Page 34 of Snowed In With the Maverick
Her place, on the other hand, was closer to the museum, and had been meticulously decorated over the years, with a great deal of thought put into each and every item. She’d agonized between the paint chips bearing Farrow & Ball’s Wimborne White and Au Lait, and every morning when she made coffee at her breakfast bar, she admired the way the soft amount of warm yellow pigment in Wimborne White made the space glow. The custom-made velvet curtains perfectly complemented her juniper yard-dyed sectional, and the Eames chair and ottoman set she’d found at an estate sale tied the modern but homey space together. She loved coming home to her condo, and the idea of moving into Harold’s impersonal space just felt wrong.
It should have been a red flag. But like the other small moments that prickled at the back of her neck, present but able to be ignored, Andrea had instead chosen to focus on the interesting conversations they had about their work, the impromptu flowers and gifts that would appear on her desk or at the door of her condo and the feeling of being on the arm of the man that so many admired.Power couple,she heard one of the board members say at the yearly fundraiser where they’d finally made their relationship public.
Why hadn’t she trusted that internal mechanism that was there to defend her? She knew enough about evolution to understand that the body had protective instincts, and to ignore them was at your own peril.
What was she to make of this supercharged attraction she felt for Seth Taylor? She followed him down the attic stairs, then the staircase back to the main floor, arms full of supplies that would provide at the most an hour of distraction. And then what?
“It’s still really coming down,” Andrea said, looking out the window. The reality of the evening was settling in. Even if it stopped snowing, there was already at least a foot of snow on the ground, and the town’s few municipal plows wouldn’t be out this way for some time. Seth wasn’t going anywhere. “Listen,” she continued. “Like I said, the guest rooms aren’t fancy, but a couple of them are furnished. I can put some sheets on the bed. I don’t think you should be driving anywhere tonight.”
Seth joined her at the window. Just the feeling of having him one foot away was knee-weakening. And now he was staying for the night?
She looked over to see him scanning the thick snow falling outside the window. His SUV had only been parked for thirty minutes, and already it was covered in a thick blanket of snow.
“You sure?” said Seth.
“Of course,” said Andrea, doing her best to sound breezy. Natural.
Seth looked down at his button-up shirt and dress pants. “I’ve got some jeans and a sweater I might grab out of the car,” he said. “I always keep a few changes of clothes in there. With my job, it’s hard to know when you’ll be going from business to casual to work clothes.”
“Or if you’re going to be snowed in at a ranch an hour and a half from home,” Andrea said.
“Exactly,” said Seth, a glint in his eyes. “Always have to be prepared.”
He grabbed his keys off the front desk and slid on his boots. “I’ll be right back.”
Andrea watched from the door as Seth trudged through the snow, holding one arm up to block the blowing snow from his eyes.
“Holy hell,” he said, stomping the snow from his boots before reentering. “That’s some blizzard.” He held up a small duffel bag. “Mind if I get changed?”
“Sure,” Andrea said. “Any of the rooms on the second floor.”
Seth disappeared up the stairs, leaving Andrea with the boxes of ornaments. She opened the first one and pulled out a string of colorful lights, listening as a door closed upstairs, then footsteps sounded in the room right overhead.
So Seth was spending the night. Andrea shivered involuntarily, not from the frosty breeze that had entered when Seth went outside, but with the knowledge that he was going to be under the same roof for the next several hours. She glanced at her watch. It was already after ten o’clock. They’d put some of the decorations out, then Andrea would get some clean sheets from the closet and make him a bed, then retire to her own room at the back of the ranch, down the hallway off the kitchen. There would be an entire floor and many feet between them, but something told Andrea that falling asleep was going to be much more challenging knowing Seth was so close by.
“Alright, I’m ready to be put to work.” Andrea looked up to see Seth, in a pair of blue jeans and light gray long-sleeve shirt, the fabric showcasing the sharp cut of his pecs, and the triceps that were likely developed over years of working on the farm.
“Ah, okay,” Andrea said, pulling the rest of the bulbs from the box. “Mind plugging these in to see if they work?” She pulled a couple of boxes of spare light bulbs from the box. “Some of them might need replacing.”
“Sure thing,” Seth said. “These look vintage.”
Andrea gave him a pursed lip smile. “My parents bought them the first Christmas after they got married,” she said. “Same with most of these ornaments.” She pulled one from the box, a small Smurf figurine wearing a toque and ice skates. “Not that they’ll all make it onto the tree,” she said. “I think I’m going for a more…refined tree than the one I had growing up.”
Seth raised an eyebrow. “Give me a tree with personality any day,” he said. “The ones we had growing up were all color coordinated with the rooms they were in.”
“Theones?” Andrea said. “You had more than one tree? How many did you have?”
“Inside?” Seth paused, and looked to the ceiling, then nodded his head a couple of times before making eye contact again, his clear blue eyes sparkling with a mixture of amusement and conspiratorial understanding. “Well, there was one in the entrance. That one was about eight feet tall and was dripping with crystal snowflakes. The big one’s in the great room. Twelve-to-fifteen-footer, easily. And then one in the living room. It’s the only artificial one. All white. Oh, and my mom likes having one in the library too.”
“You can’t forget the library,” said Andrea, trying to act casual even though the idea that Seth grew up in a world where four Christmas trees was normal made her feel a bit itchy.
“I know,” Seth said, as though he could read her mind. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Well, at least I can feel confident that you have exposure to the Christmas tree decorating world,” Andrea said. “Shall we?”
They strung the lights first, and then one by one, Seth and Andrea extracted the ornaments from the cardboard box, affixed them to the little silver hooks she’d poured on the coffee table out of a Ziploc bag, then hung them at various levels on the branches of the tree. Andrea caught Seth on a couple of occasions stepping back as though he were weighing where to place an ornament. His attention to detail was actually quite adorable, and the way his Henley shirt clung to his torso made him very easy to look at.
“Cute,” Seth said, holding up a miniature diplodocus wearing a knitted sweater.
