Christmas In Snowflake Canyon

by RaeAnne Thayne

She might have reconsidered returning to her flat in Paris, if not for Dylan and her aching heart.

  As she pulled into her driveway, she noticed fresh tracks in the snow. It looked as if someone had pulled in and then out again while she had been gone. It must have been some time ago as more snow had filled in the tracks.

  Someone had left something on the porch, she could see as she drove into the garage. Curious, she parked her vehicle then walked through the house to the front door to find a shiny red gift bag with a clumsily tied gold bow on the porch.

  Odd. Who would be leaving her a gift? Perhaps Charlotte had stopped by, or maybe Eden.

  She carried it inside and turned on the lights in Grandma Pearl’s living room. She couldn’t find a gift label or a card. With a frown, she began to pull away tissue-paper layers. Something solid and dark lay inside, she saw. She reached inside and her hand closed around smooth wood.

  A figure.

  Three wooden figures, actually.

  She pulled them out and caught her breath as her heart started to pound with stunning ferocity.

  Three figures: Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus, each rather roughly carved out of a fine-grained wood, unpainted but stained with a clear finish.

  With fingers that trembled suddenly, she set them on the coffee table for a better look. Mary knelt beside the manger, her features in shadow from her head covering. Joseph stood beside her, strong and sturdy, staff in hand, and the tiny Baby Jesus lay in a manger with arms stretched wide.

  She looked in the bag again and found nothing to indicate who had left such treasure.

  But she knew.

  He could have purchased it somewhere, she supposed, or his father or one of his brothers could have made it.

  That would have been logical, given his circumstances, but somehow she knew in her heart Dylan had made them himself, to continue the tradition her grandmother had started so long ago.

  She pictured him trying with one arm to carve this for her, probably using the prosthetic he hated to hold the wood in place, and she started to sob.

  She cried for all he had endured, for her pain the past few days and for the unbearably precious gift he had given her, overwhelming in its magnitude.

  When the torrent of tears had slowed to a trickle, she picked up the carving of the baby in the manger. It was raw, primitive, like something out of a folk-art museum, but beautiful in its simplicity, in the young, serene mother, the watchful father, those open arms.

  As she looked at it again, the truth washed over her. He loved her.

  Despite what he’d said, all that ridiculous nonsense that had cut so deeply, he loved her. He wouldn’t have spent a moment doing this for her otherwise, let alone the hours it must have taken him to painstakingly carve something so lovely.

  He loved her and she refused to let him pretend otherwise.

  She scooped up all three figures, hugged them close to her heart and hurried back out to her SUV.

  Dylan stirred the fire and watched red-gold embers dance up the chimney.

  Christmas Eve, and here he was alone at his cabin in Snowflake Canyon with Tucker, a fire and a book he knew would remain unread.

  He had done his best. He had dutifully gone with his family to watch the candlelight ski and then had gone to Pop’s place for dinner. He had stayed amid the noise and chaos as long as he could, until his nerves felt as frayed as Tucker’s favorite rug and he finally made his excuses.

  Then he had made the fatal mistake he had been regretting for the past hour.

  He poked at the fire again then tossed in another split log, watching while the flames teased at it for a moment before taking hold.

  “I know I’m an idiot, Tuck. You don’t have to tell me that.”

  His dog just looked at him out of those big eyes. Yeah, he had definitely climbed onto the crazy bus. What else would explain the past few days?

  The whole thing had started as a whim, just to see if he could still carve. After a frenzied two days with little sleep and countless tries, next thing he knew, he was actually dropping the whole thing off on her porch like the town’s do-gooder Angel of Hope.

  He couldn’t believe he had actually left them, but he had figured, what the hell? What else was he going to do with them?

  He supposed on some level, he was trying to atone for his cruel words the other night—which really made no sense at all since he was hoping she wouldn’t guess the crappy gift came from him.

  Yeah. He was not only riding the crazy bus—at some point in the past few days, he had taken the damn wheel. He sighed. Nothing for it now but to get through the holidays, wait for her to go back to Paris and then move on with his life.

  The snow was still coming down steadily, so he decided to head out to the woodpile to fill up the box on the porch. Few things sucked worse than having to run out in the middle of the night all the way to the woodpile so he could keep the fire going—but even that beat the alternative of waking up to an ice-cold house.

  He threw on his boots and his coat but didn’t bother with a glove. It wouldn’t take him long. In two or three trips to the stack out beyond the house, he could have enough split wood on the porch to last twenty-four hours or more.

  “You coming?” he asked Tucker. The dog gave him a “fat chance” sort of look and settled back on his rug in front of the fire.

  He was on the second trip to the porch through the snow when he saw a flash of light on the long, winding drive to the main canyon road.

  He stopped and stared, the leather wood carrier dangling from his hand. What the hell? Who would be stupid enough to drive up here in the dark in the middle of a storm?

  If it was Charlotte or Pop, he was seriously going to have to start yelling. Couldn’t they leave him alone for two damn seconds?

  He climbed up to the porch and dumped the wood in the bin then waited while the vehicle drew closer.

  He recognized it when it was about twenty yards away, and his pulse started pounding in his ears.

  Not Charlotte or Pop.

  He shouldn’t have bothered with a coat. Despite the cold wind that hurled snow at him, his face and chest felt hot and itchy as he watched Genevieve climb out of her SUV.

  She looked like a Christmas angel, with her little cream wool coat, red scarf and a jaunty little matching wool cap.

  He drew in a sharp breath, aching with the effort not to run down the steps and yank her into his arms.

  “I thought I was the crazy one, but you are completely insane,” he growled.

  “Probably.” She stopped at the bottom of the steps.

  “No probably about it,” he snapped. “What were you thinking, driving up here in the middle of a blizzard?” “This?” She made one of her funny little gestures at the snow steadily piling up. “This is just a few inches.” “You have got to leave now if you want to make it back down and not be stuck up here all night.”

  She looked up at him for about ten seconds then walked up the steps and into his house without waiting for an invitation, untwisting her scarf as she went. He followed after her. “Genevieve Beaumont. Get back in that SUV and go home. If you don’t, I swear, I’ll haul you over my shoulder, toss you in my pickup and take you down myself.”

  She ignored him, instead looking around his house with interest. She hadn’t been here, he realized. He tensed even more, wondering what she saw. Yeah, it was pretty bare-bones but it was comfortable and he liked it.

  Tucker the Traitor padded right over to her for a little love, and she knelt down with a slight smile and rubbed just behind his left ear, right where he adored.

  “Hey, buddy. How’ve you been? Hmm?”

  “Seriously, Gen,” he tried again. “This isn’t a joke. The canyon roads can be slick and dangerous even when there’s not new snow. If you don’t believe me, ask your brother.”

  Her mouth seemed to tighten a little as she rose to her feet and faced him. “I’m not leaving. At least not until you explain this.”

  She pulled three
wooden figures out of her pocket and set them on the table.

  His face turned hot again and he could barely look at them. Crazy bus. Definitely. What the hell had he been thinking? How could he ever have imagined it was a good idea to give them to her?

  “Well?” she demanded when he said nothing.

  He tried for nonchalance. “I don’t know. They look like something a third-grader did in art class.”

  She crossed her arms across her chest. “They do not. They’re beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I can’t believe you did this for me.”

  Her voice caught a little on the last word and he finally had a clear look at her face.

  She had been crying.

  He could see the red-rimmed eyes, the traces of tears on her cheeks.

  His lungs gave a hard squeeze. Damn it. He hated her tears. Why hadn’t he just let this whole thing between them die a natural death?

  “You think I did that?” He did the only thing he could think of and tried to brazen through. “You are crazy. A one-handed carver. That would be something to see.”

  He saw just a trace of uncertainty in her gaze as she looked at him and then she gave a slight shake of her head.

  “You are such a bad liar. I can’t believe I didn’t see it the other day.”

  She came closer to him, until they were only a few feet apart. Until the scent of vanilla-drenched cinnamon taunted him, seduced him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, stop. I know you made them. Who else would have given such a gift to me? No one knows about Grandma Pearl and our Nativity tradition except you and my parents, and they would certainly never do something like this.”

  And there was part of their problem in a nutshell. “No doubt that’s true. They would probably give you something that should be in a museum, sculpted out of Italian marble or something.”

  A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Maybe,” she said softly. “That sounds lovely. But it would mean nothing to me. Not compared to this one. I will cherish this gift forever.”

  Something warm and soft unfurled inside him, pushing away some of his embarrassment. He didn’t know what to say, especially not when she moved even closer, just a breath away.

  “You lied the other day, too, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said again, easing away just half a step and hoping she wouldn’t notice.

  “I was too hurt by everything you said to see clearly but now it all makes perfect sense. You’re Mr. Fuzzy.”

  He blinked. “Excuse me?”

  She gave that sweet smile again, looking so stunningly radiant he could hardly breathe.

  “Never mind. I’ll tell you someday.” Before he could react, she reached out between them and grabbed his hand with both of hers. She gazed up at him and the emotion in her eyes sent his pulse racing again.

  “I love you, Dylan.”

  “Gen.”

  “Let me say this. You said the other day that I need

  perfection in my life. I suppose there’s some truth to that.”

  He hated thinking about those words he had said to her, the flimsy barriers he had tried to erect.

  “But here’s the funny thing,” she went on. “I once had what some would say was the ideal fiancé—handsome, rich, destined for success—and I was completely miserable, even before he cheated on me.”

  Her fingers were cool against his, trembling a little, and he wanted to tuck them against his heart and warm them.

  “I was miserable because somehow I knew from the beginning that perfect image was all wrong for me. What I needed, you see, was not the perfect man. Just the man who’s perfect for me. Someone who sees beyond the surface to the person I’m trying to become.”

  Her fingers trembled a little against his. How much courage must it have taken her to drive up here through the snow, to confront him, to bare her heart like this?

  How could he possibly push her away?

  He thought of the past two days, how completely wretched he had felt when he drove home from that wedding—more terrible than he ever remembered, even counting the moment he woke up and realized the surgeons had taken his crushed and useless hand.

  He had walked into the cabin, grabbed the whiskey bottle and poured three fingers. He planned to get completely hammered so he wouldn’t have to think about this ache in his chest, the yawning, endless emptiness that stretched out ahead of him.

  He had raised the glass, but before it reached his mouth, an image of her face as he had left her flashed across his mind, devastated and raw, and he couldn’t do it.

  Instead, he had grabbed Tucker and gone for a long walk in the snow and then had ended up in the rundown barn he used as a workshop. He had seen wood chunks lying there, a leftover piece he had bought to repair a sagging shelf in the bathroom.

  He used to spend downtime on deployments playing around, making little toys and knicknacks to pass out to the villagers they sometimes encountered.

  The carving tools he used to keep in his pack were still there, untouched since his accident. He rooted through the pile of screwdrivers and wrenches until he found what he needed, and before he knew it, he had carved a simple Baby Jesus.

  For hours, he worked on it, trying again and again to make it just right. It hadn’t been as hard as he might have expected. He had figured out ways to hold the wood—with his prosthetic or in a vise.

  Okay, it had been a hell of a lot harder than it would have been with two hands, but he had managed it anyway.

  Maybe that was some kind of metaphor for his life. He would never be able to do things as easily as he once had. He couldn’t change that—and pissing and moaning about it sure as hell wasn’t helping the situation.

  Maybe it was time to just suck it up and deal.

  He thought of the sheer grit it must have taken for his Genevieve to drive up here in the middle of a snowstorm and lay her heart bare for him again after he had already flayed it raw.

  It would take guts to climb out of the hole he’d been living in these past months and embrace life again. But he was an army ranger, charging headfirst into the toughest of situations. Once a ranger, always a ranger, right?

  Was he really going to let some little cream puff in her beret and scarf outdo him in the courage department?

  Hell no.

  “Gen.”

  “Admit it. You have feelings for me, don’t you?” He was tired of lying. What was the point, when

  she saw right through him anyway? “Feelings for you. I guess that’s a pretty mild way of saying I’m crazy in love with you. Yeah.”

  She gazed at him, blue eyes huge and drenched with emotion. “Oh.”

  She looked so sweet, so beautiful, he had to kiss her. He had been fighting it since the moment she pulled up and he couldn’t do it a moment longer.

  With her hands still wrapped around him, it was easy to tug her toward him. She landed against his chest with a surprised oomph, which changed to a delicious sigh when he lowered his mouth to hers.

  They kissed for a long time, until he was breathless and hungry.

  “Please don’t push me away again,” she murmured, long moments later. “I can’t bear if you do.”

  “I’m not easy to be around, Gen. I’m trying to be better but I don’t expect that to miraculously change overnight. I have moods and I get pissed and sometimes I stay awake around the clock to keep the nightmares away.”

  Those nightmares had been coming with less frequency the past few weeks. He had figured it was because they had been replaced with heated dreams that left him aching and hard.

  “If you’re looking for easy,” she retorted, “I’m not your girl. I’m the coldest bitch in Hope’s Crossing. Haven’t you heard?”

  He had to smile because he just wasn’t seeing that. Not anymore.

  “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.” She smiled and wrapped her arms around his waist, her
cheek against his chest. He held her close, his chin resting on her hair, feeling as if this was the safest, most secure place he could ever imagine.

  They stayed that way for a long time, until he had to kiss her again. He had a feeling he would never get enough. He leaned his head down but she eased away before he could find that soft, sexy mouth.

  “First I want you to admit it.”

  “Admit what?”

  “You were lying. You made those carvings, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t see any point in denying it anymore. “I don’t know why I ever gave them to you. I should have just thrown them away. I’ll get better with practice, I promise. I’ll try again.”

  “I don’t want another one. This will always be my favorite Christmas gift ever. It came from your heart when the words wouldn’t.”

  She got him. He wasn’t sure how, but Genevieve Beaumont—rich, pampered, spoiled—understood him like nobody else ever had.

  She kissed him once more while the snow fluttered down outside his little cabin and the wind sighed under the eaves. The fire crackled beside them and the dog snuffled in his sleep.

  And everything was perfect.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

  What on earth is going on in this unearthly little town? It’s up to Abby, Daisy, and Shar to find out before an ancient goddess takes over Southern Ohio, and they all end up in the apocalyptic doghouse…

  COPYRIGHT

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Recycling programs

  for this product may not exist in your area.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-373-77815-7

  CHRISTMAS IN SNOWFLAKE CANYON