Read Online Baby, It's Cold Outside by Jennifer Greene, Merline Lovelace, Cindi Myers - Free Book Online

at the west window at the same time he was. The lodge was shadowed in that corner, firelight blocked from their view, but the darkness enabled them to see clearly outside. The medieval table was right there, with a dozen chairs around it, but neither seemed ready to sit. They both couldn’t seem to stop looking out at the beauty and silence of the landscape.
    He reached over to cuff her close to him, but it wasn’t a lover’s invitation, more just…affection, she thought. “Afraid our problems aren’t over just because the storm is, Doc. Can’t imagine that we’ll have power for days. No way to get out of here yet. Tomorrow morning, I’ll start splitting logs for more firewood.”
    She hadn’t planned on getting out for several more days, anyway. But she suspected both of them would suffer cabin fever if trapped inside forever. She wonderedif they’d make love again. He’d touched her, been touching her, as protectively as a lover, but his gaze had turned distant, his mood quiet. She didn’t know what that meant…but it seemed obvious that once they realized what the day was, their thoughts had turned inward.
    “What did you do when you were a kid at Christmas?” she asked.
    He leaned back against the window. “Had heaps of relatives over. There was always lots of noise, lots of food, lots of kids running around. When the women were getting serious about holiday doings, they’d kick out all the kids and guys to cross-country ski. When we got back, there’d be piles of presents under the tree. Families packed in together, stayed overnight usually. The kids would be three in a bed, the floor littered with sleeping bags.”
    “Sounds like enormous fun.”
    “Yup. Great fun, great family. Things started changing over time, of course. By the time the parents retired, the extended family seemed to be scattered all over the place. Everyone who can still gets together.” He hesitated. “Initially, when I got married, that was a serious part of the dream for me. I wanted to create more family like that. Cousins and brothers and sisters close enough to play together. Heaps of noise. Always a baby crying, a baby being rocked. Always so much food the table could hardly hold it all.”
    Emilie felt a thick lump in her throat, thinking again of all the repercussions of his ex-wife’s betrayal. The woman had not only destroyed a marriage, but a wholedream of a life—for what, just some selfish affair with another guy? How easy it was for her, to go out and create her brand of Christmas and family…but she’d left Rick as shrapnel.
    “How about you?” he asked gruffly. “How was the holiday at your house?”
    She didn’t mind answering, but she had to move, couldn’t just stand idle to talk. Not about this. “Right now, at this very moment, my dad and uncle will both be asleep in their chairs, probably with Jimmy Stewart on the tube. Christmas Eve, my brothers’ and uncle’s family will all have come over. They’d open the family presents, do the church thing. But Christmas morning, the single people would all congregate at my dad’s house…my dad and uncle are both widowers, and I’m not married, nor is my one older brother….”
    She ambled past the kitchen, with Rick ambling beside her, stopping to grab a cookie from the counter. She aimed back toward the warmth of the fireplace. “My dad will have made breakfast this morning. He’s not a cook, but he has one dish he makes. They’re a special kind of crepe, made with rum. They’re so rich, they’re to die for. We would have had an early-afternoon dinner—pretty much leftovers from the day before. Dad’s always had it catered. We could have any from five to twenty at the table, depending on everyone’s schedules. But it would be an awfully rare Christmas we made it through both days without one of us being called to the hospital.”
    “You’re missing it,” he said.
    She perched on the end of a couch, but as soon as he sat down, he scooped