Page 3 of Love Is Brewing

Crap! If Matt could see her now, he’d be bent over laughing.

Guess she should have wiped the snow off before she opened the door.

Now she’d know better.

After pushing the snow off the tan leather, she got in and started her car, turned the defrost and the heat on blast, then shut the door and used her arm to get off as much snow from her car as possible.

Maybe she should have gotten one of those scrapers that her mother told her to pick up.

Oh well, too late now.

She went back into her apartment, stomping the snow off her boots and grabbing her briefcase and lunch. Her purse was in the passenger seat where she’d tossed it to start her car.

“You’re going out in this?” someone said.

She turned her head to see the tenant below her with the door open.

“Yes,” she said. “I have to go to work.”

“I’m Torrie,” the woman said, coming forward to shake her hand.

She took her glove off and reached out. “Phoebe.”

“No one goes out until this melts around here,” Torrie said. “Most of it will be gone by lunch.”

“I’ve got interviews before then,” she said. “Can’t wait. It’s not a big deal.”

Torrie smiled. “The roads won’t be clear. They don’t like many people out on them.”

“Thanks for the warning,” she said. “But if not that many are out, then I really should be fine. It’s early yet too.”

“Good point,” Torrie said cheerfully. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said, going to her car and getting in.

She’d had a lot of waves and looks from people since she’d moved in, but no one had talked to her until today.

Of course it would have to be in the form of unsolicited advice.

Her secretary had warned her that in this small town, everyone knew everyone else’s business.

Guess that might be why she wasn’t out socializing as Matt said she liked to do.

There was a difference between getting to know people and finding herself fodder for the locals.

The windows were all clear and just wet, so she turned the wipers on, checked her mirrors, looked around, and drove through the complex as if it were a ghost town.

It almost felt like it in an eerie white wonderland kind of way. Pretty and scary at the same time.

Torrie was right—no one was out. She was making the first tracks in the virgin snowfall.

You’d think the world ended or something.

She turned out of her complex onto the main road. There weren’t any tracks here either.

Since her car was all-wheel drive and she was going slow enough, she felt in complete control.

Until she got onto the main street and went to stop for a light outside the town park and realized that braking in the snow wasn’t the same as braking in the rain.

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