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  Chad chuckled as Sabina growled and burrowed more deeply beneath the fat comforter. He stared at the motionless mound on the bed, weighing several options. Then he acted.

  Sabina shrieked as the comforter disappeared. “Get out of here!”

  “I could have wakened you with a kiss, like the prince in Sleeping Beauty.” Righteousness was not a role Chad wore well, and he knew it.

  “Maybe you should go bury yourself in a snow bank.”

  “The sun’s been up for three hours, and so has the temperature. Those snow banks are already shrinking.”

  “So go play in one before it melts,” Sabina said reasonably.

  “You really are testy in the morning, aren’t you.” Chad wrapped the comforter around her shoulders. “Do you cross country?”

  “My track shoes are at home,” she grumped.

  “Ski, my sweet.”

  She nodded irritably, her eyes still closed.

  “You shouldn’t frown like that. Causes wrinkles.” He warned. “I dug out skis and a set of boots that should fit you. If you hurry, we can get out before the snow melts.”

  “You woke me for that?”

  “We don’t have a lot of big time treats available for you city girls. Of course, if you’re out of shape, we won’t bother.”

  Sabina pulled the cover closer around her shoulders and curled into a ball. “Wake me when the roads are clear.”

  “Suit yourself, but Aunt Clara’s making Eggs Benedict.”

  * * * *

  As she pulled the covers over her head, she heard him leave. She counted to ten. His dig about her physical condition rankled. She’d show him a thing or two about cross country skiing. Besides, she would kill for Eggs Benedict. Sabina crawled from her warm nest and staggered to the shower.

  Twenty minutes later, she glowered at Chad as he greeted her with a bowl of fresh fruit in one hand and a steaming coffee mug in the other.

  “You two must have had quite an evening if you’re still tired after sleeping this late,” Erica commented cheerfully.

  Sabina nearly choked on a piece of pineapple.

  “I never heard you come upstairs, Chad.” Clara commented.

  “I was out with Sock. He didn’t want to come in.”

  Eyeing her nephew, Clara observed, “I ‘spect you both needed a snowdrift to roll in.”

  “You may be right, Aunt Clara,” Chad responded sunnily.

  Sabina was becoming accustomed to hearing virtual strangers discuss her private life in her presence. She couldn’t get angry at Clara; she’d allowed herself to like her too much . When she left here she would miss her and the twins . . . and Chad.

  The realization was like a physical blow. Talking about her past with Chad had made her realize how restricted her life had been.

  “Turning me down on the skiing?”

  “I’m not out of condition,” she parried.

  “Good. Then you’ll come. I waxed the skis just in case.”

  Sabina pretended reluctance, but she would never have turned him down. She wanted the memories.

  In no time at all she was trudging alongside Chad through the heavy snow toward the edge of the little town.

  “We can’t ski till we cross the main drag. The plows have cleared it,” Chad explained as they started out.

  Sabina followed close behind him. In spite of her dark glasses, the bright March sunshine made her eyes water. Snow transformed the buildings into frosted gingerbread structures straight from Hansel and Gretel. The sun’s laser-like rays reflected diamonds from the white landscape as far as she could see. “I can’t believe this all happened in such a short time.”

  “Look your fill. The snow will disappear just as quickly. It’s March.” Chad helped her over a split-rail fence. “We can put on our skis now.” He knelt to clean the slots on the soles of her boots before slipping the skis into place.

  Moments later she followed him across the rolling expanse of white, quickly remembering to coordinate the rhythm of poles and skis. Chad needed no such adjustment period, and he drew ahead effortlessly.

  They flowed across the field until Chad gestured for her to stop at the top of a small rise. “This is as good a place as any to catch your breath. Listen to the quiet.”

  Total peace surrounded Sabina. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so cut off from the world. She glanced over at Chad. Her voice low, she observed, “You do a lot of this.”

  Although his eyes were unreadable behind dark lenses, she saw his mouth tighten. “Those are Marie’s skis and boots you’re wearing. The three of us used to ski a lot. Now I get out whenever there’s snow; it seems to bring them closer. Sometimes I come at night in the moonlight.” He adjusted the strap of his pole. “Being out here reminds you you’re not the center of the universe, that you can’t control everything that happens.”

  Her throat tightened at the resignation in his voice.

  “Zack and I were closer than most brothers. He’s gone, but the sun still comes up every day. There are still surprises.” His lips quirked irrepressibly. “Sometimes even a state inspection is serendipity.” He looked across the field below them and pointed. “Follow me. I’ve something to show you.”

  Minutes later, flushed and exhilarated, Sabina glided to a stop at the edge of a ravine. The sound of rushing water drew her eyes, and she glanced downward at the icy stream already swollen by melting snow. “Can we get down there?”

  “We’ll have to take off our skis to get through the undergrowth.”

  She was releasing her bindings when Chad’s shout startled her. As she straightened, she saw him slide down the steep slope on his back, grabbing for branches on either side of him as he hurtled toward the frigid water. Her heart pounding in her throat, she fumbled with the recalcitrant skis. Her hands shook even more than before, but they finally swung loose.

  At the lip of the ravine she peered down. He was sprawled, unmoving, against a large bush not three feet from the edge of the stream. She called his name, her voice echoing in the sparkling silence. Squelching panic, she grasped a sapling to keep from falling as Chad had, then reached ahead to another tree, shifting from tree trunks to shrubs and back to trees as she negotiated the steep incline. Fear for him made her blood pound so loudly in her ears she couldn’t hear the rushing water below her.

  Chad lay partially on his left side, his eyes closed. Sabina knelt beside him and reached for his wrist to check for a pulse, her lips forming his name over and over. Her skin felt dead and numb with fear. “Chad, talk to me.”

  His hand gripped her arm and her feet left the ground. For a moment Sabina thought she would land in the freezing water, but she underrated Chad’s control. A dexterous twist of his wrist turned her in midair. Chad’s hands cushioned her descent.

  The unexpected takedown held Sabina quiet long enough for Chad to murmur triumphantly, “I told you I’d surprise you.”

  “You faked this whole thing just to prove you could catch me unawares?” The little voice she usually obeyed demanded that she protest, but the voice had no sense of humor.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “This wards off frostbite. The tips of your ears were a little red,” he whispered.

  He pulled her head down and kissed her.

  “Chad . . .?” She leaned forward and kissed him back, then sighed, a small, disappointed sound. Sabina had a mental picture of the two of them lying in the snow while the icy stream burbled merrily alongside. Sanity returned, and she drew away from him. “This is so unprofessional. Until my report is filed, I’m here officially.”

  “What if I told you we’d crossed the county line and you were no longer near my place of operation?”

  “I’d say you were trying to sell me Grant’s Tomb.”

  Chad rose, drawing Sabina with him. With exaggerated precision, he tugged her toboggan over her ears and rested his forearms on her shoulders before lowering his forehead to hers. “This isn’t over.” His breathing was quick and light, his voice deadly serio
us. “We need time together. Away from my family, from our jobs.”

  Sabina nodded shakily.

  “You do want to see me after you’ve finished your report, don’t you?”

  The question circled wildly in her thoughts. She felt like a teenager who’d been asked for her first date. “When?”

  “It may take me a few weeks.” His voice was pensive. “I wasn’t looking for something as important as this to happen to me.”

  He tipped her chin upward, his coffee-colored gaze locking with hers. Bright sun lightened the bleached tips of his thick lashes and highlighted the lean plane of his cheek. “I think we can be very good for each other.”

  For the first time in her life Sabina glimpsed a future filled with love. Her smile felt tremulous, and she knew her heart was in her eyes. “If you don’t come I’ll track you down. I might even put out a warrant on you.”

  Chad flicked her cheek with his fingers. “I’ll bank on that.” He drew away. “We’d better go home before they send out a search party.”

  The return trek took no time at all. Exhilarated, Sabina threw herself into the rhythmic glide of her skis, staying close behind him, filled with a sense of euphoria. The sunlight flashing off the brilliant white landscape and the exercise made her giddy. She laughed aloud with pure joy.

  As they approached the rear of the house the door flew open to reveal Daniel’s lanky figure. “Chickened out last night, didn’t you, Chad? I’m pretty hurt.”

  Daniel’s broad smile didn’t indicate any permanent damage. Accepting their congratulations with aplomb, he stepped back to allow them entrance. “What were you doing? Making snow angels?” The teenager brushed snow from Chad’s back. As Sabina turned, he removed a dead leaf from the cuff of her toboggan. “Oh ho! What have we here? Showed her the leaf slide, did you, Chad?”

  Sabina stopped in mid-step. “The what?”

  Erica joined them in the warm kitchen. “It’s sort of gully down the side of a ravine, and the leaves collect in it. If there’s snow, you don’t need a sled or anything. You just throw yourself on your back and go whoosh!”

  Sabina felt the color rise in her cheeks. She turned toward Chad, who was making rather a project of opening the refrigerator door.

  Oblivious to her rising temper, Daniel reached out to brush snow off her shoulder and teased, “Fooled you, did he? Bet you rushed to the rescue.” He waggled his eyebrows teasingly.

  Sabina fled. In her haste to push through the swinging door, she nearly struck her hostess in the face with the heavy panel. Remorse made her stop to apologize, but Clara broke in, “Did that nephew of mine play that old leaf slide trick?”

  Sabina couldn’t respond. Lovely as it had been to feel part of that great, warm circle of concern, she was appalled to find every detail of her love life under general discussion. She said from between clenched teeth, “Since Daniel’s home, I assume the roads are passable. I’m leaving.”

  She rushed into the little apartment before Clara could answer, missing the determination on the face of the older woman.

  Pulling off the knit hat, Sabina resisted the impulse to stomp on it and settled for hurling the thing onto the couch. Her parka followed. She reached into her closet for her dress boots and coat, determined to make her exit with all the dignity she could scrape together.

  Her parents might be cold, but at least they gave a person privacy. The openness which had seemed so endearing had lost its appeal. She was a grown woman, and she didn’t need a pair of precocious twins doing a running commentary. She told herself she’d been right in her assessment the day before — get out of town and run as fast as you can.

  The zipper on her boot jammed, and she jerked furiously at the tab, breaking a fingernail. Forcing herself to slow down, she managed the zipper and fumbled in her handbag for an emery board.

  The nail smoothed and her coat wrapped around her like armor, she closed the panel behind her, determined to escape before anyone asked any more embarrassing questions.

  An uneasy silence pervaded the kitchen as, carrying her luggage, she backed through the swinging door. Daniel made a half-hearted move to rise from his chair to help her, then sank back down at a quick motion of Chad’s hand. Clara stepped forward from her position at the stove.

  “No need for you to rush off, Sabina. Daniel and Erica won’t pry no more.” Her glance stabbed at the pair, as if to reinforce a lecture already delivered. “I’d like it real well if you’d stay the weekend.”

  Ignoring Chad as if he were invisible, Sabina managed a polite smile. “I really must get back. I’m already a day overdue. Besides, you know what they say about fish and guests. After three days they start to smell funny.”

  The elderly woman leaned forward abruptly and kissed her cheek. “It’s been real nice to have you. Come back.”

  In her surprise at the affectionate gesture, Sabina allowed Chad to remove her clothing bag and carryall from her hands and disappear through the outer door. She murmured, “Thank you. You’ve been wonderful.”

  The twins’ subdued farewells followed her through the door. She dreaded another encounter with Chad. She wanted to leave and get it over with. Her humiliation at being one of a series of women romanced in that wooded hollow was so great she didn’t even want to be in the same country with him.

  * * * *

  Chad watched Sabina stride briskly to her car. Her movements and her “city” clothes distanced her from him. There was no way he could take back his cousins’ teasing. Didn’t she know it stemmed from affection, that they expected her to laugh with them? They’d paid her a compliment, but he knew she couldn’t see it that way. Not yet.

  Watching her firm jaw and the proud set of her head, Chad swore to himself that if he had the opportunity to surround Sabina Hanlon with love, nothing would ever make her unhappy again.

  His thoughts shook him down to his ski boots.

  The car door slammed sharply; she rolled down the window. “I’ll send you a copy of my report. As you already know, your operation is clean and progressive. I appreciate your cooperation.”

  To his sensitive ears, the stilted phrases sounded forlorn. Chad leaned toward the window. “I’m still going to follow you. Maybe when you’re on your own turf you’ll acknowledge what’s possible between us. And you won’t care who knows it.” Ducking his head inside the open window, he kissed her. Hard.

  “Incidentally, the last time I tricked a girl down the leaf slide I was a senior in high school.”

  * * * *

  Two weeks had passed. Two weeks during which Sabina had alternated between annoyance and yearning. After the first night, spent chafing at the pitfalls of conducting a fledgling romance with a Greek chorus in the background, she had realized that for the first time in her life she felt alive. How odd that she hadn’t been aware of her stultified condition.

  Her senses were now attuned to everything. Early April’s promise of spring made her feel giddy and free. Her cheeks warmed and her pulse rate rose at the thought of Chad, and she welcomed the feelings, wallowing in anticipation.

  In retrospect, the trip to Calico Mining replayed as a Brigadoon-like interlude, but Sabina had no intention of waiting a hundred years for Chad.

  Any anger inside her bubble of well-being was directed toward herself for the years of human warmth she’d missed. As each day had passed with no word, the new Sabina toyed with the idea of staging a surprise inspection at Calico, then discarded the idea as unprofessional.

  Her thoughts retraced familiar ground as she stirred tomato sauce. Her hand slipped, and the thick red mixture splashed upward. Ignoring the stain on her shirt, she dabbed at her cheek with a paper towel. The sound of the doorbell interrupted her efforts. If it was a salesman calling on a Saturday evening, she intended send him home with an ear full.

  The figure lounging at her door seemed larger than life. Had she caused Chad to materialize just by thinking of him? There he stood, looking even more wonderful than she remembered. She yearned
to be cool and sophisticated, but her brain wouldn’t relay the message to her lips. Instead she said, “It took you long enough.”

  Sabina didn’t even smile to take the edge from her words.

  He asked quizzically, “I don’t want to seem critical, but have you fallen into a vat of spaghetti sauce?”

  Sabina cast a horrified look at herself. The dollop which had struck her minutes earlier hadn’t been the first to splatter the front of her oversized shirt. She wondered where else the stuff had landed. “I’m making lasagna.”

  “Shall we just go on standing here and looking at each other or may I come in.”

  Sabina stepped back so he could enter.

  Chad removed her fingers from the door and close it behind them. He leaned forward and licked a spot of sauce from her cheek, then held her face between his warm hands as he kissed the tip of her nose. “Delicious. I can hardly wait to see your kitchen,” he teased.

  In an effort to still her racing pulse, she moved away from him and said dryly, “You’re making yourself right at home for someone who took his time getting here.”

  “You didn’t exactly issue a warm invitation when you took off in such a rush,” he reminded her. “I decided to come anyway.”

  Memory of her hurried departure opened a wound in her conscience. “I tried to apologize when I wrote your aunt a bread and butter note, but things were so hard to explain . . .” Impossible. She’d been accepted into their family circle without question, but she had still felt alien. She’d wanted only to crawl back her apartment and draw the door in behind her. Time and distance had given her perspective.

  “My love live fascinates Aunt Clara and the twins, mostly because they’ve never been able to find out enough. I never date anyone local, which drives them wild. My reputation is mostly a figment of their imaginations, and they know it. Then you came.” There was no resentment in his voice, only fond laughter.

  “They love you very much.”

  “I know. That’s why I try to make them happy by gingering things up now and then. Gives them more to speculate about.”

  * * * *