Read Online Snowbound Summer by Veronica Tower - Free Book Online Page B

appeared to be a room key card in his hand.
    “Why yes, I am,” she played along. “I'm looking for my boyfriend. Perhaps you've seen him. He's very handsome, about your height, with the same very blond hair.”
    “Well, I would hope he's handsome,” Ron said. “A woman as beautiful as you deserves a handsome man beside her.” He looked around the lobby. “I don't see anyone matching your description. Are you sure you're in the right place? Perhaps he thought he was meeting you out on the slopes?”
    “I don't think so,” Kara told him. She wondered if she were saying the right things for Ron's little game. “I'm certain he was supposed to meet me here in the lobby.”
    “Well, perhaps you'd like to get a drink in the bar,” Ron suggested, “just while we wait for him.”
    "We?" Kara asked.
    “If you wouldn't mind the company, of course,” Ron said. “I hate to think of what might happen if you were to sit in the bar by yourself. A beautiful woman like you—men would flock to you! What would your poor foolish boyfriend think if he were to finally get here and see you talking to half a dozen strange men?”
    “What would he think if he were to find me talking to one extraordinarily handsome man?” Kara countered. She felt just a little bit awkward with Ron's game, but it was fun trying to figure out what to say. She'd never felt all that comfortable meeting men. Ron had been the first stranger to pick her up . Before that friends had always set her up.
    “Well, I would hope it would worry him,” Ron said. “Perhaps if he realized how many men would like to enjoy your company, he wouldn't leave you standing in a lobby by yourself.”
    He offered her his arm and she happily entwined her own in his. Intellectually, Kara had known she was attractive before she met Ron, but walking with him arm-in-arm like this made her feel beautiful as well—striking and desirable.
    He led her toward the bar where a busboy was cleaning up a spilled drink with a mop and actually making the mess worse by not ringing enough of the water out of the mop before pushing it around the floor. Ron guided Kara around the spreading water and helped her onto a barstool. “What can I get you?” he asked.
    “A Black and Tan,” she suggested. It had become their drink and she enjoyed the mix of slightly bitter ale with the thick and creamy Guinness stout.
    Ron ordered two and then sat back on his own stool, boldly appraising her body.
    Kara wasn't exactly certain what she was supposed to say now. She didn't know the rules of the game. What she wanted to do—what she hoped Ron was planning to do—was to run up to the room that went with the key card he was sporting where she could rip off his clothes and impale herself on his body. She knew Ron had to want her, too. She wondered how long he would wait to act on his desires.
    “You know what this reminds me of?” Ron asked.
    “No, what?”
    “When I was fifteen years old,” he began.
    Kara suppressed the impetuous urge to make a joke about how short a time ago that must have been. Ron must have seen the impulse cross Kara's face for he stopped talking, gave her a mock serious glare, and then started speaking again.
    “When I was fifteen years old, my best friend Kenny's parents went out of town and his older brother threw a party. There was a lot of beer and loud music and Kenny and I weren't really supposed to be there, but his brother couldn't exactly get rid of us either.”
    Kara did not immediately see the connection between this memory and sitting with Ron in a bar.
    “There was a girl at the party. She was a couple of years older than me. I think her name was Sandy something or other and somehow we ended up sitting together in the basement. People were making out and getting drunk all around us—which was really exciting. We both wanted to do that, too, but I was only fifteen and she didn't know how to take the lead either.”
    Kara could now vaguely see the direction