“Absolutely. Do you have a hat?”
She dug into her coat pocket, dragged out the vivid green cap. “It’s not like I sit around every night sucking down the wine or whatever.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” He pulled the cap over her head, then wound her scarf around her neck before buttoning her coat. “That’ll do it.” He took her arm, led her to the door. And out.
He heard her hiss through her teeth as the cold hit her face, and kept hold on her arm, just in case.
“Warm’s better,” she mumbled, but when she tried to turn around, he just kept walking.
“I like when it snows at night. Well, it’s not night yet, but this looks like it’ll go into it. I like watching it out the window, the white against the black.”
“We’re not watching it out the window. We’re in the damn stuff.”
He just smiled and kept walking. Plenty of paths, he thought, and all of them carefully cleared before this dusting. “Who shovels all this?”
“This what?”
“Snow, Mackensie.”
“We do, or we draft Del or his pal Jack. We pay some teenagers sometimes. Depends. Gotta keep the paths clear. We’re a business here, so we have to maintain it. We get the plow guy for the parking areas.”
“A lot of work, with a place this size, and a business with this many facets.”
“All part of the whole, plus it’s home, too, so we . . . Oh, you’re changing the subject.” Eyes narrowed, she peered up at him from under the cap. “I’m not stupid, just a little buzzed.”
“What was the subject?”
“The enormous suckatude of my family. Where was I?”
“I think you left off with Christmas, and your mother driving you to drink.”
“That’s right, I did. Here’s how she drove me to drink this time. She broke up with her latest boyfriend. I use the term
boyfriend deliberately, as her mind-set is that of a teenager when it comes to men, relationships, marriage. Anyway, drama, drama, and of course now she has to go to a spa to recover from the ordeal and the stress and heartbreak. Which is bullshit, but she
believes it. And since she can’t keep ten dollars in her pocket for more than five minutes, she expects me to front the expense. Three thousand.”
“You’re supposed to give your mother three thousand dollars because she broke up with her boyfriend and wants to go to the spa?”
“If she needed an operation, would I just let her die?” Trying to express her mother’s method of attack, Mac wheeled both arms in the air. “No, no, no, that’s not the one she used this time. It was homeless and on the streets this time. She has a collection like that. Maybe she used both. It started to blur. So, yes, I’m supposed to pay for it. Correction, I
am paying for it because she’ll keep hounding and hammering at me until I do, so I’ll pay for it. Ergo, the wine, because it disgusts and infuriates me that I always cave.”
“It’s none of my business, but if you kept saying no, wouldn’t she have to stop? If you keep saying yes, why would she?”
“I
know that.” She rapped him in the chest. “Of course, I know that, but she’s relentless and I just want her to go away. I keep thinking, why won’t she just get married again—make it lucky number four—and move away? Far, far away, like maybe Burma. Effectively disappear like my father. Only pop up occasionally. Maybe she’ll meet some guy at this spa, sitting around the pool drinking carrot juice or whatever, fall in love—which is as easy for her as buying shoes. No, easier. Fall in love,” Mac continued, “move to Burma, and leave me alone.”
She sighed, lifted her face. It didn’t feel so cold now, she realized. And the thickening fall of snow was pretty and peaceful. Walking in it, she had to admit, made for a better idea than drinking.
“You’re a saver, aren’t you?” she asked him.
“Ah, you mean like money or old papers?”
“No, as in rescue. I bet you always open the door for somebody if their hands are full, even if you’re in a hurry. And listen to your students’ personal problems even if you have something else you need to do.” She lowered her face to look into his now. “And take marginally drunk women for walks in the snow.”
“It seemed like the thing to do.” Less buzz, he noted, looking into those fascinating green eyes. More sadness.
“I bet you’re sick of women.”
“Do you mean altogether or just at the moment?”
She smiled at him. “I bet you’re a really nice guy.”
He didn’t sigh, but he wanted to. “I’ve been accused of it.” He glanced around, looking for something else to talk about. He should get her back inside, he thought, but he wanted just a little longer with her. In the snowy dark. “So, what kind of birds do you get?” He gestured toward two pretty feeders.
“The kind that fly.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. Neither of them had thought of finding her gloves. “I don’t know much about birds.” Angling her head, she gave him another study. “Are you, like, a bird-watcher?”
“No, not seriously. Just as sort of a hobby.” And God, could he get any geekier? Cut your losses, Carter, and go before it’s too late. “We’d better go back. The snow’s getting heavier.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me what kind of birds I should be watching for? Emma and I stock the feeders since they’re between her place and mine.”
“Her place?”
“Yeah, see.” She gestured toward the pretty two-story house. “The old guest house, and she uses the greenhouses beyond it. I took the pool house. Laurel and Parker third floor of the main, east and west wings, so it’s like having their own place. It’s Parker’s house, pretty much. But Laurel needs the kitchen, I need studio space, Emma the greenhouses. So this setup made the most sense. We hang out at the big house a lot, but we all have our separate spaces.”
“You’ve been friends a long time.”
“Forever.”
“That’s family, isn’t it? The kind without suckatude?”
She gave him a half laugh. “Smart, aren’t you? About those birds . . .”
“You’d spot cardinals easily this time of year.”
“Okay, everybody knows what a cardinal looks like. It’s a cardinal that provided you with a look at my breasts.”
“I beg your . . . What?”
“He flew into the kitchen window and I spilled my drink on my shirt. So. Birds. Besides the red ones that fly into windows. I’m thinking of a belly-crested whopado, like that?”
“Unfortunately, the belly-crested whopado is extinct. But you could spot some of the streaked sparrow species in this area, in the winter.”
“Streaked sparrow species. Since I managed to repeat that without slurring, I must not be close to drunk anymore.”
They walked down the path between the glowing lights and the dark while the snow fell in thick Hollywood flakes. As pretty a night, Mac realized, as you could ask for in January. And she’d have missed it if he hadn’t come by, and insisted—in his low-key way—that she take a walk.
“At this point, I feel like I should say I don’t make a habit of tossing back multiple glasses of wine before sundown. Usually I’d have channelled the frustration into work or I’d have gone over and dumped on Parker and company. I was too mad for either. And I didn’t feel like ice cream, which is also a personal crutch in trying times.”
“I figured that out, except for the ice cream. My mother makes soup when she’s really upset or seriously mad. Big pots of soup. I’ve eaten a great deal of soup in my life.”
“Nobody really cooks around here but Laurel and Mrs. G.”
“Mrs. G. Mrs. Grady? Is she still here? I didn’t see her today.”
“Still here, still running the place and everybody in it. Thank God for it. She’s on her annual winter vacation. She goes to St. Martin’s on January first, like clockwork, and stays until April. As usual, she made a freezer full of casseroles, soups, stews, and so on before she left so none of us would starve in the event of a blizzard or nuclear war.”
She stopped by her front door, cocked her head at him again. “It’s been a day. You held up, Professor.”
“It had some interesting moments. Oh, Sherry’s going for Number Three, with buffet.”
“Good choice. Thanks for the walk, and the ear.”
“I like to walk.” He pushed his hands in his pockets since he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “I’d better get going because driving in it’s a little trickier. And . . . school night.”
“School night,” she repeated and smiled.
Then she laid her pocket-warmed hands on his cheeks, brushed her lips to his in a light, friendly, close to sisterly kiss.
He blanked. He moved before he thought, acted before he checked. He took her shoulders, pulled her in—pressed her back to the door as he took the simple brush of lips into the long and the dark.
What he’d imagined at seventeen plunged into reality at thirty. The taste of her, the
feel. That moment of lips and tongue, and the heat rising in the blood. In the quiet of snowfall, that elemental hush, the sound of her breath sighing out broke in his mind like thunder.
A storm gathering.
She didn’t nudge him back, push him away, protest his shoving open the door of her friendly gesture into the hot and wild. Her first thought was, who knew? Who knew the nice-guy English professor who walked into walls could
kiss like this?
Like he planned to drag you off into the nearest cave and rip off your clothes, while you eagerly ripped off his.
Then thinking stopped being an option, and all she could do was try to keep up.
Swept away. She’d never actually believed that one, but this was swept away.
Her hands slid up from his face, forked through his hair. Gripped.
The movement slapped him back. Now he did step away, nearly slipping on the snow that covered the path. She didn’t move an inch, but stared out at him from eyes that gleamed in the dark.
God, he thought, God. He’d lost his mind.
“I’m sorry.” He fumbled it as arousal and mortification warred inside him. “Sorry. That was—wasn’t—Just . . . really sorry.”
She continued to stare as he hurried away, his strides made awkward by the fresh fall of snow. She heard, somewhere in the roaring in her head, the beep of his key lock, and watched him climb into his car in the overhead light after he wrenched open the door.
He pulled out before she got her breath and her voice back. As he drove away, she managed a weak, “No problem.”
Feeling a lot more buzzed than she had on wine, she let herself into the house. She went to the kitchen, poured his untouched wine down the sink, followed it with what was left in hers. After looking blindly around, she turned, leaned back on the counter.
“Wow,” she said.
CHAPTER FOUR
SOME MORNINGS YOU JUST NEEDED MORE THAN A POP-TART and a hit of coffee, Mac decided. She figured she’d been spared the unhappiness of a hangover—thank you, Carter Maguire—but several fresh inches of snow meant she’d be hauling out the shovel. She wanted real fuel. Knowing where she’d find it, she pulled on her boots, dragged on her coat, and headed out.
And went back inside immediately for her camera.
The light, bold and bright, blasted out of the hard blue sky onto the still white sea. Untouched, untrampled, that sea spread over the ground, washed over it. Drowned it. Shrubs became hunched creatures crossing that frozen sea, and the rocks forming the lagoon of the swimming pool a tumbled barricade.
Her breath drew in, the cold like tiny shards of glass, then expelled in frigid clouds as she framed in the winter palace of a grove.
Landscapes and pictorials rarely gripped her imagination. But this, she thought, this black and white, with so many shades of each, the shadow and light under the almost savage blue sky demanded its moment. So many shapes, so many textures with branches buried and bark laced offered countless possibilities.
And the grand and gorgeous house rose out of the sea, an elegant and graceful island.
She worked her way to it, experimenting with angles, using the light, honing in on the sparkling cotton balls of azaleas that would burst into bloom come spring. A movement caught her eye, and as she turned to follow it she saw the cardinal take its perch on the snow-covered branch of a maple. It sat, a single spot of vivid red, and sang.
Mac crouched, zoomed in rather than risk going closer and losing the shot. Was it the same bird who’d smacked into her kitchen window? she wondered. If so, he certainly seemed undamaged and unruffled as he sat like a single flame on the white-laced branch.
She caught the moment then, taking three shots in rapid succession, slight changes in angles that coated her jeans with snow as she inched left.
Then the bird took wing, swooped over the frozen sea, through the bright light, and was gone.
Emmaline, beautiful Emmaline in her old navy coat, white cap and scarf trudged toward her through the snow. “I wondered how long I’d have to stand there until you finished or the damn bird took off. It’s
cold out here.”
“I love winter.” Mac swung the camera up again, and with Emma in the crosshairs, depressed the shutter.
“Don’t! God, I look awful.”
“You look cute. Gotta love the pink Uggs.”
“Why did I buy them in pink? What was I thinking?” She shook her head as she joined Mac, and both continued to the house. “I thought you’d already be inside, nagging Laurel to make breakfast. Wasn’t it you who called me and said
pancakes nearly an hour ago?”
“It was, and now we can both nag her into it. I got caught up. It’s amazing out here. The light, the tones, the texture. And that damn bird? Bonus round.”
“It’s twenty degrees, and after pancakes, we’re going to be shoveling this snow and freezing our asses off. Why can’t it always be summer?”
“We hardly ever get pancakes in the summer. Crepes maybe, but it’s not the same.”
As she stomped snow off her pink Uggs, Emma slid her baleful gaze toward Mac, then opened the door.
Mac scented coffee instantly. She dumped her gear, set her camera carefully on top of the dryer, then strode in to give Laurel a rib-crushing squeeze. “I knew I could count on you.”
“I saw you playing nature girl out the window, and figured you were coming over to whine for pancakes.” Hair clipped back, sleeves rolled up, Laurel measured out flour.
“I love you, and not only for your snowy-day pancakes.”
“Good, then set the table. Parker’s already up, answering e-mail.”
“Is she calling for snow removal?” Emma asked. “I’ve got three consults today.”
“For parking. The consensus is there’s not enough to call in the troops for the rest. We can handle it.”
Emma’s face clouded into a pout. “I hate shoveling snow.”
“Poor Em,” Mac and Laurel said together.
“Bitches.”
“I’ve got a breakfast story.” Riding on the impromptu photo session and the near occasion of pancakes, Mac dumped sugar in the coffee she’d poured. “A
sexy breakfast story.”
Emma paused in the act of opening a cabinet for plates. “Spill.”
“We’re not eating. Anyway, Parker’s not down yet.”
“I’m going up to drag her down. I want a sexy breakfast story to keep me warm while I’m shoveling this stupid snow.” Emma scurried out of the kitchen.
“Sexy breakfast story.” Considering Mac, Laurel picked up her wooden spoon to stir the batter. “Must involve Carter Maguire, unless you got an obscene phone call and consider that sexy.”
“Depends who’s calling.”
“He’s fairly adorable. Not your usual type, though.”
Mac looked back as she opened the drawer for flatware. “I have a type?”
“You know you do. Athletic, fun-loving, may have creative bent but not a strict requirement, not too intense or serious-minded. Nothing in past history to include cerebral, scholarly, or quietly charming.”
It was Mac’s turn to pout. “I like smart guys. Maybe I just haven’t run into one who hit my hot-o-meter.”
“He’s also sweet. Not your usual.”
“I like sweet,” Mac objected. “Taste my coffee!”
With a laugh, Laurel set the batter down to get mixed berries out of the fridge. “Set the table, Elliot.”
“I’m doing it.” As she did, she evaluated Laurel’s list. Maybe it was accurate—to a point. “Everybody’s got a type. Parker’s got a type. Successful, well-groomed, well-read.”
“Bilingual a plus,” Laurel added as she washed berries. “Should be able to distinguish between Armani and Hugo Boss at twenty paces.”
“Emma’s got a type. They must be men.”
Laurel’s laugh rolled out as Emma came back in. “Parker’s heading down. What’s the joke?”
“You, sweetie. Griddle’s hot,” Laurel announced. “Better get moving.”
“Good morning, partners.” Parker swung in—dark jeans, cashmere sweater, her hair neatly tied back in a tail, makeup subtle. Mac had an errant thought that it would be easy to hate Parker if she didn’t love her. “I just booked three more appointments for the tour and pitch. God! I love the holidays. So many people get engaged during the holidays. And before you know it, it’ll be Valentine’s Day, and we’ll get more hits. Pancakes?”
“Get the syrup,” Laurel told her.
“The roads are clear. I don’t think we’ll have any cancellations on today’s schedule. Oh, and the Paulsons sent an e-mail—just back from their honeymoon. I’m going to pull off some quotes for the website.”
“No business,” Emma interrupted. “Mac has a sexy breakfast story.”
“Really?” Eyebrows lifted, Parker set the syrup and butter on the table of the breakfast nook. “Tell all.”
“It began, and sexy tales often do, when I spilled Diet Coke on my shirt.”
She started the story as Laurel brought a platter of pancakes to the table.
“He
said he walked into a wall,” Emma interrupted. “Poor Carter!” She snorted out a laugh as she cut the first tiny sliver of a single pancake.
“Hard,” Mac added. “I mean, the guy rammed it. In a cartoon, he’d have gone through the wall and left a Carter-shaped hole in it. Then he’s sitting on the floor and I’m trying to see how bad it is, and my tits are in his face—which he very politely points out.”
“ ‘Excuse me, Miss, your tits appear to be in my face’?”
Mac wagged her fork at Laurel. “Except he didn’t say tits, and he kind of stuttered. So I go pull a shirt out of the dryer, get him a bag of ice, and ultimately determine he probably doesn’t need the ER.”
She continued on while plowing her way through a short stack.
“I’m a little let down,” Laurel said. “I expect a sexy breakfast story to have sex, not just your very pretty boobs.”
“I’m not done. Part two begins when I’m back home working, and carelessly answer the phone. My mother.”
Smile fading, Parker shook her head. “That’s not sexy. I’ve told you to screen, Mac.”
“I know, I know, but it was the business line, and I wasn’t thinking. Anyway,