Chosen by Christine Pope (best romantic novels in english .TXT) 📖

smelled like snow. I’d laughed at him over that remark, although really, he would know more about it than I would, since he’d grown up in Taos. When I was in high school, Albuquerque had been hit by a freak snowstorm that basically shut the city down, but that was my only real experience with snow, save for a light flurry here and there that didn’t stick around long enough to cause any trouble.

This, though — it drifted downward, light and delicate, the flakes settling on the goats’ shed and the chicken coop and the evergreens in the backyard, giving everything a soft sugar frosting. I stood at the window, a dish still in my hands, and stared at the miracle of it, how beautiful it was.

I was so transfixed that I didn’t even realize Jace had come up behind me, not until his arms wrapped around my waist and his breath came warm against my neck as he said, “Looks like winter is really here now.”

“And we’re all safe and snug inside,” I responded, setting the dish in the drain before I could drop it. The sensation of having him there, pressed up against me, was enough to send all sorts of tingles up and down my spine.

“That we are. I’ll go out and check on the goats in a bit, just to make sure there aren’t any leaks in the shed or anything, but I think we’ll ride this out just fine.” He shifted, as if glancing up at the ceiling, then added, “But we may not have lights for much longer. With cloud cover this thick, the solar’s not going to do us much good.”

“Then we’ll spend our day by candlelight,” I replied. “I’ll turn off anything extraneous — maybe that way, there’ll be enough of a trickle to keep the refrigerator going.”

“Not a bad plan. You may want to go scrounge some extra candles from the basement.”

“I’ll do that as soon as I’m finished with these dishes.”

His lips brushed against my cheek as he gave me a soft kiss, an acknowledgment of my words. Then he let go of me, heading toward the laundry room and the mudroom beyond that, where he could get into his jacket and gloves and brave the snow to check on the livestock.

There really weren’t that many dishes to do, so I was done in the next few minutes. After that, I went from room to room, making sure we hadn’t left any lights on. In general, we were pretty careful about that sort of thing, but I did realize that I needed to put the computer in sleep mode so it wouldn’t draw any more power than was strictly necessary. If something happened to set off one of the periphery alarms, it would turn back on right away, but in the meantime it could hibernate.

After that I got a flashlight from the drawer in the kitchen where we kept them, and headed down into the basement. It had its own lights, of course, but if we really were in for a snowy day, I didn’t want to turn them on and waste more power. The flashlight would do well enough, even if it was a little creepy to be wandering around down there with only a narrow beam to show me what I was doing.

I’d come down here once before to fetch the candles, but that had been weeks ago, before Jace had even shown up at the compound. The basement actually was very organized, with rows of metal shelving and the items on them arranged according to use. Even so, I couldn’t exactly recall where I’d found the candles that last time. On the left, about five rows down?

Figuring it was worth a try, I shone the flashlight’s beam in that general direction, but saw only bins of what looked like bundles of wire and cable, possibly intended for repairs to the home’s electrical system, should the occasion warrant. Undeterred, I moved to the next row, only to have my foot bump into a cardboard box sitting on the ground next to one of the shelving units rather than placed directly on it. That was strange, simply because everything else I’d encountered in the basement so far had shown an almost fanatical adherence to order on the part of the person who had put it there.

I frowned and moved the flashlight’s beam over the box. It had clearly come from some kind of a manufacturer; there was even a shipping label still affixed to it. Crouching down, I read the name and address.

Cory Berman

28-A Skyline Trail

Santa Fe, NM 87501

Cory Berman. So was that the name of the developer from Phoenix who’d built the property, or the caretaker who’d kept watch over it? Maybe it didn’t really matter. They were both gone, after all.

What did matter, as I read the lettering stamped on the box itself, was what had been sent to him.

Yaesu FT-857D Amateur Radio Transceiver

Holy crap.

A ham radio?

A way to make contact with other survivors.

Heart pounding, I shone the flashlight around and saw another package, a much longer one, that seemed to contain the antenna to go with the radio. Damn.

I didn’t know the first thing about setting up a ham radio, or its antenna, but maybe Jace would. Or at least could puzzle out the instructions. We’d have to wait for the snowstorm to blow over before we could go up on the roof to mount the antenna, but in the meantime we could read up on how to use the radio itself.

This could change everything.

I was halfway to the cellar stairs before I remembered I’d come down here in the first place to pick up some spare candles. After going up and down a few more rows of shelving, I found them — pack after pack of shrink-wrapped pillars and votives and tapers, the sort of thing you’d buy in bulk for a wedding or some other large event. I grabbed a flat of pillar candles and headed back to the stairway, then hurried up to the main level of the house.

Jace was nowhere in evidence as I set the package of candles down on the breakfast table in the nook. When I peered out the window, though, I could see him hauling something from the garage to the shed. A sack of the pellets we used to supplement the goats’ diet, it looked like. That made sense — they probably weren’t going to head out to forage until the snow stopped.

About ten minutes later, I heard him come in, then waited as he stopped in the mudroom to get rid of his coat and scrape the snow from his boots. In the meantime, I’d gone around the house and lit a number of candles, as it was clear from the lowering skies outside that we probably wouldn’t see any sun today. Actually, it was so dark that it almost felt as if dusk was coming early, which of course was ridiculous. At this time of year, the days were short, but they weren’t that short.

“What’s up?” he asked, almost as soon as he entered the kitchen. I supposed he could tell I was fairly dancing with impatience.

“Guess what I found in the basement?”

One brow lifted slightly. “You know, that question generally doesn’t have a good answer.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” But I could tell by the twitch at the corner of his full lips that he wasn’t…not really.

“A ham radio,” I announced. Jace appeared nonplussed by that revelation, so I went on, “It’s still in its original packing…I think it was delivered here but never used. And there’s an antenna, too.”

“And?” he asked.

I felt a stir of impatience. “What do you mean, ‘and’? With that radio, we can try to reach out to any other survivors, find out where they are, how they’re doing.”

“Maybe they don’t want to be found. It seems as if they’ve done a pretty good job of hiding so far.”

“So have we,” I pointed out. “But it doesn’t mean we don’t want people to find us. Or…do we?”

Without replying, he went to one of the cupboards and got out a glass, then filled it with water. He drank some, his gaze not fixed on me, but on the increasingly snowy landscape outside the window. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “You wouldn’t think there’d be much of a struggle for resources, not with so few of us left, but after hearing what happened to you in Albuquerque, I’m not sure I’m willing to trust anyone right now. What if there’s a bigger, more organized group out there, one that decides what we have here is better than where they’re living? We have weapons, but there are only two of us. Would you be willing to risk that?”

When he put it that way…. Involuntarily, my mind flashed back to the man in the Walgreens, to the greed in his watery brown eyes, and I shivered.

“No,” I admitted, hoping Jace hadn’t noticed my shudder. “Of course I don’t want to do anything that would put us in harm’s way. But maybe if we set it up and just listened, didn’t transmit?” That seemed like a good compromise to me, but Jace’s grim expression didn’t change. After a perceptible pause, he said,

“Maybe. But we’ll have to wait for better weather. No way am I climbing up on the roof in a snowstorm, just so I can install an antenna.”

“Of course not.”

“And it may need hardware we don’t have, so then we’d have to go back into town.”

A prospect I didn’t particularly relish, and it seemed clear enough to me that Jace wasn’t looking forward to it, either.

“Well, we can figure out the logistics later,” I said. “It’s nothing that has to happen right now.”

He nodded, and I let the matter go, instead went on to ask him what sounded good for dinner that night. Something in the tense set of his shoulders appeared to relax. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he