Snowbound by Janice Kay Johnson Read Free Book Online Page B

didnt think the spoiled girl would take even three days of sponge baths and half-cooked food stoically.
    I get the first bath, Amy declared, staring a challenge at the others.
    Dieter pulled off his wool hat and shook his head like a wet dog. We just had baths. Why do you want to take another one?
    Because Im cold, she snapped, and stomped off.
    Whys she so upset? Hopper asked in apparently genuine puzzlement.
    Nobody leaped to explain. The teacher was too tactful to say, Because she didnt get her way. The others were either indifferent or perplexed as well.
    Maybe shes just having a delayed reaction to the fact that yesterday was pretty scary, Fiona said.
    But were okay, one of the other girls protested.
    Some people are more resilient than others. Its also possible that getting stranded this way reminds Amy of something that happened to her in the past. We all have different fears.
    John shook his head. Damn, she was good. He wondered if she believed a word she was saying.
    Now, she said, more briskly, lets get everything thats wet laid out in front of the fire to dry. Neatly, she added, when one of the boys dumped socks and gloves in a heap. Then the lunch crew can get started. Ahwho did I assign?
    You! they all chorused in glee.
    She laughed with them. Okay, okay! And, uh, Tabitha and Erin, right?
    Erin nodded with composure John suspected was typical, and Tabitha made a moue of displeasure.
    Next question. Fiona smiled at him. Whats on the menu?
    Soup and sandwiches.
    That we can handle. Right, gang?
    He accompanied them to the kitchen to show them where everything was. Fiona disappeared to the laundry room to move a load to the dryer and start another one while the girls opened cans of cream of mushroom soup and dumped them in pans.
    John loitered for a few more minutes, waiting for Fiona to come back. Despite his earlier discomfiture at imagining her naked, he couldnt resist watching Fiona competently slice cheddar cheese and slather margarine on bread to make the grilled cheese sandwiches shed decided on. He doubted she or the girls were even conscious of his presence. This past year, hed discovered he had a gift for invisibility.
    Damn it, he could have spent most of the morning hiding out in his quarters, reading in front of the woodstove. But Fiona MacPherson intrigued him.
    What he couldnt decide was whether it really was her in particular, or whether hed been quietly healing without realizing it and she just happened to be the first attractive woman to come his way in a while.
    Not true, he reminded himself; two weekends ago, a quartet of women in their twenties had spent two nights at the lodge. Apparently theyd been gettingtogether a couple of times a year since they graduated from college. Each took a turn choosing what they did.
    A couple of them were married, hed gathered. One of the two single friends in particular had flirted like mad with him. He hadnt felt even a flicker of interest, and shed been more beautiful by conventional standards than this slender teacher with the river-gray eyes.
    Hed thought rather impassively that the woman who kept making excuses to seek him out was attractive. Hed been bothered then by the fact that hed felt not even a slight stirring of sexual desire. He hadnt had had a woman since the night before hed shipped out for Iraq. Hed missed sex the first months there. At some point, hed quit thinking about it. That part of him had gone numb.
    It wasnt that he felt nothing. Grief was his constant companion, anger looking over its shoulder. He had unpredictable bursts of fear. Once in a while, he allowed himself to be grateful that he was alive and that hed found sanctuary.
    Fiona MacPhersons pretty gray eyes and cloud of curly dark hair wouldnt have been enough to draw him from his preferred solitude. Not if something else about her hadnt sliced open the layer of insulation that had kept him distant from the rest of humanity.
    So what was different about her? What had he sensed,