Snowed In (2 page)

Chapter 3

Gavin groaned as he reached blindly for his cell phone. It couldn't be past six in the morning—way too early for a phone call. If this was the new guy again, he was getting fired. Gavin had hired him a week ago based on his impeccable résumé, and so far his business sense had proven sound. His personality was another story. It wasn't that Gavin didn't enjoy nineties hair metal. He just did not enjoy it filtered through someone else's headphones when he was trying to concentrate. His new employee knocked it off when Gavin asked him to, but it was too late. Gavin was singing Mötley Crüe all day.

Where the hell had he left his phone? Ever since that hot kiss with the mystery woman in the grocery store, his brain had been fried. He couldn't sleep, couldn't focus on work, and had been to the grocery store every day, standing in the ice cream aisle like a lost puppy. And apparently throwing his phone under his pillow at night.

“Hello?” he mumbled, trying to convey both annoyance and competence.

“Get your ass out of bed. I need a ride to the grocery store.” Pippa. He should have known he'd regret giving the sweet, elderly widow who lived next door his cell number. Ha, sweet. But still: the grocery store. He shook his head—that had to stop. He had to accept that the mystery woman would remain a mystery.

“Pippa, it's”—he fumbled toward the clock radio—“ugh, it's six-thirty.” Not as early as he'd thought. Still, too early for the grocery store.

“I told Marv I'd make him cupcakes for his birthday.” Marv? Right, the new boyfriend.

“Isn't Marv massively diabetic?”

“Yes, but I found a sugar-free recipe online.” Gavin would also regret setting up Pippa's internet connection. “I need some of this weird sweetener stuff. And that dumb-bum weatherman on channel eleven says a snowstorm is coming. You need bread and milk.” Gavin took a bachelor's approach to grocery shopping: takeout menus and frozen dinners. And ice cream. He groaned.

“Can it wait until lunch?”

“Fine. I just wanted to hear that sexy morning voice of yours, anyway. Take an early lunch. Pick me up at eleven-thirty. If you're late, I'll call again.”

“Yes, ma'am. How long until you get your license back?”

“The judge said not in his lifetime. He seemed pretty out of shape, though, so hopefully soon.” Pippa's favorite saying was, “I'm old, I ain't slow.” The latter, the
ain't slow
part, definitely applied to her driving. It was terrifying, especially since she could barely see over the steering wheel.

“Okay. Eleven-thirty.”

“Sweet dreams, Gavin.”

Gavin snorted into the phone, but only got a dial tone in return. He wanted to go back to sleep, but couldn't. The grocery store. Enough of that. He would just wait in the car.

Chapter 4

Maureen
really
wished she could stop crying. Dave wasn't worth any tears, let alone two weeks' worth. But here she was on a Tuesday afternoon, standing in front of the ice cream—again—crying her eyes out.

It wasn't just the double chocolate brownie flavor that brought back fond memories of Dave taking care of her when she had strep throat last year. It wasn't Dave at all.

It was that damned god.

She still could not believe she'd acted so brazenly. She wasn't even that brazen in private. But there was something about that guy and the way he looked at her that made her want to, well, make out with a stranger in the grocery store. Maybe he was right. Maybe she needed someone to get her over Dave. Dave wasn't worth it. But they had a long history, and it was going to take more than one hot kiss with a god in the freezer aisle to erase two years together.

Thinking of that kiss still curled her toes. It had been two weeks¸ but every time she thought of it she could feel his arms wrapping around her and lifting her up to get closer.

She opened the freezer to cool her heated face and screwed her eyes shut against the embarrassment. Sure, yes, the kiss was hot—amazingly hot—but he was a stranger. And they had been in
public
.

Was it any wonder she'd avoided the grocery store for two weeks?

“What's the matter, girlie?”

Maureen jerked her head out of the freezer, then sniffled at the tiny, bronzed woman standing in front of her.

“Nothing. Nothing's the matter.”

“Then why are you crying into the novelties?”

This woman was truly tiny. Maureen was used to women being smaller than she, but this woman barely reached five feet, even with her curled and teased bleached-blonde hair.

“Because there's only one reason I can see crying into the novelties,” the tiny, strange woman said, “and that's because you just found out you're lactose intolerant. Any other reason probably has to do with a man and I didn't burn my bra in 1969 to have liberated young women of the twenty-first century crying into a perfectly good box of Drumsticks over something as ridiculous as a little heartache. Hey, that sounds like a country song. What's your name, girlie?”

Maureen hesitated. She shouldn't talk to strangers, should she? Last time she did, she'd practically melted the inventory. But this woman had a voice like sandpaper and her skin was as tan and leathery as her beat-up purse. Not too much danger of a hot make-out session.

“I'm Maureen.”

“Pippa. Nice to meet you. Now get your head out of that freezer and tell ol' Pippa what the trouble is.”

“You're not going to want to hear it. It's about a man.”

“I'm going to be mad that it's about a man, but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear it.”

The idea of unburdening herself to a complete and tiny stranger had a sudden appeal to Maureen. Sure, she'd told her friends about her break-up, but there's only so much “I told you so” a girl can take before she considers changing her number. Pippa didn't know Dave, who didn't know that he wasn't good enough for her but still dumped her. Pippa would be an impartial judge. That's what Maureen needed, because she felt that an impartial judge would surely rule in her favor.

She would leave out the part about kissing the god.

“I got dumped.”

“Figured that out. I'm old, but I ain't slow. Did you love him?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so, yes.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Maureen and Dave used to say “I love you” all the time. Dave said it to her after just a few months. So what if by the end of the relationship it was just a way to end a phone call? That didn't mean they didn't love each other.

“Yes. I mean, I'm sure that I did love him . . . at one point.”

“How long were you together? Let me guess. Six months?”

“No, two years.” There was maybe a small hint of satisfaction in proving the stranger wrong.

“Hmm, long time. How did you meet?”

So Maureen launched into the story. She'd finished library school and was trying to settle into Kentucky and her new job. She'd made some friends in town—Hollow Bend was friendly like that—but she wanted more, so she tried online dating. The first few guys she went out with were nonstarters, to say the least—she was pretty sure the guy with the lisp was lying about being divorced. Then she was matched with Dave. He was handsome, funny, interested in doing stuff, just like her.

“And when you met him, did he match his photograph? I hear some great horror stories about thinking you're going to meet Brad Pitt and ending up with Elmer Fudd.”

“Yes, he matched. He's a handsome guy.”

“And did you have as much in common as you thought?”

“Well, I liked him right away.”

“So you had that in common. You both liked him. Good. What else?”

“Um, well. We both went to grad school. And we are both career-driven. See, I'm very passionate about libraries and it was really appealing to me that he cared so much about his work.”

“Hmm. Sounds like he swept you off your feet. This doesn't sound like a great tragedy here. Or am I missing something? Did he die of cancer?”

“No.”

“Did he die trying to cure cancer?”

“No, he's not dead.”

“It sounds to me like he's just a regular guy and it didn't work out. Sure, you put a lot of time into it—more fool you, honey—but you're probably better off without him.”

“How can you say that? You don't know him! You don't even know me!”

“I may be old, but I ain't slow. Maureen, you need a distraction. You need something to keep your mind off the fact that you lost a relationship that wasn't that great to begin with.”

Oh my gosh
, Maureen thought,
if this woman tries to kiss me, I am never grocery shopping again
.

“Don't look at me like that, girlie. You're cute, but I don't swing that way.”

Maureen blushed. The god had really affected her ego.

“But you're on the right track.”

“Pardon?”

“You need a fling! When my Earl died, bless his heart, I didn't waste any time mourning. Of course, Earl was a low-down, dumb-bum drunk with three other girls on the side, but I loved the bastard. No, as soon as that casket closed, I got back in the game.”

Maureen blinked at Pippa. Got back in the game? Surely, now, she wasn't receiving sexual advice from a woman old enough to be her grandmother?

“I found I had plenty of wild oats left to sow, so I did. Then I met my Marv, and we've been together for three months now. He's got a bad ticker and he can't eat sugar, but he tells me I'm enough sugar for him. I tell you what—I'm the luckiest gal alive.”

That was sweet, Maureen thought. A little gross, but sweet.

“So will you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Wake up, girlie! Get out there and have meaningless sex! Fuck that bastard right out of your system!”

Maureen's eyes widened.

“Yes, that's right, an old lady said ‘fuck.' Don't you think there's something wrong with the fact that a woman twice your age has more sexual satisfaction than you do?”

This was definitely the strangest pep talk she'd ever received. But somehow, it was working.

“Okay.”

“What's that?”

“I said, okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I'll go out and have meaningless sex! I'll fuck that bastard right out of my system!”

A passing woman covered her toddler's ears and shot Maureen a dirty look.

“Go on, girlie!” shouted Pippa, oblivious to the ruckus she was causing.

“I will go on! Thanks. I'm glad to have met you.”

“You're a sweet girl, Maureen. But I don't want to see you crying in this aisle ever again,” Pippa said as she pushed her cart away.

Maureen took a deep breath and lifted her head with determination. No more crying in the grocery store. No more crying anywhere, not over Dave, not over any man. She was going to go home, burn these sweatpants, and start fucking!

Tomorrow, probably.

Chapter 5

Gavin saw Pippa come out of the grocery store and pocketed his phone. The new guy was holding down the office just fine.

“I got you bread, milk, eggs, and some other stuff, you ingrate,” she said, handing him his change.

“Thank you, Pippa. I don't know what I'd do without you,” he replied. Sleep in, probably. He started loading her bags in the back of his truck. “Jesus, Pippa, did you leave anything on the shelves?”

“When that dumb-bum on channel eleven says a storm is coming, he's usually right. I don't want to be snowed in without any food. Besides, Marv is coming over tonight. So I'm hoping we get snowed in for a while.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

Great mental image
, he thought.

“It's not a bad idea, you know. You should get snowed in with someone.”

His mind immediately went to the mystery woman in the ice cream aisle. Dammit, he'd almost gone a whole trip to the store without thinking of her.

“Right.”

“Think about it. Oh, hey, girlie! You gonna do what I told you?” Pippa was yelling at someone across the parking lot. Gavin was used to her making friends wherever she went, so he kept on loading the groceries. He was finding room for the last bag when Pippa's phone rang and she launched into an alarmingly explicit baby-talk conversation with, he assumed, Marv.
Now would be a great time to do my civic duty and return the cart to the rack
, he thought, crossing the parking lot.

The lot was crowded—everyone panicked when snow was in the forecast, even though it rarely snowed more than an inch or two—but his eyes caught a tall woman in a puffy black coat loading bags into the trunk of a sensible-looking compact car.

Holy. Shit.

The mystery woman.

He saw the instant she recognized him, her eyes going wide as she tried to duck into her little car as fast as possible. Oh, no. He wasn't letting her get away again.

“Hey!” he shouted, running toward the car. “Hey, stop!”

She already had the car started by the time he got to her, but he knocked on the window. She didn't look up as she rolled the window down.

“Hey, hi,” he said, a little out of breath. “How's it going?”

She looked up at him then, her blue eyes carefully blank. “Fine, thanks. How are you?”

“Good. Good.” Good one, Gavin. Way to charm her. “What's new?”

Her eyes went from blank to incredulous. “What's new? Since when? Since I molested you in the freezer aisle two weeks ago?”

“Two weeks and four days ago,” he said. “Almost three weeks. A lot could be new.” He paused, letting what she'd said register. “And I think it was me doing the molesting.”

“Fine, we molested each other. Mutual molestation. What do you want?”

To be molested by you again
. “Just to say hi. See how things are going.”
To learn your name. To see if that kiss was as hot as I remember.

“Things are fine, thanks. You'll be happy to know I'm turning over a new leaf. No more crying.”

“Good! That's really good. You're over what's-his-name?”

“Yes. Well, almost. I'm over him enough to get back out there,” she said in a determined voice. “I'm ready to—” She cut herself off.

“Ready to what?”

“Nothing.” She was furiously blushing. It was frigging adorable.

“Oh.” Time to seize his opportunity. “Well, if you're, uh, getting back out there, maybe you'd like to get a drink? Maybe tonight?”

He could see her searching her brain for an excuse. “Isn't there supposed to be a snowstorm tonight?”

“That dumb-bum channel eleven weatherman is never right,” he replied.

“What?”

“Nothing. You're right, it's supposed to snow, but not until way later. Let's make it dinner. We'll eat early and you'll be tucked in bed before the first flake even falls.”
My bed, with any luck.

She narrowed her eyes at him. Considering his offer, he hoped.

“What's your name?” she asked.

“Oh! Right. Gavin.” He stuck his hand in the open window to shake her hand. “Gavin Fraser.”

“Maureen. O'Connell.”

“What are you, Irish?”

“Are you seriously asking me that, Gavin Fraser? I'm surprised you're not wearing a kilt.”

“I only wear my kilt on special occasions. Besides, it's way too cold to go commando.”

She looked at him, and he thought he saw her eyes darken a little. “Do you really have a kilt?” she asked softly.

He lifted a corner of his mouth in a slow smile. “Wouldn't you like to know?”

“Fine. Dinner. The Cold Spot. Six o'clock.”

“Are you sure? You don't sound like you made up your mind there.” The Cold Spot wasn't the most romantic spot for dinner, but they had the best burgers in the county. And he knew the owner; he could make it work.

“Cute. 'Bye, Gavin Fraser.”

“ 'Bye, Maureen O'Connell.” She rolled up her window, and she was gone.