Snowstorm Confessions

by Rachel Lee

  “That could create problems for local shopkeepers.”

  “It could, but most of our employment will be seasonal. We’ll hire a lot of local students.”

  “I’m more worried about our mountains,” Ted said. “How much are you going to mess them up? I hate the scars where the power lines run.”

  Luke nodded. “We’re working to disturb as little as possible, and I’ve already promised it won’t be visible from town.”

  “And what are you going to do for the town?”

  So Luke was off and running with the same spiel he’d already given Bri. The face-lift and so on. He seemed to be winning them over.

  “Anyway, before we move ahead, we’ll have a town meeting so everyone knows what we intend to do. It’ll give everyone a chance to ask questions and make suggestions.”

  “But will you guys listen?”

  Luke put down his fork. “We try to, within reason. We’d like a friendly relationship locally.”

  Before they left, Tim and Ted helped with the cleanup and helped get Luke back in bed. “Don’t wait so long to call,” Tim told her as they were on their way out. “We don’t get dinners like that very often.”

  She laughed and told them to drive safely. The snow was falling heavily now and the wind whipped it around.

  “Some spring,” she remarked as she returned to Luke. “I’m going to make a latte. Want one?”

  “Can I be a wuss and ask for a half pain pill?”

  She went immediately to his side and touched his shoulder. “Too much up?”

  “And jostling. They were good, I needed to get clean and I’m really grateful. I think I might have been growing bacterial colonies like a petri dish. My scalp sure feels better.”

  “But it wasn’t comfortable. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re more gentle,” he admitted.

  “But they got the job done,” she tried to tease.

  “Yeah.” He managed a smile. “But coffee and a pain pill sound really good.”

  “Coming up.”

  “Thanks, Bri. You’re an angel.”

  He hadn’t called her an angel in years. Her heart leaped and she had to tamp it down. No, no, no. She refused to risk her heart that way again. He’d leave soon, either because he no longer needed her care, or because his job here would be done. That was the way it had always been, Luke home for a month then packing his bags again, off to some exotic location or other. They’d already discovered there was no future in it. She just wished the sexual attraction would lie down and die.

  * * *

  Luke could handle the throbbing in his arm and leg. In fact, it slowly seemed to be lessening, although that jostling he’d taken while Tim and Ted had ruthlessly bathed him had made him pretty achy.

  He worried about his head, though. The dizziness still came in spells, and it needed to go away quickly. There was only so long he could keep his job if he lost his ability to mountain-goat his way over construction sites. The thought gnawed at him.

  But gnawing even harder at him was his desire for Bri. That hadn’t eased at all, despite the separation, despite the painful memories, despite the fact that she still believed he had cheated on her. He’d wanted her the instant he first set eyes on her, and nothing had changed that. He’d been first snared by the curve of her hip when he glimpsed her. She’d been coming to his building to visit a friend who had just moved in, and when he saw her from the back, his interest arose. But his captivation had become complete when she turned and gave him a smile with those witchy green eyes and soft lips, when he’d seen the shape of her breasts beneath jersey. From that instant he’d become like a bloodhound that had caught a scent.

  But wanting wasn’t enough, a lesson he should have learned. He coudn’t trust her. There was a certain irony in that, he supposed. She didn’t trust him, and because of that he couldn’t trust her.

  That was one mountain he’d never be able to blast away, apparently.

  With a latte on the tray table in front of him and a pain pill starting to course through his system, he felt tension easing away. Bri had resumed her seat on the other side of the room, a book open in her lap, but he noticed she hadn’t turned a page in a while.

  Maybe she was messed up, too, by all this. It couldn’t be easy to have to be his caretaker after all the bitterness between them. In fact, considering some of the things she had said to him during their last huge fight, it was remarkable that she would do this for him.

  “So it’s snowing again,” he said, feeling a need to hear her voice.

  “Yes.” She looked up. “This may be the spring that never happened. I mean, yeah, sometimes we get snow late in the season, but this weather really hasn’t let up. It’s May, for crying out loud. If we lived farther north, I could see it.”

  “This can’t be good for your ranchers.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. Feed costs will skyrocket without grazing. I don’t know how they’ll manage.”

  “That’s why this town needs the resort.”

  “We needed the semiconductor plant, too, but that didn’t keep them from shutting down and sending the jobs elsewhere.”

  “Well, you can’t pick up a ski resort and move it.”

  “True. But you need lots of people with money to burn to keep it going. You won’t find many around here.”

  “But there are loads of them out there in the world. A long winter like this would be a boon to business, too.” He paused. “Maybe DEL could do something for the ranchers. A goodwill gesture.”

  “Why in the world would they do that? Why should they care?”

  “Image. One of the things I like about this company is that they don’t come into a place and act like an eight-hundred-pound gorilla.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes, really.” He fell silent, regarding her thoughtfully, wondering how much of her resistance to the resort came from liking the town the way it was, and how much came from disliking him. Maybe he had come to represent everything evil to her. Working for a big development company was rarely a recommendation to the people who were facing the development.

  “We could make things better in a lot of ways,” he finally said.

  “Maybe. Just don’t break all the eggs.”

  “We don’t operate that way. We hire locally as much as possible. Part of that is going to be hiring for all the construction jobs. I don’t know if you’ve got enough people in this town to provide all that we need, but you’ve got teachers who’ll need summer work, right? And others who don’t have jobs. We’ll employ every able-bodied person we can. We always do that. We prefer to hire locally. It creates a more stable workforce.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t look convinced, but she also looked as if she didn’t know where else to take this. She’d expressed her concerns.

  “I don’t suppose I could get to a window and see the snow.”

  “I could open the drapes and turn out the lights in here. It should give you a pretty good view.”

  “Thanks.”

  She pulled the drapes open, then turned on her porch light. The world looked like a snow globe just then. “You weren’t kidding about it coming down.”

  She came to stand beside his bed, facing the window. Maybe he should have thought it through, but he didn’t. He reached out and grasped her hand, taking care not to squeeze tightly, giving her the opportunity to pull away. His heart thudded when she didn’t.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “Yeah. I’m glad I stocked up. If it keeps coming down like this, I’ll be relieved I don’t have to go to the store.”

  Practical thoughts. His weren’t running to the practical at all. He was wishing he could pull her closer, draw her down and find out if her lips were as sweet as he remembered, if her curves were as soft and enticing.

  There was, however, the matter of a broken arm and leg.

  Then she astonished him, turning to look at him. “I want to hate you,” she announced.

  “I thought you
already did.”

  “I did. But now I don’t, and I want to hate you again.”

  “Why?”

  Taking his breath away, she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. It was not a tentative first kiss, but the kiss of a lover who knew her man.

  “I shouldn’t,” she whispered when she lifted her lips briefly. “I shouldn’t.”

  “I want it, too.”

  “That’s exactly what’s wrong here,” she murmured, pulling back. “The sex between us was always good. It was everything else that was the problem.”

  “We could talk about it.”

  “To what end? It’s over.”

  “Not quite.” Then, without compunction, he lifted his good arm and drew her into a deep, hungry kiss. He felt an instant of resistance before she gave herself up to him.

  God, she tasted good, just as he remembered. Her lips were mobile against his, her kiss heartfelt with yearning. He almost felt as if a victory song was breaking out in his head.

  Then she pulled away, whirled and returned to her chair. “It’s not enough,” she said tautly.

  “It’s a starting point.”

  “For what? Another sexy affair when you’re almost never around? I’m not doing that again. I felt like a way station on your travels. Like a mistress!”

  “Really?” She’d told him during one of their fights that she sometimes felt more like an affair than a marriage, but being put in these harsh terms brought it home to him like a punch in the gut. She’d felt like his mistress?

  He’d never meant to make her feel that way. Never. But suddenly the argument that she’d known what she was getting into sounded awfully thin even to him. Knowing was one thing, experiencing was another entirely.

  “And here I thought I was being such a modern man, respecting your career,” he said. His voice was thick again, thick with yearning, and thick with the pain pill and remaining swelling. “What was I supposed to do? Carry you off over my shoulder like some kind of caveman? Demand that you follow me all over the planet?”

  She didn’t reply, but she wasn’t looking at him, either. In the dark, he looked at the whirling snow outside and tried to deal with the fact that maybe Barbara hadn’t ended his marriage with her lies. Maybe she had just been the last straw.

  So what the hell did he think he was doing here? Maybe he ought to sort that out before he made Bri any more miserable than he already had. Sure, he’d been full of a desire to convince her he hadn’t cheated, but maybe he’d cheated on her in more important ways.

  He loved his job, loved the travel, loved the challenges. Unless he was willing to change that, maybe he shouldn’t try to reach Bri as anything but a friend. It wouldn’t be fair to her. He was still the same man who had left her feeling like a convenient mistress, a port of call, as it were. God, what a sucky way to feel about herself.

  It seemed he had another bunch of things to kick himself in the butt over. The question was: Was it worth it? She clearly didn’t really want him back; she’d made a life here among friends and family, as far as she could get from Chicago where they lived during their marriage. Well, where she’d lived during their marriage. Evidently he had been a drop-in visitor.

  It hadn’t looked to him that way at the time. Military families dealt with this kind of thing, after all. And she’d seemed to understand at the outset that that was how it would be.

  But apparently it hadn’t been enough for her, and taking a good hard look at himself, he wasn’t sure he could ever offer more.

  So cut it out, he told himself. Just cut it out. He was older now, and he hoped a little wiser, and maybe some women needed a helluva lot more from a relationship than he seemed able to give.

  Maybe he was just plain selfish. Maybe he wasn’t willing to give enough. Inviting her to travel with him hadn’t been an answer. It would have deprived her of what she loved, leaving her at loose ends for months while he worked a new resort.

  Maybe it just couldn’t work at all, not with Bri.

  He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see her, and tried to decide if it was a failure of circumstances or a failure on his part not to recognize her needs.

  Sadly, no ready answer came to him.

  By ten that night, two fresh feet of snow drifted across streets and yards. Bri pulled on her jacket and stepped out onto the porch. Lifting some, she found it was heavy and wet, but the wind remained strong enough anyway to keep blowing the surface stuff around.

  “I got a problem,” she said as she stepped back inside.

  Luke roused from what had seemed like slumber. “What?”

  “The snow is heavy. Really heavy. Around here it’s usually dry. I’ve never faced this before.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know if the roof can bear the weight. I don’t know if I should let it go until morning.”

  He raised the head of his bed. “I need to get into the wheelchair.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “I won’t feel quite so helpless, even if I am.”

  She almost laughed, but went to lower the bed and bring the chair close enough for him to slide into it. “You’re getting to be quite the expert.”

  “Plenty of practice.” Once in the chair, with a blanket over his lap, he looked up. Of course, there was nothing to see but a ceiling. “How old is this house? Have you ever seen the trusses up there?”

  “I’ve never been able to climb up there. And the house is about eighty years old.”

  “Not good. No way to know how well constructed or whether there’s been water damage over the years.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you have the place inspected when you bought it?”

  “Yeah, but it seemed cursory. A lot of allowances for age.”

  “Great.”

  “I’m going out to see what’s on the roof.” She didn’t wait for an argument. It’s not as if she intended to climb anything. She just wondered how much snow was accumulating above their heads.

  She took great care descending her front steps, which had become little more than vaguely defined mounds of white. Snow stung her cheeks, and what had been pretty earlier now seemed threatening. When she plowed through the snow to the sidewalk and looked back, she didn’t like what she saw. In places, the snow was piling really high, like around the vents and the chimney.

  Swearing, she stomped her way back through the snow and entered the house. To her surprise, she heard Luke cussing a blue streak.

  She raced into the living room. “What’s wrong?”

  “I am so damn sick of being laid up. I ought to be able to help you with this. I ought to be able to check out your attic, clear the worst of the snow from your roof. Instead I’m stuck in this damn chair.”

  “Can’t be helped, Luke. Get a grip. It’s not like you did this to yourself.”

  “That’s a real help.” Then, abruptly, he cocked his head to one side. “I was pushed.”

  Her heart nearly stopped. “Is your memory coming back?”

  “I can remember the feel of hands on my back, shoving. I remember it as clearly as I can see you.”

  She found her chair and sank onto it, feeling sick. “Somebody tried to kill you?” It was hard to process, hard to accept. Cold chills began to run through her.

  “Or at least put me out of commission.”

  She arched a brow at him. “Right. You’re lucky you’re not dead. Try viewing it from that perspective. Does this happen to you often?”

  “Well, I was shot at once, been punched a few times, but no, this isn’t par for the course.”

  “We need to call the sheriff.”

  “What’s the point? He already headed up there looking for evidence. This snow will have buried anything that was overlooked.”

  “But now that you remember...”

  He just shook his head. “Not the most trustworthy memory, I gather. No, whoever it was, they got what they wanted. I’m out of commission. It won’t stop the project. Killing me wou
ldn’t have stopped it.”

  Which raised an interesting question for Bri. If removing Luke wouldn’t stop the resort, what was the point in attacking him? Something personal? But he hadn’t been in town long enough to draw that kind of attention.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” she protested.

  “Except in the mind of whoever did it. It might have been an impulse. Regardless, this isn’t getting the snow off your roof.”

  She looked out the window again. “If it would just stop, I’d feel better about waiting for morning.” At the rate it was falling, however, she wondered if there’d be another two feet before dawn. Reaching for the remote, she flipped on the weather and waited until they got to her part of the country.

  “Accumulations of three to four feet are expected,” said the cheerful woman who seemed to think this was the best news ever. Bri would have bet that the only thing that would have made her happier was a tornado outbreak. She flipped it off.

  “I can’t wait for morning.”

  “You can’t do this alone! You could slip and break your neck.”

  “Some of my neighbors must be worrying about the same thing. Maybe we’ll get a work party together. Or I’ll call Jack.”

  “Jack.” The word emerged with distaste, but she gave him credit for not adding anything to it. She couldn’t understand his antipathy for Jack, but some things just couldn’t be explained. Bundling up, she went back outside to see if her neighbors wanted to do something about the snow.

  Luke would just have to stew in his own juices. Might do him some good.

  For her part, she was glad to have a problem to solve that didn’t involve Luke. The man was growing on her again, and she didn’t want that. What was that old saying? Insanity was doing the same thing again and again hoping for a different outcome.

  Of one thing she was sure—she was not insane.

  * * *

  Jack had watched the snowfall from the cozy security of his little apartment at the edge of town. He had a game going on his computer, but the snow seemed to mesmerize him more. It was a beautiful thing, all those sparkling, swirling diamonds.

  He’d begun the evening planning to show up at Bri’s first thing in the morning and take care of her sidewalk and steps. That was something he could do for her that her ex couldn’t do. He took pleasure in that, knowing he’d made the guy dependent and useless. He was sorry that it had made more work for Bri, and sorry that the guy had wound up staying with her, but he was certain that Luke couldn’t possibly appeal to Bri in his current condition. Helpless jerk. Too bad he hadn’t died. That would have solved a whole lot of problems.