Snowfall at Willow Lake: Lakeshore Chronicles Book 4 (13 page)

She took a bath, awkwardly keeping her stitches dry, and found a thick terry robe to put on as she dried her hair. Standing at the window, she gazed out at the lake, an endless, windswept field of white. A flicker of color in the distance caught her eye. One of the neighbors a few houses over was clearing an area on the ice, she assumed for skating.

She lived on a lake you could skate on. If she told Tariq, he would never believe her. Sophie's closest friends knew her as a sophisticate, a city dweller. A rustic cabin on a skating lake—they'd think she had lost her marbles.

Which, depending on how you looked at it, she had.

A bubbling agitation always accompanied memories of The Incident. She needed to get out. This might be a good time to introduce herself to the guy clearing off the ice.

She tried to dress for the weather, layering wool trousers over panty hose and topping it with a cashmere twin set. She donned the borrowed snowmobile boots, found a Sherpa-style wool hat on a hall tree by the door and pulled it on, then headed outside. As soon as she stepped into the yard, she sank to her thighs in the soft snow.

All right,
she thought. Maybe not such a good idea. She struggled to lever herself up, unable to get a purchase in the fresh snow. By the time she reached the edge of the lake, she was dusted in white and breathing heavily. There was no pain in her knee but a pulling sensation warned her to take it easy. She carefully made her way to the neighbor's.

He wore a black-and-red plaid hunting jacket, thick gloves and enormous boots, and he didn't notice her as she approached, so focused was he on working back and forth on the ice.

“Hello!” Sophie called, waving her arm.

The neighbor looked over, stuck the big orange-bladed shovel in a snowbank and came to greet her. “Hello yourself.” The voice was melodic and decidedly feminine.

Taken aback, Sophie regrouped. “My name's Sophie Bellamy,” she said. “I'm going to be staying at the Wilsons', so I thought I'd stop and introduce myself.”

The woman—it was most definitely a woman—smiled. Cold air and exertion had whipped high color into her cheeks, adding cheer to her smile. “Tina Calloway,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

Sophie couldn't quite tell if Tina thought it was nice or not. She gestured at the ice. “So is this for skating?”

Tina nodded. “It's perfectly safe. I grew up here, skating on the lake every winter.”

“It looks just beautiful, like something out of a picture book.”

“Do you skate?”

“A bit. I can manage to get around without falling. Or at least I used to.” Although she had been living in the land of Hans Brinker, Sophie had never done much for fun in Holland, as Tariq was so fond of pointing out. She worked, and she worked some more. She worked at home every night, and the next morning she went to work. This was one reason she'd advanced so quickly in the ICC. She had no life. She was a machine.

“So you're a friend of the Wilsons?” Tina said.

“I am. Bertie Wilson and I were pretty much inseparable in law school. We're still close.”

“You're a lawyer, then.”

“That's right. I'm…well, for the time being, I'm on hiatus. I was working overseas.” She paused, and thankfully, Tina didn't push for further details.

“I'm a women's hockey coach at SUNY New Paltz,” Tina said. “My folks own this place.”

“My daughter is just about to start there,” Sophie said.

“You sure don't look old enough to have a daughter in college.” She unzipped her jacket and fanned herself. “Sorry, I worked up a sweat, shoveling this.” Underneath the hunting jacket, she was dressed like a snowboarder, in cargo pants with Ride Or Die in flaming letters on the pocket.

The chainsaw snarl of a motor filled the air, growing louder. A snowmobile burst into view and, without warning, Sophie's heart sped up.

“Hey, Noah.” Brushing back her hood, Tina bloomed like a flower in the snow.
He's a little old for you,
Sophie thought, although she didn't actually know how old Noah Shepherd was.

He turned off the motor. “I brought some wood,” he said, pointing at the pole-handled sled behind the snowmobile. “Wanted to make sure you're all right.”

“Are you kidding? I live for this.” Tina gestured at the endless white snowscape.

“So the two of you have met,” he said.

Sophie nodded. “I wanted to let the neighbors know I'm not a squatter.”

“How's your knee?”

“It's fine.” She became acutely conscious of the warm but aggressively ugly hat, the earflaps crushing whatever was left of her hairstyle. Noah Shepherd, she noticed, had on a simple heather-green hat that had probably been knitted by a woman's loving hands. He just had that air about him, the look of a man for whom women made things.

He and Tina busied themselves, stacking the firewood on the porch. Sophie tried to pitch in, but he shooed her away. “You've got a bad knee,” he reminded her. “She cut her knee,” he explained to Tina, “and I stitched it up.”

“Get out of town.”

“Swear to God, I did.”

“He did,” Sophie verified.

“Way to go, Doc.” Tina gave him a high five, and they went back to work. Sophie caught herself watching Noah's movements, his easy strength and the way he seemed so sure of himself. Good heavens, he was wonderful to watch. She couldn't recall the last time simply looking at a man had inspired such a flood of lust.

“I really appreciate this,” Tina said as they finished up with the wood. “You want to come in for a cup of hot chocolate?” She glanced over at Sophie. “You, too, of course.”

“No, thanks,” said Noah.

“You want to go skating?”

“Maybe later,” he said. “After chores.”

She shrugged. “Whatev.”

“I'd better be going,” Sophie said. “Tina, it was nice to meet you.”

Noah turned to Sophie. “I'll give you a ride back to your place.” It wasn't a question.

Right,
she thought, eyeing the snowmobile. Still, she didn't want him to think she was a spoiled city slicker, ill prepared for living in a rustic winter cabin.

“See you around, Tina,” he said.

“Bye, Noah.” The young woman sent him a worshipful look.

“You'll have to tell me what to do,” said Sophie, following him to the snowmobile.

“Just have a seat on the back, and hold on.”

She awkwardly straddled the long black saddle of the snowmobile, putting her feet on the narrow running boards. He mounted in front of her and fired up the engine. “Hang on,” he yelled over his shoulder.

She put her hands on the edge of the seat, trying to find a purchase.

“To me,” he said, “hang on to me.”

She clutched the sides of his parka.

“Hold on harder,” he said.

She hesitated, then tightened her fists.

“Like this.” He disengaged her hands and pulled her arms clear around his middle, linking her hands together. He felt like a tree to her. She was a tree hugger. Then he laid into the throttle and the snowmobile jerked forward.

Sophie was glad he'd made her hold on hard. She turned her head, pressing her cheek to his back. And it struck her that she had not embraced a man in a hundred years, not like this. Never had physical closeness felt this way to her.

The snowmobile was fast and loud. Despite the bone-drilling cold of the wind rushing over her, she loved the feeling of freedom and speed. The thought crossed her mind that if Max could see her now, he would be impressed. Maybe when Max came to see her, Noah would—

She put aside the thought. It was too soon to make any sort of presumption, about her son and most certainly about her neighbor.

During the few minutes of the wild ride, she didn't have to do anything but hold on and enjoy the rush of speed. A feeling rose in her chest, along with a sound she hadn't heard in a long time—her own laughter. The wind snatched it away so that it trailed in their wake, an invisible ribbon of sound. For these few minutes, life was pure, uncomplicated fun. After the hell she'd been through, it was a huge relief to simply fly across the churning snow.

She felt slightly let down when they came to a stop at her place. At the same time, she felt completely exhilarated.

“My face is frozen,” she said to Noah when they pulled up in front of her house and he killed the engine.

“At least you're smiling.”

“Am I?” She put her hands to her cheeks. “I can't feel it.”

“Well, you're showing it. And smiling looks good on you.”

“Would you like to come in?”

She expected him to turn her down for the same reason he had turned down Tina earlier. He surprised her by saying, “Great. Thanks.”

As they stomped the snow from their boots and headed inside, she mentioned it. “She's sweet on you.”

“She?”

“Tina. Don't say you haven't noticed.” She led the way inside and pointed to the boot tray.

“I like to think I don't miss these things. She's not my type, though.”

Sophie felt stupidly gratified to hear it. “I barely remember what I was like at her age, you know?”

“Her old man's Sockeye Calloway,” Noah said. “He played on the 1980 U.S. hockey team in Lake Placid.”

The gold medal team. The miracle team. “I wish you hadn't called him an old man,” Sophie said. “I vividly remember being on the edge of my seat, watching the Olympics that year. Tina must be a very good skater.”

“Yeah. Your fire's low,” he said, clearly done with the topic of Tina. “I'll stoke it up for you.”

She stood back and watched him work, and was amazed to realize the feelings she'd had earlier still lingered and had, in fact, intensified. There was no mistaking it. She was turned-on.

Okay,
Sophie, she told herself.
Deep breath.

She held herself very still and quiet, waiting for the feeling to pass, like a wave of nausea or dizziness. Instead, as she watched Noah her fascination with him grew. Everything felt warm already, even before he added a seasoned log to the fire and gently blew upon the coals beneath it to coax a row of tiny flames licking along its underside.

The surface of her skin felt superheated. Her face, which only moments ago had been frozen, now flushed, and her limbs and eyelids seemed pleasantly heavy. This was no mere case of jet lag.

She tried to rationalize the feelings away. Honestly, how dumb did she have to be, falling for all this Naked Ape-style primal behavior? So a guy stoked the fire in her stove, so what? That didn't mean she wanted to rip his clothes off and jump his bones.

Except that she did.

Noah straightened up, turning to her as long fluttering ribbons of flame engulfed the logs. “That ought to do you for a while.”

Sophie didn't stop to analyze or think through her actions. She went to him and grabbed the front of his sweatshirt and yanked him close, planting upon his surprised mouth a kiss of shameless, aggressive desire.

He tasted exactly the way she wanted him to taste, of some kind of sweetness that had no name. He smelled like the winter air, the woods and faintly of exhaust, a combination she found impossibly sexy. Within seconds, she lost herself in the texture of his mouth, the slight growth of beard on his face, the fall of dark, wavy hair brushing against her cheeks.

As though he had known this was coming, he deepened the kiss with a hunger he didn't bother to hide. Did he know how much of a turn-on his frank lust was? It was like lighting a match to a pool of kerosene. His hands found the shape of her, and she realized with a thrum of excitement that he was exploring the quickest way to get her out of her clothes.

Which was how, approximately thirty seconds after she attacked him with a kiss, she found herself standing on the braided rug in front of the roaring fire, wearing nothing but silk tap pants and a camisole.

So far neither of them had said a word, yet when she looked at his face, she felt such a pure understanding and affinity that any speech would be redundant. There were so many reasons this was a bad idea, yet it felt absolutely right. Maybe her need to be with him like this was part of the lingering post-trauma madness.

Still. She felt compelled to speak up while there was still time to put an end to this. She said, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” he said. “Don't you dare be sorry.” He yanked his red Cornell sweatshirt one-handed over his head, revealing his bare chest, banded with muscle, a patch of dark hair adorning the middle, another line of hair arrowing downward. His jeans hung low, seeming to be casually perched on his hipbones. The top button of the faded blue jeans had already been undone. She stopped short of fanning herself.