“Well,” He let out a heavy sigh. “I think we better head to the city. We have to go celebrate this.” All seriousness left his face as it shone with fatherly pride.
“I got in!?”
“Of course you did.”
Lilly jumped up and down a couple of times before she hugged her father and squealed even louder than before.
“So where should we go out for dinner?” Zachery asked.
“Salty Sammy’s Seafood Buffet.” Always her absolute favorite.
He wrinkled his nose with mild disgust but smiled and picked up his keys off the kitchen counter. “Sammy’s it is.”
* * * *
Frost sat at the tiptop of a great pine, his bluish silver hair blowing in the wind he’d stirred. His clear, icy teeth shone in the sunlight when he smiled, because he could feel the child’s joy and knew she’d gotten into her science program.
She’s hardly a child anymore, he told himself. She’s nearly as old as I was when I became what I am now.
He considered the unfamiliar stirring he felt when he saw her just then, the one that drove him to hug her, which he’d never done before. The chill could have been too much for her mortal body. But she’d always had an unusually high tolerance for the cold, a need for it, even.
And, goodness, she’d become beautiful. Was it possible she could have been that lovely only months before? Frost doubted it. She was becoming a woman, after all.
It seemed as if he would be going to Alaska for three weeks. Frost always did his duty, spreading winter to his designated area as all the winter spirits did, and then spent every second of whatever time he had left watching over Lilly.
She was his single greatest fascination, the one thing he could never stop thinking about, and had been from the night she was born right before him. Since then, he’d longed to hold her close, but couldn’t. Not until today. It felt like a crowning moment to his existence.
“Hello, Frost,” a smoldering voice said from behind him.
He turned around and saw a man hovering dangerously close to the trees’ branches in a haze of hot flames. “Hello, Flint. To what do I owe this...pleasure?” He should have felt the intense heat approaching, but he was completely lost in Lilly. Now he was simply afraid of the danger of fire catching too near to her house.
“I came to ask a favor,” Flint said.
“Would you mind asking me somewhere else, away from all the mortal housing?” Flint and the other fire spirits were nothing more than destructive forces in Frost’s mind.
“Have it your way.” The man with fiery orange and red hair took off.
Frost followed the trail of heat at his own pace, not in any hurry to get to a meeting with his least favorite sort of spirit.
Frost found him in the center of an empty parking lot in front of an old store that had been condemned long ago. The fire surrounding Flint had been extinguished by the cold, but the scorching heat his body always radiated was melting all the glittering ice away from the cracked pavement. Frost simply stared, wanting to get this over with.
“What would you say to trading places with me?” Flint asked.
“Trading places?”
“Yeah. You do fire and I do winter. No offense, but you’ve gotten kind of sloppy in recent years, and I thought you might be getting tired of it.”
“I have not!” Frost was shocked, not by the accusation, because he knew he’d been distracted with Lilly, but by the offer. Cold and heat were natural enemies.
“That’s not what I hear. The winter beings around here say you get things cold for Tempest and then spend all your time holed up in this town.”
Frost shook his head, an irritated flurry of snow swirling around both of them and instantly melting because of the heat from the fire spirit. “I’d sooner become mortal than a man of fire.”
Smoke poured from Flint’s fanged mouth as he let out a hot breath. “That’s what the others said.” His amber skin glowed hotter as he glared.
“So ask the spirits of the other seasons.”
“Spring’s a woman’s season, and summer’s too hot.”
“What about autumn or wind then?”
“No, it has to be winter.”
“It’s not natural to wish to possess your reverse element. It isn’t even right. Why do you want winter so badly anyway?”
“I’m not sure. Something from mortality maybe.” Frost took a step back when Flint held up a hand and let it burst into flames. “I only know that when I see fire, I don’t feel right.” He looked angry as he threw a blazing ball of fire at the building, shattering a window and sending sparks flying everywhere. “That’s why I want snow and ice. I want to be as far away from that as I can be.”
“Sorry.” Frost shook his head again, feeling no real sympathy at all.
Flint stared at him darkly for a moment. “Fine, I’ll just have to find a way to take it then.”
As the hot-head burst into flames and jetted away, Frost wondered if he should say something to Mother Earth about this. Last time there was war between the elements, the balance of nature was destroyed and nearly all life on earth lost. But Flint was aware of this, too. He was simply letting his anger in the moment take over, Frost decided, and there was no point in getting everyone all worked up about it.
Chapter Three
Late Friday night, Rebecca and Lilly were still awake in Lilly’s sky blue bedroom. Lilly was lying on her stomach, digging around under her bed for a missing earring.
“I still can’t get over you packing your stuff a week early,” Rebecca said from on top of Lilly’s four-poster bed.
“I can’t help it,” Lilly’s seemingly distant voice answered. “I’m so excited!”
“Me too, but what if you pack up something you need in the next seven days?”
Lilly emerged empty-handed and sat back on her heels to say, “Then I’ll get it back out of my suitcase,” before she went to her window to look through the desk drawers underneath it.
Rebecca lay back on the bed in her silky red pajamas. “All I want is to meet a gorgeous guy and fall in love.”
Lilly stopped and looked at her friend to roll her eyes. “You’re so boy crazy.” Sometimes it seemed like guys were all Rebecca thought about.
“I know. The whole world just feels like a romance movie waiting to happen.”
“Yeah, but it always has the same ending for you, doesn’t it? You get swept off your feet for a few days, a few weeks at best. Then the magic wears off, and you break up with him. Same sad ending every time.”
“Yeah.” Rebecca let out a sigh as Lilly shook her head and went back to her search.
Rebecca wasn’t especially beautiful, but she was really good at flirting.
“That’s the best thing about this program,” she added. “Three weeks might be just short enough to end things before they can go bad. That way the ending is tragic but beautiful.”
“Oh, Rebecca.”
“What? Maybe you’ll meet a guy, too. And we’ll all live happily ever after.”
“I doubt it.”
Lilly had never been able to get into the whole dating scene, because there was always this man in the back of her mind. One she painted with very careful detail, because she had nothing to go on but her heart.
Things were different this year. Jack had held her close every evening on the back porch and whispered goodnight to her right before she went in, chilled to the bone by his freezing but welcome body.
Any boyfriend she’d ever had was lucky to make it to the next day because: (1.) Rebecca was usually the one who talked her into it. (2.) It felt wrong, because they weren’t Jack.
“This is boring. Do you mind turning on something?” Rebecca asked as she rolled over.
“Sure. I’ll turn on my laptop.” Lilly started to reach for it on top of her desk and let out a happy shriek. “There it is. It was under my laptop.” She grabbed the end of her icicle earring and pulled it out, holding it up beside the other one as she tur
ned around to show Rebecca. “I found it!”
“Great, now you can watch a movie with me.”
Lilly glanced at the clock on the elegant white nightstand beside her bed and saw that it was one a.m., definitely time to drop everything and watch a movie. “Okay.” She put the earrings in a small trinket box with a few of her other favorite pairs and turned on her laptop.
* * * *
1 week later...
Finally! The day of departure arrived. Lilly sat in the back of her dad’s silver Porsche with Rebecca, whispering about all the adventures they would soon have. It was something they’d both been talking and fantasizing about for months, like leaving their world and childhood behind for a magical land of ice.
In the front of the car, her father was having very different feelings. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he asked as they pulled into the Minneapolis airport parking lot. “I could still buy a ticket and ride along with you girls.”
“We’ll be okay, Dad,” Lilly said.
He let out a sigh as he struggled to hide how terrified he was. It was the first time she was leaving him for more than a weekend, and even then she was never more than ten minutes away at one of her girlfriends’ houses. Those visits always scared him too, because he had never fully recovered from the grief and shock of losing her mother so unexpectedly. The police investigations. The suspicions all directed at him.
There were times when he told himself he must have imagined that fateful night, but he knew the truth deep down. What if something like that took his little Water Lilly one day? It would destroy him. He tried not to let this never-ending fear affect the way he raised his only child—allowing her to attend this program was a prime example—but he could never get over the way he lost his wife. It haunted him incessantly, and he couldn’t lose Lilly. Already he was dreading the sleepless nights, but the tears and fear would have to wait until she was gone.
Instead, he climbed out of his car and took their suitcases from the trunk so he could roll them into the airport. The walk through the parking lot was long enough that everyone was shivering when they walked inside. Immediately they were met by a warm breeze and loads of people rushing this way and that.
Lilly’s father’s fear grew as he fought the urge to rescue his daughter from the chaos and from growing up. He wanted to take her home where she would be safe with him.
“Do you have your cell phone fully charged?” he asked Lilly as they passed a donut and coffee shop. He made a mental note to stop by there on his way out.
“Yes, Dad. It’s in my pocket.”
“What about the emergency money I gave you this morning? That’s still in your purse, right?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t forget anything? I can always overnight something if you need me to.”
“I’m sure,” Lilly said, stopping at the end of the line to go through the metal detectors and security check. “I’ll be fine.”
He smiled, hardly able to believe how grown up his little girl had become. “I know you will.” But as he hugged her one final time, a father’s love won out, and a tear managed to escape.
Chapter Four
“I still can’t believe the school let us take our exams early and get out of a whole week of classes,” Rebecca said as she took her window seat on the plane. “And we get school credit for this thing. This is gonna be the best Christmas break ever!”
“I know. Three whole weeks putting every waking moment into learning about the cold,” Lilly agreed, thinking how great it would look on their college applications as well.
“It’s weird how you get so into the stuff, and you don’t even know why.”
Lilly did know why actually, but that was her secret. Even her best friend would probably think she was crazy if she knew.
“Row nine,” a cute boy in slacks and a white shirt said, stopping in the middle of the isle beside the two. “C—C—Looks like I’m right here.” He smiled at Lilly as he sat down beside her.
“We don’t mind,” Rebecca said, a bit of pink rising in her cheeks.
Lilly sensed her friend’s attraction to this guy who they’d be traveling with for hours. “Would you mind changing seats with me?” she asked Rebecca. “I really like being by the window.”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you away,” the boy said as they struggled to move around each other in the tiny space.
“You didn’t. I just like the view,” Lilly assured him.
“So what are you two flying all the way to Alaska for?”
“We’re headed to Fairview for the Sam Haskans’ Arctic Program,” Rebecca answered.
The boy stared at her in surprise. “Seriously? Me, too—I’m Brian.”
“I’m Rebecca,” she said, reaching out to shake his hand.
“And I’m Lilly.”
“It looks like we’ll be spending more than this flight together, doesn’t it?” Brian grinned. “Are you both from here in Minneapolis?”
“Nope. Harrowing,” Rebecca answered.
“Harrowing...That’s an hour south of here, right?”
“Yep.”
“I went through the program last year, and it was a lot of fun. All of last year’s juniors will probably be back again this year, so I can introduce you to everyone. Parker will definitely be there. He’s from Nevada, but we’ve been talking all year. He’s a lot of fun. Cassidy and Trent’ll probably be there, too. They’re total science geeks, but they’re also the best research partners if you get to pick...”
The two continued talking about everything from their favorite songs to their post-graduation plans, while Lilly sat back with a romance novel and eventually nodded off. She hadn’t slept well the night before because she was excited about the trip, so Rebecca had to rouse her when the pilot made the announcement that they would be landing soon.
“Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Brian said.
“Don’t you mean good night?” Lilly glanced outside as she took a hairbrush from her bag and ran it through her hair a few times.
“It’s more like mid-afternoon here with the time change. It just gets dark really early.”
The plane touched down, and they felt the force of it slowing rapidly.
“Brian said there’s this great restaurant close enough to where we’ll be staying, and that we can walk to it,” Rebecca told Lilly. “He said we should go with him and Parker tonight.”
“Won’t we be busy with the program?” Lilly asked, not wanting to go on what sounded like a blind date.
“Not tonight,” Brian answered. “Last year Mr. Haskans had an orientation and handed out a schedule and some other papers. Then everyone had dinner in the mess hall and introduced themselves to each other. As long as you’re eighteen or your parents signed the permission form, they don’t mind you leaving when you’re done for the day. You just have to be back by nine o’clock. But Rebecca said you’re both eighteen, so you should be fine.”
Lilly stared at her friend’s expectant face and saw how badly she wanted this. She couldn’t take it away from her. And maybe, hopefully, she was misreading the situation, and it really would be four new friends going out to get some food together. “Okay. It sounds like fun.”
“It is now safe to unbuckle your seatbelts and exit the aircraft,” the pilot announced. “Please remember to collect all of your belongings. Thank you for flying Alaska Air. We hope you’ll choose to fly with us again.”
Lilly felt a thrill as she followed the other two into the aisle. Once they’d gotten off the plane and made their way to the baggage claim area, she had no trouble identifying her group in the tiny airport. The crowd consisted only of thirty-something teenagers who looked to be about her age, many of them sitting nervously by themselves. Lilly was extremely grateful to have her best friend there with her, even if she seemed more concerned with Brian at the moment.
A blondish emerald-eyed hottie stood up when he saw
them and began heading their way. “Hey, Brian,” he said as they did a four-step handshake.
“Hey, Parker. How long have you been here?”
“Only an hour,” Parker said sarcastically. “Mr. Haskans is making us wait till we have a full load to leave. Luckily you’re the last ones, so now we can go.”
“This is Lilly and Rebecca. They’re here for the program, too.”
“Nice to meet you both.”
They all went to the baggage carousel to wait for their suitcases. “Hey, can I borrow a shirt and a pair of pants?” Parker asked Brian. “They mixed up our luggage so all I’ve got is my carry on.”
“Sure, just stay away from my underwear and toothbrush,” Brian said and laughed.
“No worries there.”
“That’s our stuff,” Rebecca said, pointing to their blue and black suitcases.
“I got them.” Brian headed for the two bags that had popped out. He rolled them to their owners and went back to grab another black one.
“Was there anyone else on our flight you’re expecting?” he asked Parker, who shrugged as they walked toward their crowd.
A chubby pink-faced man with brown curls peeking out from under his Yankees ball cap stood up as they approached. Lilly recognized him as Mr. Haskans from the brochures. “Are you Lilly and Rebecca?” he asked the girls.
“Yes, sir,” Rebecca said.
“Then we’re all here. Everyone grab your stuff, and follow me.”
The group gathered their bags and followed him down an escalator toward the parking lot.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I told Rebecca and Lilly we’d take them to Cecile’s Italian Restaurant tonight,” Brian said to Parker as they passed a giant ice-fishing poster.
“That sounds like the perfect way to begin the next three weeks, actually. But which one’s my date?” Parker joked, winking at Lilly.
She smiled back at his swagger and appeal, feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation. He was nice to look at.
“If we’re claiming dates, I’ve got Brian.” Rebecca slid her arm through Brian’s.
Frozen: A Winter Romance Anthology Page 10