‘Where should I hide him?’
Annie gave a deep sigh. ‘There’s nowhere that I can think of. Unless you shove him in the old icehouse, but I suspect he’d die of hypothermia within a few hours.’
Annie was right. There was nowhere outside that Kitty could hide the dog that wouldn’t result in him getting frozen. Even the summerhouse at the edge of the treeline was covered in snow and icicles, its windows frozen opaque. The inside of it couldn’t have been much warmer than the icehouse.
‘We’re going to have to tell Jonas,’ Kitty whispered, sighing at the thought of his gift being spoiled.
That’s when Annie stretched her head around the doorjamb again. ‘You could take him down to the cabin.’
‘Where?’
‘To the cabin by the lake. It’s got heat and it’s got food, plus Adam has nothing better to do. Take the dog down there and I’m sure he’ll help us out.’
Kitty was taken aback. The thought of taking the puppy down through the forest and over to the ramshackle wooden house was enough to make her stomach turn. The last thing she wanted to do was ask Adam for help after their previous encounters. He may have apologised, but she was in no doubt what he really thought of her. This would only make it worse.
‘Surely there must be somewhere up here I can keep an eye on him,’ she whispered back. ‘A garage or something?’
A silence was followed by Annie’s hollow laugh. ‘If you can think of anywhere let me know. I’ve been looking for a bolthole for these last forty years.’
In the gloom of the evening, Kitty scanned the grey-coloured landscape, her eyes failing to take in anything but the snow-covered land. There was no good hiding place for a small dog.
It was the cabin by the lake or bust.
‘Does Adam even like dogs?’ Kitty hissed. ‘Am I going to embarrass myself by turning up at his door?’
Annie walked through the doorway, her stout frame illuminated by the yellow kitchen light. It lent her an almost angel-like aura. ‘If there’s one thing I know about Adam, it’s that he’s a sucker for a sad story. All you have to do is spin him a line and he’s bound to look after the dog.’
‘I need to spin him a line?’ Kitty repeated faintly. ‘What kind of line?’ She was rubbish at lying, couldn’t tell a fib if she tried. A sense of impending doom came over her.
Annie huffed. ‘Just tell him it’s a rescue dog or something. Make up a story about how he managed to save a whole family from a fire before being burned himself. Anything to make Adam inclined to lend us a hand.’
‘You want me to lie to him?’ Please, no. Anything but that. She didn’t need to make him any angrier than he already was.
‘No!’ Annie protested. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Just make it easy for him to say yes.’
Somehow, Kitty couldn’t imagine a single situation where Adam would easily say yes. All she could think of was his irritated tone and his disapproving stare.
‘OK, if you say so,’ she agreed. ‘But if he shouts at me, I’m blaming you.’
‘Adam won’t shout at you, he’s a teddy bear,’ Annie replied.
Kitty grimaced, pulling her bottom lip firmly between her teeth. If there was one thing she knew, it was that the angry man living down by the lake was nothing like a teddy bear. If it wasn’t for the puppy and the fact that Jonas deserved a Christmas surprise, there was no way she’d be going down to the lake right now.
She couldn’t help wondering how she’d managed to get in this position. Reliant upon the good grace of a man who had already proved himself graceless. More importantly, she wondered what the hell she had to do to get herself out of it.
With the puppy trotting alongside her, they cleared the final distance to the old cabin, leaving two parallel trails of footprints behind them. Behind the thick drapes, Kitty could make out that there was a light burning, and from the wispy grey smoke curling up out of the chimney, there was a fire burning in there, too. The sight of it made her shiver.
What wouldn’t she give to warm up beside a roaring fire right now?
‘Well, boy, here goes nothing,’ she whispered, rapping on the wooden door with her knuckles. ‘Try to behave, OK? If he refuses to take you then we’re both out of luck.’
The door swung open, revealing Adam behind it, a look of surprise crossing his face when he saw Kitty and the dog standing there. His hair was wet – maybe he’d jus
t come out of the shower – and he was wearing a plain black T-shirt along with soft, comfortable jeans. Once again she was hit by his attractiveness, so much clearer to her when he wasn’t shouting. This time her heart pounding against her ribs had nothing to do with fear.
And everything to do with the way he looked.
Before she went to sleep last night, she’d spent an hour on her laptop, Googling him. All the pictures of him showed Adam as freshly shaven, his dark hair spilling over his forehead, his height eclipsing everybody around him. Even in those still images he had an aura that couldn’t be denied. No wonder people opened up to him in his documentaries, with those wide brown eyes and warm smile, it was almost impossible not to crumble in front of him.