Taming His Montana Heart(15)
She looked down to make sure she wasn’t close to Rey. While she’d been shoveling, she’d managed to keep her footing but now, without the shovel for a brace, she lost traction. Not fighting gravity, she spread her arms and pushed off.
“Yes!” she screamed.
One second she was falling. The next her feet hit the snow. Her legs sank into the cold, loose stuff. When Shaw’s shovel landed some ten feet away, she laughed as she hadn’t for years. She braced her elbows on the snow and tried to push free. Nothing happened.
“Look out below!” Shaw yelled.
She looked up in time so see him launch himself off the roof. His greater weight drove him deeper into the snow.
“This might not be the best idea we ever had,” Rey said from behind her. “But what a blast.”
By her reckoning, it took them nearly five minutes to pull themselves out of the snow. Once she was free of the icy quicksand, she made her way to the men who were standing where snowmobiles had packed down the snow. She appreciated that neither of them had come to her aid. A woman who could shovel snow off a roof with the best of them could get herself out of the minor mess she’d gotten herself into.
“I’ll have to remember you have a spontaneous side,” Shaw said as they dug snow out of the insides of their sleeves. “Issue a challenge and you’ll take it.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“I make a point of balancing spontaneity with caution. Otherwise, things can go sideways.”
“Not always, fortunately.”
“No, not always. Haley, we need to talk about the sled dog race.”
She didn’t want to talk about dogs or sleds or where the races would be held or anything to do with people coming here. She wasn’t sure what she wanted beyond standing closer to Shaw.
“All right,” she made herself say. “How about we use my office? We might not have much time.”
“Oh?”
“The clients. They’ll be back before long.”
“Unfortunately.”
Chapter Five
Looking back an hour later on what she’d said, Haley wondered if she’d subconsciously heard the snowmobiles returning. Rey, Shaw, and she had still been trying to divest themselves of the snow packed on them when the first machine appeared. She’d been listening to a young couple’s tale of how they’d ventured onto the lake only to lose courage and head for solid land when the second snowmobile showed up. Between reassuring the second party that there was nothing worrisome about the sound their machine was making and answering the phone several times, she was surprised Shaw hadn’t given up and taken off. They’d barely had time to speak to each other, but she’d been aware of his presence and consequently aware of every move she made. It was almost as if someone else was sharing her skin and thoughts.
Finally all of the rentals had been logged in and the machines checked out and parked inside the storage building. Feeling the impact of every shovelful, she sat on the hard metal chair behind a table that had seen better days in a space that wasn’t much larger than a closet and let the rest of the world fade away. She’d placed two folding chairs on the opposite side of her desk for visitors’ use. Shaw was sitting in one of them while studying the pegboard on the wall to her left.
Despite the amount of space he consumed, she didn’t want him to leave.
“That’s how you keep track of which machines are rented when?” he asked. He’d unzipped his jacket. Something about seeing his bare throat made this meeting feel even more personal, intimate. “Wouldn’t it be more efficient if you used a software program?”
“I’ve looked into buying one and loading it onto my laptop but—”
“Your laptop? In other words this operation”—he pointed in the direction of the snowmobiles—“depends on what you brought with you.”
“It isn’t quite that bad.”
“It isn’t good. I’m sorry. I dropped the ball on that score. My only excuse is that winter slammed before I thought it would. Hopefully I’ll be ready next year.”
“Next year? So you’re planning to still be here after the renovations are completed?”
“I believe so, but life’s unpredictable.”
“Yes, it is.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Back to what you have or rather don’t have to work with. What needs to change?”
No way would she blame him for the antiquated system she’d inherited. As she saw it, a sport that could only be enjoyed for part of the year took a back seat to Shaw’s massive list of have-tos.
“Show me the software you need. I’ll get it and a laptop to run it on.” He looked around. “There has to be a way to enlarge and warm this space.”
She kept the electric baseboard heater on all the time but the lack of insulation and a single pane window meant she usually wore a coat when she was in here. She wondered if he’d spotted the blanket she put over her legs if she was going to be in here for a length of time or had any idea how trapped she sometimes felt in the small space.
“I’m sorry you had to wait for me,” she said after telling him she’d identified the software she believed would do the job. “But I can’t in good conscience put a machine away without first going over it.”