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“I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay. And with all your party prep too.”

Elaine smoothed the maroon comforter with her hand. She gave the room an appraising look. “I needed an excuse to step away. As you can probably tell, I get a littlecrazy.” She rolled her eyes.

“You have a lot on your mind.” Elaine was as full of life as Kade was reserved.

“If you need anything, let me know. I’ll be up a little longer.”

Elaine closed the door behind her. The echo of her footsteps in the hallway grew faint.

Fallon sat on the bed. In her lap were a pair of red plaid flannel pajamas Elaine let her borrow, with chickens in Santa hats scattered across the pattern no less. She sighed.

There was no escaping the holiday spirit, especially here.

Might as well make the best of it.

Somewhere in the house Kade was still awake too. He’d disappeared with his father after dinner, muttering some excuse about Fred needing to up his pool game now that Kade was back home. But Kade’s attentiveness to her while they ate wasn’t lost on Fallon. She’d caught him staring on more than one occasion, especially when a forkful of salad was on its way into her mouth or when she accidentally dipped her nose into her buttered roll. Famished from the long day, she’d eaten with a little more gusto than normal, undoubtedly noticed by the pair of heavy-lashed eyes boring into her whenever she looked his way.

Fallon plodded into the bathroom. There she found a tube of toothpaste but no toothbrush. There was also a neatly folded stack of washcloths on the counter, a new bar of soap still in its wrapper, but no shampoo to be found.

All right. She rubbed her hands together while giving herself a mental pep talk.

Make do tonight.

Head to the store first thing in the morning to pick up essentials.

You’ve got this.

If she could make it through the ordeal of sliding off the highway during a snowstorm, not brushing her teeth for one night was the least of her worries.

She squeezed a dollop of toothpaste on her fingertip and rubbed it along her top teeth when her cell phone buzzed. It took her a minute to find it; she’d buried it underneath her clothes when she’d changed into Elaine’s pajamas.

Agnes’s name showed on the screen.

“Hello?” She answered then rinsed her mouth and turned off the bathroom light.

“Fallon? Thank goodness,” Agnes said. “I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday morning. What a nightmare these last two days have been.”

“Tell me about it. I wouldn’t have chanced the drive if I’d known Snowmaggedon was on the way.” Fallon sank onto the bed on her back. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Duluth. My husband and I snagged one of the last rooms at the Holiday Inn Express. Talk about luck! Were you able to find a room in town?”

“I’m actually staying with Elaine Behar. She insisted after I found out there wasn’t anything available in town.”

There was a long pause on the other end. Then, “Oh. That’s…good for you. If I were able to get there, of course you could have stayed with me.”

“I know. Elaine is a dear though.”

Again, a slight hesitation. “That she is. Say, did her oldest make it home? He was supposed to be retiring by the end of the year.”

“Kade. Yes, I just met him.”

“Can you imagine retiring before age forty?”

Fallon laughed. “Not in my wildest dreams.”

Agnes clucked her tongue. “I have to be honest now, since you’re staying in the same house. That Kade was trouble when he was young.”

“Oh?”