Snow Day

by Shannon Stacey, Jennifer Greene

  “I’m sure there are a few of us around,” Colton replied noncommittally, removing his hand from Jack’s grip.

  The recognition of his name wasn’t unusual, but Colton hadn’t expected it under these circumstances. Here in the little town of Tucker’s Point, off the beaten track, in coastal Maine of all places, he’d anticipated anonymity.

  Sherry interjected in a staccato rhythm, her voice slightly shrill. “I thought we were going to freeze to death last night. I hope you people still have a fire going. We saw smoke coming out of your chimney before we went to bed. And then this blizzard. I can’t believe they haven’t fixed the problem yet.”

  “We have a fire,” Tessa told them, her tone polite but even. “Please, do come in.”

  Colton was pretty sure he detected a note of sarcasm in her final words as she pushed the door shut behind them. It seemed to clank with a level of resignation.

  “Herrington Resorts?” Jack pressed Colton for information.

  “Yes,” Colton admitted, wishing he’d left his last name out of the introduction.

  He’d prefer to have visited Land’s End anonymously. The last thing he needed was a competitor figuring out that he was interested in this property. He had Barry’s word that he wouldn’t look at other offers, but nothing had been signed yet.

  Jack immediately snagged his hand again, pumping it enthusiastically. “Well, well. Let me say, it’s a great pleasure to meet you.” Jack’s smile stretched a mile wide. “I’m a senior agent with Faust and Michaels, wealth management.”

  Colton felt his jaw tighten. Being marooned by the storm was bad enough. Being discovered at Land’s End was slightly worse. And the last thing he needed today was an impromptu sales pitch from a financial company representative.

  “Have you heard of Faust and Michaels?” Jack asked him in what was obviously the opening of a much-practiced pitch.

  “Why don’t we go inside,” Tessa interjected brightly. “Can I take your coats?”

  Colton silently thanked her for the distraction and immediately took advantage.

  “Here, let me help,” he told Sherry.

  Without waiting for her response, he deftly peeled the glossy black coat from her shoulders.

  “Do you have a hanger?” she asked, glancing dubiously at the row of coat hooks along the wall. “It’s genuine mink.”

  “Tessa?” Colton wasted no time in jumping on the opportunity for a temporary escape. “Can you help me find some hangers?”

  He relieved Jack of his coat and strode into the great room, making a purposeful beeline for the hallway that led to the stairs. Barry glanced up at him curiously as he passed, but didn’t make a comment.

  Colton made it to the cool, dim second floor. He paused while Tessa caught up.

  “What was that all about?” she huffed as she came to the top. “There are plenty of hangers downstairs.”

  “Jack was about to launch into a sales pitch.”

  “Just say no.”

  “Sometimes it’s not that simple.” Colton didn’t want to have to be rude, and Jack came across as exceedingly persistent.

  “I bet you’re tougher than he is,” Tessa put in.

  “Back in Boston, he’d never even get an appointment.”

  “I take it back. It’s Lily who’s tougher than he is.”

  Colton drew himself up, speaking with mock indignation at the suggestion his assistant was somehow protecting him. “Hey.”

  Tessa grinned, obviously pleased at his reaction to her joke.

  “Are they your friends?” he asked.

  “They live next door.” She started down the hall. “They moved in a few years ago, leveled a heritage house and built a glass-and-steel monstrosity. They seem to like Barry. But they thought Sophie was dotty, and I think they still consider me an annoying kid. Maybe they’re waiting to see if I get rich before they decide to be cordial.”

  Colton followed. “You know, I was very sorry to hear about Sophie.”

  He realized his condolences were coming far too late. There was really no excuse for that. He should have contacted Tessa as soon as he’d heard. Though neither of them spent a lot of time talking about their families, he knew she’d loved her great-aunt.

  “She died peacefully.” Tessa pushed open one of the bedroom doors.

  “You must miss her.”

  “I do.” Tessa’s voice was soft.

  “It was good of you to take care of her this year.”

  “I was honored to have the time with her.”

  Colton hesitated, but saw no reason not to speak his mind. “So, you’ll stay here by yourself, then? Is that the plan?”

  He suddenly realized they were in Tessa’s own bedroom. It was one of the nicest rooms in the castle. The floor was covered in a thick burgundy carpet. Her curtains and quilts were gold, and she’d decorated the walls with fabric hangings instead of paintings. It softened the room, making it feel warm and welcoming.

  A small fire burned in her fireplace, flicking against the stone hearth and a pair of cream-and-rose-striped armchairs.

  She disappeared into a walk-in closet, her voice hollow and echoing back. “Are you about to tell me this place is too big for one person?”

  She was acting as though he’d been critical, which he hadn’t. At least not yet.

  “This place is too big for twenty people,” he responded honestly.

  She returned with two coat hangers. “Well, I happen to like it.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  “You don’t need a reason,” he allowed, finding himself quite curious. “But I bet you have one.”

  She glanced around the bedroom as if she was remembering snippets of her childhood. Perhaps there’d been a dollhouse in the far corner. Or maybe she’d used the padded bench seat to experiment with makeup. Had she whispered secrets with friends, fought with her mother, written in a diary?

  He wished he was allowed to ask her those personal questions. But he wasn’t. That moment in his life had passed. He realized now that he should have tried hard to get to know this part of her life while he’d had the chance.

  “This was your room when you were a little girl,” he ventured.

  “It was,” she admitted, her expression going less guarded as she cast a gaze around them. “Somehow, since Sophie’s death, the memories are fresher.”

  “Good memories?” he prompted, curiosity growing. “You know, you never talked much about your family.”

  “You never talked much about yours.”

  He felt a sharp spike of emotion. “I stopped talking about my father the day he walked out the door.”

  “Colton.” She’d pressed him for details a few times while they were dating, but he’d always put her off.

  “Leave it.”

  “You had your grandfather.”

  “My grandfather was busy running the hotels. Mostly, I had nannies and drivers.”

  “Poor little rich boy?”

  “Something like that. But we’re talking about you. There was no reason for you to stay quiet.”

  Pain flashed briefly in her eyes, but she blinked it away. Then she gave a little laugh. “It’s because I always thought you’d like my mother’s version, where I was a perfect little girl. And I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell it.”

  “You’re not making sense,” he pointed out.

  “I was a hellion.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “Okay, I wanted to be a hellion. But my mother wanted me to be perfect. So, I did both.” She ran her fingertips along the back of a striped armchair. “Sometimes I was her version of me, and I knew those were the stories you’d like.”

  “I’d have liked any stories,” he
told her honestly.

  She gazed at him, eyes opaque, for a long moment. “I ran too wild, yelled too loud and got dirty a lot.”

  He found himself smiling at the mental picture. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s messy. My mother hated messy. You hate messy.”

  He shrugged. He supposed it was true. At least it was now. But he’d been a kid once.

  “Tell me a messy story,” he encouraged her.

  “I had a cocker spaniel named Ralph.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “He loved the beach,” she continued. “We’d spend hours down there, getting wet, sandy, the wind tangling our hair. It drove my mother crazy.”

  “Kids tend to get dirty.”

  His words seemed to surprise her. “Did you get dirty as a kid?”

  “I told you I mostly lived in hotels, right?”

  She nodded.

  “We stayed in the city locations more than the beach resorts, so there wasn’t much dirt around. I spent a lot of time with tutors and my nannies. There weren’t many opportunities to make friends when I was young.”

  “I didn’t realize.” There was sympathy in her voice. “I mean, I hadn’t thought about how all the other kids in the hotels would come and go every few weeks.”

  “That was the reality.”

  “Did it bother you?”

  “It took me a long time to realize it wasn’t normal.”

  Her eyes took on a faraway expression. “When I was about eight,” she told him, “I realized living in a castle wasn’t exactly normal. Before that, I just assumed anyone who wanted a castle would buy themselves one. I thought my friends’ parents preferred smaller houses in town.”

  Colton found himself smiling. “It wasn’t until my mom died, and my dad left, that I realized my life was very different from most kids’.”

  “Have you heard from him?” Tessa asked.

  Tessa was well aware that his dad was a reclusive writer living in Paris. What he’d never shared with her was the pain he’d felt when his only living parent turned his back on both the family and the family business.

  “He doesn’t bother with Christmas cards,” Colton stated flatly, intending to change the subject.

  “You should go see him.”

  “Why would I go see him?”

  Charles Herrington had descended into inconsolable grief when Colton’s mother had been killed in a car accident. Apparently deciding he was incapable of providing emotional or any other kind of support to his grieving thirteen-year-old son, he left Colton in the care of his grandfather. Charles had absolutely no interest in the family business. He’d come home only rarely, and the company had eventually passed directly from Colton’s grandfather to Colton.

  At twenty-three, when his grandfather died, Colton had become CEO of the multinational corporation. It would have been invaluable to have had some guidance from his father, but Charles had remained too self-absorbed to notice or to care.

  “He’s your father,” said Tessa.

  “And?” Colton demanded.

  “And, you’ll regret it if you don’t make peace. Every day, I think of things I should have said to Sophie, done with Sophie. I wished she’d told me more stories about her life, her paintings, my relatives—anything.”

  Colton dropped the coats over the back of one of the armchairs. “What would he tell me? The man lives almost entirely inside his own head. He’s been cloistered in some crappy little Paris apartment for years, pounding out those dense, inaccessible stories that only the most pretentious academics can stomach.”

  Tessa stared up at him in silence for a long time. “Have you ever told him you’re this angry?”

  “I’m not angry.” Colton regretted his emotional outburst. He’d long since come to terms with a life without his parents. It wasn’t like him to care about his father’s circumstances, never mind talk about them.

  “Then what are you?”

  “Resigned.”

  She paused again. “It’s okay to have feelings, Colton.”

  He had feelings. He had plenty of feelings. He simply wasn’t in the habit of letting them out for the world to see.

  “You ever do something just because you felt like it?” Tessa asked.

  “I do most things because I feel like it.” Why did she think he was trying to buy her land?

  “I mean, not because it’s smart, not because it’s right, just because it makes you feel good in the moment?”

  He gazed down at her soft, flowing hair, blue eyes, flushed cheeks, red lips. He could think of something that would make him feel very good in this particular moment. But it was a colossally bad idea. He’d kissed her twice since arriving yesterday. Each time, he’d walked away with his heart hollow, his longing for her even more acute. If he was going to get over her, to forget about her and get on with the rest of his life, not kissing her would be a good place to start.

  “No,” he answered huskily.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would be foolish.” Feelings were all well and good, but the world didn’t run on feelings, especially the business world. It ran on cold, hard facts and logical decisions.

  “You should think about trying it,” she tossed off loftily.

  “I think about trying it all the time.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  She cocked her head sideways. “So, give. What is it you feel like doing?”

  Staring down at her, desire rippling through him, wanting so damn badly to throw caution to the wind, he realized how dangerous the conversation had become. He was about to do exactly as she suggested, do something very stupid based on emotion alone. He couldn’t let that happen.

  He girded himself, shaking his head. No way, no how was he telling her that what he wanted was to kiss her, ravish her, make hot, hard love to her until they both cried for mercy.

  He scooped up the fur coats, relieved her of the hangers and turned for the door.

  “Playing hooky from work,” she guessed from behind him.

  “I’m the boss,” he called back, pushing down hard on the emotion in his chest and his gut.

  “Eating a giant hot fudge sundae.”

  “We really have to do something about your sweet tooth.”

  “Skipping a day at the gym.”

  He paused at the door, without turning. “I like the gym.”

  “Dressing up in lacy ladies’ underwear.”

  “No. What is the matter with you?”

  She gave a little pout. “I like dressing up in lacy ladies’ underwear.”

  That was it. He was done. No man could be expected to fight the image that bloomed inside his mind.

  He turned and marched down the hallway, rounded the staircase and made his way back to the safety of the great room. Bring on the financial sales pitch. It was better than dueling with Tessa.

  * * *

  TESSA DIDN’T KNOW what it would take to actually pierce Colton’s logical shell. Maybe it couldn’t be pierced. She knew he didn’t operate on emotions. But maybe he didn’t even have emotions. Maybe she was fighting to find something that didn’t exist.

  As she entered the great room, she forced herself to face the truth. The Colton she needed didn’t exist. And she couldn’t be the Tessa he deserved. Impasse. There was nowhere for them to go.

  Sherry’s voice chirped from the big sofa, regaling Colton with tales of the exclusive clubs they belonged to, the fabulous vacations they took, all the work and money that had gone into their new house and her husband’s plans to work his way up to VP in the company. It was a tag-team conversation, with Sherry lobbing Jack an opening, and him taking over, presumably so she could catch her breath.

  Tagged in, Jack went
on about his international business trips, his wealthy clients, their success and the stellar service available through Faust and Michaels. It was a fairly shameless commercial.

  Emilee moved up beside her, mumbling in her ear. “Are we having fun yet?”

  Tessa’s attention was stuck fast to Colton. “He looks so lifelike.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s so sexy and handsome, and his deep voice just strums across your nervous system like it was custom-designed.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “But there’s no way to break through that iron-hard, emotional control. If he can’t let himself be imperfect, how’s he ever going to forgive it in someone else?”

  “What the heck happened up there?”

  “We hung up some coats.”

  “Tessa.” There was a warning tone in Emilee’s voice.

  “And Colton was Colton. As usual, just like always. In his wildest fantasies, he’d never consider dressing up in ladies’ underwear.”

  “Excuse me?” Emilee squeaked.

  “I guess skipping the gym was a more realistic expectation,” Tessa admitted.

  “Are you supposed to be making sense?”

  “Not really.”

  Sherry laughed very loudly, her hands fluttering in the air as she made some kind of a point. “You’re so right, Jack. And the third-floor balcony is to die for. We had Aberdeen and Questin on retainer. You know, the New York City firm that—”

  “I have to admit,” Emilee growled. “The more I listen to them, the less I like their house.”

  Tessa forced her gaze away from Colton, looking out the dining room window, hoping against hope for a little light at the end of the tunnel. But the storm was still going full force.

  “Any good news on the weather front?” she asked Emilee.

  “Government offices and businesses staying closed. The governor is asking people to stay off the roads. They’re forecasting fifteen inches of snow by nightfall.”

  “What about the power situation?”

  “Crews can’t even start work until the wind lets up. They’re saying lines are down, trees are falling, but a full assessment will have to wait.”

  Tessa puffed out a hard breath. “So, I guess the Biddles are ours for the night.”