Page 4 of A Killing Cold

Alexis’s lips thin. “Not yet. He should be up soon, though. Mom can’t make it until tomorrow.”

“I thought they were coming together,” Connor says.

“Nope. He’s driving himself,” she replies, voice tight. Her eyes cutto me, and then she gives him a pointed look. “Anyway. You two are in White Pine, of course.” To me she adds conspiratorially, “White Pine’s always for the newest couple, because it’s out of the way. Total privacy.” She winks; Connor blushes. “We’ll see you both for dinner?”

“We’ll be there,” Connor assures her.

Alexis releases her hold on me at last. She gives me a look I can’t quite read, analytical but with a smile keeping the edges from getting too sharp. She tucks my hair behind my ear, and it seems like she’s going to say something.

Someone sent me that text. Could it have been Alexis? She was friendly when we met. I mistook her briskness for distraction at the time, but I suspect she’s always paying attention. If she thought I was wrong for her brother, I have no doubt she’d do something about it.

Alexis’s lips close. Whatever she was going to say stays sealed behind them. She drops her hand and steps away.

“I should let you two settle in,” she says. She puts her hands in her jacket pockets. Her weight rocks back on her heels. “Connor, when you get a minute, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

His brow creases in concern. “What is it?”

Her smile is bright and false. “It can wait. None of us are going anywhere.” With that, she swings around, putting her back to us. “See you later!” she calls, and she’s marching across the snow again, with the same careless grace as when she walks down a city sidewalk.

“She can be a lot,” Connor says when she’s out of earshot.

“I don’t mind,” I tell him, which is at least five-eighths the truth.

“She’s a bit protective. It comes from being the oldest,” he says, still with that apologetic tone.

“That fits,” I say distractedly. He gives me a curious look, and I blush a little. “Alexis—it means ‘protector.’ From the Greek.”

“I don’t know how you hold all this stuff in your head,” he says fondly.

“It comes from being a lonely kid. Fun facts were my go-to social move,” I tell him.

“And what does Theodora mean?” he asks.

My throat tightens. “‘Gift from God,’” I say, trying to keep my tone weightless, unbothered. I don’t tell him that it isn’t my name—not really. There are things about me Connor Dalton doesn’t know. Can’t know.

“Shall we?” Connor asks. He hefts the suitcases again. I know better than to offer to take mine. It’s a point of pride for Connor, to carry things. It makes him feel like he’s being “down to earth,” which I find charming. “I’m sorry my mom isn’t here yet. I was hoping I’d get the chance to introduce you before—”

“Before you have to loose the whole pack on me?” I ask. “That would have been nice.”

“We aren’t ravening wolves,” Connor chides. “And you have pretty sharp teeth yourself.”

I bare them at him to prove his point.

Connor hauls the bags the rest of the way to the cabin and we step up onto the porch. The brass silhouette of a pine tree is tacked to the door, to match its name.

The interior is warm and well lit with electric lights. I turn in a slow circle. The Scotts took me to a cabin one spring when I was nine. It was cold and wet and the roof leaked; I burned myself on the woodstove, leaving a shiny welt across the side of my hand. This cabin has hardwood floors, a full kitchen. Through the bedroom door I spy a king-size bed.

Connor’s watching me with a worried expression—one he wears often. It’s hard to say whether it’s his natural state or if it’s just that I worry him.

“Mm,” I say, cracking a smile. “I see we’ll be roughing it.”

“If you’d rather pitch a tent out back…” he begins, and I smack his arm playfully. He catches my hand. He turns it, slides my sleeve up my arm, and kisses the bare skin of my wrist—and the tattoo that decorates it: a blackwork dragonfly, three circles behind it. Then he drawsme in toward him, and now it’s my lips he kisses, slow and deliberate. I hum against his mouth, content, but break away.

“Give me the tour,” I say, faux sternly. He obliges.

The tour doesn’t take long; it’s a one-bedroom, with a spacious living room and a full kitchen decked out with quartz countertops and top-of-the-line appliances. The bathroom is just as generous, the walk-in shower done in shimmering blue tile.

“Rustic,” I say as we walk through the rooms, my eyebrows climbing higher with each new open door. “Charming. Quaint.”

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