Chapter 3

Chapter

Three

O kay. The snow was very deep.

The snow was so deep that it covered the wheels of the little car, and Samuel didn't know what to do.

He didn't have any food. He didn't know how to get hold of this…man? Dragon? that he was supposed to get hold of. It was very unnerving.

He really needed a cup of coffee. How was he supposed to figure this whole thing out?

He closed his eyes and had a very private little cry.

It seemed ridiculous to panic over something as silly as snow, and he had electricity. Not to mention there were other people here.

There were others here who obviously knew what they were doing, because they didn't seem to be so scared, but he couldn't even figure out how to get to the car without getting all wet and then…

Oh dear.

The snow was very deep.

His plane ticket was for tomorrow morning. He was supposed to have taken care of this. His parents were going to be calling at any moment, wanting to know where the baby was and why there weren't pictures and why he wasn't already heading down the road and…

He hadn't even started. He was still in his fuzzy pajamas because they were the warmest thing he had.

Also, there was an entire series of Top Chef reruns on, and he could watch this show for hours, with the searing and sautéing and chopping and?—

His parents were going to kill him.

A knock sounded at the door, which made him jump a good foot off the couch. Oh goodness, who was going to be out there in the snow like this? A serial killer? He couldn't imagine anyone else braving it. So he wasn't going to answer the door. Because no one needed to find him once the thaw came, frozen to death like some outre Donner party member.

Except the knock came again, and what if that was the lady who owned the cabins. Mari? Did she live up here? Maybe she could give him some food.

So he put on his slippers and went to peek out the little fish-eye thing in the door.

A blond man stood there, his longish hair hanging out from under a hat with a huge pompom on it, his parka and boots looking like they could stand up to the weather.

"Hello?" he called, not willing to open the door to such a big stranger.

"Hi! I'm Lars. Mari sent me. I have coffee and doughnuts and breakfast sandwiches and it's all going to freeze. I promise I'm not here to hurt you. Can you let me in?"

"Oh, hello, Lars. I'm Samuel. I'm new. Please come in. Excuse my pajamas. I was cold. I thought maybe you'd be a serial killer."

That earned him a warm smile. "Well, that would be awful and incredibly inappropriate. I bring food." The dragon popped in with a huge smile and settled at the single low table after dragging it between him and the bed. Then he began to take out goodies—pastries and sandwiches and chocolate and coffee.

"Oh coffee. Thank you. Thank you very much." His belly snarled, desperate for a bite.

"That's more than all right, my dear. You're not from here, are you?"

Samuel shook his head. "No. I arrived yesterday because I'm supposed to come and get a baby. My sister, she came here and she had a baby, and then she and her alpha died. We just discovered this, and my parents sent me here to retrieve the baby so I can take it home."

Lars's eyes went very wide. "That's… That's different. You just found out? Who is your sister?"

"Susan de Lamar was her name. I'm Samuel de Lamar."

"You didn't know her alpha?"

Samuel shook his head. "My parents may have, but they say they didn't. You see, I work in the library. I'm in the library all the time. I suppose she came out here to visit something she hadn't seen before. She liked to explore, and she loved to fly." Samuel didn't know what else to say. "I don't suppose you knew her? Or of her. This is the only information I have, and I'm supposed to be on a plane in the morning. On the way back."

Lars tilted his head. "Did someone tell you? That you were supposed to come retrieve this child, I mean."

"Yes, my parents."

"Fair enough." Lars bobbed his head like a great big bird. "Did anyone tell your parents that you were supposed to come and retrieve this child?"

Samuel felt his cheeks heating, and he leaned forward as if he were telling his secret. "Honestly, I doubt it. My parents tend to…" How should he put this? "…get what they want."

"Ah." Lars pushed over the coffee with a smile. "What about you? What do you want?"

"For my feet to get warm and to drink this coffee."

That made Lars laugh, and he found himself laughing along. "Fair enough. Let's share a meal. We can talk, get to know each other. The snows are very deep, and I don't think there'll be any flights leaving tomorrow from Albuquerque. It may take as much as a week."

"The whole week!" Oh dear. "I don't know what I'll do. I only brought two days' worth of clothes and nothing for this…this weather."

Lars smiled as if that was the easiest problem on earth to fix. "We'll go to my house if we need to. I'm sure I have clothes that'll work and boots as well. First, we're having a meal, making friends. Those things are very important, don't you agree?"

He did with all of his heart.

He was scared, sure, but he also felt like he was free for the first time in, well, ever.

No one was watching him.

No one could watch him. It was exhilarating.

And terrifying.

Maybe this was how Susan had felt. Deep down where his parents could never see or hear it, Samuel understood why she'd never returned to their wing. No one was evil, but things were very strict there. Incredibly structured. No one would ever just offer to let a stranger stay at their home.

"My car will never make it anywhere, though."

"Well, see? That's another reason I'm handy." Lars grinned widely, but it wasn't toothy at all. "I have a big SUV with chains. It will get us anywhere we need to go. Still, we have bacon and cheddar and egg croissants, some pottage, and a grand selection of doughnuts. So, dig in."

Samuel grabbed a doughnut and bit into it, the sweet and salty maple and sea salt flavor bursting on his tongue. Oh, these were fresh. Not that he hadn't appreciated last night's day-old ones. But yum.

"There, I can already tell that's better." Lars grinned at him again, still, nose wrinkling with the expression. "It's so good to make a new friend."

"Thank you." That was another thing that was odd, because nobody new ever came into the wing at home. Not really. They were born into it, of course, it wasn't like it was a dead cell or something, but nobody new came. They were off the beaten path and… "Did you know my sister?"

Lars gave him a quiet look. "I did."

"So do you know her baby?"

Do you know how she died? Do you know anything? All of a sudden, he had a thousand questions, and none of them would come out because he wasn't sure that he wanted to know the answers. This was so nice to just sit and be somebody new with somebody new. And yet there were so many things he had to know. So many things he had to tell about and report back with and…he just didn't want to.

"We're having breakfast. Questions? We have plenty of time for questions and answers. Right now, we can just enjoy the snow. And the food. I've decided I'm going to quite like you, you see, and that you and I are going to be friends."

It was weirdly impossible to argue about that, because Lars sounded totally sure about it. They were going to be friends. He wasn't going anywhere. They were going to have breakfast.

"All right, I think I can do that."

"It's less hard than you would imagine."

"I'm so used to just fulfilling orders. As a librarian, I'm always gathering information for someone…"

"I just want to know about you." Lars motioned to the TV. "You like cooking shows?"

"Oh my gosh, yes. I find them very soothing, even the competition ones. I mean, I don't particularly like when they get mean, but I love to listen to them talk about food and come up with new recipes and the chopping and all is very rhythmic." He waved a doughnut, his enthusiasm quite real.

"I kinda love it too. Simon, my brother's housekeeper, he's like a phenom in the kitchen, and I love to watch him go to work on—what is it he calls it? Mis en place? When he's chopping all the stuff for like, soup."

"That would be mirepoix, I bet. Celery, carrots, and onions."

"See, I knew you knew things. I'm not the world's biggest cook. I do like to bake, though. I find that very entertaining and very mathematical."

He nodded. "Baking is a science, absolutely. It seems to me that there's much less freedom in the baking world."

"Well, anything that requires yeast and baking powder. You kind of get the idea that at some point those things could just explode."

Samuel looked at Lars, amusement filling him. "I suppose on a small level, you're absolutely right. At least with the baking powder."

They ate and they chatted about television and food, and Samuel found himself quite happy to just spend the morning talking and visiting and being friends.

When his phone started to ring, he almost cried.

"That's going to be my parents. They're going to want to know what's happening."

"No one has to know that your phone works," Lars suggested, a wicked little gleam in his eye.

"What?"

"No one has to know that your phone is ringing. I don't hear it."

Lars had to know his sister. That had Susan written all over it. Susan always was the one who forgot to follow the rules, forgot to show up for dinner, forgot to be where she was supposed to be. Forgot to answer her phone.

"You don't hear it?"

"Nope."

"Huh. Okay. Me neither."

He'd never once in his entire life not answered when his parents called.

He was either going to pass out, or he was going to throw up.

Or he was going to…

"Just have another doughnut." Lars's suggestion was absolutely more pleasant than anything he'd thought of. So he did. "It's going to be all right," Lars assured him. "I don't know how, exactly, but I do know that it's going to be okay."

"I hope so." Samuel wasn't sure what was happening, but he could feel little tendrils of excitement kind of moving through him. He thought it was all right. He thought maybe this was something new.

So much of his life had been involved in finding old information for people, but this was new.

And it wasn't for people . It was for him.

Just for him.

He thought, maybe, he hadn't heard that phone ring, either.