Baby, It's Cold Outside by Jennifer Greene, Merline Lovelace, Cindi Myers Read Free Book Online

matter how or who was doing what. They were making a difference.
    Only then he heard it. The wind waking up. The first sound started out like an ogre’s innocent yawn, but it was enough to snap his head up immediately. He looked back, saw the ominous black sky coming toward them like a tsunami.
    “ Emilie! That’s enough. We’re going back in the house. Now .”
    But she wasn’t done. She wanted her part of the roof cleaned off just so, no uneven ends or heaps left hanging. She was doing her damnedest to make scalpel-straight edges, wanting everything exactly right.
    He heard it again. The ogre waking up. For a few more seconds, there was complete silence, but then out of nowhere came a slow, slow, slow roar that built and built….
    “Emilie.” He scooched up, grabbed her arm. “ Now . In the house. Now .”
    “But I’m almost—”
    The snow hit like the slam of a door—fierce, hard, sharp. That fast, he couldn’t breathe, literally couldn’t take air that cold into his lungs. Even trying to move a few feet, he got sick-headed, dizzy, made tougher because of needing to pull Emilie with him.
    She hadn’t initially understood—but she did now.
    Her instinct seemed to be to curl up in a ball.
    Anyone’s instinct would be the same. The slug of wind, the slap of snow, the punch of icy air could have beat up a prizefighter. Within seconds, visibility changed to a complete whiteout and the temperature dropped. Although he knew they were still on the roof, he couldn’t actually see any part of the lodge—or anything else. Everything was a blinding, slashing white.
    Fear could be paralyzing, Rick knew. But the worst threat right then was the debilitating cold. He wasn’t certain how long it took to move them two feet. Then three.
    He was losing sensation in his hands and feet, but he was far more worried about Emilie. She’d swaddled up good, but in clothes too big for her, snow and cold couldeasily have sneaked under the layers. Even minutes mattered, but he was literally blind, groping through nothing but white to find purchase, balance, something, anything solid that he could recognize.
    Finally he felt the drop—they both tumbled off the roof. He pulled Emilie up and glued her against his side.
    He found the door, battled with it. It took forever— forever —for him to get the damned thing open. He pushed her inside first, not meaning to be rough, but out of breath and out of strength both. Then he shut out the wind, secured the door and slumped against it, heaving in a lungful of oxygen.
    He couldn’t move. Not for a while yet. When he realized how hard he was shaking, he mentally swore at himself for allowing Emilie to stay out so long. He’d known the storm was picking up again. Known she was an Alaska rookie, no matter how many times she’d stayed at the family lodge. She hadn’t lived here. Didn’t know danger or blizzards.
    As soon as he got some wind back, he started peeling off gloves, then boots. His snowsuit was crusted with heavy ice and snow, making it harder and heavier to negotiate. He seemed to be moving slower than a slug. His hands were just too frozen, but the stinging tingles meant there was no real harm; he was getting his circulation back. Even his eyebrows seemed to be shedding snow, which would probably tickle his sense of humor. Later.
    Right then, as soon as he regained his mobility—and his senses—he tracked down his doc. He found her on the floor in the big room, crawling on all fours toward the fireplace, and almost there, but still in all her gear.
    “Hey. You okay?”
    “No,” she said.
    For a man who hadn’t laughed since he could remember, she seemed to provoke him into smiling in spite of himself. She was talking. So she was all right.
    She stopped in her tracks when he hunched down beside her.
    “I’m too cold to walk, too cold to talk. Too cold to think,” she said.
    “I know.”
    “I changed my mind about coming to Alaska for Christmas.”
    “I