But when she stepped out of the bedroom, two chubby-cheeked faces beamed up at her from the kitchen table as they scraped the last oatmeal from their bowls. No sign of distress whatsoever.
“Mom!” Lucas yelped, bounding from his chair and nearly tripping over Precious’s massive bulk in his enthusiasm. “It’s snowing!”
“I saw,” Eden said mildly, crossing to the table and hugging him—she couldn’t help it. Her heart was so full at the sight of him looking so happy and young.
Connor stood at the counter, his face as impassive as ever, but his eyes were warm. “Coffee?”
“Please.”
“Sugar? Cream?”
Eden gaped. “You have cream?”
“Coffee-mate.”
“Just black.” She didn’t take cream anyway, but the mention of it was so exotic it had startled her.
Connor pressed the cup into her hands, and the smell nearly sent her into another orgasm.
All this and the man can make coffee like a god. Does it get better?
Then he tweaked Hannah Rose’s ponytail, making the little girl giggle, and Eden’s heart gave up all consideration of resistance.
If only they could stay…
She nodded toward the window. “How bad is it?”
“It’s coming down pretty hard. No one’s going anywhere today.”
Her relief was profound. If they couldn’t get out today, then no one could get in to find them. She was glad their respite with Connor wasn’t going to be over so soon.
He set a bowl of oatmeal in front of her before taking the fourth chair at the table, nursing his own coffee. “There’s a snowmobile in the shed with enough fuel to get us to town, but it won’t do us any good until the visibility clears. Could be later today. More likely tomorrow.”
“It’s a snow day, Mom!” Lucas exclaimed. “Can we play outside?”
Play. Lucas, who had been a silent soldier, never comfortable enough to relax even in Seattle when things had seemed so safe on the surface, was laughing and smiling and asking to go out and play. She didn’t even consider denying him. “Of course you can.”
The children crowed and bounded off to collect their snow gear. Eden smiled after them then turned and found Connor watching her over the rim of his coffee cup.
“Sleep well?”
She couldn’t help the blush that heated her cheeks. “You know I did.”
His expression didn’t change, but smugness radiated off him. Smugness and the dark heat flaring in his green eyes.
Suddenly Eden couldn’t wait for the kids to go outside.
Resisting the urge to fan herself, she focused on her oatmeal. “Do you think the storm will stop Ben? I mean, will the kids be okay outside by themselves?”
“I can’t imagine anyone traveling in this, but I’ll send Precious out with them. She’ll be the first to know if anyone finds us.”
Eden’s gaze went to the dog sprawled lazily like the world’s largest floor rug. “Precious. I’m guessing you weren’t the one who named her.”
Connor stilled, and Eden realized belatedly how stupid it was to bring up the Big Bad Past when the present had been so pleasant, but before she could take it back, he said softly, “Madison. My wife. She named her.”
He stretched one arm behind his shoulder and plucked a picture frame off a side table without looking. He handed it to her and turned his attention back to his coffee cup.
It was an all-smiles vacation photo of the perfect couple. Connor, looking insanely gorgeous, no surprise, and the woman who must be Madison Reed, dark-haired, with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen and a sweet face that was Hollywood’s version of girl next door. No surprise Connor’s wife had been a looker, but it did reawaken Eden’s sleeping insecurities. She was no Madison Reed.
“She was beautiful.”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat roughly.
Eden didn’t say more. She wasn’t in the habit of talking about the dead. Maybe it was wrong to want to forget them, but if she remembered one loss, she remembered all of them, and the weight of it was too much when every person you’d ever met was dead except a pair of children. Instead she just looked forward, remembering their cultural history—books and movies—but wiping the slate clean on her personal attachments.
The kids burst out of the guest bedroom, bellowing gleefully as they ran to the front door and the bliss of a snow day. Eden rose from the table, checking to be sure scarves and gloves and hats were all in place and zippers zipped before sending the kids out into the cold, Precious bounding after them, snapping at the falling snow.
“I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have asked,” she said, watching the kids throw themselves onto the ground and swing their arms and legs to make snow angels.
“No. You can ask. It is what it is.”
She heard clattering in the kitchen where he cleaned up the mess from breakfast and stepped away from the window to help.
Under normal circumstances being a widower would have been unusual. Perhaps she would have asked about his wife. But the conversation changed when everyone had lost not just someone but everyone.
“They aren’t really yours, are they? Hannah Rose and Lucas? Not both of them.”
Eden froze with her hands wrapped around a bowl. “I… Of course they are,” she lied, the words too rushed to be believable.
Connor didn’t look up from the sponge in his hands. He didn’t have to.
“How did you know?”
He shrugged. “Breakfast. Lucas was telling Hannah Rose how
his
mom put brown sugar and raisins in his oatmeal. Didn’t sound like he meant you.”
Eden swallowed around a lump suddenly taking residence in her throat. “Amber. His mother’s name was Amber. She was my stepsister. My dad married her mom when I was twelve and she was sixteen. She had three boys. Hunter, Lucas and Taylor.” She’d looked like a supermodel but laughed like a hyena and had the ugliest tattoo on her lower back.
“And Hannah Rose?”
Eden flinched. This part was harder to admit. Her responsibility for Lucas was tenuous, but her claim on Hannah Rose was nonexistent. But she loved those kids. They were her everything, and she didn’t want to lose them.
“Hannah Rose lived down the street from Amber. I’d moved in with her and the boys when Taylor got sick. After…everything…Lucas and I couldn’t get the car to start. Amber didn’t have a garage, and it was January in Alaska. The engine block had frozen solid. I’d already checked the neighborhood for other survivors but hadn’t found any. They’d either died or left already. I was looking for car keys in a neighbor’s house when I heard a noise upstairs and found Hannah Rose. She’d been on her own for a while then. Probably three weeks or so. But she was neat as a pin. She’d been living off of Go-Gurt and cereal. I took her home and she’s been with us ever since.”
“Did you find the car keys?”
The practical question loosened a knot she hadn’t been aware her stomach had tied. “Later that week. The power grid had just failed, and I didn’t want to get stuck somewhere without a fireplace. Later we drove down to the supermarket. That’s where we found the other Anchorage survivors—though that came later. It was just us for the first couple months. For a while it felt like we were the only ones in the world who had lived, you know?”
They were silent for a long moment, Eden drying the dishes Connor washed in the bucket in the sink.
“When the second epidemic hit, I volunteered at the hospital,” he offered, startling her with the confession. “After so many people died, I was almost relieved when I got sick. But then I got better.”
“That’s how it was with us too. We just bounced back.”
“The doctors who were left tried to figure out how I’d fought it. They worked until the end to find a cure, but only three of us survived. The other two went to Spokane to look for more survivors. And I went home. I’ve been on my own ever since. Me and Precious.”
Eden waited. She didn’t want to cut off his soul-baring moment, but she didn’t want to talk about this anymore either. They all had tragedy, but she’d never subscribed to the
share your personal tragedy and we’ll grow closer
brand of psychobabble armchair therapy. They all had weaknesses, but she didn’t want to be appreciated for her vulnerabilities but for her strengths.
She set the last bowl on the open shelving and forced a smile. “Well. Now that we’ve gotten the tragic-past discussion out of the way, how’s about a game of Scrabble?” She nodded toward the board games stacked on a low shelf. “Though I should warn you, I’m undefeated. Librarians are notorious word nerds.”
As she moved past him toward the living room, Connor curled one arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “I have a better idea.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” she admitted breathlessly.
A slow smile started in Connor’s eyes and moved to his mouth. “How long do you think the kids will be outside?”
“Not long enough.”
“Then there’s no time to waste.”
His first kiss melted her knees. His second melted her inhibitions. She leaned into his touch, just wallowing in the kiss because they couldn’t go any further with the kids right on the other side of the door, but she didn’t need further. The man was a world-class kisser. Eden licked, stroked and sucked, hoping the children played in the snow for a
long
time.
Eden lay in the darkness, listening to the beat of Connor’s heart beneath her ear. She couldn’t stop thinking about the last three days.
It had snowed constantly for the first two, so much so the kids had actually gotten tired of snow forts and snowball fights. Connor didn’t have a stock of toys lying around, but they’d played Crazy Eights, Go Fish and Hide-and-Seek all afternoon. Eden had set up a makeshift schoolroom and quizzed them on their writing, both kids being model students as a change to show off for Connor. In the evenings, Eden read to them from a leather-bound copy of
Peter Pan
Connor plucked from one of the shelves in the guestroom.
It was all very domestic and idyllic—and totally artificial. For three days they played the parts of the perfect nuclear family. They could have given
Leave It to Beaver
a run for its money in American dreaminess. But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t permanent. A fact Eden had to keep reminding herself of.
She tried not to fixate on Hannah Rose presenting Connor with a picture she’d drawn for him or the way the big man blushed and gave the girl one of his slow smiles. She ignored the studious intensity Lucas fixed on Connor as he explained flanking maneuvers in preparation for their next epic snowball fight—and the pealing laughter she hadn’t heard from Lucas in months when Connor stumbled dramatically to the ground beneath the eight-year-old’s tackle.
After the kids’ bath time and bedtime, Eden and Connor were early to bed themselves—with the exception of one notable and slippery interlude against the shower wall. The sex had been great from the start, but sometime over the last few days it had become more than just intense physical chemistry and the pleasurable scratching of a mutual itch.
Beyond attraction, beyond trust, Eden
liked
him.
More than that, she liked who she was when she was with him. Who they all were. No longer a stressed-out single mom trying desperately to maintain some sense of youth in a pair of old-beyond-their-years children. Now they were a family. He’d fallen into the daddy role so easily—or perhaps an uncle would be more accurate. There was still a distance, a lingering caution in the way the kids approached him, but it was a start. And a start toward a normal family life was more than she’d even dreamed of a week ago.
This wasn’t love. It was just casting a part in a fantasy. But she wasn’t sure her heart knew the difference. They hadn’t had a fight yet. Her stepsister always preached that you didn’t know how you really stood with a man until you’d disagreed with him—but all those
Cosmo
relationship rules were from a different time. In just a year the mores of her world had shifted, and Eden wasn’t sure what love was and wasn’t in this new society.
Maybe love was security and safety and the renewal of hope she hadn’t felt in months.
Connor didn’t say much, but his actions spoke of honor and affection. Still, she didn’t have a clue where he stood emotionally, and wasn’t sure she wanted to know. If he cared for her, for them, she would never be able to leave—and they were too close to Seattle to ever have peace. And if he was just entertaining himself with her, biding his time until they left, she didn’t want to know.
It had stopped snowing this evening. The visibility had cleared and tomorrow they would head to town and then south.
South
. For the first time in months the word didn’t fill her with hope, but a restless, shapeless sense of loss.
She wanted to make this last day last. To hold tomorrow at bay as long as possible.
And so, here it was, on the far side of midnight, when she should have been resting up for tomorrow’s long journey, and she couldn’t sleep. Connor’s arm held her pressed to his side, a heavy weight against her back. One she would miss in nights to come.
“You okay?”
Eden jerked, startled by the low rumble of his voice. “You’re awake.”
“You keep twitching and turning. Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you up. Just thinking.”
Connor brushed the hair back from her face, his fingertips resting for a moment on her temple. “Mm.”
There was a slight inquiring inflection to the sound. It was about as close to an invitation for conversation as he ever came. Eden wasn’t going to confess she’d been trying to figure out if she loved him or not, but she did suddenly feel like talking, as if filling the night with words would stop her from thinking about the inevitability of the morning.
“Everything has changed. Words, concepts, they mean different things than they used to. Like
theft
or
ownership.
” And reward. She wondered again what Jonah could possibly be bribing his soldiers with. “It’s like we’ve reverted back to a Native American concept of land ownership, because there are so few people left to compete for resources. No more keeping up with the Joneses. There are so many empty places, it’s just a matter of picking the one we want and moving in. Big ostentatious houses have lost their status, just becoming hard to heat and a foolish use of space for a single family.”