Page 5

“Don’t freak out. The latch is shot. When the wind catches it, it flies open.” I rattled the knob to show her. “Lock’s the only thing holding it.”

She eyed the door, then me. “You could fix the latch.”

“I could.”

Her mouth tightened, but something underneath it looked like she was trying not to be amused.

I went to the front window. Her SUV already had a sheet of ice across the windshield. I couldn’t see the road from the house, but I didn’t need to. The first curve sat in shade all day. The hill after it dropped fast. She wouldn’t make it half a mile.

“So, I got your voicemail,” I said. Making small talk wasn’t one of my skills. Neither was having Emmy Parker stranded in my house, but Mother Nature didn’t seem to give a fuck about that.

She went still with one glove halfway off. “About that…”

“You said I had something of yours.”

“Yeah.” She gestured toward the front window. “That giant crate that got delivered here by accident.”

“Then you told me not to open it.”

“I also explained why.”

“Not real well.”

Her cheeks pinked as she yanked the glove free and shoved it in her pocket. “You could have called me back.”

“I was about to. I was on the other line pulling my drivers off the roads.” I nodded toward the porch. “And that’s on me.”

She blinked. “What is?”

“Your crate. The carrier hands us the big freight for the last few miles. Somebody put our address on the label instead of yours, and my driver should’ve caught it.”

“So it is your fault.”

“That’s what I said.”

She looked like she’d come ready for a fight and didn’t know what to do since I’d already admitted defeat.

“I was going to bring it to you tomorrow,” I said. “Assuming the roads are clear.”

“Tomorrow is too late.”

“Figured that out when you showed up.”

She pulled off the other glove. “It wasn’t like this when I left town.”

“Maybe not, but it was coming.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Oh yeah? Did the weather alert give it away?” I didn’t mean to sound like an asshole, but I had no idea what to do with her until the weather cleared. Well, that wasn’t totally accurate. I had a few ideas about what I could do with Emmy Parker now, but those weren’t the kind that ought to be shared.

She put her hands on her hips. “The weather alert said I had until four, though Janice told me it might be bad out here.”

I grunted. If Janice knew where Emmy was headed, half of Big Wood knew by now, and the other half would hear by dinner.

Emmy unzipped her coat and looked around. Her eyes stopped on the mantel.

“No Christmas tree?”