Chapter 4
Miranda woke the next morning before dawn to a slight thump coming from the main room of her apartment. Her eyes snapped open with a start before she remembered Randall was there. Instantly, her muscles relaxed and her breathing grew easy.
At least until she heard the sharp whistle of the wind against the side of the building and felt the bitter snap in the air.
She was cold. Very cold. In the night, she’d curled into a ball on her side to conserve warmth, but that wasn’t doing much now.
Not even the three blankets piled on top of her could hold back the chill.
There was nothing for it but to scramble out of bed and into clean, warm clothes, though the process of getting dressed left her even colder for a moment.
Her fingers were too stiff to bother braiding or tying back her hair—almost too stiff to light the lamp on her bedside table—so she left her hair down, wrapped one of the blankets around her, and shivered her way into the apartment’s main room, lamp in hand.
Randall crouched by the fireplace, striking matches and setting them to a large pile of fresh wood and kindling. He twisted to greet her with a smile as she approached.
“Good morning, Randi.” He teased her with a wink.
The fire was out, but Miranda warmed all the same. “Good morning to you, Randy,” she replied.
They shared a nervous giggle, then Randall nodded to the fireplace. “The fire went out sometime in the night. I was so cold I couldn’t sleep anyhow, so I got up to investigate, and look.”
He pointed to the hearth all around the wood and kindling. Miranda gasped. A fine layer of snow had covered everything. She’d hardly ever heard of snow blowing down a chimney. Although honestly, there hadn’t been much snow at all in the part of California where she’d grown up.
“The storm must be bad,” she spoke her thoughts aloud.
Randall returned to his work as he said, “I think so. I couldn’t see much out the window when I checked a few minutes ago, but that might just be because it’s still dark.”
Miranda pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and crossed the room to the window above her washstand.
The water she’d left in the bowl the night before had a thin layer of ice on top.
She shivered, half from cold, half from the ominous feeling the ice gave her.
She pulled back the curtain only to feel a deeper blast of cold.
Instinct told her the windowpane was too cold to touch.
What was even more worrying was that most of the rectangles of glass were completely covered in snow.
“I doubt it snowed so much overnight that the saloon was actually buried,” Randall called from the fireplace, sensing her distress. “It probably just drifted against that wall. I found a window on another side of the building upstairs, and it wasn’t that bad.”
“You were upstairs?” Since there wasn’t anything to see, and since the very fact of Randall’s presence was the only thing keeping her from panic, she left the window and returned to crouch beside the fireplace.
“Just for a minute or two,” he told her with a reassuring smile. “I thought I’d look for more blankets.”
Miranda blushed hot. “I haven’t had time to clean those rooms yet.”
His eyes danced with mirth. “I noticed.”
She swallowed. Who knew what kind of scandalous items were tucked away up there? Heaven knew she’d found enough things in the rooms downstairs to provide an education for even the most stalwart soul.
“Did you find blankets?” she asked in a sheepish voice.
“I did.” Randall peeked at her as he struck a match and managed to get the kindling to light. “I even found a few that I could use.”
Miranda was mortified down to her toes. She couldn’t imagine what kind of filth those other blankets contained. Not for the first time, she cursed her Uncle Buford for not running a tighter ship, for getting so deeply involved in vice in the first place, and for saddling her with the whole mess.
The fire Randall had built finally took, and as the flames licked higher, melting the snow and starting to take the chill out of the bricks of the fireplace, Miranda tugged her hands out of the blanket around her shoulders and held them out to warm them.
“The stove comes next.” Randall got up and moved to her kitchen stove, opening the belly to shovel a bit more coal inside.
Miranda stayed where she was for the time being.
She should really get moving and start breakfast for him.
She was the hostess, after all, and if there was one thing her mother had always drilled into her, it was the importance of being a good one.
The newly-crackling fire was such a delicious balm to her frozen limbs, though, that she stayed crouched in front of it until Randall had the stove lit.
It took even longer for the room to heat up and the stove to be hot enough to boil water for tea.
Randall insisted on going to the main room of the saloon to light that fire and to check for any sort of storm damage, but Miranda was more than content to stay in the tiny cocoon of warmth that the fireplace and the stove in her apartment created.
She fetched the leftover biscuits from last night’s dinner as well as eggs and a rasher of bacon from her cupboard and did her best to make a morning feast.
An hour later, she and Randall sat across her small table, eating dry biscuits, rubbery eggs, and undercooked bacon.
“I truly wouldn’t mind cooking for you one of these meals,” Randall said. He wore a smile, but Miranda suspected he didn’t actually like her cooking. “I have some experience in the kitchen.”
“From your time as a cabin boy?” she teased him, trying not to feel guilty about her own, pitiful skills.
Fortunately, Randall laughed at her joke. “From before that. As a boy, I had a glorious crush on our cook, Mrs. Foster.”
“Did you?” Her eyebrows flew up.
Randall chuckled sheepishly and nodded. “I was eight, she was forty-eight, but I knew it was meant to be. She taught me everything I know about cooking, baking, all of it. Those skills have come in mighty handy as I’ve traveled about.
I even worked in a restaurant for a month when I was stranded at the end of the train line during my days as a railroad porter. ”
“And did you enjoy it?”
A sudden, far-away look came to Randall’s eyes and he sighed, leaning his elbow on the table, chin in his palm. “I loved it.”
That was when Miranda noticed that he’d shaved.
He must have done so before coming in to light the fires.
She’d found him handsome with a bit of end-of-the-day scruff, but now his appearance was even more charming and manly.
His curly hair fascinated her. And she was ready to admit fully that it was a comfort and a blessing to have him there in the midst of the storm.
“Maybe I will let you cook something,” she said, swirling her fork through her eggs and lowering her eyes flirtatiously. Her, Miranda Clarke, flirting. Would wonders never cease?
“I tell you what I do want to do, though,” he went on, finishing up the last of his breakfast. “I want to see if there’s a way to go outside and assess the amount of snowfall. Especially snow that might have fallen on the roof.”
“The roof?” Miranda stood and took his plate and hers, just as she’d done the night before.
And just as the night before, Randall stood with her and took their tin tea mugs and the teapot, following her to the counter. A homey thrill swirled through Miranda’s gut. It was almost like a routine, something people who had been together for a long while would do.
“The roof,” Randall repeated. “You always want to check the amount of snow that falls on your roof. Too much of it or too heavy a consistency and it could collapse the whole thing.”
Miranda gasped, her anxiety returning. “The roof could collapse?”
Randall shrugged, reaching for the pump to help her wash the dishes. “If whoever built this place was smart, they knew snow could be a problem and designed the roof accordingly.”
It took far more time and effort to get the pump to work, and when water did begin to flow, it was frigid and loaded with ice particles.
Miranda tried not to think about what that could mean.
Underground water usually stayed above a certain temperature.
It had to be merely the water already in the pipe that was frozen.
Either way, she and Randall washed the dishes quickly.
As soon as they were done, Randall set aside the cloth he’d used to dry them with a long, “Brrr!” and took her hands in his to warm them.
The simple contact of her icy hands with his, the way his long-fingered hands enveloped hers, sent spirals of a dangerous kind of heat all through her.
She’d felt something like this all those times she’d been close to Micah, but not nearly this potent.
Before she could stop herself, she was standing scandalously close to Randall.
She could smell the salt of his skin along with a spicy cologne of some sort.
It may have just been his shaving soap, but whatever it was sent sparks along her skin.
“We should go ahead and check the roof,” he said after a silence that went on too, too, deliciously long. His voice was rough, and he cleared his throat before stepping back. “I’d hate to see any damage to your saloon.”
Miranda studied his face for a moment, drank in the kindness in his eyes and the familiarity of his smile. Surely they must have known each other for more than just one day. There were people she’d spent every day of her life with that she didn’t feel a kinship to like this. Vicky, for one.
“I’m not sure how we’ll get outside to check,” Randall went on, slowly breaking the spell she’d fallen under. “I, uh, tried the front door earlier, but the snow had drifted up to my thighs.”
That did it. That snapped Miranda out of her reverie. “Oh, dear.”
Randall reached up to scratch the back of his neck. “I didn’t want to alarm you.”