Cover Of Night

To her surprise the chip began to flame, fire sitting in the curve of the chip like a baby in a swing. "I’ll be damned," she murmured.

"High oil content," he said, sliding the chip under the twigs.

She leaned forward, watching the corn chip in fascination as the twigs began to catch and smoke curled upward. "How long will it burn?"

"Never timed it. Long enough. Don’t let the fire get too hot; feed it just enough to keep it going until I get back with more wood." He went back into the night.

The fire was engrossing, and the warmth that began to bathe her face was pure heaven. She watched the corn chip until it was no more and was tempted to light another one, but instead she carefully monitored the little fire and let it die down before she fed it another small stick.

He amassed what looked like a small mountain of sticks and dry bark in the far end of their shelter before he deemed it enough. Then he cut voting, limber branches from the nearby trees and sat just under the overhang while he quickly lashed together a frame, using long strips of fiber pulled from the branches themselves to tie evervthing together. He began weaving the remaining branches in and out of the frame, overlapping and interlocking. When he was finished, he propped one end of the frame against the outside edge of their enclosure and drove a stick into the ground to prop up the other end. He’d made a screen that blocked most of the opening, to hold in more of their precious heat and keep out the wind, and he’d done it in little more than half an hour.

Then he sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, and she saw how tired he was.

"Sit down, she said, moving over on the pad to give him room. She handed him a bottle of water and a bag of muesli. "I also have raisins and PayDay bars, if you want them."

"Both," he said. "We’ve burned a lot of calories today."

They were silent while they ate. so tired they had to concentrate on the act of chewing. When she ate the raisins, she could almost feel the sugar in them racing through her bloodstream in a rapid burn. She laid the little cardboard box beside the fire, to feed to it later.

He noticed her shoes and moved them closer to the fire, as well as her socks. That was when he saw her sweatpants. He froze for a moment, then slowly reached out and drew them closer to the fire, too, arranging them so the wet parts were nearest the heat. He darted a quick glance at her, clearly wondering if she was naked under the blanket.

Smiling, she parted the edges of the blanket to show her silk long johns. Some of the tension went out of his shoulders, and he gave her a rueful smile in return. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

After they ate, nothing seemed as interesting as getting some sleep. He pulled off his boots and dropped the light stick down in one of them, effectively turning out the light except for the green glow coming from his boot and the much more comforting light from the fire. Wrapping himself in his blanket, he stretched out between her and the opening to the shelter.

Cate lay down on the pad and pulled her blanket around her. "Aren’t we keeping watch tonight?"

"No need." His voice was a sleepy murmur.

"We’ll take turns on the pad."

"I’m fine here. I’ve slept on the ground more nights than I can remember."

She started to protest, but her eyes were too heavy. Instead she sighed and dropped off to sleep.

She woke sometime later – could have been an hour, could have been several hours – shivering as cold air crept under the edges of her blanket. She opened her eyes to find Cal sitting up and feeding another stick to the fire, so evidently the cold had awakened him, too. Light flared brighter as the stick caught and began to burn, but she couldn’t tell any difference in the amount of heat.

The night had grown a lot colder. She could feel a difference in the air that came around and through the screen he’d built. How much colder would they have been if the screen hadn’t been there? She curled on her side, pulling her knees up in an effort to conserve her body heat. He glanced at her, saw her eyes open.

"Cold?" he asked, and she nodded. He added another stick to make the fire hotter.

She squinted at her watch but in the uncertain light couldn’t make out the time. "What time is it?"

He must have already checked his watch, because he said, "Just after midnight." They had been asleep a couple of hours, at least.

"Is it still snowing?" She was thirsty, so she sat up to take a quick sip of water, then swiftly snuggled back under the blanket.

"Yeah. There are three or four inches on the ground."

Three or four inches wasn’t a vast amount of snow, but under the circumstances, it might as well have been a blizzard. They simply weren’t equipped to handle snow; they weren’t dressed warmly enough, plus the underlying ice made even the simplest task dangerous. And it was still snowing.

He lay back down, too, his back to her, the way they had slept in the basement, except now they weren’t cuddled together. Of course, the pad was barely wide enough for one, but there were other options.

She considered those options, wondering if she was truly ready to take such a step. She looked at the back of his head, at the shaggy dark blond hair, and the answer was a simple yes. Yes, she could very happily wake and see that head on the pillow beside her for the rest of her life. She wanted him. She wanted to explore the mysteries of who he was, what had made him, every complicated detail of him. She wanted to make love with him, laugh with him, share her life with him. Whether he was interested in taking on a widow with two children was something she would have to find out, but she knew he was interested in her on at least one basic level.

"Cal," she whispered, reaching out to touch his back.