Snowed In by Rachel Hawthorne Page B

smaller.
    He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Guess I’d better get back to painting. Sure you don’t want to help?”
    “Actually,” I said, surprising myself with the words that followed, “I do.”
    “Know anything about stenciling?” he asked when we got back to the guestroom.
    I remembered that Mom had mentioned putting borders along the walls near the ceilings in some rooms. “I know what it is, but I’ve never done it.”
    “I’ll bet you’re a natural.”
    He shoved a ladder over to the portion of the wall that was already painted. He found a stencil—
    one that Mom had picked out, I guessed—and 77
    climbed the ladder. Reaching into a huge pocket on the leg of his coveralls, he brought out a roll of masking tape and secured the stencil in place. He hopped to the floor.
    “Climb on up,” he ordered, before moving to another part of the room where cans of paint were lined up like good little soldiers.
    “What if I mess it up?” I asked.
    “Won’t happen,” he said. He was crouched, pouring purple paint onto a small plate.
    “For all you know, I have no talent at painting.”
    He glanced over at me. “If you screw up, I’ll paint over it. It’s no big deal.” Not exactly what I’d wanted him to say.
    Actually, I guess I was looking for some sort of praise, something like—
    “Besides, I wouldn’t have offered to let you do it if I didn’t think you could do it,” he added.
    Okay. That was more along the lines of what I wanted to hear.
    Why do you care if he’s impressed, Ash? You’ve got a date with another guy. And they’re bound to be friends.
    Before moving to the island, it had been easy to have dates with different guys, because there were so many of them—and the odds were good they wouldn’t be friends. Chase and Josh had to be 78
    friends. Dating both of them wouldn’t work.
    So Josh Wynter wasn’t even on the menu to sample. I’d already chosen the entrée: Chase.
    Still, I kicked off my fuzzies and climbed up the ladder.
    The ceiling was high, like maybe a thousand feet.
    Okay, closer to ten, but still . . . The ladder was a little shaky, especially when Josh started to climb it.
    “Uh . . . what are you doing?” I asked.
    “Coming up to show you how to do it.” And suddenly he was there, his arms coming around me as he put the plate of paint and a brush on the top step of the ladder. Or was it the top of the ladder? Would I really want to stand on the very top of the ladder with nothing to hold on to?
    I was obsessing about the ladder and what its various parts were called because that was a lot safer than thinking about the fact that Josh and I were so close. He smelled really good. Not like paint, as I’d expected.
    He smelled like a lumberjack, like pine.
    Woodsy. And even though it was winter, his skin had a brown hue, so I figured in the summer, he spent a lot of time outdoors. He looked the type.
    “Are you listening?” he asked.
    “Huh?” I sounded breathless. Probably because I was. Having his chest pressed to my back felt so 79
    good. I grew warm, kinda dizzy. Maybe it was the height. But I didn’t think so.
    “I’ve been showing you how to prepare the brush, how to make sure you don’t have too much paint,” he said.
    I nodded. “I got it.”
    “You can either dab or swirl,” he said, leaning forward to show me.
    Which put him even closer, close enough that it was almost an embrace. So close that my mouth went dry.
    “Personally”—he cleared his throat—“I like the swirl.”
    He was giving me other pointers, but I was barely listening. All I could think about was the swirl. The type of swirl that might take place if we were kissing.
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    7
    Only, we weren’t kissing. I was amazed by how much I wished we were. I wondered if he had a girlfriend. He hadn’t mentioned one. But would he get this close to another girl if he did?
    On the other hand, I hadn’t mentioned my date with Chase. But a date . . . well, dates came and went in