Carrying a cup of hot coffee with her, she then tidied the great room, putting the blankets and towels she had used in the laundry room to be washed whenever power returned. She cleaned up the puddles of melted snow and ice. Tink had been back and forth through the water several times, of course, leaving wet doggy tracks all over the house. She followed his trail, crawling on the floor and blotting up pawprints.
"I thought I smelled coffee."
Her head jerked up. He was standing at the balcony railing, his hair tousled, his jaw dark with beard stubble, his eyes still heavy-lidded from sleep. His voice was hoarse, and she wondered if he was getting sick.
"I'll bring a cup up to you," she said. "It's too cold down here for you to be walking around without clothes."
"Then I think I'll stay right here. I'm not ready to be cold again, just yet." He gave her a crooked smile, and turned to pet Tink, who had bounded up the stairs as soon as he heard a new voice.
Hope went into her dad's room and searched until she found the long sweatpants. Then she collected a pair of shorts and some thick hunting socks, but try as she might she couldn't locate the extra-large sweatshirt she knew was here, somewhere. It was a gray University of Idaho shirt, and she had worn it once with leggings, but the thing had been so big she looked as if she were lost inside it. What had she done with it?
Maybe it was in the closet of the extra bedroom upstairs. She rotated her winter and summer clothing between that closet and the one in her room, but she didn't necessarily move everything.
With the small stack of clothes in her arms, she detoured to the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee, then carried everything up the stairs.
The roaring fire had rapidly warmed the upstairs. The bathroom door was open, and Price was in the shower. Hope set the cup on the vanity. "Here's your coffee."
He pulled the curtain aside and stuck his head out.
Water streamed down his face. "Would you hand it to me, please. Thanks." He drank deeply, sighing as the caffeine jolted through him.
"I brought you some clothes. I hope you don't mind wearing my father's shorts."
"I don't if he doesn't." Blue eyes regarded her over the rim of the cup. "I'm glad you said they belonged to your father and not your husband. I didn't ask, last night, but I don't fool around with married women, and I sure do want to fool around some more with you."
"I'm a widow." She paused. "I had the same thoughts about you this morning. That I hadn't thought to ask if you were married, I mean."
"I'm not. Divorced, no kids." He took another sip of coffee. "So where is your father?" he asked, his tone casual.
"Visiting his brother in Indianapolis. Uncle Pete had a heart attack, and Dad flew out. He's supposed to be gone another week."
Price handed the cup back to her, smiling. "Think the blizzard will last another week?"
She laughed. "I doubt it." Both his wrists were bruised, she noticed.
"Damn. At least there's no question of leaving today, though I guess I should let some people know where I am."
"You can't. The phone lines are down too. I just checked."
"What rotten luck." The blue eyes twinkled as he pulled the shower curtain closed. "Marooned with a sexy blond." From behind the curtain came the sound of cheerful whistling.
Hope felt like whistling a tune herself. She listened to the wind blow and hoped it would be days before he would be able to leave.
She remembered something. "Oh, I meant to ask, are you hurt anywhere? I didn't see any blood last night, but your uniform is torn and has blood on it, or at least I think it's blood."
A few seconds lapsed before he answered. "No, I'm not hurt. I don't know what the stain is."
"Your pistol and holster are missing too. Do you remember what happened to them?"
Again there was a pause, and when he spoke, he sounded as if he had his face turned up to the spray. "I must have left them in the Blazer."
"Why would you have taken off your gun belt?"
"Damn if I know. Ah ... do you have any weapons here? Other than the rifle I saw last night, that is."
"A pistol."
"Where do you keep it?"
"In my nightstand drawer. Why?"
"I might not be the only person to get stranded in the storm and come looking for shelter. It pays to be careful."
5.
When he was finished, he came downstairs, he was freshly shaved, with her father's borrowed razor, and he looked alert and vital in the sweat clothes she had provided. The big sweatshirt had been in the other closet after all, and it fit him perfectly, just loose enough to be comfortable.
She would normally have just eaten cereal, but with him there she was cooking a breakfast of bacon and eggs. He came up behind her as she stood at the island, turning bacon with a fork, and wrapped his arms around her waist. He kissed the top of her head, then rested his chin there. "I don't know which smells best, the coffee, the bacon, or you."
"Wow, I'm impressed. I must really smell good, if I rank up there with coffee and bacon."
She felt him grin, his chin moving on top of her head. "I could eat you right up." His tone was both teasing and serious, sensual, and a wave of heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment swept over her. She leaned back against him, her knees weak. He had a serious swelling in the groin area, and she rubbed her bottom against it.
"I think we need to go back to bed." There was no teasing at all in his voice this time.
"Now?"
"Now." He reached around her and turned off the cooktop.
Ten minutes later she was naked, breathless, trembling on the verge of climax. Her thighs were draped over his shoulders, and he was driving her, with his tongue, to absolute madness. She tried to pull him up and over her, but he pinned her wrists to the bed and continued what he was doing. She surrendered, her hips lifting, her body shuddering with completion. Only when she was limp did he move upward, covering her, sliding his erection into her with a smooth thrust that took him all the way in.
She inhaled deeply, having already forgotten how completely he filled her.
He began a gentle back-and-forth movement, gripping her shoulders, watching her face.
Guilt and her innate honesty nagged at her. "I'm not taking birth control pills," she blurted, knowing this wasn't exactly the best time to bring up her lack of protection.
He didn't stop. "I'm not wearing a rubber," he said equably. "I would stop, but that would be like closing the barn door after the horse is out, wouldn't it?"
Afterward, while she was in the bathroom, he finished dressing-again-and called out, "I'll go down and start breakfast again."
"I'll be there in a minute." She still felt incredibly weak-kneed, and relieved. She stared at her face in the mirror, her brown eyes huge. She was going to get pregnant. She knew it, sensed it. The prospect both terrified and exhilarated her. From now on, her life would be changed.
She went out into the bedroom and collected her scattered garments, pulling them on again. After a lifetime of caution and careful behavior, taking such a deliberate risk was nerve-racking, like climbing on board a space shuttle without any previous training.
It pays to be careful, Price had said, but sometimes it paid to be careless too. And, anyway, she was doing this deliberately, not carelessly.
One of her socks had ended up between the bed and the nightstand. She got down on her knees to retrieve it, and because she was there, because she had just been remembering what Price had said, she opened the night-stand drawer to make certain the pistol was there.
It wasn't.
Slowly she stood, staring down at the empty drawer. She knew the pistol had been there. When her dad had left, she had checked to make certain it was loaded and returned it to the same place. Living in such an isolated place, where self-defense was sometimes necessary, she had learned how to use the weapon. Idaho had more than its share of dangerous wildlife, both animal and human. The ruggedness of the mountains, the isolation, seemed to be a magnet for nut groups, from neo-Nazis to drug runners. She might happen upon a bear or a cougar, but she was more worried about happening upon a human predator.
The pistol had been there, and now it wasn't. Price had asked where she kept it, not that finding it would have been that difficult. But why hadn't he simply said he wanted it close to hand? He was a cop; she understood that he was more comfortable armed than unarmed, especially when he wasn't on his own turf.
She went downstairs, her expression thoughtful. He was standing at the island, taking up the bacon. "Price, do you have my pistol?"
He slanted a quick, assessing look at her, then turned back to the bacon. "Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me you were getting it?"
"I didn't want to worry you."
"Why would I be worried?"
"What I said about other people coming here."
"I wasn't worried, but you seem to be," she said pointedly.
"It's my job to worry. I feel more comfortable armed. I'll put the pistol back if it bothers you."
She looked around. She didn't see the weapon lying on the cabinet. "Where is it?"
"In my waistband."
She felt uneasy, but she didn't know why. She herself had thought that he would feel more comfortable armed, and he had said so himself. It was just-for a moment, his expression had been . . . hard. Distant. Maybe it was because he worked in law enforcement and saw a lot of things the average person never even dreamed of seeing that he expected the worst. But for a moment, just for a moment, he had looked as dangerous as any of the scum with whom he dealt. He had been so easy and approachable until then that the contrast rattled her.
She shoved the uneasiness away and didn't say anything more about the pistol.
Over breakfast she asked, "In what county do you work?"
"This one," he said. "But I haven't been here long. Like I said, I knew this place was here, but I hadn't had time to get up here and meet you and your dad-and Tinkerbell, of course."
The dog, lying on the floor between their chairs in obvious hopes of doubling his chances of catching a stray tidbit, perked up when he heard his name.
"Table scraps aren't good for you," Hope said sternly. "Besides, you've already eaten."
Tink didn't look discouraged, and Price laughed.
"How long have you worked in law enforcement?"
"Eleven years. I worked in Boise before." His mouth quirked with amusement. "For the record, I'm thirty-four, I've been divorced eight years, I've been known to have a few drinks, and I enjoy an occasional cigar, but I'm not a regular smoker. I don't attend any church, but I believe in God."
Hope put down her fork. She could feel her face turning red in mortification. "I wasn't-"
"Yes you were, and I don't blame you. When a woman lets a man make love to her, she has a right to reassure herself about him, find out every detail right down to the size of his Fruit of the Looms."
"Jockeys," she corrected, and turned even redder.
He shrugged. "I just look at sizes, not brand names." The amusement turned into a grin. "Stop blushing. So you looked at my briefs; I looked at your panties this morning, didn't I? I bet you just hung mine over the railing to dry, instead of sniffing them the way I did yours."
He had sniffed, drawing an exaggeratedly deep breath and rolling his eyes in pretended ecstasy, making her laugh, before he had tossed the garment over his shoulder with a flourish.
"You were goofing around," she mumbled.
"Was I? Maybe I was turned on. What do you think? Was my dick hard?"
"It was hard before we went upstairs, so you can't use that argument."
"It got hard when I thought about sniffing your underwear."
She began to laugh, enjoying his teasing. She was beginning to suspect arguing with him would be like swatting at smoke.
"I do have a really bad habit," he confessed.
"Oh?"
"I'm addicted to remote controls."
"You and about a hundred million other men in America. We can pick up one station here-one-and when my dad watches television, he sits with the remote control in his hand."
"I don't think I'm that bad." He grinned and reached for her hand. "So, Hope Bradshaw, when conditions are back to normal, will you go out to dinner with me?"
"Gee, I don't know," she said. "A date, huh? I don't know if I'm ready for that."
He chuckled and started to answer, but a sunbeam fell across their hands. Startled, they both looked at the light, then out the window. The wind had stopped blowing, and patches of blue sky were visible.
"I'll be damned," he said, getting up to walk to the window and look out. "I thought the storm would last longer than this."
"So did I," Hope said, her disappointment more intense than she wanted to show. He had asked her out, after all. The clearing weather meant he would be leaving sooner than she had anticipated, but it wasn't as if she wouldn't see him again.
She went over to the window too, and gasped when she saw the amount of snow. "Good heavens!" The familiar terrain was completely transformed, disguised by drifts of snow that appeared to level out the landscape. The wind had piled snow to window level on the porch.
"It looks like at least three feet. The ski resort operators will love this, but it'll take the snowplows a while to clear the roads." He walked to the door and opened it, and the frigidity of the air seemed to suck the warmth from the room. "Jesus!" He slammed the door. "The temperature has to be below zero. No chance of any of this melting."
Oddly, the improved weather seemed to make Price uneasy. As the day progressed, Hope noticed several times that he went from window to window, looking out, though he would stand to one side as he did so. She was busy, as being confined to the house didn't mean there weren't any chores to do, such as laundry, but doing it without electricity was twice as hard and took twice as long.
Price helped her wring out the clothes she had washed by hand, then braved the cold long enough to carry in more firewood while she hung the clothes over the stair railings to dry. She checked his uniform, picking up the shirt and feeling the seams, which would be the last to dry. Another hour would do it, she thought, as hot as Price was keeping the fire. The temperature on the second level had to be close to ninety.
She started to drape the shirt over the railing again when her attention was caught by the tag. The shirt was a size fifteen and a half. That was odd. She knew Price was bigger than that. The shirt had in fact been tight on him; she remembered how strained the buttons had been last night. Of course, he had been wearing a thermal shirt underneath, which would make the uniform seem tighter than it was. But if she had been buying a shirt for Price, she wouldn't have looked at anything smaller than a sixteen and a half.
He came in with a load of wood and stacked it on the fireplace. "I'm going to clear off the steps," he called up to her.