Billionaire Romance: Out of The Cold (Book One) by Violet Walker Page B

out his window.
    Anna let out her breath in
relief. “God, if they’re in that much of a hurry they should just
pass and be done with it,” she mumbled.
    He grunted in agreement.
“Yeah, well, that would take an actual effort besides stepping on
the gas and laying on the horn. Folks should just disappear out of
the way instead. Pull off the road, speed up to match them,
otherwise just let ‘em through so they can keep being lead-footed
assholes.”
    “How do these people get
through winter without ending up in a ditch?” she wondered
aloud.
     
    “ Oh, well, trust me, a
bunch of them do end up getting pulled out of ditches every damn
year. James tells me stories. All we need is a little snow and ice
and it turns into bumper-cars out here.” He laughed a little and
then laughed louder as a rust-eaten Subaru took the place of the
Chevy in his rear-view.
    It was around five by the
time they pulled off the state route onto the gravel drive that led
up to the new project. Anna looked around eagerly as the trees
flashed past, seeing a fox trot past a cluster of maples near the
drive. A quarter mile up the hill, the drive opened out into a
broad oval of gravel surrounding the detached garage --once an old
carriage house, now sturdily rebuilt and with a steel shingle roof
on top.
    “And here we are!” Henry
sounded proud as he pulled up to the garage and cut the engine.
“What do you think?”
    Anna looked up the hill
above the garage and saw the farmhouse looming over them. It was
large—she guessed at least three bedrooms--and of the same
steel-roofed stone, but the south face of its roof was covered with
solar panels. New double-paned windows gleamed in its walls, and
stone planter boxes waited below, empty until spring. “It’s
beautiful,” she said quietly, her mind still mostly on his smile.
“I can’t wait to see the inside.”

Chapter 2: Storm Warning
    A door slammed, and a tallish, broad-shouldered man walked out
from behind the garage, wiping his hands on a rag. James Thompson,
the project foreman, was one of those Dutch-descended mountain men
whose families had occupied the Catskills since the 1600s. He
looked the part, too: sharp features, white blond hair, eyes like
chips of lake ice. His usual uniform of work boots and jeans was
supplemented with a battered fleece-lined bomber jacket. He always
looked a little grim, but when he saw Anna in the passenger seat,
he offered her a small smile.
    “Hey, Boss,” he greeted
Henry in his low, growly voice as they stepped out of the Cherokee.
He paused and took a deep breath, his expression going a shade
grimmer. “We got some delays. Oil guy won’t be here until after the
holiday, half his staff is on vacation. Same with the propane guy
for the stove. I went out and got you a twenty-pound tank and
hooked it up to the stove so you can cook your meal. But that’s
gonna be it until after the crew gets back on the 27th.
Sorry.”
    “Damn. Well, nothing more
you could do about it anyway.” Henry shook James’ hand, noting
that, although Henry was six inches taller than James, the foreman
seemed to have just as much presence. It was probably the fact that
James was built like he could bench-press a truck.
    James glanced past him at
Anna, and gave her a small nod. “Miss McCallister.” His eyes
lingered on hers, and she blushed slightly and lowered
them.
    “Mr. Thompson.”
     
    She glanced back up and
saw another faint smile. James had this way of flirting with her
without flirting with her: subtle, as if he almost didn’t know he
was doing it. She had thought more than once of giving up on this
stupid crush on Henry and giving the tough, working-class hunk with
the obvious interest a try, but...her heart just wasn’t on board
with that. It annoyed the hell out of her that James, who was a
genuinely decent guy, hard working and actually interested, was
right there, but she couldn’t get awat from her fantasies of Henry
enough to do something about it.