Snowed In by Rachel Hawthorne Read Free Book Online Page A

What I couldn’t understand was the reason he’d ordered it in the first place.
    “That’s not really me,” I said carefully.
    “How ’bout this? We have this striped stuff. . . .” That looked like drunk candy canes. Hard to explain, but trust me.
    “Uh, no—”
    “Dad, why don’t you just let her look?” His dad looked disgruntled, but then the wrinkles on his face eased. “I guess there’s no hurry. We have plenty to keep us busy with the guestrooms.”
    “Speaking of the guestrooms,” Mom said, “I’d like to run an idea I had for one of them by you.
    Would you mind coming upstairs?”
    “Not at all,” Mr. Wynter said. He shoved himself out of his chair and followed Mom out of the kitchen.
    She’d mentioned putting a window seat with a storage area in one of the rooms that had a view of the lake. I had a feeling she was going to keep the Wynters busy all winter. I smiled at that thought and went back to looking at the samples of wallpaper.
    “If you don’t see anything you like, you can go 62
    to the hardware store down the street,” Josh said.
    “They have a bigger selection, not in stock, but that can be ordered. We can get it from the mainland.” I looked over at him. “Won’t it be more expensive?”
    “Yeah. Dad tends to buy stuff on closeout. It never occurs to him there’s a reason stuff is on closeout—like, no one wanted it to begin with.”
    “You mean, you don’t think ducks sitting in puke was someone’s first choice?”
    “Probably not.”
    He grinned. Really broadly. He had a nice smile, a very friendly smile. Not teasing, not flirta-tious like Chase’s. It was just . . . nice. And I thought I could look at it forever and never grow tired of it.
    Whoa! Slow down, Ash.
    I needed to get out of there.
    I closed the book. “I don’t know that I really need or want wallpaper. I’d love to have some shelves, though.”
    “Those are easy enough to make. Shoot, I could make those tonight. No problem.”
    “I don’t know. My room is very oddly shaped.”
    “I just have to take some measurements.”
    “It’s the room at the top of the stairs, right off the third floor.”
    63
    “I sorta figured that out yesterday.” From where I was sitting, it looked like he was blushing, but maybe it was just the way the sun was coming through the window that he was now looking out of. Was he embarrassed thinking about our encounter? I’d been the one still in PJ’s.
    “How long do you think all this work is going to take?” I asked.
    Josh looked at me and shrugged. “You in a hurry?”
    I shrugged back. “Having company this early messes up my morning routine.”
    “What’s your routine?”
    “The usual girl routine.”
    “It’s just me and Dad. I’m not real familiar with the usual girl routine.”
    “What about your mom?”
    “She got tired of the winters.”
    I couldn’t help myself. I gave him a mischie-vous grin. “You mean, the winters like the cold and snow, or the Wynters, like father and son?”
    “Both, I guess.”
    I didn’t know what to say. I’d been teasing, but apparently . . .
    He set his mug on the counter. “I need to get back to painting that room.”
    He started to walk out. I got up so fast that I 64
    nearly toppled the chair and lost my balance.
    “I was just teasing. I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t think she’d really left left.” He furrowed his brow. “So what did you think?”
    “That she didn’t like the cold, maybe went to Florida for the winter or something. You know.
    Short-term getaway.”
    “Nope. Long-term getaway. Been about ten years now.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “No big deal. Hell, I don’t even remember what she looks like.”
    Before I had a chance to remove one foot from my mouth and jam the other one in, he walked out of the kitchen.
    65
    6
    Why was I always saying idiotic things around Josh? I’d always been as comfortable around boys as I was around girls. Best buds and all that. But then, I’d always known