"My feet are freezing," she mumbled after they had walked a mile in the rapidly accumulating snowfall.

"At least you can still feel your feet, Jordan."

"You're from Wisconsin. I thought you were used to this kind of thing."

"Well, I never had to walk two miles in the snow wearing wingtips."

They were quiet again, and the only sound on the deserted road was the crunch of their shoes against the snow. The moon's reflection off the white blanket cast an eerie glow, and they walked on.

As they rounded the corner through a cluster of trees, there was the unmistakable red glare of a sign up ahead. She uncurled her frozen fingers and grabbed his arm.

"Look! See that? There's a motel up there!" She ran a few steps ahead and pointed to the flickering neon sign for the Motel Milton.

Woody stopped in his tracks and shook his head. "No. Oh no. Stranded travelers stop at a backwoods motel? That's the opening scene of about 14 different horror movies, Jordan."

"Come on! What's the alternative, Woody? We get gas and walk back, only to find the car buried under a foot of snow? Let's just take a hot shower, spend the night, and start fresh in the morning."

She hurried on as fast as she could without waiting for him. She knew, of course, that he had no choice but to follow, and after a moment, she could hear his quickening footsteps in the snow behind her.

The motel sat amid a cluster of two or three other buildings, and a stoplight hanging over the road swung in the wind and ran through its cycle for no one. This was Milton.

They staggered across the parking lot and fell inside the front office, hungry, tired, and cold. The warm air hit them like a furnace blast as the manager shuffled in sleepily from the back room and leaned against the desk.

"Do you have any vacancies?" Woody managed to say with near-frozen lips. The manager stared back unblinkingly with his stony, New England gaze and jerked his head out toward the empty parking lot. "Okay. Stupid question," Woody muttered.

"One room or two?" the old man asked laconically as Jordan fumbled for her credit card.

"One room," Woody said in a rush.

Jordan whipped her head around and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Two beds," she added quickly, and the old man took her credit car with an indifferent shrug.

"I guess you don't get a lot of folks heading this way, do you?" Woody asked.

"Some." The old man waved a finger over Woody's shoulder. "The road out front used to take you right into Boston 'til they put in the new highway."

"Wait, let me guess," Woody said with a chuckle. "Now, you can't get there from here."

"Ay-uh," the old man closed his eyes and nodded solemnly. "You can't."

"Wonderful..." Woody muttered under his breath. "This just keeps getting worse and worse."

Jordan poked him in the ribs. "Is there anyplace around here we could get something to eat?" Jordan asked as the old man passed her the room key.

"Diner cross the street," the man muttered and ambled toward the back room without another word.

"One room?" she hissed as soon as they hit the cold air.

"Do you really think I was going to let you stay in a room by yourself? Didn't you see Psycho?"

She groaned and swung open the door to Room 4. They stood in the doorway and scanned the room. Neither spoke for a moment. The decor was done up in shades of brown, orange, and avocado green and looked as if it hadn't been remodeled since 1972.

"Didn't the Brady Bunch stay in this motel room on their trip to the Grand Canyon?" he finally deadpanned.

"No, smart guy, they slept outside." she said wearily and tossed her bag on one of the beds. "Which is what we'd be doing if we weren't lucky enough to find this motel."

She turned around to face him. He was still standing in a puddle of melted snow just inside the door. His lips had gone blue and his was shivering uncontrollably.

"That's it. Take off your clothes, Woody." She grabbed the bedspread from his bed and held it up in front of him as a curtain.

"Now that's just cruel," he said humorlessly through chattering teeth as he kicked off his soaked wingtips. "I've dreamed about you saying those words to me for years, and I'm too cold to do anything about it."

She averted her eyes as his clothes fell, one by one, onto a wet pile on the floor. After he had stretched them out to dry on the radiator, she reached out and tried to wrap the bedspread around him.

He held a hand up to stop her. "They never wash those bedspreads, you know. Do you have any idea what people do on those things? Do you have any idea what kind of nastiness is on there?"

She groaned. "I promise you in all my years as an M.E. I have never signed an autopsy report where the cause of death has been 'motel bedspread nastiness.' Hypothermia, on the other hand..."

There was a gentle silence while she wrapped the bedspread around him and rubbed his arms and back. The room was beginning to warm. It was small but cozy, and even the tacky furnishings had sort of a retro charm about them. After his shivering began to subside she slipped her arms around him from behind and laid her head against his back.

"This isn't so bad, is it?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah...the room is actually starting to grow on me," she murmured sleepily. There was a pause, and she realized then that perhaps he hadn't been talking about the room. She pushed away from him quickly. "Hey, you can have first dibs on the shower. I'll see if I can scare up some dinner for us."

She headed for the door as he shuffled to the bathroom. She turned and reached for her bag as he dropped the bedspread at the threshold of the bathroom and her eye caught just a glimpse of flesh as he stepped inside and shut the door.

She smiled a small, surreptitious smile to herself and her hands flew to her hot, crimson cheeks as she stepped back into the frigid air and crossed to the diner.