Page 299 of Come Back to Me

“A pole? Oh, yes. It used to be… somewhere there.” She gestures in the near distance. “Please don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel about eighty.” She sticks out a gloved hand. “My name’s Kara.”

When a gust of wind chases her words, I barely hear her name.

“Do you think you could give me a ride home?”

“Sure.”

“That’s one thing that amazes me about small towns. How helpful you all are.” Her smile’s sheepish. “Thank you…?”

“Theo.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Theo.” That earns me another grimace. “Not that this is pleasurable. I mean…” She sucks in a breath. “Ignore me. Please?”

My lips twitch. “Sure thing.”

I hold out my arm for her and help her onto the road.

Once she’s tucked safe and sound in my cab, I head for the driver’s seat, but that’s when I realize the visibility of before has dialed down dramatically.

I can’t even see my goddamn hand in front of me, and her car’s already blanketed by a thick layer of snow.

Fuck.

Cursing under my breath, I jump into the truck. I reach for my cell, but there’s no signal and the radio’s issuing several alerts that I should have heeded before I took off from home.

But then, if I had, Kara’d be in a hell of a lot more danger than?—

“Are we going to be all right?” she whispers.

“Last time we had conditions like this, we were holed up for a week,” I grit out.

If itisas bad as the Storm of ’92, then… shit. It could be even longer than that.

“What are we going to do?” she cries.

“My family has a cabin about five minutes away. We can stay there. We have enough supplies but?—”

What we don’t have…

…are two goddamn beds.