Read Online Until Angels Close My Eyes by Lurlene McDaniel - Free Book Online Page B

break,” she said. She lugged her large yellow plastic snow dish from the garage.
    “But I still have much to do.”
    “So what? I’m bored and I think we should play.”
    He jammed the shovel into a snowbank. “With that?” He pointed at the bowl-shaped disk. “What is it?”
    “You’ll see. Come around back, where there’s a hill.”
    The hill was at the back of the giant yard. So much snow covered it that it was hard to see exactly how steep it was. Leah tossed the dish down, lay across it on her stomach and gripped the short nylon handles on either side. “See ya!” she shouted, then scooted the disk forward. It slipped downward, picking up speed and making her squeal. At the bottom she coasted to a stop and jumped off. She trudged back up the hill and handed Ethan the dish. “Your turn.”
    His eyes danced. He took the disk and zipped down the hill, his laughter flowing behind him with the sprays of snow. By the time he climbed back up, she had a snowballhidden behind her back. “At home we use cardboard for such rides,” he said. “And the ground is not so steep.”
    She tossed the snowball in his face, snatched the dish with her free hand, leaped onboard, and flew down the hill, laughing as he sputtered and wiped snow out of his eyes and mouth. “Gotcha!” she yelled.
    He started down the hill after her, clomping through the snow, getting stuck in areas that were waist high, struggling against the snow’s heavy wetness. Leah kept laughing. When he arrived at the bottom he doubled over, gasping for breath. “I thought you’d be in better shape,” she teased, “you being a farm boy and all.”
    “You flirt with danger,” Ethan said, lifting his gaze to hers.
    “I don’t think so,” she needled. “You’re a wimp.”
    He pounced on her. They rolled in the snow. Ethan stuffed handfuls of it down the front of her jacket and sweater. Leah squealed, trying in vain to fend him off. “You’ll pay for this!” she promised.
    He pinned her on her back, grinned andplopped a fistful of snow in her face. “How will you make me pay?”
    “I’ll poison your food!” she sputtered.
    “How? You don’t cook without electricity.”
    “I’ll find a way.” She squirmed as he tossed another heap of snow at her face. “Get this stuff off me. It’s freezing!”
    He paused, looking down at her with a smile that lit up his face. “I know a good way to get the snow off.” He tugged off his glove and brushed her cheeks with his bare hands. Then, holding her wrists, he bent over and kissed her with such an intensity that she was certain the snow would melt from the very heat of his mouth.
    By midafternoon the electricity was back on, and Leah took a long, hot shower. Afterward she showed Ethan around the house, including the basement rooms where he would be living. He stashed his few belongings in the closet and went back upstairs with her to the kitchen.
    “I have my grandmother’s recipe box,” she said. “I’ll bet I could fix us something special for supper.”
    “I
am
hungry,” he confessed.
    “Ethan, you were born hungry,” she said as she riffled through the box. Her grandmother’s familiar handwriting made Leah feel linked to the woman she had loved and lost when she was still a child. Leah pulled up a card. “This one looks easy. If Mom has all the ingredients, we’ll be eating in a couple of hours.”
    Leah studied her grandmother’s neat writing and swallowed a lump of emotion. She set to work on the beef stew.
    Leah and Ethan ate in front of the fireplace, where Ethan had laid fresh logs. He wolfed down three bowls of stew, and three slices of bread, topping off the meal with two glasses of milk and half a bag of vanilla wafers.
    “Get enough?” Leah asked, slightly awed by the sheer quantity of food he had downed.
    “Is there more?”
    She threw a pillow at him. “Eat this.”
    Later Leah made popcorn. Close to midnight, she stopped the video they were watching and switched