Janice Kay - Snowbound

So he said, “If you want to clean bathrooms.”

He was ashamed of himself for sounding ungracious. She’d been more than generous in getting the whole group to help out. Once upon a time, he’d known how to make pleasant conversation. Not so long ago. Before…

John willed his mind to go blank.

Fiona helped hold him in the here and now. “Our bathrooms?” She sounded horrified. “We can clean them ourselves.”

“We’ll just do a quick swipe. Before your charges come in and need hot baths again.”

“Oh, dear. They will, won’t they?” She nodded. “Fine. But they won’t have made their beds, either, and we’re not doing that for them.”

She sounded so fierce, a trace of amusement stirred in him. He hardly recognized it. He’d lost his sense of humor along with so much else in Iraq.

Climbing the stairs, he asked, “Are you going to be in trouble over this?”

“With the school, you mean?”

He nodded.

“I don’t know. I hope not. I did call my principal before we left Redmond, and he agreed that it made sense to take the alternate route. And it wasn’t snowing, and forecasters were off by hours about when the storm was supposed to reach this far north.”

She wasn’t trying to convince him, John guessed, but rather herself.

Her voice went quiet. “Maybe I deserve to lose my job. We could have all died. I used poor judgment.”

He’d been harsh yesterday, and now felt like the worst kind of hypocrite. His own misjudgment had resulted in horror. Maybe she’d been lucky, but her error had been mild in comparison.

Besides… He’d been surprised himself yesterday afternoon to walk out of the grocery store and see snow falling so soon. His own drive back to the lodge had been treacherous.

They’d reached the hallway above.

“I suspect there are travelers stranded all over. You may not be the only Knowledge Champs team that got in trouble. From what you said, high schools all over Oregon had sent kids.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, no! I didn’t even think about that. Two groups came from Portland and one from Lincoln City over on the coast. What if…?” She pressed a hand to her throat.

“Nothing you can do about it.” Okay, that didn’t help, John saw immediately. He tried again. “Eight kids is enough for you to take responsibility for.”

“I can’t help worrying. Oh, I wish we could get some news coverage!”

“You can’t do anything.”

She tried to smile. “I can worry, can’t I?”

They’d been standing here in the hall too long. He was becoming uncomfortably aware of her. Of little things: the palest of freckles on the bridge of her nose, the fullness of her lower lip, the single strand of dark hair that curved down over her brow. He resisted the urge to lift his hand and smooth it back.

The effort made his voice curt. “Worrying won’t help.”

Her pointy chin rose. “No. It won’t. Hadn’t we better get started? I figure they’ve already been out there five minutes. By your estimate, Amy will be coming in the door in another five minutes.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay. You’re trying to help. I know.” She smiled, a benediction.

His fingers curled into fists at his sides. She wouldn’t be so forgiving if she knew about the death he’d rained on the innocent.

The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

She took the girls’ bathroom, he took the boys’. From long habit, he cleaned fast, and then carried a pile of towels and washcloths to her. She was wiping the countertop, which took longer than in the other bathroom because of the amazing array of toiletries and cosmetics scattered there. All of which had presumably come out of their purses and bookbags.

“Oh, thank you,” Fiona said, seeing the pile in his arms. “More loads of laundry in the making.”

His laugh felt rusty. “You don’t look like the half-empty kind.”

She smiled impishly. “In this case, the washing machine is going to be a lot more than half full.”

Still smiling, although it felt unnatural, John said, “And I seem to remember you promised to load it.”

“Yes, I did.” Fiona began hanging towels on racks, leaving part of the stack on the counter between the pair of sinks. “What you said earlier, about Iraq… Was it awful? I know a lot of the returning veterans are suffering from posttraumatic stress, just like after Vietnam.”

PTSD—Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—was a fancy way of saying that you’d seen things you shouldn’t have, in John’s opinion. It was ridiculous to talk about it as a disease, as if the right pills would cure it.

He cocked a brow at her. “Are you asking if I’m one of them? Maybe. Most soldiers do have some symptoms.”

She flushed. “I’m so sorry if you thought… I really wasn’t asking, even obliquely. You haven’t given me any reason… Oh, dear.”

Great. He’d been a jackass again.

“That’s all right. I…hinted.”

“If you need help you can get it from the Veterans Administration, can’t you?”

“I don’t need it.” The gravel in his voice startled even him. He cleared his throat. “What I need is to…decompress. This is my way of doing that. Be around people in limited doses. Get over being jumpy without a barrage of noise around me all the time.”

She looked doubtful even though he could tell she was still embarrassed. “Is it working?”

Some days he thought so. On others, when he awakened from a nightmare with his heart pounding and a bellow raw in his throat, he wasn’t so sure.

“I feel better than I did when I tried to go back to work at Robotronics.” Which was truth, so far as it went.

“It is peaceful up here.” Shouts from outside drifted up, and her mouth curved. “Or was, until we darkened your door.”

“You’ve been good guests,” he forced himself to say.

“Why, thank you.” She sighed. “I suppose I’d better go check on the kids.”

He stepped aside and let her pass him, a flowery scent lingering for a moment even after she’d disappeared into the hall. Had she brought perfume…? No, he realized; she’d used one of those fragrant bath beads.

John glanced toward the old-fashioned tub, picturing her letting her bra drop to the floor, then slipping off her panties before stepping in. He’d seen her long legs when she changed yesterday in front of the fire. Imagining the rest of her naked body came easily. Had her hair been loose, to float on the water when she sank down into the tub? Or had she bundled it up?

Loose. Definitely loose. Her hair had still been wet when she came down for breakfast.

A groan tore its way from his throat. Damn it, what did he think he was doing? He had a shaky enough hold on reality.

He forced himself to scan the bathroom with a practiced, innkeeper’s eye before following her downstairs.

As predicted, Amy was the one to have come in and was shedding her outerwear in front of the fire. Water pooled on the plank floor around her boots.

“It’s freakin’ cold out there.” She shivered and hugged herself.

“It was nice of you to go even though you didn’t want to, for the sake of everyone else,” Fiona said.

Reaching the foot of the stairs, John paused to hear the girl’s answer to the teacher’s kindly retooling of motives he was pretty damn sure hadn’t been that altruistic.

“Even though I went out to be nice, Troy ,” she said the name with loathing, “made this big snowball and smashed it against my face. He’s a…a creep .”

“Well, you did go out to have a snowball fight.”

“But he walked right up and did it! He’s such a jerk. Him and Hopper, too.”

How sad romance was when it died. A grin tugging at his mouth, John crossed the huge great room, opened the heavy front door and went out on the porch.