Chapter 5
By the time Miranda and Randall had determined the roof wouldn’t cave in under the weight of snow and shut and secured the trapdoor once more, the wind had picked up and the snow thickened.
An hour later, the blizzard was back. Going out to see how the rest of Mistletoe was doing was out of the question.
More snow drifted and banked against the front of the building, blocking the door.
There was nothing for it but to give up, accept their fate, and do something productive.
That productive thing became putting Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes to good use scrubbing the entire main room of the saloon from top to bottom.
“I’ll pay you for everything we use,” Miranda assured Randall after lunch as the two of them scrubbed the floor on hands and knees. They’d pushed all of the tables and chairs to one side of the room and determined that they would wash every one of them thoroughly once they were done with the floor.
“You don’t have to do that.” Randall pushed up to his haunches and wiped away a strand of sweaty hair that had fallen onto his forehead. His hair became even curlier when it was damp. Miranda found herself uncommonly captivated by that fact. At least their efforts were keeping them warm.
“No, no. We’re using the brushes, so the saloon should pay for them,” she insisted. “There is a contingency fund for such things.”
“Maybe, but you wouldn’t have bought them if we hadn’t been trapped in here by the storm.”
Now it was Miranda’s turn to rock back into a squat to give him an incredulous look. “You don’t know that. Your presentation was very persuasive.”
He laughed. The sound and the way it lit his face with charming self-mockery made Miranda even warmer. How could she ever have cared for someone like Vicky’s Micah when there was a man like Randall in the world? “Now you’re definitely being too nice.”
Miranda plunked her fists—a wet, sudsy scrub brush in one of them—on her hips. “Are you arguing with me, Randy?”
Randall cleared his throat and affected a high-brow voice as he said, “A smart man never argues, son. A smart man discovers ways to bring his opponents around to his point of view and to make them think it was their idea.”
Miranda chuckled. “Who said that?”
Randall’s brows twitched as he leaned forward to continue working. “My father, of course.”
Miranda returned to scrubbing as well. She had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d nailed his father’s voice and mannerisms, and that the only reason he could do so was to keep from overflowing with resentment for the man.
The rest of the day passed in similar work and companionship.
Once the floor was scrubbed, they tackled the tables and chairs.
When they were spotless and shining, they cleaned every inch of the bar, the counters behind it, and the stove and sink, including taking everything down from the shelves and cleaning those as well.
It was suppertime by the time they finished.
In spite of Randall’s protests, Miranda fulfilled her hostess duties and cooked a simple meal for him.
They chatted for a while after cleaning up together, and once Randall had done his utmost to make sure the fire in Miranda’s apartment wouldn’t go out as it had the night before, they went to bed.
Miranda was certain she wouldn’t sleep a wink, what with the cold and the continued wail of the wind.
She’d forgotten to check how dire the snowfall of the day was before turning in for the night and just knew that worry would keep her eyes popped open.
But whether it was the hard work she’d done all day or the comforting sounds of Randall on the other side of the thin wall that separated their bedrooms, she fell into a deep sleep within minutes.
Randall was up before her once again the next morning. This time, he looked more rested as she shuffled into the main room of the apartment, the same blanket from the day before wrapped around her.
“Good morning, Randi,” he teased her as he’d done the day before.
“Good morning yourself, Randy,” she bantered in return. The silly exchange put a sunny smile on her face, in spite of the near dark that loomed out the curtained windows. “Are we still snowed in?”
Randall straightened from where he had been stoking the kitchen stove. “It looks that way. I haven’t gone up to the attic to check through the trapdoor yet. Then again, I think we learned our lesson with that yesterday.”
Miranda gave a wry laugh in reply and moved to the cupboard beside the stove to take out breakfast things.
“I wouldn’t mind cooking breakfast today.” Randall’s brow lifted hopefully.
Miranda bit her lip as she moved a canister of rolled oats from the cupboard to the counter beside the stove. “It really is my responsibility to cook for you, as hostess.”
A vaguely pained look came to Randall’s eyes, but only for a moment. “Whatever you think is best.”
He hesitated for a moment, swaying toward her.
Miranda was struck by the sudden feeling that he might lean in and kiss her cheek.
The way a husband would kiss his wife’s cheek in the morning.
Come to think of it, the situation they found themselves in was intimate in that very way.
The moment didn’t last long, though. Randall stepped away toward the hall.
“Let me just go check to see how much snow we got overnight.”
He disappeared down the hall. Miranda heard his footsteps echo faintly across the newly cleaned boards of the saloon.
She smiled to herself as she fetched a pot and began making oatmeal.
Running the blasted saloon wouldn’t be quite so terrible if she had Randall there to do it with her.
Perhaps they could find a way to turn it into some kind of more respectable social hall or a…
She sighed and added a dollop of butter to the saucepan. Those were futile thoughts. Randall was a traveling salesman. He needed to move on. As soon as the snow subsided and the train was able to make it through again, he would be on his way. The thought fell like a rock in her gut.
She managed to regain her smile when Randall came back to report the snow had drifted all the way up almost to the top of the saloon’s front door, though she wouldn’t let herself think too deeply about why something that was a real danger made her so happy.
Instead, she and Randall sat down to their breakfast, planning out what they would do that day.
She’d only just done inventory a few days before he arrived, but they decided to do it again.
By that afternoon, however, with the wind still blowing and the snow still making things impassable, they’d done everything that could possibly be done in the saloon proper.
“We really shouldn’t keep the fire lit in the saloon itself,” Randall suggested after a somewhat disappointing lunch of boiled cabbage and salted ham. “Who knows how long we’ll need our fuel supplies to last?”
Our supplies. How long we’ll need them to last. The way his words wrapped themselves around her, they wouldn’t need much in the way of wood or coal at all.
“Well,” she began hesitantly. “I still haven’t cleaned the rooms upstairs.” She’d been too filled with dread over what she might find in those rooms.
As if Randall could read her thoughts, his expression grew mischievous and teasing. “Now’s the time. The heat from the saloon’s main chimney will have warmed up that part of the building, but if we let the fire go out, it’ll get awfully cold again.”
Miranda pursed her lips and pretended to think about the prospect, but the spark in his eyes alone had already convinced her to tackle what she’d been avoiding. “All right. Let’s do it.”
The tiny, second floor bedrooms ended up being everything she dreaded they would be. The linens hadn’t been washed in longer than she cared to think. They were stained and smelly in more of the rooms than not.
“Whew!” Miranda held her nose with one hand and a nasty, old sheet in the other as she carried it into the hall. “How could people live in these conditions?”
As she dropped the sheet in the dry washtub that Randall had hauled up to the second floor hallway, he came out of the room with an armful of sheets. “Um, Miranda, I don’t think people lived here.”
His words were monumentally scandalous, but his tone of voice was laced with humor and his eyes were bright. Miranda giggled even as she rolled her eyes. “It’s shameful, is what it is.”
“Forgive me for arguing with you once again, Miss Clarke, but I believe this is, in fact, shame less .” He managed to speak with a combination of mock seriousness and impish teasing.
Miranda pressed a hand to her mouth to cover her laughter, then jerked it away at the thought of what her hands had been touching moments before. That only increased her laughter, which caused Randall to break his pretend stern character to chuckle along with her.
“What was Uncle Buford thinking?” Miranda shook her head and marched down the hall to the next room.
“Probably that there is a good deal of fun to be had in being shameless,” Randall answered.
Miranda squeaked and twisted to face him, unable to keep the smile out of her tone. “Scandal, Mr. Sinclair! Blasphemy!”
Randall raised his brows. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been shameless on purpose just to have a good time.”
All joking dropped from Miranda’s expression. “Never,” she answered, and for the first time in her life, she felt as though that was her loss.
“We’ll just have to change that then.” Randall slipped up behind her and swept her into his arms.
For one, glorious moment, Miranda thought he would clasp her in his arms and kiss her, like some dime novel hero.
Her entire body thrilled with the prospect.
She even softened her lips and gazed up into his eyes in preparation.
But instead of making passionate love to her, he hopped right into the steps of a polka, wheeling her around the narrow hallway as if they were on the widest dance floor in town.