Free Beloved by Antoinette Stockenberg Page B

her, but the sight of Mac McKenzie sitting on a John Deere tractor fitted out with a plow and clearing her driveway — that surprised her.
    Splaat! A fat snowball hit the window in front of her face and slid down the pane. It was Cissy, dressed in jeans and a parka with a fur-rimmed hood, jumping up and down and waving.
    " Get dressed! Get dressed and come on out! "
    Jane slid the window up and said, " Are you nuts? It must be six in the morning! "
    " No, it ' s not — it ' s nine o ' clock! "
    Splaat! Another snowball, this time from the side — and this time, right through the open window and down the middle of her nightgown. Jane cried out from the cold shock of it and turned to see Bing with a wickedly boyish grin on his face. " You heard my kid sister! Come on out — or are you too chicken? "
    " Chicken! We ' ll see who 's chicken, you ... you cluck! " Jane yelled. She slammed the window down and marched back to the bedroom with a determined glint in her eye. She dressed quickly for battle in heavy pants, a turtleneck, a tasseled cap, and a down jacket. Then she slipped into the backyard, packed a dozen snowballs into a galvanized bucket, and sneaked back around to the front.
    Bing was throwing a fluorescent pink Frisbee across the snow for Buster to fetch and had his back to Jane; he never knew what hit him. Ba m ! Ba m ! Ba m ! Three in a row, all in the back. Her shoulder hurt like crazy from the effort, but it was worth it: the last one knocked the ski cap he wore right off his head. Bing swung around, laughing and stunned by her ferocity.
    " Hey! Where ' d you learn to shoot like that, pardner? "
    Jane gave him an arrogant look, then blew smoke from the barrel of an imaginary six-shooter. " Don ' t start nothin ' you don ' t mean to finish, pal, " she said, feeling like a flirt.
    Cissy was getting the bottom of a snowman going. Buster, wanting desperately to be a part of things, came up and put his huge paws on the rolling ball, just as his mistress was doing. Cissy laughed and stood up and tried to push him away. The dog stood up on his hind legs and pushed her back — s uch fun! — and Cissy fell on her behind in the snow.
    It was fun, the way fooling around in fresh and falling snow is always fun. But it was impossible, at least for Jane, to ignore the fact that their fellow dinner guest was twenty feet away, working hard at plowing her driveway clear. She sidled up discreetly to Bing and said, " Why is he doing that? Just being neighborly? "
    " Hell, no; I ' m paying him, " Bing answered cheerfully as he shaped a snowball in his gloved hands. " The regular service wouldn ' t be around to your place for hours. "
    Shocked, Jane said, " You ' re paying —"
    " Don ' t think twice about it, fair one, " he said gallantly. " It ' s no different than picking up the cab fare into Manhattan on a dinner date. "
    " But we ' re not on a dinner date — "
    " Which is why I was coming over. Will you have dinner with me tonight? " he asked. His eyes were sparkling with interest, and this time there was no wine to blame.
    " Tonight? "
    The revving of a tractor engine behind them sent Jane jumping: McKenzie seemed to want to plow the exact spot they were standing on. He was wearing a duckbilled plaid hat with fold-down flaps, but even that wasn ' t enough to prevent him from having to squint in the driving snow. He looked fiercer than ever. His lips, normally set in a firm line, shaped themselves silently around one word: move.
    He was being deliberately annoying; surely there were other parts to plow. That damn chip on his shoulder, she thought. She ' d been wrong about him being a hired hand at the nursery, but she hadn ' t been wrong about the chip. Anyway, right now he was a hired hand. And in this case, she didn ' t like it. It offended her that he ' d accepted money for plowing her drive. If their positions were reversed, she would ' ve done it for nothing, just to be neighborly.
    " I would love to go to dinner