“What software does she use?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to ask her.” Did she use any software? How was he supposed to know?

“I don’t know anything about secretarial work, or office management. I don’t know anything about the law.”

Fox knew tones, and hers was defensive. He kept shoveling. “Do you know the alphabet?”

“Of course I know the alphabet, but the point-”

“Would be,” he interrupted, “if you know the alphabet you can probably figure out how to file. And you know how to use a phone, which means you can answer one and make calls from one. Those would be essential job skills for this position. Can you use a keyboard?”

“Yes, but it depends on-”

“She can show you whatever the hell she does in that area.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you know a lot about what she does.”

He also knew disapproval when he heard it. “Okay.” He straightened, leaned on the shovel, and looked dead into her eyes. “She’s been with me since I set up. I’m going to miss her like I’d miss my arm. But people move on, and the rest of us have to deal. I need somebody to put papers where they belong and find them when I need to have them, to send out bills so I can pay mine, to tell me when I’m due in court, to answer the phone we hope rings so I’ll have somebody to bill, and basically maintain some kind of order so I can practice law. You need a job and a paycheck. I think we could help each other out.”

“Cal asked you to offer me a job because Quinn asked him to ask you.”

“That would be right. Doesn’t change the bottom line.”

No, it didn’t, she supposed. But it still griped. “It wouldn’t be permanent. I’m only looking for something to fill in until…”

“You move on.” Fox nodded. “Works for me. That way, neither of us are stuck. We’re just helping each other out for a while.” He shoveled off two more blades of snow, then stopped just to lean on it with his eyes on hers.

“Besides, you knew I was going to offer you the job because you pick up that sort of thing.”

“Quinn asked Cal to ask you to offer it to me right in front of me.”

“You pick up on that sort of thing,” he repeated. “That’s your part in this, or part of your part. You get a sense of people, of situations.”

“I’m not psychic, if that’s what you’re saying.” The defensive was back in her tone.

“You drove to the Hollow, when you’d never been here before. You knew where to go, what roads to take.”

“I don’t know what that was.” She crossed her arms, and the move wasn’t just defensive, Fox thought. It was stubborn.

“Sure you do, it just freaks you. You took off with Quinn that first night, went with her, a woman you’d never met.”

“She was a sane alternative to a big, evil slug,” Layla said dryly.

“You didn’t just run, didn’t haul ass to your room and lock the door. You got in her car with her, came with her out here-where you’d also never been, and walked into a house with two strange men in it.”

“Strange might be the operative word. I was scared, confused, and running on adrenaline.” She looked away from him, toward where Lump was rolling in the snow as if it were a meadow of daisies. “I trusted my instincts.”

“Instincts is one word for it. I bet when you were working in that clothes shop you had really good instincts about what your customers wanted, what they’d buy. Bet you’re damn good at that.”

He went back to shoveling when she said nothing. “Bet you’ve always been good at that sort of thing. Quinn gets flashes from the past, like Cal. Apparently Cybil gets them of possible future events. I’d say you’re stuck with me, Layla, in the now.”

“I can’t read minds, and I don’t want anyone reading mine.”

“It’s not like that, exactly.” He was going to have to work with her, he decided. Help her figure out what she had and how to use it. And he was going to have to give her some time and some space to get used to the idea.

“Anyway, we’re probably going to be snowed in here for the weekend. I’ve got stuff next week, but when we can get back to town, you could come in when it suits you, let Mrs. H show you the ropes. We’ll see how you feel about the job then.”

“Look, I’m grateful you’d offer-”

“No, you’re not.” Now he smiled and tossed another shovel of snow off the deck. “Not so much. I’ve got instincts, too.”

It wasn’t just humor, but understanding. The stiffness went out of her as she kicked at the snow. “There’s gratitude, it’s just buried under the annoyance.”

Cocking his head, he held out the shovel. “Want to dig it out?”

And she laughed. “Let’s try this. If I do come in, and do decide to take the job, it’s with the stipulation that if either of us decides it’s not working, we just say so. No hard feelings.”

“That’s a deal.” He held out a hand, took hers to seal it. Then just held it while the snow swirled around them.

She had to feel it, he thought, had to feel that immediate and tangible link. That recognition.

Cybil cracked the door an inch. “Breakfast is ready.”

Fox released Layla’s hand, turned. He let out a quiet breath before calling the dog home.

PRACTICAL MATTERS HAD TO BE SEEN TO. SNOW needed to be shoveled, firewood hauled and stacked. Dishes had to be washed and food prepared. Cal might have felt like the house, which had always seemed roomy, grew increasingly tight with six people and one dog stuck inside it. But he knew they were safer together.

“Not just safer.” Quinn took her turn plying the shovel. She considered digging out a path to Cal’s storage shed solid exercise in lieu of a formal workout. “I think all this is meant. This enforced community. It’s giving us time to get used to each other, to learn how to function as a group.”

“Here, let me take over there.” Cal set aside the gas can he’d used to top off the generator.

“No, see, that’s not working as a group. You guys have to learn to trust the females to carry their load. Gage being drafted to make breakfast today is an example of the basics in non-gender-specific teamwork.”

Non-gender-specific teamwork, he thought. How could he not love a woman who’d use a term like that?

“We can all cook,” she went on. “We can all shovel snow, haul firewood, make beds. We can all do what we have to do-play to our strengths, okay, but so far it’s pretty much been like a middle school dance.”

“How?”

“Boys on one side, girls on the other, and nobody quite sure how to get everyone together. Now we are.” She stopped, rolled her shoulders. “And we have to figure it out. Even with us, Cal, even with how we feel about each other, we’re still figuring each other out, learning how to trust each other.”

“If this is about the stone, I understand you might be annoyed I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“No, I’m really not.” She shoveled a bit more, but it was mostly for form now. Her arms were killing her. “I started to be, even wanted to be, but I couldn’t stir it up. Because I get that the three of you have been a unit all your lives. I don’t imagine you remember a time when you weren’t. Added to that you went through together-I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say an earth-shattering experience. The three of you are like a…a body with three heads isn’t right,” she said and passed off the shovel.

“We’re not the damn Borg.”

“No, but that’s closer. You’re a fist, tight, even closed off to a certain extent, but-” She wiggled her gloved fingers. “Individual. You work together, it’s instinctive. And now.” She held up her other hand. “This other part comes along. So we’re figuring out how to make them mesh.” She brought her hands together, fingers linked.

“That actually makes sense.” And brought on a slight twinge of guilt. “I’ve been doing a little digging on my own.”

“You don’t mean in the snow. And on your own equals you’ve told Fox and Gage.”

“I probably mentioned it. We don’t know where Ann Hawkins was for a couple of years, where she gave birth to her sons, where she stayed before she came back to the Hollow-to her parents’ house. So I was thinking about extended family. Cousins, aunts, uncles. And figuring a woman that pregnant might not be able to travel very far, not back then. So maybe she’d have been in the general area. Ten, twenty miles in the sixteen hundreds was a hell of a lot farther than ten or twenty miles is today.”