“I barely know him.”
“Oh. Well, just wondering.” He sounded slightly relieved.
She blinked at him, and then let the subject drop, though her head was spinning. Was he jealous? No, he couldn’t possibly be. Not of her. Billionaires dated supermodels, not round, quiet, shy girls from middle-class Delaware families.
Chapter 3: Christmas Eve
They fixed dinner together; she prepped what he hadn’t done already, chopping vegetables and running things back and forth from the oven while he stirred pots and added seasonings. It smelled amazing.
She couldn’t help noticing, again, how well they worked together, even on such small domestic tasks. Henry was in a great mood despite the setbacks and James’s warnings, telling stories about how he’d found the place. He already had other prospects in mind--including an old barn out by Woodstock that he planned to turn into a set of artists’ lofts. “The stables are from the sixteen hundreds. Almost four hundred years old and still mostly standing except for the roof and some of the interior woodwork. That’s going to be spring’s project. You would not believe just how beautiful it is in there, Anna. I’ll show you the pictures I took on my phone as soon as we’re done here.”
She smiled at him and was about to answer when someone knocked on the front door. Her hands were clean, so she hurried out to answer it. Standing there was a smallish, round-faced man with John Lennon glasses and long, dark hair barely covering a scar across his forehead. He was heavily bundled in a down coat and jeans, and broke into a grin when he saw her. “Oh hey! I didn’t know you were up here with Henry this time. I wanted to bring him his Christmas present.”
Toby Castleburg was a local, one of the woodworkers Henry worked with, and very good at scouting old properties that could be refurbished. He was only a few years older than Anna, but had the manner of a big kid, fidgeting a little bit in the doorway as he smiled. She knew that under the giant jacket he would invariably have some comic book or video game related T-shirt on over his thermals. “Where’s Henry?” He peered past her and she stepped aside to let him in.
“In here, Toby! You staying for dinner?” Henry’s call was cheerful and welcoming. Toby was a friend. Henry had this habit of making friends wherever he went, and he wasn’t classist about it.
“If you’re cookin’ roast beef, I’ve got to get a piece of that action!” Toby, young, partly disabled from the accident that had scarred him, and definitely as working-class as James, had shown up every time they worked in the Catskills, usually to eat with them or show them around on the back roads while Henry drove. They met when Monty had gotten out of the SUV during a visit to Toby's home town of Phoenicia, and Toby had shown up within five minutes with the dog in hand on a borrowed leash, asking whose he was. Ever since then, he had had an open invitation to visit whenever Henry was in town.
“I am. C’mon in.” And Toby ambled past her, a brown paper package in his arms, face lighting up as he sniffed the air.
Anna didn’t mind his presence--well, yes, part of her did, the part that had hoped roast beef and pie would lead to romantic scenes with Henry in front of the wood stove. But generally, she was fine with Toby being around. When he was present, things just couldn’t get too serious. He was a ray of sunshine in these wintry mountains.
He helped them finish fixing things as he and Henry chattered. Anna quietly watched the clouds marching in, stuffing themselves into the sky over the mountain until the last patch of blue was gone. There they thickened and darkened, lowering slowly. She remembered James’s warning and his worried glances at her. She felt the seed of fear in her stomach grow a little. I should say something. Shouldn't I say something? Henry seems determined to spend a few more hours and he's the boss, but....
They ate well before sundown, dining at the gorgeous live-edge dining table Toby helped build. Anna couldn't tell whether it was Henry's concession to James's warning or whether he was just hungry, but she was secretly a little glad they were eating early. As much as she loved spending more time with Henry, her eyes kept going back to the low black clouds outside the window. James never looked worried about anything, but he sure had that afternoon.
"Guess it's good you didn't bring Monty," Toby chattered on between huge bites of roast beef. "I know how he likes to get out, and the last few nights have been freezing. And tonight's really gonna be no night for a dog to be out. Looks like snow. Maybe lots of snow."
Henry frowned but then forced his face into a more pleasant expression. "Monty's at doggie daycare, they have already arranged to keep him overnight if we get back late."
"Guess that's good then." He perked up. "Hey, did James tell you he got his trailer fixed up? Just in time, too. I helped him put the new wood stove in. He’s gonna be a lot warmer this winter, bet you anything. Good thing, too, because last winter he had a cough for three months! Poor guy’s had no luck since he got out of prison, not until you came along.”
Anna paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. Then she forced herself to take the bite, chew and swallow. Of course she felt a little worried about James’s last winter. But mostly what she thought was that Henry was always doing things like that: offering a second chance to people who wouldn’t have it otherwise. Like the ex-con who had stolen money to feed his family. Or the brain-damaged woodworker who sometimes had convulsions. Or the social-reject secretary who was better with dogs than she was with humans. Henry had a big heart, and she wished, with an ache that deepened whenever she looked at him, that there was room in it for her.
“He didn’t mention it, no. But I’m glad he did.” Henry sliced off more meat, dipped it in mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffed it in his mouth.
“Saw the inside the other day. He scrubbed all the mold out, stuffed it full of insulation. Got two solar panels of his own. Too bad his neighbors bitched about the windmill noise or he would have that too.”
“Hard to believe that that not-in-my-backyard thing happens out where people’s backyards are several acres,” Anna commented quietly as she poked at her green beans. Her gaze rose back to the window, and she saw a few spatters of icy rain hit the glass.
Henry had them pack up the dirty dishes, since there was no hot water available for washing, and they brought them out to the car before settling in for pie and coffee. That’s when Toby, with a big gap-toothed grin on his face, presented his brown paper package to Henry, who chuckled.
“Another one, huh?”
“Yep! Got one to add to your collection.” He waved it slightly and Henry took it, tearing it open. A cartoonish statue of a woodchuck, expertly carved and softly polished with beeswax, sat on its haunches with a derpy look on its face and a branch in its mouth.
Henry grinned and looked the thing over. “Well damn, Toby, this one’s even better than last year’s.” He had a display case in his office with the cartoonish wooden animals, and now she knew where they all came from. “You know I keep these at work for people to look at?”
“No kidding?” Toby brightened.
“It’s true. He has a big lit-up display case with a mirror behind it in the lobby.” Anne couldn’t help but smile as Toby beamed.
“Well, that’s awesome. I’ll have to tell the boys back home that my work’s on display in New York City!”
“Now we just have to get some more of it out there so I can sell it for you, and you can finish fixing up your Mom’s house with the money.” Henry gave him a pointed look, and Toby’s ears turned red.
“Oh, I can’t carve except when I’m making it for a certain person,” he demurred.
Henry sighed. “So pretend they’re all for me then?”
“Huh.” Toby wrinkled his scarred brow, then nodded. “I could do that! And maybe try selling some of the furniture. You think this table turned out all right?”
“The table’s beautiful, Toby.” Anna thought about Toby, living with his mom, his life a regimen of medicines and doctor visits, and how the chance to make more money made such a huge differ
ence for him. For James, going home alone to his trailer tonight. And, she realized, that bothered her; should they have asked him to stay? If she wasn’t going to be alone with Henry anyway, there had been no reason not to ask him. But Henry had almost made a point of not doing so. Why?
Could he be jealous of James flirting with me? No, no, that’s just not possible. The man is out of my league. He probably doesn’t even see me as a woman, at least not in that kind of way.
Toby excused himself soon after, seeing the few raindrops start to become more than a few. “Gotta hop on my bike and get out of here, Mom gets worried if I’m too late and it’s starting to look messy out there.” He had Henry’s gift of a new wallet in his pocket, along with some investment certificates he didn’t know the value of and his mother would explain to him later--and which would cover the repairs of their house by themselves. Henry was like that: full of generous surprises.
They lingered together over more coffee, and chatter about the job went quiet soon after Toby left. “I’m keeping you. You must have a big day tomorrow,” he probed gently.
She looked up at him, then smiled and shook her head.
His brow furrowed. “You look sad.”
“I have nothing going on tomorrow,” she replied. “I’m not in touch with my family, and I’m not exactly a social butterfly around here. I...I can stay late, it doesn’t really matter.”
His face fell. “Nobody?” he asked, disbelieving. “I don’t get it. You’re so sweet….”
She let out a soft little laugh and looked out the window. “I have some people I volunteer with at the SPCA. I have my brother, but he’s out in Los Angeles. That’s kind of it in my life right now. My apartment won’t even allow pets.”
A silence dragged between them, his eyes flickering with something soft and sad and unfathomable.
She looked down, swallowing a lump in her throat. “I’m sorry, I’m being maudlin. Point is, don’t worry about getting me back late.”
Henry didn’t answer. She blinked and looked up and saw that he was staring past her at the window. She turned her head and saw an almost solid curtain of white flakes falling past the window. It was so thick that it looked like someone was emptying a feather pillow off the roof.
Chapter 4: The Blizzard
Henry stood up and immediately ran to the door, pulling it open. She hurried after him--and staggered back as a shockingly icy breeze blew past him into the hallway. “Oh my God!” She came up beside him...and saw that the Cherokee and the ground around it were already blanketed in a foot of snow.
“What the hell! I only saw the first few flakes a couple of minutes ago--!” He turned and looked at her and then back at the insane tableau outside. “Okay, we’re gonna freeze if I stand here like this.” He pushed the door closed and turned around, dozens of flakes drying in his hair and on his clothes. “What the hell is this?”
“I think it’s a blizzard,” Anna whispered breathlessly.
Henry stood there, expression baffled. He was used to making the right calls. If anything, it had made him a bit overconfident. But here, he seemed to realize too late that he was way out of his element, and should have listened to those who weren’t. “Oh holy crap. James was right.” He turned to her, shaking his head slowly, his eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
She looked out one of the windows and saw that the back pond had vanished and that the snow just kept piling up, almost as if someone had taped a snowfall and was now playing it back at five times normal speed. “We’re trapped here, aren’t we?” she asked in a tiny voice.
He swallowed and turned to look out the window. “Even with the Cherokee I can’t get out in this, not until the plow comes by. And that won’t happen until the storm’s over and they can, well, dig the plow out.”
“Oh God.” She was shivering from more than the sudden cold. The well-insulated walls had given them a false sense of how things were outside; they couldn’t hear the wind and a foot-and-a-half of stone and the wood stove had masked the drop in temperature. And now, it looked like they might be stuck. In a house with very little food, no hot water, and only enough firewood to fill the indoor hopper. And the propane. But a twenty-pound container of propane was only good for about seventeen to twenty hours of burn time. Still, it was something.
Her mind focused on these calculations automatically, taking care of business so fear didn’t take over in the face of something they had been warned about--twice--but not listened to. No wait. I was listening, but didn’t say anything. Henry didn’t listen. She pushed aside a stab of disappointment in him and just shuddered and hugged herself, her eyes blurring a little. Being stuck somewhere with him as company would be welcome if it wasn’t potentially dangerous. As it was, she had no idea what to say or do except to mumble, “Maybe a day and a half of heat, two days of food, no hot water. The windmill will give us electricity but we’ll be running on house batteries a lot of the time, so they’ll run out after about six to eight hours if we keep everything on.” Oh God, we’re going to be trapped here. Oh God, I’m scared.
He stopped to listen to her, and then heard the shake in her voice and took a step in her direction. Tears brimmed over in her eyes and she looked down, embarrassed by her blubbering.
“Hey,” said Henry worriedly. “Hey, are you okay?”
She drew a breath to tell him sure, she was fine, they were caught in a freezing snowstorm without much in the way of resources aside from what James and the stagers had left and their leftovers from dinner, and she was terrified, and why hadn’t he listened, damn it, but she was fine. But her breath drew in with a low, sobbing sound, and his eyes flew open in worry--and then he had hold of her and was pulling her against his chest.
She froze, the tears and terror startled out of her by the sudden contact. Something in the back of her mind still kept going on about two days, we have two days and then we’re in trouble. Another part wanted to yell why didn’t you listen to James and shove at his chest, but the rest of her was suddenly preoccupied with the warm, solid length of his body against hers. With his arms around her, gently but snugly, and his soft hand on her shoulder.
She shuddered and then slipped her arms around him as far as they would go. Her fingers caught in the fabric of his sweater, and she gasped, tucking her head against him and nuzzling her face into his throat.
A shiver went through him. It was probably from the cold. But his grip on her tightened a little, and she felt his heartbeat pick up against her cheek. She closed her eyes. He was so warm, and so big, and his hands on her were so tender. Don’t let go.
She hung onto him and gasped for air. He must have thought she was panicking, but what she felt was more a desperate hunger for more closeness to him. He didn’t let go, she relaxed against him, and for just a little while, her loneliness was gone.
“Okay. So let’s go over this again.” They let each other go reluctantly--though she still wondered if she imagined that he had been reluctant--and now sat at Toby’s beautiful table, under the one light they kept on, calculating their resources. Henry bent over the list they had made, speaking as calmly and authoritatively as he could manage under the circumstances.
“We have no communication in or out thanks to the cell tower not being up yet. No Internet. We have a landline but no connection thanks to the service not being ordered yet. So, no calling for help.
“We have enough food and supplies to last us two days, three if we stretch it. The propane stove isn’t the best heat source, but it can last us about a day off and on. That leaves us with about half a day of wood. Now the problem is, a wood stove has to be fed every few hours, and the fan system that would push the warm air into the bedrooms eats too much electricity to use. Same problem with the propane stove--it will heat the kitchen, not the house. We’ll have to drag a mattress down here to sleep comfortably.”
“That’s...what I’ve been able to sort out going through everything, yes,” she said in a small voice. Except for the bit about
bringing down mattresses.
Wait, he had said one mattress. Singular.
She blinked. Do I correct him? There were technically room for two queen sized mattresses on the living room floor, but….
I think I’ll just let that detail slide and hope he doesn’t notice until bed time.
He paused. “Your face is very red. Are you alright?”
She looked down, biting her lip. “You...said...one mattress.” Oh damn. Shut up, Anna!
He let out an embarrassed scoff, and went quiet a moment. “Well, the stagers only put one comforter apiece on the beds, and um...body heat is about the only heat source we have an unlimited amount of.”
“O-oh,” she murmured, her cheeks heating up even more.
It took more work than they had anticipated to drag a mattress and a big pile of bedding down that narrow staircase. He almost fell twice, and at one point she almost tumbled down the stairs herself as the weight of the huge king-size dragged her down. Fortunately, he set his shoulder against it and stopped the slide. But they were both panting by the time they dragged the mattress in front of the stove and plopped the pile of bedding on top of it. She made the bed while he made them cocoa--since one of the burners was on anyway.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said suddenly as they sipped their cocoa. “I really should have listened to James. He’s lived around here all his life. I just...I’m usually not the rich guy who thinks he knows better than people who aren’t as well off as he is. Except, I guess, sometimes I am.”
It was big of him to admit and took the edge off her urge to smack him. “James knows we were up here pretty late, and Toby knows as well. Between the two of them, someone will think to come looking for us.” She knew that she was just stirring up hope where maybe there was none, but it was better than spending the whole time in terror.
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