Chosen by Christine Pope (free children's ebooks pdf txt) 📕

* * *

We slept in each other’s arms that night, and awoke to a chilly morning where the roof of the garage was white with frost. The fire had guttered down to coals, and Jace wrapped one of the blankets around himself as he got up to set new logs in the hearth and get a fresh blaze going. Dutchie watched all this with approval; it looked as if she hadn’t moved since she curled up in front of the fireplace the night before. I got the distinct impression that she was happy with our new sleeping arrangements, since it meant she wouldn’t have to split her time between Jace’s and my room anymore.

Even with the fire going, I was loath to get out of bed. But I wasn’t a city girl any longer; I needed to get moving, shower, check on the goats, start breakfast. All these things were speeded up by Jace and me sharing the shower in the master bath, which was roomy enough that we fit quite nicely. Okay, we didn’t save quite as much time as I’d thought, because we got lost in lathering up each other’s bodies, running soapy hands over bare skin, until I was pressed up against the wall and he was inside me again, one of my legs wrapped around him, holding him in place while he thrust into me. We had to clean up all over again afterward, but it was worth it.

At last, though, we got out of the shower — mostly because the hot water heater began to run out of steam — and got dressed, then dried our hair. A pang went through me as he fished another one of those leather cords out of his pocket and began winding it around his hair.

“Don’t,” I said, and he turned toward me with a quizzical look.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t tie it up. I like it down.”

A slow smile spread over his lips then, and he shrugged and shoved the cord back into the pocket of his jeans. “Okay. But if it starts getting in my face when I’m out in the wind — ”

“Then okay, you can tie it back again.” I went to him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’m not totally unreasonable, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” He gave my own ponytail the side-eye, and I couldn’t help laughing.

“Yeah, do as I say and all that.”

We went out to check on the goats before breakfast, our breath puffing up into the icy air. They seemed all right, but Jace looked at the frost on the ground and shook his head.

“We need to get them some kind of protection from the cold. It’s only going to get worse after this, and when we have our first snowfall….” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence, but I knew what he meant. Our little herd needed someplace to go.

“So what are you thinking?” I asked, looking around the walled-in landscape. From within the chicken coop, I could hear the hens clucking away happily. It was obvious they hadn’t suffered too much from the cold.

“It doesn’t need to be fancy, but some kind of shed, someplace where they can go inside if they need to. The henhouse went together pretty quickly, so I’m sure I can do something like that for the goats, too.”

I saw another foray to Home Depot in our near future. We’d stocked up on food just the day before, but if we were going to Santa Fe anyway, I was going to put in a request to raid an outdoor gear store or something similar. My outerwear definitely wasn’t up to snuff, and I had a feeling that adding some thermal underwear to my repertoire wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

So I asked about that, and Jace nodded. “I could use a few things, too. So we’ll do that first, and then we’ll go the hardware store. I need to check the library here, though — I’m pretty sure I saw a book with plans for different kinds of outbuildings, and that’ll help me figure out how much to bring back.”

With that settled, he headed back into the house to start making notes, and I popped into the henhouse to scoop up some fresh eggs for breakfast, then hurried to the kitchen. At least in there it was relatively warm and cheery. My fingers gradually thawed out as I made scrambled eggs and toast, and a pot of fresh coffee. I reflected then that Jace was right — I couldn’t let survivor’s guilt get in the way of enjoying the life I had now. I had him, and we had this beautiful place to live, with plenty of food and no one bothering us. In this post-Dying world, that was about as close to heaven as I would probably get.

After breakfast, we patted Dutchie and went out to the garage. I’d been thinking this over while Jace took care of this dishes, and I realized it was time for me to show how much I really did trust him.

“Wait,” I said as he began to head to the passenger side of the Jeep. He glanced back toward me, and I opened my hand to reveal the key fob lying on my palm. “You want to drive?”

His dark eyes lit up, but he didn’t move. “Are you sure?”

I nodded, and he came back to me, taking the key from my hand as he leaned down to kiss me. Mmm, coffee and the faintest trace of butter, rich and friendly, welcoming, just like the man who was kissing me.

“Thank you,” he said, then went to climb in the driver-side door.

It felt strange to go around to the passenger side, to get in and then watch Jace back the Cherokee out of the garage and maneuver it down the steeply sloping drive to the gate. I had a new perspective on things this way, could concentrate on my surroundings rather than merely on the road.

Not that there was a lot to look at up here. The junipers didn’t change much with the seasons, and the grass had already been sere and yellow even before the frost hit. But the sky was a deep, deep blue, overlaid with faint traceries of high clouds, and in the Sangre de Cristo mountains above town, I could see the patches of bright yellow aspens now looking faded as they lost more and more of their leaves, settling in for winter.

We came down onto Upper Canyon