Spotting me near the door, Connor gave me a small smile. “Good morning,” he murmured.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said, gesturing to the snow, which was as tall as my waist. It was scary to realize that it was getting so high that it was impossible to get through. This wasn’t just about being out in the cold. At this point, I felt like we were being buried alive.
“How long can it keep snowing?”
He shrugged. “As long as it wants to, I guess. Not much we humans can do about it, is there?”
“Where’s Elsa when you need her?” I muttered and shut the door with a sigh.
Connor chuckled at my Frozen reference, and I raised an eyebrow in surprise that he knew what I was talking about.
“What?” he said with a shrug. “You know my nieces are four years old. That happens to be their current favorite movie. It’s on an endless loop at my sister’s house.”
“And do you sing the song with them?” I asked, amused.
“Withthem? No.” He grinned. “It’s more like I’m putting on a one-man concert for a very captive audience.
My own smile grew wide as I strolled toward the bed. “I want to hear it.”
He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “No way.”
“Aww, come on, there’s no TV here.” Then I sang a few versus to prompt him. “Let it go, let it go . . .”
He wasn’t swayed, though his eyes held humor. “Nope. Not gonna happen. I don’t want to split your eardrums when we’re nowhere near a hospital.”
He finally got out of the bed, and I averted my eyes, suddenly finding the hardwood floor very interesting. I heard him chuckle under his breath as he put his own clothes on, but he didn’t say anything about it, and I didn’t dare look at him again until I heard the zipper of our emergency bag.
“Hungry?” he asked, holding up a vacuum-sealed bag of dehydrated fruit and a couple packets of oatmeal.
“Starving,” I admitted, following him into the kitchen as he put the fruit on the cooktop with a little water.
I watched as he cooked the strawberries and blueberries with the oatmeal. The smell of the cooking fruit made my stomach growl, and I covered it with my hand, shooting Connor a small, embarrassed smile. It wasn’t exactly a sexy sound.
Not that I was trying to be sexy.
“You feel okay today?” he asked, giving me a sidelong look I wasn’t sure how to interpret.
I bit my bottom lip. “You mean after we…”
“I mean after the drinking,” he said before I could finish my sentence. “Are you hungover?”
“Just a little headache.” Although that could have easily been stress-related.
“Well, drink some water. The fruit might not be the only thing dehydrated.”
I did as he said, selecting a water bottle from the emergency bag since I didn’t know what kind of quality the water was from the tap. As I watched Connor prepare me breakfast, I once again had that sense of this whole entire scenario not being real. Who would have thought that my boss would be so comfortable standing over a hot stove cooking breakfast?
But something about this scene made me feel calmer about the whole situation. Why focus on the consequences now, and ruin the time we still had here? It wouldn’t do either of us any good to obsess over what we’d done, and I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t quite ready to let this warm, happy feeling go.
That could wait until we were back in the real world.
“Here you go,” Connor said, handing over the oatmeal in a small bowl. I took it, and I felt an electric jolt as our fingers brushed. The chemistry was still there, maybe even stronger than before, and it felt good.
Maybe being snowed-in for Christmas wasn’t so bad, after all.