Snow Day

by Shannon Stacey, Jennifer Greene

  Eventually, he figured, they’d have to worry about the inconsequential, irrelevant things. Jobs, rental cars, where she wanted to live. After that, they’d have to worry about a few consequential things, like where she wanted to raise their kids, and how many of them she wanted. Oh. And what kind of ring she’d like.

  That question was likely to come up extremely soon.

  But for this night, there were only a few hours of blizzard left. It was their world for now, with nothing that could intrude on these hours together. She was going to be stuck with a lot of tenderness, he was afraid. He’d had ten years of tenderness pent up, and this seemed just the time, just the night, to let it all loose.

  “I love you, Red,” she said fiercely.

  “And I love you more than anything in my world, always will,” he promised her, the vow in his voice as real as the one in his heart.

  * * * * *

  Land’s End

  Barbara Dunlop

  For Marsha Zinberg

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I BET YOU’RE sorry I broke up with the six-feet-two rowing champion,” Tessa Ambroise called to Emilee Hiatt as the two women hauled a sea kayak up the concrete stairs to the rocky peninsula at her seaside family home. It was Emilee’s first day in Tucker’s Point, but Tessa felt no compunction at putting her friend and former college roommate to work.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts,” Emilee called back as they reached the top of the stairs.

  “I’m not having second thoughts,” Tessa assured her, just like she’d assured herself each day for the past six months.

  “Good,” said Emilee. “Because Colton Herrington took a well-earned hike right out of your life, and he can stay there.”

  “I’m sure he’s found someone who can keep up with his high standards,” said Tessa. She didn’t have a single doubt that the who’s who of Boston debutantes had lined up the second her diamond ring hit his palm.

  “What I’m truly sorry about,” Emilee continued as they leveled out on the narrow peninsula, “is that you won’t move back to Boston.”

  “I can’t move back to Boston.” The winter wind blew the sea spray up from the rocks, dampening Tessa’s brown hair and whisking her ponytail against her cheek.

  “Sure you can. There’s no one to keep you here anymore. I mean, I’m not saying I’m glad that your great-aunt passed away. But she was ninety-three years old.”

  Tessa missed her aunt dearly, but Sophie had been ill for several months, going rapidly downhill those last few weeks. In a way, it was a blessing that the end came quickly. Her heart had given out in November. According to the doctor, she’d died peacefully in her sleep.

  “I’ve got a thousand things left to do here,” Tessa pointed out. She was currently going through the nooks and crannies of the sprawling basement, discovering family treasures that had been in storage for decades.

  “Don’t you rich families have people to do that for you?”

  “We’re not rich. Well, maybe a little bit rich,” Tessa amended. “Or, at least we were once.”

  “Rich people never think they’re rich.” Emilee switched hands, settling her grip around the stern of the kayak as they approached the stone boathouse.

  “I am going to need a job,” said Tessa.

  The upkeep of Land’s End estate was expensive. And what might have started as a family fortune two hundred years ago had dwindled over the generations. The Ambroises were now land-rich but cash-poor.

  Tessa couldn’t help but glance up at the castle. The imposing twenty-six-room stone mansion had been built by her several-times great-grandparents nearly two centuries ago, and had guarded the harbor from its perch ever since. Right now, it was backlit by the setting sun, its two-story wall dark in the shadows, a turret bracing either end. In some ways, it was beautiful. In others, it was an albatross.

  “Maybe Colton could have helped me clean out the basement,” she mused.

  “Manual labor?” Emilee snorted. “Colton Herrington wouldn’t dirty his hands in your basement.”

  Tessa didn’t believe that was true. She’d seen Colton step up to help his neighbors with manual labor, not to mention the movers who’d delivered the new sofa set to his penthouse. Not that he had a lot of call to undertake it. Unlike the Ambroises’, the Herringtons’ rapidly growing fortune ensured assistance was always readily available.

  It was the kind of wealth that showed. Everything about the man oozed class and breeding. Tessa had noticed it from the first moment she’d seen him, emerging from the waves of Nantucket onto the beach where she’d been reading on a folding chair. He’d moved through the sunlight, tall, bronzed, impossibly handsome, confident in every step he took.

  “He might not get his hands dirty often.” Tessa felt a certain loyalty to her former fiancé. “But he was a gentleman through and through.”

  “And wasn’t that just the problem?” Emilee asked, an edge to her tone. “He’d have ‘gentleman-ed’ you into the loony bin.”

  “True enough,” Tessa conceded.

  That was the crux of the problem between them. Colton set ridiculously high standards for himself. And his level of perfection always left her feeling inadequate. So much so that she was embarrassed to admit it, and spent an inordinate amount of energy hiding her flaws. It was hard to spend so much time around a paragon of all virtues. His attention to detail had made her jumpy, and not in a good way.

  Now, she pulled hard on the wide oak door that led to the ground floor of the boathouse.

  “To be fair,” she found herself defending him, “he was exceedingly organized.”

  She knew that if he’d been in charge of the operation, Colton would have had a twelve-man crew combing the basement of Land’s End, retrieving Tessa’s great-aunt’s paintings and sculptures from the rest of the junk that had gathered down there over the decades.

  “Was he like that making love?” Emilee asked, maneuvering to one side as the door groaned open.

  Tessa didn’t understand the question. “Exceedingly organized at making love?”

  “Yeah, organized—and all staid and fastidious like he is in real life?”

  “No,” Tessa lied, moving into the dim space. The words organized and staid seemed unnecessarily critical.

  “I can tell when you lie,” Emilee warned from behind.

  “Well, maybe a little bit organized,” Tessa allowed. Her mind jumped involuntarily to their lovemaking before she quickly banished the compelling memories.

  He might have been more organized than your average guy, but his brand of organization was effective. Colton was an amazing lover. One might even say perfect. Where Tessa— Well, Tessa was more impulsive and chaotic. Not that Colton had ever complained.

  Gripping the kayak with one hand, she hit the light switch on the wall, illuminating the bare bulbs affixed to the ceiling. The aged stone walls and concrete floor absorbed most of the light. The boathouse was cold and musty, having been closed up since October. She knew she should’ve moved the kayaks up from their beach racks a couple months ago, but somehow it had never reached the top of her priority list.

  But now, with snow and high winds predicted for the coming week, the first real storm of the winter brewing off the coast, she needed to batten down the hatches.

  “Organized lovemaking,” Emilee pondered out loud. “So, what are we talking about? Only on Thursdays? Only in the bedroom?”

  “He was just really, really good.”

  “Oh, I can see how that would be a problem.”

  Tessa struggle
d to put her feelings into words. “It was as if he’d sat down, drafted a perfect plan and then executed it.”

  “Oh, now you’ve got me curious.”

  “He always had to shower beforehand,” Tessa admitted. “And shave, and brush his teeth.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing,” said Emilee as she hoisted the kayak’s stern onto a rack against the wall.

  “Turn that thought around,” said Tessa. “I always felt like I also had to shower, shave, brush and floss.”

  Emilee grinned as she dropped her arms, her tone going mocking. “I’d ravish you, baby, but you have hairy legs?”

  “More like, I’ll meet you in the bedroom in half an hour. I bought you a lavender silk nightie from Giselle’s. There’s some new spearmint toothpaste on the counter.”

  Tessa stopped. It was the first time she’d owned up to any of it out loud.

  Emilee’s eyes had gone quite round. “Please tell me you’re exaggerating for effect.”

  Tessa wished she was. “When you think you’re in love, you let these things slide. But when you start looking back...”

  “It’s like he wanted a perfect princess.”

  “I’m never going to be a perfect princess.”

  “I did tell you so.”

  “That you did,” Tessa agreed as she stepped back from the kayak rack to survey their work.

  From the first time Emilee had met Colton, she’d insisted he was too uptight for Tessa. But it was hard for Tessa to see past his gorgeous body and dazzling smile—not to mention the flashy BMW, his sky-rocketing business empire and his elite circle of well-read, influential friends. If a woman were to write a checklist of the perfect husband, Colton would hit on every feature.

  Emilee rubbed her damp hands against the front of her skinny jeans. “Personally, I like spontaneous.”

  “Stop,” Tessa barked, feeling a budding tingle at the thought of sex with Colton. “It’s been six months for me.”

  “You haven’t slept with anyone since Colton?”

  “Of course I haven’t slept with anyone since Colton. Who would I have slept with since Colton?”

  “I don’t know. Anybody?”

  “Tucker’s Point is a small town, Emilee. I grew up with most of the guys around here. I’m not about to have a one-night stand and kick-start the gossip loop.”

  “All the more reason to come back to Boston with me,” Emilee immediately put in. “Come back for New Year’s. We’ll watch the fireworks, go to a wine show, stuff ourselves with triple cheese pizza. I’ll even set you up with a nice guy to kiss at midnight.”

  “You don’t know any nice guys.”

  Emilee was doing an internship with a celebrity management firm that specialized in sports teams. The men she knew were mostly footloose and narcissistic, criss-crossing the country from game to game. They definitely didn’t restrict themselves to the home team.

  “I work with hot guys. I’ll set you up with a hot guy.”

  “The guys you work with will get me into the tabloids.”

  “True enough. But it would be ‘star pitcher Tom Macbey spotted at midnight kissing an unidentified woman.’”

  Tessa couldn’t help but laugh at the truth of that.

  “What do you say?” Emilee cajoled.

  “I can’t come to Boston for New Year’s.”

  It was tempting, but Tessa had work to do. She knew her brother, Barry, was needed at his medical practice in Atlanta. The two didn’t contact each other very often. They’d never been close, and now they led very different lives. But they’d had to make some decisions about Land’s End now that Sophie was gone. Closing the house up for a few years seemed to make the most sense.

  “So when?” Emilee pressed.

  “Maybe later on in January.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  Tessa glanced around the boathouse. “Well, that’s the last of the stuff we’d left on the beach. Let the wind blow.”

  Job done, she led the way out, pushing the heavy door closed and latching it behind them. The breeze was picking up in the early evening, the temperature flirting with the freezing point.

  Waves broke with a roar against the huge rocks that surrounded the narrow finger of land that jutted out beyond the protected harbor. The Ambroise property was at the edge of the seaside town of Tucker’s Point. Fishing boats were moored in the gloom of the marina near the center of town, while B and Bs and small inns dotted the beachfront on either side, their lights coming on as the sun settled completely behind the hills.

  Historically a sleepy fishing village and tourist stop, Tucker’s Point had recently become popular with successful entrepreneurs. Lone eagles, they called themselves, businessmen and women who could work remotely from anywhere in the world. They’d escaped the bustle of New York, Chicago or Boston for the bucolic atmosphere of Maine.

  “I’ve given myself a craving for triple cheese pizza,” Emilee observed, fastening the top button of her brown leather jacket and turning her back to the wind and restless ocean.

  Comfort food sounded like a great idea to Tessa. “You want to go out or order in?”

  “How’s your wine cellar holding up?”

  “There are still about a thousand bottles down there.” Tessa had recently toured the temperature-controlled room set in a far corner of the original basement. It had been years since anyone had stocked it, but it would take many years more to drink their way through the existing bottles.

  “Then let’s order in. We’ll build a fire in that big old stone fireplace, get a little drunk.”

  “So, we won’t hang Sophie’s pictures tonight?”

  Emilee playfully grasped Tessa’s shoulder. “You’ve got to stop working so hard. Take a break. We’ll hang the pictures in the morning.”

  Tessa was itching to see how the haunting portrait of three women on a widow’s walk would look bracketed by the copper candle holders. They’d been crafted by her grandfather. But Emilee was here on vacation. So it was only fair to do something besides work.

  * * *

  IN HIS OFFICE atop Herrington Tower in the heart of downtown Boston, Colton Herrington scrolled through the property photos his Vice-President Rand Garvy had forwarded to his email account.

  “You’re positive they’re planning to sell?” he asked Rand without glancing up.

  The place was as picturesque as Tessa had once described—twelve lush-lawned acres in the sleepy little seaside village of Tucker’s Point, Maine. Most of the photos had been taken in summer, a few of them in the fall. The grounds were undeniably beautiful, the view of the ocean spectacular and the small castle perched in the middle of the property was, well, interesting.

  It had obviously been patched together over the years, one turret original, the other newer, slightly larger, giving the place an off-balance appearance. Though it had probably been quite grand in its time, the stone had aged, all manner of foliage creeping its way up the facade, obscuring the architectural details. Rand had discovered the foundation was deteriorating, and the roof needed replacing.

  “My guy in Atlanta talked to her brother,” Rand replied, dropping into a chair on the opposite side of Colton’s desk.

  It was nearly five o’clock, and the offices of Herrington Resorts had grown quiet.

  “Barry Ambroise?” Colton confirmed.

  “Barry Ambroise. He says they’re in the final stages of rezoning, and they’ll be putting it on the market as soon as the paperwork is complete. He’s been working at it for a while now.”

  “She never said anything to me.” Colton remembered that Tessa loved her ancestral property. He couldn’t imagine her wanting to sell. Then again, perhaps he hadn’t known her as well as he’d thought.

  “I guess you never truly know what’s go
ing on in another person’s life.”

  “We were engaged,” Colton pointed out.

  “And then she backed out.”

  There was no arguing with that.

  When Colton had asked Rand to check out her brother in Atlanta, he hadn’t even thought of Land’s End. He’d been curious about her family.

  With no plausible explanation for why she’d suddenly broken off their engagement, he’d wanted more facts. They’d been happy, deliriously so. He’d never met such a smart, sexy, funny woman.

  They’d debated, sure. But they always resolved the issue. Normally, it had just taken a little more information for her to see his side. She was great that way, always willing to come at things from a new perspective.

  He’d found himself wondering if she was battling other pressures, maybe secrets he didn’t know about. He’d discovered her great-aunt was ill. But that didn’t seem like any kind of explanation. So he’d looked into her brother next, not really sure what he was expecting to find, but unable to simply let it go.

  “You know you’re behaving like a stalker,” said Rand.

  Colton frowned at his friend. “I’m simply gathering additional information.”

  “You’re not going to find any by examining her house.”

  “You don’t know that,” Colton countered.

  “She changed her mind, Colton. It happens.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” As far as Colton was concerned, it didn’t make any kind of sense at all.

  Not that Colton was particularly proud of investigating her. It hadn’t been his first course of action. He’d spent more than a month getting on with his life, trying to forget about her. But he couldn’t seem to get closure. Their relationship felt like an unfinished race. His boat was in the lead, his muscles pumped. They were stroking in unison toward the finish line, when someone inexplicably blew the horn to scratch the event. And now he needed to find out why.

  “It makes sense to her,” Rand offered in an undertone.