When the lights snapped on, she threw a hand in front of her face, reflexively blocking the sudden glare.
And then lowered her hand one millimeter at a time, her mouth hanging open and her eyes painfully wide.
It was a castle.
Towers and turrets. Candles flickering in sheltered sconces. The hedges, threateningly visible in the sudden light, loomed over her like the encroaching boundaries of an ancient forest. She could almost swear she heard horns, dying faintly away on the cold night air, calling the hounds to hunt.
When the wolf burst around the side of the building and raced straight toward her, giving one deep woof on the way, Addy decided that she was hallucinating. Clearly.
Her next conscious thought was that being body-slammed by a wolf into a snowbank sure did shoot the hallucination theory all to hell. Its paws were planted smack in the middle of her stomach and she could feel its hot breath on her neck as it shoved its nose beneath her scarf. She opened her mouth to scream.
And sputtered in disgust as she got a faceful of doggy drool when the thing licked her from her chin to her eyebrows.
“Ew, gross, disgusting.” She whipped her head to the side to avoid another lick and spat into the snow. “Get off me, you big lug.”
“Elwood! Heel!”
The dog gave a reluctant whine, swiped one last kiss wetly across her forehead and leapt off her to go trotting obediently away. Addy pushed herself up on her elbows, scraped the snow out of her collar and wished that the heat of her irritation could actually shoot red laser beams out of her eyes to burn to a crisp the man striding across the snow-covered lawn toward her.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he was out.” Spencer came to a halt at her feet. She could see him trying to decide whether or not it would be safe to offer her a hand up. The dog, an enormously overgrown puppy she now saw, bounced around his feet, tail wagging and tongue drooling. “Elwood, sit. Sit, Elwood.”
When Spencer finally gave up and shoved the dog’s butt into the snow with two gloved hands, Addy laughed out loud.
“Elwood?” she asked as she clambered to her feet and started brushing off her clothes. “Let me guess, he has four whole fried chickens for lunch every day.”
“That was Jake. Elwood ate dry white toast.”
“That giant wolf in dog’s clothing certainly eats more than white toast.” She could feel melting snow trickling down the back of her neck. “What kind of dog is it anyway?”
“Elwood’s a purebred Akita.”
“Of course. Even her dog sounds snotty, though I wouldn’t have thought Great-Aunt Adeline was a fan of The Blues Brothers.”
“I don’t think she ever saw the film. Elwood is my dog.”
Oops. So much for the truce on insults.
Before she could ask what his dog was doing at the house, Addy heard Spencer give what sounded suspiciously like a snicker. She glared up at him. His lips were clamped together in what was clearly a weak effort to keep from laughing out loud at her. “If you’re finding this funny, Reed…” she warned.
“Not at all,” he said, his voice strangled. “It’s just…dripping.” He reached out a gloved hand toward her hair.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, and jerked her head back. This had the unfortunate effect of dislodging the mountain of snow perched on her hat, spilling it down her face in a cold, damp mini avalanche.
“Dammit.”
Spencer’s laughter burst out of him in an uncontrollable guffaw. Through the ice water dripping into her eyes, she saw him strip off his gloves and shove them into the pockets of his overcoat. He stepped through the snow to stand next to her, crowding her.
“You’re invading my personal space, Reed. Back off.” She knew she looked ridiculous, and resented it.
“I’m cleaning you up, Frosty. Relax.” He tugged off her knit cap and ran his bare fingers gently through her wet curls, combing out clumps of melting snow. She felt the trails left by his fingers on her scalp like the burning afterimage of the sun. Spencer brushed his thumbs gently across her eyebrows and then her cheekbones. When his fingers passed softly over her mouth, she inhaled shakily, and the sudden narrowing of his eyes told her that he’d heard it. “And it wouldn’t kill you to call me by my first name, Addy.”
“You know, it just might,” she muttered, and nearly smiled at the grimness in her own voice. Her awareness of his hands on her skin shocked her with its intensity. In a sudden movement, she jerked her hands up to push his away, only to find her fingers entangled with his.
If I’m so cold, why does it feel like he’s burning me? As the words flashed through her brain, she tried to pull her hands away.
“That’s enough.”
“Not nearly.”
The clouds of their breaths lingered in the cold, still air between their faces, merging into one slowly disappearing fog. Addy felt the ridiculous urge to tuck her top lip over her bottom one and direct her next breath straight at her feet, and told herself she was being paranoid.
She didn’t think she sounded very convincing.
“Your hands are cold.”
Her fingers were still interlocked with his, and Spencer was rubbing them gently. With inexorable slowness, he pulled her hands to his mouth and exhaled warmly on them. When she shivered, his smile showed in his eyes.
Enough was enough.
“I’m soaking wet because of your goofy dog, Reed. I’m cold all over,” she snapped.
For the second time since her arrival, her irritation at his smugness saved her from further embarrassment. She yanked her hands away from his and shoved them deep into her coat pockets. “I suppose it would be too much to ask to go inside now, before I end up with a raging case of pneumonia?”
Spencer’s grin told her she wasn’t fooling anyone. Then she shivered again, and this time it was because she actually was freezing.
“I really am cold,” she said as her teeth started to chatter.
“Of course. Come on.” With a casualness she didn’t fall for, he snagged one of her hands and tucked it in the crook of his arm. He led the way back to the sidewalk and steered her toward the front porch. After a moment of mental debate, Addy decided that the advantage of not having to look where she was going, allowing her to stare at the house looming over them, was worth the inconvenience of bumping into Spencer’s body with every step. Elwood pranced about their feet, kicking up snow with a dog’s sheer joy in play.
But it was the house, the fairy-tale, castlelike vision of a house, that she couldn’t take her eyes off.
With all of the lights on and a little more composure under her belt, Addy could see that although the house was large, it was the height of the building that made it seem so imposing. The house itself was three full stories tall, and its towers—there are towers, with round walls and cone-capped roofs, for God’s sake—stretched another story or two higher. There were windows everywhere, almost more windows than walls it seemed, and warm yellow light shone out of dozens of them.
Closer to the house, she started to realize why the building gave off such a feeling of age. Her initial impression of stone walls had been given by the mottled, peeling gray paint on the clapboard siding. The wraparound porch that stretched across the front of the house and around one side lent an air of elegant welcome, until she noticed that the gutters were pulling away