Snow Jam

by Rachel Hanna

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Note From The Author

  Copyright

  Snow Jam

  By

  Rachel Hanna

  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for picking up Snow Jam! I know you’re going to fall in love with these characters and their story.

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  Chapter 1

  The first time I saw him, an amazingly rugged, gorgeous, young Robert Redford of a man, he was covered in snow. Which I'm afraid of.

  It didn't bode well.

  I admit it: I'm afraid of snow. People have all kinds of crazy phobias, right? Mine just happens to be snow.

  Nothing bad has ever happened to me because of snow. I've never been trapped in a snowstorm or lost in a blizzard or caught in an avalanche. I've never been snowed in with no heat or food and the bathroom frozen solid. I've never skidded off a highway into a snow bank and had to await rescue.

  It's really not even snow that I'm afraid of. It's what the snow represents. It's a form of claustrophobia. So while other people are exclaiming about how beautiful it looks, all crystalline and catching the light as it falls, all lush and silent and Christmas-like, I'm thinking about not being able to get to the store, or to work, or just out.

  It makes me feel trapped.

  I don't like feeling trapped.

  That's exactly what I was feeling. Because while snow had never done anything to me before, it was doing it now.

  I've heard that Georgia is always a bit surprised when a big snowstorm hits. Frankly, I think that's probably true everywhere. Blame it on technology. We think we can control everything because we're so far advanced, but Mother Nature has tricks up her sleeve that there's nothing we can do anything about. And this snowstorm came late in the year. Everyone should have been starting to plan to lose those last few winter pounds and hitting the tanning salon so they weren't all pasty winter white when spring hit. Gardeners were definitely ordering seeds and making plans. Animals were thinking about coming out of hibernation. And the flowering peaches and cherry trees were making initial movements toward their annual showy displays. It was the very end of February, the very start of March. Almost spring, right?

  Then, bam! Snow.

  I didn't even live here yet. Somehow that made it worse. When the snowstorm that turned the interstate I was traveling into one of the so-called Snow Jams hit, I was still technically a resident of sunny Las Vegas, enjoying my 300 sunny days a year, blithely aware it would never dare snow on Sin City. But the economic rollercoaster of the 21st century was still rolling and I'd lost my job as an economic development specialist and had flown to Georgia for the last of a series of interviews, this one in person.

  If I got there.

  As the tall, broad, gorgeous apparition made his way toward my car, one of the many stranded on Interstate 75 in the unanticipated blizzard, I frantically posted to social media and texted friends.

  Did anyone order me one rescuer, tall, blond, handsome? Speak up, because he's big and coming my way and I'm worried.

  It was taking him a while. The sides of the road and the median were nothing but piles of snow, except where they were piles of snow mixed with road debris from where drivers tried to force their way off the highway by way of the shoulder.

  No immediate response from assorted friends. I had friends in Georgia, hence the hope for the new job, in the wilds of Hanlin, north and west of Atlanta up Interstate 75. Pretty place according to all the Google Images, and not supposed to strand motorists on highways under tons of snow.

  "It's not that much snow, Mya," my sister Jill would have told me. Though she probably would have called me Michelle, since Jill tends to eschew nicknames. She's very straight laced and reality based. Which is one reason I hadn't called or texted Jill when I got suck along with every other traveler on this road. She thinks she's always right (Curse of the Younger Sister) and she often is (which sucks). She's also happily married at 23, with two kids, a cat, a dog and a Porsche SUV, and I'm still single.

  The guy in the sheepskin jacket, hat pulled low, scarf around his throat, gloves making his hands look crazy big, was nearly at my car now. Couple more skidded-out rear-wheel drive vehicles to pass and he'd reach my door. Not that I knew for sure he was coming my way – not like I was expecting anybody to come looking for me on Highway 75 above Marietta, Georgia.

  My phone chimed. I looked down at it hurriedly.

  "Relax," Sunny said. Best friend since high school, freshman year. Sunny's one of those weird, six degrees of separation types. She always knows someone. She probably knows Kevin Bacon. "His name is Rick Barnes. He's part of a volunteer Facebook Jeep rescue team. Be nice – he didn't make it snow."

  I sent back "K" because there wasn't time for anything else. He'd reached the side of my car and was standing there exhaling clouds of vapor into the cold late afternoon air.

  "Mya? My name's Rick Barnes." Then he did something very strange. He put one hand over his heart and said in a strangely foppish voice, "I have come to wescue you."

  "Um?" I asked, staring. I could feel how wide my eyes were.

  Rick Barnes sighed. "It's a movie quote. Now I can't remember which one. Princess Bride maybe? Or Shrek."

  "Oh," I said, not at all relieved.

  Sensing my hesitation, he unwrapped the scarf from his lower face and smiled, which was dazzling. "Not crazy. Just a movie buff."

  I almost missed what he was saying. From a distance I'd seen his face when the scarf had come free. Up close? Wow. Seriously good looking in a rugged outdoorsy kind of way. At the same time, I could imagine him smoking down a cigarette before getting on a motorcycle. Or a surf board.

  He spoiled the illusion by pulling the scarf back on, but I couldn't blame him. The snow had stopped and the temperature had seriously dropped. "I guess I shouldn't quote out of the blue when coming across stranded female motorists in the wilds."

  I looked around. Hardly in the wilds. Atlanta was about 90 minutes behind me, apparently receiving another threatening two inches of snow. The last time a "snow jam" had left motorists stranded and children sleeping overnight at their schools, the state officials had claimed never again.

  Maybe they'd kept that promise. It was possible traffic was flowing nicely all the way through Atlanta, snow or no snow. But out here on the highway, nobody was going anywhere. It doesn't take a lot of snow to cause serious traffic problems when there are a lot of vehicles sliding around in it and kicking it up to reduce visibility. It also doesn't take a lot of snow when the place it's snowing doesn't routinely get a lot of snow.

  I shoved my shoulder against the rental car door. It seemed to have frozen shut. The temperature was really dropping out here. I wanted out of the car and off the highway but I needed to know who this guy was first. Despite the tingle I got every time I looked at him. He had green eyes, the kind that crinkle at the edges and look like he's – well, honestly, smirking more than smiling. I liked his eyes, though. I was predisposed to trust him because he seemed heaven sent and because I wanted out of there. I had an appointment the next day that I couldn't miss.

  And because he was damned good looking. That made me want to trust him, too.

  Bad reasoning.

  "Who sent you?" I asked. This Ric
k Barnes was really good looking but I didn't know what he thought he was going to do now or how he was going to rescue me. And I needed to know he was the person Sunny thought I was talking about.

  One of my goals in life is to avoid becoming an urban legend and cautionary tale. "Never get in a car with strangers, kids. You don't want to end up like Mya Powers. She got into a car with a beautiful man during a snowstorm and was never heard of again."

  "Sunny Davis. Lives in Roswell, Georgia. Said you knew her."

  I nodded.

  Rick gestured back over his shoulder where I could now see a black Jeep Renegade parked, spewing exhaust into the blue evening's frigid air. "Part of the Jeep rescue." Now he motioned at all the cars around us. "Pretty much everybody is texting or using social media. Passing time or calling for help."

  If I squinted, I could probably make out all the tiny little glares of light from tiny little screens in all the parked and/or slewed and broken cars on the icy freeway. I'd done it, reached out to family and friends, to anyone who might have a suggestion.

  "Because let's face it, the authorities are not getting this sorted out very fast." He glared up at the sky. "There's more coming. Grab your stuff and let's go."

  I balked. He'd been Sunny approved, which meant he was a good guy. He knew my name and he knew Sunny and some details about her and our friendship. He was the kind of gorgeous that made my breath come short, and I liked the hopeful tingle I felt whenever he looked at me. But the dictatorial Grab your stuff and let's go? I've never been one of the caveman type.

  … then again, I hated snow. More was coming.

  I had nowhere else to go.

  I started to get out of the car. The film of ice on the door cracked and it opened about an inch. My rescuer pushed the door back closed. I stared at him.

  "See if you can ease it over to the shoulder. You can't just leave it sitting there."

  It was a rental. Other than the fact that I'd have to pay for it, I kind of could. I started the car, which caused the seatbelt to bong at me, and put it into drive. It moved okay, sliding a little and I hate that feeling; it's the loss of control coupled with a sort of instant nausea. But the car allowed itself to be eased over onto the shoulder and the minute I put up the window and turned it off, Rick Barnes opened the door for me.

  Still irritated, I took a haughty step out, ruined the next instant by the fact that I slipped and staggered to catch my balance against the window and door frame. He didn't say anything but I got the impression Rick both knew I was feeling bitchy and was amused by the results. He had the common sense not to comment. Apparently he might quote unknown movies at unsuspecting stranded female motorists, but would not push his luck to the very brink.

  I held the key aloft, used the fob to open the trunk, carefully picked my way around in the snow. Atlanta's embarrassment over the first Snow Jam reported in national media had been in part because the accumulated snow had been something like two inches. That had been enough to bring the city to its knees.

  Out here, north of the city and headed for Hanlin, I could now see that there was quite a bit more snow covering the ground. I loathed all of it, but at least it justified my paranoia and all the stalled cars.

  Out of the trunk I pulled my laptop in a messenger bag, my carry-on and a purse that had been tucked into the carry-on during the flight. I took a quick look around the trunk, but I knew I wasn't leaving anything behind.

  I was stalling. Because he was so attractive, and because he was a stranger, and I'm not overly good with strangers. I'm shy. I'm not good with attractive men, either. I tend to slip in the snow and take offense at the slightest little things. Then again, I also get tongue tied in the presence of pretty, which annoys me and makes me bitchy.

  "Need a hand?"

  Of course he'd followed me around the car. And of course he'd found me standing there staring at the now-empty trunk.

  "Thanks," I said. "Just thinking. I'm supposed to be in Hanlin by tomorrow afternoon."

  He glanced at the sky, either asking for divine patience or assessing the weather. "You should be able to do that. Forecast says it will be cloudy tonight, so warmer than it is now, and the snow's supposed to stop by midnight. Tomorrow should be mostly sunny and warmer. Nothing's gonna stick for long."

  He looked away from the sky at me. I must have had my mouth open, staring. I closed it, then said, "What are you, a weatherman?" Not the best way to get myself rescued, and not the proper appreciation, but still.

  "Interested spectator. Can I carry that?" He was gesturing to my carry-on.

  "Thanks." I scanned the trunk one last time. Empty. Time to go. Now that I was being rescued, the trapped feeling I'd had in the snow should have vanished. It hadn't, though. Now I just felt trapped because I couldn't go wherever I was going under my own steam.

  I have a lot of rules. Some of them even wear me out.

  "Where are we going?" I asked as we walked back to his waiting Jeep. They're not the warmest things in the world in winter, but he had the heater cranked and once I stepped inside it felt like heaven. "I have to be in Hanlin tomorrow for a job interview. If you really think the roads will be clear by then – "

  "What am I, a weatherman?" he asked, smirking.

  I blinked. Whatever. "Or you can drop me at a motel. Or – any chance you were on your way to Hanlin?"

  He gave me an unbelieving stare. "Are you asking me to drive you to Hanlin, your highness?"

  I didn't think my question deserved that. "I'm asking you if there's a chance you were already headed that way. You'll recall I suggested dropping me at a convenient motel and – what the hell are you doing?"

  "Getting us out of here," he said. He'd just started up across the snow bank on the side of the road. He was going to get us stuck. He was going to get us stuck and someone would have to come rescue the rescuer and it was getting later and darker and colder and I wasn't able to come and go by my own will and...

  "And in answer to your other question," he said. "You'd suggested dropping you at a motel. You didn't mention anything about whether or not it was convenient."

  Mental text: Sunny – I'm rescued, but who's going to rescue me from this jerk?

  "Do you always argue this much?" I asked. "I know you're doing me a favor, but I didn't ask for it and you didn't have to."

  He grinned. It made me want to slap him. There was a hint of the kind of guy who watches you walk by on the street and doesn't catcall, doesn't do anything, but his grin is disconcerting and all at once you feel –

  Kind of like taking him home and taking him to bed. Which really makes him all the more obnoxious because who wants to feel that way over someone who argues all the time?

  "It's still your favor," he was finishing up.

  The Jeep whined and climbed over the snow. Less four-wheel drive, more four-legged beast.

  I sighed. "I appreciate it." I meant it. I might not be making progress under my own power, but at least it was progress. Tomorrow I'd come back in the morning and get the rental. I'd call the agency to let them know where it was and what I was doing. Then if they'd magically moved it, I'd know, and I could make other arrangements to get to Hanlin. I really wanted that job.

  That thought made my fingers tighten on the bag I held. The one with my laptop and my resume and a lot of hope tied up inside it.

  "And in answer to your other question," Rick continued, squinting at the road, which the way we were doing it was all shoulder, snow and the tops of road markers flashing by on the left side of the vehicle rather than the right. "We're heading to my cabin."

  Heart pounding. Stalker alert. I don't care that Sunny knows him. "Excuse me?"

  He glanced my way. "Oh, relax, princess. It's a perfectly respectable cabin in a circle of such, with outdoor winter sports enthusiasts in it. One bed, one futon in the living room. Small, but warm and dry. We need somewhere to spend the night if I'm going to squire you back to your carriage tomorrow."

  Seriously, he might be the
hottest guy I'd ever thoroughly disliked. I took stock again. Golden hair, no other way to describe it. Very young Redford looks, the great jaw, the eyes that looked like they were used to squinting into sunlight while he did improbable things like shoeing horses and rescuing snow-stranded motorists. His hair curled down into the scarf he wore, which looked like something someone had knitted him. Idiotic to feel a stab of something then. Jealousy? Because seriously, he wasn't my type. I like city guys who aren't going to drag me off into the wilderness for exactly this kind of snowbound adventure.

  If he'd been anyone else, I'd have asked. Does this seem like fun to you? It doesn't scare you? What if you can't leave the minute you want to? What if you get stuck and have to call for help? What about it is fun?

  Which isn't to say there aren't things I like to do that are hard. Just they seem to have a point. Like doing a long, very hard Pilates class or a long, very hot yoga class. Those things have a point: they make me better. I've never been the type who would climb Everest because it's there. Lots of things are there. Doesn't mean I want them. Which means no four-wheeling because if I'm out in a vehicle, I want to be going somewhere.

  I was so wrapped up in my own internal logic and the questions I wasn't going to ask him, I nearly screamed when he said something suddenly.

  "What?"

  The look he gave me this time was amused and confused. "Are you all right? Am I scaring you that badly?"

  "You're not scaring me," I snapped, and jerked the bag in my lap higher and tighter, up against my chest with both hands. Not what I wanted to do. Not what I could stop myself from doing.

  He looked from the bag to me to back at the road. "Right," he said. "Anyway, we should be there in about two minutes."

  We'd gone hardly anywhere. That was good, though. Because I'd need to get back to my car the earlier the better tomorrow.

  I tried again. "If you're not going to Hanlin, any chance you could drop me back at my car tomorrow? Or is there a cab I could call?"