Snowbound Hearts by Benjamin Kelly Read Free Book Online

“No, but we can share a blanket.”
    “Naked?”
    She cocked her head to one side and shot him a little grimace. “No. But if you promise to be good, I might consider...”
    “Stripping down to your underwear, crawling under the blanket, and writhing on top of me like a snake?”
    Her grimace morphed into a full on glare. “No!”
    “Letting me slather your body from head to toe with baby oil and give you a massage?”
    “No! Um”— she screwed up her face, cutting her eyes toward the ceiling—”do you have baby oil?”
    Stephen flung his arms into the air and slapped a hand to his forehead. “Damn it all to hell. I knew there was something I forgot. If you’re up for that, I brought vegetable oil for cooking.”
    She let her shoulders slump, shaking her head. “No, that wasn’t what I was going to say. You’re getting me all sidetracked.”
    He raised his eyebrows twice. “You’re thinking about an oil massage, aren’t you?” An image of Audrey lying naked, facedown on his bed, her skin glistening with oil, flashed into his mind. Stephen breathed deeply as his heart began to pound.
    “No, of course not.” She huffed loudly, turned around, and took a few steps away, then spun on her heel to face him. “Okay, maybe I was thinking about it a little.” She raised a hand into their line of sight and held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “But just a little.” She shrugged and dropped her gaze to the floor. “All right, a lot actually, but you can’t do that, so stop making suggestions. Got it?”
    Stephen nodded, having run out of inappropriate suggestions for the moment.
    “I was going to say I might consider stretching out under a blanket with you and snuggling in our...” Audrey started, but Stephen cut her off.
    “ Mmm , you’ve got a deal. Snuggling it is. Naked?”
    Audrey strolled over to him and poked his shoulder with her index finger. “Don’t push your luck, pal.”
    Stephen gave her an apologetic grin. “I cut you off. You were about to say something else.”
    She nodded. “Yes, I was. Too bad that you couldn’t stop your nonsense long enough to listen.”
    He cupped a hand to his ear and stood quietly waiting.
    “Oh, no. You can forget it now. Maybe, if you’re really lucky, I’ll tell you when we come back in.”
    “It was better than just snuggling, wasn’t it? We’ve been doing that already.”
    Audrey shrugged and headed toward the coat rack with Stephen tagging along behind her like a puppy. They bundled up and stepped out onto the back porch of the cabin. The wind had made a snowdrift in the corner of the open porch that reached all the way to the ceiling. In a few more hours, it might even block the door. The storage shed that housed the generator stood fifty feet away and was half-buried. The handle of a shovel protruded out from a smaller snowdrift in the opposite corner of the porch. Stephen grabbed it with one hand, Audrey with the other, and they trudged together through the knee-deep powder out to the shed. He stepped up to the door and began digging.
    “Stephen!” Audrey called.
    He spun around to see what she wanted and caught a loosely packed clump of snow with his face. It fell straight down his jacket into his shirt. He gasped loudly and brushed it away, shaking as much as he could out of his clothing. Stephen thrust the shovel into the snow, leaving it sticking upright, and stalked slowly toward Audrey.
    “Oh my God, Stephen. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t aiming for your face, I swear.”
    He scooped up a handful of snow and formed it into a ball as she backed away.
    She held her hands up, poised to block any inbound snowballs. “Wait! Please don’t hit me in the face with that. I didn’t mean it.”
    “Oh, I’d never throw it at your pretty face.”
    Audrey turned and tried to run, but lost her footing just as he caught her. They tumbled together, landing facedown in the snow. She got to her knees and scampered away, but he caught her and