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Some of the snow, no longer kept in check by his door, fell into his house, but most of it remained tightly packed in a near-perfect cube resting on his porch. Reaching the middle of his shins, Liam realized with a doleful groan what he’d be doing for most of his morning.
Retreating from his doorway, he found some gloves in his closet and then sighed his way to his garage, where he claimed his snow shovel for its first job since the previous winter. Preparing his muscles for the unfamiliar displeasure of scooping away a couple hundred pounds of snow out of the way, he began the arduous task of creating a canyon from his porch to his driveway.
It took him fifteen miserable minutes to clear his porch and doorstep, piling the snow sloppily away from the single area he cared to uncover today. His ears felt like they were turning to ice, his nose wouldn’t stop running, and he was too stubborn to run back inside and find something to cover his ears. He knew he’d have to get his driveway at some point, or at least enough of it for him to get his car, which also needed unburied, onto the street once the snowplows showed up and cleared and salted the roads, but for now, he simply couldn’t be bothered.
For today, clearing a path from his door to his driveway would be enough. His roof, and Santa Claus, were lost causes. The plastic figure was completely covered in snow, and he wasn’t about to grab a ladder and rescue him.
When he was about a fourth of the way into clearing his walkway, allowing at least a few of the ornaments he and Tess had set up to breathe again, his porch mostly freed of all but the most recalcitrant clumps of snow clinging to where it’d fallen last night, he glanced over his shoulder. His timing couldn’t have been better, because two angels decided to emerge from the house next to his at that very moment.
Anna exited the house first, and like him, she was carrying a snow shovel. Unlike him, the wiser pair of women had thrown on some of Tess’s snow boots, beanies, and two swaddling black overcoats, although everything outside of Anna’s coat, which was hers, hung a bit long on the shorter, younger woman.
He noticed all these things, and then he noticed one more thing. Because of it, he forgot all about the cold.
Tess had thrown on the same pair of fleece-lined leggings he’d seen her wearing the night he’d gotten home from college. They adhered to her immaculate legs, not an ounce of extra fat left to run amok beneath the skintight fabric. Even a yard away, Liam basked in the sight of her—and the realization that he hadn’t ruined his chance of seeing her in them with what he’d said last night.
She noticed him first. Her eyes, intensely blue and wildly radiant thanks to the stark white tundra surrounding her, picked him out before she’d taken her second step outside. Immediately, a beatific smile framed her heavenly features. A wave followed.
As Liam waved back, breaking into a smile of his own, Tess tapped Anna on the shoulder and gestured toward him. The younger woman, just as beautiful in her own right, turned his way, then also smiled and waved. The two women exchanged a few quick words, Anna nodded, and then Tess began to wade through the snow toward him.
Behind her, Anna began imitating the same task he’d already completed, working to uncover Tess’s porch. She’d get some time to catch up, for Liam forgot all about his work while Tess fought through the snow on her way toward him.
“Hi, Liam, good morning!” Tess said, beaming at him once she stopped on the bricks he’d cleared of snow. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra snow shovel in your garage, would you? I only have the one.”
“Yeah, I have one,” he replied, sniffling and wiping at his red nose,nowwishing that he’d dressed better for the winter, solely because he didn’t want Tess to see him dripping mucus in front of her.
“Might I borrow it?”
“Y-yeah. Sure, absolutely.”
Stammering like a lovelorn fool, he winced internally, though Tess remained all smiles.
“Great! Let’s go!”
Her jollity garnered a dumbstruck nod, and he followed after Tess as she entered his house. Immediately after crossing the threshold, she bent down and began removing her boots, which thrust her butt out in front of him. Making the sound of an animal choking on a bone, Liam immediately skirted around her and hid his blush by imitating her.
“We should get you something for your ears, Liam,” Tess remarked after she’d deposited her boots on his entry mat. “They’re red as a stop sign. It’ll also probably help with your runny nose.”
“Yeah, I’ll, uh, nab something on our way out,” he said, swallowing.
Nodding happily at him, Tess let him escort her to his garage. Flipping on the light, they looked over the various tools, ladders, and bikes neatly ordered on the back and right sides of the rectangular room. Right beside an empty spot on the right wall sat an upright sibling to the snow shovel he’d left outside.
“There it is,” Tess said, smiling and practically bounding to it.
She left him staring in her wake, happy but confused by the burst of exuberance she’d so far shown him. Given that they were all trapped inside their homes for the next few days, he’d have expected something more morose or, at best, accepting of the unfortunate situation.
After grabbing the shovel, she returned to him, remaining undampened by the manual labor awaiting her. Heaping onto his confusion, she set then the shovel down on the wall.
“Liam,” Tess said, eyes such deep azurite that he’d have paid any price to keep them looking his way. “You still look a bit too affected by the cold.”
His brow furrowed as her perplexity reached its peak.
“Come here,” Tess said, voice quieter than it’d been before. She opened her arms to him. “Let’s warm you up for a minute.”
It was the kind of phrase that could stretch from completely innocuous, if coming from someone as warm and friendly as Tess, to deliriously salacious, like if Avril had been here now. And yet, the way in which Tess had made her suggestion somehow reminded him of the way that sultry redheaded troublemaker would have teasingly whispered the words to scald his face with heat. It might have—it must have—been his mind playing tricks on him.
It might not have been.
Liam discovered that when Tess’s arms wrapped themselves around him, and when her body heat mingled with his. The fullness of embrace scattered redness through his face as if someone had carpet-bombed it. Even with her winter coat on, he felt her breasts mash against his chest, and he naturally folded his arms around the small of her back.
