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What about living here part-time? Could he telecommute? Contrary to Daphne’s claims, she had both good satellite internet and good cell service.
What are you doing, buddy?
Thinking.
Maybe you should, I don’t know, ask her out before you make plans to move in.
But he was an accountant after all. He considered all the factors. He knew what he wanted, and he had to be sure it worked before he chased it. What he wouldn’t do was rush. No woman wanted a guy positioning himself as a friend, only to make the leap to more two seconds later.
Anything worth doing was worth doing right. And Daphne McFadden was definitely worth doing right.
Er, no, that didn’t come out correctly either.
Still, not untrue.
Chris took a quick sip of his coffee and then cleared his throat. “So, what’s it like up here in the winter?” he asked. Seriously? Why not just ask if she has an extra closet and a spare set of keys?
“Cold,” she said with a smile. “But I like it better than the lower mainland, actually. I’m not good with the Pacific Northwest’s idea of winter.”
“Rain, rain, and more rain? Gray skies and icy drizzle?” He actually didn’t mind the gray and mild winter.
“Yep. I prefer snow and sunshine. Once you have the snow, it doesn’t feel that cold if you bundle up. Short days, but I kind of like that, too. It’s like part-time hibernation—spend my mornings and evenings writing and reading by a roaring fire and my afternoons getting out and enjoying the snow.”
“Winter sports?”
She nodded. “Up here, minus twenty doesn’t keep people indoors.” She waved at the lake. “I can hike or ski or snowshoe across it and visit areas I can’t reach by foot in the summer. I’m thinking of biking across this winter, so I can go further.”
“Biking?”
“With fat tires, of course. Winter doesn’t keep Yukoners from their bikes. And then there are the sled-dog teams. They cross a few times a day.”
“Sled dogs? That’d be cool.” He looked at Tika, quietly wandering along the lake edge. “Do you pull sleds, girl?”
“She does. For me, at least. Sometimes for practicality—hauling wood. Sometimes just for fun. You should see her pulling me on a toboggan across the lake, running as fast as she can, loving it as much as I do. It’s…” Daphne blushed, as if she’d shown undue enthusiasm. “It’s fun.”
“It sounds awesome. Can you clear the ice and skate?”
“Sure, there are always patches cleared for hockey—”
Tires crunched gravel. It sounded less than twenty feet away, but after nearly two days at Daphne’s house, he’d learned that sound meant someone was driving down the mountain, hundreds of feet away.
When the crunching gravel got louder, he checked his watch.
“They’re early again,” Daphne said.
“Damn.”
“Yep.”
She straightened, relaxed-Daphne sliding away as she shifted into efficient-Dana mode.
Chris sighed, gulped his coffee, and pulled the glasses from his pocket. The crew’s rental truck engine died, its doors squeaked, and he squared his shoulders and headed through the last hundred feet of forest to meet them.
Daphne didn’t hurry to catch up. Enjoying the last moments of peace. He couldn’t blame her. It had been such a nice morning… until they showed up.
Ahead he made out the distant shape of a figure. The male camera operator was a beefy, middle-aged guy with sandy brown hair. He must have gotten out of the truck early to snap a few shots of the lake through the trees.
“Morning,” Chris called, just as Tika’s low growl wafted from the lakeside.
