out Wednesday. It was chock-full of great stories of how folks had weathered the big storm. Two storm-related accidents were reported. One had occurred after the roads were cleared, when a pickup going too fast rolled on Thunder Canyon Road. The other concerned a high-schooler who’d driven his snowmobile into a tree while the snow was still falling on Sunday afternoon. Injuries were surprisingly minor in both cases. She found no mention of any accident on the road to Bozeman, nothing about a black Escalade or an out-of-towner named Caldwell.
Before she left for the library, she called Bozeman information. His home phone wasn’t listed. But they did have a number for Red Rock Developers. She dialed it and a service picked up. The offices opened at nine. She could leave her number and Mr. Caldwell’s secretary would get back to her during business hours.
“Uh, no thanks. I’ll call later.”
She hung up and considered calling Caleb, asking him if maybe he had Justin’s home number. But she found herself hesitating to do that. Caleb would be curious. He’d tease her about her “groom,” and ask her why she thought she needed his number. And then Caleb would tell Adele that Katie was trying to get ahold of Justin—and Addy would tell Caleb how distracted Katie had been at lunch the day before…
Oh, not right now, she thought. She wanted to find out how Justin was, wanted to talk to him, wanted to be reassured that everything was all right, with him and between the two of them, before she said anything to Caleb or Addy.
She went to work and tried to keep her mind on her job, a difficult task when every thought kept tracking right back around to Justin. Where was he? Was he okay? Why hadn’t he called?
By lunchtime, after Lindy had asked her twice what was wrong with her and Emelda had expressed concern over whether she might be coming down with something,
