“Get out of the car,” I growled.
“Oh, sure. Let me just grab a few things.”
“Hurry up. It’s fucking freezing out here.”
She snorted out a laugh, not at all concerned that she was about to be stranded here for the foreseeable future. “I should have left the shop earlier, but I had a few deliveries to make, and just when I thought I was done, I remembered that I hadn’t returned Mrs. Bennett’s platter from her cookies. So, I swungpast her place, and of course, I got talked into staying for a half hour while she made tea—” she glanced over at me, a sweet smile on her face, “which is always amazing. Really, she must have some secret on the best ways to make tea.”
“Can you hurry this up?”
Shoving her purse through the window, she waited expectantly for me to take it. Rolling my eyes, I tucked it into my side and then grabbed the various other things she shoved my way. A bag of something from her shop, a small bag of dog food she no doubt intended to spread all over my property, and a few grocery bags.
“Josie, I’m not an octopus.”
“Oh, right,” she laughed. “Well, I think that’s everything.”
She rolled up her window and shut off her car, then checked her car one last time for anything she might have left behind.
Unlike me, she was prepared for the storm. With pink gloves and a matching hat, she looked like a little girl out to play in the snow.
“Ready?” she asked, cheery as ever.
“Sure.” Turning with loaded arms, I stalked back to the truck and piled everything into the back seat, then slammed the door.
It was shocking how much the truck cut the freezing temperatures, even though it wasn’t warmed up.
“Is this normal for around here?”
“What? The snowstorm? Absolutely. We always get at least one cold front, followed by a terrible storm, before the season ends. This is actually mild compared to previous years.”
“And you thought it was a good idea to stay out in it?”
“Well, I hadn’t planned to stay out. As you can see, I did all my shopping earlier.”
“You should have done it yesterday,” I snapped.
I felt her eyes on me, but she wasn’t upset. Rarely had I seen her actually mad. Even when we sparred, it was like she was trying to goad me.
“Maybe, but I don’t see you bundled up in your house either.”
“I was at work.”
“Funny how that excuse works for a man, but not a woman.”
“You ended up on the side of the road,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but that was more human error than anything else.”
I didn’t want to hear it, to know how this woman got herself into a ditch in the snow, but it wasn’t the snow’s fault.
And yet…
“I give. How was it human error?”
“Well,” she bounced cheerily in her seat as she shifted to face me. “See, I was digging through my purse to see if I had my keys on me. Because I didn’t want to get all the way home and then realize I had locked myself out. That would be horrible. I’d have to drive all the way back to the store, and then all the way back home. And?—”
“Yeah, I get it. But what about your brother?”
“Sawyer?”
