Janice Kay - Snowbound

Going back through the kitchen, she said, “Boys, you get KP duty this morning. When everyone’s done eating, it’s your job to wash the dishes.”

Inevitably Hopper grumbled, “Why us?”

“Because we’re all going to take turns.” She surveyed the table. “Tabitha, Erin and I are going to make lunch. Willow, Kelli and Amy will do the lunch dishes. Dinner we’ll discuss when it gets closer.”

Smiling, she left them groaning and whining. Some of them had looked shocked enough, she had to wonder if they were required to do chores at home. That was the thing with a ritzy private school—the kids came from a whole different world than the one in which she’d grown up. They were more sophisticated in many ways than the teenagers with whom she’d gone to school. They compared Thai food at a restaurant to food they’d had in Thailand, snorkeling off Belize to experiences on the Barrier reef. They wore designer clothes, had every electronic gadget and drove BMWs the minute they turned sixteen.

But there were also huge gaps in their knowledge. They spoke of maids instead of having to carry out the garbage. She doubted most of them knew how to mop a kitchen floor or scrub a toilet. Maybe even how to wash dishes, although they were smart kids—they’d figure it out. They seemed not to have been expected to be responsible for much of anything. She had one student in her U.S. History class who’d wrecked two cars since March, and both times his parents had just bought him a new one.

Many of her students were great kids; some, like Erin, were clearly driven. But others were spoiled and simply marking time. She had two this year in Knowledge Champs that she suspected were merely padding their résumés for college: Amy and Troy. Amy was also one of the weakest participants. But Troy was different.

As a senior, he was on the A team. He was smart. But she’d also found him to be lazy. He often missed practice. His grades were top-notch, but when she looked at his file she saw that he had participated in very few extracurricular activities in his first three years of high school. That had changed this fall, when he joined Knowledge Champs and won a part in the fall musical.

Well, it wasn’t her business, but it would be interesting to see how they responded to her expectations if they were stranded at Thunder Mountain Lodge for long.

And even more interesting, she decided, as she set the washing machine to a normal cycle and started picking out light-colored garments, to see whether John Fallon opened up to her—or started hiding out in his quarters.

Of course, she shouldn’t care, considering she’d never see him again after the snowplows came through. What was it he’d said? I prefer the solitude . But then, with the way he looked at her sometimes, she wondered whether that was true.

Would he tell her how he’d been hurt if she asked? Or would he be offended by her nosiness?

She frowned and closed the lid on the washer. Probably the latter, and she wouldn’t even blame him.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was an enigma: an intelligent, well-educated man who’d presumably had a high-paying job and yet was now cooking and cleaning up after strangers at this remote lodge, glad when he had his midweek solitude. A man who hid his pain, who had been dismayed by the sight of the woman and kids on his doorstep but had been kind in large and small ways since then. He was a man who looked as if he badly wanted to kiss her, and yet he seemed to have forgotten how to flirt.

More assumptions on her part, Fiona thought with a sigh as she headed back to the kitchen to see how the kids were doing with cleanup. She was tantalized by him, so, ergo, he must be attracted to her.

Because she was so irresistible, of course.

Another sigh. She was pretty on a good day, which this was not. True beauty, she’d never achieve.

Face it: she was unlikely to have a shot at learning what had wounded John Fallon psychologically as well as physically. And, honestly, even if the attraction was reciprocal, where would they go with it, living several hours apart as they did?

Stick to fixing the kids’ problems .

“Watch it!” she heard one of the boys say, followed by the crash of a dish shattering on the slate floor.

Fiona winced and hoped the man she’d been obsessing about was out of earshot. Clearly she would have to supervise the kitchen crews.

It might have been far more interesting to have been stranded here without eight teenagers.

GETTING THE KIDS out the door was a chore, even after John went to the effort to round up a fair selection of parkas, gloves, hats and several pairs of boots. One girl—Amy—didn’t want to go. John was sympathetic until she started to whine.

“It’s cold.”

“Come on, you gotta be on my team,” Hopper coaxed.

“I don’t like getting cold.”

“But you ski!” one of the other girls said in apparent surprise.

Her lower lip was getting pouty. “Not when it’s snowing like this.”

Troy Thorsen grabbed a hat and put it on her, pulling it down over her ears even as she shook her head madly, fighting him. “You have to come out, or we won’t have even sides.”

She yanked it off and threw it at him, her eyes flashing. “I don’t have to do anything.”

Their teacher intervened. “No, you don’t. Amy, if you’d rather stay inside, that’s fine. Mr. Fallon has a good library. You can pick out a book and read in front of the fire with me.”

“But, Ms. Mac!” the skinny kid protested. “Aren’t you coming out?”

“Are you kidding? Not a chance.”

“Bummer,” somebody muttered.

Kelli sniffed and pointedly turned her back on Amy. “Let’s just go out. It doesn’t matter if sides aren’t even.”

“Yeah,” a couple of them agreed. All began zipping parkas and donning hats.

Amy smiled at Hopper, the boy she’d been hanging on. “You could keep me company. We could play a game. Or, like, explore the lodge.” Be alone , her tone promised.

Yanking on gloves, he missed the full wattage of her smile and possibly her implicit promise. “Nah, it’s going to be cool out there. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Standing to one side, John saw anger flare on her face.

Then, “Oh, fine!” she snapped. “I’ll come already.” She appropriated a parka the girl in braces had been reaching for, picked out a faux-fur headband that left her hair to ripple down her back and chose gloves.

“Cool!” Hopper declared, as oblivious to the cold-shoulder she gave him now as he’d been to her earlier, flirtation.

Coatless—she’d loaned hers to one of the girls—Fiona followed them out onto the porch. “Remember, you’ll stay right in front. I want to be able to see all of you whenever I glance out.”

“Yes, Ms. Mac,” they all said dutifully, meanwhile rolling their eyes.

Shaking her head, she came back inside and shut the heavy front door. “Want to bet on how long they last out there?”

“I’m going to say ten minutes for the one who didn’t want to go.”

She laughed. “Hopper may live to regret not falling in line.”

“Or be very, very grateful he ticked her off early on.”

This smile was wry. “Amy is a bit of a handful. She’s an only child, which doesn’t always mean spoiled…”

“But in Amy’s case does,” he said bluntly.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” She seemed perturbed at the idea of criticizing one of her charges. “I’m an only child myself.”

Interesting. He wouldn’t have guessed. Nodding in acknowledgment, he changed the subject, “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“Can I help?”

He shouldn’t succumb to temptation. Spending time alone with her wasn’t smart. But she was not only the first woman to interest him since he’d landed stateside, she was also the first person of either gender he’d had any inclination to talk to.