Money Shot by Sey Susan

Author:Sey, Susan [Sey, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-04-17T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

THREE HOURS later the sky dropped onto the island, exactly as Rush had predicted. Snow rose and fell in strange, howling twists outside the frosted windows, driving the evergreens to moan and rock and weep. Icy air leaked into the Ranger Station straight through the walls, or so it seemed to Goose. It reached deep into the core of her and leached away something vital and warm.

“Good Lord,” she said, rubbing her arms and moving closer to the stove. Unease perched lightly in her belly. “Was that thunder?”

“Yeah.” Rush opened the stove door to feed the fire and Goose all but crawled up his back in an effort to get at the heat. She spread her hands in the blast of hot air.

“You can have snow and thunder at the same time?”

“Sure.” He threw her a glance over his shoulder, blinked at how near she was. “Chilly?”

“Aren’t you?” She looked out the window—the part that wasn’t yet buried in snow anyway—and shuddered.

“You might want to put on a sweater or something,” he said. “I don’t think this old stove will pump out much more heat. It’s pretty much running at capacity. Plus we’ll want to be relatively conservative with the wood. We don’t know how long this little squall will last yet.”

“Little squall?” The wind battered the door like a wild beast that had scented its prey. “You call this little?”

“Sure.” He fed the fire a log and closed the stove door. “We’ve still got power, don’t we? Until the power goes out, it’s hardly—”

The lights flickered, dimmed, then died.

“—a storm.” Rush sighed. “Okay, now it’s a storm.”

“Wonderful.”

“Come on. Help me light the lamps. Then we can get set up in here for the night.”

He groped through the storm-induced twilight and came up with her arm. His hand was so warm and solid and reassuring that she leaned into him. She was so damn cold. After a single startled moment, he gave her arm a brisk scrub, a quick up-and-down with his hand. The sort fathers give chilly daughters. If she hadn’t been so freaked out at finding the passionate battle raging inside herself suddenly reflected in the out-of-doors, she might’ve been offended. Or at least amused.

As it was she simply leaned closer.

“Wait, get what set up in here?” she asked as he led her into the kitchen, where he’d arranged a series of antique hurricane lamps earlier. He handed her a disposable lighter and she lifted the glass globes and began filling the cabin with an oily yellow light.

“Our beds.”

Goose fumbled the lighter.

“Excuse me?”

“Power’s out,” he said, slipping a glass globe over the wick she’d finally managed to light. “Which means the fans that move hot air through the cabin are also out. Unless you’re looking forward to waking up tomorrow morning with icicles on your eyebrows, we’re bunking down in here for the night.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll close off the doors to the bedrooms, too. Minimize the space the stove needs to heat. I filled a few five-gallon buckets before the water pump went out.

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