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He emptied his winter gear out of his duffel bag, heavy coat, hat, gloves, and his winter boots, imagining he was probably going to wish he’d brought his taller boots rather than these six inch ones. He carried those down the stairs and returned to the back hall, pulling the inside door closed behind him, where he sat on the bench to don his boots.
Maren had waited but was not inactive. She’d pulled her hood back up, and her back faced him as she kicked snow away from the door, through the skinny opening he’d made. Alec glanced around the hall while he tied his boots. In the corner sat three snow shovels of varying height and design, and a long snow brush, likely meant for a car.
“All right,” Alec said as he stood, putting on his gloves. “Let me at it.”
Maren turned her body a bit and then was forced to turn her head even more to see beyond the edge of her furry hood. She stepped back inside, holding another shovel. Already, her cheeks and the tip of her nose were painted red by the wind and cold.
“It’s not the pretty, white fluffy stuff,” she cautioned, her lips parted, maybe winded from her brief exertions. “It’s that heavy, wet stuff.”
Great.
But he shrugged internally. They had to go through it, light, heavy, or otherwise.
Considering that the shovel in her hand appeared the sturdiest, with a thick plastic scoop, he asked, “May I?”
“By all means,” she said, moving out of his way as she handed him the weapon. “May the snow gods be kind to you.”
He took the shovel and compelled the door to open a bit more, just enough so that he could wedge himself through the opening. Once outside, the wind smacked him hard, pelting him with icy snow crystals.Are you kidding me!He moved quick, positioning himself behind the door, and thus protected from the wind, working first to free the door completely.
Maren followed, working on shoveling a path toward the garage. She tossed the snow several times off to her left before she realized the wind was tossing it right back at her and switched sides, throwing each shovelful off to the right. Wisely she tried to keep her back to the oncoming wind. Her progress was slow, having to shovel each next step three times, once to clear the top of the drift, again to remove another foot of snow, and then finally, to reach the blacktop of the driveway or close to it.
Alec joined her as soon as he’d cleared the door and the back step, hopping up in front of her and taking the top two tiers off the snow they needed to move, in order to expedite the process.
“Tell me there’s a nice big riding tractor in that garage,” he called over his shoulder, “with a wide snowplow attached to it.”
“Actually, there is a snowblower,” Maren returned, having to holler a bit to be heard, “but it hasn’t been used this year or last because Hal insists on doing all the—gah!”
Alec whipped round, just in time to see Maren, made blurry in his vision by the eddying snow, go flying onto her side, the shovel extended beyond her, as if the wind had given her a little shove when she’d tossed the snow off the shovel.
Jabbing his shovel into the uncleared snow so that it stood without falling, he went to her, biting back the laughter that likely would have come if he knew her better, if they were friendly enough to laugh at each other’s mishaps. Before he reached her, however, she rolled stiffly onto her back and proceeded to make snow angels. She only scissored her arms and legs twice before Alec was standing over her.
Nowthere’sa picture, he thought. She lay in a bed of snow, outlined by an angel’s shape, with a dusting of snow covering her hat and coat and gloves while her rosy cheeks were dewy as each snowflake landed and succumbed to the warmth of her skin. A few more flakes, un-melted, clung to her long lashes.
Maren wasn’t looking at him, but at the sky above her, her gaze filled with a combination of wonder and wry amusement. “It’s ugly beautiful,” she said, a strange serenity to her stillness and her shiny gaze.
Extending his hand down to her, Alec deemed the pre-dawn scene harsh, annoying, and overdone, anything but beautiful.
He easily pulled her to her feet once she’d clapped her hand into his.
He did not release her gloved hand immediately.
“Ugly beautiful?” He questioned when they stood face to face, though she was compelled to tip her face up to him to meet his gaze.
“Fierce, but mesmerizing,” she said, her eyes moving over his face. “Nature’s wild chaos,” she concluded, almost absently.
Alec returned her stare, his chest heaving a bit, same as hers, for their labor thus far. But neither of them moved. For what seemed a long moment but likely was only three or four seconds, in the hushed exchange of glances, a burgeoning awareness of attraction took hold of him, and he would have sworn a similar energy passed through Maren as her lips parted and her gaze went still, fixed on his eyes. The wind and the world fadedaway. Alec believed the moment was pregnant with possibilities, foremost being a want to kiss her. Before he moved to make that happen, but after he’d shifted his gaze to her bright pink lips, Maren blinked and laughed awkwardly.
“Listen to me,” she said self-consciously, lowering her clear blue eyes. “Nature’s wild chaos,” she repeated, seeming to make fun of herself. She bent and retrieved her shovel. “It’s a blizzard. A big, ugly, fat, angry blizzard.”
The spell broke, Alec breathed again and stared a moment longer as Maren got back to shoveling.
Don’t kiss her, was probably a better idea than what he’d been thinking.
And yet the abrupt shift from silent-but-rife-with-promise to Maren removed, her hand gone from his, returned to shoveling, left him briefly disoriented. More alarming though was the sudden pang of regret, caught between the momentum of what could have been and the hollowness of a road left untraveled.
Chapter Six
Truth be known, she was more than only a little thankful when Alec offered to consult with Hal, who’d been out plowing his driveway across the street by the time Alec and Maren had returned to the house from the garage. Alec had carried two full stacks of firewood while Maren had transferred an armful of necessary groceries.
