Snowbound - Harlequin.com

JANICE KAY JOHNSON
29
moment been so clumsy because she’d been trying to
defer to him since he was disabled?
“I’ll get started on food,” he said shortly, and left her
to the kids.
Like a bunch of locusts, they showed up in the
kitchen all too quickly and began filling plates. A couple
of the smaller girls barely nibbled—one was Asian, a
tiny thing with glossy black hair down to her hips, the
other thin and plain with braces that pushed her lips out.
Those two, he remembered, had taken the room with
one bed, and now were quieter than the others.
Two girls were arguing loudly about some math
question, while another flirted with the stocky boy who
seemed more interested in piling food on his plate. The
teacher looked dead on her feet.
She swayed, and John stepped forward, but she
rallied and said, “Wow! This is great. Thank you.”
They took seats around the long, farmhouse table
that occupied the middle of the enormous kitchen, John
at her right side.
“Everyone, our host is John Fallon.” She reeled off
their names, most of which he’d likely need to hear
again.
The tall, skinny boy who’d stayed here before was
Dieter Schoenecker, the stocky one had the unlikely
name of Hopper Daniels, and the third boy was Troy
Thorsen. Nordic last name, which didn’t explain his
racial heritage.
The girls were a blur. Kelli—with an i, she made sure
to tell him, last name he didn’t catch, Amy Brooks,
who seemed given to posing and flipping her hair,