Her vehemence made him smile. “I’m not asking permission, Lilly.”

“I’ll go.” Yet even as she heard herself volunteering, she quailed at the thought of setting foot outside the security and relative warmth of the cabin.

He looked her up and down. “You couldn’t carry enough to make any difference. I may not be able to bring back much, but it would be more than you could handle. Besides, your boots are wet. You could get frostbite. I’m the one who has to go.”

They argued about it for another five minutes, but all the while, regardless of her arguments against the idea, he was preparing to do it. “Is there anything i

n the shed I could use, like a sled? Something to stack the wood on and drag along?”

She ran a quick mental inventory, then shook her head. “Unfortunately Dutch and I removed everything except some basic tools. As you go in, on your right, there’s a large wooden chest we used as a toolbox. You may find something useful in it. There’s an ax, I know. Larger than the hatchet on the porch. You said the logs needed to be split, so if you can carry the ax, too, you should bring it back.”

“Once I get past the porch steps, I angle off that way, correct?” He indicated the general direction.

“Correct.”

“Anything between here and there I should be aware of? Tree stump, sinkhole, boulder?”

She tried to envision any potential obstacles on the path. “I don’t believe so. It’s a fairly straight shot. But once you get across the clearing and into the woods . . .”

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “It’ll be rougher.”

“How will you see?”

He removed a tiny flashlight from his coat pocket.

It didn’t look all that reliable. “What if the battery runs out? You could get lost.”

“I have a sixth sense about direction. If I can see well enough to get myself there, I’ll be able to find my way back. But if the cabin lights should go out while I’m not here—I’m expecting that at any time. Ice is hell on power lines.” She nodded agreement. “If you lose power, light one of the candles and put it in a window.”

“I don’t have any matches.”

He withdrew a matchbook from another coat pocket and handed it to her. “Keep the matches and candles together so you’ll know where they are if you need them.”

Suddenly she was struck by the lunacy of what he was about to do. “Tierney, please rethink this. We can break up the furniture and burn it. The shelves in the bookcases, the coffee table, cabinet doors. Before we run out of fuel we’ll be rescued. And the propane may last longer than we expect.”

“I’m not willing to risk it. Besides, no sense in trashing the cabin unless we’re absolutely forced. I’ll be all right. I’ve trekked through worse.”

“During a blizzard?”

He didn’t respond to that as he reached for his cap. When he picked it up, he frowned with distaste. “It’s stiff with dried blood. Mind if I borrow your stadium blanket?”

She helped him fashion a hood as he had for her earlier, and then he was ready. Trying one last argument, she said, “People with concussions aren’t supposed to exert themselves. You could black out, your sixth sense of direction could fail you, you could lose your way and either walk off a cliff or get lost and freeze to death.”

“We who are about to die . . .” He saluted her.

“Don’t joke.”

“I wish I was.” He worked his scarf up over the lower half of his face and reached for the doorknob. But after taking hold of it, he hesitated, turned back, and pulled the scarf down past his mouth. “If I don’t make it back, I’m going to hate like hell that I never kissed you.”

His eyes were as blue as flame, and as entrancing. They held her gaze as he worked the scarf back up over his nose. When he opened the door, the blast of icy air was like a slap in the face, and about that short-lived. He pulled the door securely shut as soon as he’d slipped through.

Rushing to the window, Lilly shoved back the drapery, lending him light through the panes. He turned and gave her a thumbs-up for thinking of it. She went to the other window and did the same, then cupped her hands around her eyes and watched him through the frosted glass. With each step, he carefully planted his boot and made certain he had solid footing beneath him before putting his full weight on it.

The windows shed an apron of light over the area immediately in front of the cabin, but it didn’t extend far, and Tierney eventually walked out of it. Impatiently Lilly wiped away the fog created by her breath on the cold glass. She saw the feeble beam of the flashlight bobbing erratically in the swirling precipitation.

Soon she couldn’t see even that.

• • •

Tags: Sandra Brown Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net