Page 2 of Cruel Winter with You

I clear my throat. “Anyway, the sooner you bring the pan to me, the—”

“Hey, there! Aren’t you the Malek girl?”

I turn to the neighboring house, where a vaguely familiar elderly head leans out from one of the upstairs windows. It takes me a moment to place it, but when I do, I swallow a sigh. “Um, hi, Mrs. Nos—”

Hang on a minute. Is Mrs. Nosy her real name, or did we just call her that because she’d constantly bribe us with Werther’s Original to find out gossip about our parents?

“Norton,” Marc mutters, reading my mind.

“Hi, Mrs. Norton. Yup, I’m Jamie Malek.”

“You don’t look one day older than when you left for college. It’s been, what, ten years?”

I try to smile, but my zygomaticus major might be frozen. “Sure has. You look great, too, ma’am.” In truth, I can barely see her. The storm is picking up quickly, whiting out anything that’s more than a dozen feet away.

“You’re a lawyer, right? Like your daddy?”

“Jamie’s a physician,” Marc corrects her, a touch impatient. “Finishing up her pediatrics residency.”

“Ah, yes. You’d know, wouldn’t you?” She looks between us, suddenly hawkish and a little prurient. “I forgot that you two both moved out to San Francisco. Bet youseeeach other all the time, don’t you?”

My stomach tightens. Because now would be a good time for Marc and I to exchange a loaded stare and burst out laughing. Maybe even say,Oh, Mrs. Nosy, if only you knew what happened last time we were together. We should tell you. It’d make your holiday season. You’d dump a whole truckload of hard candy on us.

I stay silent, though. Paralyzed. Which means that Marc is on his own when he says, “Yeah, of course. We practically live together. If you’ll excuse us, I can see a snot icicle forming under Jamie’s nose. Merry Christmas to you and your husband.”

A minute later, I’m in the Comptons’ kitchen, having absolutely no clue how I got there. Marc, whose tolerance for bullshit never managed to grow taller than your average bolete mushroom, must have pulled me inside. He’s currently standing in front of me, unzipping my parka like he would for a toddler who has yet to master the concept of zippers.

“I need to—”

“Go back, yes.” He plucks the beanie off my head, and halts when the mass of blond waves slips out from underneath it.

My residency has been kicking my butt, and I barely have time to eat, let alone go to a salon. My hair is the longest it’s ever been, for the first time in my life—a little past my shoulders—not a bob. Marc must notice, because he picks up the end of a strand and rubs it between his fingers, staringat it in an intense, lingering way that makes me remember something he told me when we were both very young.

You have the prettiest hair in the world. It’s dumb that you don’t grow it longer.

All this attention from him has me feeling overheated. A true feat, in the current weather.

“You’re frozen solid,” he mutters, dropping the lock. “I made a fire in the living room. Go stand in there—”

“But what about the—”

“—whileI look for the pan,” he adds, like I’m more predictable than a quarterly tax deadline. “I can’t believe your dad sent you here in a damn snowstorm.”

“I don’t mind,” I say. Minding a little.

A lot.

“You don’t have to say yes to every idiot thing he asks of you. Especially if it’s not safe.” Marc’s full mouth tightens into a thin line—and then curls ever so slightly, a bare hint of humor that is so exquisitelyhim, my heart loses a handful of beats. “You don’t even fuckinglikeham, Jamie.”

I huff out a laugh. Of course he’d know. “Dad’s trying a new recipe.”

“Uh-huh.” He unspools the scarf from around my neck. “Unless the new recipe bakes through the ten inches of snow we’re getting tonight, he still shouldn’t have sent you here.”

“Honestly, ten inches is not that much.”

A dark eyebrow lifts.

I realizewhyafter a beat and instantly turn scarlet. “Oh my God.”

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