Time and Again

me."
    "I'm not." She let out a long-suffering breath. "All right, then, come on."
    The moment she opened the door, the cold stole her breath. The wind had died down and the sun was fighting through the layers of high clouds, but the air was like brittle ice.
    It would clear her head, Sunny told herself. For a moment in the kitchen, with him looking so intently into her eyes, she'd felt as though- She didn't know what she'd felt. She didn't want to.
    It was enough to be free to walk, though the snow was up to her knees. Another hour of confinement and she'd have gone mad. Perhaps that was what had happened to her in there, with him. A moment of madness.
    "It's wild, isn't it?"
    She stood in what had been the backyard and looked out on acres of solid white. The dying wind moaned through the trees and sent powdery snow drifting.
    "I've always liked it best in the winter. Because if you're going to be alone you might as well be completely alone. I forgot the bird food. Hang on."
    She turned, wading through the snow. He thought she moved more like a dancer now than an athlete.
    Graceful despite the encumbrances. It worried him to realize that he'd been content to watch her for hours. In a moment she was trudging back, dragging an enormous burlap sack.
    "What are you doing?"
    "Going to feed the birds." She was out of breath but still moving. "This time of year they need all the help they can get."
    He shook his head. "Let me do it"
    "I'm very strong."
    "Yes, I know. Let me do it anyway."
    He took the sack, braced, put his back into it and began to haul it across the snow. It gathered snow-and weight-with every step.
    "I thought you weren't a nature lover."
    "That doesn't mean I'd let them starve." And she'd promised Libby.
    He hauled the bag another foot. "Couldn't you just dump it out?"
    "If a thing's worth doing-"
    "It's worth doing well. Yeah, I've heard that one."
    She stopped by a tree and, standing on a stump, began to fill a big wood-and-glass house with seed from the sack. "There we go." She brushed seed from her hands. "Want me to carry it back?"
    "I'll do it. Why any self-respecting bird would want to hang around here in the middle of nowhere I can't understand."
    "We're here," she called out as he hauled the sack across the snow.
    "I can't understand that, either."
    She grinned at his back, and then, not being one to waste an opportunity, she began to ball snow. She had a good-size pile of ammunition when he came out again, and she sent the first one sailing smack into his forehead.
    "Bull's-eye."
    He wiped snow out of his eyes. "You've already lost at one game."
    "That was poker." She picked up another ball, weighed it. "This is war. And war takes skill, not luck."
    He dodged the next throw, swearing when he nearly overbalanced, then caught the next one in the chest.
    Dead center.
    "I should tell you I was the top pitcher on my Softball team in college. I still hold the record for strikeouts."
    The next one smacked into his shoulder, but he was prepared. In a move she had to admire, he came up with a stinging fastball that zoomed in right on the letters. He'd pitched a few himself, but he didn't think he would mention that he'd been captain of the intergalactic softball team three years running.
    "Not bad, Hornblower." She sent out two, catching him with the second on the dodge. She had a mean curve, and she was pleased to note that she hadn't lost her touch. Snow splattered all over his coat. One particularly well-thrown ball nearly took off his hat.
    Before her pile began to dwindle, she had him at eight hits to two and was getting cocky. It didn't occur to her that he had closed half the distance between them.
    When he took one full in the face, she doubled over with laughter. Then she shrieked when he caught her under the arms and lifted her off her feet.
    "Good aim, bad strategy," he commented before he dropped her face first in the snow.
    She rolled over, spitting out snow. "I still won."
    "Not from where I'm standing."
    With a good-natured shrug, she held out a hand. He hesitated. She smiled. The moment he clasped her hand, she threw her weight back and had him flying into the drift beside her.
    "What does it look like now?"
    "Hand-to-hand."
    He grasped her by the shoulders. They only sank deeper. Snow worked its way, cold and wet, down the collar of his borrowed coat He found it, and the way her body twisted and turned against his, impossibly stimulating. She was laughing, kicking up snow as she tried