Simultaneously. This antique child’s toy wasn’t coming up with anything more than what sounded like a banjo playing in a wind tunnel.
“Let me try.” Setting the sandwiches aside, Sunny snatched the radio from him. In moments there was a blast of music. “It’s temperamental,” she explained.
“It’s a machine,” he reminded her, miffed.
“A temperamental one.” Satisfied, she set it back on the counter, then carried her sandwich and her beer to the table. “Weather report’s not much use anyway.” She applied herself to the sandwich. “I already know it’s snowing.”
Jacob picked up one of the potato chips she had piled beside the bread. “More to the point is to know when it’s going to stop.”
“Speculation.” She shrugged as he joined her. “No matter how many satellites they put up there, it’s still guesswork.”
He opened his mouth to contradict her but thought better of it and bit into his sandwich instead. “Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“Being . . .” What phrase would she use? “Being cut off.”
“Not really—at least not for a day or two. After that I start to go crazy.” She winced, wondering if that was the best choice of words. “How about you?”
“I don’t like being closed in,” he said simply. He had to smile when he heard the light tap of her foot on the floor. He was making her nervous again. He took an experimental swig of beer. “This is good.” He glanced around when a voice broke into the music to announce the weather. The cheerful, painfully breezy announcer carried on for several moments before getting to the mountains.
“And you people way up in the Klamath might as well snuggle up. Hope you’ve got your main squeeze with you, ’cause it looks like you’re in for a big one. The white stuff’s going to keep right on falling through tomorrow night. Expect about three feet, you hardy souls, with winds gusting up to thirty miles an hour.
“Not very scientific,” Jacob murmured.
Sunny made a rude noise and scowled at the radio. “However it’s presented, it means the same thing. I’d better bring in some more wood.”
“I’ll get it.”
“I don’t need—”
“You made the sandwiches,” he pointed out, sipping more beer. “I’ll get the wood when we’re finished.”
“Fine.” She didn’t want him to do her any favors. She ate in silence for a time, watching him. “You’d have been better off to wait until spring.”
“For what?”
“To come to see Cal.”
He took another bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was terrific. “Apparently. Actually, I’d planned to be here . . . sooner.” Almost a year sooner. “But it didn’t work out.”
“It’s a shame your parents couldn’t come with you . . . you know, to visit.”
She saw something in his eyes then. Regret, frustration, anger? She couldn’t be sure. “It wasn’t possible.”
She refused, absolutely, to feel sorry for him. “My parents couldn’t stand not seeing Libby or me for so long.”
The disapproval in her voice rubbed an already raw wound. “You have no conception of how the separation from Cal has affected my family.”
“Sorry.” But she moved her shoulders to show that she wasn’t. “I’d just think if they were anxious to see him they’d have made the effort to do so.”
“The choice was his.” He pushed back from the table. “I’ll get the wood.”
Touchy, touchy, she thought as he started toward the door. “Hey.”
He rounded on her, ready to fight. “What?”
“You can’t go out without a coat. It’s freezing.”
“I don’t have one with me.”
“Are all scientists so softheaded?” she muttered. Rising, she went into a long cupboard. “I can’t think of anything so stupid as to come into the mountains in January without a coat.”
Jacob took a deep breath and then said calmly, “If you keep calling me stupid, I’m going to have to hit you.”
She gave him a bland look. “I’m shaking. Here.” She tossed him a worn pea coat. “Put that on. The last thing I want is to have to treat you for frostbite.” As an afterthought, she threw him a pair of gloves and a dark stocking cap. “You do have winters in Philadelphia, don’t you?”
His teeth gritted, Jacob struggled into the coat. “It wasn’t cold when I left home.” He dragged the hat down over his ears.
“Oh, well, that certainly explains it.” She gave a snort of laughter when he slammed the door behind him. He wasn’t really crazy, she thought. A little dim, maybe, and so much fun to aggravate. And if she aggravated him enough, Sunny mused, she might just get some more information out of him.
She heard him cursing and didn’t bother to muffle a laugh. Unless she missed her guess, he’d just dropped at least one log on his foot. Perhaps she should have offered him a flashlight, but . . . he deserved it.
Wiping the grin from her face, she went to the door to open it for him. He was already coated with snow. It was even clinging to his eyebrows, giving him a fiercely surprised expression. She bit down hard on her tongue and let him stomp across the kitchen, his arms loaded with wood. At the sound of logs crashing into the box, she cleared her throat, then calmly picked up her beer and his before joining him in the living room.
“I’ll get the next load,” she told him solicitously.
“You bet you will.” His foot was throbbing, his fingers were numb, and his temper was already lost. “How does anybody live like this?”
“Like what?” she asked innocently.
“Here.” He was at his wit’s end. He threw out his arms in a gesture that encompassed not only the cabin but also the world at large. “You have no power, no conveniences, no decent transportation, no nothing. If you want heat, you have to burn wood. Wood, for God’s sake! If you want light, you have to rely on unstable electricity. As for communication, it’s a joke. A bad one.”
Sunny was a city girl at heart, but nobody insulted her family home. Her chin came up. “Listen, pal, if I hadn’t taken you in you’d be up in the woods freezing like a Popsicle and no one would have found you until the spring thaw. So watch it.”
Overly sensitive, he decided, lifting a brow. “You can’t tell me that you actually like it here.”
Her hands fisted and landed on her hips. “I like it here just fine. If you don’t, we’ve got two doors. Take your pick.”
His little excursion to the woodpile had convinced him that he didn’t care to brave the elements. Neither did he care to swallow his pride. He stood for a moment, considering his choices. Without a word, he picked up his beer, sat and drank.
Since Sunny considered it a victory, she joined him. But she wasn’t ready to give him a break. “You’re awfully finicky for a guy who pops up on the doorstep without so much as a toothbrush.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said you’re awfully—”
“How do you know I don’t have a toothbrush?” He’d read about them. Now, with fire glinting in his eyes, he turned to her.
“It’s an expression,” Sunny said, evading his question. “I simply meant that I wouldn’t think that a man who travels with one change of clothes should be complaining about the accommodations.”
“How would you know what I’ve got—unless you’ve been going through my things?”
“You haven’t got any things,” Sunny muttered, knowing that once again she’d opened her mouth before she’d fine-tuned her brain. She started to rise, but he clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Look, I only went through your
