“I assume you’ve got some food around here, enough to last for a while,” he said. He strode to the cabinets ranging along one wall and started hurling doors open.
“A bit of powdered milk. Packets of hot chocolate mix. Freeze-dried chicken stew. A few cans of soup. Canned chili and some other stuff. Is there more food somewhere? In the cache below the trapdoor in the kitchen maybe?”
Mutely she shook her head.
He walked back to where she stood, balancing his hands on his hips and staring down at her. “That’s barely enough for one person for two more weeks. If Bert didn’t show up on time, exactly what did you plan to eat?”
“I expected him to be here on schedule,” she said with admirable dignity. She lifted her chin and treated him to that flint-eyed gaze. “Anyway,” she said, “I thought I could fish. I’ve fished in the river and the creek and the lake before.”
He could barely contain his scorn. “With a broken finger?”
“My finger wasn’t broken to begin with.”
“What would you do if I hadn’t come along? If Bert were never told you’re waiting here for him? Of all the tomfool things to do, woman, this takes the cake. And sitting here with a broken finger to boot.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and glared at him for a moment. “We’ve been through all this before, Sam. I already know you think I’m an idiot, thank you very much, but actually I don’t think you’re much smarter than I am.”
“If I hadn’t come along—”
“If you hadn’t come along, I’d be in deep trouble, okay? Does it make you feel better to hear me admit it?”
“Damn straight,” he said. But he felt no satisfaction when she whirled and marched to the back door.
With one last furious look back at him, she flung a thick woolen shawl around her shoulders and slammed out into the night. Sam recalled that the storage shed that served as an outhouse was partly protected by a breezeway. It wouldn’t be pleasant going out there in weather like this, but she’d be all right.
At least that’s what he thought in the beginning. He started cleaning up the dinner dishes, scraping scraps into a bin, sluicing water over the plates from a pitcher that he filled from a wooden barrel beside the back door, all the while listening for sounds of trouble outside. The kitchen window overlooked the breezeway, and he looked out to see if anything was amiss, but the night was pitch dark and thick with windblown snow. He could barely make out the outline of the shed at the end of the breezeway, but where was Kerry? He worked with one ear cocked to the keening of the wind. By the time all the dishes were put away on their designated shelf, he was feeling edgy. She shouldn’t have gone out by herself. How long could anyone spend in an outhouse, anyway?
Too long, he stewed as he unpacked his things and stashed them in the closet beside hers. It wasn’t a big closet, and he didn’t think she’d like him taking up much space, so he crammed his few shirts and extra pair of jeans into the far corner.
A flutter of cream-colored lace snagged his wristwatch, and he paused to disentangle it. The lace edged the sleeve of a silky scoop-necked gown. It was lined in flannel and buttoned up the front, not quite granny-style but almost. Granny or not, he had a vision of Kerry wearing it. She’d look ethereal and graceful, the lace trailing along those dainty hands, the scooped neck revealing a bit of cleavage. No, a lot of cleavage. Kerry was well endowed. He’d never really noticed that about her before.
The back door catapulted open, and Kerry rode in on a wedge of snowflakes. Guiltily he dropped the sleeve of her nightgown and hoped she wouldn’t notice.
“Whew! I don’t think the weather’s anywhere near letting up!” she said, seemingly in better humor than when she’d left. She doffed the shawl and draped it over a chair near the stove to dry.
“You shouldn’t have gone out in the storm.”
She spared him a hard look. “A human body has certain needs. It was necessary.”
He realized that if he hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t needed privacy, she would have taken care of those needs inside. He knew for a fact that there was an ancient chamber pot stored under the eaves upstairs.
“If it’s still storming next time you go to the shed, let me know. I’ll go with you and wait outside. You shouldn’t go out alone.”
“I’ve been going to the shed alone for the past three months and have never had a problem. I think I can still manage it for the next couple of days.” She took in the neat kitchen. “Thanks for cleaning up,” she murmured grudgingly.
“No thanks are necessary,” he said. She’d tucked the light sweater she wore into her jeans, and her breasts strained against the fuzzy fabric. The color was a luscious cherry red, and he found himself studying the curves of her breasts in expectance of seeing the outline of a nipple. He thought he detected a puckering of the fabric, and his unbidden thought was of Kerry’s nipples erect from the cold, shifting tantalizingly against the soft knit.
The thought made him swallow hard past the lump in his throat, and he clamped his lips tight against the wave of desire that swept over him. Which only reminded him that yes, he did have lips, and that so did she, and that they were exactly the same shade of red as her sweater, and that it would be oh so easy to kiss her and let his lips follow the sweet line of her neck all the way down to the swelling of her breast.
This was going much too far. “I’d better check the shed and see what tools we have,” he said, his tone intentionally brusque. He grabbed his parka and pushed past her toward the door.
As he braved the icy barrage that greeted him in the breezeway, he found himself wishing again that he’d accepted his friends’ invitation and hightailed it for Key West last week. He could sure use a margarita right about now.
WHEN SAM WALKED BACK in the cabin ten minutes later lugging a two-by-four and Doug’s old toolbox, he startled Kerry so much that she spilled hot chocolate all over the countertop in the kitchen.
Sam dropped the lumber and the toolbox and grabbed a roll of paper towels. “You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”
“No,” she said, tearing off a wad of towels and blotting at the dark-brown liquid inching across the counter and dripping down the front of the cabinets. “I can’t do anything right lately. Not even make hot chocolate from a mix,” she said.
He spared her a glance. “Maybe you’d better leave cooking chores to me until you can manage with your finger a little better.”
“I feel like such a doofus,” she said unhappily.
He ignored this. “There are spatters on your sweater,” he pointed out.
She looked down at the brown blotches spread across her midsection. “I’ll go change,” she said, reaching behind her with both hands and fumbling awkwardly with several tiny buttons at the neck. She muttered impatiently and turned her back toward him. “Would you mind?” she said.
She lifted her hair out of the way, exposing the pale skin at the nape of her neck, and, acting as if he did this all the time, Sam reached up and unbuttoned the buttons one by one. His fingers grazed her soft flesh, and he thought he felt a shudder run through her. Or maybe she was only shivering. The cabin was well-chinked, but all this going in and out of doors had lowered the air temperature in the cabin considerably.
Well, it was time to change the focus here. He was getting much too rattled over this. Over her.
“Do you mind if I build a fire in the fireplace?” he said.
She didn’t speak, only shook her head, fluttering into motion the loose tendrils wisping around her neck. Sam found himself wanting to push her hands away so that the weight of her hair would swing across her shoulders, brushing