Ontario California was suffering through the worst cold snap in living memory. Snow flurries descended down from the sky causing a kind of chaos and disorder that wouldn't have been appropriate in a blizzard but below freezing temperatures were just unheard of in there. For some of the citizens it was wonderful, like a miracle that they were going to have a white Christmas but for Katrina it was some a disaster of nearly epic proportions.
After spending three years living for the most part between New York and Philadelphia she'd despite being a Californian by birth she'd seen enough snow to last her a lifetime. It had been magical for about the first two hours of her first snow storm then she'd been stuck shoveling the stuff and salting driveways. She'd had to scoop the stuff off her car and occasionally break through a thin layer of ice just to open her car door. These flurries weren't going to cause any of those problems but she'd come home expecting a California Christmas, one that never dropped below sixty degrees.
Thanks in part to a break between blizzards in New York she'd even came home dressed for the weather she expected. The skin tight blue jeans did almost nothing to keep her shapely thighs warm but certainly displayed them well. The same could be said for the tee shirt and half jacket combination she'd chosen. The jean jacket was fur lined but didn't even fully close around her full bust and was really more to draw attention to them than keep her warm. The only parts of her outfit that were helping fight off the biting cold were her gloves and Ugg boots and those had been chosen more for fashion than function as well.
It was so cold that Katrina could hear her teeth chattering in her skull and the tip of her nose hurt. That and one other detail made the five minutes she had to stand in the cold sitting on her baggage with her arms wrapped around her chest unbearable. The other was that the man coming to pick her up drove lime green Volkswagen Thing that could have passed for the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine in a pinch. With her house as close to the airport as it was she'd been able to see that it was still sitting in her parking lot as the plane had started landing and now she could pick it out from the other vehicles on freeway. She might not have been so cold if she hadn't been able to watch as the Thing hit every possible red light in the Airport coming towards her terminal.
Bret jumped out of the car and ran around trying to embrace Katrina but she quickly ducked away from him and leapt into the heated van. It was actually a bit too hot because the heater had never worked properly but for the moment too hot was okay, besides they could always roll down the windows to get it just right. Bret didn't need to be hold to grab her bags and in a moment the two of them were off.
"You know that's cold. I come get you and I don't even get a hug?" Bret pouted glancing over at his fiancée for a moment.
"You could have warned me. I was freezing my butt off!" Katrina wailed lightly slapping his shoulder.
"It was snowing in California. I figured you knew, it must have been all over the news I mean this is a bigger deal than when Godzilla came to New Yor-"
Before he could finish the sentence Katrina had cut him off. "That wasn't Godzilla. That was a very confused iguana who lost to Mathew Broderick!"
Bret could only chuckle at that. "Point being you should have known, besides I still got you pretty quick you were waiting for what a minute or two? I think I deserve a kiss."
Katrina pretended to think about for a moment before pursing her lips and leaning over and pressing her lips against his cheek. "That's all you get for now. I could have forgiven you for not telling me it was snowing here; maybe you thought it was a wonderful surprise. I might have been able to get over the fact that you kept me waiting in the literally freezing cold for five minutes before you got here. What I can't forgive is that you insulted the King of All Monsters by comparing him to the thing that attacked New York. A woman has to have her standards.
The rest of the trip home was filled with the kind of inane small talk that lovers who've been separated for any length of time engage in. Nothing really important, almost nothing that hadn't been said on the phone over the last few days but there is a certain quality to having a person next to you that just gives the words a different flavor. Katrina hadn't even noticed that she'd slipped her hand into his until the car stopped at their home and she'd felt the tug as they both tried to get out of the car.
The very first thing to hit her when she walked into her home, before the familiarity of the den settled in, or the mild annoyance that two weeks past the new year the Christmas Tree was still up and most of the presents were still sitting around it on display was the strong aroma of apples and cinnamon wafting through the house pulling her to the kitchen past the small pile of unopened letters to her.