Spark in the Snow

The heat between them in the flickering glow of the hearth was incandescent, obliterating five years of cold academic rivalry and professional warfare in a single breathless instant. Outside, the polar vortex battered the twenty-foot glass wall of Chalet Seven with savage ferocity, throwing swirling vortexes of snow against the dark pines, but inside, the world had narrowed to the burning perimeter of the stone fireplace and the heavy, ragged…