That was how he’d always felt anywhere near her. As if the rest of the world was boring and irrelevant. Only Whitney mattered.
“Smith,” he repeated. “You worked so hard to get in there. Was it everything you wanted?”
She averted her gaze, suddenly fussing with napkins and dinner debris. Once she answered, her tone seemed strange and overly cheery. “It was fantastic...but not exactly what I’d hoped for.”
He cocked his head. “The way I remember it, you especially wanted Smith because it was such a respected school. You wanted your family to feel proud you could get in there. And even more, you wanted the kind of education that’d open doors for you. You always used to talk about wanting to make a real difference.”
“Yeah, we both had those corny ideals in high school, didn’t we? Wanted to make the world a better place. Wanted to really do something.” She sighed. “Well, I started out really sure I wanted to do something terrific in American Studies.”
“I hear a ‘but’...”
She nodded. “But the women in the program that year were a lot more political and, um, angry than I was. Militant. I just didn’t fit in. Changed majors, ended up with a pretty degree in Fine Arts.”
“That’s cool.”
Again, she averted her eyes. “Yup...turned out great. I landed a super job with a design firm in Philadelphia—they’re big, work with offices and large buildings. I have my own place, and I sure can’t argue about the money, either. I do okay.”
“That’s great to hear.” Which was true, except Red was getting a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something was wrong. She’d said the right words, but something had to be seriously wrong with the job or her life, or she wouldn’t be avoiding meeting his eyes. He stalled, grappling for a way to coax her into talking more, when she suddenly shook her head—hard, as if trying to shake loose some common sense.
“I can’t believe it. Us. Talking like this, after all this time. As if we were still friends...”
She untwisted from the couch, lurched to her feet. There was no place to escape in a blizzard, but he understood that was what she wanted to do. Escape. From him.
Instinctively he leaped to his feet even faster—fast enough for his right knee to give out a knife-sharp protest. It was an old pain, not a new one; he didn’t pay any attention.
“Whitney.” He hooked her arm gently, but even that slightest touch caused her to whip around and almost lose her balance. He steadied her, placing both hands on her upper arms. Her face shot up, eyes meeting his.
It had happened before. Just like this. The night after their first date. It was dark. Her doorstep. He was thinking through his moves, planning to kiss her, believing she’d expect a kiss after that first date. He’d been practicing kissing girls since grade school, but when she suddenly looked up at him, it wasn’t about high school moves anymore.
It was just about a guy and a girl.
His voice came out hoarse and low. “Whitney...we were friends. You were the best friend I ever had.”
She frowned, as if confused. But it was there, just like before. Just like always. He was a bear next to her delicate figure. She had to look up to meet his gaze. But he’d never looked down on her. Ever. She made him feel a hundred feet tall, as if he were the one man who could protect her. The one guy she just might let cherish her.
“That’s what I thought. A long time ago,” she said, in a voice as raw as his.
“Because that’s how it really was between us.”
“Red. You’re the one who cut it off. You broke us up. Not me.”
“Not,” he said thickly, “because I wanted to. I never wanted to.”
And he’d waited as long as he could wait. His mouth came down on hers like a fighter jet coming in for a landing, fire-fast but soft, the total, sudden silence after there’d been noise.... The complete fadeout of everything else around them.
Her mouth was life. Her lips, soft as pansy petals. Her arms lifted to his shoulders, then to his neck. She made a sound, a song of longing, then closed her eyes and sank into him.
He remembered her innocence then. It was like now. He couldn’t run roughshod, let his hormones go, although his body certainly felt a rage of them. But she communicated vulnerability, trust, the way she lifted up, the way she melted into him. The way she kissed back, with wonder, lips finding lips, finding tastes, finding pressure, yearning for more. A little afraid, but still needing more. Wanting more.
Wanting him.
And God knew, he wanted her. There seemed to be a million pounds of clothes between them. Zippers and bulk and buttons and layers on layers and nothing easy...but he already knew her shapes, her textures. The same scent, close to her skin, in the hollow of her neck. The slender slope of her spine.
When he was in his teens, a lot of girls came on to him because he was more or less the king of the high school, the classic jock. Besides that, he was a lusty, brainless teenager.
But the whole world changed with Whitney. He was afraid she’d think she was just another notch. But it was nothing like that with her. His desire for her was a fire in his gut.
But more than sex, he wanted to be with her. He’d never wanted to be with anyone like her, before or since. It was a craving, just to see her in a hallway, to wait the hours until he could finally rap on her door again, the way nothing felt right until she was next to him, even if they were only sipping vanilla shakes after a game. Even if they were just walking to school. Even if it was a Saturday morning, and he had to wait the whole damned day until he could be with her again.
He’d forgotten. How unbearably fierce that loneliness was, that hunger for her, that raw, hot yearning. Now was no different than the past. Everything became right when he could touch her. Hold her. Get lost in her.
He pulled off his fleece, then her sweater. His sweater, then her silk long underwear top.
They both still had layers to go. His heart was chugging like a race horse, wanting to hurry, wanting her naked, wanting. Her. Now. Before this spell ended. Before anything could stop them. But fast wouldn’t cut it. He wanted to love her like she’d never been loved. Like he’d wanted to love her all these years. Like he’d always loved her.
“Red.”
He heard the buzzing noise. Didn’t care.
“Red,” she repeated, and framed his face in her hands. He opened blurry eyes, saw her wet lips, the flush in her cheeks even in the dim light. And what she saw in his eyes echoed how he felt.
Still, she pulled back when his mouth tried to claim hers again. “Your pager’s going off,” she said.
“I know. Damn it. I’m hoping it’ll go away.” He added on a groan, “It has to go away.”
“Red.”
Yeah, yeah. He straightened up. Sucked in some air. Kissed her fiercely, angrily.
And then started grabbing for his damned clothes.
“We’re in the middle of a conversation here.”
“Really? I’ve never heard that called a conversation before.” It was a whispered attempt at humor. But he saw her just miss meeting his eyes. The spell was broken.
“Yeah, well, it was a conversation, Red. We were communicating just fine. There’s just a whole lot more to say.” The pager kept up the relentless buzzing. He still had one sleeve off his sweater when he snatched it, read the code, clicked on his cell and snapped, “Red” to the sheriff.
He listened, answered, “Yes,” “Yes” and “Yes—” because those were the only answers he could give. But his gaze never left Whitney’s face. Once he clicked off, he said, “People need transport to the shelter. Someone may have seen April, the missing kid. The storm’s going to get worse before it gets better, not just because we’re still due a half dozen inches, but because the wind’s edging above thirty-five miles an hour.”
She said nothin
g. But she hadn’t stopped looking at him.
That was a hopeful sign, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? It had to be.
He charged over, kissed her one more time, shot a frown in her direction. “Whitney, just give me a chance to finish the conversation, okay? I’m not sure when I can be back. But it’ll be soon. As soon as I can. And if I can scare up a spare generator, I’ll bring it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
BY SIX THE next morning, Whitney had set up a mirror in the living room, leaning it against the side of the couch. She stripped down, and opened a package of towel-wipes—a godsend she’d discovered on previous travels. She didn’t need the mirror to clean up. She needed the mirror to practice.
“It’s fun, isn’t it, Red?” she said to her image. “To still find some chemistry after ten years. No, of course I’m not bothered by the breakup, Red. I put all that behind me years and years ago.”
The towel wipes were freezing. She burrowed in the duffel for her last set of clean clothes. Old gray cords. An Alpaca purple sweater with a tiny hole in the neck. A double pair of wool socks, Smart Wool, with a crazy bohemian pattern of colors. Down vest.
“Good grief,” she continued. “Why would I still care that you threw me out like a weed? Flicked me off like a fly in the summer? Forgot me faster than a dream?” She searched for a scrunchie, couldn’t find it, gave up and started brushing her hair. She abruptly remembered Red’s hands, slowly shivering through her hair, the sweep of his kiss, the magic and lure of being close to him again.
She threw the brush across the room. It cracked against the far wall. The sound was enormously satisfying.
She grabbed a breakfast bar, then continued her monologue to the mirror with her mouth full. “No. Honestly, Red, I don’t want to know why you broke up with me. You did. That’s water way, way, way over the dam. We both grew up, have great jobs, made great lives. Well. You have a great job. I have a job I hate—but there’s no reason you have to know that. I’ll be gone as soon as the blizzard’s over, so there’s no point doing anything but enjoying each other’s company. See? See my smile? See how I’ve got my pride on? I’m tough now. Really and truly. In fact, I’ve slept with zillions of guys since you...”
Okay. That last part was excessive. She couldn’t pull off a lie like that. And the point was that now—unlike ten years ago—she didn’t put a problem under the bed anymore. She still cared. That was reality. She still fiercely wanted to be touched by him, to talk to him, to be with him. That yearning was ten years stronger than it had ever been.
More of that crappy reality.
She was leaving in days. The best she could do was to make him think, Boy, I’m glad I ran into her again. And I sure know why I fell in love with her. It brought all the good memories back.
Or something like that. She could keep her smile on, and her pride intact, and express honest feelings to him without tearing herself up again. Without tearing him up, either.
And she was sick to bits of roiling this all up in her mind—and heart—again. Time to do something. Her gaze honed on the wooden chest across the room.
She hadn’t opened her grandmother’s box last night, but now seemed like the perfect time. She knelt down, pulled it closer to the light. The wood was old, probably walnut. Never varnished, but it still had a cared-for sheen. It was an odd size, not as big as a hope chest, but much too big for a regular jewelry box.
She tried the two tarnished brass hinges—they popped open easily, but the lid refused to open. There was no lock, no place for a lock, but there had to be some trick to getting into it.
She bent down, feeling slowly with her palms around the circumference of the box—when out of the blue she heard an odd sound. A high-pitched yip.
Her head shot up.
She couldn’t fathom anything outside in this weather, but—unless she imagined it—it sounded like a dog. She stood up, listened again.
The sound didn’t repeat, but she couldn’t stop thinking that no pet would normally be outside in these conditions. She popped to her feet, yanked an afghan around her shoulders and took a quick hike around the first floor, looking out windows from all directions.
Most of the windows were iced over, revealing little more than daylight. The worst wind had come from the north, which meant nature had sculpted artistic mounds of snow, visible from the south windows. The kitchen faced south, the room comfortingly familiar with its red-and-white tiles and round table. From the back door, she could see a few bare patches in the yard. Her grandparents had put a fruit cellar in the ground, facing that direction, because that was the best chance of snow sweeping free from the cellar doors.
From the east—the downstairs bedroom and bathroom windows—she could see the Atlantic, still roiled up and furious, pounding relentlessly against the stone shore below. When she pushed aside the curtains in the living room, there was nothing in sight but a silent white world. No one was driving or walking. Big fat flakes were coming down, soft and white, covering the ice rink of a road and the earlier drifts.
Definitely no dog.
She returned to the box. She knelt down, and carefully felt every inch, every crevice, every seam. Then again. She was about to give up when apparently she touched just the right spot, and the lid popped open.
The contents made her breath catch. And then the tears came.
* * *
THERE’D BEEN ONE bad repercussion from reconnecting with Whitney. Once Red had kissed her—more than kissed her—there’d been no chance of his sleeping the rest of that night.
In principle, that was a good thing, since emergency problems kept tumbling in, one after the other. The sheriff paged him several times about the missing girl, April.
Both parents were out of their minds with worry. No one had reported seeing their daughter, but a neighbor two doors down had reported their dog missing. The pet was described as a copper-and-white mutt, dumber than rock, a runner who wouldn’t obey anyone or anything, but despite his faults, the family adored him. The idiot dog had left via the dog door—in the middle of the worst of the blizzard.
Trouble showed up from other fronts. The school was now set up as the town’s emergency center, with a kitchen, a gym full of cots, blankets and basic medicines, and a communication center was also up and running there. A tree fell on the McClelland house, poking a hole in their front window, requiring the family to be evacuated. Red made two trips, first for the two kids, then for the dad. By the time he’d deposited them at the school, Delaney reported another rumor. Old Mrs. Churnon had fallen, according to a neighbor. Since she was 100 if she was a day—and still refused to leave her house—Red had no idea how he was going get her inside his John Deere, particularly if she was injured. But he headed there, anyway.
He found her in her dining room. Fallen, just like her neighbor feared. But she’d scooched herself closer to the antique sideboard, and when Red barged in, he found her curled up in a heap of handmade afghans, her hurt ankle propped on a stool, and as far as he could tell, she was a quarter into a bottle of “sipping whiskey.” She wasn’t that hard to transport, primarily because he could lift her with one hand—she was lighter than air—but there was hell to pay when he tried taking away her bottle.
The stories kept coming, the way blizzard stories always kept coming—and got embellished—but by midafternoon, Red was wiped out. At the school, Delaney predictably made sure he was fed and caffeinated and had snacks to take with him.
They had a minor argument about whether he should bed down there; the school was warm, after all, with enough generator power to keep everyone reasonably comfortable and close to the communications center. Once Red’s shift was over, though, he only had one thing on his mind. Getting back to Whitney.
He wasn’t sure what to make of their last encounter, but he wasn’t about to let it go. He’d never expected to kiss her, or that
her response would be explosive. Soul-searing, he thought, even though he’d never say that kind of corny phrase aloud. But that’s what it felt like when she kissed him back. When they were teenagers, she was his world.
He never thought he’d feel that again.
He never dreamed he’d even see her again.
There was no chance of leaving the school before three, and then he had to fuel and oil Betsy before he could take off. Outside, the afternoon had turned unexpectedly mystical. The temperature was still blister-cold, but for a few moments, the wind stopped and the snow quit, and it was just a virgin white world out there.
By the time he turned onto Route 1, he owned that white world. There was no sign of life anywhere. The trees were diamond-crusted. The landscape had swirls and whirls and whipped-cream tips, each drift a unique sculpture that never existed before, never would happen the same way again.
Which made him think of Whitney.
Which made him push Betsy’s pedal into a burst of speed.
The school shelter had Mabel serving in the kitchen—and thankfully Mabel loved him, because she’d packed and wrapped hot meat loaf sandwiches, mashed potatoes, beans, brownies. He pulled into Whitney’s drive, whistling as he grabbed the cooler, smacked on his hat again and hiked to the door.
He rapped, to let her know he was there. But then all the supplies he was carrying started to shift, threatening to tumble, so he used his elbow to twist the door handle and push in. “It’s me, Whitney. Red—”
Hell. She was there. Of course she was there. Only place she’d be is by the kerosene heater.... But she had the wooden box open, and when her face lifted in his direction, a river of tears tracked down her cheeks.
“Hey. What’s this?” He heeled the door closed, dropped the cooler of food, yanked off his jacket, pretty much crashed across the room.
She tried to speak. Couldn’t. She closed her eyes tight, as if to force back any more tears, and tried swallowing. Swallowed again. “I’m fine.”
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