Page 96 of Snowbound Surrender

The answer to that question stood right in front of her. She’d been distracted.

“It looks like things really picked up out there while we were having tea,” Randall said, striding away from the door and coming to join her. Once he reached her, he turned to stare at the door. “It looks pretty bad.”

Miranda nodded, but anxiety closed up her throat. She stared at the door too. To outsiders, they must have looked silly. The saloon had been built without windows in the front so that passersby wouldn’t be offended by the sight of dancing girls, poker games, and drinking. There were windows in the back, though, where the living quarters and spare rooms were. She glanced over her shoulder at the opening to the hall that led to that part of the building.

“We can probably see how bad it is back there.” She picked up her skirts and hurried toward the hall.

Randall followed close behind her, and it wasn’t until she’d turned the corner into the narrow hall, a steep staircase at the end leading to the second floor, that she thought to feel self-conscious about what he might see. The backrooms of the saloon were small and narrow, with little more in them than a bed. But then, they hadn’t needed anything else for the use they’d performed. Miranda rushed past the three, curtaineddoorways on her right and on to the closed door just before the stairs.

“My Uncle Buford used to live in this apartment,” she explained, not quite finding the courage to look at Randall after passing the three back rooms. “It’s serviceable enough for my needs…for now.”

She pushed open the door, inviting Randall into her small apartment. It consisted of a modest-sized main room that held a table and two chairs, a pair of worn armchairs that stood on either side of a fireplace, and a bookshelf that she had yet to fill. A door on the far side led to her tiny bedroom—not much bigger than the veritable booths along the rest of the hall. The rest of that wall held a small cook-stove, a sink with a pump, and a cupboard where she stored both her food and the pots and utensils with which to cook it.

Randall paused just inside of the room to take it all in, but Miranda rushed straight for the small window that stood beside the bookshelf. She could feel the cold bleeding through the glass before she reached it. A low, round table with a wash basin and pitcher sat on the table—there wasn’t enough space in the bedroom for the wash set—and she had to bend around it to look fully out the window.

The sight made her catch her breath and press a hand to her chest. “Oh dear.”

“What?” Randall left off his assessment of the room and hurried to the other side of the wash table to peek out the window with her.

There wasn’t much to see. Night had fallen, and the world outside was dark. But there was just enough light from nearby houses and buildings to see just how thick and angry the snow was. It blew sideways, piling and sticking against the edges of the windowpane. Where usually Miranda could spot half a dozen other houses and more by their lights at night, at themoment the only one she could see was the house directly behind the saloon by twenty feet, and she could only barely see that.

“There was a blizzard a few weeks ago,” she began, trying and failing to keep the fear out of her voice, “but it wasn’t as bad as this.”

“This looks pretty bad,” Randall admitted. Where she had failed to sound anything but anxious, he sounded resigned, even confident.

Miranda pushed back from the window and faced him, drawing strength from his presence. “I think you’ll have to stay here, at least for the night. Probably until the storm passes.”

Randall stepped away from the window as well. “Looks like it.” His serious look melted into a smile. “I can think of worse things to do with my time.”

Miranda flushed, the chill of the storm not seeming quite so bad. She could do this. Randall was a kind man. He hadn’t tried anything untoward with her. In fact, she felt as though he was the kind of man she would befriend if they’d lived in the same place. It would be a simple matter to play hostess to him until the storm passed.

“The saloon has plenty of, uh, bedrooms,” she explained, trying to ignore what those rooms had been used for in the past. “You’re welcome to take any of them that you find suitable.”

“That’s awfully generous of you.”

They stood there, smiling and polite and silent, for several long moments. Miranda’s heart refused to slow down. Randall was just a guest, after all.

At last she forced herself to breathe deeply. “Well, if you’d like to fetch your trunk and choose a room to your liking, I can get supper started.”

“Supper.” Randall shook himself out of whatever thoughts had whisked him away. “Trunk. Right. Good ideas. I’ll beright back.” He jumped into motion, rushing past her and out through the doorway, into the hall.

Miranda let out a long breath once he was gone, pressing a hand to her stomach. “Don’t be such a ninny,” she scolded herself. “Treat him as you would any other guest on any other day.”

They were wise words, but as she moved to the cupboard and searched for anything she could make into an appropriate meal for a guest, they didn’t sink into her soul. She took out flour and lard, canned beans and corn, and filled a pot with water from the sink. The stove needed a bit more coal, so she added a shovel from the coal scuttle in the corner, then moved to add a few more logs to the waning fire in the room’s main fireplace. Finally, she made a quick trip out of her apartment to the root cellar under the stairs to fetch the chicken she’d roasted—over-roasted really, but it would do—the day before.

She was well on her way to warming up the chicken, boiling the vegetables, and preparing biscuits when she heard the distinctive slide and thump of Randall dragging his trunk into the closest of the disreputable bedrooms to her apartment. Another five minutes, and she had rough-looking biscuits in the stove as Randall strode back into the room.

“I took the liberty of banking the fire in the saloon proper,” he announced.

“Oh?” Miranda jumped and spun to face him.

He nodded. “I wasn’t sure if you planned to go back in there tonight. It’s already turning mighty chilly in that big room. It might be a challenge to keep this whole place warm if the blizzard continues.”

“It’s a challenge to keep it warm already,” she said with a wary sigh.

“Is it?”

Miranda shrugged. “It’s always hard to keep a large room warm in the winter. At least the saloon has that big fireplace, and not having windows helps retain the heat. And, though I’m loathe to say it, there have been times since I took over where there were enough men playing cards and visiting to keep things warm enough.” There had been women too, in spite of her entreaties that they find other places to ply their wares, but she wasn’t about to tell Randall that.