Anna laughed. “My dad was. He was always saying stuff like that, giving me little bon mots to help me get through life.”
“You have great timing. How could you know that was exactly what I needed to hear?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” Anna said, watching as a bar patron asked for the check, then paid with a handwritten IOU. “Gotta love small towns,” she murmured.
“And this is an especially lovable one.”
She turned to him. “You seem very at home here.”
“This is my second time in Snow Falls. I was here years ago.”
“For your uninteresting job?”
He looked at her for a beat, as if gauging whether he could trust her. “Yes, for my job.” He sipped his mulled wine and looked away.
She tilted her head as she regarded him. “Josh, are you a spy?”
He nearly spit out his drink “A spy? What would give you that idea?”
“You just seem... a bit mysterious, that’s all. Plus, I read somewhere that they choose spies partially based on who has the most forgettable looks—the kind of person you couldswearyou’d met before.”
“Really? Forgettable?” He laughed. She blushed.
“Hey! Wait! Thearticlesaid forgettable!I’mnot saying you’re forgettable. I think you’re—” She had been about to say “quite cute,” but she cut herself off and looked down into her cider mug. Had the bartender inadvertently given her the strong stuff? No. Her head was clear as a bell. And in this state of clarity, she had been about to tell a guy she’d just met at a bar that she thought he was cute—when meanwhile, Nick was about to ask her to marry him. “I guess you just seem like a regular guy,” she continued. “But there’s something about you that tells me you’re not.”
“So, you immediately went to ‘this guy is a spy.’ ”
She laughed again. “Hey, I have a wild imagination, what can I say?”
“I promise you,” he said, and now his expression was surprisingly intense, “I really am just a regular guy.” He leaned back a bit and gestured at himself. “Look at me! Leafs jersey and toque, sitting in a sports bar, watching the game in small-town Ontario. What could be more regular than that?You, on the other hand...”
He trailed off, and she waited, expectant, suddenly very curious to know what he had to say about her. “You don’t look like a regular girl.” They stared at each other for a long moment. It felt like all the noise in the bar fell away.
Then a buzzer sounded on the TV for the end of the game. It had concluded in a draw and there would now be overtime.The twin bartenders were walking up and down the bar, offering more free refills of cider or wine. When they got to Anna, she shook her head. “That’s it for me, but thank you.” She held out cash, but the twins shook their heads and said in unison, “No way, bad luck!”
“Wait, I thought only one of you believed in bad luck?”
“Not when it’s a tie!” said the Senators-jersey-wearing twin. “When it’s a tie, anything is possible!”
Anna put her wallet away and looked at Josh. “Thanks for keeping me company, but I’d better be going. It’s been quite a day, and I still have to figure out where I’m staying. I don’t think I have overtime in me tonight.”
“Me, neither. I’ll read about it in the paper in the morning. But I meant what I said earlier. Let me walk you to the inn. I couldn’t stand the idea of you getting lost in the snow. And...” He took a black parka from the back of his barstool and held it out to her. “Wear this? Please? I also couldn’t live with myself if you turned into an icicle on the way there.”
Anna protested, but he wouldn’t hear of it. She slid on his jacket and felt immediately warm and cozy. She couldn’t help but notice how nice the jacket smelled, too. Subtle and expensive, a blend of amber and bergamot that did not seem like something a regular guy would wear.
They made their way to the front door and outside into the snowy night—but Anna stopped on the sidewalk when she realized how much the volume of accumulated snow had already increased. “These stupid shoes,” she muttered. “I think I need to call a taxi, I’m sorry.”
“You’re not going to find a taxi at this hour in Snow Falls. Most people walk home from the bar—or snowshoe or cross-country ski,” he said—just as two bar patrons shushed past gaily on skis. “I do know of a rickshaw, however.”
“A rickshaw?”
“Okay, not really a rickshaw, but I could carry you? Really, what are your options, other than frostbitten toes?”
She was about to decline—but she knew he was right. With the shoes she was wearing, frostbite was a legitimate concern. The snow fell gently into the short waves of hair that hugged the back of his neck as she stared up at him, knowing she probablyshouldsay no—she didn’t really know this guy at all, no matter what the excitement of a long, unpredictable day was making her feel. But when he kept smiling that sweet, generous smile, she found herself saying, “Yes, please.”
“Okay, ready?” He swept her up into his muscular arms and carried her like he was a firefighter rescuing her from a burning building. She could feel his firm chest against the side of her body, smell his cologne and the cinnamon-and-clove spiciness of his breath.
“You know, this is probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done,” she said as he carried her through the snowy night.
