I slid the door open as quietly as possible, closing it behind me to save the warmth of the room. I grabbed my coat, hat, and gloves, then slipped on my snow boots. When I opened the door, an icy blast of air smacked me in the face. There was so much snow that had drifted up on the porch that by the time I made it to the corner of the house, I knew I would have to shovel first. The problem was, my snow shovel was not where I left it.
I couldn’t see where the porch steps were and where the ground started. It was just one big, snowy blanket. So, I trudged out across the lawn in search of my snow shovel. The way the snow was drifting, I had a feeling I was headed in the right direction. The wind nipped at my nose and my fingers were already feeling the bite of cold, but as I got closer to the shed, I saw my shovel sticking up out of a snow drift. I was going to have to find a chain and anchor it to the porch.
It took me twice as long to get back to the porch after retrieving my shovel. I was already exhausted, and I knew there was no way I would be able to shovel us out. I just needed a path to get to the firewood. The stack was closer to the back door, but the fireplace we were currently using was at the front of the house. And if I went through the back door, I would be tracking snow through the whole first floor. But I could always stack the firewood inside the door and then bring it to the fireplace.
With a plan in place, I shoveled enough to make a path to the firewood, and then to the back door. I figured I would need a path either way. It felt like hours had passed by the time I was done. My fingers were frozen in my gloves and my legs felt like jelly, and I could tell that my face would be chapped from the cold and wind when I went inside. It was so tempting to just go back inside, but we would need the firewood for making food and keeping us warm. Every log that I put in my arms felt like a million pounds, but somehow, I hauled some wood up into my arms and headed for the back door. Back and forth, I carried load after load, setting it just inside the door. My body dragged with every load I carried, my feet just barely shuffling across the porch. I just barely made it inside with my last load before my arms gave out.
“What the hell are you doing?” Andrew barked at me, rushing forward. He caught me just as my legs collapsed underneath me. I was so cold by now and my whole body ached from the effort. My teeth were chattering and I just wanted to be warm. Andrew swung me up into his arms and carried me into the living room, setting me down on the couch. I sat there shivering as he left the room, only to return with the load of wood I had brought in. He quickly tossed some logs on the fire and then came over to me, pulling off my gloves and wincing at the sight of them.
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“We n-needed wood.”
“Yeah, and you could have woken me up to help you. Look at you!”
I would have laughed at the ridiculous notion, but I was too frozen. He stood and walked into the other room, returning with a bowl of water.
“We need to slowly warm up your fingers. God, they’re like ice.”
He gently lowered my fingers into the water and I hissed, trying to pull them out. He took my hand and held it in the water. It felt like a thousand tiny knives stabbing at my fingers. Andrew sat back, running a hand through his hair.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You needed sleep,” I chattered.
“Do you have any idea what could have happened? What if you collapsed out there and I was sleeping in here? You could have died. You have to be smarter than this.”
I wanted to argue with him that I was only trying to keep us alive and warm, but that seemed like a moot point at the moment. As my fingers warmed up slowly in the water, Andrew started tugging off my boots, setting them to the side as he ran his hands over my feet, trying to warm them up. My toes were red and I barely felt his hands on them. I just felt numb.
He methodically went about pulling off my snow pants and my coat, hanging them up to dry, and then he carried me over to the fire and tucked me under the blankets, shoving a pillow under my head. Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“You stay here, and you don’t move. Understand?”
I nodded my head jerkily as he left the room, coming and going with more firewood. He stacked it next to the fireplace and then went back for more. Then he was gone for a while and I had no idea what he was doing, but my eyes started to drift shut as the warmth of the fire started to lull me to sleep.
When I opened my eyes again, Andrew had created a makeshift cooking station over the fire. There was a cast iron pot sitting on some kind of wire rack. He also had some bottled water that I kept in the kitchen. When he turned and saw me awake, he frowned.
“Are you feeling better?”
I nodded, trying to sit up, but I was just too tired. He dragged the couch over and positioned it in front of the fire. Picking me up, he nestled me between his legs, tucking me into him. I sighed in contentment as his fingers brushed through my hair.
“I should have thought of this earlier,” he chuckled. I felt him shift, and then he handed me a bottle of water. “You need to drink.”
He unscrewed the cap for me and handed it to me, but then stopped me when I started drinking too fast. After about half the bottle was gone, he took it from me and set it down on the ground.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he sighed.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, not having anything else to say. I wasn’t really sorry. If he hadn’t been here, I would have done the exact same thing because it’s what needed to be done.
“No, you’re not.”
“I know,” I whispered, chuckling lightly.
“You know, I’m fine. You could have woken me up.”
Sighing, I snuggled in deeper and pretended he wasn’t talking. It didn’t matter now anyway. I stared into the fire, my eyes drifting shut every so often. Andrew kept playing with my hair, but neither of us spoke, just enjoying the silence. I had never felt so content in all my life. Even those years with Matthew, it never felt like this. And it made me feel guilty that I could so easily replace the man that saved my life. But I couldn’t live in the past. I could only live in the present, and like it or not, Andrew was my present.
I took a bite of the stew that Andrew put together and groaned. It was so good. I shoved another spoonful into my mouth and then another.
“Hey, slow down.”
I glared at him. I couldn’t slow down. I felt depleted and this was just what I needed. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“My ma, but don’t tell my family that. They all think I can’t cook.”
“Why would they care?”
“Well, it’s easier to go to someone else’s house and have them cook for you.”
I shook my head slightly. “You can come cook for me anytime. This is fantastic.”
His eyes caught mine and held. I couldn’t read his expression. It was somewhere between curiosity and a hard no.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” he answered, shoving a spoonful in his mouth.
“Why are you helping me so much?”
His eyes dropped and he slid his spoon around in his bowl, not answering my question. Finally, he shrugged. “Isn’t it enough that I like you?”
It was, but I wasn’t used to that. Every good relationship I had was born out of some need to survive. I’d never had anyone want to spend time with me and help me just because they wanted to.
“So, I have a question for you too…” His gaze latched onto mine and I could tell I wasn’t going to like what he asked. “I really like you, and…” He huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “I have this idea of who you are, and then I have this other idea…So, I’m asking for you to just be honest with me.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly, not liking where this was going.
“Did you really love your husband?”
I jerked back, surprised by his question. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because none of this makes sense. Your husband just died and you move
d across the country. You’re doing your own thing and you don’t seem to really care about your old life at all.”
“I told you, grief is different for everyone.”
He nodded. “I get that, and I get needing to leave everything behind. But what I don’t get is if you loved him as much as you claim to, why do I feel like there’s this really powerful connection between us?”
Andrew
I stared at her, waiting for her answer. What happened between us last night had really fucked with my head, but what happened this morning had completely changed things between us, at least in my eyes. If she didn’t care about me, she wouldn’t have gone out in the cold, practically killing herself to get us firewood. She could have woken me up, but she was worried about me. I could tell. Which meant that whatever happened yesterday really had been an accident. She wasn’t lying to me, and she wasn’t trying to kill me.
In fact, if I looked at things rationally, everything that had happened so far could be explained perfectly. She didn’t know I was there when she threw a wrench at my head. The house really was rotting and the floor needed to be replaced. She couldn’t have known that the tub would fall through the floor at that moment. So, however I ended up hitting my head yesterday really was an accident. It had to be, because the way I was starting to feel about Lorelei didn’t allow for me to be wrong about her.
So, I watched as she fidgeted, trying to figure out what she wanted to say. I knew that whatever was going on, she was having trouble trusting me with that information. I took the bowl from her hands and took her hand in mine, giving it a squeeze.
“Lorelei, I’m not trying to trick you or anything. But I can’t see us moving forward if I don’t feel you’re being honest with me.”
She slowly looked up at me, her eyes shimmering with tears. When one tear fell, I brushed it from her face and hoped that she would open up to me.
“I didn’t love him,” she whispered. “I just…” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head slightly. “When he died, I felt free for the first time in years. I was glad, not that he was dead, but that I could finally live my life.”
For the first time since I met her, I felt like I was finally getting somewhere with her, and that was enough for me. She might have some other agenda, but a killer? Not a chance. Something else was going on and I was going to find out what, but for today, I just wanted to spend the day with her, try not to freeze my ass off, and get to know her better.
“You know, I think that we should paint today,” I said, changing the subject.
Her head jerked up and she blinked away her tears. “What?”
“Well, what else are we going to do? Sit around and talk about our feelings?”
“Well, we can’t actually do that,” she said.
“Why not?”
“First, you have a head injury and I’m pretty sure that falling again would be bad.”
I scoffed at that. “Falling again? As if I would do that twice.”
She stared at me, as if urging me to prove her wrong.
I spluttered for a second. “Well, okay, so it could happen, but—“
“But if you get on a ladder and lose your balance because your equilibrium is off, you’re going to end up falling again.”
“Unlikely,” I muttered. I didn’t want to be seen as weak, which was exactly what she was implying.
“Besides, it’s too cold in here to paint.”
“What are you talking about? It can’t be too cold to paint. That’s just ridiculous.”
She smirked at me. “You should never paint when it’s below fifty degrees. Plus, you have to take into consideration the temperature of the walls, and since the power’s been out, the walls are much colder than before. If we were to paint now, it would be a waste of time.”
“Well, then what the hell are we supposed to do all fucking day?”
“For starters, you could come under the covers and warm me up.”
It wasn’t a terrible idea. I mean, I could spend the day with her, making love to her and— Making love? What the hell was I thinking? Making love implied feelings much stronger than what we had. Well, than she had. I already knew that I was falling for her, so it would be making love for me, but what would it mean to her? Would she consider it making love or just fucking?
“What are you thinking over there?” Lorelei asked.
“Uh…” I huffed out a laugh, shaking my head. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“You like me, right?”
She nodded, hiding a smile. “Yeah, Andrew. I’d say that I like you.”
“And that liking would be similar to…” I waited for her to fill in the blanks.
“Similar to liking a man that I’m sleeping with?”
“Right.” I nodded and tried to think of another way to go about this. “So…if you said you liked me on a scale from one to ten, which number would you pick?”
“Well, that depends. Is ten high or is one high?”
“Ten is always high,” I said, a little confused at how she didn’t understand that.
She nodded thoughtfully. “So, is one the first number or is zero? Because zero technically isn’t a number. It’s nothing. So, would one be the lowest, or would zero?”
I stared at her for a moment. What the hell? Was she messing with me? “Okay, let’s try this again. We’re walking down the street and a car comes out of nowhere—“
“Wait, are we walking on the street or the sidewalk?”
“What?”
“Well, it would be silly to be walking in the middle of the street. It would make more sense if we were on the sidewalk. Unless, of course, the car is playing a part in this story and we need to be on the street.”
“We need to be on the street.”
“Then I would say that we’re idiots and we deserve whatever’s coming.”
I grunted in frustration. Why was she making this so damn difficult? “Okay, so, we’re at a crosswalk and our light is green.”
“It’s white actually.”
“What?” I asked in exasperation.
“It’s white. The little man on the crosswalk sign is white. Green is for stoplights.”
“Whatever!”
She laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corner as my frustration built. She was enjoying this way too much.
“Anyway, the little man is white. We have the right of way and we’re within the lines of the crosswalk. Got it?”
She nodded, holding back her smile. “On board.”
“So, anyway, a car comes out of nowhere—“
“It had to come from somewhere. I mean, did it just drop out of the sky? Was it invisible and one second it wasn’t there and the next it was?”
“Goddamnit, woman! Will you just let me finish?”
She threw her head back and laughed, then schooled her features and waved me to go on.
“Anyway…A car comes barreling down the road and you see it before me. Do you shout for me to move out of the way or do you try and push me out of the way, thus sacrificing yourself to save me?”
“Hmm…that’s a tough one. Are we together when this happens?”
“Of course we’re together. We’re walking down the road,” I said, thinking that was a pretty stupid question.
“I know that. I meant are we together, as in dating?”
Were we dating? I mean, I spent a lot of time with her, and we’d slept together twice now. That had to mean that we were more than friends. On the other hand, I slept with Stacy all the time before meeting Lorelei and I wasn’t dating her.
“We’re dating,” I said with a nod.
“Okay, how long have we been dating?”
My brows wrinkled in confusion. “Why does that matter?”
“Well, if we’ve just begun dating, how do I know that you’re worth saving?”
“Isn’t every life worth saving?”
She shrugged. “Sure, but is it worth it for me to risk death to save
you? See, I want to live a very long life and I can’t waste my cat lives on someone that’s unworthy.”
“Your cat lives?”
“Yeah, you know, cats are said to have nine lives. I feel like maybe I’ve used a few of those already, which means I don’t have as many to spare.”
I tried to wrap my brain around what she was saying. She was just talking in circles around me.
“We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks.”
She nodded. “And in that time have we slept together?”
“Yes.”
“And was it good?”
“Fucking amazing.”
She smirked at me. “Well, based on the evidence you’ve presented, I would say I would most likely take option number three, and try to pull you out of the way to save both of us.”
I hadn’t considered that as an option. “Well, that doesn’t exactly answer my question.”
“Yes, it does. If the sex is really as good as you say, then either of your options wouldn’t give us what we both want, which is more sex.”
I frowned, wondering if that’s all this was to her. Sure, I had thought she was a murderer up until this morning, so I had no right to judge her feelings, but I couldn’t help part of me that was pissed at her for just wanting sex. Shouldn’t there be more between us after the last few weeks?
“Right, so just sex…” I nodded, partially glad that I got that cleared up.
“Andrew—“
“You know, we’re never going to get out of here,” I said, cutting off whatever she was going to say. “We need a plow to get down your driveway.” I pulled out my phone and saw there was still no service. “I’m guessing that something’s wrong with the cell tower.”
“Can we just talk about this?”
“The snow?” I shrugged. “Not much to say really. It is what it is. I guess we just hunker down until someone comes to rescue us. Maybe tomorrow I’ll start shoveling the drive if no one comes by.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. You’re purposely misunderstanding me.”
Tangled Web: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 6) Page 15