Read Baby, It's Cold Outside for Free Online Page B

and material that reflected sun. But this particular storm had been unusual, started up after a rare stretch of warmish temperatures. So the first layer on the roof was ice. Thick ice. Heavy ice. Followed by at least three, maybe four feet of snow on top of that.
    It was the overall weight that worried him.
    If the blizzard were over, it probably wouldn’t matter—but it wasn’t over, and there was no guessing how much more weight the roof could take. He looked at the massive job, shook his head, doubted he could make a dent before the next pounding blast of storm hit—assuming the cold didn’t wipe him out first. But he had to try, at least get as far as he could.
    Time passed. Who knew how much? He wasn’t an idiot, kept a sharp eye on the sky, stayed conscious of how cold he was getting. It was the sudden sound of a voice that distracted him.
    “What on earth are you doing? ”
    He turned around, looked down, and for the first time in a blue moon wanted to let loose a plain old silly belly laugh. Emilie had the sense to search for her dad’s winter gear, rather than wear her own city-girl jacket, but damn, she looked like a robot. Her head was covered with an ear-flapping fur cap. Both her parka and leggings were way too long. Her mittens would have fit a mountain man, and the boots were almost bigger than she was.When she tried to walk, she resembled the abominable snowman.
    She said something else, but it was hard to understand, because her mouth was completely covered by a woolen muffler.
    “Yeah,” he said, “I’m really shoveling the roof.”
    She pushed down the scarf. “Just tell me straight, Hunter. Did you start out the morning drinking? ”
    “Don’t I wish.” Damn. She made him want to laugh all over again. “Head back inside the house, Doc. You don’t need to be out here.”
    “That’s what I thought, too. But now I realize you’ve turned into a complete lunatic on me, I can hardly leave you out here alone.”
    He got serious fast. “Emilie, this is the deal. We got a ton of snow, too much snow, from one direction. I was afraid the roof could cave under the weight. I just want to shovel off the first layers. We’d be okay, except that there’s even more snow coming. The roof’s in good shape, it’s just that this blizzard is in the humdinger class.”
    She said something. He couldn’t understand her, so she shifted the scarf again. “My roof. My problem, too. Not just yours.”
    “You can’t do this. It’s all right. Just go back inside.”
    He should have known better than to suggest she couldn’t do something. Might as well have waved a red flag in front of a bull.
    She started toward him, but even to take a few steps, she had to extend her arms for balance, like a child stuffed in a snowsuit. In spite of himself, in spite ofaching arms and a biting-hurt shoulder and exhaustion starting to beat at him, he sat down in a heap of snow and laughed.
    “Erl!” she said through the scarf.
    “I’m not making fun of you, I swear. I appreciate your willingness to help, honest to Pete, but there’s no way you could hold a shovel, much less navigate with one.”
    She responded with more garbled swearwords—or the equivalent of swearwords. Her attitude was clear enough, even if she couldn’t be clearly understood. At least she didn’t attempt to shovel. She just scrambled up the mountain of snow to the roof, and started scooping up heaps of snow with her mittens.
    He was going to object again…but then didn’t. She crawled up with the agility of a monkey, in spite of all her oversize clothes, and managed to climb higher than he had or could. He’d been using a shovel, haphazardly loosening any snow he could, heaving it off the roof, just hoping to make a difference before the next storm hit. Her method of attack showed her doctor personality, all fastidious perfection. She’d scoop off snow, but then tidy it all up, make each section look neat and even.
    They tangoed. It didn’t