One Frosty Night. Janice Kay Johnson

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      “Maybe partly because we don’t have any pets,” his father said mildly.

      Carson looked ostentatiously in all his mirrors before backing out onto the as yet unplowed street, then starting sedately forward. Olivia relaxed. If he crashed here in town, no one would die, not with a twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit.

      They had to park a couple of blocks from the hill leading up to the high school, new since she and Ben had gone there. Once they’d parked and started stomping through the snow, Carson carrying the plastic disc under his arm and Ben pulling the sled by its rope, they could hear the whoosh of sleds coming down the hill. Excited voices rose.

      Ben gazed upward. “You been to the new high school?”

      “Not to go in,” Olivia said. “I drove up one day just to see it.” She’d actually been thinking about attending the Friday night home game, until her friend Polly had called to invite her to dinner. Maybe another night.

      Ben and Carson called hello to people they knew, introducing Olivia to a few. She was astonished at how many of the adults she recognized—some who’d been recent customers at the store, but more who’d been her schoolmates and now had children.

      “Why don’t you try the sled?” she suggested to Carson, who demurred just long enough to be polite before sitting down on it, scooting forward with his heels, then gliding forward. He was really moving by the time he reached the bottom, letting out one delighted whoop.

      She insisted Ben go next, accepting the accusation of cowardice and watching as he shot down the hill, spun out of control and crashed into a snowbank.

      While she waited for him and Carson, she warmed her hands over a fire someone had started in a burn barrel hauled to the street for that purpose, and she joined the general conversation.

      “Olivia!” a familiar voice called, and she turned to see one of the women she’d had dinner with Friday night. Autumn had been a good friend in high school. Unlike the others in their crowd, she’d gotten married right out of high school and now had three kids, the oldest almost a teenager. In fact, two of her kids were currently preparing to launch themselves down the hill on a sled.

      “I can’t believe you’re here!” Autumn exclaimed. “I thought you’d still be snowed in.”

      “Um...Ben Hovik and his son came and shoveled our driveway. He just went down the hill.”

      “I saw him.” Her eyes narrowed. “Friday night, you stayed totally mum about Hovik Stage Two.”

      “There’s no stage two,” Olivia said. “We’re just having fun today.”

      “Uh-huh. Back in high school, you’d been out with Ben like half a dozen times before you told any of us— Ooh! Sabrina’s here, too.”

      Thank goodness for distractions.

      Both turned to include another of Olivia’s friends, this one a basketball teammate who had become a nurse and returned to Crescent Creek. Although Autumn and Olivia hadn’t stayed in close touch, Friday night had been all about updating each other. It turned out Sabrina had married a former logger turned builder who’d been several years ahead of them in school and therefore not on their dating radar back then. Her husband, Aaron, was a regular at Bowen’s, so Olivia greeted him with pleasure, too, when he appeared pulling a plastic disc, their two-year-old son riding his shoulders, half strangling his dad and giggling.

      She had a surreal moment, looking around and realizing how many of the people at this casual gathering she knew and even considered to be friends. In all the years since leaving Crescent Creek, she’d been a city dweller who had become accustomed to being surrounded by strangers. She had forgotten what it was like to be part of a whole instead of always standing apart.

      A lovely, warm feeling filled her, except as she turned to watch Ben and Carson cresting the hill, she heard Autumn whispering to someone.

      “With Ben Hovik, of all people...”

      She never had been able to trust Autumn with a secret, Olivia remembered. If she’d confided in her the way she had in Ben the other day, everyone in Autumn’s wide circle of acquaintances would know the Bowen marriage had been faltering even before Charles’s death, and that Olivia and her mother weren’t getting along.

      So, you had to take the bad with the good, she reflected. Laughing at the sight of Ben still looking like the Abominable Snowman, she decided that, right this minute, the good was in ascendance.

      Others started teasing him, but his gaze was fixed firmly on her.

      “Bend your head,” she told him, and when he obliged, she swiped at the snow clinging to his hat. “That,” she told him, “is why I plan to stick to my sled.”

      “Yeah, but you’ve got to crash. What’s the fun if you don’t?”

      Carson grinned at her, too. “Tall girls aren’t afraid of crashing, are they?”

      Man and boy let her go next. She steered herself right down the center of the hill, laughing in exhilaration the whole way, despite watering eyes and a face so cold her nose had gone numb. Oh, she’d missed doing things like this!

      Inevitably Ben suggested they take a run together on the sled.

      “Why not?” Olivia said recklessly. “Only who gets to steer?”

      His face came vividly alive when he laughed. “Let’s review. Which of us is the careful driver?”

      “I haven’t had a ticket in—” Oops. Seeing Carson’s shocked expression, she said, “Um, quite a while.”

      “Right. I’m steering. Besides—” he gave her another rakish grin “—if you’re in back, you wouldn’t be able to see.”

      “I could sit in front and steer.” If she could forget being in Ben Hovik’s arms for the first time in forever. Okay, not really in his arms, but...close enough.

      Ben sat down first and waited while she gingerly lowered herself on the sled, hesitated, then gave up and wrapped her arms around his thighs to hold on. Even through his quilted pants, she felt his muscles tighten as if in response. He took a good grip of the rope, Carson gave them a running push and they were off.

      The rush of cold air and exhilaration were there this time, too. Hearing the rumble of Ben’s laugh, feeling his rough cheek brush hers as he looked over her shoulder, made her heart do some stupid gymnastics.

      The sled had just started to slow when he yanked hard on one side of the rope and steered them straight at a snowbank.

      “What are you doing?” she yelled.

      Wham. They both went flying, their bodies tangled together.

      She ended up sprawled on top of Ben. For just a moment, she went utterly still, looking down at him. Past and present overlaid like transparencies. His face thinner, more boyish, but the laugh, oh so much the same. Crinkles beside those espresso-dark eyes that didn’t used to be there. His mouth, more sensual now. A look on his face, both familiar and...not. The hunger was there, but something else, too.

      She СКАЧАТЬ