An Enchanted Season

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank Lady Fi for teaching me how to drive. I didn’t learn until I was twenty-nine, and she was an excellent instructor. In fact, I passed with room to spare…even though it snowed the day I took the test. It is because of her that I chose Iowa for the setting of this tale; she moved to Rolfe this last winter, and I miss her dearly. So here’s hoping that your hearthfire never goes out, milady!

—Jean

Prologue

THE CAR JOLTED ONTO THE ROAD IN A SOFT GLOW OF LIGHT, sliding a little over the ice-packed snow. Mike gave Bella a dirty look from his position in the front passenger seat. One of his hands curled around the shoulder strap of his seat belt, dark brown on black, dimly lit by the dashboard lights. “Do you always have to drive like that?”

“Better a few minor bumps than a speeding ticket, O Lead-Footed One,” Cassie reminded him from the back seat of the old VW Beetle. “As I recall, you cost us an hour’s delay and just under a hundred dollars, the last time you drove.”

“Whereas you refuse to learn how to drive,” Bella quipped, glancing at her companion through the rearview mirror. Cassie’s fingers were busy with a wad of saffron-orange yarn and a golden crochet hook, her attention on her task and not on the road ahead. She looked over at Mike and smiled. “Don’t worry, Mike. We only have another two miles to go. Besides, cars are much more comfortable than camels. Be grateful we’re living in the modern era.”

A light in the distance made Mike crane his head that way. “Look, a small town. Probably with a motel. Why can’t we ever stay at a motel? It’s not as if I’m asking for a five-star hotel, you know.”

Cassie answered him. “We go where we are needed, we stay where we are welcome, and we do what we must. When you follow the Way, you must follow the path that it dictates.”

“Thank you, Ms. Buddhist,” he quipped. “You just love to go all Zen on me, don’t you?”

The blonde in the backseat merely smiled and flipped her crocheting over, starting on the next row. The three rode in silence for a little while more. Around them, the landscape was lit with an eerie orange-gray glow. It was faint, but the refracted light from that town in the distance was mingling oddly with what little sunlight made it through the thick cloud cover.

Small flakes had already been swirling down out of the sky like granules of sugar on steroids. They now grew to the size of bleached cornflakes, obscuring the vision of the three travelers with disturbing quickness, until it was hard to see more than a hundred feet ahead. The tires slipped on the powder that was accumulating on the packed snow, sending the car skidding sideways.

Mike yelped and clutched at the handle fastened over the upper edge of his door. “Prophet, save us! Can’t you drive any more carefully than that?”

“Oh, you fuss over nothing,” Cassie soothed him as Bella corrected the vehicle’s skid, her attention firmly on her driving. “She has it well in hand!”

Mike shook his head, still clutching the panic-grip over the door with one dark-skinned hand. “To quote Ebenezer Scrooge: ‘I am mortal, and liable to fall!’”

“Hah hah, very funny. We’re not exactly on a mountainside, Michael, nor staring out a Victorian window,” Bella reminded him, her mouth twisted wryly. Since they were out of danger, she was free to speak again. “We’re in the middle of Iowa. Flat Iowa, no less.”

“Nowhere, Iowa,” he muttered. “And those ditches are six feet deep, if you haven’t noticed.”

“If we were nowhere, then we wouldn’t be here, because there wouldn’t be a here to be,” Bella stated.

In the backseat, Cassie pouted and muttered, “Rats. You beat me to it.”

“And yes, I noticed the depth of the ditches.” Downshifting, Bella carefully turned into a driveway marked by a snow-powdered, ornately carved sign reading “Bethel’s Inn—Welcome!” She smiled as she guided the car up the drive. The snow wasn’t packed down on the driveway as it had been on the road; the bumper of the rounded car pushed it up in chunks, broke it to either side, and plowed them a path up to the gingerbread-trimmed farmhouse. “Well. Here we are. Time to get going.”

“More than get going,” Cassie said, freeing a hand from her project to point past Mike’s shoulder. “Look.”

Two pickup trucks sat at what looked like hastily parked angles mere feet from the covered front porch. Others had arrived ahead of them. From the way the truck lights were still shining on the front windows of the house, it didn’t look like their owners were the polite type. Indeed, despite the swirling snowstorm hissing its flakes around them, they could hear shouting from somewhere within the farmhouse.

One

“NO. NO, NO, NO…NOT THIS!” RACHEL STARED IN DISMAY at the small television set perched under the cupboard containing her willowware plates. “Not this, on top of everything else…”

The weather report shifted from the weekend to the ten-day forecast, ignoring her pleas. They had eight guests planned to arrive for the Christmas holidays, but with the sudden shift in the jet stream overnight, a huge blizzard was now headed directly their way, rather than bathing the states to the north. Without those eight guests, she and her fiancé wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage at the end of the month, and the country inn that had been in Steven’s family for four generations would fail. She stared at the longer forecast, noting with dismay that snow was predicted all the way up through Christmas Night.

The weatherman was cheerfully relating to his viewers that they were definitely going to have a “white Christmas.” Rachel didn’t find his prognostication the least bit cheering. She flinched when the phone rang, and shifted to pick up the receiver. Sure enough, it was Mrs. Terwilliger, calling to cancel her and her husband’s arrival. Opening the day planner, Rachel scratched out the couple’s names, feeling depression closing in around her.

Within five minutes, the phone rang again. Billy Platz was calling to let her know that he and his two brothers weren’t going to make it; they were stuck at an airport farther north, snowed in and unlikely to go anywhere for a long while. Her hands shook a little as she marked out those names. Three names were left. Mary, Joseph, and Maggie Stoutson; Mary was old Bill Pargeter’s granddaughter. Rachel didn’t think Joseph would want to travel quite this far in the coming weather with a three-year-old. She flinched when the phone rang again, but it wasn’t the Stoutsons, thankfully. Just her future mother-and father-in-law, calling to wish her and their son a quick Merry Christmas before boarding their ship for a holiday cruise in the Caribbean.

Rachel managed to get through the phone call without betraying her inner fears. As soon as she gave an upbeat farewell and hung up the phone, however, she shuddered with the weight of responsibility. It wasn’t her fault that the old farmhouse had been partially damaged by a passing tornado. Nor that the insurance company had tried to declare bankruptcy, leaving not only the Bethel Inn but many other homes and businesses in the lurch in the legal tangle that had caused. Nor was it their fault that the estimated costs had grown when the contractors discovered dry rot in some of the main support beams last autumn, requiring extensive repairs.

It was her and Steve’s fault for deciding to take out a mortgage on the house, in order to finance those repairs, yes…but it wasn’t her fault that Mr. Thomas Harrod was such a tight-fisted Scrooge when it came to making payments on time, to the last penny. The Inn was profitable; the old house had just run into a bad patch of luck. That was all. It was also more than enough to put the two of them teetering on the brink of ruin. Stress and worry had become a daily part of their lives, and Rachel just wished it would all go away.

The door to the mudroom opened. Her fiancé stepped inside, balancing two pails of milk in his hands. Snow still dusted his light brown hair, though he had removed his boots and overcoat in the mudroom. Setting the covered pails on the counter, he started to grin at her. His smile faltered, seeing her expression. “What’s wrong?”

Rachel gestured at the day planner. “Five guests canceled.”

Running his hand through his short, crisp locks, Steve winced at the chilly damp his fingers encountered. It was a reminder of the blizzard under way. “Which ones?”

“The Terwilligers and the Platz brothers. I haven’t heard from the Stoutsons yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time.” She sighed and ran her hands over her own hair, dark brown and pulled into a single, sleek braid. “This isn’t good, Steve. This isn’t good. We’re not going to make the mortgage payment, are we?”

“I don’t want to ask Mom and Dad for help, but if we can’t—” he started to say. Rachel shook her head, cutting him off.

“They just called a few minutes ago. They’ve probably boarded their ship already. I’m sorry,” she added softly. “We won’t be able to reach them until they get back.”

He spun away from her, hands fisting on the edge of the counter. Frustration alternately boiled and froze in his veins. Steve hated this situation, but he didn’t want to loose that anger in front of Rachel. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t his fault…well, maybe the mortgage they had cosigned, but considering how many years the Bethel family had partnered with the Harrod Bank, he heartily wished its current owner wasn’t such a tightwad.

Rachel crossed to him, lifting her hands to his shoulders. They were knotted with tension. She did her best to massage them, but he was almost a foot taller than her. “Come on; let’s get the rest of the milk in the house. And the eggs.”

“Oh, that’s what I meant to tell you,” Steve said, turning around and slipping his arms under hers. He cradled her against him, taking comfort in the feel of her soft curves against his harder muscles, in the trust of her cheek resting on his chest. The hug wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been, given how both of them were still stiff with tension. “I had to hang a rope from here to the barn, the snow’s threatening to fall that thickly, but I’ve already got all the eggs gathered. The chickens were cooperating today, not being nearly as nasty as usual. But the really good news is that I managed to draw off some colostrum from Ellen. If her first-milk is finally showing up, that means she’s getting ready to drop!”

Rachel winced at that, pulling back. “That’s not good news. We’re going to be snowed in, Steve, straight through Christmas! What if she has another breech birth, like the last time?”

“We’ll handle it, somehow,” Steve reassured her, cupping her shoulders in his palms. He looked down into her brown eyes and managed a smile. “One task at a time. No courting trouble, when we’re supposed to be courting each other, got it?”

She managed a smile of her own. Neither of them had been in the mood for “courting” since that tornado had struck last summer. Not for more than halfhearted attempts. “Alright, no courting trouble.” She found enough energy to smile and attempt to flirt with her love. “You’re certainly cuter.”

“Than what, a breech-birthed calf?” he joked.

She chuckled and mock-swiped at him. “Go on, get out there and get the rest of the milk. I’ll follow as soon as I can pull on my boots. And don’t break any of those eggs. If we don’t have any guests, we can at least have a nice quiche for supper.”

THE SLEIGH BELLS ON THE FRONT DOOR, HUNG IN HONOR OF the impending holidays, jangled loudly. Rachel, joyful that the Stoutsons had made it safely through the storm, quickly wiped off her hands on her apron, hurrying out of the kitchen and around the bulk of the front stairs. She drifted to a stop, her smile faltering and fading in dismay. The three snow-dusted figures who had walked into her fiancé’s home in a swirl of cold air weren’t Mr., Mrs., and little Miss Stoutson.

They were Pete, Dave, and Joey. College-aged boys, but none of them college-educated. Their families were close friends of the Harrods, the family that owned the town bank, and with it, the mortgage on the Bethel Inn. Heart pounding in her chest, she dredged something resembling a smile back onto her lips. “Hello, boys. What brings you all the way out here, with a storm on the way?”

Pete—never Petey, that was his dad—closed half the distance between them with an ambling walk that spoke of time spent in a saddle. His father raised pigs, of course, but she had heard he’d spent his summers between school years on his uncle’s cattle ranch, farther south. He flashed her a grin. “Now, Miz Rutherford, you ain’t that much older’n us. You ain’t, what, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six.” Asserting her age allowed her to assert her authority. She spoke the words crisply, too, without any of the local drawl. “And I do not recall inviting you over for a visit.”

“Ooh, college-educated,” Dave teased; his hair was dark brown, his face less lean and saturnine. He made a pretense of rubbing his jaw, using fingers perpetually stained with the grease from the engines he liked working on in his cousin’s garage in town. “Seems a shame ol’ Steve had to go all the way to Des Moines to find himself a pretty thing for a future wife. You know what they say: Big city wimmin get ideas that are too big for their little-bitty brains.”

“At least I have a brain that I can use,” Rachel retorted. She did her best to keep her smile as Dave stiffened. “But in the spirit of Christmas, I’ll be generous, and believe that you have one, too. Now, what are you boys doing in my house? Somehow, I don’t think it’s to rent any of our rooms.”

Joey, the redhead of the trio, finished unbuttoning the puffy front of his blue, down-stuffed parka and hooked his thumbs into his work belt. Of the three of them, he was the most polite and reasonably respectable; he was a journeyman plumber, having apprenticed with his aunt’s husband for the last two years. “Now, Miz Rutherford, you know why we’re here. You got until the twenty-fourth of each month to come up with the mortgage money. Mr. Thomas wanted us to remind you that, come snow or sleet, hail or dark of night, that money’s gotta be delivered this next Monday, or he’ll foreclose on this place. You don’t wanna be tossed out into the snow on Christmas Day, now do you?”

“We are not going to be tossed out,” Steve asserted from the top of the stairs. He thumped his way down the stairs, glowering at the trio. “And I thought I told the three of you to stay off my property!”

“Ain’t gonna be your property much longer, Stevie,” Dave drawled, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. He rocked on his heels, coolly ignoring the glare the older man aimed at him. “Pretty soon, you won’t have a place to lay your head at night…and that pretty girl there is gonna come lookin’ for a real bed to lay in—something satisfying.”

He leered at Rachel as he said it. She gasped and stepped back, disgusted by the implication, while her fiancé jumped down the last two steps, anger furrowing his brow.

“Get the hell outta this house!”

“Why doncha try throwing me out?” Dave shot back. “There’s three of us, an’ only one of you!”

The door banged open with a vigorous clashing of the sleigh bells, startling everyone. They turned to look at the figure in the opening. The pink, fur-clad figure. At least, the coat was pink, and it had a thick span of high-quality, white faux-fur trim all around the hems, cuffs, and neckline. A fluffy faux-fur hat was perched on the woman’s head, and a matching, fuzzy muff dangled from a white cord around her neck. She flung up one hand as they gaped at her, beaming an angelic smile from her pink-painted lips. “We have arrived! Oh, goodness, you wouldn’t believe how thick the snow is falling out there!”

Her hand slashed down again in a limp-wristed dismissal, showing off her sparkly pink fingernails. Narrow pink heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she crossed from the entry rug to the hallway, brushing between Joey and Pete. Both young men stared at her with wide eyes. She held out her hand to Steve, forcing him to uncurl the fists he had formed in order to shake it. Blue eyes pinned him in place as she did so, and an exotic scent filled his lungs. The combination was too friendly for the anger in his mind to be sustained. He found himself tentatively smiling as she introduced herself.

“You must be Mr. Bethel, owner of this fine establishment. Call me Cassie! We were looking at stopping in the town, but the snow was falling so heavily, it seemed we wouldn’t make it—and then we saw your sign, like a miracle from the Buddha himself!” Releasing his fingers, she reached out and clasped Rachel’s palm as well, beaming warmly at the two of them.

“‘We’?” Dave managed to ask, not quite as stunned by her appearance as the other two. Until she turned around and smiled at him. He froze in place under the impact of that warm, cheery grin.

“Oh, yes, my traveling companions. Bella,” Cassie introduced, gesturing past the three youths, “and Mike.”

They turned and saw a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman clad in a black wool coat with flared sleeves and an equally flared hemline that fell almost to her boots. A black fur hat was perched on her head and a muff strung from her neck as well, faux-mink to the faux-fox her companion was wearing. Beside her, closing the front door, stood a dark-skinned gentleman in a marten-fur hat, matching faux-fur muff, and a brown leather trench coat, which he was unbuttoning now that the door was closed, preventing more of the heat in the house from escaping. Doing so revealed the fake sheepskin lining the calf-length jacket.

“Hello,” Mike stated, reaching between Pete and Joey to shake Steve’s hand. “As she said, my name is Mike, and I’m just as grateful as she is that we have arrived in time. I do hope you have room for us. I would hate to toss anyone out into the blizzard that has formed outside.”

“Speaking of which,” the woman in black stated, her words accented with a hint of something exotic, maybe Eastern European, “shouldn’t you gentlemen go turn off your headlights? Since no one is going to be going anywhere in this weather, there’s no point in you killing your batteries.”

Joey twisted to peer out the window next to the door and groaned. “Aw, man! We haven’t even been here five minutes, and it’s already dumped two inches!”

“What?” Dave hurried to the window set to the left of the door. He squinted through the rectangular panes. The only reason why their trucks were still visible was thanks to the headlights shining through the driving mass of snowflakes outside. “Goddammit!”

“Language, young man,” the woman named Bella snapped, her dark eyes gleaming with outrage. “This is the holy season, and you will not take the Lord’s name in vain!”

“I’d follow along with what she says,” Cassie interjected helpfully, touching Dave’s shoulder. “She has quite a temper when it comes to blasphemy.”

Dave whirled to tell her something, but her pink-nailed fingers bumped into his cheek, knuckles gently caressing his skin.

“Just mind your manners, be on your best behavior, and enjoy the peace that can be found at this time of year,” the blond woman suggested, still smiling kindly.

The fight that had been forming drained out of him. There was no point in arguing; the snow was driving too hard and piling too deep to go anywhere safely. “Fine. Then I guess we’ll just have to stay here until it stops.”

Steve started to open his mouth and argue the point, but Rachel stepped forward, cutting him off. “That’ll be a hundred dollars a night, gentlemen. A hundred a night, apiece. Plus the cost of dinner and supper; breakfast does come with the cost of the bed, naturally.”

All three youths gaped at her. Pete was the first to regain his voice. “A hundred—a night? You can’t be serious!”

“Oh, she’s quite serious,” Mike interjected. “This is a business, and the business is selling rooms and meals. If you wish to stay and eat, you must pay.”

“You think I’m gonna pay to help support this place, when my cousin Richie is gonna be running it as soon as they can’t pay the mortgage?” Joey demanded.

“Of course; your only other option is to risk driving in this weather, and freezing to death.”

“When we want your opinion, we’ll beat it out of you!” Pete snapped.

Cassie slipped between the two once again and cupped their jaws gently in her fingers. “Now, boys, this is the season for peace. For brotherhood, compassion, and caring. But electricity doesn’t come cheaply, and neither do clean linens, or a hot meal. You will be gentlemen, and pay for your stay.” Releasing their cheeks, she turned and smiled at Rachel and Steve. “Just as we will pay for our own stay. Mike?”

“Why am I the one who always pays for these things?” the dark-skinned man muttered. He touched his chest, then gestured at the dark-haired woman. “Do I look like I’m made out of gold?”

“Of course.” Bella smirked. She passed between the three boys, bringing with her a sharper, spicier tang to her perfume than the sweeter one her pink-clad companion wore. Glancing over her shoulder, her heart-shaped face thrown into elegant profile, she murmured, “Your headlights? Or do you want to still be stuck here, forced to pay a hundred dollars a night when the roads are cleared in a few more days?”

“To he…heck with this,” Dave muttered, heading out the door. “I’m not stayin’ here!”

Pete, glancing between him and Joey, joined him in slogging through the rapidly forming drifts. Joey exited the house as well, but not to climb into his truck, slam the doors shut, and start up the engine. As the five in the house watched from the front window, he sat there for a moment, the door still opened, barely more than a silhouette glimpsed through the falling flakes. Then the headlights cut off. The other set of headlights swiveled, then vanished into a reflected, swirling glow of lit flakes. The glow dimmed quickly, fading from view.

A figure swirled out of the white, climbing the deep-set porch. Joey opened the door, looking sheepish as he entered far less vigorously than he had originally arrived, keeping one hand on the doorknob so it wouldn’t hit the wall. He rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand, opened his mouth…and a crash in the distance, faint but unmistakable, cut him off. Jerking around, he stared out the window next to the doorway. “They must’ve slid into the ditch! We gotta get to ’em!”

“Joey, stop!” Steve ordered. As the redhead glanced back at him, he explained, “The snow’s driving too hard; you get more than twenty yards from this house, you’ll never find it again. You know what an Iowan blizzard can do.”

“We can’t leave them out there!” Joey protested. “Look, I know we came out here to give you trouble, but freezin’ ain’t the way to go.”

“I’ve got some bundles of rope in the mudroom. I brought them in from the barn when I brought in the last of the milk this morning. If we tie them to one of the posts on the porch and keep a hold of the other end, we won’t get lost,” Steve said. “They probably misjudged the turn out of the driveway, and hit one of the ditches.”

“I told you they were six feet deep,” Mike whispered to Bella.

She rolled her eyes and waited for their host to come back. He had three bundles of ropes in his hands. Grabbing one of them, she met his startled gaze. “What? It snows like this all the time where I come from. I’m used to maneuvering in the snow.”

“I couldn’t ask a lady to go out in weather like this,” Steve protested, glancing at his fiancée.

“Who said I was a lady? Look, we may need a crowbar as well, depending on how banged up they are. I have one in my car, which is on our way. If that is the case, you’ll need someone to hold the rope to make sure it doesn’t get blown away while the two of you gentlemen pry open the doors,” she instructed Steve and Joey, giving them equal time under the weight of her dark brown gaze. “And if both boys are injured, each of you can carry a man, and I can reel in the rope and keep track of the four of you, to make sure no one gets lost.”

“You’d better give in, Mr. Bethel,” Mike advised wryly. “There was never a more stubborn or opinionated being in all of creation, once Bella makes up her mind to help someone.” He flashed the dark-clad woman a white-toothed grin. “At least she uses her powers for good.”

Cassie laughed at his quip, and Bella smirked. No one else chuckled. Considering her offer carefully, Steve finally handed the second bundle of rope to Joey. “Fine. You reasoning is sound. But you follow orders. I don’t know where you’re from, but I doubt you’ve seen a snowstorm like the ones we get around here. There’s a porch on the second floor, at the back of the house. There have been times when my family has had to clear that of two feet of snow.”

“Mr. Bethel, it can drop an average of half a meter overnight where I come from. And the landscape is a lot more mountainous than this.”

“Where’s that?” Joey muttered, eyeing her all-black outfit warily. “Transylvania?”

“Yes, actually.” She parted her lips, licking her teeth, as if her canines were about to grow a lot longer and pointier than their normal appearance would seem.

“Oh, be nice!” Cassie chided, flipping her hand at her companion. As the three rescuers headed out the front door, the pink-clad woman turned to Rachel, patting her hand. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Bethel. Bella will make sure they all get back here nice and safely.”

“I’m not Mrs. Bethel yet,” Rachel found herself compelled to admit. “I’m going to be, soon.”

“A nice, big wedding?” Mike asked her, distracting their hostess from the danger of the storm. “With a huge feast and lots of relatives?”

“Actually…a small, quiet civil ceremony, New Year’s Day,” Rachel found herself confessing as Cassie drew her into the sitting room next to the front hall. “Just his parents and mine as witnesses. We originally thought of having a big wedding, but had to scale back when the Inn was damaged last summer. Repairs are more important than parties, after all.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” Cassie commiserated. “Mind you, the Buddhist way is about as simple as a civil ceremony can get, but most cultures like to indulge in lavish displays of hospitality and festivity. And as prominent business owners, it would also be a good way to spread awareness of just how fine your inn is, if you were to host a reception here.”

She gestured at the warm oak wainscoting and pale, calico-sprigged walls lining the front parlor, with darker versions of calico-covered furniture amply cushioned for comfort. Efforts had been made to festoon the room with red and gold ribbons, artificial greenery, and a Christmas tree in the bay window off to one side. Even the Franklin stove boasted a set of sleigh bells, wrapped around the stovepipe on a metal chain that would tolerate the heat of a fire better than the velvet ribbon supporting the ones hung from the front door.

“Yes, it’s very warm and inviting,” Mike agreed, taking one of the stuffed armchairs while Cassie sank onto the sofa with their hostess. “Are all of the furnishings new?”

“This side of the house was badly hit in a tornado last summer,” Rachel found herself explaining. “We took out a mortgage on the Inn to make the necessary repairs, since the insurance company tried to go bankrupt, and all the funds are still tied up in litigation. The house is on the Historic Registry waiting list, so we did our best to have the structure repaired very close to what it originally was, in case it does make it onto the list of important buildings for this region. But our guests prefer more comfortably padded furniture.”

“Fascinating. Has it always been an inn?” the dark-skinned gentleman inquired.

“From within the first eight years of its construction,” Rachel agreed, glad she had asked Steve about the Inn’s history. “It was a part of the railroad expansion. There used to be a set of tracks that ran near the property line, and the owners realized that if they invested in lumber and some bed frames, they could house first the workers, then the people who traveled through here. They made sure to bill it as a family establishment, a place for the husbands to bring their wives and children, as opposed to the bachelor quarters offered in town—no single men allowed. When the railroad was built, and the main depot installed at the edge of town, they had a buggy specifically built to escort the women travelers out to the Bethel Inn so that they could sleep in chaperoned safety.”

A beeping noise cut off any further explanation. Mike gave her a sheepish look as he extracted an electronic day planner from his pocket. “Please forgive me. It is time for my devotions.”

“Oh. Are you a minister, then?” Rachel asked him, curious.

“No, just a faithful Muslim—you aren’t going to be serving a lot of pork, are you?” he asked with a wry smile. “I realize that Iowa is pork central, of course, but while I’m not absolutely strict in my diet when I’m traveling, I do try to avoid alcohol and pork.”

“Ah. Well, if you’re snowed in with the rest of us through Christmas, I had planned to carry on the tradition of the famous Bethel Inn ham…but I suppose I could roast a chicken as well.”

“That would be very kind of you,” Cassie replied, smiling. “I know Bella would be grateful, too.”

“Is she also a Muslim?” Rachel inquired politely.

“No, she’s a Reform Jew,” Mike corrected.

Blinking, Rachel looked between him and Cassie, who was finally unbuttoning her fluffy-edged pink coat. “A Buddhist, a Muslim, and a Reform Jew, traveling together?…Listen to me,” she scoffed in the next moment, smiling ruefully. “I made that sound like the opening to a bad joke, or something. Next thing you know, you’ll be walking into a bar!”

Cassie and Mike both laughed at that. Ruefully, Mike shook his head in the next moment. “As much as I’d like to continue to chat, I really do need to attend to my midmorning devotions. If I give you my debit card, could you show me to a room, and perhaps process it while I pray?”

Having been raised a Christian herself, Rachel had heard only bits and pieces about how the faith of Islam worked, but she did know those who were devout to it prayed five times a day. Though it wasn’t her own system of beliefs, she would be an innkeeper’s wife, and that meant welcoming not only a diverse number of travelers, but a diverse number of faiths. Rising, she nodded cordially to him, adding a smile. “I think that can be arranged. I can scrounge up another rope to go out to your car to safely fetch your bags, if you like.”

“Oh, there’ll be no need,” Cassie reassured her, rising from the sofa as well. “They’re out in the hall.”

Rachel headed through the greenery-framed door, frowning softly. Sure enough, three sets of bags rested around the foot of the coat rack, like presents around a Christmas tree. One set was vinyl pink, one set was cloth black, and one set was leather brown. She was sure they hadn’t brought their luggage in with them, and reasonably sure she hadn’t heard the front door open and close…somewhat sure? Maybe Bella had directed the other two to bring in their bags while Rachel was distracted with the tale of the Inn…

Shaking it off, she picked up the brown cloth bags and mounted the stairs. “This way, please; I presume you’ll each want separate bedrooms?”

“Of course,” Mike agreed. “When you’ve traveled together for as long as we have, you tend to want some privacy now and then.”

“Have you been together long, then?” Rachel asked next, leading him toward the bedroom overlooking the front of the house. “Oh, the bathroom is that door there, conveniently labeled as such. There are two more further down the hall, each with its own sign, in case this one is busy at some point.”

“Yes, I see,” Mike confirmed, nodding his head at the carved and painted sign. “We’ve gone on holiday voyages like this one for many years now. Sort of a hajj of friendship, as it were—I’ve already been to Mecca, so that journey is complete. We travel for other reasons these days.”

“I hope you don’t mind our Christmas celebrations,” Rachel offered politely, entering the bedroom and crossing to the four-poster bed, setting his two suitcases on the padded bench at its foot.

“Why should I? Christ was one of the most important Prophets to appear before Mohammed’s time. The traditions of Christmas celebrate the exact same spirit of unity and brotherhood that the followers of Islam embrace at this time of year—in fact, today is the last day of hajj on our holy calendar,” Mike added, smiling at her. “Not to mention the Winter Solstice, an important holy-day for those who revere nature. Though the coldest days of winter still lie ahead of us, today is the darkest, longest night, the shortest, dimmest day of the whole year…and it is a time when all of us in the Northern Hemisphere are reminded that, no matter how bleak things look today, tomorrow will be a little brighter than today, and the day after will be even brighter than before.

“And so here we are,” he stated, spreading his arms with a smile. “Bringing you customers for your business, when it seems likely that the storm has chased everyone else away.”

Her cell phone rang, startling Rachel. She hadn’t realized what a mesmerizing speaker her guest was until then. Pulling it out of her pocket, she flipped it open. “Bethel Inn, how may I help you?”

“Rachel? This is Bill Pargeter. I just wanted you to know that my granddaughter and her family have arrived safely at my house. It’s going to be a tight squeeze, what with my two daughters and their own broods, plus my grandson…but I wouldn’t put a rabid dog out in weather like this, let alone make ’em drive all the way out to your place. I’d shoot the rabid dog to put it out of its misery, but I wouldn’t put it out in this weather.”

Rachel made a face at the wall. So much for tomorrow being a little brighter than today… “I’m glad to hear that Joseph, Mary, and the baby are safe and sound at your place, Bill. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Wait, there’s more!” Bill’s voice interrupted her before she could tell him good-bye. “I know Mr. Harrod’s being, well, the backside of a front-ugly cow right now about that mortgage of yours. Joseph and I talked it over, and we’re both in agreement. We’re gonna pay you the full price for their ten-day stay, half from him, an’ half from me. That’s on the hope that this storm will be less severe than the weather guys keep claiming it’ll be. By paying you a retaining fee, they can at least guarantee a room to escape to, once it’s safe to drive again—and no arguing, young lady. Consider it a Christmas gift from the Pargeters and the Stoutsons, a thank-you for hosting little packets of our family whenever we have ’em over for a holiday.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta get off-line so my own daughter can teach me how to use that newfangled computer-thing she got me for my birthday last month. Beth says there’s a way we can transfer the money to you online, so you’ll get it into your account right away. Richie’s a good enough boy, but that father of his would have him cuttin’ corners an’ driving the Inn into bankruptcy.”

“Th-thank you!” Rachel stammered, too shocked by the generosity to protest. Not that she had much of a chance for it, since the old farmer hung up before she could even try. Returning the phone to her pocket, she blinked a few times, then drew a deep breath and let it out. With the income from six guests, plus the income from the Stoutsons…they would have enough to pay the mortgage for this month, and their other bills as well. Their savings had been whittled down during the months Steve and she had spent doing all those repairs, unable to operate the Inn. With the boys replacing the Platz brothers, they’d not only have the mortgage and the electricity paid, but enough set aside to start feeding those depleted accounts.

Maybe today was one of the darkest days of the year; it had certainly been darkening metaphorically around her and her fiancé up until this point, as well as physically. But with one phone call and six unexpected visitors, Rachel felt like the sun was finally returning to her and Steve’s life. Remembering her guest, who was rolling out a small prayer rug taken from one of his suitcases, she quickly murmured her excuses and left the room, giving him privacy for his faith.

Six guests…God bless them all, Rachel thought, amazed that she would find herself thinking such a thing after the way the boys had arrived. It’s going to be interesting, entertaining that many when they can’t go off and visit other people. Maybe some party games in between meals? She could still do a quiche for supper, if she stretched it with cheese and vegetables and added a few more dishes, but Rachel also had a much bigger lunch to plan. Head full of ideas, she returned to the kitchen.

Two

STEVE WASN’T SURE WHAT TO MAKE OF THE WOMAN, BELLA. Ignoring the biting, breath-stealing cold, she used her muff to dust the snow off the front of the rounded lump that was her car, extracted the crowbar with black-gloved hands, and trudged alongside him and Joey through the increasingly deep drifts without any problems, despite the slenderness of her frame. Joey, bundled up once again, kept slipping her glances, too. Of the three of them, she seemed almost happy to be out in the deepening drifts. Sandwiched between the two men, she forged onward, somehow guiding them in what had to be the straightest line Steve had ever seen anyone take in a blizzard, as if drawn by some sort of beacon.

Not that there was much to see beyond the swirling, falling snow and misty white puffs of their own breath, of course, but when something reddish-gray loomed up out of the grayish-white surrounding them, it took Steve a moment to realize the reddish thing was the plastic of his newspaper box, advertising the name of the local tribune, and the gray bits belonged to the metal mailbox and the weathered-wood post supporting both. The object looked oddly short, until he realized how deep the drifts had packed up under their feet.

The snow was coming down even harder now, blowing sideways in disorienting swirls before angling the other way. Without the rope playing into the distance behind them, Steve doubted they would be able to make it back at all, straight-line march or otherwise; he couldn’t even see the far side of the road from here. From the way the cold seeped into his boots and gloves, how the wind stole into every gap and sucked heat from every thin spot in his clothes, if they didn’t make it back to the house, they would freeze to death. No, Joey was right; this wasn’t the way anyone should die.

“My guess,” Bella enunciated over the hissing of the wind and its swirling burden of flakes, “is that they pulled out of the driveway, then slid into the far side of the ditch. Which way would they have turned, do you know?”

“The nearer of the two is Pete’s place,” Joey offered, speaking over the scarf wrapping the lower half of his face. “Off to the left.”

Bella and Steve looked at each other. He looked down at the rope in his hands. Having already tied two lengths together, he took the third coil, knotted them stoutly, then handed her the rope and put her on the end. “Let’s check that way first. I’ll take point. Joey, you take the middle and make sure you hold my hand, and Miss Bella, don’t you let go of either him or that rope!”

“Don’t worry; you can trust me,” she returned stoutly.

Hoping that everyone, sensible or otherwise, had found shelter and gotten themselves off the road, Steve inched out across the highway, trying to spot signs of the ditch on the far side before he found it the hard way. If it weren’t for the mittened hand gripping his, he wouldn’t have known he wasn’t alone. The world had turned white and violently empty with the onset of this blizzard. Cold seeped through his clothes in little patches of discomfort. All he wanted to do was go back and warm up by the woodstove, cuddling on the couch with his soon-to-be wife and a hot cup of cider, rich with spices.

It was her cider that had first made him realize he was in love with her. They had met in college in business class. He had offered to buy her a cup of coffee and chat in his dorm room, and she had countered with an offer of home-brewed cider in her apartment. An offer that he had ended up accepting several times. The spices she used reminded him of her eyes, cinnamon-warm and nutmeg-bright. Their courtship had progressed slowly, since she had accepted an internship for two years at a hotel down in California after getting her MBA, with a minor in the hospitality industry. But Steve had been willing to be patient.

Stress over their finances had dampened some of their prewedding enthusiasm, and certainly curbed their original, pre-tornado plans for a better wedding. Inching his way across a snow-obscured road, Steve just wanted to get back to her. But there were two young fools somewhere out here. He couldn’t leave them to freeze to death.

His feet found the edge of the ditch, blanketed into a mere dimple by the drifting snow. The moment he felt the curve, he shifted to the left, crowbar in one hand, the other tugging Joey behind him. It didn’t take more than another two minutes to find the truck, though at first he couldn’t make out what he was seeing; tilted firmly on its side, Dave’s black pickup sat under an obscuring blanket of white at least three inches deep. Part of it was due to the way the wind swirled snow up off the road, driving it until it hit the vehicle and formed the start of a snowdrift, but part of it was just the heavy, icy downpour of flakes all around.

“Here it is!” Steve told the others, restraining the impulse to hurry to the front of the truck. With the road slick from compressed snow underneath the freshly deposited stuff, he didn’t want to risk stepping wrong and twisting an ankle, or worse. As soon as he was even with the back of the pickup bed, he whacked the truck with the crowbar, clanging metal against metal. “Hopefully, that’ll wake ’em up!”

“I’ll stay at the bumper with the rope,” Bella told him, releasing Joey’s hand. “Don’t go further away than you can touch this thing, or you’ll be lost!”

Nodding, the two men moved up along the length of the truck. They reached the door, designated by a peak in the blanketing white that was the side mirror, and heard a thumping and yelling noise from within. Scraping the snow from the window, Steve saw Dave and Pete inside. With Joey’s help, he cleared off the rest of the snow, finding the door handle. It seemed to be stuck. Joey took the crowbar from him and, with Steve gripping the latch to release its lever, helped to pry the thing open. Dave helped by shoving from the inside.

Holding the door open against the wind, Steve watched as Joey assisted his two friends in scrambling out. It was awkward, since the moment Dave released his seat belt, he slid right into Pete, who yelped at being squished. But the boys sorted themselves out. Gesturing at the back of the truck, Steve shouted over the wind.

“Bella’s at the back of the truck. She’s got a rope that’ll lead us right back to the Inn. Everybody, grab hands and work your way back there together. Don’t let go!”

Joey took point, pulling Pete along behind him. Dave hesitated a moment, then gripped Steve’s hand. “Thanks.”

Steve almost didn’t hear the words, but knew it must have cost the younger man a bit to say them. He held his tongue, saving his breath and his energy for the trek back to the Inn. He let Bella take the lead, reeling in the rope as she walked steadily through the thickly falling flakes, retracing their path through the snow. Joey had one hand tucked into the belt wrapped around the waist of her overcoat, the other forming the rest of the chain of men. All Steve had to do was follow in the wake of the others, holding Dave’s gloved hand as he trudged through the gap in the drifts that had been churned and trampled into their path home.

INSIDE THE FRONT ROOM, CASSIE PEERED THROUGH THE glazed front of the woodstove. The flames were burning merrily enough, but eventually the fire would die down. Peering at the logs stacked in the nearby basket, she smiled and selected a rounded one, then used a nearby pot holder to open the metal door.

Long ago, the people of the Scandinavian lands had ceremonially lit a log like this one—only much, much bigger, the entire trunk of a tree—to celebrate Thor, god of lightning, at this time of the year. The object was to burn a single tree for the entire length of the old celebrations. The Celts had also lit a log much like this one as well, to entice the sun to grow strong once again, shedding more and more light. But the tradition involving flames she thought most fondly of, as she tenderly placed the rounded bit of trunk into the heart of the fire, was the one Bella would think of, too: that of the miracle of the temple lamps, in the ancient land of the Hebrews. At the darkest time of the year, it was important to remember that light would come back into their lives, no matter how gloomy things might seem.

“Shalom,” she breathed into the metal box, before closing the door. Inside the stove, the log slowly caught fire, burning with a steady golden light. The Franklin stove was as far as one could get from a menorah, but in a storm like this, it was just as important to warm the body as to warm the spirit.

This had to be the snowstorm to end all snowstorms; by the time they reached the front porch of the converted farmhouse, it was nearly three steps shorter than it should have been, and all of them were chilled to the bone, shivering inside their clothes. A pink-clad figure met them on the porch, dusting each of them off in a fluttering bustle of pink-gloved hands before allowing them into the house, so that the caked snow on their clothes wouldn’t melt and soak them into a worse chill, or so Cassie chattered. The boys accepted her fussing with wide eyes, and Steve with an impatient sigh, wanting only to rejoin his fiancée. Bella accepted it with a roll of her eyes as she finished coiling the last bit of rope.

As soon as they were inside, Rachel met them with a tray loaded with steaming mugs. The spicy scent warmed Steve’s heart just as much as his lungs. As soon as he had shed his outer coat and his gloves, he wrapped his hands around the almost-toohot mug, letting the heat sink into his chilled fingers. For a moment, he wanted to tell her how much he loved her. It felt too awkward, though. Professing his love in front of strangers was bad enough, but in front of three unwelcome guests, boys who would snicker and make fun of his feelings…he couldn’t do it.

Mike came down the stairs, dressed in a deep brown sweater-vest, tan shirt, and chocolate trousers. “I’m glad to see all of you made it back safely. Allah’s blessings upon you, and those of the Prophet Emmanuel.”

Pete blinked and frowned at him. “You ain’t a Christian?”

Bella smacked him on the back of the head with her muff. “No, he isn’t! And neither am I, though I’m willing to admit your Christ was probably a True Prophet of God, if not the Messiah.”

“God is God,” Cassie interjected smoothly, favoring Pete with a smile. “Whether you dress Him up in an aba, a sari, or a three-piece suit, God is God.”

“And this time of the year has been set aside for the celebration of kindness, tolerance, unity, and brotherhood,” Mike agreed as he finished descending the last few steps. Reaching for one of the mugs, he lifted it from the tray in Rachel’s hands. “A toast: to the enlightenment that comes from opening our minds to knowledge. May we all know the Creator a little better, through getting to know each other.”

Bella plucked a mug from the tray, holding it high. “May we all enjoy the comfort of a solid roof over our head, good food in our bellies, and friendships—both new and old—warming our hearts.”

“To peace, in this holiest of seasons,” Cassie agreed, taking the second-to-last mug. She looked expectantly at Steve, who realized she wanted him to add a toast.

“Uh…to finding these two young gentlemen alive.”

“And to making it back alive,” Joey added, clinking his mug against his friends’.

David blinked, then nodded. “To being rescued, even when I made an a—” He caught Bella’s pointed glare and changed his wording. “A donkey of myself.”

“To, um…tolerance, and the holiday spirit,” Pete agreed.

“To a Merry Christmas, a happy hajj, and a joyous Hanukkah,” Rachel offered. Then blinked and looked at Cassie. “Um…what celebrations do Buddhists hold at this time of the year?”

“The day the Buddha began his search for Enlightenment, but that was earlier in the month,” she dismissed with a smile. “I’m perfectly fine with the idea of toasting happiness, merriment, and joy, since you’re all safe and sound.”

“Then to happiness, merriment, and joy,” Rachel allowed, clinking her mug with the others.

“Good! Now it should be cool enough to drink,” Mike told the others, smiling. They lifted their mugs to their lips, finding the cinnamon-laced apple juice just on the tolerable side of hot.

Rachel lowered her mug and gestured everyone into the front parlor. “Come, sit! Shed a few more layers as soon as you’ve warmed up enough. If anyone needs a hot shower, we have three of them available, but the water tanks can only reheat so much at one time.”

“That’s assuming the power doesn’t go out,” Pete muttered, taking a seat on a padded calico footstool. “Storm this bad’ll probably knock out a substation somewhere, plus all them power lines coming down.”

“Naw, the county got smart along this stretch of road, an’ buried all the lines,” Joey reminded his friend, stretching out his legs. He’d claimed the rocking chair in the corner by the stove. “Power’ll only go out if the substation goes. Of course, that makes it a pain in the b—uh, backside when it comes to findin’ the road if the drifts get deeper than the ditches, since there’s no poles to watch for.”

“Well, if the power goes out, we’ve got a portable generator in the lean-to, just off the mudroom out back,” Steve told the others from his seat on the sofa, freeing one hand from the mug of cider so that he could tuck his wife-to-be closer against him. Having cheated a frozen, swirling death, he appreciated Rachel a whole lot more today.

“Speaking of which…shouldn’t at least one of you gentlemen cough up a credit or debit card, so that our hostess can register you for your stay?” Mike inquired gently, giving the three boys a pointed look.

“You can’t be serious about that,” Dave scoffed.

“Quite serious,” Bella stated before Rachel or Steve could speak. “Two of you owe your very lives to Mr. Bethel and that rope of his that guided us safely back to this shelter.”

They looked at each other, then Joey grumbled under his breath, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. “You can put it on mine, Miz Rutherford. I’ll beat it outta the other two later.”

Pete snorted. “As if you could!”

“Let us not test that theory in person,” Mike chided them. He turned to their hostess, who had leaned fully into her fiancé’s side, her slippered feet curled up next to Bella’s hip. “So, what shall we be having for our lunch?”

“Tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, and steamed vegetables,” Rachel replied promptly. “With more cheese smothered over the top.”

Dave scratched his chin. “Well, if it’s the Bethel Inn cheese, I suppose I could stomach ’em…”

“It is,” Rachel promised, reluctantly uncurling from Steve’s side to take the credit card Joey extended her way. There was a credit reader in the kitchen she could use to bill him with. Credit wasn’t quite as good as debit, since it wasn’t an instant transfer of funds, but it would have to do.

“Well, in the meantime, why don’t we play a game?” Cassie offered. “Something to warm us up in both body and mind, like charades!”

The others groaned, but conceded the idea. With the snow swirling outside the house, the front room was cozily warm in contrast, thanks to the cheerfully burning woodstove. Bella volunteered to go first, rising to her feet and holding up three fingers.

“Okay, three words,” Mike agreed.

She held up two fingers, and Joey said, “Second word.”

Two more fingers, and Pete offered, “Two syllables?” Bella shook her head, so he changed it to, “Two letters?”

A nod and a tug of her ear, then a fluttering of her fingers, her thumbs intertwined, forming the shape of a bird. Steve narrowed his eyes. “Sounds like…dove—of!”

The black-clad woman nodded, unbuttoning her overcoat. Naturally, she was wearing an all-black ensemble of wool slacks and an angora sweater underneath. She held up her first finger after passing her coat to Dave, who draped it over the arm of his chair, and then she held up four fingers.

“First word, four letters,” the dark-haired youth offered, and received a nod.

A tug of her ear, and she stretched her hands out, as if expanding something. Steve tried to guess it. “Sounds like…stretch. Expand?”

Bella shook her head twice. Mike tried a guess next. “Lengthen?”

She swirled her fingers, encouraging that line of thought. Pete blurted out, “Long?”

Grinning, Bella tugged on her ear and pointed to him.

“Wrong, bong, thong,” Dave muttered.

“Song?” Steve asked, and received a sharp nod, three fingers, and then seven more in reply. It popped into his head. “‘Song of Solomon’?”

“You got it!” Applauding him, Bella reseated herself on the other end of the couch. “Your turn, Mr. Bethel!”

“Steve, please,” he urged. Thinking for a moment, he rose and began his own charade attempt with a smile and six fingers.

By the time Rachel returned, the others were laughing at her betrothed, who was flapping his elbows and making faces.

“Six words, Miz Rutherford!” Joey gasped, wiping at the tears in his eyes. “We can’t figure it out!”

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” she stated, and grinned as the others gaped. “He did the exact same one when we first played charades together at a party back in college.”

“Cuckoo?” Mike snorted. “He looked more like a drunken chicken! No offense meant.”

“None taken,” Steve agreed, straightening with a grin. He took his fiancée’s hand and kissed it impulsively, remembering that party and how she had found his silliness endearing rather than off-putting. “Your turn, love.”

“HEY.”

The soft-spoken word turned Steve’s head. Pete stood in the doorway to the mudroom, watching him tug on his boots. “What do you want?”

“That gal, Bella, is right. I owe you my life. Me an’ Dave both do.” He scratched at the back of his head for a moment, then asked, “You gotta go milk your cows, right?”

“That’s right,” Steve agreed. “It’s almost time for their afternoon milking.”

“Well, I can help you. I’ve done it before, at my uncle’s place,” Pete offered with a diffident shrug. “If nothin’ else, you’ll need help clearin’ a path to th’ barn.”

Steve hesitated only a moment before nodding his head. “There’s only the four of them that need full milking; one of them’s at the first-milk stage, so that’ll need to be set aside; there’s a bottle of colostrum started in the dairy’s fridge. But the offer is appreciated. Get your things, and put them on in here. I’ve already strung a rope from the house to the barn, so we’ll be following that from here.”

Nodding, looking relieved at having his offer accepted, Pete vanished from the doorway. Steve finished settling his snow boots on his feet, and hoped that this peaceful coexistence would continue. The two boys did owe him their lives, true, but he didn’t do things like that to hold any favors over the heads of others. He had done it because it was the right thing to do.

STEVE GROANED AS HE SETTLED BETWEEN THE FLANNEL sheets next to Rachel. It had been a long day, and he was tired from slogging through the snow. The radio on the far side of the bed from him played softly, letting them know there was still electricity to the house. Rachel had picked a classical music station, something soothing, relaxing.

“How are the cows doing?” she asked him. “Do you need to watch Ellen yet?”

“If this one’s anything like the last five calvings, she’ll have two more days to go before she’s ready to drop. Butt first,” he added, gesturing with his hand. “But she’ll drop. Probably the night before Christmas Eve.”

“And unless a miracle happens, this storm will keep the vet away for longer than those three days,” Rachel sighed, twisting onto her side so she could snuggle close. “You’ll have to start sleeping out in the barn tomorrow night, just in case…and I’ll miss you.”

A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. He twisted his head, kissing her dark hair. “Actually, Pete is going to be sleeping out there. We’ll trade off during the day, but he’s volunteered to watch during the night. He’s had to turn breech-birth calves half a dozen times before, with his uncle’s guidance. And he says the cot we have out there is nicer than having to doss down in the hay like at his uncle’s place. I made sure he had extra blankets. He’ll be fine.”

“It’s a nice turnaround from him and his friends coming here to bully us earlier,” Rachel sighed. “And it takes one of our worries off the mind. Depending on whether or not the credit companies can give us a fast turnaround on processing Joey’s card before noon, we should have enough in the bank for the automatic withdrawal of the mortgage. If not…”

“If not, then there’s nothing we can do about it. Except pray for a miracle that Mr. Harrod gets that stick unwedged from his butt,” Steve muttered.

Rachel shoved at him lightly for the vulgarity, and he kissed her on the lips to soothe her protest. It had been a while since they had last kissed in bed. Stress had taken its toll on their urge for intimacy, submerging their desires under the weight of their worries. With some of that weight lifted, and with memories stirred of how they had first gotten together, Steve felt his body quickening with a half-forgotten thrill of desire. So what started out as a simple, loving kiss grew a bit warmer.

His hand slid from her shoulder to her breast. Rachel sucked in a startled breath, pulling her head back. He hadn’t touched her like that in a few weeks, and truth be told, she hadn’t been in the mood for it herself. Until now, that was. Brown eyes stared at hazel for a long heartbeat, then they both squirmed under the covering quilts, Steve removing his pajamas, Rachel her long-sleeved nightgown.

Shoving the garments under their pillows so they could be found again, Rachel squeaked when Steve pounced on her, his hands just a little too chilly for comfort. He tickled her ribs, making her giggle, then muffled the noise with his lips, recapturing their kiss. She returned the favor, brushing her fingertips over the hairs dusting his chest. He retaliated by cupping her breast.

The soft, moaning sigh that escaped Rachel’s lungs made Steve remember that sound, back when they had first been intimate. It reminded him how much she had enjoyed the way he had stroked and savored her curves. The last time they had made love, he had only played with them a little, wanting to move on to the rest of her body. Only he hadn’t really moved on to the rest of it. Not her legs, not her arms…

I’ve been neglecting her, he thought, pulling back from their kiss. She gave him a puzzled look, so he gave her a reassuring smile in return. I should not neglect the woman I love.

Catching her hand, he brought it to his mouth, nipping gently at her skin. From the flush of her cheeks, she still enjoyed having her fingers nibbled and licked. That made him dredge through the rest of his memory, recalling every little caress she had ever enjoyed at his hand. The suckling of his lips at the soft inner bend of her elbow. The lapping of his tongue over the tender flesh of her wrist. The worshipful caress that palmed the outer curve of her breast.

Rachel moaned again, enjoying his touch. She couldn’t remember the last time he had pampered her like this. As he worked his way down her torso, teasing around her nipples rather than going straight to their crinkled tips, she knew she would reward him once he was done with her. It would be rude to interrupt him before he was done, after all.

When he kissed her belly, she giggled. It was too ticklish a sensation not to react—mainly because he lapped like a kitten around the rim of her navel. But rather than continuing on to her core, he squirmed into a lump under the covers that had enough room to nibble on the soft skin of her thighs. Aroused more than she could remember, Rachel moaned softly with each breath. With their room on the ground floor, she didn’t fear the softer sounds of lovemaking. Only if he provoked her into a loud cry would she worry, though they had invested some of their renovations in filling the spaces between the walls with plenty of insulation.

Oh! Oh…there… Her breath groaned out of her when she felt his tongue tickling the edges of her folds. Hands curling into the feather-stuffed pillows, Rachel twisted, arching her hips up and splaying her knees out. There, there, there…ohhh, yes, this man deserves a big reward for thi—wait, he’s stopping.

Disoriented by the sudden cessation of pleasure, she lifted her head, feeling him squirming an arm up the length of her body—and not to grope her breasts. He batted instead at the edge of the covers, lifting them up. A moment later, Rachel heard a deep inhalation. She giggled, divining his problem.

“Can’t breathe down there, my love?” she asked her lover, amused.

“No, I can’t,” came his half-muffled reply. “A little help with the air, please?”

“And let myself freeze from the cold draft?” she joked, shifting the bedding so that it formed what she hoped was an adequate tunnel.

“I’ll make sure you’re kept nice and warm,” Steve murmured, returning to his task. A moment later, he paused in his savoring to add, “Mm, tasty.”

That made her laugh. It was what he’d first said about her recipe for cider, and for the first meal she had made for him…and the first time they had made love. No, she didn’t mind the cold, after all; not when he resumed flicking his tongue between her nether lips, sending a flush of pleasure out across her body.

He knew her very well. In fact, Steve could usually make her climax within minutes once he began tasting her down there. This time, he took his time, using his knowledge to tease, not just to please. A flick here, a suckle there, a bit of lapping, a swirling lick. Gentle stroking from his fingers, counterpoint to the nibbling of his lips. One of those fingers slipped inside, carefully twisted around, and pressed upward in a fluttering movement. Stars exploded silently behind her eyes, making her cry out.

When he added an equally rapid flicking of his tongue to the peak of flesh overlooking his finger, Rachel shattered deliciously, arching her neck and twisting her body, before relaxing gradually under the easing of his touch.

Steve couldn’t breathe; her brief writhe had been just enough to collapse the tunnel of the bedcovers that had been providing him with fresh, cool air. Squirming carefully up the length of her body, he poked his head out with a gasp of relief, flushed from the heat the two of them had generated under the thickly layered quilts. He grinned as he gulped in the crisp, cool air. In fact, he was surprised he still fit in the bed, given the dreamy, dazed look on his fiancée’s face.

What a way to make a man feel ten feet tall! Damn, I’ve missed totally scattering her wits like that. What a fool I was, letting the grind of daily life drive our love down into something ordinary…

Rachel came back to herself with a double blink, finally realizing her fiancé was beaming at her like a lit-up Christmas tree. She thought briefly about twitting him for being so smug, but conceded that it was well-deserved smugness. That, and it was much easier to whisper a simple “Wow.”

“Mm-hmm,” Steve agreed smugly, cupping her damp mound under the layers of bedding. His groin twitched with desire, feeling how slick he had made her, but he told that part of himself to hush. Tonight was for his future wife to enjoy. If she wanted more, she’d let him know. If not, it was enough to have pleased her so thoroughly. She deserved being pleased.

Thankfully, his loins agreed with that decision; Rachel was worth far more to him than the proverbial quick roll in the hay.

His quietude puzzled Rachel. Arching a brow, she asked, “Is that it? No pouncing on me?”

The curve of his mouth deepened from a smirk to a leer. “If you want more of the same, I’d love to do it all over again.”

Oh. She blinked at him, thought about him suckling her again, and of him not being that eager to release himself. Since she could feel his erection prodding her hip, she knew he was eager physically, but he hadn’t even hinted at his own need. “Why? I mean, why pamper me, and not take any pleasure for yourself?”

“Who said I don’t enjoy that?” Steve countered, propping his head up on his hand. The air was cold against his arm, but he was still a bit heated from being buried under the covers. “It pleases me a lot to pleasure you. Tonight is your night. Anything you want,” he promised impulsively, almost rashly, “and if it’s within my power, I’ll give it to you.”

And I thought he’d melted my body into warm goo with that mouth of his, she thought distractedly. Who knew he could melt my heart, too, after all these years together? Thoughts whirling, she settled on what she really wanted, and slid a hand onto his shoulder, pushing him over. “What I want, right now…is to please you as thoroughly as you have just pleased me. So kindly make an air tunnel for me.”

Grinning at the ceiling, Steve complied, first making sure the quilts and sheet stayed high on his chest while she squirmed underneath, then rumpling them just so to ensure that she could breathe as she kissed her way down his chest. He didn’t want his fiancée to suffocate, after all. Especially with her mouth full.

Three

THE ALARM CLOCK RANG ALL TOO EARLY, AS IT USUALLY DID, but both Rachel and Steve woke with that wonderful, must-stretch-under-the-covers sensation of having had a truly good and relaxing night’s sleep. Rachel winced as Steve turned on the lamp by the bed, smirked as he slapped off the alarm, and kissed him with closed lips when he leaned over her. Morning breath was always a worry, but a peck on the lips was a very nice way to start the morning in a good frame of mind.

Good enough that the chill in the air only made both of them gasp and hurry to dress for the morning’s chores. Even with Pete out in the barn, ready to help shift the cows from their stalls to the attached dairy annex and give them their morning feed, it would still be a chore. Since he could still hear the wind whisking the snow around the house, Steve crossed to one of the heavily draped windows and peeked between the velveteen curtains. He frowned, trying to make sense of what he saw.

With his and Rachel’s bedroom being on the ground floor, with the understanding that the “ground floor” technically started two feet above the actual level of the ground, it took him a few moments to process what he was looking at in the sliver of light that shone through the windowpanes: snow that had piled up to the bottom edge of the window.

Six feet of snow.

There had been about eight to ten inches of snow left over from previous storms, compacted by time, wind, and almost-thawing before freezing again. It usually didn’t snow more than a few inches, half a foot at most per snowstorm, but it rarely thawed in Iowa long enough for all of the snow to melt away, just compact down. By the time spring rolled around, it would be a couple feet thick, but that was at the end of winter. This much snow in a single fall was almost surreal.

“Six feet…”

Rachel, tugging her head through the sweater she was pulling on over a long-sleeved knit shirt, padded over to join him. “What did you say?”

“Six feet!” He held the curtain back so that she could see for herself. It was somewhat dark outside, though still lit by a faint, almost sourceless, orange-peach glow that undoubtedly came from the lights over by the barn, and the streetlamp glow from the nearby town. “Assuming it hasn’t drifted up on this side of things, that’s six feet of snow out there! This is one of those storms that only comes along once every half-century!”

“Wow,” she breathed, staring at the still-falling flakes, which didn’t have quite so far to fall anymore.

“You’re only allowed to say that after I give you mindless pleasure,” Steve teased her, drawing her into his arms as he let the curtain fall back into place. They shared a loving but brief kiss before he set her free with a sigh. “I’m going to have to crawl through the snow to get to the barn, then shovel my way back again. I told Pete the milking starts at five o’clock sharp; I hope he has the sense to start without me, or the girls will get off their schedule and stop producing as much milk.”

“You’ll need a hearty meal when you’re done. I’ll start making sausage…um…chicken gravy and buttermilk biscuits for breakfast,” Rachel amended, thinking of the two guests who wouldn’t be able to eat pork.

“I’ll need a hearty meal before I’m done,” Steve quipped, shifting to pull on a second layer of wool socks. The rest of him might get warm from the exertion of all that shoveling, but his toes would freeze if he didn’t take care of his feet.

RACHEL JERKED TO A STOP BY THE PARTIALLY OPEN STUDY door. Frowning, she poked her head inside, searching the brightly lit room for its occupant, which shouldn’t have been brightly lit at all. The nubbly black curls and chocolate-colored nape of their tan-clad guest met her gaze. He was doing something on their computer, checking something online. Stepping inside, Rachel caught his attention. “Excuse me, but this room is off-limits to guests.”

He turned to face her with an apologetic smile. “I’m terribly sorry; I didn’t realize. I just saw the computer and the router, and thought I could check my e-mail. Um…while I was online, your instant messaging thingy popped up a little window. You’ve received an e-mail from someone about a Mr. Swanson. The subject line looked rather urgent—I’m done here, so you can check it out yourself,” he added, closing out the last window and rising from her office chair. “Forgive me my meddling, but I wanted to make sure my business was running smoothly.”

“What sort of business?” Rachel found herself asking in curiosity as he moved out of her way.

Mike smiled warmly. “Knowledge. It is important to learn, and it is vital to understand. I am something of a teacher, and something of an information broker, a researcher. But then, you already know an education is important; after all, you wouldn’t be so successful as a bed-and-breakfast owner if you and your impending husband hadn’t gone to college…and met there, and fallen in love. I’ll leave you to your work, and go sit in the front parlor.”

Rachel blushed as she smiled. Settling into the chair, she started to face the monitor, then turned back. “Oh—I need to stoke and build up the fire in that room first.”

“No need,” Mike reassured her. “I checked on it when I got up, and saw that someone had done it earlier.”

Puzzled, Rachel frowned at him. “Earlier? It’s nine minutes to five a.m.—who would be up this early?”

“Oh, we’re all early risers. Especially when motivated. Don’t forget your e-mail,” he instructed her, nodding at the computer screen. “It looked urgent, and we don’t know how long the power from the county can be maintained, what with this storm and all.”

Bemused, Rachel turned back to the screen, clicked on the appropriate icon, and started sorting through the list of e-mails received. The latest one puzzled her even more than her early-rising guests. It was from “Lappschaum & Assoc.” and the subject line read “Pursuant to the Request of Mr. Theodore Swanson.” Teddy Swanson was one of their longest-standing guests, according to Steve. He came every single summer, stayed for four weeks, visited all his friends and relatives in the area, then went back to Minneapolis–St. Paul. He was something of a local legend, too, for he had been doing so for most of his eighty-four years, ever since graduating from the local high school and going off to college three hours to the north, where he had found a wife and started a family.

Opening the e-mail, Rachel read the contents. Her hand crept up over her mouth, tears prickling in her eyes. Someone had written to inform them that Mr. Swanson had died in his sleep. Steve would be devastated, as would his parents, who had hosted Teddy for decades. As had the previous generation of Bethels.

She forced herself to read on…and the hand covering her mouth to hold back her grief now covered up its urge to gape. It seemed that Mr. Lappschaum was Teddy Swanson’s executor for his will…and that Teddy had left a trust fund for Steve’s future children, to ensure they would have a college education, whenever Steve and she got around to having them. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but with compound interest, it would be enough to ensure at least two offspring had the chance to attend some college or university somewhere across the States.

It was an incredibly generous gift from a man who had been a delight for the Bethels to host. Even though she personally had known him only a few summers, she had enjoyed taking care of the elderly gentleman’s needs. He would be missed, but remembered for a long time, especially with this unexpected piece of philanthropy. Closing the browser window, Rachel made her way to the kitchen in a daze. The sad and the happy news could wait until Steve returned from the barn; she had breakfast to make.

ADJUSTING HIS KNIT CAP ON HIS HEAD ONE LAST TIME, Steve opened the door of the lean-to, ready to grab his snow shovel and start forging a path to the barn. The shovel wasn’t there, however. Neither snow shovel hung on their assigned pegs hammered into the board running along the outer wall, nor was the regular shovel, which should have been hanging in the tool-shed-style room. Confused, he closed the lean-to door, then opened the back door to the mudroom, expecting to have to climb up over the couple of feet of snow that had piled up over the back porch.

A snow-dusted trench greeted his eyes, wide enough for two people to pass, and the faint sound of voices in the distance met his ears. Bitter cold seeped into his lungs, and swirling white still fell from the dark sky. Treading over the crunchy, squeaky snow that had begun to reaccumulate at the bottom of the artificial, somewhat broad, curving canyon, he found the source of the cleft in the drifts when he was within viewing distance of the bright glow from the large fluorescent light hung at the peak of the barn roof. Three bodies worked in rotating tandem as he stopped and watched, goaded by the accented voice of the slender woman in black. They had followed the path of the rope he had strung, straight to the barn entrance.

“That’s it! Put your back into it! Four more shovels to go! Keep it up, David; you’re doing well! Three more shovelfuls! Watch that clump, Joey, it’s about to fall! Two more shovels…and it’s my turn again!”

Joey stepped to the right as Dave stepped back, and Bella stepped up into Joey’s place on the left. She hacked at the snow with her spade-tipped shovel while Joey scooped up the broken chunks of snowbank and tossed them up over the head-high snowbank enfolding them. Breathing hard, David leaned on his shovel and watched them for a moment, then idly glanced behind him. He blinked at the sight of Steve standing there, watching them, then straightened and held out the shovel.

“Here. Your turn. I’m bushed.”

“Nonsense!” Bella asserted as she lunged the implement in her hands at the wall of snow between them and the small side door set in the end of the barn wall, next to the larger, sliding doors. “Exercise is good for you! All those endorphins, pumping through your blood! Plus it will make us appreciate our breakfast all the more. Five more shovelfuls, Joey, then it’ll be our host’s turn!”

Guessing what was expected of him, Steve stepped up behind them, waited for his turn, and slotted himself on the left as Joey stumbled back, breathing just as hard as his friend had. “Man!” He gulped, his breath steaming in the snow-swirled air. “Where does she get all that energy?”

Steve found himself hard-pressed to keep up with her, even though he was fresh and she must have been working the two boys for at least half an hour. She continued to chop into the snow with the spade in her hands, switching sides with him so that he could scoop away the loosened snow. Joey stepped back in after a few more minutes, having regained some energy. Within a minute after that, they reached the door and had to take more care so as not to damage the wooden planks of the siding, scraping more than shoveling.

Grinning, Bella twisted open the door as soon as the way was mostly clear, and gestured Steve into the warmth of the building. “There you go! Mind you, I want to enjoy fresh milk and eggs for my breakfast when you are through. Come along, boys. Unless you want to muck stalls and pitch hay while you’re at it?”

Muttering their refusals as politely and quickly as they could pant, the two youths followed her, taking the shovels back with them. Amazed at how the odd, black-clad woman could get such honest work out of the local pack of troublemakers, Steve shook his head and stepped inside. It was only a couple minutes after five, and he could hear the lowing of the ladies in their byres. Or rather, not in their byres, he noted with satisfaction. Pete was already leading what looked like the second cow out of her stall, taking her to the dairy room for food and milking, just like he had the previous afternoon. It was a relief for Steve to see that their girls would’ve been fine without him.

Shedding a layer as the heat of the barn seeped into him, Steve headed for Ellen’s stall; she needed to be hand-milked for the colostrum, rather than put on the machine that would send her first-milk into the same pails as the rest. But when he got to her, he found she’d already been milked. When Pete came back, he grinned shyly at Steve, who was straightening from checking the now slack udder.

“Already done it, Mr. Bethel; she gave it up easy, too. Of course, I was smart enough to wash my hands in hot water so they’d still be warm when they touched her. It’s in the fridge with the rest, in the processing room. I wasn’t sure you’d make it out here in less than three hours, given how deep th’ snow got overnight; then I heard Miz Bella yelling at Dave an’ Joey, making ’em clear a path to the barn. Made me right glad, too,” he added, taking Eliza’s halter and backing the lowing cow out of her stall. “I mean, you showed me the microwave and the frozen stuff in the deep-freeze, but I ain’t so good at cookin’, even with prepackaged stuff. Miz Rutherford’s cookin’ beats my own hands-down, any day.”

“It also beats my own,” Steve agreed, entering the last stall and taking the halter of the remaining cow. “And she loves doing it, too, which is the important part. We’re having chicken gravy on homemade buttermilk biscuits once we’re done cleaning, milking, and cleaning again in here.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here; that machine ain’t too familiar,” Pete admitted. “You did show me, and I could figure out whatever I couldn’t remember, but I’d rather trade you; I’ll muck out the stalls as clean an’ fresh as can be, while you take care of these ladies in the dairy. Deal?”

“Deal,” Steve agreed. Nearly ten minutes of shoveling had been more than enough for him; not having to change out the bedding in the stalls was a very welcome offer. “Don’t forget, we’ll need to gather the eggs in the henhouse, which is through that door over there…”

“AND THE YEAR AFTER THAT, WE WERE TRAVELING IN THE Bahamas,” Bella related as the others finished laughing, “so those lavi-lavi turned out quite useful as makeshift sarongs, but I’ll never stop teasing Mike about having to wear what we think of as a skirt over his trousers!”

“It’s a good thing I can enjoy a laugh at my own expense,” Mike warned her, passing along the bowl of fried potatoes they were sharing at the dinner table, “or I’d have to retaliate with the tale of you and the fresh coconut halves you wore for a hula dancer’s top at that costume party that one Christmas Eve two years ago. It turns out she’s allergic to fresh coconut milk,” he confided to the others. “But only when it’s allowed to dry on her skin.”

“That was me,” Cassie interjected, lifting her finger while Joey and Pete eyed her speculatively. “Not Bella. And that is too painful a subject to discuss at the dinner ta—”

The lights went out, stopping the chatter around the long oak table. With the cessation of speech came an awareness of the cessation of the furnace that had been blowing its heat in a subtle background whoosh, easily missed until it went missing. They could hear the wind still blowing outside, and the hiss of snow on the upper half of the windows, since it had drifted and covered the lower half already. It was a poignant moment, dark and quiet. Then Steve scraped back his chair, clearing his throat.

“If everyone will stay here, I’ll go get a flashlight and some candles, then start up the generator once we can see.”

Bella’s voice broke the quiet following the footsteps of his cautious exit. “Well. At least we finished our supper first. And with the snow halfway up the house, it should help to insulate us against some of the cold outside.”

“Coconut halves, huh?” Dave’s voice asked archly. Something whapped a moment later, making him yelp. “You tossed a bun at me!”

“You’re still in your seat, and I have a very long memory,” Cassie quipped back. She giggled after a moment. “This is turning out to be a very special holiday, that’s for sure!”

Steve came back with the glowing beam of a flashlight in one hand, a pair of candelabras in the other, and a plastic sack swinging from his arm. “Well, I suppose candlelit meals could be considered ‘ambience.’ We’ll have you lit in a jiffy so you don’t bump around; then I’ll get the generator going. Rachel, if you can get the votive holders off the sideboard there, in case they need to get to the bathroom before the lights are back on; I’ve got the candles for ’em here.”

It didn’t take long to set up the candles in their holders, nor to light them. Steve waited long enough for Rachel to get started on illuminating the room, then took himself and a jacket upstairs. The exhaust chimney for the generator was hooked up to a long, tall stovepipe with a sharp, conical peak for a roof. It was designed to take several feet of snow on the lean-to roof and still be able to vent, but with the snow still coming down, Steve didn’t quite trust it to remain clear.

Grabbing a broom from the upstairs closet, he made his way to the covered balcony, which overlooked the mudroom and lean-to below. Snow had stacked up at a fairly steep angle to the balcony railing. More snow fell, glittering as it swirled into the glow of the flashlight he set on the wrought-iron chair in the corner, pointing it out into the snow. As beautiful as the flakes were to watch, they were interfering with his employment; he had guests to keep warm.

Balancing carefully, he climbed high enough to check the snow on the lower roof. It was within a foot or two of the top of the pipe. Poking at the snow with his broom, Steve tried to dislodge it. For a moment, nothing moved, then a good chunk of it broke off and slithered down the sloped surface, taking more and more snow with it. It splattered somewhere below, falling from most of the roof in a rough wedge shape, warning him that he would probably have to shovel the chunks out of the trench to the barn, but it did clear the lean-to roof nicely around the exhaust pipe.

The last thing they needed was to asphyxiate on diesel fumes, after all. Sweeping the snow from his feet, he picked up the flashlight again, returned inside, hung the broom in the closet again, and headed back downstairs, dusting the snow from his short locks. Inside the dining room, he could hear the others playing some sort of game, and paused to check on them. Mike was explaining that the book-sized box in his hands, wrapped in something white printed with golden bells and ribbons on its paper, was a Guessing Box game; they could shake the box, tilt it, turn it, even weigh it, and each person would write down on a piece of paper what they thought was inside the box. Whoever guessed right would win a bar of Swiss chocolate.

It was the perfect dinner game to play in the dim glow of candlelight. Wishing he could join them, since he knew Rachel loved Swiss chocolate, Steve continued on to the mudroom. It was chilly enough, so he kept on the jacket…because if the mudroom was chilly, the lean-to was positively freezing. Crossing to the generator, he played the flashlight over it, checked the gas gauge, and followed the instructions to start it.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, Steve tried again. Nothing happened. He unscrewed the tank cover, checked to make sure it had diesel inside, closed the cap tightly, pressed all the right buttons, pulled on the lever, and…Nothing happened.

Frustrated, he turned away before he could smack the machine. A house full of paying guests, and he couldn’t get the generator to work. This was not good. One problem at a time, one solution at a time, he reminded himself. Of course, the problem is I don’t know much about fixing engines. Milking machines, yes. Generator machines—wait…

Walking back into the house, he poked his head into the dining room. Everyone was still eating and playing the game; the box was now in Joey’s hands, and he was making a show of carefully tipping it just so, to see at what angle the object inside would either roll or slide.

“Dave? You work on engines, right?”

“Yeah,” Dave admitted, lowering his cup of cider. “What’s up?”

“I, ah, can’t get the generator to start,” Steve forced himself to admit. “Maybe, if you took a look at it…”

Shrugging, the youth abandoned the dining table. Borrowing a jacket in the mudroom, he followed Steve into the lean-to. He, too, tried the buttons and the lever, checked the tank, tapped the gauge, then checked over the cables. Digging around on the tool bench in one corner, he came back with a screwdriver and removed the engine cover, checking it over. It didn’t take long for him to figure out the problem.

“Here it is. It’s the spark plugs. They’re all corroded,” the dark-haired youth stated, removing each one for a closer inspection.

“Ah. Well, can they be cleaned up?” Steve asked him. “With some soda pop or something?”

Dave examined each plug, then shook his head. “I doubt it. When was the last time you had this thing serviced?”

“Um…” Steve hated to say, “Never,” but the younger man got the message.

“We’re screwed,” he stated bluntly, handing Steve the ruined plug.

“Now, wait a minute,” a familiar, accented voice stated from the doorway. They both turned and blinked at Bella, who was holding a lit votive candle in a blue glass holder. “Do you mean to tell me, young man, that you work on car engines all the time, as you told us earlier this afternoon, and you don’t have any spare parts in your truck?”

“If I did have any, and if they were the right type, you forget my truck is all th’ way out there, on the far side of the road, lyin’ in a ditch, lady,” Dave reminded her pointedly.

“Well, then, what is the problem? We know it takes two and a half lengths of rope to get from the porch to the bed of your truck, and we have a flashlight to see our way there. Put on your snow boots, gentlemen!” Bella ordered them. “If there is a packet of spark plugs that will work in that truck, now is the time to go find them. Not five hours from now, when we are freezing in our beds. If you want the comfort of a warm home, you must exert yourselves to attain it—he who cuts his own wood is twice warmed, and all of that. Come along!”

Dave shot Steve a sardonic look. “Ever get the feeling she was a drill instructor in a former life?”

“I heard that!”

AT LEAST THE SNOW HADN’T PILED ANY DEEPER THAN THE bottoms of the ground-floor windows, though the wind still swirled it around like it was a full-blown blizzard. No one could tell if it actually was snowing from the clouds somewhere overhead, or if it was all ground drift. It also took a lot longer to get from the front porch to the truck and back, but at least breaking a trail through such deep drifts meant they had an easier time finding their way back. The sight of the mound that was Joey’s truck greeted them first, lit by the plying of two flashlights through the night. Once past the view-blocking mound, they could see the glow of candlelight in the front window, and the figures of Rachel and the others waiting to open the door for them.

Dave was still muttering to himself as he started stripping off his down jacket inside the foyer, letting Steve hang it on the coat rack by the front door. “I don’t believe it…I just don’t believe it…”

“Don’t believe what?” Joey asked his friend, watching the other two removing their gear as well.

“We got there, I climbed down inside, and I immediately found a pack of four spark plugs that can fit the generator, a ten-dollar bill, a rolled-up pair of sweat socks, that old road map I’ve been looking for, and a weenie whistle,” he told his redheaded friend, wrinkling his nose. “A weenie whistle? You know, one of them hotdog-shaped plastic things?” From the blank look on Joey and Pete’s faces, reflected in the light of the votives they were holding, they didn’t know what he was talking about. “Ah…never mind. The point is, we got what we need.”

“What’s wrong with finding a weenie whistle?” Bella asked him, her accent muffled by the way she had bent over to tug off her snow boots.

“I have never in my life owned a weenie whistle, that’s what!” Dave retorted. “I tell you, there’s somethin’ weird goin’ on.”

“What’s weird about finding what you need when you need it?” Mike asked, his dark skin blending him into the doorway of the front parlor.

“Yeah,” Cassie agreed, her blond curls very visible next to his shoulder as she leaned past her friend. “’Tis the season for miracles, and all that!”

“Well, maybe it dropped outta someone’s pocket when they were ridin’ with you,” Pete offered. “Dad found a one-dollar coin from Canada in his car about three years after he bought it from his cousin, who had gone up North a couple years before that.”

Grunting, unable to deny the logic of that possibility, Dave followed Steve back to the lean-to and the waiting generator. Both men groaned, then grumbled, realizing they had to shrug back into their jackets, given the breath-frosting chill in the mudroom; the lean-to was achingly cold in comparison, making their coats a necessity even for such a short task. Once the plugs were installed and the cover resecured, it was simply a matter of pushing a few buttons, pulling on the lever, and starting up the generator. Pleased with their efforts, the two males slapped hands in a high five, shed their things in the mudroom, and returned to the front room, where the others had gathered.

“Just to let you know,” Rachel was cautioning the others, “we cannot run a lot of electricity off that generator, and it only has so much fuel, anyway. It’s only good for a few lights at a time, for the heater out in the barn, and for the furnace and hot water tanks. And when it’s milking time, the dairy gets priority on the electricity, so there’ll be a ban on using it from five to six in the morning, and from three to four in the afternoon. So if you leave a room, turn off the lights behind you if you’re the last one out of there…and enjoy a nice long snuggle under the covers in the mornings.”

“Reading by candlelight can be cozy,” Cassie offered, cheerful as ever. She had brought out her tangle of bright orange yarn again, and was busy crocheting away on something smallish. “And Mike’s little box game is fun, and doesn’t require a lot of bright light. We can keep doing some of that to conserve power in the afternoons.”

“Is she always this cheerful?” Pete asked Bella.

“Yes. You get used to it after a while.”

“A long while,” Mike added dryly. Cassie only laughed and continued playing with her yarn.

“Well,” Rachel stated. “Now that everyone is back, and we have a bit of power for lights, I’m going to bring out the apple crumble I baked earlier. And some of our famous Bethel Inn cheese from the curing cupboards down in the basement. We can heat the crumble on the woodstove here and serve it piping hot, if you’re willing to wait a few minutes. Does that sound good?”

“That, and some of that magnificent spiced cider of yours sounds delicious,” Mike praised, voicing the enthusiasm of the others, who were all nodding.

“Then I’ll be right back.”

It didn’t take long for Rachel to bring out the casserole pan with the apple crumble, nor to set it on the woodstove to heat. Heading down into the basement, she entered the room where the cheese was made and turned to the curing cupboards. The sweetness of the apple crumble would be best offset with a sharp flavor, so she turned toward the cupboards holding the rounds that had aged the longest.

It was very chilly down there, colder than expected. So cold that her breath frosted almost as badly as if she had stepped outside. That meant when Rachel heard a ting-ting followed by a crack and a pshhhhhhh off in the distance, she guessed instantly what had happened. Dismayed, she abandoned the cheese room, hurrying through the other rooms comprising the basement.

The busted pipe was in the laundry room, of course. It sprayed water down from one of the pipes crossing the ceiling. There was a drain pipe in the tiled floor, but with the ground ice-cold under all that snow, it would soon freeze and clog up. Biting back a curse, Rachel hurried for the stairs.

She couldn’t shut off the water, since if it stopped flowing, it would freeze that much faster elsewhere in the house. Once Joey was ready to work, then it could be shut off. She couldn’t even put a space heater into the room to keep the other pipes in there from freezing until the water was cleared up, and not just because of the electricity hazard. Space heaters drained a sizable chunk of the generator’s power; it would be better to just let the furnace do its work.

“Joey? Joey!” She found him headed her way in the front hall, trailed by the others. “You brought your work truck, right?”

“Yeah, I did,” he agreed, jerking his thumb at the front door behind him. “It’s not ten feet from th’ porch, buried under all that snow.”

“Well, unbury it as fast as you can and get your toolbox,” Rachel ordered him tightly. “The blizzard just busted a pipe in the laundry room, and since you’re here, I need you to fix it.”

“You know, who’s gonna pay for all these things we’re supplyin’?” Dave asked her and Steve as Joey stood up. “Help in the barn, shovelin’ all that snow, those spark plugs, and now a busted pipe?”

“We haven’t charged you for your extra meals yet,” Steve pointed out. “Why don’t we call it services in trade?”

“You gotta admit, the food is worth it, Dave,” Joey allowed, hurrying to get into his winter clothes. Bella, ever willing to go out into the snow, was already pulling on hers.

“I’ll get the snow shovels,” Steve sighed.

Rachel caught his hands as he started for the mudroom. Tug-ging him close, she kissed him on the lips, then leaned back with a smile. “One problem at a time.”

“Yeah, but it’s one problem after another,” Steve muttered back, feeling the tension from earlier in the week returning to his shoulders. He hadn’t realized just how much he had relaxed in the last twenty-four hours, thanks to a nearly full inn. Having all these new troubles piling on top of him threatened to grind him right back down again.

“So think of our blessings. The power would have gone out, regardless…and we’d be without a functional generator, and the pipe would have frozen and busted anyway. But we’ve got a full enough house to pay the mortgage, a mechanic who had the spark plugs necessary, a plumber who can fix our pipes…and plenty of heating oil in the furnace, so long as we have the power to run it,” she reminded him. “And plenty of wood for the woodstoves here and in the kitchen, just in case.”

Bella poked her head into the front room. “Are you getting the snow shovels or not?”

Sighing, Steve nodded. He did spare a moment for another quick kiss with his fiancée, then followed their dark-haired guest back to the mudroom. Rachel watched him go, thinking of all the exercise he’d been doing. Deciding he needed rewarding, she started planning what could be done, once the latest problem was fixed.

Four

JOEY NOT ONLY HAD THE TOOLS AND THE PIPING TO MAKE the necessary repairs, he also had a roll of insulation, white on one side, shiny on the other, and fibrous in the middle. Steve and Rachel had pooled their resources for the renovations, even to the point of draining the money originally set aside for a wedding, but they hadn’t been able to insulate all the pipes in the basement. With the power lines buried underground, the electricity rarely went out in the winter; in fact, it was far more common for the Inn and its neighbors in that corner of the county to lose power in the summer from various repairs and construction projects.

The chance of a storm knocking out the electricity had been weighted against the presence of the generator and the fact that the basement rarely got cold enough to freeze. It was a gamble they had lost this time around. But with the pipe repaired and the now-functional generator helping the furnace to blow heat into the rooms once more, it was thankfully not as bad as it could have been. The furnace burned oil, yes, but it operated electronically, an irony not lost on anyone thanks to the storm.

Aware of how much these sort of repairs would cost normally in labor as well as materials, Rachel and Steve conferred quietly, then asked the young man what he would want in additional trade for the work and materials. He thought for a moment, then shrugged and said, “A wheel of your cheese. Mom and Gran are always going on about it, and I think it’d make a nice Christmas present for ’em.”

Considering the youth had managed to make his insulation roll stretch to cover three rooms of piping so far, Steve didn’t think that was adequate. “Two wheels of cheese.”

Joey grinned at the offer, pulling more binding tape from the roll in his hands while Dave held the insulation in place. “Well, now…if that’s the price you’re offerin’, I should have a look at all th’ washers and drainpipes in this place, make sure the seals are good and the U-bends are unclogged.”

“I won’t object to that,” Steve laughed, reaching out to shake the younger man’s hand as soon as he was done taping the latest section of insulation.

“I wouldn’t object to some of that hot apple crumble we were promised, neither,” Dave stated, climbing down the other half of the two-sided ladder.

“As soon as we’ve run out of insulation,” Joey promised his friend. “I’ll make a plumber’s apprentice out of you in the meantime, if you don’t watch out!”

“And I’ll make a grease monkey outta you,” Dave quipped back, helping him shift the ladder. He waited for Joey to measure off a manageable length of the insulation, cutting it into strips that would just fit around the pipes with a little bit of overlap. “Aren’t you done with that thing yet?”

“I’m still cuttin’ it out,” Joey retorted, working the shears through the material.

“No, I mean, haven’t you run out of it?”

Steve frowned in thought. Dave was right; the roll shouldn’t have been that bountiful, even with the journeyman plumber cutting it as economically as possible. It looked almost as thick as it had when he first started. Then again, the stuff was thin, especially when compressed into a tightly rolled cylinder like that. Shaking his head, he left the two to their work in the basement. Maybe it is the season for miracles…

He met a puzzled-looking Rachel in the hallway. She saw him closing the door to the basement and smiled, then frowned softly again, beckoning him into the kitchen. It was dark, with only the light from the hall to illuminate them; with the generator rumbling out in the lean-to, they had a measure of privacy. The dinner dishes had been washed by hand while he, Dave, and Bella had gone out to the truck. Rachel moved automatically to the drying rack to check if they were ready to be put back, and Steve followed her.

Sliding his hands up her arms, he kneaded the muscles to either side of her nape. “Is something bothering you?”

“Yeah…It’s the stove in the parlor. Every time I’ve gone in there to check on it since last night, it’s been burning merrily away, not needing any tending whatsoever. The one in here does, which I started when the three of you went back out to Dave’s car,” Rachel admitted, turning her head to look at the old-fashioned, cast-iron cookstove Steve’s great-grandmother had cooked upon when the Inn had first opened. She had started it to keep the house warm while they looked for spark plugs outside, and had put a quartet of water-filled milk pails on the stovetop to slowly heat. “Every time I ask the others, either they don’t know when it was last stoked, or they say they saw one of the others feeding it earlier. It’s nice to know they’re keeping it going for me, but…”

“But what?” Steve asked his love. “There’s something nagging at you about it. What is it?”

“There’s always this one log in there, whenever I go to check. It could be a series of them, since we did cut up the limbs of that old alder that came down in the tornado and put them in the woodpile, but…there’s always this one round log just burning away every time I go to look. Sometimes it’s to the front, sometimes it’s to the back, or sometimes it’s crosswise. But it’s always in there among the others.”

He laughed softly, half in amusement and half in wonder. “And here I was, just thinking as I came up the stairs that it’s a miracle Joey has so much of that insulation stuff he’s been putting on the pipes downstairs. By rights, he should be almost done with the roll, except it looks like he’s only used a quarter of it. Which makes me want to believe in miracles again. And…”

“And?” Rachel prompted him, turning around in her beloved’s arms.

“And it makes me remember how much I still love you, now that the burdens are being lifted from our shoulders,” Steve whispered, looking down into Rachel’s brown eyes. His smile faded, replaced by a sober look. “I forgot that, because of all our troubles. I didn’t stop loving you, but I did forget to tell you how much I still love you. And how much I appreciate you being here, working so hard right beside me. If there’s any miracles happening in this house, you are one of them. I don’t know how else to tell it to you, to make you believe…except…”

Backing up from her, he lowered one knee to the linoleum-covered floor, holding her hands in his. His legs ached from all the work he’d done, climbing through all that snow and back, but that didn’t matter. It was the look on her face, surprised yet tender, that provided all the cushion he needed.

“Rachel Rutherford, love of my life…will you still marry me?” Steve asked her. “For richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness and health…and in spite of tornado and blizzard?”

His wry question chased away her tears, though her smile was still tremulous. “Of course I will. God couldn’t keep me from marrying you…and He wouldn’t stop it, either.” Freeing one hand, she ran her fingers through his crisp curls, loving their springy texture. “You’re a good man, Steven Bethel. The only man for me. I’m sorry I forgot to show my own deep love and appreciation of you, too.”

Kissing her other hand, Steve pushed back onto his feet. He groaned as he did so, his muscles sore, then smiled at her, pulling her into a hug that was a lot less tense than the one they had shared the previous day. “It’s been a rough five months, hasn’t it? But if we think about it, if we can survive all of this, then we can survive marriage together.”

“Yes, we can,” Rachel sighed, snuggling her cheek into his shoulder.

A voice cleared itself back at the doorway. Steve twisted the two of them a little, so they could both see who it was. Mike stood in the doorway, looking apologetic for interrupting their privacy, yet somehow pleased by the sight of them embracing tenderly. “Pardon the intrusion, but the apple crumble is bubbling, the cheese is melting, and I have only twenty minutes before giving my last devotions for the evening. My stomach politely reminds me that it is not necessary for me to fast before doing so at this time of the year.”

His grin made the other two smile ruefully. Squeezing his fiancée, Steve let go with a sigh. “I’ll call the boys up from the basement.”

“I’ll bring the plates,” Rachel agreed, and smiled as Mike offered his assistance.

WITH THE LAST OF THE DESSERT DISHES HAND-SCRUBBED— the dishwasher took up too much energy to run—and all of the dishes dried and stacked in the cupboards, with their guests retired for the night and nothing more needing to be done until morning, Rachel nudged her fiancé toward the kitchen woodstove and the four milk pails set on its surface. “Grab a pot holder and help me carry these pails, will you?”

Quirking a brow, Steve did as she bid. “What are they for?”

“Well, I didn’t want to run too much water from the tanks, what with the power coming from the generator for both the heating units, and the well pump. And I wasn’t sure how many of our guests would want a hot shower before going to bed,” Rachel explained, taking a couple of pads to lift the handles on two of the pails herself. “I turned the sink on a trickle while you were out, to try to keep the pipes from freezing—yes, I know that didn’t quite work—but it had to be done, and since I lit a fire in the stove to heat the back end of the house, I thought, why put both of them to waste?

“I was going to just draw a regular bath, but it all came together nicely enough,” she added, voice tight as she hauled the heavy pails across the hall, into their own ground-floor bedroom.

With the door shut and the heat out for a while, the room was chilly. She manipulated the lever-style handles for both bedroom and private bath, stopping only when she reached the old-fashioned, big, deep claw-footed tub, with its sloped back and refinished porcelain surface. It had been restored as an engagement gift from Steve’s parents, since it was just big enough for the two of them to nestle in like spoons.

Rachel had blushed when that had been explained to her, but it had told her just how much his parents supported the thought of her as their daughter-in-law. Setting down her pails, she made sure the tub was stoppered, shook some sandalwood-scented bath salts into the tub, then lifted the first pail over the rim, pouring its steaming contents into the basin. If she hadn’t grown used to hauling the heavy pails around in the last several months, helping Steve occasionally in the dairy, her task would have been that much harder.

“What, no bubble bath?” Steve quipped, copying her by pouring one of his own pails into the tub. The water was quite hot, though not scalding; it quickly perfumed the air with scented steam.

“Oh, it’s not for me,” Rachel demurred, smiling to herself. “It’s for you.”

“Me?” He stared at her as the last of the water dripped into the tub, hazel eyes wide and brows quirked, bemused.

“Yes, you,” she confirmed with a feminine smile. “You’ve worked very hard today, and I’m very proud of you. So I’m going to bathe you. Pamper you, like you did me last night.”

He smirked at that. “If I’m in the tub when you’re trying that, you might drown.”

She gave him a mock dirty look and took the pail from his hands, setting it back by the other empty canisters, out of her way. The fourth pail, she left full for rinse water later. “Strip, mister!”

“Your command is my wish,” he said, still smirking. Pulling his sweater over his head, he sat on the edge of the tub to unlace his boots. Rachel dropped to her knees in front of him, batting his fingers away so that she could perform the task herself. It felt nice, being pampered. Even when she peeled down his socks and briefly massaged his feet, it felt good. She was even careful to lower his soles to the fuzzy green bath mat, rather than letting his feet touch the cold vinyl of the floor.

Smiling, he let her unbutton his shirt cuffs, then work her way down his chest. Shifting back, she silently urged him to stand, then unfastened his jeans. He had to help her push down the denim, since they clung to his long johns underneath. While he pulled off the undershirt, she started to lower the silk-knit leggings.

That brought a certain part of his anatomy into view, reminding her of what she had done with him last night. Grinning, Rachel lifted his shaft, pressing a kiss to its tip. Steve groaned softly, stroking her dark brown hair with one hand. He stopped her after a few more moments, if reluctantly. “It may have warmed up in here, with all that water heating the place, but I’m going to freeze if I don’t get into the bath. And if I freeze,” he stated wryly, “I’ll shrivel up and won’t be of any use to you tonight.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Rachel agreed, amusement coloring her reply. “Into the bath with you. I need to shed a layer or two so I can bathe you without overheating or getting too wet.”

“So long as you get nicely wet…”

She smiled as she pulled off her own sweater, watching him climb into the tub once her face was free. The water was hot enough to make him hiss through his teeth, but not so hot that he couldn’t sink down into it with a groaning sigh. The bliss smoothing the furrows in his brow made her glad she had thought of doing this for him. Stripping to her undershirt and long johns, Rachel tossed their clothes in the hamper, took their boots back into the bedroom, rearranged the milk pails a little more out of the way, then found the sea sponge he had given her for her birthday two years ago. She hadn’t used it in about seven months, which meant it was long overdue. That it was for him instead of her didn’t matter; it was the ritual of the thing that made it special.

Steve knew she liked using it for special occasions, for when she wanted to feel extra-feminine and pampered. When he spotted it in her hands, he blushed a little. Not that he thought she was going to make him more feminine by using it, but because she was going to spoil him by association with her favorite bathing ritual. He watched her dip the sponge into the bathwater, then anoint it with some of her body wash, working the sponge into a lather.

When she picked up his near arm and began gently scrubbing his muscles, Steve let her manipulate him as she willed. The combination of slick suds and scratchy sponge relaxed and invigorated him. Coupled with the attention she was giving him, he felt a renewal of the love he knew she held for him. He had given her care and attention last night, reasserting what had been suppressed by the troubles in their lives. Now she was giving it back to him.

“I don’t know…” He trailed off, unsure if he should say it.

Rachel looked up from his shoulder and upper chest, working her way across to his other arm. “You don’t know…what?”

“I don’t know if you’re just reviving my deep love for you, or making me fall in love with you all over again,” he murmured diffidently, and watched her blush with pleasure. He smiled. “I think a little of both.”

“Good. We’ve forgotten to do things like this,” Rachel said, reaching across him to scrub at his other arm. Soap smeared across one breast from his closer arm, dampening and turning her undershirt translucent. “We were on a pattern spiraling down into dullness, weren’t we? I mean…not that you’re dull, but that we’d gone and forgotten how special we are together.”

“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Steve agreed, admiring the way the dampened silk permitted the darkness of her nipple to show. Tracing the little peak made her glance at him. “You’d better take that off before it gets too wet and soapy to wear, in case we can’t do laundry for a few more days.”

“But then I’ll freeze,” she pointed out. “You’re the one in the water, not me.”

“Then come in here, and straddle me,” her fiancé coaxed. “I’ll keep most of you warm.”

Stripping off her remaining clothes, Rachel found herself asking skeptically, “Most of me warm?”

He grinned, looking at her breasts. “I like certain parts of you best when they’re cold. It’s so much more fun that way.”

Considering how her areolas had puckered, she couldn’t blame him. Chuckling, she finished removing her undergarments and stepped carefully into the tub with him. The heat from the water was heavenly. Kneeling carefully, she scrubbed his abdomen with the sponge, then sat back and worked on his legs, taking her time to refamiliarize herself with every inch of his skin she could reach.

Her fiancé had a decent body; working in the dairy had kept him reasonably fit, and there was just enough hair on his chest and legs to say he was a man, but not enough to suggest he was a beast. Some women liked their men to be downright furry; Rachel just wanted a little bit of curl on her man’s chest, and not much elsewhere. The texture of Steve’s sparsely dusted skin was just the way she liked a man to feel: warm and silky in some spots, warm and crinkly coarse in others. Perfect.

Leaning forward, she made him sit up, then wrapped her arms around him, kissing him somewhat awkwardly while she scrubbed at his back. Getting him to stand, she scrubbed the parts the water had covered, then urged him back down again, rinsing and using the sponge to trickle water over his body. Midway through her task, he stole the brown sponge from her.

Against her protests, he lathered it up again and scrubbed her in turn from neck to toes, shushing her mouth with kisses. Catching on to his silencing scheme, Rachel mumbled a few more protests, making him kiss her again. The water had turned too murky to rinse with, but she had anticipated that. Standing, Rachel urged Steve to his feet, and with his help, lifted the final milk bucket over both their heads. It was still full of hot, clean water. Steve helped her pour it over both of them for a rinse while the tub drained at their feet.

Steve laughed when the last of the water was done dripping out of the can. “We still have soap on our bodies. I think we’ll need to risk a brief shower.”

Rachel nodded. It was now late; if any of the other guests had taken a shower, there might not be much hot water left, but it also shouldn’t be a strain on the generator to siphon some from the tanks. Letting him pull the curtain into place, she turned and worked with the faucet, waiting until warm water spilled forth. The position left her bent over at the waist. She didn’t know why she was surprised when he grasped her hips, but she was. Pleasantly, at least.

The sight of her stooped over like that excited him. Being bathed had been more sensuous, like a backrub, but this was just too sexy to resist. Swaying closer, Steve teased her flesh with his own. He didn’t have a condom handy, so he wasn’t going to penetrate her…mostly wasn’t going to penetrate her…she pushed back, slotting him into position, then into place with a soft, feminine groan. A spasm of lust twitched through his entire body. Gritting his teeth, he held back, held himself still within her.

“Rachel…I’m not wearing a condom,” Steve managed to warn her.

“We’re getting married in less than ten days,” she reminded him, grinning over her shoulder. “I won’t tell if you won’t!”

“Well, since not even the worst blizzard in the history of the whole Midwest would stop me from marrying you,” he conceded, pulling out almost all the way before pushing back in again, nice and slowly, “I think we can keep our mouths shut.”

She turned off the tub faucet again to conserve the hot water; they could always rinse off after making love, but not if they ran out first. From the slow pace he was setting, she figured they’d definitely run out of hot water if she left the taps open. Not that slow was a bad thing…but it was getting cold in the bathroom without the shower running. Changing her mind, Rachel stood up, letting him slip free. Turning, she silenced his wordless protest with a kiss, looping her arms around his shoulders. “Let’s finish rinsing off, then get dirty in bed, under the nice, warm covers.”

As much as he wanted to just take her, Steve conceded not only the increasing chill in the air, but also the slipperiness of their location. Kinky was only okay if it didn’t lead to a broken neck, in his book. “Alright. Rachel…I’ve been thinking,” Steve added as she turned on the taps and lifted the lever for the shower head. “I kind of miss the way we used to, you know, court each other. Not that I’m aiming to be spoiled or anything, but I liked you pampering me just now, and I liked doing it to you last night.”

Turning to face him, Rachel let the hot water rinse any lingering soap from her back. “I liked it, too. I missed doing things like that.”

He nodded. “That’s what made me think. What if we set aside one weekend each month, or a weeknight, whatever works with the rest of our schedule…and just make sure to pamper each other on that day?”

Considering the idea, Rachel finished washing off the soap, then shifted out of his way so he could rinse himself, too. “It’s not a bad idea at all. But I’d rather spend one day on one of us, and the other day on the other person—the one being lavished with love can reciprocate if they want on their day, but it’s their day.”

“‘Lavished with love,’” Steve repeated over his shoulder, twisting under the spray. “I like the sound of that. And a day apiece, that’s good. Nothing too extravagant—we live in Iowa, so no buying either of us a yacht,” he teased, making her laugh. “But little things, we can do that. Things we can do around the needs of the Inn. And we could even space it out every few weeks between the two of us. Say, you get the first and I get the sixteenth of each month?”

Rachel thought about it as she twisted off the taps again. “No, that runs up against New Year’s Day. That conflicts with our wedding, which is supposed to be about both of us. How about the fifteenth and the thirtieth? That way, it’s separate from any possible holidays or anniversaries, and makes the days in question ours alone for a celebration.”

Stepping out of the tub, Steve fetched a large towel from the stack on the shelves in the corner and enfolded her in it with a hug, before fetching one for himself. “I like it. The fifteenth and thirtieth it is. And you get the thirtieth, so I can spoil you before our wedding day.” He paused, then added quietly, looking off to one side, “I wish we could still afford a big wedding, then I could’ve spoiled you on that day, too.”

Tucking her finger under his chin, Rachel turned his gaze to her. “I’m marrying you. That’s the important thing. If we can survive tornadoes and mortgages and once-a-century blizzards—and we have—then the rest of our lives will be good, and that’s all I could ask for. So long as I get to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Steve ducked his head, kissing the tip of her finger. “I don’t deserve you, woman.”

“Every fifteenth of the month, you will,” she returned, grinning. “Now, dry off so the important bits don’t freeze before we can get into bed. I’m still in the mood to start a family with you, mister!”

“Yes, ma’am!” Grinning back, he complied.

CROCHETING IN THE LIGHT OF THE FOUR VOTIVE CANDLES she had brought upstairs with her, Cassie blinked sleepily. The infant-sized jumper suit was almost done. Just a few more rows to finish the collar, and she’d be finished. Which was just as well, since she was almost out of pink yarn in the skein she had brought.

Pink.

Blinking again, this time to clear the sleep from her eyes, she grinned and crawled out of the quilt-covered bed. Padding out of her room, jumper and skein wadded in one hand, a candle in its glass holder carried in the other for illumination, she tapped lightly on the door across the hall from hers with a knuckle. Bella opened it after a moment, one of her dark brown eyebrows arched in silent inquiry. Still grinning, Cassie lifted the jumper into view, displaying it to her longtime friend.

For a moment, Bella squinted in confusion. Then her brow cleared, her eyes widened, and she smiled as well. Tipping her head to the left, she indicated Mike’s door, there at the end of the hall. A nod and Cassie moved over to that panel, rapping quietly on the painted wood. It opened after a moment. Lifting the votive holder and the nearly finished jumper, Cassie displayed it to him as well.

He grinned and nodded, speaking softly. “Everything will be taken care of on my end. Don’t worry. Just keep up your own work. I trust the snow will end in time for us to get going.”

Cassie nodded, clutching the pink jumper to her chest with that same pleased smile. “Everything will work out, I’m sure of it.”

“When does it not?” Bella murmured from the doorway of her room. “Good night, you two.”

SOME OF THE SNOW HAD SWIRLED INTO THE TRENCH BETWEEN the farmhouse and the barn, and some of the snow had swirled away from the house, reducing the six feet of snow in the drifts around them to about five and a half. But it was still passable when Steve slogged through the knee-high powder and wind-blown flakes on his way to help Pete with the morning’s milking. The air was still bitingly cold, too, threatening to freeze him from nostrils to lungs with each cautious breath.

He wanted to be back in bed with his wife-to-be, but tending animals was a responsibility, with cattle to milk and chickens to feed. He did allow thoughts of last night’s unfettered coupling to keep him warm, since the wind was blowing hard. Of how deliciously naughty it had felt to enter her without any protection…of how she had laughed at one point during a position shift when he complained about the cold drafts down his back, since the covers had also shifted.

Opening the barn door, he stepped inside, and heard an unexpected sound. The lowing of the girls in their stalls was joined by the bleating, higher bawl of a calf. Blinking, Steve closed the door behind him. There, in Ellen’s stall on the other side of the barn, was a newborn calf! And a very tired but pleased-looking Pete, seated on a stool as he fed the hungry thing from the oversized baby bottle of colostrum they had collected.

The slats of the stall were angled wrong for Steve to tell if it was a future bull or heifer. Joining the younger man, he saw the gender. “A boy. Ah, well.”

“Something you don’t need in a dairy herd. Not when it’s the offspring of one of these ladies,” Pete agreed. “It’s hard not to get attached to ’em when they’re newborns. A girl, you could’ve kept. What’ll you do with him?”

Steve always hated this part, but he knew he had to be practical. They had room for six cows, in the count of the stalls and the milking machine stations in the dairy; if the calf had been a heifer, they could’ve kept her. “Same as the last one, I guess. Raise to the point of weaning, then sell for veal, and keep the stomach for the rennet.”

“Rennet?” Pete asked, curious.

“The stomach lining of a milk-fed calf has enzymes that help turn milk into cheese,” Steve informed him. “A lot of the enzymes are vegetable-based these days, and we mix it in, but there’s no sense in wasting the calf rennet, either. Didn’t you ever read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when you were going up?”

“Nope; I was more into books with talkin’ animals. I figured you’d raise him for veal,” Pete replied, getting back to the subject. He scratched the top of the calf’s head. “That’s why I resisted naming him. This is the part about dairy farming I don’t like. The rest of it, I do. Much more than pig farming.

“I’ve been thinking, out here at night,” he added, adjusting his grip on the bottle, tilting it higher so the calf could suckle the remaining milk. “I think I should go back to my uncle’s place and hire on as a hand. He’s always been grateful for the help in the summers. Joey’s turning into a real good plumber, an’ Dave’s got an offer in the works for the garage of the dealership in the next town. It’s time I did something with my own life, rather than just drift an’ make trouble. An’ I’m sorry I came here to make trouble for you an’ Miz Rutherford. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“I think you just finished growing up, Pete,” Steve observed softly. “And your apology is accepted. It takes a man to admit when he’s been wrong. Anyone who can’t do it is still just a boy, no matter how many years under his belt.” From the shy smile Pete gave him, Steve knew his compliment had driven home. “But I’m not too sorry you three came out here. Dave helped with the generator, Joey with the plumbing, and now you with the calf. Was it a hard birth?”

“Breech, like you thought; her lowing woke me up,” Pete admitted. “But it was easy enough to scrub up, reach in, and turn ’im around.” He paused and laughed. “I almost went up to th’ house to wake you up, make a city-educated boy like yourself learn how do it…but I thought of all that sloggin’ through the snow you did yesterday, gettin’ the spark plugs an’ such, an’ I didn’t have the heart to wake you so early. Besides, it was an easy turnin’ to do.”

A yawn followed his words. Steve took pity on him. “Why don’t you finish up with the calf, then go on back to bed for a nap? I’ll do the milking and the mucking, then wake you up when it’s breakfast time.”

Pete smiled at him. “I’ll take that offer. This little boy’s almost done, anyway. Darn near drained Mama dry when he first latched on, too, so I thought I’d offer him what was in the bottle.”

Nodding, Steve went to work.

THE WINDS CONTINUED TO SCOUR DOWN THE DRIFTS OF snow, but at least more didn’t seem to be coming down from the thinning clouds in the sky. At the rate it was vanishing, somewhat slower than it had arrived, Rachel figured the roads should be reasonably drivable by Christmas morning. They couldn’t get out to church for Sunday services, but that was alright, in a way; Cassie found a book of hymns in the small, family-style library the Inn boasted, and coaxed the others into singing carols with her. It filled the old farmhouse with joy and tranquility, that eight people, three with diverse faiths, could enjoy such a simple yet uplifting task together while they waited for the last of the storm to abate. And with the drifts gradually blowing away, they’d be able to go into town for Christmas services.

Mike suggested it to the others, in fact, the afternoon of Christmas Eve. After peering out at the rumpled, shrinking mound that was Joey’s half-undug truck, he came back to the others. “I think,” the dark-skinned man stated with a smile, “that we will all be able to go to your church tomorrow morning.”

“‘We’?” Joey asked, arching a brow his way. “Ain’t you a Muslim?”

“Yes, but we do honor Christ in our own way. His birth is worthy of celebrating.” Mike looked at Bella, who shrugged.

“I’m willing to admit he was special, even if I don’t know personally if he was the Messiah my people prophesied, or merely a prophet of God.” She looked at Cassie. They all looked at her. The faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all shared common beliefs at their foundation, but Buddhism was different.

“What?” the vivacious blonde asked, glancing at the others in the front parlor. “There’s nothing in the writings that say I cannot also revere Christ. Buddhism is an addition to one’s faith. Besides, between Joey and Steve’s trucks, and our Bug, we can make it just fine, I’m sure of it. And it’ll be nice to interact with other people,” Cassie added. “As nice as we’ve all been to each other, it’ll make an equally pleasant change.”

A beeping sound in the distance jerked Steve onto his feet. Dave looked up at him, curious. “What is it?”

“That’s the generator’s alarm.” He grinned at the others. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have power! I’ll just go shut off the generator, to conserve what’s left of the fuel in the tank.”

“If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition,” Mike offered politely, looking Rachel’s way, “could I possibly check my e-mail? I have some very important messages I’ve been waiting for.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Rachel allowed. “I’m glad you asked me this time around.” She gave him a wry smile. “Steve and I were going to put WiFi into the house for our guests, but that got derailed by more important things last summer. Don’t take too long; I still need to check and make sure we’ve enough in our bank balance to cover the mortgage withdrawal.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Bella offered, smiling. “’Tis the season for brotherhood, kindness, and miracles, after all.”

THE CHURCH WAS CROWDED WHEN THEY ARRIVED THE NEXT morning. The sky was still overcast and the wind was still blowing, but the weather wasn’t hampering travel anymore. In fact, it looked like the only people missing were Steve’s parents, but they would’ve been gone through the whole of the holiday season anyway, including missing out on their son’s quiet wedding. Steve and Rachel had urged them to go, however; a Caribbean cruise was an opportunity not to be missed. So, though both of them missed the elder Bethels, they had a good time greeting everyone in the community with hugs and introducing their three out-of-town guests, before settling into the padded pews for the service.

Steve knew the big miracles of his faith were worthy of honoring, but as Rachel snuggled into his side during the reading of the nativity scene, he thought that the woman at his side was his own personal miracle. She wasn’t a large miracle, but she was his fiancée, his soon-to-be wife, a woman willing to stand beside him through thick and thin, and that was miraculous enough. From the way her hand crept up to cover her stomach, he could guess she was thinking about a different sort of miracle, the possible creation of life between the two of them. Happier than he had been in a long time, he returned his attention to the service.

At the end of the closing prayer, rather than giving the final parting words of peace and fellowship he usually did, Pastor Jonathan lifted one of his hands and said something unexpected. “And now, for the other thing that drew so many of you out here, despite the lingering snow and the icy roads. Not quite so important as the birth of Our Lord, but important enough to this community to make the effort to stay just a little longer. Will Steven Bethel and Rachel Rutherford please stand?”

Startled, Rachel and Steve exchanged looks before complying; they felt the eyes of the rest of the congregation upon them as they did so, as well as the warmth of everyone’s smiles.

“As we all know, the Bethel Inn has hit some hard times in recent months. Including to the point that this loving couple gave up their dreams of holding a big wedding, because they couldn’t afford it anymore. Well, it being the season for miracles…and aided by the modern miracle of e-mail”—Pastor Jonathan chuckled—“we have managed to pull off a small miracle of our own. Steve, Rachel…if you will permit your friends here in the community to do so, we’d like to give you a big wedding day, right here, right now!

“We already have the civil paperwork from the county, since you picked it up last week…and our three newest guests managed to smuggle in your best outfits,” he added, smiling and nodding at Bella, Cassie, and Mike, who gave unrepentant little smiles and waves to the startled couple. “And since everyone is already here, we all thought, why not celebrate not only a birth, but a wedding as well today? What do you say?” the pastor asked them.

Encouraging words were called out from the sea of faces lining the church. “Go on!” “Do it!” “Don’t let ’er get away!” “Don’t let him get away!”

Laughter greeted that last outburst; then the congregation quieted, waiting for their reply. Rachel glanced at their three conspirator guests, then looked up at Steve. “Well, you want to get hitched a few days early?”

“More than anything in the world,” Steve agreed, before pulling her close enough to kiss. The sound of the pastor clearing his throat broke them apart. Keeping one arm around his fiancée’s shoulder, Steve looked at the community members gathered in the church around them, warmed beyond words. “Thank you all for this incredible surprise. I—”

Several arriving figures at the entry doors caught his attention. And Rachel’s. She squinted, then widened her eyes. “Mom? Dad?”

“We weren’t sure we’d make it, the roads are that messy!” Rachel’s mother called out from the back of the sanctuary, unwrapping the scarf covering her face. The others resolved themselves into Rachel’s siblings. “Sorry we couldn’t make it for the service.”

“God forgives when it’s with good intentions. You’re just in time to get ready for the wedding. Everyone else, there will be a half-hour break while beautiful things are done to the bride, and the groom is wrestled into his suit,” Pastor Jonathan joked. “Tea and coffee are waiting in the fellowship room. God bless you and hold you in His heart!”

A hand on his elbow distracted Steve from following Rachel as she made her way toward her family, somehow brought all the way out from Des Moines for the occasion. Turning, he saw it was Mr. Thomas Harrod, the mustached, stiffly postured bank owner. Fear raced through him. Didn’t we have enough to pay the mortgage?

The older, graying gentleman cleared his throat with a touch of awkwardness. “My, ah, wife pointed out to me that our son, Richard, cannot make cheese. If he cannot make cheese, she cannot eat cheese. Not the Bethel Inn Blue Ribbon Cheese, at any rate. And then she gave me a half-hour lecture on how long the Bethel Inn has been operating, how prosperous it normally is, and…well, she made a lot of sense, once my ears stopped ringing.

“So I’m letting you know that I am going to give the Bethel Inn special dispensation, a full month’s leeway in its mortgage payments. Of course, you didn’t need it for this month,” Mr. Har-rod added under his breath. “But the offer stands. My wife said, you don’t make a business prosperous by trying to pretend your best clients aren’t all that good…and your family has been very good to mine for a very long time. She said I owe you…and I find I’m inclined to agree.”

“She did?” Steve asked, too startled to say anything else, though he did manage to shake the hand the bank owner offered to him.

“She did. That, and she called me nothing but Ebenezer this, and Mr. Scrooge that, for the whole length of the storm,” he muttered, smiling slightly, wryly. “May your own wife not have quite so sharp a tongue, whenever she’s upset with you. Or at least, may you give her no reason to use it on you.”

“Thank you—and a Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Harrod,” Steve enunciated carefully, making the man laugh. As the bank owner left him, a touch on his other elbow turned him back around. It was Mike; his two traveling companions had vanished, no doubt to bring Rachel her clothes.

Mike clasped his hands firmly, then nodded politely. “I just wanted you to know that Cassie, Bella, and I will not be returning to the Inn after the wedding. It’s time for us to be on our way. But we enjoyed our stay very much, and we’re very happy for the two of you. May the blessings of God—by whichever name you call Him—shine upon you and your new family like the Star of Bethlehem. Love is a miracle we must not forget to honor. It has been a pleasure seeing you honor that love with your wife-to-be.”

“Thank you. Are you sure you cannot stay?” Steve found himself asking. “We’ve enjoyed hosting you very much.”

“Alas, no. We have a long way to go, to get to our next destination,” Mike demurred. “But it was good to see you and your impending bride getting a little good fortune back into your lives.”

“Will you at least come back?” he asked next. He wanted to ask, Did you cause all of these miracles that have been happening? But there were too many people around, and Steve wasn’t going to spoil it by looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. It was enough to know that subtle miracles had happened…like this big Christmas Day wedding everyone else had planned.

Mike merely smiled. “If we can, it would be a delight. Now, if you don’t mind, I have your suit waiting in the men’s room. I trust I will not have to ‘wrestle’ you into it?”

Steve laughed at that. “Believe me, I’m more than eager.”

RACHEL GAVE HER SITUATION A LOT OF THOUGHT, AS HER two guests, her mother, and her sisters fluttered around her, helping her into her dress, then fixing her hair and face. It wasn’t until they were almost ready that she had a moment alone with Cassie and Bella. “How did you do it?”

The two women exchanged looks before Bella asked, “Do what?”

“Steve and I had a talk the other night. About the one log in the front woodstove that just keeps burning. The spark plugs that were an exact match. The insulation that wouldn’t run out. Having on hand the three helpers we needed to keep our inn running. And now, getting my family here in time for an unexpected wedding on the tail end of a big blizzard—Mike using my e-mail, and the pastor saying it was all arranged via e-mail!” She looked up into Cassie’s blue eyes. “You somehow did it all, didn’t you? Or at least had a hand in it. It had to have been you. How? And why?”

The two women exchanged looks. Cassie sighed and shrugged. “We do this every winter solstice, that’s why. Northern or Southern Hemisphere, we seek out miracles that need to happen, and make sure they happen.”

“Sometimes they happen on their own, and sometimes we just…help them along,” Bella admitted with a shrug of her own. “It’s been our joy, and our assignment, for as long as we can remember.”

“Assignment?” Rachel asked, confused. “From who?”

Both women just looked upward for a moment, then back at Rachel again with identical smiles. Cassie reached over to where she had laid her coat and muff on the counter in the ladies’ room, pulling a small, roundish, wrapped present out of one of her coat pockets. “Here. One more gift for the two of you. It’s not frankincense, but then that fell out of fashion ages ago. And it’s far more practical for you.”

Curious, Rachel carefully opened the package. A bundle of pink fabric came out, resolving itself into a finely crocheted baby suit, the kind with little footies on the leggings, and little steel snaps up the torso. For a moment, she was confused at why it was such a practical gift…and then blushed bright red. Cassie grinned at her, patting her on the shoulder. Bella smiled and straightened.

“Don’t you worry about a thing. When the world has reached its darkest point, just remember that the light will come back into your lives once again,” the dark-haired woman said. “And now, we must be going.”

“Wait—one question. If you’re…you know, you,” the bride-to-be asked, “the Three Magi…aren’t you all supposed to be males? And why are calling yourselves a Buddhist, a Muslim, and a Reform Jew?”

“Because miracles happen all the time, regardless of whatever faith you follow,” Bella told her.

“And gender does not matter,” Cassie added. “Only love, unity, compassion, and brotherhood. So long as the teachings are good, does it matter who delivers them? Merry Christmas, Rachel.”

“Don’t ever forget how much you love each other—and have a good life together. That’s an order,” Bella added. She grinned. “Now, go and marry that wonderful man.”

Rachel started to rise from the chair that had been brought in for her to sit in while having her hair and face done, then looked up at Cassie. “How long will that log burn?”

“Until the end of tonight. I was going to make it last eight days, but since you figured it out…” The blonde shrugged. “Well, some of the magic goes out of it when people do that.”

“A little mystery in life is necessary, to slip the miracles through the cracks in people’s attention spans,” Bella said. “By the way, that idea you have, to pamper each other one day a month, that’s a very good idea. I think we’ll keep it in mind for our next visit, and suggest it to others in the future. Just make sure you don’t forget to do so, hmm?”

“Yes, keep the love alive,” Cassie agreed. “It’ll light up your lives, even on the darkest of nights.”

Rachel would have asked more, but her mother poked her head through the door, murmuring that it was time. She looked at Cassie, who lifted a pink-nailed finger to her lips, and understood the two women wanted her to keep quiet about what she had figured out. Deciding she would comply, Rachel nodded her head, acquiescing. One task at a time, as her groom-to-be liked to say…and that task was now for her to marry him.

Epilogue

“A BUDDHIST, A MUSLIM, AND A REFORM JEW,” MIKE stated with a laugh as he escorted his friends out to their car. “We sound like the start of a bad joke—hey, maybe I can come up with the rest of it?”

Bella snapped her fingers. A length of pipe materialized midair, just in time for their friend to walk into it with a bonk. “There’s your ‘rest of it.’”

Cassie giggled, watching Mike grimace and dissolve the apparition with a snap of his own fingers.

“Very funny, Balthazzar. Watch it, or I’ll sic a camel on you!”

“No, thank you.” Bella shuddered. “I still remember the trouble we had with them, and the delay we suffered over two thousand years ago.”

“Me, too,” Cassie agreed. “I much prefer modern conveniences.”

Bella nodded. “Well. Next time, I think I’ll be a female Baptist. You, Melchior?”

“I was thinking a female Pagan. Caspar?” Mike asked their third member.

“Greek Orthodox. And I want to be a man next time. Where are we going, anyway?” Cassie asked him.

Pulling out his electronic notebook, Mike consulted it with a few taps from the stylus. “Argentina. A city called Rosario, which is located on the western banks of the Rio Paraná, at the edge of the State of Santa Fe. We’ll be looking for a dance instructor, and the arrival of his long-lost childhood sweetheart.”

“Sounds like fun.” Peering all around them, Cassie gestured at their snow-dusted car. The wind was still blowing, but only lightly this time. The blizzard she had arranged was now over. “No one is watching. Shall we just go?”

“I don’t feel like driving, so why not?” Bella shrugged.

All three laid their hands on the vehicle. It vanished with a soft white glow. Mike held out his hand to the two ladies. “See you in six months, then?”

“At the next winter solstice,” Bella agreed with a smile, reaching to shake his proffered hand. Cassie, never one to stand on formality, pulled both of them into a group hug, making her friends laugh. Like the car, they vanished in a soft glow of light. The wind stirred for a moment, swirling rapidly through the parking lot. It covered their tracks, obscuring the fact that the VW Bug hadn’t backed out or driven away, then gentled back down into a winter zephyr, stirring only a few flakes here and there.

From somewhere within the church, the strains of the “Wedding March” could be heard all the way out by the parking lot…had anyone been outside to hear them.