with her. Behind the wheel of her own car, the pavement
bare, it seemed no time before she left the placid Willamette Valley behind and began the climb into the forested foothills of the Cascade Mountains. As each
mile passed, her apprehension and anticipation ratcheted higher and tangled together.
She meant something to John, Fiona kept reassuring
herself. She wasn’t alone in feeling this powerful connection, or at least attraction. He had gone to a lot of effort to maintain the e-mail correspondence with her.
The e-mails held a whole lot more meaning when she
knew he’d had to drive a hundred miles round trip to
send each one. She might not have had the courage to
make this trip if he’d been able to casually reply whenever he had nothing better to do. The effort required, the fact that he’d driven down the mountain twice a week
when clearly he preferred to avoid town, that gave her
confidence.
On the other hand…she was going to spend as much
as ten days with a man she hardly knew. A man who had
gotten angry when she pressed him to find out what was
bothering him.
Going with the full intention of sharing his bed,
although they’d left that open.
I haven’t booked your room over the holidays,
he’d written.
She had been careful not to respond to that remark.
Knowing she could have a room to herself meant she
could chicken out. Or at least take her time. Get to
know him again before baring herself—literally—for
him.
Fiona stopped for lunch in Danson, not wanting to
arrive hungry in case John was busy with guests. The
choices were a homey-looking café and a burger joint.
She picked the burger joint, even though she was
tempted to opt for the café and hope she had a gossipy
waitress. It would be interesting to know what locals
thought of the new owner of Thunder Mountain Lodge.
But now that she was so close, Fiona couldn’t imagine
browsing a menu, waiting for food, then for a bill. The
need to get there was rising in her, to find out if John
Fallon still had that instant effect on her.
So she went in just to use the rest room and order her
burger and fries to go.
The forest closed in just outside of town. No more
than three or four inches of snow had lain frozen on the
ground in Danson, but with every hundred feet of elevation the road gained, the snowbanks grew higher.
There was still nowhere near the amount of snow as
there had been in November, but there was plenty for
cross-country skiers and snowmobilers. She passed
several turnouts with a couple of vehicles parked in
each and various tracks in the snow leading away.
She came around a curve in the road and suddenly,
there it was. Sooner than she’d expected. Thunder
Mountain Lodge, the familiar sign announced. Just
beyond it, the highway ended against a low wall of
snow. Fiona shivered in memory of her stupidity. She
and the kids had been the last people to make it over the
pass heading toward eastern Oregon, and would be the
last until sometime next spring. How long would it have
taken for them to be found if they’d gotten stuck up
there somewhere, with the snow that fell for two days
burying the van?
Thank God for Dieter, she thought, for at least the
hundredth time.
The narrower lane had been plowed, too, but patches
of snow clung to the hard-packed gravel. She drove carefully on the steep descent, her heart thudding as she waited for the lodge to come into sight. She had grown to love it,
Fiona realized; in comparison, her town house was bland.
No massive river rock fireplace, no deep, claw-foot
bathtub, no peeled log walls and broad plank floors.
One more curve, and the lodge appeared, looking just
as she remembered it the day they left, when she had
turned back just once, wanting to remember it accurately.
The steep, shake roof was punctuated by dormers
with small-paned windows for the bedrooms, a smaller
one behind which she knew lay the bathroom with that
amazing bathtub. The porch seemed larger without
snow cloaking stairs and footings. From this vantage
she could see the roofs of cabins amongst the trees, and
the shed that had been half-buried in snow and was
much larger than she’d realized, the size of perhaps a
triple garage.