Chapter 3

T he snowy track turned out to be a two-lane road deep with snow that came up to the top of the Volvo’s hubcaps. And while I knew the car would make it, the looks Alex was giving me as I trundled along, taking it slow and sensible, were anything but convinced I had any idea what I was doing.

“Chill out,” I said. “I practically drive for a living.”

“What do you do for a living?” asked Alex, but I could tell he didn’t really care about the answer, only that he wanted a distraction. How do I know this? He grabbed the oh-shit handle (Jonah liked to call it the Jesus handle), with a grip so tight, his fingers were white.

Being new me, I had some empathy to spare, so I humored him.

“I lived over a garage in Denver,” I said, keeping my eyes on the snow-piled road, so he wouldn’t think I was taking my eyes off the road and freak out. “We sold spare parts, and I delivered a lot of the times, and drove all over.”

His response was a noncommittal grunt, and I got the feeling he was still coming down from an adrenaline high of almost dying and being rescued by a handsome stranger dressed in black.

“My name is Beck, by the way,” I said, because new me had some manners.

“What kind of name is Beck?” he asked.

I stole a glance at him, thinking for a minute that he was being snarly in mean, and that maybe he’d meant to say something more along the lines of, What kind of fucking name is Beck? But he wasn’t.

By the time we got to Whispering Pines Lodge, I reckoned he’d be back to his old corporate CEO self, and giving orders. I’d seen a flash of that bossiness right before he’d gotten out of his car. I’m going to come that way . His tone then had been everything about being in charge in a crisis, and I figured that kind of attitude was tattooed on his skin. Maybe even his very soul.

I almost missed the driveway that led to Whispering Pines Lodge, but a last minute sharp turn got the Volvo onto a mostly plowed drive that led up to what looked like a main lodge. The building was old, covered in snow, and the supports that held up the front porch looked barely able to hold the weight.

But as I parked the car carefully between a large truck and a Honda CRV and got out, I took a look around as I waited for Alex to get out, too.

The lodge was old, but it was sturdy. The walls were made of logs that looked thick, with a river rock base, all of which looked robust enough to last another hundred years.

As we walked across the scraped-snow parking lot, I could see there were lots of cars. Which meant lots of people were already checked in. Would there be rooms? If there weren’t, Alex and I were going to spend a chilly night in a Volvo that, while comfortable to drive, was not set up to sleep in.

Alex rushed past me to go up onto the porch.

“After you,” I said, not hiding my sarcasm.

He flung open the door, and I followed him into the reception area of the lodge and I might be the least romantic person to ever walk the planet, but right away I could see that the lodge, at least this part of it, was cozy. There was even a fire in the river rock fireplace, and two young ladies in flannel shirts standing behind the wooden reception desk.

They looked at each other as we approached with expressions that seemed to say Uh oh, be on the alert . But that’s not what they said.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” said one. Her badge said Lisa , and she had long dark hair.

“Lisa,” said Alex in a commanding way as he laid a gold-tipped black credit card down on the glass-topped counter. “We need two rooms. The state trooper said the road is closed and that you might have rooms for us.”

He said all this as if he was quite confident that the state trooper with Christmas lights on his brown trooper hat had actually taken the time to phone ahead for us. In a perfect world, maybe, not this one.

But before I could add anything to this brusque request of Alex’s, Lisa shook her head of dark hair and looked sad. And, I might add, she did not seem impressed with that black credit card. The card Royce had given me was also gold-tipped, but it was dark blue, and I was willing to whip it out if Alex’s card was at its limit. Then we could engage in a little credit car war.

“We only have one room, I’m afraid,” she said. “So, if you don’t mind sharing.”

“Actually, we only have a cabin ,” said the other young lady. Her badge said Marge , and she had her hair in a bun. “Number 7. It’s the furthest from the main lodge, but it’s all we have.”

“You’re right,” said Lisa. “It’s got a queen sized bed, and a little fireplace.”

“What about food?” I asked. Now that I was warming up, my hands began to ache a little, and my stomach had become alerted to the fact that someone was roasting something that my nose could not identify, but which smelled very good.

Alex spared me a glare as if I’d been bothering him all day with my food demands and had just gotten on his last nerve.

As Lisa took Alex’s credit card, I realized he’d won the battle of the credit card, but what did I care? The gals gave us two room keys. Real ones, old, brass. Cool, right?

Then Lisa handed Alex a laminated card with directions to Cabin 7. I had to go on my toes to look over Alex’s arm to see any of this.

“The parking lot is paved all the way back,” said Lisa. “And there’s a reserved spot for your car.”

“We’ve got a restaurant and a little convenience store and a small bar, right down that hallway there,” said Margie. “We’re limited on what we have, but we make a mean roast chicken. Can I make a reservation for you two?”

Alex was all over this information, like the corporate Boy Scout he seemed to be. Which left me waiting, holding the car keys while he decided which time we would eat.

When we finally walk out into the cold, trudging back to the car, Alex was reaching into the pocket of his thin city coat. But when he brought out his phone, even from a distance, I could tell the glass was cracked and that the phone would ping no more.

Old me wouldn’t have given a shit, but new me made a sympathetic sound.

“Bummer.” I was pretty sure Alex could afford a new phone every month for the rest of his life, but he looked pretty stricken as he clenched the phone in his hand.

The snow had let up a little by the time we got back into the Volvo. When I started the engine, which purred right to life, he said, “Can I borrow your phone?”

I never loaned anyone my phone, always thinking they would fuck it up, you know? But new me handed it over and watched him enter a number and hold the phone to his ear.

He had nice hands. Recently manicured. His movements were fluid, not that I was staring, but because I was driving and he was on the phone, there was no way that I couldn’t listen in to the call.

I imagined he’d be calling some floozy or other that he had waiting for him in Steamboat, so I was surprised to see his face soften when someone on the other end answered.

It was a short drive to Cabin 7, but it was just the two of us in that car, so I could hear every word.

“Mom, it’s Alex. I’m okay, but I wrecked my rental?—”

I could hear the gasp at the other end, and then Alex explained how he’d been rescued, and who I was, blah, blah, blah. Then the conversation turned more informative, at least in a one-sided way.

“Did Lottie bring the baby?”

“Tell Tim he shouldn’t wait to go skiing?—”

“Did Dad get my message?”

“All of my presents to you are at the bottom of a lake except for the ones I shipped from Amazon?—”

There were long pauses between what he was saying and the words he was listening to, and I could just about hear a woman at the other end of the line. Something about Christmas and home and family. And I love you. A lot of I love you.

Then Alex said to me, “You were headed to Steamboat, you said? Mom wants to know which hotel. You told me once, but now it’s slipped my mind.”

“The Anchorage,” I said, not sure what difference it would make for her to know. “Got a soak and stars package or whatever it’s called. First drink’ll be a G&T under the stars.”

Alex passed along the information, paused to listen, and then said, “Yes, I agree. He did save my life, after all.”

With a shake of my head, I parked the car in front of Cabin 7 and watched for a minute as the snow gathered on the windshield once I turned the wipers off. The little brown cabin in front of the parking spot had snow on its roof, and a mist on the inside of the windows. The cabin looked old and would probably be a miserable hovel.

We got out and grabbed our stuff, with Alex going ahead to unlock the door. As he pulled it open, he handed me my phone back and said, “Thank you,” as polite as could be, though I could see he was stressed about missing Christmas with his family.

I had sympathy and all, even though Christmas to me was just a holiday to be gotten through. My experience with Christmas was strictly limited to the Mr. Magoo version of a Christmas Carol.

Once inside the cabin, I had to revise my initial thought that the cabin would be old and dumpy. It was not. Half of the walls were painted white, the others were covered with wood paneling painted a soft blue. Ship lap, I think Royce would call it.

There was a faded blue and white rug on the pinewood floorboards. Someone had come by and brought logs and kindling for a fire. The heat was on, too, which made me shiver as I warmed up.

“Why don’t you have gloves?” asked Alex as he prowled around, inspecting the small kitchen off the small living room with its river rock fireplace. As he headed down the short (really just a step or two) hallway to the bathroom and bedroom, I shouted after him, “Why don’t you have boots?”

I plopped myself on the couch in front of the unlit fire, throwing my old green army duffle on the floor. As long as I was warm and there was supposedly food nearby, I could weather any storm.

But before I could really relax, Alex came back, having left his leather suitcase collection in the bedroom. As he looked down at me, I couldn’t read his face, exactly, but he didn’t look happy.

“Why are you sitting on the couch in wet clothes?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, matching his tone that seemed half-exasperation and half bossiness.

“No, you’re not, you’re shivering.”

“What do you care?” I asked, and yes, by golly, my whole body twitched with a massive shiver. All that tramping around in the snow had finally caught up to me. “Fine, fine,” I said, standing up, peeling off my blue fleece jacket. “I’m not going to catch cold and die, you know.”

I never caught colds, and I was about to go on and on about this, to distract him, when he sat on the arm of the couch, snow dripping from the shoulders of his fancy city coat, melted snow, tinged rose-colored, sliding down his temple.

He covered his face with his hands and I realized something was going on. Yeah, I can read the room when I try, but I’m not so good at small talk.

“Eh?” I said, more of a sound than a word, an invitation, I guess.

“She almost died,” he said, talking into his hands. His voice shook. More snow dripped from his hair, but I guess, along with the phone, he could afford a new city coat if he wanted one.

“Who?”

“Lottie. My sister Lottie and Baby Ginny. The birth took hours, and I couldn’t be there because I was in Tokyo and couldn’t get back fast enough.”

For some reason, this pulled at my insides, all the way up to my throat.

Old me would have laughed at him. New me wasn’t sure what I should do, besides which, he lifted his head and looked at me, utterly fetching, trying to hold his jaw still from quivering, his eyelashes sparkling with tears, exposing a vulnerability that I’m sure he was unaware of.

Yeah, both old me and new me wanted to hit that, but somewhere inside of me I found some manners.

“Maybe we should both change and get something to eat,” I said. “Dinner’s not for another hour or whatever, but we can go sit in the bar.”

“I don’t really drink,” he said.

“That’s bullshit,” I said without any heat. “You almost died and my stomach is about to attack itself. Why don’t we get some beer, some munchies? I’ll loan you my phone again if you say yes.”

This made him laugh, a delightful burry chuckle, and maybe it was wrong of me to want to go closer and just, you know, touch him. He was tall and broad shouldered, with nice hands and a nice laugh. His eyes, as he looked at me, were deep blue. Gah. The kind that made me want to drown in them.

But the spell was broken when he got up and pulled off his coat, which he hung neatly in the small closet.

“Let me put on some dry clothes and we’ll go.”

Putting on some dry clothes also involved him taking, of all things, a quick shower. By the time he came out I had changed out my socks and put my boots back on, that was it, I was ready to eat my own arm.

I would have eaten any part of him, as well, because he shaved, and he smelled like a dream, and he was wearing blue jeans that sort of hugged him everywhere. Alas, the city shoes on his feet did not go and did not suit the outfit.

“Maybe they’ve got some boots they can sell you,” I said instead of everything else I wanted to say. Or do.

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug, as if my worry wasn’t important.

We put on our coats and trucked out into the snow, which was still coming down, but more softly now, a whisper of white that danced in front of the limited parking lot lights. It wasn’t far to the main lodge, so we walked, and while my hands were cold, I knew I was a great deal warmer than he was, with his thin shoes and city coat.

We marched into the bar and found ourselves a small, circular bar table along the wall. The warmth of the fire in the main reception area just about reached us, which was good because every time someone opened the front door, which wasn’t often, we got a blast of cold air.

I talked Mr. I-Don’t-Drink into beers and nachos, and while we waited, I leaned back. The low lighting in the bar let me look at him as he gazed around the room. The bar was small and cozy, the chatter low, the bottles of gin and wine sparkling in the shelves behind the bar.

“So what went down with the ship?” I asked, just making conversation, maybe to distract him from the fact that I was staring at his manly jawline and admiring his skin, the way a bit of his throat peeped out from his crisp white button-down shirt.

“Ship?” he asked, focusing his attention on me. Which I found felt very nice. I mean, we weren’t on a date, but it sure could maybe feel like we were.

“Your car, when it went into the lake. You mentioned all the presents were lost except for the ones you shipped from Amazon.”

“You’ve got a good memory,” he said, nodding at the waitress as she brought our beers and a basket of nachos.

“That’s not all I’ve got that’s good,” I said.

I swear, hand to heaven, I hadn’t meant to say that, at least not out loud. But it was said now, so I gave him my best saucy wink, and if he wanted to follow up on any of what I might be offering, I would not say no.

“Excuse me?” he asked, like he had no idea what I was talking about.

I’m thinking he did know, because as he lifted his mug of beer and stared into it, I could just about see him turning over and over the idea of the two of us taking a roll in the hay. I also saw the second he shook the idea away. Then he took a long slug of beer, and I watched him lick his lips as he swallowed.

“So,” he said, a little flushed from the beer. “I had great presents for everybody, mittens and coats, a certificate for steak of the month, all the usual.” He shrugged and maybe he realized that his usual wasn’t my usual. “The only thing I saved was the silver spoon for Baby Ginny that I had in my suitcase.”

A silver spoon. Didn’t surprise me because of course a new baby from a rich family would get a silver spoon.

One year, when I was five or six or maybe seven (my kid hood is such a blur), I got a new pair of black socks. I cried because I was only little and all my other friends were getting new bikes and karate lessons and Game Boys.

For a moment, I went still, the memory futzing out before I could even grab hold of it. Who gave me those socks? Mom or Dad? Or some unmarried aunt stuck with a kid for the holidays?

All of these ideas always seemed to overlap and I never could figure out what was real and what came from a TV commercial. But moments like that one always reminded me that I hated Christmas.