Snowflake Wishes (7 page)

Noah looked around him. “We've got two winter coats, one blanket, and two vinyl booth seats. Suggestions?”

“Well, last time some guy purposely stranded me in a mountain diner—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes.

“What if we each sit on one side and put our feet up on the other? Kind of sit-sleep?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Will your feet
reach
over to this side?”

“Really? A short joke?” She shook her head, shifting her body so her feet came up under the table and onto his side of the booth. It was hideously awkward, since the position left her butt hanging somewhere in midair under the booth.

“Comfortable?” His eyebrows were up again, his lips trying not to smile.

“Just like a feather bed.”

“Come sit on this side with me. I'll even let you lean on me if you promise not to snore.”

She laughed. “I don't snore.”

“Of course not. Never did.”

With those two sentences, Piper felt walls crumbling as she remembered him yawning through an entire Sunday long ago. It turned out she'd kept him awake for most of the night, but he hadn't had the heart to poke her … or suffocate her with a pillow.

The wind howled outside the window, making Piper shiver, even though the diner was perfectly warm. She looked at Noah, and every cell in her body wanted to scooch over and sit beside him, letting his warmth envelop her as they both drifted to sleep.

“Come on, Piper. It's an accepted blizzard survival method—you curl up and share body heat.”

“We're in a perfectly warm diner.”

He tipped his head toward the window. “In a blizzard. It counts.”

She rolled her eyes, but before she could talk herself out of it, she pushed herself out of the booth and then slid in beside him. He stretched his legs across to the other seat, and she'd be damned if he didn't actually look kind of comfortable.

He closed his eyes and crossed his arms, the picture of a guy who had no intentions of taking liberties with the situation. She should have been relieved, but instead, she found herself wishing maybe he'd sling his arm around her shoulders or something.

“You can prop your feet up on my legs if it helps, shorty.” His eyes stayed closed, but he smiled.

Piper fussed around with her coat, trying to make the tiny booth as comfortable as possible, and finally she gingerly propped her feet on his legs, then laid her head back against the top of the booth. She couldn't imagine sleeping in this position.

“You're never going to fall asleep like that.” He opened one eye and lifted his arm. “C'mere. I won't bite.”

With a sigh, she leaned against him, snuggling in as his arm came down around her. His body was the perfect combination of hard, soft, warm … solid, and it was all she could do not to sneak her hand under his sweater to feel the sculpted planes of his chest.

She swallowed hard.

He opened one eye again. “I know it's tough being this close to my body without ripping my clothes off, but if you could remember we're in a public diner, I'd appreciate it.”

“I'll do my best.” She kept her head down lest he see the redness she could feel taking over her cheeks.

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, and she struggled not to melt. “Sweet dreams, Piper.”

She stayed snuggled against him for what felt like an hour, but despite being actually sort of comfortable, she couldn't fall asleep. Her brain was cruising at warp speed, and her pathetic little eggs were having a luau, thinking there was a remote possibility they might not actually die.

“Piper?” His voice rumbled through his chest and to her cheek. “You going to twitch all night?”

“I'm not twitching.”

“You
always
twitch when you're too amped up to sleep.” He squeezed her. “Need a story?”

She closed her eyes tightly, assaulted by sudden, sweet memories. Years ago, whenever she'd had trouble falling asleep, he'd rub her back and tell her stories—silly little nonsense tales he pulled out of his imagination. He'd speak in his most soothing voice, and she'd fall into a deep, relaxed lull … but before she ever fell asleep, his hand would still and his voice would soften, and then
he'd
be the one to fall into dreamland first.

She'd never had the heart to tell him he always succumbed to his own stories before she did, because she'd never wanted him to stop telling them. After his breathing was slow and even, she'd slide out of bed, sit down at her easel, and paint a scene from the story. Then she'd write down as much of the tale as she could remember, and then, when he'd wake up and pull her back to bed, she'd finally be able to sleep.

She still had those stories—and those paintings—tucked away in her bedroom closet.

“I'd love a story,” she finally answered, then felt desolation creep through her.

He'd tell one, but this time, she wouldn't be able to paint it afterward.

Chapter 6

Early the next morning, Piper was startled awake by the sound of a plow outside the window. She squinted her eyes against the morning sunlight just creeping through the panes, then sat up carefully, trying not to wake Noah. He'd fallen asleep first, but she hadn't been far behind him, and visions of his story were still dancing around in her head.

“Morning, sunshine.” He smiled, brushing a stray hair away from her face. It was a move so tender that it made her want to sigh and sink right back against his body.

“How long have you been awake?”

“Sunrise hit me between the eyes about an hour ago.”

She pulled away, stretching. “You must be as stiff as a board.” She slid out of the booth. “Want to stand up?”

She stepped away from the booth so he could slide out, and when he stood up to stretch, she found her eyes traveling over his chest and up to his morning stubble. When her eyes met his, she saw amusement, like he'd caught her looking and knew exactly what she'd been thinking.

People were stirring from their uncomfortable sleeping spots, and Piper could hear the cook banging pots back in the kitchen. The smell of fresh coffee hit her nose as Darla pushed through the swinging doors, carrying two huge carafes.

“Free coffee for anybody who helps shovel!”

She put the carafes on the counter, along with a stack of clean coffee cups, and though Piper was just about ready to kill for a hot cup of coffee, she waited while the others got their cups and went back to their spots. Then she filled up two mugs, handing one to Noah as she poured creamer in hers.

“Still like yours black?” She grimaced as she stirred hers.

“Still pollute yours with flavors that are not coffee?”

“Just cream.” She rolled her eyes. “And if you'd grown up on my mother's coffee, you'd have learned to love creamer, too.”

He stared out the window, sipping his coffee as the morning sunlight touched the tips of his eyelashes, and Piper had a vision of him sitting on a front porch someday, looking out over a sunrise-lit lake from his Adirondack chair. It was an image that hit her right in the gut—one she'd had in her head for a long time—and for a moment, she tried to picture somebody besides him in that chair.

She couldn't.

She closed her eyes and braced her hands around her mug, wishing the heat would seep in and bring sanity to her brain before she completely fell under Noah's spell again.

He looked at her over his cup, smiling in that way that crinkled the corners of his eyes so perfectly. And all she could think of in that moment was kissing him again. Her eyes locked on his lips, and his on hers, and for a long, long moment, neither of them moved.

“You want some breakfast?” Darla appeared at the end of the table, startling them both. “Looks like the bridge'll be open in an hour or so. Probably safe to head out then, if we're shoveled out. What can I get you?”

“Um, I—” Piper fumbled for the laminated menu, hoping thoughts of pancakes and bacon would replace the ones of wishing they
were
stranded at a B and B with a huge bed and a claw-foot tub.

Noah cleared his throat. “I'll have the number three. With bacon.” He flipped the menu. “And home fries.”

Piper looked up at the waitress. “I'll have the same.”

Half an hour later, Piper pushed away her plate, stuffed. “You may have to roll me to the truck. I'm not going to need to eat again till next weekend.”

“Right. This is you we're talking about.”

“Okay, fine. Till at least two o'clock, then.” She wrinkled her nose as she looked out the window at the massive piles of snow. No one seemed very anxious yet to pay off their coffee with labor. “Should we go help shovel?”

“You ready to get back?”

His question was innocent, but they both heard the undertone. The sooner they got back, the sooner they'd have to face the reality that her life was still in Echo Lake, and his was—somewhere else.

She sighed. “I suppose we have to at some point, right?”

He shrugged, holding up his cup. “Good coffee here. I'm in no rush.”

“Okay.” She shifted awkwardly in the booth, searching for the words she'd been trying to formulate since they'd woken up, but so far, all she had was a jumbled mess of thoughts. However, time was getting short, and she needed some answers before they got back to Echo Lake.

“So … when you headed up here from Boston on Friday, what did you hope things would look like … today?”

Noah studied her over the rim of his cup. Then he set it down. “Piper, you know I'd never lie to you, right?”

“I think so.”

“I wouldn't. I never did.” His eyes held hers, and she couldn't look away. “Being with you this weekend feels like I hit a time warp on the interstate and jumped back seven years. You've changed so much, but at the core, you haven't changed a bit.”

He reached for her hand. “I knew … I still loved you—but I loved the you I remembered. And I knew you couldn't possibly still be that same person.”

“Oh.”
Ouch.
Did that mean he
didn't
think he could love the person she was now? Was she really all that different?

Her eggs emitted little tiny death-bleats.

He squeezed her fingers. “You're not the same person—you shouldn't be, can't be. The problem is, I'm supposed to fly out in a week, but I don't even want to go back to Boston tonight. I'm not ready for the weekend to end, because I feel like I just found you again.”

“Oh.” The bleats subsided a little.

Noah chuckled. “Your vocabulary's diminishing rapidly.”

“I know. Sorry.” She blew out a breath. “It's all just—so much to take in. I thought you were gone forever, and now? You're—here. Sort of. But you're leaving.”

“I know.”

“Then … what are we doing, really?”

“I don't know.”

She frowned. “Now
your
vocabulary's diminishing.”

“I know.” He cringed. “Sorry. I think—there's a lot to think about. Forty-eight hours ago, I thought you were probably married with six kids, and you assumed I was probably dead.”

“I didn't—”

He put up a hand. “It's a lot to process, for both of us.”

He sat back, tapping his fingers on the table, studying her face. “The thing is, Piper, as much as this weekend has been better than a dream come true, I don't want to end up hurting you again. I don't. I'm the same guy I was seven years ago. I'm still chasing the high, I'm still traveling the world, I'm still parking my backpack for a month at a time, never quite settling down. That hasn't changed. And seven years ago, that guy wasn't right for you.”

She took a deep breath as her eggs gave up and built a tiny gangplank. “Is there any chance it ever could? Change? I mean, is this what you picture life looking like for you? Forever?”

He shrugged slowly, like he hadn't really paused to consider any alternative. “I don't know it any other way.”

“Then how can you know it's the best way for you? Don't you ever get lonely? Don't you ever wish there was someone to come home to at night?”

She swallowed hard. How the hell did
she
know whether he'd ever had someone to come home to, since her? Maybe he had a
someone
in every place he'd ever been.

He looked at her, long and hard, then closed his eyes like it hurt.

“I never wanted anyone to come home to you but you, Piper.”

*   *   *

An hour later, the silence in the truck cab stretched thin between them. The same impasse that had separated them the first time looked like it might just do so again this time, and Piper closed her eyes, trying to block the visions of Noah's kisses from her head.

Suddenly, he braked and swerved to the side of the road, then punched the truck into reverse.

She sat up straight, peering out the side window. “What's the matter?”

“I saw tracks.” He pointed out her window, where a small patch of flat land quickly headed over what looked like a huge cliff.

She put her hand to her throat when she saw the tracks. They ended at the edge. Oh, God.

He parked the truck and jumped out, grabbing a big black bag from the bed of the truck before sprinting toward where the tracks disappeared. Piper was only two steps behind him, and he put a stiff arm out to catch her when she reached him.

Below them—far, far below them—she could see the hood of a red SUV, almost covered with snow. Beside it, the Abenaki River ran fast, even in the dead of winter, and she couldn't see any footprints emerging from any side of the car.

“Oh, God, Noah.”

“I know.” He looked around, assessing the landscape with his eyes while he unzipped his bag. “I'm going down there.”

She put a hand on his chest. “How? It's a cliff! You can't!”