Frosted (6 page)

Having been married for decades, it wasn’t that Grace hadn’t been kissed before, but she’d never experienced this rush of heat—of passion—from kissing Harold. The push and pull of each intense lip lock, the soft sucking sound of his tongue licking hers, the way his thumbs stroked her cheek…it was consuming, almost dangerous, because she almost felt that she would do anything, give anything, be anything, for it to never, ever end.

Which it did. Too soon.

He leaned back from her suddenly, his chest still pressed against hers, but his face several inches away. Panting lightly, his eyes were wide as they stared at her lips before searching her face.

“Why’d you stop?” she asked, her breasts pushing into the hard expanse of his chest with every shallow breath.

“Because that was…um…” He dropped her eyes, shifting so that he could sit beside her on the couch, and she immediately missed the warmth of his body partially covering hers. Her blanket had slipped a little, uncovering her thighs against the back of the couch, and he righted it, tucking it under her legs and then keeping his hand tucked beneath her as he leaned over her.

“What? What was it?” She couldn’t help the ribbon of panic that unfurled through her body, even as she kept her voice calm.
Hadn’t he enjoyed it? Oh, God, what if he hadn’t?

He covered his lips with his hand for a moment, staring at her, before clearing his throat. “Intense.”

His words made her so happy, she laughed softly. “Don’t you kiss all the lonely widows who sprain their ankles in the woods in the middle of a blizzard?”

He shook his head, his cheeks pink as he dropped her eyes, smiling down at the blanket. “No.”

“Never?”

“I’ve never kissed a guest before five minutes ago,” he said softly. “Wasn’t appropriate, but I…the way you asked, I couldn’t say no.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” Truth be told, all she wanted was for him to do it again.

“Probably wasn’t a good idea, though,” he added.

Shoot.

“No?” she asked, hearing the uncertainty in her voice.

He shook his head, removing his hand from under her thigh and scooting back until he rested against the opposite side of the couch facing Grace. He lifted one leg, pressing it flush against hers and kept the other on the floor. In a strange way, it comforted her to still have physical contact with him, even if it wasn’t the contact she specifically wanted. It meant that, maybe, he still wanted her.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said, anxious to learn more about him, to keep him engaged. “Is Roger your only child?”

He took a deep breath, looking out the window where the snow still fell at a clip. “You want some tea? I could boil some water.”

“Sure,” she answered. “Thanks.” He got up and she instantly missed the warmth of his leg pressed against hers, but wanted to keep him chatting, “You never told me about this place…why isn’t it open today?”

He answered her from the kitchen behind her where she heard him opening cabinets and setting mugs on the counter. “It’s usually open on the weekends, but if you look in the corner of the room, behind you, by the door, you’ll see the hole in the ceiling. Bad storm a few weeks back and a tree fell through the roof. Building isn’t up to code until we can get a contractor up to fix it.”

She glanced over her shoulder where the corner of the ceiling was covered with a royal blue plastic tarp.

“Is that why there’s no electricity?”

“Yep.” He set two mugs on the table in front of her, and then headed back to the kitchen where she heard water running. “There’s a generator, but I checked when we got here and it’s completely covered with snow. I don’t even know if it has fuel. I figure we’ll be okay with the fire until the snow stops. Plenty of wood.”

When he crossed before her again, his hands were covered in long, thick mitts and he was holding an oven rack in one hand and a small, cast iron pot by the handle in the other. He knelt in front of the fire and sectioned off some whitish-orange coals, laid the rack over the coals and gently placed the pot on the grate. Apparently satisfied, he stepped back, taking off the gloves and laying them beside the fireplace on top of the log pile.

To her relief, he headed back to the couch and sat opposite her, lifting his leg again and pressing it against hers. She almost shuddered with relief, reveling in the ease of it, the familiarity.

“To answer your question, no. Roger’s one of three. His twin, Derek, is in college out in Colorado. His sister, Tami, is a nurse over in Ithaca. Roger always loved the mountains. Decided to come work at the resort instead of going to college.”

“He has a nice personality for the hospitality business,” she noted.

He grinned at her. “He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

“Good parenting, I guess.”

“That was all Lena. She was warm as a summer day.”

“You must miss her,” said Grace, trying to suppress a ridiculous surge of jealousy.

“I did. Some days, I still do. But I can’t live like that.”

“The first year was the worst,” she said softly, remembering her own first year without Harold.

The sudden realization that she had no one with whom to share news about their children and grandchildren, no one who remembered the little minutiae of their life together. Despite their lack of passion, they’d had a rich life together and she’d turned to Harold with all of her news, her thoughts, her plans. And suddenly he wasn’t there to hear her, to nod his head, or chuck her under the chin.

And there were other ways the loss hurt in little unexpected sneak-attacks: Having no steady date for events, no one to take her coat to the coat room and hold the claim check. No one to warm her cold feet in bed and take care of their annual taxes. No one to reach the platter in the top cabinet or roll up the hose when the gardeners forgot to do it.

She had loved Harold, but even more, she’d been accustomed to him. She hadn’t really realized all of the quiet ways he’d infiltrated her life until he wasn’t around anymore. Losing him was like losing a limb in some ways. And it was challenging to learn how to live without it.

“I thought the second year was worse,” said Tray. “Everyone’s so concerned about you the first year, and you’re in shock. The second year you start to realize all the ways she completed you, and you’re left with all of this…incompleteness. Loose ends flapping in the breeze. It’s painful to tie them all down. Every time you think you’ve gotten the last one, another one appears—it’s Christmastime and you realize she did all the shopping and wrapping. Or it’s time for your annual dental appointment and she’s not there to harass you into going.” He smiled sadly, his hand dropping to Grace’s leg and rubbing distractedly. “By the third year, you can breathe again. You can, I don’t know,
stand
it. Bear it.”

Grace nodded in sympathy and perfect understanding.

“And then the vultures descend,” she added dryly.

He grinned at her. “All those good-looking lonely widows who want to be kissed by a local while they’re on vacation.”

“I’m not on vacation,” she confessed, her cheeks coloring. “My kids sent me to the “Silver Wings” weekend at the lodge.”

“How’s that going for you, Red?”

She flushed even deeper from the nickname.

“Unexpectedly well,” she teased.

He laughed softly, nodding at her. “What about you?”

“What
about
me?”

“Kids?”

“Yes. Two. Well, four. I helped to raised Harold’s boys, Henry and Edward. My Addy’s thirty-one and her brother, Lloyd, is twenty-nine.”

“So you were twelve when you started having children,” he deadpanned.

“You’re a few years off,” she volleyed back, delighted by his compliment.

“Damn fine looking woman, Grace.”

“Why, thank you, Tray.”

“Damn fine kisser, too.”

“And here I thought I could use a little more practice.”

His breath caught again in that way she was coming to like so much. It made her feel powerful and sexy, and while Grace wasn’t a stranger to power, sexy was a whole new world.

“I don’t know if my heart can take it,” he said softly, staring back at her.

He might have meant the words as a joke, but his tone was unexpectedly poignant and made her pause, because it was a good point. She’d only known Tray for a handful of hours, but she could tell that he wasn’t someone she was going to be able to quickly forget once she was home again. She imagined herself at a hospital benefit, unconsciously scanning the crowd for his face…walking down Fifth Avenue on her way to church and feeling the phantom caress of his warm hands on her cheeks…trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep, night after night, as the memory of his lips claiming hers kept her awake until dawn.

As she resumed her lonely life, she’d know that there was a man living and breathing on the earth who’d made her feel more electric in a few hours than her husband had made her feel in thirty some-odd years. How long would it take to let go of him? Would she
ever
really let go or would he be this unshakable fantasy for the rest of her life?

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

She darted a glance at the fire, where the pot of water hissed and boiled, and finally said something sensible: “That it’s time for tea.”

***

As they sipped their tea in companionable silence, Grace wondered if Tray was having any of the same thoughts she was.

Granted, they’d only just met one another, but Grace had been alive for almost six decades and she knew that the chemistry she had with him wasn’t commonplace. It was…extraordinary.

“So,” she said. “You’re dating someone? Here at the resort?”

He swung his other leg up on the couch, sinking down a little so that her feet were nestled under his shoulder.

It was late-afternoon and in the past hour or so, it had started darkening outside. When Tray had opened the door of the warming hut, the snow had been piled almost a full foot against the door. She wondered if they were going to have to stay the night and quickly realized that the one and only desperate hope of her heart was that they’d be
forced
to spend the night. She wanted as much time as possible with Tray and she knew that once they returned to the resort, they’d be a guest and an employee again, expected to go their separate ways.

“Sort of,” he hedged.

“Who is she?” asked Grace, holding her still warm mug between her hands.

“Why do you want to know this?”

She shrugged because she didn’t have a good answer.
Because we’re lying on a couch together in the middle of nowhere. Because I like you. Because you like me. Because maybe it’ll be easier for me to walk away tomorrow if I think you’ve got someone else already in your life.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I go out with Bonnie. She works in the gift shop.”

“Ah,” murmured Grace, wondering if she was the forty-ish woman she’d spied in the sundry shop this morning. “Is it serious?”

“If it was serious,” he said, “I wouldn’t have kissed you.”

She looked down quickly, bringing her mug to her lips so he wouldn’t see how much she liked this answer.

“How about you?”

“I’m supposed to have dinner tonight with Stewart Whitman,” she offered.

“Another Silver Winger?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Rich?”

“Very.”

“Handsome?”

“Quite.”

He mumbled it like a curse word. “
Quite
.”

“I know him from home.”

“Which is where?”

“Manhattan.”

“Of course it is.”

“What does that mean?”

“That we couldn’t possibly be more different,” he said, leaning forward to place his cup on the table, before settling back down. He reached for her foot absently, pulling it onto his chest, stroking and massaging it gently as he pouted.

“That’s a big assumption,” she said. “I bet we have more in common than you know.”

“Like what?” he asked. “You’re from Manhattan. I’m from Deer Mountain.”

“I’m actually from Connecticut.”

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a look that said,
Big difference.

“You’re rich. I’m…comfortable,” he grumbled.

“So neither of us have money problems.”

He shook his head, but her heart fluttered when his lips tilted up a smidge. “You’re well educated. I only have a high school diploma.”

“And yet I have no survival skills,” she said. “I’d have died out there if you hadn’t come along.”

“I have a feeling you’re made of tougher stuff than you give yourself credit for.”

“I love old movies,” she said suddenly. “Especially Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.”

He grinned at her. “Me too. And Grace Kelley. You ever see “High Society”? It’s one of my favorites.”

“Then try “The Philadelphia Story”,” she said with a grin. “Same story. And starring Kate.”

“I love that one, too,” he said. “What else do you do for fun?”

Bad question for Grace since in the past several years Mrs. Harold Edwin Luff III hadn’t been a barrel of laughs. She grimaced.

“What’s that look for?”

“I’m not very fun.”

“Says who?”