Snow Furries (An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy Book 4)

by Susan C. Daffron

  “I have really sensitive skin and I spend a lot of time outside. Razors and my face don’t get along. It’s better to just go with a short beard and avoid looking like I have some horrible rash or disease.”

  “I suppose. It works for the biker look too, but I think you need more leather and fewer pockets to pull it off.”

  He chuckled. “What do you have to do at this house tomorrow?”

  They lay facing each other as Becca explained the information she needed to get for the appraisal when she went out to the house on Edgewater Road. Jack listened and asked a few questions. He pointed out that doing a property appraisal on a house had some similarities to what he did for a timber cruise to assess the marketability of the trees on a parcel of land.

  Becca laughed. “It’s all about the trees for you, isn’t it? You’re like the Lorax.”

  “Trees are a renewable resource. If you cut down that last Truffula tree, it’s all over.”

  “Aww, I loved that book.” Becca nudged herself slightly closer to Jack and raised her eyebrows. “Okay, I’m giving you fair warning. I want to give you a hug again.”

  “It’s okay. I’m already lying down.” Wrapping his arms around her, he returned the hug briefly, then rolled over and said, “Go to sleep.”

  The next morning, Becca awoke to the rich, savory aroma of brewing coffee. Jack was in the kitchen and Frank and Mona were looking up at him with great interest. Becca got up to investigate. “Is that what I think it is?”

  He handed her a mug. “You said you drink coffee, right?”

  “Yes! With enthusiasm.” She sniffed at the coffee and took a sip. “Oh how I’ve missed you, glorious elixir of awakening.”

  Jack turned to look at her. “Wait, with your disorder you probably shouldn’t have caffeine, should you?”

  Becca glared across the rim of the mug, hugging it with both hands. “I can have one cup. One! And it is a beautiful thing. Don’t mess with me.”

  Jack laughed and held up his palms. “I’ll just leave you two alone then. I’ve got to go clean out the truck anyway.”

  After he left, Becca returned to the mattress with her coffee and sat sipping contentedly while Frank and Mona looked on. Clearly, the dogs wanted to be sure she didn’t make a move toward food without their knowledge. “Hey, you two. Are you ready for a little road trip?” Frank wagged a few times, but didn’t take his eyes off the coffee mug.

  Even Mona looked relaxed and happy. Maybe Kat was right. One thing Alpine Grove certainly had going for it was quiet. Although Becca had made a point of staying on her own side of the mattress last night, as she had predicted, knowing Jack was there, feeling his warmth under the covers, and hearing his breathing did not make for the most restful night’s sleep. However, she did enjoy some rather exciting dreams. Smiling at Mona, she said, “I have really got to get over myself. Time for a shower.” She stood up and ruffled Mona’s ears. “Keep Frank in line. You know how boys can be.”

  After showering and eating, they all loaded into the truck for the trip out to Edgewater Road. Jack pulled out onto the main street of town and headed south. People were walking along the sidewalks, enjoying the brilliant sunshine. In front of a gift store, an older woman was sweeping away some snow that had blown onto her carefully shoveled section of sidewalk. Next to her, a man with glasses and a pretty blonde woman were holding hands and obviously laughing about whatever the older woman was telling them.

  Becca couldn’t help but smile at how happy everyone looked. A little sun seemed to be a serious Alpine Grove community mood booster. It was a beautiful day and the plows had evidently done more work on the roads, so the pavement was clear and dry. That was good news for her trip back down the mountain later today. Becca was ready to have a more sedate driving experience that didn’t involve extreme fear and trepidation.

  As they turned onto a road that wound down toward the lake, Becca started to understand why Jack had offered to drive his truck. Because of the angle of the trees and how the road curved along a north-facing peninsula, the road surface received little sun, so there were still large patches of ice.

  They parked in front of the house and Becca looked down at her notes. Pat had said the place was a horse property, but there wasn’t a barn anywhere. She wasn’t exactly a horse expert, but didn’t people need a place to put hay and other horsie-type stuff? Not to mention the horses. She turned to Jack. “Are you sure this is 1719?”

  “That’s what it says on the mailbox.”

  Becca grabbed her bag. Maybe the notes were wrong. At least she could cross one item off the to-do list. “Okay. Time to get this done.” She turned to Jack. “Could you get the dogs? I need to go knock on the door and let them know I’m here.”

  He gestured toward the quiet dwelling. “It doesn’t look like anyone is home.”

  Becca riffled through her information again. “This is the right place. I was supposed to be here on Wednesday though. Maybe they went somewhere for the holiday weekend.”

  Jack shrugged and walked around the truck with the dogs. “Maybe.”

  Becca trudged through the snow, down to the front door. At least today, she was not wearing heels. However, cute flats with dress pants were still not perhaps the ideal wardrobe choice for this activity. Brr. Her feet were going to freeze. She knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. Nothing. Uncle Pat was not going to be happy that she couldn’t get inside. Fine. She’d just have to deal with the outside for now. At Jack’s place, she’d looked through all the stuff Pat had given her, and it seemed like a lot of information was missing. Where was it? This whole appraisal was such a mess.

  With a sigh, Becca pulled her camera out of her purse and started taking photographs of the property. She walked around the entire house, taking notes and photos as she went. Feeling a little like a criminal, she peered in the windows. It looked like no one had been in this place for quite a while.

  Returning to the front, she walked down the path she had created in the snow toward the truck again. Jack was with the dogs and they were all looking up at a huge tree. The image of all three of them standing there amused her, and even though she wasn’t supposed to waste company film on personal snapshots, Becca took another picture anyway.

  She walked up to the group. “I’m done here and my feet are cold. What are you looking at?”

  Jack pointed up at the branches. “Squirrels. Frank is pretty sure that one is making fun of him and that squirrel puree might be a tasty snack.”

  “Eww. What does Mona think about all this?”

  “She seemed interested, but not in an ‘I’d like to invite you to dinner’ kind of way like Frank.”

  Becca reached out to stroke the big dog’s head. “Oh Frank. This is like the chicken thing, isn’t it?”

  “The squirrels are busy getting their goodies stored away. I think the snow caught them by surprise too. I’m afraid Frank’s going to end up needing to have another learning experience about squirrels.”

  Becca stood listening to the frenetic squirrel scold them from above. Two more agitated squirrels were scurrying through the branches, chasing each other, leaping from bough to bough. She realized Jack had a point about the forest. Being surrounded by all these trees was relaxing, even when the forest was filled with hyperactive wildlife. The tightness in her chest had been absent for a while. That sensation had been her constant companion for months. When had it gone away?

  She couldn’t think about that now though. It was time to get home and get back to work. There was so much to do and many lists to make. Item one was to drive home. She took Mona’s leash from Jack. “We should get going. I need to get on the road.”

  They loaded the dogs back into the truck and returned to Jack’s place. After collecting her things from his apartment, she put Mona in the backseat of her car and closed the door. Jack stood next to her with his hands tucked into two of his thousands of coat pockets.

  Becca looked into his eyes and her stomach clenched. She couldn’t
bear the idea that she might never see him again. “Okay, I’m warning you. Brace yourself, because I want to hug you.”

  He stretched out his arms. “Okay. Go for it.”

  She grabbed him and hugged as hard as she could. Pressing her cheek into his coat, she said, “How can I ever thank you enough?” She let go and shook her index finger at him like an angry schoolmarm. “You have to promise to call me and let me know what I owe for the broken window. And anything else we destroyed at Joel’s cabin.”

  “I’ll be going out there to meet him tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay. So I guess this is goodbye then.”

  “Drive carefully.”

  Becca crawled into the driver’s seat and waved. Jack raised his hand and gave her a half-smile. She pulled away and glanced at her rearview mirror. Jack was walking back toward the door to the ugly apartment building with his hands in his pockets again. She hurriedly wiped a tear from her eye before turning onto the main street to leave Alpine Grove.

  Chapter 9

  Adjustments

  Becca sat at the little writing desk in her apartment, trying to concentrate on the pile of paper in front of her. Her trusty calculator was by her side and she was attempting to figure out the adjustments to a comparable property for this awful appraisal in Alpine Grove. She knew it wasn’t a decent comp. The whole project had turned into a morass of miscommunications and mistakes.

  The problems weren’t all her fault, but the memory of Uncle Pat saying, “That’s the wrong house!” kept reverberating in her mind. To his credit, he had tried to remain calm, but he was obviously furious. It was a good thing she was related to him and that he remembered her when she was just an adorable nine-year-old little girl selling cookies for her scout troop. That might have helped him refrain from firing her right there on the spot.

  Before Joanne, the senior appraiser, left for her trip home to the East coast, she had dumped a pile of documents about the Alpine Grove project on Pat’s desk, and he gave the whole mess to Becca. After going through the sequence of events, it seemed that Joanne had pulled the wrong file and that the house Becca was supposed to have appraised was actually farther down Edgewater Road than the one Becca had visited. That certainly explained some things, including the lack of equine facilities.

  A fire engine siren wailed outside and Becca looked up from her calculations. Mona zipped through the doorway into the bedroom. The dog was probably busy crawling under the bed. And Mr. Rap Dude who lived downstairs was playing his dreadful music, so the bass was vibrating through the floor like a heartbeat. It was giving her a splitting headache. Time to complain to the building manager again.

  When Becca signed the lease on this place, she hadn’t thought about how close it was to the fire station or much about the neighbors. All she’d thought about was what a great deal it was and how lucky she was to find it because the company she worked for at the time managed the building.

  Over time, Becca had developed a deep loathing for rap, hip-hop, or whatever it was called. Wasn’t there some phrase like ‘sign a lease in haste, repent in leisure’? She was repenting a lot, but at least it had been long enough that she was paying month-to-month now. Yes, she should move, but with everything going on, she hadn’t had the time or mental energy to deal with the idea of looking for a place, much less moving. The new job, counseling, yoga classes, and everything else had been quite enough. Just the idea of moving was exhausting.

  Although taking work home didn’t tend to work out well, Becca had opted to give it a try in this case. Uncle Pat was one of the most easy-going people she’d ever met, but he was so angry about all the problems with this appraisal that he’d had to retire to his office and close the door for a while. He never did that.

  If Pat had any hair left, some of it probably would have turned gray after the events of the day. Becca tried to ignore the tightness in her chest. She had contributed to this disaster. There was no denying it. The countless other appraisals she’d done before had been fine. Even though she was still the new appraiser on the block, she did know what she was doing. Every appraisal assignment involved a lot of details, but Becca was good at details. She always tried to dot every i and cross every t, and Pat often said how pleased he was with her work. But this stupid appraisal in Alpine Grove seemed to be cursed.

  The morning had started off so well, too. The first thing on her to-do list had been to drop off her film at the one-hour photo place on the way to the office. After Becca got her coffee, she went to talk to Pat. As Jack had predicted, Pat found the whole trapped-in-a-snowstorm story amusing. Her uncle shared some anecdotes from Thanksgiving and everything she’d missed with her family. He’d even seemed impressed with her initiative to go out to the Edgewater property even after everything that had happened to her over the holiday weekend.

  At lunch, Becca picked up her photos and went back to talk to Pat about the tasks that still needed to be done to finish up the project. The conversation that morning had been so friendly and fun, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Pat that she hadn’t been able to take pictures of the inside of the house or comparable properties.

  Becca was still fretting about that fact when she showed him the photos. But she never had a chance to say anything because Pat had taken one look at the photograph of the front of the house and freaked out. Well, maybe freaked out was a little extreme. He was too nice to completely freak out. But he had stroked his smooth skull and started pacing back and forth before he exclaimed, “That’s the wrong house, Becca!”

  Things had taken a nosedive after that.

  After he’d retreated to his office, calmed down, and called the client, he came back to Becca’s office with a laptop. Placing it on the desk, he’d said calmly. “Becca, you need to completely start over on this. I got you a one-week extension. They are not happy, but they grudgingly agreed that a blizzard is out of our control. So let’s go through everything we have and what you need to do.”

  They’d waded through the pile of papers. Maybe Joanne had the missing information somewhere. Or maybe not. Pat had said Joanne was dealing with a family emergency, so it was up to Becca to do the appraisal from scratch. He suggested she return to Alpine Grove and take the laptop this time. Because Alpine Grove was the county seat, all the records she needed were there. Becca would need to spend a lot of time at various offices digging up information.

  This had to be the worst Monday in her short and not particularly illustrious appraisal career. Becca leaned forward, crossed her arms on the desk, and laid her head down on them. All day, she had been working on breathing deeply and focusing on the right now, but it wasn’t working. Maybe she really wasn’t cut out to be an appraiser, after all. The right now she was experiencing at the moment was definitely lousy. The incessant pounding in her head and chest weren’t even in sync with Mr. Rap Dude’s horrible music, which was unbelievably annoying. The phone rang and Becca almost fell off her chair. Clutching her chest, she grabbed the receiver and yelled, “What!”

  “Becca?”

  “Hello. Yes. Sorry. Who is this?” The deep voice sounded familiar.

  “Hi, this is Jack. Are you okay?”

  “You always ask me that. I’m fine.” Becca rubbed her chest. How had she not noticed that his voice was so smooth and mellow? “You just sound different on the phone.”

  He chuckled. “It’s still the same ole me. You wanted me to call you after I met with Joel, remember?”

  It had been less than twenty-four hours, but that conversation felt like a lifetime ago. “Yes. Thanks for calling. Is everything okay with the cabin?”

  “Yes, Joel is great. He plowed everything out and I cleaned up. Oh, and I measured the window and talked to a glass company about getting a piece cut down that I can use. It’s an odd size, so it’s going to be ridiculously expensive for such a small thing. I might call around a little more.”

  Becca picked up her calculator. “Well, a few things were kind of odd about that
place.”

  “True. That reminds me, I found out why it smells like smoke.”

  Becca pressed a button to clear out the calculator display. “Oh, do tell.”

  “It was a kitchen fire. Joel didn’t really go into detail, but I guess someone threw something at him that was on fire. They had to call the fire department.”

  “Wow, that sounds like some serious drama at The Shack. Not to mention big excitement for the neighborhood too.” A siren screamed outside the window and Becca sighed, hoping Jack didn’t hear.

  “Your place isn’t on fire, is it?”

  “I live close to the fire station. If I’d rented this place after I got into property appraisal work, I would have known that. But no. Back then I didn’t really think about location and how it affects property values. I can tell you that the boys at the fire department get out a lot. My tax dollars are working hard.”

  “Are you okay? You sound sort of, I don’t know, tired.”

  Becca put her elbow on the desk and rested her chin on her palm. Tired didn’t begin to describe it. “I’ve had a bad day. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say, the whole appraisal is a disaster and my uncle probably wants to kill me. Or at least fire me. The end result is that I have to go back to Alpine Grove.”

  “Really? But you just got home.”

  “I know.” Becca sat up straight again. “Since I have to go back up there, maybe I could see you?”

  There was a long pause and finally he said, “Okay. But I have to work.”

  “I know. So do I. I’m trying not to think about how much work I have to do. But I should take you out to dinner or something. To say thank you. I mean, you fed me for days. It seems only fair. Maybe we could expand our culinary horizons beyond pizza and tree parts. Are there any decent places to eat?”

  He laughed. “You can’t get lodgepole fries just anywhere, you know. But there’s an Italian place that’s not bad.”

  “That sounds great. It’s been a really long day. I came home early to try to get a head start on the appraisal, but I’m not getting anywhere. I should just give up and start packing. Before you say anything, yes, I promise I’ll bring warmer clothing this time. Including gloves.”