SEALed at Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page A

year.
    She reached down and lifted the phone. Seeing Molly’s name on the screen, she hit the button to answer. “Hey.”
    “About time you picked up. I was starting to wonder what the heck you could be doing on Christmas Eve up there in no-man's-land where there’s nothing but woods and wildlife.”
    “Sorry. I was waiting to see who it was.”
    Molly laughed. “Are you screening calls again? I guess I should be grateful that I made the cut.”
    “You should be. My mother didn’t.”
    “Ginny, it’s Christmas Eve. The least you can do is talk to your mother on the phone.”
    “This coming from the girl with the sweetest mother on earth.”
    “That’s no excuse. Virginia Starr, call your mother!”
    “Oh my God, you sounded just like her. Stop that. You’re giving me heart palpitations.” Ginny pressed her hand to her chest.
    “That’s not palpitations you feel. That’s guilt and you deserve it.”
    “Is she paying you to torture me? Come on. Tell me. What did she promise you? My grandmother’s secret plum cake recipe? What? Spill.”
    “We had a lovely conversation this morning but no, she promised me nothing. I bug you without compensation. Just for the sheer joy of it.”
    A lovely conversation this morning?
    Zeroing in on Molly’s words had Ginny frowning “Wait one minute. You talked to my mother? Today?”
    “Yup. She’s so sweet. She called to thank me for the Christmas card I sent her.”
    Ginny groaned. “Let me guess what she said next. How horrible it was that I didn’t bother to send cards this year.”
    “Nope. You’re wrong. We talked about what she’s cooking for dinner tomorrow night.”
    Ginny blew out a frustrated breath and glanced out the window at the snow that had started falling about an hour ago. “She’s really going to freak when she hears I probably won't be able to make it home. Not with the way this snow is falling.”
      “It's snowing by you? Aw.” Molly sounded annoyed. “There's not even a hint of a flake here. You're gonna have a white Christmas and I'm jealous.”
    Easy for Molly to say. She lived in a condo where some nice hired maintenance man shoveled, plowed and sanded the walkways before Molly even woke.
    Ginny glanced out the window again, taking particular note of the length of the driveway she’d have to shovel before she’d be able to get her car out.
    There was a snow blower in the barn, but she’d be damned if she knew how to start it. Besides, the giant exposed blade in front scared the bejeesus out of her.
    People should know their limitations, and she knew she wasn’t cut out for operating equipment with big sharp spinning parts.
    A white Christmas as an adult was definitely not as much fun as it had been when she’d been a child. If she was still eight years old, Ginny would be jumping for joy. Getting out the sled and the makings for a snowman. Running inside wet and cold for hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows.
    Being twenty-eight meant she’d be breaking out the shovel and the bag of ice melt instead of marshmallows.
    The snow changed from tiny flakes that drifted down slow and serenely before disappearing, to fat juicy lumps that pelted the ground with a big splat of white.
    “It's snowing like crazy.” She glanced at the rapidly disappearing driveway. “It’s sticking too, even on the blacktop.”
    Molly hissed in a breath. “That doesn’t bode well for driving. But maybe it will stop soon and the crews will have all night to clean up the roads. Then by tomorrow you’ll have a beautiful clear drive.”
    “Maybe.” And maybe Molly was the biggest optimist she knew.
    Given Ginny’s own propensity for pessimism, it was a wonder they’d been friends since grade school.
    Pessimist or not, this time she couldn’t help but hope Molly was right, because her mother would never let her hear the end of it if she couldn’t get home for Christmas dinner.
    Sometimes being an only child was a lot of work.
    On a brighter note, Ginny had