Chocolate Cream Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen #24)(11)

A sigh escaped, unbidden, from Hannah’s throat. If things had turned out differently, she would be sitting here on the comfortable leather couch with her loving husband. Then a blizzard would be just another adventure, a welcome excuse to stay home and be with each other.

The memories of her time with Ross began to surface. She’d made him hot chocolate the way he loved it, with a scoop of marshmallow fluff sprinkled with cinnamon on top. They had cuddled up together in this very spot, sipping from their mugs and laughing at the marshmallow mustaches that both of them had worn as they drank.

Hannah roused herself from the happy memory. Thinking about the good times would only make her wish that things could be different. It was time to face reality. Things couldn’t be different, not anymore. The situation was not salvageable. Ross had abandoned her and gone back to his wife. Memories of their romance had no place in her life. She had loved him with all her heart, but now that she knew the truth, her love had turned to a darker emotion. Ross had betrayed her. He’d lied and played her for a fool. She had to harden her heart against him.

Hannah’s living room window rattled with each gust of wind, and all she could see was a sheet of shifting, swirling white outside. Normally, she could see Marguerite and Clara Hollenbeck’s living room window from hers, but the visibility was down to only inches outside. The escalating storm suited Hannah’s mood perfectly. Her very soul felt icy cold. Ross was out of her life forever and she couldn’t let herself miss him.

The questions that plagued her sleepless nights emerged with the howling of the wind. Had there been warning signs that she should have spotted? Should she have insisted on a longer engagement so that she could find out more about Ross’s life during the time they’d been apart? Was she a fool for missing him so dreadfully, even now?

There was a knock, a very loud knock that successfully competed with the howling wind. Hannah moved Moishe to another cushion, sprang to her feet, and rushed across the room to the door. “Who is it?” she asked, shouting to compete with the cacophony of the storm.

“It’s Norman! I’ve got Cuddles with me! Let us in, Hannah! Another couple minutes out here and she’s going to turn into a cat-sicle!”

Hannah opened the door to a snow-covered figure carrying a snow-covered cat carrier. She helped Norman in, took his parka the moment he shrugged it off his shoulders, and dodged the orange-and-white blur that jumped off the couch with a thud and raced to see his favorite kitty friend.

“Ready?” Norman asked, preparing to pull up the grate on the cat carrier to let his pet out of confinement.

“Rrowww!” Moishe replied, and both Hannah and Norman laughed.

“That says it all!” Hannah remarked. “Go ahead, Norman.”

Norman pulled up the grate, Cuddles shot out like a rocket, and the kitty-derby down the carpeted hallway to the bedroom was on with Moishe in the lead and Cuddles chasing him.

“Feet up!” Hannah said, hurrying to the couch with Norman following suit. Once there, both Hannah and Norman tucked their feet under them and waited a scant second before they heard the sound of the two cats racing back into the living room.

Both Hannah and Norman knew that the derby consisted of three laps, from the bedroom out to the living room and back again. They counted them off, one by one, and after the third lap Hannah asked, “Are they through?”

“I’m not sure,” Norman replied. “Cuddles still has that crazed look in her eyes. She might be getting ready for one more lap.”

“If she is, Moishe will go for it. He’s panting, but he’ll chase her if she . . . oops!” Hannah drew her feet up quickly. “Feet up, Norman! They’re off and running!”

Norman laughed and lifted his feet as the two cats ran past him. Then he turned to Hannah with a puzzled expression. “What smells so good?”

“Ultimate Strawberry Bundt Cake. If it’s good, we’re going to bake it for Valentine’s Day.”

“If it tastes as good as it smells, it’ll be great.”

There was the sound of a timer ringing and Hannah got up from the couch. “I have to test the cake,” she told him. “If it’s done, I’ll take it out of the oven. I’ll be right back.”

“With cake?”

“Not quite yet. It has to cool for twenty minutes in the Bundt pan before I can put it on a plate.”

“That long?”

Hannah smiled. “That long. Patience is a virtue, Norman.”

“Patients are what I have in my dental chair every day,” Norman corrected her.

Hannah was saved from attempting to come up with a clever reply when her stove timer began to beep again. “That’s my second warning,” she told him. “If I don’t shut that off, it’ll beep steadily until I do.”

Norman sighed. “Then I guess I’ll have to practice the other kind of patience.”

Hannah chuckled all the way to the kitchen. She loved Norman’s ability to come up with the perfect rejoinder in a lot less time than it took for most people.

Once she’d shut off the timer, Hannah tested the cake, decided that it was done, and set it on a cold stove top burner. Then she reset the time for twenty minutes, the length of time it would take it to cool, and went back to the kitchen doorway.

“I’ve got Chicken in Cabernet Sauce in the Crock-Pot,” she told Norman. “I put it up this morning before I left for church and it should be almost ready by now. I was going to freeze it because I planned to go out to dinner with the family tonight, but we can eat it tonight. It’ll take me a few minutes to thicken the broth, but would you like some when that’s done?”