LITMIR.BIZ

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      “And if there is something wrong with it that I can’t fix,” she announced, ripping the entire roll of film out of the camera in several torn sections and dropping them onto the ice-encrusted dock, “I’m not going to overreact.”

      All of which didn’t fully explain why Connor was greeted, on his return with the snowmobile several minutes later, with the news that as soon as baby Jane and all the bags were unloaded, he had to drive the minivan up to the main road. Karen needed to make an emergency dash into Albany to get her very expensive, state-of-the-art, obscure brand of camera repaired immediately.

      “I’ll be gone three hours max,” she finished.

      “Karen, it’s over an hour’s drive each way,” Connor pointed out patiently. “And then you have to get the—”

      “Okay, three and a half. But I’ll be back before dark.”

      “It’s already nearly four o’clock.”

      “Before dinner.” She paused at last, and listened. “That’s Jane waking up, Allie.”

      “Yes, I can hear her.”

      Jane was waking up happy. There were some singing and cooing and gurgling sounds coming from the backseat of the van.

      “If you can get her and put on her snowsuit, Allie, then Connor can take you and her and the diaper bag over to the cabin now, while I unload the rest of our gear. Then he can come straight back and drive me up to the main road. I can be on my way in five minutes.”

      This time, Connor didn’t even bother to offer a more realistic time-frame, and Allie was too busy thinking, Jane. I’m going to have to look after Jane. All by myself. No one else around at all. For at least half an hour while Connor drives up and walks back down and loads our gear onto the snowmobile. And then when he gets back, it’ll be just him and me and Jane. For hours. I don’t want to do it. I’m scared. I’m not ready. I don’t know yet if I’ll ever be ready. Why can’t Karen see that? Why isn’t she helping me with this?

      Because Karen was scared, too.

      Allie could see it and hear it in the panicky plans and the jittery movements. First and foremost, Karen was a mother and a wife. She wanted a big, loving, untidy family in her big Victorian house next to Connor’s. But she had a strong creative drive as well.

      Her career as a commercial artist and photographer was important to her, this cover for a guaranteed bestseller was her biggest break so far. She needed to continue this success if she and John were to afford that parcel of kids they dreamed of. She didn’t want to blow it, and her camera had jammed, and of course she was scared.

      “Sounds do-able,” Connor said. He gave an apparently casual glance at the horizon over the snow-covered mountains that ringed Diamond Lake and added, half under his breath, “More or less. If we’re lucky.” Then aloud he said, “Let’s go, Allie.”

      “Don’t hold dinner for me,” Karen told Connor. “Although I’ll definitely be back.”

      “Of course you will,” Connor soothed her, as if he hadn’t just spent five minutes trying to convince her she shouldn’t go in the first place. He hunched his shoulders against the growing chill. It was only just past four o’clock, but the day was darkening by the minute. There was bad weather in the forecast, although it hadn’t made its appearance yet.

      “And for Jane you’ll need to—” She tucked a strand of light brown hair behind her ear and it stuck out messily, adding to her aura of nervous distraction.

      “I know a fair bit about babies,” Connor soothed her again.

      “Allie…doesn’t.”

      “I gathered that,” he nodded.

      He was actually a little put off by how cold Allie seemed toward her cute little niece. Maybe his positive first impressions were going to need some revision. She had neatly ducked the task of getting Jane into her snowsuit and Karen had done it instead, with a tight face. Was she angry at her sister’s lack of interest?

      I would be, Connor decided inwardly. It doesn’t take much to show a little warmth toward a baby.

      “Look after her—and Allie,” Karen said now.

      “Oh. Sure. Of course.” Did Allie need looking after?

      “Seriously, Connor.” For a moment, Karen actually held still long enough to look him in the eye. “She’s been through a really rough time, and she’s such a great person. Warm, funny, sincere.” She stopped suddenly, as if rethinking the wisdom of what she’d just said. “Anyway, I’ll be back pretty soon. I know what you said about the forecast, but look at that sky.” She waved in the direction where it was still blue. “Does that look like a storm to you?”

      It didn’t, and Connor didn’t waste his breath pointing to the clouds that had begun to build behind them. She could well be right. The storm would pass to the west, or hold off altogether.

      “And I have my cell phone,” Karen was saying. “Oh, this is such a nightmare!”

      “No, it isn’t. Really, it isn’t.”

      She hadn’t heard. “See you later.”

      She was gone in a flurry of dirty roadside snow seconds later, and so he turned with a fatalistic shrug and began to walk back down the winding quarter mile of track to Diamond Lake.

      Allie stood outside to greet him after he’d brought the snowmobile across the lake and wheeled it around to park it by the front door.

      “You said this place was a cabin,” she said accusingly.

      “Never did,” he returned lightly, following her inside. She peeled off her coat to reveal black pants tucked into damp leather boots, and a pale blue angora sweater that hugged her small frame.

      He decided Allie was an assertive woman, despite her size! If he hadn’t heard it in her voice, he’d have seen it in the lift of her strong, but graceful jaw and in the electric flash of her dark eyes. Eyes like hot chocolate syrup, he could see, now that she’d unjammed that hat from her head.

      “Karen said—”

      “Karen might have said it was a cabin,” he pointed out, enjoying their trivial conflict. “But I didn’t. I probably used the word ‘place,’ as in, ‘my brother Tom’s place in the Adirondack Mountains.’ She must have assumed it was a cabin, as people tend to, when you mention mountains. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.”

      “Disappointed?” She shivered and stepped toward the warmth of the open fire, a sudden grin lighting up her face and draining away the tension in her that he still didn’t understand. “Are you kidding? It’s fabulous! And you even lit this fire! I’ve been toasting myself.”

      “After what you said about blazing fires and good music and hot chocolate, how could I not?”

      Knowing what a panic Karen was in, he hadn’t wasted time on coming into the house with Allie after he’d brought her here with baby Jane. And he’d deliberately left the fire he’d lit for her earlier to be a surprise. He didn’t know, at the time, what had prompted the impulse to light it in the first place. The central heating was very efficient.

      Now he understood. He’d wanted to imagine her face lighting up like that when she first saw it, and he’d gotten his reward as it lit up again now. It changed her whole personality, hinted at a warmth and softness and sense of fun that he hadn’t seen much of yet in that small package of womanhood. Karen had mentioned those qualities, but he wasn’t going to take them on trust. He liked to make his own decisions.

      “Well, it was wonderful,” she answered him. “Thank you. I haven’t even tried to look around or unpack.”

      “You haven’t made yourself that hot chocolate yet?”

      “No, as I said, I’ve just been toasting myself. And—and Jane.”

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