The 48 Hour Hookup (Chase Brothers) by Sarah Ballance

Author:Sarah Ballance [Ballance, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, forced proximity, mountains, Series, stranded, Lovestruck, romantic comedy, fling, Entangled, category, contemporary romance, Chase Brothers, Sarah Ballance, winter, Bet
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2016-09-11T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

By the time he and Claire had finished sweeping the snow off the tree, it was late afternoon. Liam was surprised to see a plow had actually cleared the road to the lodge. Claire had a perfectly intact four-wheel drive truck that would have easily handled the fresh snow—maybe even better than the packed ice that was left after the plow went through—but a layer of ice had melted from the snow and made driving dangerous.

The plow driver had stopped in to make sure she was okay, and she’d offered him a bowl of stew. They’d sat there chatting over it like old friends, and when he left, it was with a full thermos of coffee, with Claire standing on the porch waving like they were all in one of those schmaltzy movies.

Meanwhile, Liam was left staring down a truck-crushing spruce that needed to somehow go through the front door. He sincerely hoped in that twenty-four hours since the tree had hit the ground—or, rather, his hood—that any creatures that might have been living in it had taken a hike. He hadn’t noticed any while brushing off snow, but that didn’t mean anything. Stanley sure hadn’t bothered to hit the bricks.

“What are you thinking?” Claire asked. She stood beside him, the expression on her face reflecting none of his concern over getting that thing through the door.

“That you’re probably going to want to cut ten feet off the bottom to get it in the lodge. And for future reference, I don’t think you’re supposed to ask men what they’re thinking. It’s never the touchy-feely stuff like women want it to be.”

“Clearly not. Your thoughts are murderous.”

He gave her a blank look. “Are you not the one who cut down this tree?”

“Yeah,” she shot back with impassioned defiance. “But I’m not asking to dismember it.”

He had a feeling that blank look of his hadn’t gone anywhere. “Okay, you’re going to have to help me pull. And I can’t guarantee there won’t be a loss of life or limb, considering the size of these bottom branches.” They were the size of entire trees, some of them, and he had no idea how Claire expected Liam to finagle them sideways through the front door of the lodge.

But he’d try. He twisted the tree so the largest of the branches faced up, giving them the height of the door for clearance. “You ready?”

Of course she wasn’t. She was still giving him a look.

“I know I’m amazing,” he said, “and even godlike, but I can’t move this tree through this door by myself. So unless you want to call the plow driver back to help you…”

“Godlike.” She laughed.

He let go of the branch. Pointedly. “You might want to save the mockery for after we get this thing up.”

“Noted.” Still, she didn’t exactly bother to hide her laughter as she took a spot next to him and gripped a branch.

Together, they pulled. To his surprise, the tree moved about six inches.

“That was easy,” she said.

“Yeah. Only about twenty-four and a half feet to go.

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