One Frosty Night

“This actually might be a good chance for him to practice, if you feel brave,” Ben said. “I didn’t let him on the way here because I wasn’t sure if the main roads were plowed. There isn’t much traffic right now, though.”

“I’m good with it,” she said.

Grinning his triumph, Carson circled to the driver’s side. Ben rode up front with him—so he could grab the wheel if he had to, she teased—and Olivia settled in the backseat.

Carson actually did pretty well during the short drive into town. Once he overcorrected during a skid, but he came out of it and nodded when Ben said something quietly.

She had known where they lived, but was just as glad Ben didn’t suggest going in when they stopped at his house. He jumped out, going into the garage through a side door and returning with the bright blue plastic disc. Waiting, she studied the two-story house, modest like most in Crescent Creek, but one of the oldest in town. It was a simple farmhouse style with a porch that ran the full width of the front. The backyard was fenced. When she asked, Carson said he’d wanted to get a dog, but he was allergic so Dad had said no.

“It’s dumb. I mean, I can be around them now,” he was complaining, when Ben got back in.

“Around who?” he asked, fastening his seat belt.

“Dogs.”

“Ah. The animals that sent you into full-blown asthma attacks when you were little. Attacks that meant you had to be hospitalized.”

“I’ve outgrown the asthma,” Carson said sulkily.

“Maybe partly because we don’t have any pets,” his father said mildly.

Carson looked ostentatiously in all his mirrors before backing out onto the as yet unplowed street, then starting sedately forward. Olivia relaxed. If he crashed here in town, no one would die, not with a twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit.

They had to park a couple of blocks from the hill leading up to the high school, new since she and Ben had gone there. Once they’d parked and started stomping through the snow, Carson carrying the plastic disc under his arm and Ben pulling the sled by its rope, they could hear the whoosh of sleds coming down the hill. Excited voices rose.

Ben gazed upward. “You been to the new high school?”

“Not to go in,” Olivia said. “I drove up one day just to see it.” She’d actually been thinking about attending the Friday night home game, until her friend Polly had called to invite her to dinner. Maybe another night.

Ben and Carson called hello to people they knew, introducing Olivia to a few. She was astonished at how many of the adults she recognized—some who’d been recent customers at the store, but more who’d been her schoolmates and now had children.

“Why don’t you try the sled?” she suggested to Carson, who demurred just long enough to be polite before sitting down on it, scooting forward with his heels, then gliding forward. He was really moving by the time he reached the bottom, letting out one delighted whoop.

She insisted Ben go next, accepting the accusation of cowardice and watching as he shot down the hill, spun out of control and crashed into a snowbank.

While she waited for him and Carson, she warmed her hands over a fire someone had started in a burn barrel hauled to the street for that purpose, and she joined the general conversation.

“Olivia!” a familiar voice called, and she turned to see one of the women she’d had dinner with Friday night. Autumn had been a good friend in high school. Unlike the others in their crowd, she’d gotten married right out of high school and now had three kids, the oldest almost a teenager. In fact, two of her kids were currently preparing to launch themselves down the hill on a sled.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Autumn exclaimed. “I thought you’d still be snowed in.”

“Um...Ben Hovik and his son came and shoveled our driveway. He just went down the hill.”

“I saw him.” Her eyes narrowed. “Friday night, you stayed totally mum about Hovik Stage Two.”

“There’s no stage two,” Olivia said. “We’re just having fun today.”

“Uh-huh. Back in high school, you’d been out with Ben like half a dozen times before you told any of us— Ooh! Sabrina’s here, too.”

Thank goodness for distractions.

Both turned to include another of Olivia’s friends, this one a basketball teammate who had become a nurse and returned to Crescent Creek. Although Autumn and Olivia hadn’t stayed in close touch, Friday night had been all about updating each other. It turned out Sabrina had married a former logger turned builder who’d been several years ahead of them in school and therefore not on their dating radar back then. Her husband, Aaron, was a regular at Bowen’s, so Olivia greeted him with pleasure, too, when he appeared pulling a plastic disc, their two-year-old son riding his shoulders, half strangling his dad and giggling.

She had a surreal moment, looking around and realizing how many of the people at this casual gathering she knew and even considered to be friends. In all the years since leaving Crescent Creek, she’d been a city dweller who had become accustomed to being surrounded by strangers. She had forgotten what it was like to be part of a whole instead of always standing apart.

A lovely, warm feeling filled her, except as she turned to watch Ben and Carson cresting the hill, she heard Autumn whispering to someone.

“With Ben Hovik, of all people...”

She never had been able to trust Autumn with a secret, Olivia remembered. If she’d confided in her the way she had in Ben the other day, everyone in Autumn’s wide circle of acquaintances would know the Bowen marriage had been faltering even before Charles’s death, and that Olivia and her mother weren’t getting along.

So, you had to take the bad with the good, she reflected. Laughing at the sight of Ben still looking like the Abominable Snowman, she decided that, right this minute, the good was in ascendance.

Others started teasing him, but his gaze was fixed firmly on her.

“Bend your head,” she told him, and when he obliged, she swiped at the snow clinging to his hat. “That,” she told him, “is why I plan to stick to my sled.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to crash. What’s the fun if you don’t?”

Carson grinned at her, too. “Tall girls aren’t afraid of crashing, are they?”

Man and boy let her go next. She steered herself right down the center of the hill, laughing in exhilaration the whole way, despite watering eyes and a face so cold her nose had gone numb. Oh, she’d missed doing things like this!

Inevitably Ben suggested they take a run together on the sled.

“Why not?” Olivia said recklessly. “Only who gets to steer?”

His face came vividly alive when he laughed. “Let’s review. Which of us is the careful driver?”

“I haven’t had a ticket in—” Oops. Seeing Carson’s shocked expression, she said, “Um, quite a while.”

“Right. I’m steering. Besides—” he gave her another rakish grin “—if you’re in back, you wouldn’t be able to see.”

“I could sit in front and steer.” If she could forget being in Ben Hovik’s arms for the first time in forever. Okay, not really in his arms, but...close enough.

Ben sat down first and waited while she gingerly lowered herself on the sled, hesitated, then gave up and wrapped her arms around his thighs to hold on. Even through his quilted pants, she felt his muscles tighten as if in response. He took a good grip of the rope, Carson gave them a running push and they were off.

The rush of cold air and exhilaration were there this time, too. Hearing the rumble of Ben’s laugh, feeling his rough cheek brush hers as he looked over her shoulder, made her heart do some stupid gymnastics.

The sled had just started to slow when he yanked hard on one side of the rope and steered them straight at a snowbank.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

Wham. They both went flying, their bodies tangled together.

She ended up sprawled on top of Ben. For just a moment, she went utterly still, looking down at him. Past and present overlaid like transparencies. His face thinner, more boyish, but the laugh, oh so much the same. Crinkles beside those espresso-dark eyes that didn’t used to be there. His mouth, more sensual now. A look on his face, both familiar and...not. The hunger was there, but something else, too.

She had to struggle for resolve but found it. I am not doing this. Remember?

His expression changed as she scrambled to get off him. “Olivia...”

“You did that on purpose,” she snapped.

Ben sat up. “Yeah, I did. Is that so bad?”

“Ugh. Now I’m wet.”

He rose a lot more lithely than she had and began to brush her off. “No, you’re not. The snow is pretty dry.”

And she was behaving badly. It wasn’t like he’d tried to kiss her or anything.

But he was thinking about it.

The part that had her panicked was that she’d been thinking about it, too. And she knew maybe she was being unreasonable. Yes, he’d broken her very young heart, but he’d been very young, too. How many high school romances actually endured?

Autumn and Joe’s had.

But how happy were they? Olivia had no idea, only that they were still together. But neither of them had wanted to leave town for four years of college.

Realizing she was doing nothing but standing there, staring at Ben, Olivia couldn’t help thinking, I could just as well have ended up breaking his heart, once I left for school. That was reality.

So...why did he scare her so much?

“That was fun,” she said, trying to sound natural. “Until you crashed us on purpose, anyway.”

His face relaxed. “For old times’ sake.”

“Last time I let you steer,” she declared.

He chuckled, a deep, slow sound that made her shiver. “You can steer anytime,” he assured her, and it was not riding on the sled she pictured.

Not going there, she reminded herself, but this time she wasn’t convinced.

* * *

OLIVIA WASN’T THE first to arrive at work Monday morning; Lloyd Smith’s Chevy pickup was in its familiar slot. He beat her there almost every morning. She didn’t know what she’d have done without Lloyd. The hardware business, she knew. Lumber, not so much, given that Dad hadn’t added the lumberyard yet when she had worked for him. She’d have been in trouble trying to run that side without Lloyd.

The alley had been plowed, thank goodness, or they’d have both had to take up parking slots on the street. Even so, she slipped and almost fell on her way to the back door.

“Ugh,” she mumbled, unlocking and entering. Snow had been way more appealing yesterday, when it was fresh. And, oh yeah, when she was playing in it with Ben.

Only a few of the lights were on. She turned on the rest as she went, including the Christmas lights strung along the eaves in front and the lights on the tree in the window. She did this even though she was dreading Christmas and would have preferred to skip the decorations this year here at the store as well as at home.

Home.

No, she wouldn’t think about it, not right now.

Finally, she stopped to crank up the thermostat, too. The vast, barnlike building did not hold heat well.

The cluster of offices was in the loft: Lloyd’s, her father’s—at least temporarily hers—and the bookkeeper’s. Olivia smelled coffee even before she reached the top of the staircase. Bless his heart, she needed another cup this morning.

He must have heard her footsteps, because he stood in his doorway waiting for her. His keen eyes searched her face. “No trouble getting into town?”

“Nope. Ben Hovik and his son came out and helped me shovel our driveway yesterday,” she said, keeping her tone casual. “Otherwise, the roads were all plowed.”

“You and your mom holding up okay? Anything new?” he asked gently.

She realized that, one way or the other, she and Lloyd had missed each other the past several days.

“Mom has already decided to sell the house,” she told him. Everyone would know soon. Hard to hide a for-sale sign in the front yard. “I didn’t know what to say. She’s...not herself,” Olivia said slowly, and that was the truth.

Well, part of the truth anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Lloyd said, in that same kind voice, and this time she nodded and did succeed in smiling, if tremulously.

“We’ll get through it.”

“Sure you will.” He cocked his head. “Sounds like Stu’s here.”

“Somebody is,” she teased, despite the darkness of her mood. They had this conversation almost every morning. He was ridiculously good at identifying vehicles sight unseen from the sound of the engines, and Olivia gave him a hard time when he was wrong. This time she frowned, realizing it was a car engine she was hearing. “He hasn’t driven his truck in forever. What’s happened to it? Do you know?”

“All he’ll say is it needs work.”

Stuart Dodd’s pickup had been his pride and joy. A Ford F-250, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old.

“Shouldn’t it still be under warranty?”

Lloyd shook his head. “No idea. He’s being real tight-lipped, which makes me think he might have wrecked it and doesn’t want to say.”

She laughed despite herself. “That would be a blow to his pride, wouldn’t it?” Stuart had worked for her father since a beam had fallen on his shoulder on a construction project, leaving him unable to do heavy lifting. His experience made him a godsend working with contractors. Olivia guessed him to be in his mid-forties.

Lloyd chuckled. “Yes, it would.”

She let herself into her office and settled behind her desk with a sigh, cradling the mug of coffee in both hands to warm them.

Most days she was glad to be here. Until she’d had to face the realization that Mom might sell the business, she hadn’t let herself understand how much she was enjoying herself. Before Dad’s first heart attack, she’d worked as an account manager at a major Portland investment firm. Dissatisfied, she’d been thinking about making a change, and she had quit without a second thought when her parents needed her. She could take some time off and help her parents, she had reasoned.

At the time, Olivia had expected to be here three or four months, tops. Now—she had no idea what she wanted to do next. She’d begun to wonder if she wasn’t a small businesswoman at heart.

Something else, too. Thinking about what a tomboy she’d been had sparked a minor revelation. It wasn’t like she’d make career decisions based on what she was required to wear to work every day, but...she wasn’t missing having to wear suits and heels, do something elegant to her hair and put on makeup every morning. Jeans, flannel shirts, comfortable shoes, a ponytail—this felt really natural to her.

It’s me, she thought.

She shook off the reflection, in part because, as Ben had pointed out, any possibility of her staying to run Bowen’s Hardware & Lumberyard wasn’t really hers, but also because brooding wasn’t productive. She wanted to make time for sure today to talk to old Mr. Swenson about his plans for the appliance store. No point in starting to dream if it turned out he had a long-lost nephew planning to move to Crescent Creek to take over his store or already had a buyer.

Olivia spent the morning working the floor, as she frequently did, answering questions and helping people find the screws and bolts they asked for, pick out the best caulking material or identify the washer needed to stop that drip from the kitchen faucet. She loved the old building, with wood floors that creaked and weren’t entirely level, those high ceilings and the cold drafts that came every time someone opened either the front or back entrance doors. Given a spare moment here and there, she considered the layout and eyed stray corners, trying to envision how she could expand the stock without aisles becoming claustrophobic or displays too cluttered.

The cash registers were the old-fashioned kind, although the credit-card machines weren’t. Dad had modernized only as he had to.

“Nobody in Crescent Creek is interested in hurrying,” he liked to say. In general, it was true. Like she’d told Ben, standing in line at the hardware store was as good a place to gossip as any.

This morning, passing by the short line at the front of the store, Olivia heard Bernard Fulton saying, “That damn wife of mine thinks we’re going out to dinner tonight. Why can’t she cook seven nights a week, I ask? She says, God didn’t work seven days a week, either. I say, but this isn’t Sunday—it’s Monday. God liked Sundays, she says, I like Mondays.”

Olivia stifled a laugh. June and Bernard had eaten at the Crescent Café every Monday night for as long as she could remember, and most Fridays, too. So did all their friends. Most of the men had once worked at the lumber mill. Lloyd and his wife would be there, too, just as they’d play bingo at the grange hall every other Saturday and plant their butts in the same pew every Sunday morning at the Grace Lutheran Church. Bernard and June were Presbyterian, if Olivia remembered right. Pete Peterson, currently listening tolerantly to Bernard, was Baptist. If your inclinations were for anything else, you had to drive at least as far as Miller Falls. Not many locals did.

Was this really what she wanted? she asked herself with some incredulity. By the time she’d graduated from high school, the predictability of every day, of everyone she knew, had begun to drive her crazy. She’d yearned for something different. For adventure. For a future different from the one that had been her dream, when it had included Ben.

And now here she was, taking a ridiculous sense of comfort from the very predictability that had once been such an irritant. Not minding gossip, because...oh, because it meant people were genuinely interested in each other’s doings. Intrigued by the mystery of why Stuart wasn’t talking about what was wrong with his Ford F-250, when her eighteen-year-old self would have pretended to be interested while really thinking, Who cares?

Discovering she did care gave her a funny ache beneath the breastbone, one that didn’t want to go away no matter how busy she got.

CHAPTER FIVE

AS YET UNNOTICED, Ben leaned one shoulder against the end of the bleachers and watched the boys’ basketball practice.

Even though the weekend had been unexpectedly relaxed where Carson was concerned, he still felt the prickly grab of the burr that was his worry about him.

During the Friday night game, Carson had mostly sat on the bench with his elbows braced on his knees and his head hanging, his eyes downcast. His body language shouted, I don’t want to be here. When he went in, he was a step too slow. Ben could see why McGarvie had benched him. The coach had probably had no choice. Ben had also seen the distance Carson was keeping from the stars of the team. Even when McGarvie called the team into a huddle to talk about strategy, Carson stayed on the outskirts, a careful arm’s length from anyone else.

Something was wrong, above and beyond a rapidly growing boy’s clumsiness.

He packed his observations at the game on top of Olivia’s worries and his own, increasing that sense of foreboding. It might be an overreaction, but he couldn’t shake the feeling. As a result, Ben had spent more time than usual today wandering the halls between classes, listening to snippets of conversation, talking to teachers and asking them to keep an ear to the ground for new rumors, and the only result by the time the last bell rang was that his uneasiness had grown, and he had not a grain of fact to base it on.

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