License to Love by Barbara Boswell Page B

glad the evening was over, that she hadn’t had a good time! He’d been half expecting her to tell him that he had been reading her all wrong and he was prepared to believe it. Unfortunately he had been right on target.
    Neither said anything as the car’s engine roared to life. Steve easily steered the car out of the parking space and into the street. The windshield wipers worked diligently to keep the glass free of snow, but the flakes were falling so thick and so fast that it was a losing battle.
    “The visibility is horrible,” Michelle said anxiously. “Do you think you should pull over and—”
    “Do what? Sit in the car and freeze until it stops snowing? No thanks. I’ve never had any trouble driving in the snow. I don’t anticipate any now.”
    He’d no sooner uttered the words when the car began to fishtail. “We’re at that bad corner.” Michelle gulped. “The one none of the other cars—” Her voice rose into a terrified squeak as the car shot across the road. A telephone pole was looming.
    Three
    Michelle glanced at Steve manipulating the steering wheel with both hands and pumping the brake with his foot before she covered her eyes and braced herself for the collision ... which didn’t occur.
    “You can open your eyes now,” Steve said tersely. “We’re still on the road.”
    Michelle snapped her eyes open and she gazed around her. The pole was behind them and the car was hugging the curb, inching along as the snow continued to fall with blinding fury.
    “You did it,” she breathed. A powerful surge of relief made her feel giddy.
    “Of course. Didn’t I tell you this car drives like a dog-sled?” He didn’t feel as calm and cool as he sounded. They’d missed that pole by mere inches. The adrenaline that had suffused his system, sharpening his reflexes and his dexterity in the emergency, began to slowly abate. He took
    a few deep breaths and tried to ignore the wild thundering of his heart.
    “So that was ‘mush’ I heard you muttering under your breath?” Michelle teased. “That’s odd, it sounded remarkably similar to a certain swear word.” She was lightheaded from the near miss, she felt like giggling and weeping at the same time. Careening toward the inexorable wooden strength of a telephone pole could do that to a person.
    Steve braked to a stop at a traffic light—or tried to. The car slid through the intersection, fishtailing crazily. Fortunately there were no other cars on the road, so it didn’t matter that they spun around in a complete circle.
    Michelle gasped. Steve muttered a few more words, which sounded nothing like the “mush” a sledmaster called to his dog team.
    “Your place is closer, mine is across town,” he gritted as he slowly, carefully pulled the car onto a highway whose lanes were obliterated by the snow. It looked like a vast arctic tundra rather than a four-lane road.
    Michelle nodded, picturing her apartment, warm, safe— and stationary. “I wish we could teleport ourselves there,” she said softly.
    “Scared?”
    “Completely rattled,” she admitted.
    “We’ll make it.” He reached over and patted her hand for a second before resuming his grip on the wheel.
    The rest of the drive, which normally took twenty minutes, was filled with two hours of close calls and near misses. They watched a succession of hapless motorists spin, skid, and slide off the road as they proceeded at a snail’s pace— and sometimes even slower. As the storm worsened, the number of abandoned cars alongside the road—and in one case, in the middle of it—increased, creating additional obstacles to be avoided.
    They played the radio for a while, but the incessant weather bulletins, proclaiming the impassability of the roads and the admonitions to stay off them, irritated Steve and unnerved Michelle.
    “Staying inside isn’t an option,” Steve finally snapped back at the hypermanic voice of the radio announcer who / had once again cautioned motorists not