Page 8 of A Heart of Winter
Not even a whole day in Minnesota, and I was already flirting with new men, making plans to call them. That had to be good, right? Sure to get my powers back under control soon, so I wouldn’t keep causing snow and chaos wherever I went?
I let the door close behind me and leaned against it, my head hitting the heavy oak with a thump, and sighed like a schoolboy with a brand new crush.
I didn’t move until I heard firewood start to thud against the back wall of the cabin as Kai stacked it up there. I’d offered to help on the way back, but he’d told me it wouldn’t be verygentlemanly of him to make me carry my own firewood. Far be it from me to make someone feel like he wasn’t a gentleman, especially if it involved not having to do manual labor.
Maybe I could make him some cocoa, though. Or tea. Would he like tea? A lot of people in New York thought making tea was hopelessly old fashioned and only drank coffee.
There was a tea kettle in the kitchen, thankfully, but the selection of tea Morwenna had was decidedly slim pickings. Jasmine and another kind of jasmine. It was the only kind she drank when she wasn’t at my house, so it made sense. But would Kai like jasmine tea? Was that a weird thing to offer someone?
My thoughts of tea evaporated when I grabbed the tea kettle and it instantly froze solid.
The temperature probably wasn’t important for a piece of machinery—I didn’t know if any of the electronic bits were susceptible to breaking in the cold—but more obvious, there was suddenly a solid cube of ice where once there had been water inside it.
I wasn’t making tea anytime soon.
Worse still, my mood had improved, but somehow, my powers were even more out of control than before.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Milk and Bread
Ablizzard.
I hadn’t even had a chance to call Kai yet—it had been less than a day since we’d met, and the news was predicting a blizzard. Since it was all over the weather channel, it probably wasn’t my fault.
At least, I tried to keep telling myself that.
The snow I caused in the past had always been called “freak storms,” and people had always complained about how they’d come on with no warning. They hadn’t been something about cold fronts and warm fronts and pressure systems or . . . whatever.
I was a witch, not a meteorologist.
On the other hand, puberty had ended for me before modern meteorology had existed. Maybe I did cause all that atmospheric disturbance, and I’d just never known.
It had taken hours for the kettle to thaw, and when I’d apologetically told Kai that the kettle was frozen with water inside—well, he’d been sweet. He’d insisted on coming in and getting a fire restarted in the stove, and then asked if I knew how to take care of it and keep the house heated. When I’d said yes,he hadn’t insisted on explaining to me, but he’d clearly still been worried about my wellbeing.
I’d half expected him to show back up after his meeting the previous night, but that would have been a lot.
Maybe.
Infatuation, I had one.
But his smile. And his eyes, and his . . . everything. The man couldn’t have been more gorgeous if he’d tried.
I didn’t have time to worry about that right then, though.
Morwenna had called first thing in the morning to inform me that the appropriate human course of action was to rush to the grocery store in town to buy milk and bread, to prepare for the storm. I wasn’t sure what milk and bread had to do with anything, and hoped it was acceptable that I also planned to buy the ingredients for a stew I had always made in the winter. And rice pudding. And wine. And toilet paper.
Those things seemed more important than milk and bread. Though bread would go well with the stew, and rice pudding did have milk in it. Maybe I should buy extra milk, just in case. But could I even use up a whole gallon before it went bad?
That sounded like a lot of rice pudding.
I stood there staring into the dairy case, looking at the few options left. Gallons of whole milk, or half-gallons of skim. I didn’t really like milk all that much, honestly. I could just buy some cream for the rice pudding, but then what was the milk even for?
“Looking for the answers to the universe in the milk?” A low, deep voice asked near my ear, and instead of jumping in fright, a delighted shiver shot down my spine.
Kai.
I turned to face him, a smile on my face. “My friend called and told me I need to buy bread and milk.” I glanced back at the case, frowning.
