Snowbound, page 2
part #3 of Discovered by Love Series
Meg cast a look over her shoulder, clearly weighing the contortion required to get over the seat versus the fact he would have to help her out the window. “I’ll go through the back.”
Declan held up his hands in acknowledgment and stood back as she rolled up the window, climbed into her backseat, then lowered one side to let herself into the cargo area. She popped out the back, surprisingly unperturbed, a backpack slung over one shoulder and a tote bag in the other. At his questioning look, she said, “My computer and some snacks. It was a long drive. I don’t suppose you could grab my suitcase?”
“Suitcase?”
She shrugged. “I believe in being prepared. Looks like I was right.”
Fortunately, the suitcase in question was a tiny roller bag that could fit beneath an airplane seat, not the behemoth he’d been envisioning. He took it without complaint, scrambling up the slippery hill to his car. At least half an inch of snow had already accumulated on his windows.
Meg followed him up less confidently, falling to her knees once or twice, but he didn’t offer to help. She wouldn’t like any reminder that he’d come to her rescue. Only when her things were safely stowed in his trunk and she was sitting in his front seat with the heater on high did he turn to her.
Even shivering, with clumps of snow melting in her hair, she was beautiful. Not for the first time did he feel a pang of regret that things had turned out so badly between them. For a brief period, during their internship, he thought they’d finally established a friendship. He thought she might be interested in becoming more, had been summoning up his courage to make a move. And then . . .
And then he’d been an idiot and had blown it all up, even if he hadn’t intended to. The situation had quickly spiraled out of his control.
He cleared his throat and his regrets along with it. “So. Your call.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“We can try the two and a half miles to town. We’ll probably make it, barring any more owls.” He gave her a faint smile. “But if we don’t, we’re stuck in the car all night until a plow comes through, and considering we’re supposed to get two feet by morning, it might be a while.
“Or we head back to the house and wait it out there. Even if we get stuck, we’re close enough that we could walk back if we had to.”
Meg glanced down the road. Clearly, she was inclined to take the first option, where they could be rid of each other and on with their lives—albeit stuck in Vail for the weekend. Then she sighed. “The smart move is the house, isn’t it?”
“Probably.”
Meg bowed her head. “House it is.” She shot him a wry look. “Guess we’re going to be doing our proposals hands-on this time, aren’t we?”
He managed to make his expression neutral despite the images the phrase “hands-on” summoned. She didn’t need to see how much he’d been hoping she’d make this decision. “Seems so.” He turned the car around carefully and began the drive back to the house.
It was now snowing so hard that their tracks had already been covered by a fresh coat of white, and he had to rely exclusively on snow markers to find his way back to the drive. Meg said nothing, but gripped the door in silent anxiety. When they finally made the turn onto the Gratz property, Meg said quietly, “Thanks, by the way. I know you weren’t going my direction. You must have followed me. In the chivalrous way. Not the creepy way.”
He shot her a grin. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Meg flushed again, but she managed a weak smile in return.
And that was the last thing they said to each other until they reached the front of the house and let themselves in with the key, showering snowflakes and dropping bits of muddy ice on the hand-scraped hardwood and Oriental rug.
“I’ll go find some towels,” Meg said, setting her bags in the corner.
“And I’ll get the heater turned on.”
They went their separate ways, Meg to the mudroom around back, where they should have entered in the first place, and Declan to the thermostat in the hallway beneath the stairs. It was an old-fashioned unit with actual buttons, but he turned up the temperature from its forty-degree minimum setting, and somewhere deep in the house, a fan thrummed to life. It might smell like burning leaves for a while, but at least they’d get warm. Eventually. The amount of energy it took to heat a five thousand square foot house from near-freezing was staggering.
Meg was still rummaging, so Declan wandered back into the home’s enormous, if outdated, kitchen. Hickory cabinets encircled the whole room, accented by a once-fashionable black and brown granite. A huge island big enough to seat six people dominated the center. Behind the island was a door he was pretty sure led to a pantry. Now to see if it had been cleaned out or if Eleanor still kept staples on hand.
Declan walked into a space the size of a small bedroom fitted with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Jackpot. There was a full section of canned goods left, most of them expensive and many of them foreign, acrylic containers full of rice and pasta, and an entire shelf full of imported mineral waters. He scanned the provisions and began pulling down ingredients: some bucatini, a couple of packets of tuna in olive oil, and an unopened bottle of capers. At the last minute, he chose a small, expensive bottle of extra-virgin olive oil from the shelf.
He was going to have to reimburse Eleanor a small fortune for this, or at least replace it all before anyone was the wiser.
“Declan? Where are you?”
“In the kitchen.” He pulled down pots and pans and set them on the eight-burner Viking range. He sensed, rather than saw, Meg pull up short in the doorway.
“I cleaned up the— what are you doing?”
“Cooking dinner. If we’re going to be stuck here a while, I’d like a real meal.”
“You can cook?”
“I can cook. Just don’t judge me entirely on this meal because there’s no fresh garlic, onion, or lemon here and they’re all fairly essential for Spaghettoni al Tonno.” He twisted on the faucet behind the stove to fill the pot, relieved at the immediate flow of water. He'd been hoping that since the heater had been left on low, the house hadn't been fully winterized. “Why the tone of surprise?”
Meg came fully into the room and pushed herself up onto the counter, her legs dangling. “I don’t know. You didn’t strike me as the type.”
“The type to eat food?”
“The type to . . . do things. Regular things, I mean.”
“Ouch.”
“Oh, come on, don’t pretend your upbringing wasn’t privileged.”
Declan sighed. So they were on to this. Meg had always pretended she didn’t care who his father was, but of course it was a lie. It was always a lie. No matter how far he got from Ireland, Colum McKenzie’s reputation preceded him. “We had plenty of money, yes, if that’s what you mean.”
“What else could it mean?”
“Spoken like someone who’s privileged without knowing it.”
“I don’t understand.”
He swore he could hear Meg frown without looking at her, a side effect of spending so many hours studying her expressions when she wasn’t looking, hoping for some clue as to what actually went on in that brilliant head of hers. He stole a look and sure enough, it was just as he’d predicted.
“I’m sure you don’t.”
Meg paused for a long moment, then hopped off the counter. “I’m going to go look around a bit. Call me when dinner’s ready.”
A pang of regret struck Declan as Meg vanished. He hadn’t meant to antagonize her. Or maybe he had. Everyone thought it was so easy, such a privilege to be the son of Colum McKenzie, famed architect, the man behind some of the best-known Brutalist public buildings in Europe. Sure, there had been money and expensive trips, but there had also been empty houses, holidays spent at boarding school, and an impossible-to-meet set of expectations.
No one, Meg included, could believe that they, with their normal houses, nuclear families, and middle-class worries, were the privileged ones.
He shook off his silent whingeing and turned his attention to the meal. The pasta water was now boiling, so he salted it and measured out two portions of bucatini. Then he stared at the hot pan and wondered what he could do to make up for the lack of fresh aromatics. He was searching for a bottle of Calabrian chilis in oil that he’d seen in the pantry earlier when the room went pitch black, all the appliances powering down with a deflated whine.
And somewhere in the house, he heard a shriek.
Meg was reaching for the space heater on the top shelf of the master bedroom closet when the lights abruptly blinked out. She tilted precariously on her tiptoes, momentarily dizzied by the sudden darkness, her fingers grasping for the heater before she became completely disoriented. She just about had it—and then the entire contents of the closet shelf came tumbling down.
Meg screamed as the heater, half a dozen blankets, and what felt like a pile of books dropped onto her head and back.
From down below, Declan’s voice drifted: “Meg? You all right up there?”
She rubbed her scalp gingerly before replying. “Yeah! I’m okay.”
“Good! Dinner in five.”
She pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and flicked on the flashlight to review the carnage. She’d gone in search of a space heater once she realized it was going to take all night to get the house to a comfortable temperature, but this power outage made the whole search moot. She knelt in front of the mess and attempted to fold all the blankets as they’d been before. Not only had she and Declan raided Eleanor Gratz’s pantry, but now she was rooting around in her closet as well.
She gathered up the books on the floor before she realized that they were leather-bound photo albums. Some were filled with color photos of trips abroad—she recognized the Eiffel Tower and the Trevi Fountain—but the other was filled with creased black and white photos. She flicked through the pages, angling her phone’s light for a better look. Gradually, she realized that the photos had been taken at this very house, though not in its current iteration. All the interiors had the look of an English country manor with dark paneling, staid antiques, and fusty draperies. She must have gotten distracted by trying to pick out details in the background, because Declan’s voice carried to her again: “Meg? Dinner!”
She quickly shoved the other photo albums onto the shelf, then hurried downstairs with the house album under her arm. She charged into the kitchen, invigorated by her find, then stumbled to a halt. Two plates of delicious-smelling pasta sat on the island counter along with glasses and a bottle of mineral water, the whole thing illuminated by the flickering light of two tapers in stone candlesticks.
“This looks very . . .” Romantic, she wanted to say, but she was afraid he would take that as a positive thing.
But he seemed to read her mind, because he looked abashed. “I know. It was all I could find. I’m sure there are some lanterns somewhere around here.” He gestured to the empty chair in front of her plate. “Sit. Eat while it’s hot.”
Reluctantly, Meg sidled over to the island. He’d left a chair between them, she saw. Apparently, he wasn’t any more enthusiastic about this arrangement than she was. Declan poured her some water while she took her first bite.
“It’s . . . it’s really good!”
“Again with the surprise.”
“Sorry, I just . . .” She took another bite. “If this is what you did with pantry items, I can’t imagine what it tastes like with fresh.”
“The Calabrian chili helps. I’m going to make a spicy sauce tomorrow with the rest of the jar. Assuming we’re still here tomorrow,” he amended.
“About that. How much snow so far?”
“Seven or eight inches last I checked.”
“Whoa.” That made something like four inches an hour. “I wonder what happened to the power. That’s not enough snow to down a line.”
“Hard to tell what it’s like elsewhere.” He took a bite of his own pasta, seeming to be evaluating it, before he gave a shrug that she took to mean it’s okay.
“Doesn’t this place have a backup generator?” Meg asked. “It’s going to get cold fast if we can’t rely on the furnace. I was looking for heaters upstairs, but the only one I found was electric.”
“I think the fireplace in the den is gas. Which is better anyway because it’s a smaller room to heat. If the power doesn’t come on, we’ll have to camp out there.”
“Great.” From the way Declan flinched, Meg realized she’d hurt his feelings. She cringed. She might still harbor plenty of bitterness toward him, but he had, after all, rescued her from the side of the road, where she’d still be if he hadn’t decided to check up on her. “I just meant, I’m kind of a baby about my sleep. I’d really been hoping for a proper mattress.”
He flicked a glance at her. “There’s another fireplace up in the master bedroom, but it would mean sharing a bed.”
“Uh, no. I draw the line there.” Her response was so emphatic that she thought she might have offended him again, but he just laughed.
“I see. Afraid you can’t control yourself, huh?”
“Please.” Meg rolled her eyes, but found she had no comeback. Just because she’d spent the last six years cursing his existence and her own naivete didn’t mean she didn’t feel a quiver of anticipation in her middle at his very proximity. She’d learned a long time ago that her head and her hormones had very different tastes in men.
Declan grinned as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. If she was half as transparent as she’d once been with him, he probably did.
She grasped for another subject. “Seriously, though. Are we the only two architects bidding on this project?”
“Why do you think I would know?” Meg sent him a look and he caved. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Why us?” Meg asked, then amended, “I can understand you. But why me?”
He raised a shoulder. “Would you rather have not been considered?”
“No! I just mean . . . NCO isn’t a big firm like Klein. I’m not even a senior architect.”
“Yeah, but you’ve done a couple of noteworthy structures. The Breakwater House, for example. It’s a beautiful piece of architecture. Modern, elegant, maybe a little challenging, but in an interesting way, not an off-putting one.”
Meg slid him a dubious look. “How do you know about that?”
“There was that little feature in Altitude Magazine. Mentioned your name. But I would have recognized your style anywhere. It’s always been very . . . innovative.”
“Now you’re mocking me.” There was no way anything she did would be considered innovative by the son of Colum McKenzie, standard bearer of the revived European Brutalist movement. She drained her glass, picked up her half-finished plate, and took them both to the sink.
“I’m not mocking you!” Declan insisted. “It takes guts to look at a pristine wilderness location and say ‘I’m going to design in steel and glass.’ And it takes talent to make it actually work. Intellectually, it’s no more out of place than an icicle in winter. Just because something is hard and shiny doesn’t mean it’s not also organic.”
It was, perhaps, the nicest thing anyone had said about her work and the closest anyone but she had come to articulating her style. She looked at nature and saw not only soft lines and warm materials, but the sharp edges—the strata of a rock cliff, the sharp bright cut of a stream through a valley.
What was surprising was that it was Declan saying it. He was the master of traditional: he made places the way builders and architects would have done centuries ago, if only they’d been able to plan ahead for electricity and running water and the desire for open living spaces. Walking into one of his homes was like walking back in time to any genteel European country house, just without the inconveniences of low doorframes and water closets that were down the hall from the bath. And though that style wasn’t to her particular taste—it was, in fact, the polar opposite of her taste—she could admit that he was good at it.
In that way, the request to have them both bid on this project made perfect sense. Two opposing viewpoints, two radically different visions. No middle ground. If the design brief could be believed, the first batch of architects had failed because they tried too hard to be everything to everybody. And if there was one thing she knew about Eleanor Gratz, it was that the woman was her own person. No matter what anyone thought
Meg flipped on the faucet and began to wash the dishes, surprised when Declan appeared beside her and took over, handing her a dish towel instead. They worked silently in tandem for several minutes until Declan said, “Can I ask you something?”
After his compliments, she was beginning to thaw toward him. “Okay.”
“What’s this perfume you always wear? You’re the only person I’ve ever smelled it on, and I’ve always wondered what it was.”
“Oh.” She’d expected him to ask her how she fell in love with architecture, why she wanted this job; she’d never envisioned something so personal. “It’s Chanel. Bois de Iles. It’s a 1920s fragrance that they reissued in the noughties. My mom bought a bottle for me for my high school graduation and it just kind of became a thing.” She threw him a sheepish smile. “I don’t usually like perfume, but I like this one. It’s not blended. It’s . . . built.”
When she glanced over at him, he was looking down at her with warmth in his eyes. That annoying quiver built to a full-blown vibration, making her breath catch.
“That is a very architect sort of response,” he said with a smile. He finished washing the last pan and left the water on at a trickle, no doubt to prevent the pipes from freezing now that the heater didn't work. “I’m going to go see about that generator. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” she said absently as he left the room.
What on earth was happening to her? She’d only been in the house alone with him for four hours and already she had Stockholm Syndrome? Even more shocking, it seemed to go both ways. As if a shared meal and cleaning up together had made them forget they were rivals, forget all the cutthroat things he’d done to get where he was. Maybe he wanted to bury the hatchet out of guilt, but all things considered, the only place she should want to bury the hatchet was his head.
