Holiday Spice Read Online Free PDF Page A

remember the last time that they had had relations of any kind , spontaneous or otherwise .
    At first, she had tried to blame it on his age because he was now in his 4 0 ’s after all. But in looking back, she realized that the distance had begun when he was as young as 35 . She hated hearing her friends talk about their active sex lives. These women were her age , late 30’s and early 40’s, and they seemed to be living quite eventful li v e s in the bedroom as well as out of it.
    She heard the door to the cabin open and turned to find John entering and kicking a little slush from his boots. He looked up and saw her watching him.
    “It seems to be getting colder out there and the snow is picking up some,” he said. “I heard a weather report that this is a lot worse than they had originally thought it would. We might wish that we had headed home earlier.”
    “Well, we’ve got enough food and water for several days,” Andrea pointed out. “The wood should hold out and keep us warm if we get snowed in for a bit. You know the snow plows always head up this way when there’s a bad snow storm.”
    “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” John said. “I just didn’t want to miss class on Monday. My students are learning some key music sections for the competition.”
    “Oh, we may not be here that long,” Andrea tried to reassure him. “Besides, wouldn’t it be a little romantic to be stranded her for a few days; just the two of us?”
    John made some sort of face and pretended that he didn’t hear her while focusing instead on the bottom of his boot. That was the sort of treatment that Andrea had become accustomed to during the last ten years of their marriage. It w as as if John had suddenly flipped some sort of an OFF switch that turned him into almost an asexual being.
    The pair spent a quiet evening eating dinner and then reading next to the fire. The bedroom was a little cooler than the front part of the cabin so they left the door open in order to allow some heat in from the fireplace. John made it point to keep the fire going most of the night even if he had to keep getting up and down to do so.
    The next morning when Andrea looked out her window she was a c ompletely different story. She knew it had been noisy and windy overnight, but now she realized that they were in blizzard conditions. The wind howled and the snow was coming down so fast and hard that she could barely see anything other than a gray and white world. John came in from the bedroom and observed the scene outside in silence. He walked back over to the fireplace and stoked the fire some more.
    When he attempted to open the front door, he found that it was completely blocked from the outside by high snowdrifts. He turned to face Andrea with a very serious look on his face. She knew this was bad.
    “I’m not sure that we have enough wood to last us through the night tonight ,” he said. “And I can’t get outdoors to start up the generator.”
    Andrea looked at him with the beginnings of fear on her face.
    “Surely, the snow plow will make it up this way,” she implored.
    “Yeah, they’ll come up here, but it may be days before they can break through. We’re going to have to start conserving the wood immediately. In that way, we can stretch it out a little longer.”
    They spent the rest of the day trying to behave as normally as possible. By nightfall , the snow seemed to show little sign of letting up. They brought their pillows and blankets into the front room so that they could sleep by the fire. Closing off the bedroom would help keep the warmth trapped in this room and allow them to use less wood . Under any other circumstances, this would have been a very romantic adventure. But now it was only frightening.
    John pulled the blankets over them both and put his arm around Andrea, pulling her close. She figured he had to believe that they were getting ready to die or something because he had not touched her like this in years. But