“It’s okay, bae. Just be ready when I get there.”
She heard a tone that indicated he’d hung up on her. Galvanized into action, she opened drawers and took out several sets of underwear, T-shirts, and socks. She opened a closet and took down a quilted weekender from a shelf and filled it with jeans, leggings, and a couple of sweatshirts. Cherie went into the bathroom and gathered grooming, personal, and feminine products, and put them in a large cosmetic bag. She opened and closed drawers in the vanity to make certain she hadn’t forgotten anything.
Pulling on a rain poncho over her coat, she slipped her feet into a pair of boots lined with shearling. She was dressed for a New England winter day. Grasping the handles of the weekender in one hand and her ubiquitous tote in the other, she went down the staircase at the same time the doorbell rang.
Cherie opened the door to find Reese wearing a black slicker and baseball cap. He took the weekender and tote from her, and she picked the cake carrier off the table in the entryway. He waited while she locked the doors and escorted her to his pickup. He hadn’t turned off the engine, and the heat and the lingering scent of his cologne wrapped around her like a blanket as she sat on the passenger seat, the cake carrier resting on her lap, and secured her seat belt.
“Should I assume there’s something delicious in that container on your lap,” he said, as he slipped behind the wheel.
She stared at Reese’s distinctive profile. “It’s dessert. How are the roads?” she asked when he smiled at her.
“Treacherous. The bridge freezes over before the roadway, so it’s really slow going.”
“Do you have a lot of ice storms down here?”
Shifting into Reverse, Reese slowly backed out of the driveway. “We get enough. When I was a kid, we had one where the ice was so heavy it brought down power lines. We were in the dark for nearly a week. We had to resort to using candles for light and fireplaces for heat and cooking.”
“If there is a power failure, I hope it won’t last more than a day.” Cherie had experienced power failures after blizzards blanketed the Northeast region, and everyone would huddle in the kitchen, where her mother turned on the oven and cooked everything in the freezer to provide warmth and keep the food from spoiling.
“We don’t have to worry about that because I have a generator.”
“That’s something I’ll definitely need to buy,” Cherie told him.
“Do you have firewood for your fireplaces?” Reese asked her, as he slowed to under ten miles an hour.
“I found some in the garage.”
“Do you know how to light a fire?”
Cherie met his eyes when he gave her a quick glance. “Yes. I went camping overnight with some friends in college, and we stayed at a cabin that was unheated. Some of the guys who had been Boy Scouts made quick work of lighting fires in the fireplaces.”
“You went camping in the winter?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “It was late spring, and sometimes nighttime temperatures dip below forty.”
Reese turned the wipers to the fastest speed. “I would never take you for someone who would rough it in the woods.”
A slight frown appeared between her eyes. “Why would you say that?”
“Everything about you screams big-city sophisticate. Your tote and shoes are a definite giveaway.”
She glanced down at her Kate Spade Jemma booties. “I happen to like shoes and bags.”
While Tory Burch and Kate Spade were her favored designers, Cherie didn’t tell Reese that she’d made it a practice never to shop retail. If she saw a pair of shoes she liked, she’d wait for them to go on sale at the company’s outlet store, where they would be discounted as much as forty percent. It was the same with handbags, and she prided herself in not paying full price for whatever she wore.
“Do you have a problem with a woman spending a lot of money for her clothes?”
“No. If it’s her money, she can spend it any way she chooses.”
“What if it was your money, Reese? Would that pose a problem for you?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a long pause. “If the shoes made her happy, then I wouldn’t care how much they cost.”
Cherie was slightly taken aback with his explanation. “Are you saying it’s all about her happiness?”
“It’s always about her happiness, Cherie. I’m certain you’ve heard the expression happy girlfriend, happy life.”
Shifting on her seat, she gave him a long, penetrating stare. “I thought it was happy wife, happy life.”
