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“Do you have a way to reach him?”
“Of course.” She rattled off a phone number. “He said for you to call him anytime.”
“We’re going to ski over and pick up the boys. We should be there in an hour or so.”
Billy made a little face to warn her it might be longer than that.
“Roughly,” Jenna corrected.
“Actually, Mr. Caldwell said to tell you that he hired one of the volunteer firefighters to drop off a snowmobile for you. He figured you would want to get here as soon as possible.”
“Wow. He thinks of everything.”
“That he does.”
“I think I like this guy,” Billy said after they’d hung up the phone and gone to hunt down the snowmobile.
“I’m not so sure about him. Why didn’t he leave us a message or a note? Or call us? Just because he’s rich enough to whisk Annika off to—” She broke off suddenly. “She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”
“Hey hey.” The terror on her face made him reach for her. “She’s in the right hands. We’ll find out more when we talk to her. Do you want to call Caldwell before we go?”
They’d have to call from the landline, which meant going back inside the house, taking more time…
Jenna shook her head. “I want to see the boys first.”
He nodded his understanding. One crisis at a time.
“Here’s the snowmobile.” He found it tucked next to Jenna’s car, both vehicles buried in snow. “Now I really like this guy,” he said as he knocked snow off the leather seat. It was the most expensive model he’d ever seen.
“It probably belongs to Sans Souci.” Jenna had clearly decided to withhold her approval of Annika’s new man.
“Hang on. Are you going to give Caldwell the Billy treatment?”
She laughed, her cheeks pink in the cold air. “It would serve Annika right if I did. Let’s see Mr. Caldwell handle it half as well as you do.”
Touched, he stopped brushing snow off the machine and turned to face her. It felt, somehow, as if they’d gone through a whole lifetime of emotions over the past forty-eight hours. It was now literally impossible to make her blurry. She was crystal clear, all the way down to the streaks of tears on her face.
“You noticed.”
“Of course I did. You know she’s just being protective, and you love her like a sister, and you know how important she is to us, so you roll with her teasing. And that’s why underneath it all she loves and respects you too.”
Under his gaze, she turned pink, then shifted her attention to the snowmobile. “We won’t all fit on this. It’s built for two.”
“I’ll be the shuttle driver. If you want to wait here, I’ll go pick up Bean first, and then—”
“Oh no.” She shook her head firmly. “I’m going, too. The sooner I see the boys, the more I’ll relax. I’m not used to having them be chopper-napped by a billionaire.”
Billy helped her onto the seat of the snowmobile. He was about to take the wheel, then stopped. “Want to drive or sit shotgun?”
“Why, Billy Cooper, how egalitarian of you.” She cocked her head. “Let me think. I grew up with an eccentric artist opposed to all forms of mechanized snow transport. You grew up riding anything you could get your hands on. I’m a botanical artist, you’re a pro athlete. I think I’ll go with you being the driver. But I do appreciate the offer.”
He figured the fact that she’d gotten her sarcasm back meant that she was no longer in a state of fear. “Anytime,” he said gallantly as he took the seat behind the handlebars. She put on one of the helmets dangling from the controls.
“Do you mean you’ll be snowmobile chauffeur anytime, or offer to let me drive anytime?”
“Either. Both. Whatever works.” He put on the other helmet, then turned the key in the ignition.
He barely heard her response over the roar of the high-performance snowmobile engine, but he was pretty sure it was complimentary. She was smiling, a tender, affectionate curving of her pretty lips.
