Snowed (5 page)

“Smells great,” she said.

He turned and smiled at her with such open warmth that she almost regretted having to leave right after breakfast. “Know how to make pancakes?” he asked.

Pouring herself a mug of strong black coffee, she said, “Well, sure, but doesn’t Mary make your breakfast?”

“Oh, I packed her off to her sister’s place in Queens when I saw we were going to be snowed in. The two old hens can amuse each other, and I’d just as soon not have her underfoot
—
Why are you looking at me like that?”

Leah hadn’t heard a word after “snowed in.” The coffee mug never reached her mouth. She ran to the window and yanked aside the gingham curtains. The white stuff was packed against the glass as high as her nose. Peering over the top, she saw mountainous drifts glittering in the sunlight, their pristine beauty lost on her. She turned from the spectacle to stare in wide-eyed horror at James, who appeared maddeningly unruffled as he turned sizzling bacon with a long fork.

Leah’s temples started to pound. “When you say ‘snowed in,’ what exactly do you mean?”

He stopped turning bacon. “You don’t know what ‘snowed in’ means?”

She gripped a chairback and took a deep breath. “Are we stuck in this house, James?”

“Of course not.”

She breathed a gusty sigh of relief and sank into the chair.

“I’ve got snowshoes,” he assured her. “And cross-country skis. I think there’s even a toboggan or two. Once I dig us out, there’s no reason we have to be housebound.”

Snowshoes?

Leah spoke very slowly. “Can I or can I not get back to the city?”

He laughed. “Not unless you brought your dogsled and a team of huskies.”

She groaned.

He said, “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You slept through nature’s little practical joke, didn’t you? At about one
a.m.
we already had over a foot of snow, so I chased everyone out. Or so I thought. Didn’t count on a stowaway.” He paused to ponder the snow-clogged window. “Funny. The weather guy didn’t predict a blizzard.”

Yes,
Leah thought as she massaged her temples.
That is so very funny.

He transferred the crisp bacon to a platter. “It was a relief to get rid of that crowd, I’ll tell you. Not that I didn’t appreciate Kara’s efforts. I guess I’m just not one for surprises.”

Too bad,
she thought.
I’ve got a doozy for you.

“You should’ve seen them in their high-heeled shoes and what all,” he continued, “slip-sliding around, trying to clean a foot of snow off their Jags and Beamers. And with the stuff still coming down and sticking like crazy. You want eggs?”

She stared at him balefully.

He shrugged. “Anyway, I finally got rid of everyone, and Kara made sure all her rent-a-maids got everything cleaned up and put away. Then she took Mary to her sister’s, and I went to my darkroom in the other wing and worked for a couple of hours. When I called it quits about three, the snow was still coming down. I’ll do the pancakes.” He pulled a heavy ceramic bowl out of a cupboard and broke an egg into it. “By then we were solidly snowed in.”

“Are the phones working?”

“Nope.”

“How long will we be stuck here?”

“Well, I’ll gaze into my crystal ball later for an accurate reading, but off the top of my head...two or three days.”

Leah whimpered.

“Maybe longer,” he said, as he dumped pancake mix and milk into the bowl. He gestured toward the window with his whisk. “That, my dear, is one hell of a lot of snow. A record-breaker, I’d guess. Don’t look at me like that, Leah. If it were up to me, you’d already be on your way back to the city.” He whisked the batter with more vigor than was strictly necessary. “When I went up to bed last night
—
this morning
—
I was happy about the blizzard. About a few days of solitude. Blessed aloneness.”

In silence James cooked the pancakes, plunked two plates and forks on the table, fetched syrup and butter, and poured the orange juice. Leah knew she should feel mortified at finding herself an unwanted houseguest. But all she could feel at that point was weary. How she yearned for her cheerful apartment in Little Rock, her efficient warehouse and office, and the temperate, if not always predictable, Arkansas winter.

At length she realized she was sitting in front of a pile of flapjacks and bacon. She looked up from her plate to see James studying her from across the table.

“Oklahoma?” he finally asked.

She smiled despite her mood. “Arkansas.”

“Ah. I wasn’t far off.” He nodded toward her plate. “Don’t let it get cold. Do you live up here now?”

“No.” She kept her eyes directed at her plate as she poured syrup.

“Tourist?”

“Uh...not exactly.”

“Visiting someone?”

“Well...I guess I am a tourist, actually. Just up here, you know, seeing the sights.” Hazarding a glance, she thought she detected a trace of skepticism before he schooled his expression.

“It’s none of my business, of course,” he said. “Sometimes I’m too inquisitive. It’s the artist in me. When I meet someone interesting, I tend to dig deeper and deeper, finding out what makes the person tick, ferreting out every little secret.”

“So, um...” She cleared her throat. “Am I interesting?”

“Very.” His crystal blue eyes glowed in arresting contrast to his swarthy complexion. “Think you can put up with my voracious curiosity for a couple of days?”

“Do I have a choice?” Her gaze drifted to the winter wonderland beyond the window, and she asked herself how anything so beautiful could be so menacing. It wouldn’t do to speculate on just what she could “put up with” from this man for a couple of days. No, it wouldn’t do at all.

“Turn out the light,” James said.

Leah depressed the foot switch he indicated and the darkroom lived up to its name. “Isn’t there supposed to be a red light or something?”

“Amber. But not yet.”

She heard a click and suddenly she saw his face, eerily lit from below by the light from the enlarger. He leaned over the machine, peering at the easel on its base, adjusting knobs and levers to frame the image and focus it. Earlier he’d selected a negative, carefully placed it in the enlarger’s negative carrier, blown compressed air on it from a little can, and slipped the negative carrier into the machine.

His profile became a landscape of contrasts in that strange light as he frowned in concentration. His features stood out in sharp relief
—
the classic Roman nose, the wide mouth and firm jaw. The only sound was their breathing. She watched, fascinated, as his long fingers slowly turned a knob and moved a lever. She couldn’t help imagining how those fingers would feel gliding over her
—

“What do you do, Leah?”

She jumped. “What?”

“You know
—
doctor, lawyer, Indian chief? What do you do when you’re not touristing around New York?”

“Oh.” Was it her imagination, or did he put a certain skeptical inflection on that last part? “I own a mail-order company.”

He glanced up from the enlarger. “Really? Don’t lean on that.”

She moved away from the long stainless steel water bath. Four plastic trays of chemicals sat in the temperature-controlled water, with a sink at the far right end. “Really,” she confirmed. “It’s called Harmony Grits, and I started it four years ago. We sell southern foods.”

“
Harmony
Grits?” He grinned.

“Yeah, well...”

“I know. You couldn’t resist. Southern foods, huh? Is there any kind of market for that?”

“I’ll have you know we have customers in all fifty states,” she said, “plus a handful of other countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq—soldiers from the South who are looking for a taste of down home. We’re growing fast. We were in the black our second year of operation and we’ve been going strong since, mostly through word of mouth and our Web site and blog.”

“‘We’?”

“I have an assistant. Miguel. If it weren’t for him, I’d be tearing my hair out right now, stuck here with no phone.”

Leah had accidentally left her cell on its charger in her hotel room, and James, as it turned out, didn’t even own one. He’d shrugged at her incredulity.
I don’t believe in being available twenty-four seven
. That blessed aloneness thing.

“Then by all means give Miguel a raise,” James said.

“What?”

“I’d hate for anything to happen to your hair.” In the semidark he reached out and stroked her head. “Your hair is beautiful, Leah. Like an angel’s.”

She stood rooted to the spot, barely breathing, as his warm fingers threaded through her hair. She shivered, every nerve ending on fire as his fingertips grazed her scalp.

“Angel hair,” he murmured.

She didn’t trust her voice to even say thank you.

He went back to his enlarger, and she took a deep, silent breath. As she watched, he used a meter to gauge the exposure, then set the timer and toed a foot switch. The enlarger light went off as an amber bulb went on overhead, bathing the room in a murky half light. He asked, “Would you get me a piece of paper from the third drawer of that paper safe?”

She complied, and he positioned the eight-by-ten-inch piece of photographic paper in the easel, shiny side up. The amber safe light went off as the enlarger light once again snapped on.

“So many little steps,” she said.

“It’s like any other enjoyable activity. If you spend enough time and effort making sure all the parts are as ready as they can be, the end result is that much more satisfying.”

His face was exasperatingly unreadable in the gloom, leaving her to wonder if she’d only imagined the double meaning.

“I’m surprised you even have a darkroom,” she said. “I thought photographers nowadays used digital cameras.”

“Most of my professional work is digital. But not the stuff that matters—my own personal photography. For that, only film will do.”

“What’s next?” she asked.

“We’re waiting for it to expose.”

She could tell it was a picture of a face. But since the image was in negative
—
dark where it should be light, and light where it should be dark
—
that was all she could tell.

“You’re pretty young for an entrepreneur,” he observed.

“I was twenty when I set up shop. Before that, I waitressed at an all-you-can-eat catfish place for four years. Four long, greasy years of fried fish, hush puppies, bad slaw, and worse tips.”

“I take it you chose not to include those particular delicacies in the Harmony Grits catalog.”

“You got that one right,” she muttered. “I will never set foot in that joint again as long as I live. In fact, if I never see another piece of catfish again
—
”

“I get the picture. What’s this catfish place called?”

“Ma Chum’s Catfish Shack.”

“Classy. So what exactly do you sell in your catalog? I assume it’s something along the lines of
—
”

“If you say chitlins and corn pone, you’re going to eat that enlarger,” she warned.

“Actually, I was going to say salsa and refried beans. Chili and guacamole. That sort of thing.”

“Well, that’s Tex-Mex really, southwestern, and we do carry some of that ’cause it’s always popular. Also Cajun items
—
gumbo and dirty rice. But the bulk of my business is in Deep South delicacies, the things that haven’t found their way into Middle America yet.”

“Such as...?”

“Oh, such as pralines. Green tomato pickles. Chowchow.”

He gaped at her. “Isn’t that a kind of dog?”

She laughed. “Chowchow is a spicy relish mixed with mustard.”

“Don’t know how I ever lived without it.”

“Of course, a lot of our customers like to cook, so we carry raw ingredients, too, most of it pretty hard to find in stores. Like just about every variety of hot pepper there is. And a whole slew of cornbread mixes.”

“You must have a blast writing the catalog copy. ‘The South shall rise again. And so will our cornbread.’”

“Hey, that’s not bad. If you ever get tired of being a zillionaire photographer, you’ve got a job at Harmony Grits.”

The timer
bing
ed and once more he directed his attention to the enlarger as its light went off and the amber safe light went on. He carried the paper to the water table and carefully slid it into the liquid-filled tray on the far left, using his fingers to keep it submerged and gently agitate the chemicals around it. “This is the developer,” he said. “It brings out the image.”

Her eyes widened. “You stick your fingers in that stuff?”

He shrugged. “Some people use tongs. I’ve been doing it this way so many years, no point in getting dainty about it now.”

She stood next to him as the black-and-white picture began to emerge, slowly at first, an indistinct image, then swiftly darkening until a man stared back at her through the developer bath. She watched, transfixed. The man in the photo was middle-aged, aristocratic, forbidding. And somehow familiar.

Realization slammed into her like a fist in the gut. She looked at James. He was holding the picture now, letting it drip over the tray, but his eyes were on her. Even in the amber light, she saw an inquisitor’s ruthless determination.

She pulled in a deep, steadying breath. “Who is he?”

“My father.”

Unconsciously Leah stepped back from the water table. She forced her voice to remain steady. “What’s the next step?”

He moved to another tray. “This is the stop bath. It neutralizes the developer.”

“Smells kind of vinegary.”

James Bradburn, Sr., glared at her through the swirling eddy of acetic acid. She could almost hear his challenge.
Why did you come here? You can’t hurt me. You can’t do anything to me now. You’re nothing.

“Leah.” She started at the sound of her name. “I said, did you ever meet my father? You seem to recognize him.” James was staring at her intently.

She pulled her eyes from his. “No. He...looks like someone I know.”

He transferred the picture to the next tray
—
”fixer,” he called it
—
where it rested for several minutes.