by Taryn Quinn
Saving Kylie
a Small Town Second Chance Romance
Taryn Quinn
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Saving Kylie
© 2021 Taryn Quinn
Rainbow Rage Publishing
Cover by LateNite Designs
Photograph by Adobe Stock
All Rights Are Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First ebook edition: Previously published in 2012 Cari Quinn
Second ebook edition: January 2021
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She asked for his help…and fell into his bed.
Justin Norton has put his feelings for Kylie, his college ex, into a box. Or so he thinks…until she ends up hurt in his cabin on a snowy night just before Thanksgiving.
Suddenly, giving thanks takes on a whole new steamy meaning.
But she’s running from trouble and he’s dealing with his own demons, putting their chance of a happy holiday in danger.
Unless saving Kylie turns into her saving him right back.
Author’s Note: Saving Kylie is a standalone novel set in Turnbull, NY, near our small town Crescent Cove. It has a happily-ever-after with no cliffhanger.
Saving Kylie was previously published as Melt by Cari Quinn in 2013 and has been lightly re-edited
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
CEO Daddy
Taryn Quinn
Crescent Cove World
Quinn and Elliott
About Taryn Quinn
Acknowledgments
Sometimes we make up fictional places that end up having the same names as actual places. These are our fictional interpretations only. Please grant us leeway if our creative vision isn't true to reality.
For those of us who have to fight a little harder for our happily ever after. It’s always worth it.
One
His nuts were going to freeze. Considering how long it had been since he’d required their services, the possibility was damn well worth going for a ride on the coldest night of the year.
Justin Norton slipped on his goggles and grinned at the snowy landscape. Even in the moonlit dark, the white blinded him, sparkling on the evergreens, glistening on the low-hanging branches he shoved out of his way. This trail was bumpier than some, but the exhilaration of flying through the night—silent but for the buzz-saw whir of his snowmobile—was worth every risk. Especially tonight.
He’d had a shitty day, complete with tears from his mother, cranky students, and a pisser of a headache that still throbbed at the base of his skull. But in a minute, none of that would matter anymore. He zipped his jacket and tugged on his thin lambskin leather gloves, anticipation already humming in his blood. Now it was all about snow and speed and wind. Out here, no one intruded.
Being alone had never felt so damn good.
He rolled his shoulders and started the engine. As he gripped the handlebars, he breathed deep. Fine shards of ice coated his throat, and he exhaled puffs of frosty air in front of his face. Both soothed him immeasurably. This was what he’d waited for all fucking day long. He didn’t have to watch the clock here, didn’t have to wonder what reaction he’d get from his mother the next time he phoned home.
Would she be happy to hear from him? Indifferent? Or would today finally be the day she didn’t answer the phone at all?
Shaking off the worry, he glanced up the trail. The dark swallowed it whole like a hungry mouth. Then he kicked the snowmobile into gear and roared into the deep woods.
Snow flew back into his face as he pressed the snowmobile into the first looping turn, but that was part of the thrill. Wind-whipped cheeks, chapped lips, stinging eyes—he craved the burn that came with doing battle with the elements and never knowing who might win. There was a symmetry to the chase. A rightness he’d never felt anywhere else.
He pushed for more speed as the trail opened up, his gaze alternating between the ice-encrusted, snowy ground and the pink-hued horizon. Nothing was quite as breathtaking as the winter sky in this neck of the woods. When the stars came out to twinkle amid the cotton-candy clouds, the rest of the world faded away.
It was just past five, and already dusk was imminent. Judging from the streaked sky, so was a hell of a lot more snow.
For once the forecasters weren’t blowing smoke out their asses. Late November in Turnbull, New York, usually didn’t yield this much accumulation, but he’d gotten lucky this year. Good thing, because he hadn’t gotten lucky in any other, more vital ways for months now.
And his frozen balls were feeling the strain.
His fingers tingled as he tightened his grip and whipped around a curve too fast. His skis shimmied on the ice before he backed off on the torque and adjusted his stance. Figured. Thoughts about his pathetic sex life were a sure path to ending up on his ass in a snowbank.
He squinted into the darkness. The light flurries had increased at a steady clip, and now he couldn’t see the gloves in front of his face. He’d yet to see another snowmobiler on the trail, so obviously people were taking the severe weather predictions seriously.
Smart money told him to turn back and head home. Thanks to the teachers who took pity on him every holiday, he had a basket with a loaf of crusty bread, a couple of kinds of fancy cheese, and a nice, chilled rosé waiting.
Somehow getting drunk on wine two nights before Thanksgiving—a holiday he’d long ago become accustomed to spending sans turkey and relatives—didn’t seem quite as lame as loading up on a twelve-pack of beer.
Right.
Shaking off the sudden tension in his shoulders, he decelerated and swung around slowly to keep from losing traction. He skidded again on a patch of ice, hard enough he nearly did a header over the handlebars.
Fuck.
Obviously he’d waited too damn long. He rode out the spin, and finally the machine shuddered to a stop.
He sucked in a sharp breath. Clearly tonight wasn’t the night for a nocturnal ride.
Just as he was about to turn around to head home to his cabin, he felt the vibration of his phone against his chest. How he felt it over the noise from the snowmobile, he had no clue. A weird sort of sixth sense, maybe, born from years of expecting a phone call about his mother.
He stopped and shut off the engine before digging out his cell, managing to grab the call before it went to voice mail. As usual, he forgot to look at the readout first. “Yeah?” he barked.
Unless it involved blood or death, now was not the time for someone to be bothering him.
“Justin.”
The soft plea, barely audible over the wind, hit him deep in the gut and made him wrap his fingers around the handlebars.
Kylie.
Her image sprung into his mind so fast his breath caught. Sunny, shoulder-length hair, wide, expressive eyes the clearest blue he’d ever seen. She grinne
d while she mopped the bar, sang while she polished glasses. Invariably she dripped beer on her tight beige Rough and Ready tank top, and every so often, the liquid would soak onto the nipples that always seemed as hard as stones under his gaze.
They’d been friends in college and lovers for one brief, unforgettable night. At least to him. Then they’d fallen out of contact, until the day more than six months ago he’d walked into Rough and Ready and found her smiling at him across the bar. He’d come back almost every day since.
“Justin?” Anguish was plain in her tone. “I need you.”
His pulse skipped. How many times had he dreamed of hearing her saying those words?
She’d said them once, on the night they’d slept together. He’d hoped that night would lead to something more.
Wrong answer.
By graduation they’d barely been acquaintances and she’d been dating some burly guy who drove a classic car and wore leather like most guys sported denim.
“What’s wrong?” She didn’t answer, so he asked again. “Kylie? What is it?”
“I’m near your house. I went riding and”—wind swallowed her words—“and then I crashed. Stupid. Shoulda went when I wasn’t mad. So…dumb.”
Her broken speech caused the twisting in his gut to intensify. “Where are you?”
Oh yeah, brilliant question. If she went snowmobiling near his house, the trails were surrounded by lots of landmarks. Like trees. Leafless branches that looked like dancing skeletons when caught in the breeze.
But if there wasn’t something to identify her location, how else would he find her? He needed something to go on.
She didn’t answer.
“Kylie? Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
“Not far from your house. I could see the lights. Pretended…I could see the lights.”
The line went dead.
Cursing under his breath, he kicked the snowmobile back into motion. He didn’t have time to waste. She couldn’t be too far if she’d seen the lights of his cabin, though how she knew which was his, he didn’t know. She’d never been to his house. Never called him before right now, though he’d given her the number. She’d also never given him her number, which he understood.
Hated but understood.
“Fuck.” He tightened his fingers around the handlebars as he ducked his head to avoid a snowy branch that aimed for his eyes. So much for paying attention.
If anything could make him forget what the hell he was doing, it was Kylie Fisher.
God, she was fucking gorgeous. And funny. And she knew what the hell she was talking about when she called out the plays during the games he’d become addicted to watching with her.
He’d become addicted to her, period. He didn’t know why she’d be in such a hurry to get to him that she’d risk her safety, but he’d be damned if he didn’t ride to her rescue anyway.
She wasn’t easy to read, on any level. Sure, she smiled and flirted and laughed as freely as anyone he’d ever met, but something dark lurked in her eyes that hadn’t been there in college. He didn’t know what her deal was or why her habit of standing on the sides of her battered tennis shoes while she watched the basketball games on the TV behind the bar was so damned irresistible.
One thing he did know, however, was that she was taken, with a live-in boyfriend and commitment ring on her fourth finger.
Which meant paws off.
He’d find her. Somehow. Even if he had to comb these damn trails all night.
He pushed down on the gas, pausing as he glimpsed a bright pink glove up ahead poking out of the snow like a talisman.
Or a warning.
The only place he’d seen quite that shade of pink before was Kylie’s gloves and matching coat, though in the dark the color didn’t match his memory. But still.
Shit, what if she was badly hurt? What the hell had she been thinking, coming out for a ride on a night like this? Her boyfriend was the snowmobiler, not her.
She’d expressed a little interest when Justin had mentioned going out on the trails, but she seemed more into basketball and trying to ply him with mixed drinks, the girlier the better.
Strangely enough, he always enjoyed her concoctions too. She added grenadine to everything, and if there was one cherry he wouldn’t mind a taste of, it was hers.
Justin continued up the trail, going faster than he should’ve in the driving snow. The canopy of naked tree branches laden with ice blocked most of the light of the emerging moon, so he traveled deeper into the woods mostly from memory, following a path he’d covered many times before. He knew this trail, and the brutally cold air scraping his throat barely stole his attention from the flavor of fear coating his tongue.
He had one worry, and it sure as hell wasn’t for himself.
He shot around a bend and saw the hulk of black on its side up ahead, headlights staring straight into his eyes. He threw up a hand to shield his gaze even as he steered carefully to the side of the path. Another bundle of black lay on the snow, but this one was smaller and lower to the ground.
Panic rippled along his spine and turned into a full-blown shudder.
Dammit.
With a sharp turn of his wrist, he silenced his engine and dismounted. His footsteps crunched as he approached the unmoving form, and his heartbeat thudded dully in his ears.
He wouldn’t freak out. He’d come across downed riders on the trail before, and none of them had been seriously hurt.
She wouldn’t be either.
Tufts of pale blond hair stuck out from underneath her knit cap, and the tangled strands draped over the shoulders of her puffy coat.
Her puffy pink coat.
As silly as it was, he’d hoped until that moment he’d come upon someone else. Anything so she wouldn’t be lying motionless on the ground.
He rushed forward and knelt in the snow, barely aware of the wet seeping into the knees of his jeans. Right then, he could only see her. He turned her face toward him gently as he clutched her bare hand in his. She was so cold. So small and still.
“Kylie,” he whispered. “Can you hear me, baby?”
She didn’t answer for so long that he started to fumble his cell phone out of his jacket. He couldn’t wait. Time was of the essence. If she was seriously hurt—
She groaned and rolled awkwardly onto her back. “Justin? You found me.”
Relief crashed over him in a swift, knee-weakening wave. Her eyes hadn’t opened yet, but she knew his voice. “Yes, it’s me. Yeah, I did. Luck. I just got lucky.” The rawness of his tone as he bent forward to kiss her cheek would have stunned him if worry hadn’t crowded every other thought out of his mind. “Sweetheart, I’m going to get you help.” He stuck his fingers in his mouth and yanked off his glove so he could use his phone. If only his fucking hand would stop shaking. “Okay?”
“No.” She shifted restlessly, kicking her leg out hard enough to nearly topple him on to his side. “I’m okay. Just dizzy. Turned too fast. Protected my…head.” She moaned and clawed her bare hand through the snow beside her hip. “F-freezing. Help me up.”
He stared at her as she forced herself onto her elbows, though her eyes had yet to open. Thanks to the backwash from her headlights, he could see the shadow of a bruise darkening her cheek. One of many, he was sure. “Kylie, you could have a concussion. Or internal injuries.”
“Didn’t hit my head. Hold up your fucking fingers. I’ll count them.” With a furious exhale, she opened her eyes to glare at him. He couldn’t see her expression clearly, but impatience leaked from her lithe, vibrating body. “Well?” she demanded when he gazed at her stupidly.
Goddamn, she was so beautiful. Flakes clung to her cheeks and melted on her lips. She could be injured, perhaps badly, and all he could do was look at her as if he’d never seen a damn female before.
His cock came to life at the same instant as his mind threw up the one protest capable of shutting down his libido. Other than the possibility she could be seriously injured, that is
, which was more than weighty enough.
But persisto-cock persevered.
She probably makes love to her man every night. She’s happy. She’s fucking taken, got it?
No, he didn’t get it, because the fingers of the hand he’d gripped didn’t have any rings. Her commitment ring was gone.
“Justin?”
He set down his phone on his thigh and held up three fingers. Her health was what mattered now, not her availability. “How many?”
“Three,” she said, sounding almost smug. To his astonishment, she stumbled to her feet, though he had to jump up and steady her when she swayed. “See? I’m fine. A little wobbly, maybe, but with a hot bath and some rest, I’ll be good as—”
Her eyes closed again as he clamped his hands on her waist and brought her shivering body close to his, impressive hard-on aside. Even the cold didn’t seem to affect the damn thing. But she’d certainly been around guys with hard dicks before, and she was shaking so fiercely he was afraid she’d lose her balance.
“Whoa, dizzy.” She wet her lips. “Maybe I’m not fine.”
“Maybe not.” He glanced down at his phone lying in the snow, but made no move to reach for it. No way was he letting her go. “You should see a doctor.”
“No, I’ll be all right. I’ve hurt myself worse falling off a ladder.” She looked down pointedly between their bodies. “Besides, you’re hurting too, aren’t you?”
So much for avoiding erection detection. Cuddling her against him hadn’t exactly helped on that score.