Snowbound Heart by Jennifer Blake

away, fastened the clip over her smooth hair at the nape of her neck, and went briskly about the business of cooking breakfast.
    She was cracking eggs into the pan where she had fried bacon when Logan came through the door from the laundry. He threw down the burden he carried and took a deep breath. “I could smell the bacon and coffee a hundred yards away,” he said.
    Her attention on what she was doing, Clare said over her shoulder, “I suppose you are hungry again?”
    “Starving.”
    “It will only be a minute.” She turned to smile, then let her glance drop to the bundle at his feet. It was an instant before recognition came. “My suitcase!”
    “You said so little about having to wear the same clothes for two days that I thought you deserved a reward.”
    “Oh, Logan. You shouldn’t have done it, but I’m so glad you did. I don’t know how to thank you.”
    “Slip another egg into the pan there, that’s a good girl,” he answered, and picked up the bag to carry it up the spiral stairs to one of the bedrooms for her.
    It was after breakfast before Clare could turn her attention to a change of clothing. Shutting herself up in the frigid bedroom, she replaced what she was wearing from the skin out, mourning only that she could not take a long hot bath before donning the fresh clothing. She could have done so, if she had only waited a little while, she discovered. The first thing she noticed when she emerged from the bedroom in jeans, a knit shirt, and a chunky pullover sweater was the Tiffany light burning brightly over the table.
    “The power is back on!” she said as she carried Logan’s shirt through to the laundry.
    “It came on about five minutes ago. That means the snowplows are out on the main roads. They should get here by this afternoon.”
    “That’s good. Beverly, the friend I was going to stay with, will be standing on her head. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out she had called in the police to locate me.”
    “I suspect most of the roads into this area have been closed since dark day before yesterday. People up here make allowances for this sort of thing. Your friend probably has a good idea that something like this happened. I doubt she will do anything drastic unless you don’t show up a few hours after the roads are cleared.”
    Clare nodded. “You may be right.”
    “Since there is nothing we can do until the roads are open, and as long as you are warmly dressed, what do you say to a walk?”
    “I would love it,” Clare said, brightening; then her expression grew doubtful. “But you have already been out this morning. Are you sure you want to go again?”
    “I’m sure. Besides, I have something to show you.”
    They set out immediately, both of them well wrapped up, including caps and gloves, with the addition, for Clare, of a brilliant red muffler over her camel’s hair coat. It was not difficult to decide where they were going. They turned in the same direction Logan had taken that morning, following the path he had made in the snow. It could lead only one place, to her car on the side of the embankment.
    Rather than beat a trail of her own, Clare followed along in Logan’s footsteps, her view blocked by his broad shoulders. It was not until they reached the place where she had gone over the edge that she could look down and see where her car had come to stop.
    The sight brought her to an abrupt halt. With her hands clenched and her face pale, she stared downward. Here the road paralleled the same canyon that Logan’s house overlooked. It had the same evergreens, the same perpendicular walls. Only the great trunk of the huge ponderosa pine had kept Clare’s car from plunging, rolling over and over, bounding off snow-covered rocks to the blue-shadowed bottom a thousand feet below.
    Slowly Clare lifted her gray eyes to stare at Logan.
    “Yes,” he said softly. “It was quite a chance you took, wasn’t it?”
    “I didn’t know it was like that,” she