Cold Snap (In From the Cold #1)

by Lee Brazil

  Chapter Six

  "Okay, Siggy. Come when you're done with your client. I'll make pancakes, just like mom used to. I have one thing to do." He grabbed his red, rabbit fur lined, wool knit hat from a peg by the front door. "But it shouldn't take long. If I'm not here when you get here, you know where the key is."

  His brother hung up, and Finn continued pulling on his cold weather gear. With the Under Armour he wore constantly in the winter, all he needed was a short wool blend pea coat over his jeans and cashmere sweater. The smooth buttery leather gloves were more for the sensual pleasure they gave him than anything else. His hands would be just as warm in his pockets for the short walk to Cannon's A-frame.

  A pair of Sorel boots completed his black and red ensemble, and Finn didn't even question why he was making such a fuss over his appearance. Cannon had ditched him at the hospital, checking himself out AMA while Finn had been home, making arrangements for him. The idiot was probably at campus right now, meeting with his staff or terrorizing interns when he should be home in bed resting.

  And as long as there was a small chance that Cannon was home in bed, then Finn was going to do his best to look like Prince Charming, even if Cannon's rendition of Snow White lacked something. Smiling wryly, he acknowledged the error of trying to see Cannon Malloy as a princess. Grumpy the dwarf, maybe but he couldn’t quite see Snow White ditching Prince Charming not once, but twice. No, that was Cinderella, and even that hadn't even been her own doing. Poor girl had to leave at midnight or her ride would turn into a pumpkin and her dress to rags.

  Cannon…that was all choice. The first time he'd had no ride or rags to consider. He'd just run, and given the emotional intensity of the night, maybe Finn could excuse that. He could certainly understand it and work with it. Winning the fair princess, er…grumpy dwarf, wasn't worthwhile if it wasn't challenging, was it?

  That second time, when Finn returned to the hospital to pick Cannon up the morning after he had been admitted for observation, only to find Cannon had checked himself out…that he found a little harder to forgive. It seemed a lot more deliberate. After all, once you'd cleaned up another man's vomit, you should get some privileges, shouldn't you?

  Thoughts of Cannon occupied his mind all the way to the cabin, where he paused at the side of the drive, which Scott had done a fabulous job of keeping plowed. Finn stopped in the roadway and stared at the house. Somewhat smaller than his own, it was neat, the drapes drawn against invasion of privacy. The front patio needed to be shoveled, and he made a note to come back and do that after his afternoon online course discussion was over.

  His eyes narrowed as he followed the lines of the shrubs and the house. There really were strange footprints all around Cannon's cabin. That didn't surprise Finn. Cannon was odd, but not an idiot. What surprised Finn wasn't the footprints themselves, but the fact that they led from the road to the door as Cannon had indicated, then seemed to circle the house, darting in here and there as though the person who'd made them was peeking in the windows. But they never came back.

  Maybe Cannon was right. Maybe someone had broken in and was still in the house?

  He knelt in the snow to examine the indentations. One trail of elongated circles, not egg shaped, like pointy toes and heels, but just curved edges back and front. Looking more closely, he realized that the footprints were odd, because whoever had made them had walked back to the road by stepping in his own tracks…

  Smart.

  Rising, he glanced cautiously around. No vehicle tracks in the slushy residue of Scott's plowing. How had the unwelcome visitor managed? Through the tight trees a hint of glass and gray caught his eye. Hmm…

  Crossing the road, he ambled down, sighing in relief and resignation when he found what he'd suspected, a good hundred feet down the road from Cannon's place. The same plodding footprints led across the expanse of snow to the cabin that had long housed Finn's closest and most mysterious neighbor.

  Rowen Smithe.

  At least he was harmless. Mostly.

  Fancying himself as St. George setting out to slay dragons, Finn stepped into Rowen's boot prints and followed the wavering trail back to the man's cabin. He felt compelled to talk to Rowen because it would set Cannon's mind at ease to know he wasn't being stalked, but he also couldn't deny the inevitable curiosity that he had long felt toward the man.

  He'd moved in less than a year after Finn, in the dark of night. Finn's initial efforts at being neighborly and introducing himself had been ignored, until one day the door he hammered on cracked open and a husky voice whispered, "Go the fuck away."

  It was a start, and after several years, they'd come to a reluctant understanding. Rowen would answer the door and have a cup of coffee…that he made himself, never one that Finn brought him, once every two or three months. He'd answer Finn's efforts at conversation with monosyllables or clipped one-liners, then when fifteen minutes were up, he'd announce, "Bout fucking time you went home, isn't it?" and disappear through his own door.

  If Finn tried to visit more often, he got the cold shoulder.

  He'd visited last month. Christmas Eve afternoon. Tried to give Rowen a fruitcake he'd baked. And yes, there it was, still sitting on the front porch just where Finn had left it. Sighing, he brushed snow off the gilt wrapping paper and knocked on the door.