Snowbound

“It’s not skiing when you have to plod instead of riding up the hill,” one of the girls sniffed. Literally—her nose was bright red and dripping.

“Sure it is,” the first boy argued. He was at that ungainly stage when his hands and feet were out-sized and the rest of him skinny. Crooked features added up to a puppy-dog friendly face. “You don’t think when they invented skiing they had quad chairlifts, do you?”

“My great-great-whatever came west in a covered wagon, too,” she retorted, with another sniff. “I’d rather fly United, thanks.”

The rest chimed in with opinions; John didn’t listen. He looked at the teacher. “Anyone going to miss you?”

“Oh Lord! Yes! We were having trouble with cell phone coverage.” She gave him a hopeful look. “Do you have a land line?”

“Out here? No. And cell phone coverage is lousy for miles around even when the weather’s good. Unfortunately, my shortwave radio had an accident and I haven’t got it fixed.” If what his idiot guest had done to it with spilled coffee could be called an accident. And he should have taken the damn thing to town to be worked on, but hadn’t felt any urgency. Stupid, when a guest could have an emergency at any time.

“Well, we’ll try again anyway. Kids, anyone who brought a phone. If you reach someone, tell them to start a phone tree.”

Six out of the eight kids pulled tiny flip phones out of a pocket or bag. John suddenly felt old. When he was sixteen, nobody’d had a phone. Or wanted one.

The teacher was the only one who got lucky, although he gathered the reception wasn’t good. The kids all put theirs away, shaking their heads.

She kept raising her voice. “Yes, Thunder Mountain. You’ll call the parents?” Pause. “It’s snowing there, too?”

That caused a stir.

“Wow.”

“Cool.”

“We don’t get snow that much. I wish I was home.”

“We have more here.”

“Snowball fight!” another boy said. This one’s face caused a shift in John’s chest. He looked too much like the teenage boys hanging around on dusty streets in Baghdad. He might be Hawaiian or Polynesian. Something just a little exotic, skin brown and eyes dark and tilted.

“Yeah!” The third boy, short and stocky with spiky blond hair. Sweatpants from the lost and found bagged on him. “I will so take you down.”

Girls giggled. Like a litter of puppies driven by instincts they didn’t understand, the boys began shoving and wrestling.

Dark heads, laughter. A group of boys much like this, clowning around. A mud-brick wall. Rusty dust puffing under their feet, a couple of dirty soccer balls lying forgotten.

With a physical wrench, John pulled himself from the past. He tolerated guests at the lodge. Teenage boys, he avoided. Their very presence brought back things he couldn’t let himself remember. How was he going to endure this group?

The teacher—Fiona?—evidently sensed his longing. After telling the kids that the principal would call all their parents, she said to John, “I hope you won’t be stuck with us for long. Um… Do you have any idea when this storm is supposed to end?”

“A couple of days, at least. And I’m at the bottom of the highway department’s list for plowing. Could be a week before they get here.”

The longest week of his life.

Just like that, he was propelled into another flashback.

He was driving a truck, the sun scorching through the window and sweat dripping from his helmet, dust from the convoy ahead turning his and everyone else’s face to gray masks their mamas wouldn’t have recognized. Women walking along the side of the road in dark robes—how in hell did they stand the heat inside them? Kids giving the convoy wary, sidelong looks. Men staring with flat hostility. M-16 in his lap, John scanned the people, the side of the road, the rooftops of the sand-colored mud buildings for anything that looked wrong.

As quickly, the vivid memory faded and he was back in the lodge, only the teacher looking at him a little strangely.

Not the longest week of his life, he apologized silently, if anyone was listening. He’d lived a year of longer ones. Survived them.

If living half in the past, hiding out in the present, could be called survival.

CHAPTER TWO

“A WEEK!” the teacher exclaimed, and John had the sense she was repeating herself.

Yeah, he’d definitely tuned out.

“But…if the highway department knows we’re stranded here, surely they’ll plow this far sooner than that. You can’t possibly have enough food to keep us that long.”

“This is a lodge. I take in paying guests. Since I just stocked up, we won’t starve.”

“Oh.” She nibbled on a delectable bottom lip, full enough to make his groin tighten.

Damn. Why her? The subject of women wasn’t something he’d wasted any time thinking about since he got out of the VA hospital.

“Do you have any guests right now?” she asked.

John shook his head. “Expected a couple today. Don’t suppose they’ll make it.”

“So you have enough beds?”

This was a woman who knew how to stick to the essentials.

“We’ll have to make some up.”

“We can do it. I don’t want to put you out any more than we have to.”

You want to share mine?

Right. That was happening.

Nice, he thought somewhat grimly, to know that his libido had survived.

“I’ll show you where the bedding is.”

She ordered them all to come. “You can make up your own beds.”

“We get our own?” a blond pixie asked.

“Two to a bed,” Fiona MacPherson decreed. “We’ll stick to our buddy system.”

Made it harder for a boy to sneak into a girl’s room, John diagnosed with wry amusement. Chaperoning this bunch for a week would be a chore. The school ought to give her a nice fat bonus once she returned the kids to their parents’ custody. Unless, of course, she was in hot water for setting out in the first place on the foolhardy venture to cross the pass.

They trooped upstairs. He showed them the shared bathrooms, each boasting a deep, claw-foot tub, double sinks, piles of towels and open shelving for the guests’ toiletries.

“Oh, eew,” one of the girls exclaimed. “We don’t have toothbrushes or anything!”

He almost kept his mouth shut. Bad breath might make the chaperoning easier. But that was just plain mean. He might be a recluse, but he was also an innkeeper.

“I keep extras for guests who forget them. Remind me and I’ll go get some.”

“Bless you,” the teacher murmured, apparently not having considered the benefits of halitosis.

He handed out flannel sheets and duvet covers, they picked partners and rooms. Fortunately two of the rooms each had a pair of queen beds, so the three boys went in one of those and three of the girls in the other. Another pair of girls shared a room and Fiona claimed the first room at the head of the stairs.

John went in with her to help her make up the bed. Setting the armful of linens on a chair, she looked around with approval.

“Dieter told me the lodge was really nice. This is lovely.”

He’d bought the place as-is, but it was in good shape. Her room was typical: polished plank floors with a rag rug to add warmth, a bed built of peeled Ponderosa pine and covered with a puffy duvet, antique pine dresser with a mirror that showed a wavery reflection. The artwork varied from room to room, giving each character. She was in the one he privately thought of as the Rose Room, with cottage-style paintings in which roses smothered fences and arbors and tangled in old-fashioned hedgerows. He tended to put women in here.

With quick, efficient movements, he and Fiona made up her bed with snow-white sheets and duvet cover. When they’d finished, she looked at him over the bed.

“I don’t think you told me your name.”

“Fallon. John Fallon.”

Her smile was a thing of beauty, somehow merry and so warm he had the sudden illusion of not needing the fire downstairs. “It’s nice to meet you, John Fallon. You’re a kind man to try to hide how much you wish we hadn’t shown up on your front porch.”

He thought of himself as a decent man. Decent enough to do the right thing when he had to.

“I usually have guests. You’re not putting me out.” What was a little white lie?

“We’re just surprise guests.”

And nonpaying ones, he presumed.

Again, she seemed to read his mind.

“I’ll make sure you’re reimbursed, at least for the food. I teach at a private school.” She nodded toward the voices drifting from the other bedrooms. “Most of their parents are pretty well-to-do.”

He only nodded. “That would be appreciated.”

Again her teeth closed briefly on her lower lip. “I hate to ask, but…We ate at four o’clock. I suspect the boys especially are starved.”

John had once been skinny like the one kid. He seemed to remember eating from morning to night and never feeling full.

“Sandwiches?”

“Sandwiches would be great.” She treated him to another smile, this time relieved.

They met at the foot of the bed and had one of those awkward moments where they both hesitated, started forward, shuffled, until he finally waved toward the door. “After you.”

It seemed to him that her cheeks were a little bit pink. Did she feel some of the pull that had him half-aroused and uncomfortable?

He couldn’t imagine. With his scarred face and obvious limp, he was more likely to be an object of pity than lust. His throat momentarily tightened. Had that moment been so clumsy because she’d been trying to defer to him since he was disabled?

“I’ll get started on food,” he said shortly, and left her to the kids.

Like a bunch of locusts, they showed up in the kitchen all too quickly and began filling plates. A couple of the smaller girls barely nibbled—one was Asian, a tiny thing with glossy black hair down to her hips, the other thin and plain with braces that pushed her lips out. Those two, he remembered, had taken the room with one bed, and now were quieter than the others.

Two girls were arguing loudly about some math question, while another flirted with the stocky boy who seemed more interested in piling food on his plate. The teacher looked dead on her feet.

She swayed, and John stepped forward, but she rallied and said, “Wow! This is great. Thank you.”

They took seats around the long, farmhouse table that occupied the middle of the enormous kitchen, John at her right side.

“Everyone, our host is John Fallon.” She reeled off their names, most of which he’d likely need to hear again.

The tall, skinny boy who’d stayed here before was Dieter Schoenecker, the stocky one had the unlikely name of Hopper Daniels, and the third boy was Troy Thorsen. Nordic last name, which didn’t explain his racial heritage.

The girls were a blur. Kelli—with an i, she made sure to tell him, last name he didn’t catch, Amy Brooks, who seemed given to posing and flipping her hair, Tabitha, Erin and…that left someone out, but he couldn’t remember who. Probably the plain, quiet one.

Watching the speed with which the food disappeared, John took mental stock of his larder. They’d be okay for a week, he figured; he kept an emergency supply of canned goods he could dip into if need be.

Fiona took half a sandwich and ate it slowly, as if she had to remind herself to take a bite and swallow. Clearly they’d driven across the mountains that morning, and had probably made an early start to have had time for any kind of competition during the day. Driving for hours through the blizzard had to have wrung her out.

“Why don’t you hit the sack?” he said quietly. “They’re still wound up. I can sort them out later.”

“I’m responsible…”

“You look ready to collapse.”

Dieter Schoenecker, who sat on her other side, heard. “Ms. Mac was Superwoman today.”

She managed a grin and pretended to flex a bicep. “That’s me. Speaking of which—” she pitched her voice a little louder “—have I mentioned that I have X-ray vision? I see through walls.”

“Ahh! Ms. Mac doesn’t trust us.” The Hopper kid clasped his hand to his chest and fell back in his chair.

She just smiled. “Bathroom on the right side upstairs is for girls, left side for boys.”

“Toothbrushes.” John pushed back his chair and stood. His bad leg chose to cave, and he had to brace his hand on the back of the chair until the spasm let up. Without looking to see if anyone had noticed, he left the kitchen.

He grabbed a basket and piled it with toothbrushes, toothpaste in sample tubes, dental floss, the small bottles of shampoo and hand lotion he put out when readying a bathroom for guests, and a couple of packages of feminine products. It might embarrass the girls, but if they were here for very many days, odds were a couple of them would need something.

Fiona stood when he came back. “I’ll take that up.” She looked into the basket. “Oh, thank goodness. I didn’t even think of that as a problem. I’ll distribute all this.” She raised her voice. “I’m going to bed, kids. Help Mr. Fallon clean up, then I expect you to get ready for bed, too. It’s been a long day.”

“Do we have to turn the lights out?” Amy looked genuinely horrified.

“No. You can read, talk, listen to music, whatever. Just keep it down, and be considerate of each other.”

“If you need anything during the night—” John pointed to a door at the back of the kitchen “—that’s where I’ll be.”

Nods all around.

He walked the teacher to the foot of the stairs.

Standing one step up, she was at eye level with him. “Did I tell you when I called that our principal said they had four inches and snow still piling up even in Portland? It’s amazing that you have electricity.”

“We operate on a generator. There aren’t any power lines out here.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” She gave a small shiver. “I can’t believe how lucky we were. I didn’t want the kids to know, but…I was so scared.”

Feeling cruel, he said, “You should have been. Without winter gear…”

Her chin came up. “This blizzard wasn’t predicted so soon. And none of the meteorologists expected it to be so major. It’s only November!”

“You ever noticed how ski areas open Thanksgiving weekend? Means they’ve been getting snow for weeks.”

“That’s true, but we’re not at that kind of elevation here…” She trailed off, then sighed. “You’re right. We should have never set off without being prepared. I knew we had chains, and I’ve driven in snow, so I got complacent. But my dad kept down sleeping bags in the trunk whenever we traveled during the winter.”

“Smart man.”

“You saved our lives.”

“No. It sounds like Dieter did.”

Her face softened. “He did. He’s an amazing boy. Really brilliant. I mean, they’re all smart, but not like him. And he’s so… together. Mature and, I don’t know, comfortable with himself. Which, let me tell you, is rare in sixteen-year-olds.”

The boys he’d known in Iraq were younger in years, if older in experience. Living in a war zone did that to kids.

He jerked his head toward the kitchen. “They all that age?”

“Willow is fifteen. She’s our only sophomore. And Troy and Erin are seniors, so they’re seventeen. The rest are juniors.”

John nodded.

“It’s nice of you to take charge. I really am tired.”

“Go. They’ll be fine.”

“I know. You’re right.”

Still she didn’t move, and he thought how easy it would be to step forward, wrap a hand around the back of her head and kiss her.

Something on his face may have given away the tenor of his thoughts, because her color rose and she groped backward with one foot for the next step.

“I don’t know what I’m just standing here for. Tiredness, I guess. Um, good night.”

He dipped his head. “Good night.”

John stayed at the foot of the stairs watching until she disappeared above with the basket of toiletries. He should have offered her a nightgown; he had a few of those in the lost and found, too. All were sturdy flannel. He didn’t know if any newlyweds had ever honeymooned at Thunder Mountain Lodge, but if so the brides had remembered to take home their lacy negligees.

John frowned, trying to remember whether the kids had called her Miss. Or was it Ms.? Young as she looked, she could be married. No, he decided; if she was, she would have called her husband tonight, not the principal. And she’d asked him to phone parents. She hadn’t said anything about him calling a husband.

Heading back to the kitchen, he was irritated to realize that he felt relieved.

FIONA HAD NEVER been more grateful to be able to brush her teeth. As she did so, she thought about their host. He’d been remarkably kind so far, but he’d looked so grim all the while!

She wondered what had happened to give him the limp and the scar that ran from his jaw down his neck and beneath the collar of his shirt. It looked…not brand-new, but not as if he’d lived with it for years, either. Several times she’d seen a spasm of pain on his face, too, so the injury to his leg obviously still troubled him.

Well, she could hardly ask, and hoped the kids would be tactful enough not to. Or, more realistically, she should hope that they were too self-centered to care about John Fallon’s history.

Fiona brushed her hair with her own brush from her purse, then gazed at herself in the mirror. What had he seen when he looked at her? A couple of times she’d imagined… But that was silly. He probably thought she was an idiot who hadn’t showed any more sense than the teenagers would have.

She sighed. Sad as it was to admit, he was right. It terrified her still to think what might have happened if Dieter hadn’t spotted those tire tracks. The fact that they were safe and warm tonight was a miracle.

In the bedroom, she hesitated over what to wear—or not wear, finally leaving on the pants he’d lent her and her turtleneck. Just in case she had to get up for some reason during the night.

The bed felt wonderful, the fluffy duvet heavenly atop her. Tension drained out of her, and Fiona closed her eyes.

The moment she did, white swirled beneath her lids, as if the sight had been imprinted on them. She squeezed her eyes tighter shut and fought to picture something or someone else.

What she came up with was John Fallon’s face as they’d stood at the foot of the stairs. Lean, tanned, with strong cheekbones, dark bristles on jaw and cheeks, a fan of lines beside watchful brown eyes, and a mouth he kept compressed. The scar, puckered and angry. Maybe, she thought, his mouth was tight against pain and not from impatience or irritation.

But there had been that moment when she’d have sworn his gaze had lowered briefly to her mouth. The muscles in his jaw had knotted, and something had flickered in his eyes.

Had he kissed a woman since he’d been hurt?

How silly. He probably had a girlfriend, or even a wife who happened to be away right now. She doubted he had looked at her with desire—even momentarily.

He was being as polite as he was able, and she would have to do her very best to be sure they weren’t any more trouble than they had to be. It was absurd for her to wish that the unsmiling lodgekeeper would look at her with just a little more warmth.

Still, she held on to the image of his face until exhaustion overcame her.

FIONA AWAKENED to the sound of a squeal, then hushed giggles. Huh? She opened her eyes and stared at a strange, pitched ceiling. For a moment she felt completely blank. Then it came back to her.

Snowstorm, hellish drive, the lurch as the van dropped off the road, the tramp through knee-deep snow in the dark.

She had slept… She turned her head and found an old-fashioned clock on the night-stand. Twelve hours? Was it possible?

Galvanized, she jackknifed to a sitting position. Her students! And here she’d gone to sleep vowing to keep them out of their host’s hair.

No slippers, but she’d left her borrowed wool socks on. Fiona paused to peer in the mirror and shuddered. She’d scare the kids.

No choice. She needed the bathroom, and now.

Raucous laughter came from one of the girls’ rooms followed by someone shushing.

“Hey,” she said, flapping a hand as she went by.

“The bathtub is so-o amazing,” Tabitha called after her. “Mr. Fallon said it was okay to use as much hot water as we wanted.”

The idea of sinking into a deep tub of hot water was irresistible. On the other hand, putting on dirty clothes when she got out was less appealing.

Water splashed the floor in the bathroom and toothbrushes, hairbrushes and makeup were scattered over the counter. Dirty clothes were heaped in a corner. Sitting on the toilet, Fiona gazed at the pile wide-eyed. Had John Fallon come up with more clothes…?

Then she spotted the neat pile of folded laundry on the slatted shelving unit beside the towels. As if in a dream, she investigated. There were her jeans and yesterday’s socks, neatly rolled. He’d washed and dried their clothes last night.

“I’m going to marry him,” she said out loud.

If he had a clean shirt she could borrow, she could leave off her panties and handwash them. She could have that bath.

Realizing she hadn’t looked outside yet, she went to the window. Beyond the eaves, snow still fell and the world beyond was completely white. What if they had slid into a ditch last night, instead of making it safely here?

She shivered and turned quickly back to the bathroom.

Fiona brushed her tangled hair and went out, stopping once again in the door to the girls’bedroom. This time she saw that Hopper sat on the floor with his legs outstretched and Amy, Tabitha and Kelli lounged on the beds.

“Where’s everyone else?”

Kelli shrugged. “Still asleep, I guess.”

“I see it’s still snowing.”

“It’s really pretty outside.”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Uh-huh. There’s a toaster, and this really great bread, and muffins, and when he saw we were up, Mr. Fallon scrambled some eggs. And then he gave us the laundry.”

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw he’d washed our clothes. It’s like…”

“The shoemaker and the elves.” Tabitha nodded. “The bread tasted like it was right out of the oven. Do you think he slept at all?”

“I don’t know.” Fiona scrutinized them. “He loaned you some more clothes.”

“They are so too big.” Amy gazed down at herself with comical dismay. Actually the flannel shirt she wore draped becomingly, giving her a waifish look but for the swell of breasts.

“I’m going to go borrow something, too,” Fiona declared. “And then take a bath. Don’t let Willow or Erin beat me to it if they appear.”

“We won’t.”

She’d barely reached the first floor when John Fallon materialized in front of her.

“Oh! You scared me. I didn’t see you.”

“I was adding wood to the fire.”

Their host was even better looking in the light of day. He’d shaved and wore a heavy, cream-colored, Irish knit sweater over jeans. His dark hair, brushed back from his face, was just long enough to curl over the collar of the sweater.

“Thank you for washing our clothes.”

He nodded. “I set some more out in the kitchen, if you want to borrow something. Once everyone’s up, I’ll run another load.”

“Are we leaving you anything to wear?”

“Enough.”

Was he always so closemouthed, or was it just Fiona who brought it out in him? Weren’t innkeepers supposed to brim with bonhomie?

“Um…I think I’ll go pick something out.” She started toward the kitchen.

He followed. “Breakfast?”

“I’m going to take a bath first, before the kids use up all the hot water.”

“The lodge has several water heaters. It’s not good for business to make guests take cold baths.”