going to get snowed in for a day or two,” he remarked as he put her gently down on the porch. “That being the case, I’d better get out back and make sure my furry house guests have enough to eat and that their water bowls are plugged in so the water doesn’t freeze.” He sighed. “Then we hope we don’t lose power, or I have to go out and water them two or three times a day.”
“How do you get water when there’s no power?” she asked, and was honestly curious.
“Melt snow, if it’s the only way. But we have an emergency generator. I can connect it to the well head if I have to.”
“Wow. Science!” she teased.
He grinned. “All the comforts of home, regardless of the weather. And it’s the weekend, so I don’t have to work—except for feeding our furry guests. I won’t be long.”
“I’ll start supper.”
“Damn,” he muttered. “I should have stopped somewhere and gotten us takeout, so you wouldn’t have to be in the kitchen cooking on our wedding day!”
“I love to cook, since you taught me,” she protested. “Really. It’s not even like work.”
“You sure?”
She smiled. “I’m sure.”
“Okay, then. I’ll go see to the animals.”
She went into the kitchen and started looking through the meat in the freezer.
* * *
She cooked a beef casserole and made biscuits to go with it. Dessert was vanilla pudding from a mix, with some Cool Whip and peaches mixed in.
Butch just shook his head as he savored the dessert. “Honey, you have a way with food,” he said. “You can take the simplest things and make them uptown.”
She grinned. “Thanks. It’s better if you have yellow cake or shortcake and put peaches and ice cream over it and then add the Cool Whip, but I didn’t have ice cream or cake.”
“We had cake at the fellowship hall.” He groaned. “They told me to bring the rest of the cake home with us. I forgot!”
“They’ll save it for us,” she said with certainty. “I’ll phone the Gray Dove later, to make sure. It’s not a problem, you know. We’re eating dessert!”
He sighed. “You’re the easiest person to live with,” he said.
“So are you.”
He looked up. “I’m really not,” he told her. “I’m impatient, bad-tempered from time to time, unreasonable . . .”
“You’re just you,” she interrupted. “We all have times when we’re irritable. I get that way, too.”
“I’ve never seen you irritable.”
“Well, I don’t get that way often. Never with you,” she added, her eyes soft with affection.
He finished his dessert and sat back to enjoy his second cup of coffee. His eyes slid over her with pure appreciation. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved yellow sweater that brought out the highlights in her blond hair.
“Why do you wear your hair up like that?” he asked curiously.
She laughed, touching the high topknot held up with a yellow scrunchy. “It gets in my way when I’m cooking,” she explained.
He pursed his lips. “But you’re not cooking right now.”
She rolled her eyes, but not with irritation. “Men,” she laughed. She took the scrunchy out and shook her head, so that her long blond hair settled around her shoulders.
“You take my breath away,” he said, and he wasn’t smiling.
She met that intent stare and couldn’t look away. The tension in the room was suddenly so thick it could be felt. Even old Two-Toes, asleep on his rug in the corner, lifted his blind eyes momentarily before he curled up again and went back to sleep by the fireplace.
“What we need right now,” Butch said in a husky tone, “is a nice, warm, dark place.”
Her heart raced. “I think I know the very one,” she replied breathlessly.
He stood up and curled her fingers into his. “I’ll be slow, and careful,” he said softly. “I promise, I won’t hurt you.”
“I know you won’t.”
She followed him into his bedroom. The light was already off. He closed the door, leaving them in total darkness. Esther could hear her own heart beating. She felt the heat of him as he moved closer, felt his breath on her forehead, her nose, and then on her mouth as he bent and kissed her with exquisite tenderness.
He sighed. It was like drowning in velvet. He murmured that and she smiled under his mouth, because it felt like that to her, too. She slid her arms around his neck and waited for whatever came next.
She was unprepared for the sudden flash of desire that sparked between them when his hand