Montana Sky

hand. “You looking to be useful?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “The woodboxes are half empty,” Bess told her, and hauled a basket of apples out of the pantry. “The men don’t have time to bring in fuel.”
    Tess swirled the brandy in her hand. “You expect me to go outside and bring in wood?”
    “The power goes out, girl, you’ll want to keep your butt warm just like the rest of us.”
    “The power.” At the idea of losing power, of being stuck in the cold, in the dark through the night, her color drained.
    “We got a generator.” Bess moved her shoulders as she began briskly paring apples. “But we can’t waste it on heating bedrooms when we got plenty of fuel. You want to sleep warm, you bring in wood. You give her a hand, Lily. She needs it more than I do. There’s a rope leading from that door there to the woodpile. You follow that, and bring it in by hand. You won’t be able to push the wheelbarrow through the snow, and there’s no use shoveling the path out until it’s done falling. Get bundled up good, take a flashlight.”
    “All right.” Lily took one look at Tess’s annoyed face. “I can bring it in. Why don’t you stay inside, and you can carry wood up to the bedrooms?”
    It was tempting. Very. Even now Tess could hear the frigid howl of the wind threatening the kitchen windows. But the smirk on Bess’s face caused her to set her snifter aside. “We’ll both bring it in.”
    “Not with those fancy lady’s gloves,” Bess called out as they started out. “Get yourself some work gloves from the mudroom after you’ve got the rest of your gear on.”
    “Hauling in wood,” Tess muttered on her way to the foyer closet. “There’s probably enough inside already to last a week. She’s just doing this to get to me.”
    “She wouldn’t ask us to go out if it wasn’t necessary.”
    Tess dragged on her coat, then shrugged. “She wouldn’t ask you,” she agreed, then plopped down at the base of the steps to tug on her boots. “The two of you seem to be pretty chummy.”
    “I think she’s great.” Lily wound the knit scarf around her neck twice before buttoning her coat over it. “She’s been nice to me. She’d be nice to you too, if you’d . . .”
    Squashing a ski cap onto her head, Tess nodded. “No, don’t spare my feelings. If I’d what—?”
    “Well, it’s just that you’re a little abrasive with her. Abrupt.”
    “Well, maybe I wouldn’t be if she wasn’t always finding some idiotic chore for me to do, then complaining that I don’t do it to her specifications. I’ll get frostbite bringing in this damn wood, and she’ll say I didn’t stack it right. You wait and see.”
    Miffed, she headed back down the hall again, went through the kitchen without a word and into the mudroom to hunt up a pair of thick, oversized work gloves.
    “Ready?” Lily grabbed a flashlight and prepared to follow Tess.
    The minute Tess opened the door, the wind slapped ice-edged snow into their faces. Wide-eyed, they stared at each other; it was Lily who took the first step into the wolf bite of the wind.
    They grabbed the leading rope, pulling themselves along as the wind shoved them rudely back a step for every three they took. Boots sank knee-deep into snow, and the flashlight bobbled along through the dark like a drunken moonbeam. They all but stumbled over the tarp-covered woodpile.
    Tess kept a grip on the flashlight and held her arms outwhile Lily filled them with wood. Legs spread to hold her balance, the tip of her nose tingling, Tess gritted her teeth. “Hell has nothing to do with fire,” she shouted. “Hell is winter in Montana.”
    Lily smiled a little and began to fill her own arms. “Once we’re inside and warm, with the fires going, we’ll look out and think it’s pretty.”
    “Bullshit,” Tess muttered as they fought their way back to the house to dump the first load. “How bad do you want a warm bed?”
    Lily looked toward the toasty kitchen, then back out into the thundering storm. “Pretty bad.”
    “Yeah.” Tess sighed, rolled her shoulders. “Me too. Once more into the breach.”
    They repeated the routine three times, and Tess began to get into the swing of it. Until she lost her footing and fell headlong and face first into a three-foot drift. The flashlight buried itself like a mole in topsoil.
    “Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?” In her rush to help, Lily leaned over, lost her balance, overcompensated, and sat down