She was not heartbroken about this but she did feel bad for her girls. More because they never asked where he was or when he was coming to see them. It was as if they, too, had had enough of Seth Connelly and his broken promises. Luckily, they did have a close relationship with Seth’s mother, Audrey. She loved the girls and Jessie appreciated that she tried to run interference between Jessie and Seth’s domineering father, Judge Connelly, who had not truly accepted the divorce.
Jessie glanced at the clock as she rose from the couch. It was late. The light dusting of snow that had been predicted had already begun. She crossed to the window and glanced out, pressing her fingers against the icy pane of glass. Steamy imprints were left behind when she removed her hand and she used the fluffy sleeve of her bathrobe to wipe them away.
She checked the locks on the doors, switched off the lights and made her way upstairs. She peeked into the girls’ room. Although she’d bought the three-bedroom house specifically so the girls could have their own rooms, the two of them refused to be separated. It delighted Jessie that her girls were so close, so she was happy to let them share until the day came when they did want their own space. In the dim light, she could see Gracie asleep with one arm thrown over her head and Maddie buried deep in her covers with just her nose visible. The sound of their soft sighs was the only noise, except the steady purr-snore that Chaos emitted from where he was curled up at Gracie’s feet.
Jessie eased out of the room and crossed to her bedroom. She opened the book she’d been reading but decided instead to just sleep. She put her phone on her nightstand, counting on its alarm to wake her in time for work. As she wriggled under her flannel sheets, trying to warm them up, she felt herself began to drift.
The image that flitted through her mind while she laid there was one from tonight. Someone had snapped a picture of Zach with his shaggy blonde hair poking out beneath the hem of his slouchy beanie. He was laughing, a big wide show of teeth with a wicked twinkle in his dark brown eyes, as he lobbed a snowball right at the person taking the picture. The image—the sheer mischievous boyishness of his pose—made Jessie smile as she slid into a deep sleep.
• • •
It was cold, bitterly cold. The tips of her ears, the end of her nose, and her cheeks hurt from the chill. Jessie glanced down and realized she was standing naked in her front yard and she was knee deep in the snow. Her teeth were chattering and her skin was covered in goose pimples. She hugged her arms close and ran her hands over her body trying to warm up and cover herself at the same time. Jessie frowned.
She saw Zach next door. He was laughing and Rufus was dancing around him, trying to grab the scarf that was wrapped around Zach’s neck. Jessie was so cold. She wanted that scarf. She tried to call Zach but she couldn’t make any noise beyond the sound of her teeth clacking together. She tried to wave at him, but her arms felt heavy with the cold and she couldn’t lift them.
It occurred to her that she was going to freeze to death, naked in her front yard. The horror of it made her redouble her efforts to be heard. She forced her feet to move in the snow and she walked, dragging her feet until she didn’t have the strength to take another step and fell face forward into the snow.
She was going to die. Jessie opened her eyes but the darkness remained. She tried to cry out and this time a soft sound escaped her mouth. She blinked.
It hit her then that she was lying in bed. How did she get here? She lifted the heavy bedcovers and felt her chest. She felt the well-worn thermal beneath her fingertips. She was in her pajamas, thank goodness. It had just been a dream. She blew out a breath and felt it mist into the air.
The frigid air in her bedroom swept in under her blanket, making her shiver and shake. Jessie dropped her covers and snatched her phone from her nightstand. The screen told her that it was three o’clock in the morning. She blinked against the darkness. It was so dark. The night-light that illuminated the hallway so that the girls could find the bathroom or her room if they woke up at night wasn’t glowing its usual ambient blue light.
Jessie stuck her arm out of the covers and switched on her bedside lamp. Nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. A boom sounded outside, making her start, followed by flashes of lightning. She remembered it had been lightly snowing when she went to bed, so this was now a snow thunderstorm? Fantastic. Not.
She shoved aside her covers, and using her phone display for light, she found her thick bathrobe at the foot of her bed and pulled it on. There were no sounds of alarm coming from the girls’ room but she hurried across the hallway to check on them anyway.
They were both sound asleep. Chaos was snuggled up with Maddie now, his little face poked out beside hers from her cocoon of covers, but their room was freezing, too. It occurred to Jessie that the power must have gone out shortly after they all went to bed.
She grabbed two extra blankets from the linen cupboard in the hallway and added them to the blankets the girls were already under. She then went into the bathroom and turned on the faucet so that it ran in a tiny steady stream, hoping it would be enough to keep the pipes from freezing. She used the flashlight on her phone to find her way downstairs and did the same in the bathroom and kitchen sinks down there.
Another boom sounded outside, causing Jessie to yelp, followed by several flashes of lightning. She turned on the flashlight app on her phone and aimed it at an angle out the living room window and gasped. This was not good. The snow that should have stopped hours ago was falling fast and furious, adding to the thick blanket that already covered the ground.
The thunder continued to rumble and the lightning flashed. Never in all of her thirty-two years did Jessie ever remember snow that came with thunder and lightning. Mother Nature must be feeling especially bitchy these days.
She left the window and went into survival mode. She checked the log basket by the fireplace. It was fully stocked and she had plenty of firewood out back on the patio. She wasn’t sure if she should use the wood inside now or wait until later. She opened up the weather app on her phone. The latest report said the storm was predicted to last for three days. They were going to be buried. The entire shoreline was without power and there was no telling how long it would remain so.
Jessie hurried to the kitchen. She found three big round pillar candles and some matches. She lit the candles, her fingers clumsy with the cold, and shut off her phone to conserve the battery, which was at ninety-five percent. She did a quick assessment of her pantry and her refrigerator. She had plenty of food. Water. If the pipes did freeze, they would need water. She gathered all of the pitchers and water bottles she had in the cupboard and filled them with tap water. When she was out of bottles and the counter was full, she stopped, holding her hands over the flames of the candles to warm them up.
She tried to remember how much gas she had in the car. Not that she could go anywhere in the storm; driving a basic four-door sedan in this blizzard would be stupid at best and suicidal at worst. But if things got crazy cold, she and the girls could always open the garage door to let out the fumes and climb into the car and run it with its heater on while she charged her phone off the car battery. They would be okay. She could get them through this. Really, she could. She nodded, then she started to cry.
Maybe it was because she’d woken up in the middle of the night and she was tired, maybe it was because it was really frigging cold in her house, or maybe it was just that adulting, especially alone with kids, was so damned hard sometimes. If Jessie didn’t have the girls then any screwups she made would only impact her life, but Maddie and Gracie needed her. They needed her to problem solve and keep them safe and secure while—
Boom. Another rumble of thunder rocked the house.
She wiped away her tears. If nothing else, the thunder had interrupted her bout of self-pity. During her seven years of marriage it became quickly clear to her that crying was pretty much a waste of time. Not that she didn’t indulge
now and again, but other than the comfort of letting her upset out, her tears had done little to fix her situation.
She grabbed the afghan off the back of her couch and wrapped it around her thick bathrobe. She sat on her couch, trying to calculate how much wood she had and how much she would need. And how much wood would a woodchuck chuck . . . She snorted.
The wind howled against the side of her small shingle house as if trying to find a way in. When she’d bought the place a few months ago, she’d had new insulation put in and now she was glad. It had taken a hearty bite out of her earnings at the time but while it was cold in her small house, it wasn’t drafty, for which she was very grateful.
Okay. Jessie settled back against the couch cushions. She would wait a little while and then start the fire. It would be all right. She had water. Her car was there in case of an emergency. The soft light of the candles illuminated the room. It was even somewhat cozy with the flickering candlelight. Maybe she and the girls could pretend they were Laura Ingalls Wilder, surviving a blizzard on the prairie.
Bam!
A horrific noise sounded on the front porch. Jessie sat up, her eyes wide, her heart pounding in her chest. Another thud sounded and another. That was not thunder. That was someone trying to break into her house!
Chapter 8
She glanced around the room, looking for a weapon. She had her choice of a designer throw pillow or a women’s magazine. This would not do. She ran into the kitchen. The candles illuminated the small space enough so that she could see her bottles of water on the counter.
She could throw water bottles at the person outside. No, she and the girls might need the water. She opened the knife drawer. Could she actually cut someone? What if they wrestled the knife away from her and used it to slash her throat? She slammed the drawer shut.
A light flickered on her porch. Someone was out there. She grabbed the first thing at hand, thinking she would throw it at them if they kicked in her door. With her other hand she used her cell phone to call the police. She pressed nine and one and then waited.
Maybe she could scare them away. Maybe they didn’t know she was awake and they thought the house was empty. She stealthily approached the door. The wind was howling and it was still snowing. Whoever was on her porch was protected by the roof from the snow and the wind but it was still falling thick and deep and it was bitterly cold out there. Maybe the person was stranded and had come to her house seeking shelter.
Oh, damn, she didn’t want to let a stranger into her home during a storm. That reeked of something that would end up on the Investigation Discovery channel, but she couldn’t let them freeze to death either. Her need to protect her girls warred with her compulsion to be a Good Samaritan. She decided to try to scare them away. If they were a bad guy, they would go. If they were good, they’d stay and she could help them or at least let them use her phone.
She peered through her peephole. The lamp on the porch was very bright, the sort you’d use to go camping, and within its glow she could see the accumulation of snow on her front steps as well as the person standing there in a puffy green coat. The hood was up and it closed around their face, leaving a hole just big enough to see through.
Jessie made sure the latch on the storm door was locked as she opened the interior door just a crack and shouted, “Stop right there. I have a gun and I know how to use it.”
The person whirled around. With their back to the lamp and the snow swirling in the air it was impossible to see their features, but she heard a muffled shout. She grasped her phone, getting ready to hit the remaining digit.
“I have the police on the phone,” she cried. “They’ll be here in minutes.”
The person reached up and Jessie panicked and shouted, “I’ll shoot!”
The person held their gloved hands in the air in a position of surrender. They gestured to their hood, indicating that they were going to remove it.
“Okay, but move slowly,” she said.
One of the person’s gloved hands ripped the Velcro fastening open on the hood, while the other pushed the hood back. A thick thatch of unruly blonde hair was illuminated in the lamplight and Jessie felt herself sag against the doorjamb.
“Zach! What are you doing here?” she cried.
“The power is out,” he said. “I was worried about you and the girls.”
“You scared me to death,” she said. A boom of thunder sounded and she jumped. “Come in, hurry.”
She unlatched the storm door and pushed it wide. Zach stomped his boots before stepping into the house. Rufus came bounding out of a snowbank at the bottom of the steps and scooted inside with him.
Jessie pulled the door shut against the wind and latched it, shutting the thick wooden interior door after it. She turned around to find Zach looking at her with a smile curling his lips.
“What?” she asked.
“A potato?” he asked.
“Huh?”
He gestured to her hand. “You said you had a gun. That’s a potato.”
Jessie looked down at her hand. She hadn’t really thought about what she’d grabbed in the kitchen but seeing the big Idahoan in her hand was a bit startling. A laugh bubbled up before she could stop it. She looked at Zach. He was grinning.
“I threatened you with a potato.”
“You were going to mash me,” he said.
Jessie laughed harder and waved the potato at him. “No, I wouldn’t want you to lose your appeal.”
“Ha!” Zach laughed. “Nice one.”
Rufus pushed his head against Jessie and she felt his cold, wet fur.
“Oh, poor baby,” she said. “You must be freezing. Come in and I’ll start a fire. Let me just get a towel for Rufus.”
She dashed down the hallway to the guest bathroom where she kept some extra towels. She hurried back to the living room to find that Zach had put his lantern on the coffee table and it lit up the entire room. He was kneeling in front of her fireplace, setting up the logs for a fire. She thought about asking him to wait so she could conserve wood, but Rufus felt awfully cold to the touch and she thought he could use the warmth of a fire before going back out there.
She wrapped Rufus in the large towel and rubbed him down. He was happy to let her do so and even rolled onto his back so she could get all of the clumped snow off of his legs.
Zach took one of the long matches that she kept on the mantel and lit the kindling beneath one big log. He blew on the low flame, making it flare until the log slowly started to burn. The flue was open and small tendrils of smoke started to drift up against the occasional snowflake that fell down into the fireplace.
In just minutes there was a crackling fire in her fireplace and Jessie moved closer, hoping the flames would sear away the chill that had begun to seep into her bones.
“The girls are all right?” Zach asked. He continued to nurture the fire, keeping an eye on it so it didn’t just flame out.
Another roll of thunder sounded but they both ignored it, although Jessie noticed that Zach flinched, too.
“I put extra blankets on them,” Jessie said. “Last time I checked they were both sound asleep.”
“That might be the best way to get through the power outage,” he said. “Hopefully the electricity will come back on in a few hours.”
“I hope so,” she agreed. “I’m not sure I have enough firewood to get through several days of this.”
“We’ll be all right,” he said. “I have a generator. We can always go to my place if the storm doesn’t let up.”
“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Coffee . . . er . . . no, I can’t make that, can I?”
“Nope,” he said. He added another log to the fire.
“For coffee alone, we’re going to need your generator,” she said.
“Agreed,” he said. “I don’t think I can face a morning without coffee.�
��
Zach unzipped his coat and shrugged it off. He draped it by the hearth and began to unlace his thick work boots, leaving them by his coat. He was in well-worn jeans and thermal shirt under an unbuttoned flannel shirt. He looked solid and safe, like a human shield against the nasty storm outside, and Jessie was surprised to find how much comfort she took in having him, another grown-up, here with her.
Rufus nudged his way between Zach and the hearth. He sprawled onto his back, letting the fire warm his belly. Zach shook his head and absently gave Rufus a tummy rub. His hands were big and square and Jessie felt a longing to feel those same hands on her body, touching her, making her breath quicken.
She glanced away. She shook her head, sending her bedhead into a tumble around her shoulders. It was not a great plan to have inappropriate thoughts about her neighbor, not if she wanted to keep things casual between them.
“How are you for food and water?” he asked. He switched off the lamp, leaving just the candles and the fire to illuminate the room.
Jessie told him all of the preparations she’d taken so far, and he nodded. He gave her an impressed look and said, “Nice job. Looks like you were on top of it.”
“Thank you.” Jessie was ridiculously pleased with the praise.
“Your pipes should be okay,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do tonight at any rate. We should get some sleep. If it keeps snowing, we’ll have to do some cleanup tomorrow to stay ahead of it.”
He rose to his feet and moved over to the large sectional couch, where he stretched out. He put his head on a throw pillow in the corner and closed his eyes as he burrowed into the sofa as if trying to heat it up. Jessie watched him in alarm.
Every Dog Has His Day Page 7
