The refrigerator has officially given up on life.
I discover this delightful fact when I open it looking for something to make for dinner and get hit with a wave of not-quite-cold air. The temperature gauge inside reads forty-eight degrees, which is not all that far from the current kitchen room temperature.
Fantasticalicious.
For reference, the food safety danger zone starts at forty degrees. Which means we’re about six hours away from everything in there becoming a science experiment. And not the good kind that advances human knowledge. More like the kind that gives you salmonella.
I catalog the contents. Gregory’s personal chef really went all out before leaving. There’s got to be two hundred dollars worth of organic produce alone. Grass-fed steaks. Free-range chicken. Wild-caught salmon. Artisanal cheeses that would make my monthly grocery budget cringe.
And all of it about to go bad.
“Problem?” Gregory’s voice comes from behind me.
I don’t turn around. Still too angry about this morning’s revelation to look at him without wanting to throw something.
“Refrigerator’s gone,” I say. “Without power, we’ve got maybe six hours before everything inside spoils.”
“Can’t we just keep the door closed?” he asks. “Trap the cold?”
Oh sweet summer child.
I finally turn to look at him. Big mistake. He’s leaning against the kitchen island with his arms crossed, making his biceps bulge beneath that cashmere sweater of his. The late afternoon light coming through the windows catches his face and makes his blue eyes look almost silver.
Stop it.
He poisoned your grandmother’s village.
His arms are not allowed to be attractive.
“Thermodynamics doesn’t work like that,” I tell him, forcing my brain back to science instead of the way his arms look. “Heat transfer is constant. The fridge is just a well-insulated box, but without active cooling, it’ll equalize with the ambient environment. Which in this case is about fifty-four degrees and dropping.”
He frowns. “So what do we do?”
I look out the window at the blizzard. Then at the thermometer mounted just outside it.
Negative twelve degrees.
“We move it outside,” I say.
He frowns. “Outside.”
“Outside. Natural freezer. The temperature out there will keep everything frozen solid.”
He’s quiet for a moment, processing this. I can practically see him trying to find a flaw in the logic.
Go ahead, billionaire boy. Tell me how your currently useless money could solve this better.
But he just nods slowly. “All right. What do we need?”
Oh.
He’s actually listening to me.
That throws me off balance more than I want to admit.
“Do you have eaves anywhere?” I say, refocusing. “Where the snow can’t get?”
He nods. “The north side. Next to the wood. It’s away from the wind. For now, anyway.”
