Jennifer Greene - Wild in the Moment

And it was his cell phone ringing, demanding someone get up.

She pushed out of the blankets, had the cold air slap at her skin and decided that a girl only needed so much reality.

“Yeah,” she snapped at the sheriff when she finally grabbed Teague’s cell phone in the kitchen. “I’m well aware the power’s off, George. I’m going to look this morning to see if I can get the Cunninghams’ generator going. If I can’t, then I’ll bring in the wood from their garage. No, I don’t know how my patient’s doing…”

Blah, blah, blah. Twenty-three inches of snow. Still snowing, not as hard, but big winds, some six-and seven-foot drifts. The town was busted except for absolute emergencies for a few days. Like everyone in Vermont couldn’t guess the day’s news report?

She yawned, then waited until she could get a word in. “All right, all right. So we’re not on a level of heart attacks and babies being born. But Teague really was hit hard on the head. And I know his ankle’s hurt. You keep us on the rescue list, you hear? And, yeah, I’ll check in a little later today, so you know how we’re doing.”

As she walked back in the living room, she reminded herself to contact her parents and sisters pretty quickly. They didn’t know she was back home in White Hills. She also hadn’t told them the whole story of her divorce from Jean-Luc, but that was a different issue. The only immediate problem was if they tried to reach her in France and couldn’t, they’d worry.

She raked a hand through her sleep-tumbled hair, her mind still galloping a zillion miles an hour, then stopped dead.

So did Teague.

For some unknown reason he was on his hands and knees, emerging from the back of the couch like a little kid playing hide-and-seek-at least until she spotted him. Or he spotted her. Whichever came first, both of them seemed to freeze in unison.

Daisy didn’t move, but her pulse suddenly lunged-just as it had last night when she’d touched him. When she’d judiciously crawled under the blankets with him to conserve heat. When she’d extremely unjudiciously started running her hands all over the man. It was as if someone had taken over her mind. How else could she explain how this confounding man had her hormones in such a buzz?

“What are we doing?” she asked tactfully, since he didn’t seem to be moving from his crawling position.

“I was looking for something behind the couch.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I dropped something out of my pocket last night. A key. It’s not like I needed it this minute, but when I realized it was missing, I thought I’d better find it before I forgot-”

She cut to the chase. “Your ankle is that bad? You can’t walk on it at all?”

He scowled at her. He had no way of knowing that she’d been lied to by the best. Her ex could lie to the Pope on Easter and look innocent.

“I can walk on it,” Teague said irritably.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You crawl to the bathroom-in fact, we’ll call that your bathroom for the duration. I’ll use the one upstairs. No more showers or cleaning up for either of us, though, until the power goes back on, okay? But the point is-”

“There’s a point coming?”

“The point is, I’ll try and rig you up some kind of cane. And some ibuprofen. When you get back, you go for the couch, we’ll get your weight off the ankle and ice it.”

“I can do all that.”

He kept singing that refrain all day. Daisy might have become exasperated except that, damn, he kept getting cuter by the hour. Every time she started to do something, he crawled after her, determined to either help or do it himself. After being prey to the most dependent guy in the universe for the past several years, Teague’s bullheadedness was a treat.

“I know how to get the generator started,” he said.

“I’m sure you do. And it’s been years since I watched my dad do ours when we were growing up. I’m not sure I remember what he did, or that I can do it besides. But the generator’s still in the basement.”

“So?”

“So you can’t get down to the basement with that ankle. So it has to be me. Go sit on that couch. ”

“I’ll sit at the top of the stairs in case you come up with questions.”

She screwed off the sweeper end of a broom to create a makeshift cane. Brought in another load of logs. Tended the fire. Battled the generator in the basement, couldn’t figure it out, braved Mr. Cunningham’s desk to see if she could find a file of appliance instructions, tried a second time to get the generator going. Failed again.

So they were going to be cold. At least they had the fire and firewood. Nobody was going to get frostbite or die or anything. But if the darn wind would quit howling and the sky quit dumping buckets, the power would have a chance to come back on. Then the snowstorm would just be a pain in the behind, but not really uncomfortable.

“I can go down in the basement,” Teague argued again.

“Yes. But what if you fell on that ankle? I couldn’t possibly carry you back upstairs.”

“I wouldn’t fall.”

He was so male. Only a male would make such a ridiculous statement. By that time she’d fixed them both an early dinner. “Eat,” she said, looking to divert him.

It worked. She looked at the wound on his head every time she could sneak a glance-which wasn’t easy, when he kept claiming it was fine. It wasn’t remotely fine. The gash was a good three inches, with a lump under it that looked bruised and swollen. On the other hand, she reasoned, he couldn’t be too injured if he could eat like a wolf at his last meal.

“I don’t understand how you could make this out of a nonexistent kitchen,” he said.

“Are you kidding? This is the kind of cooking that’s all fun. You get to use your imagination instead of just opening a can and punching a microwave.” Truthfully, he was giving her a bunch of unwarranted praise. She hadn’t been that creative, just unearthed some clothes hangers to twist into spits, then raided the Cunninghams’ freezer for a couple of steaks. She was going to owe them all kinds of supplies when this was over with. Anyway, she’d rubbed some garlic and tarragon and a few other surprises on the steaks. Wrapped some potatoes in foil. Added this and that. The thing was, everything always tasted good by fire. It’s not as if she’d pulled off a miracle.

“It wouldn’t be so hard if we just got the generator going. I know I could do it-”

That again. If she kept him out of the basement, it’d be a miracle. She tried diverting him again. “So exactly how did you get into the demolition business?”

“Demolition?”

“Yeah. You know. Tearing up kitchens. Tearing down walls. Getting to use power tools all day, make noise and lots of sawdust. I mean, have you always had this calling, or did you just never grow up?”

He almost choked-but Teague, it was clear, was never going to waste a good bite of steak, even when he had to fight not to laugh.

“I was playing with wood from the time I was a little kid. Couldn’t shake the love for it, so made a career out of it. The Cunningham job, though, was more a favor than the kind of work I normally do. They were going to be out of town for a few weeks, so I could fill in here when I had time from other projects. Mostly, though, I do reconstruction stuff. Old wood. Uneven floors. Tilted ceilings. Ruined woodwork-”

She could hear the joy building up in his voice like an opera singer letting loose with an aria. “Now, don’t go have an orgasm on me.”

He grinned. “I can’t help it. That’s the stuff that pulls my chain. I went to college to be a lawyer. Just wasn’t for me, hated every minute of it. Went back to do the apprentice thing with a master carpenter.”