Life Shocks Romances Contemporary Romance Box Set

by Jade Kerrion

  In silence, Felicity watched him walk away. She swallowed hard through the lump in her throat. Her fingers trembling, she swiped away the tear that trickled down her cheek. You’re right, Cody. Love doesn’t make it easy. It only makes it hurt more.

  ~*~

  Cody kept his foot on the gas pedal as he swung his Jeep around the curves of the narrow road to Evergreen.

  He had screwed up. The realization was a bitter taste in the back of his throat.

  Oh, God, how could he possibly have screwed up so badly with Felicity?

  He had spent months being careful—never pushing too hard, never asking for too much. But what did he do after Felicity told him that she loved him? All his brains dribbled out of his head, and he had issued an ultimatum that he, first, should have known not to do; and second, known that Felicity—strong-willed and more than openly in love with his family—would never accept.

  “Why!” He slammed the palm of his hand against the steering wheel. “God damn it!”

  Why had he imagined for even a moment that love was enough to open doors and clear a path to his future when all his life, he had encountered only closed doors and paths that led nowhere?

  Anger made him throw the steering wheel with more force than he intended. His Jeep swerved into a turn and skidded, spinning on the thin layer of ice on the shoulder. Cody grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and turned into the direction of the spin until he felt the car’s tires grip the road once more.

  Carefully, he guided his car to a stop on the side of the road. He cut the engine and leaned his head against the steering wheel. His heart pounded, and he wiped his sweaty palms on his denim jeans. Damn it. Could have died—and proved Felicity right. Stupid punk kid.

  He turned the key in the ignition and pulled back onto the road. He made it back to his Evergreen apartment without further incident, although emotionally, he was no more settled than he was when he had stalked out of Felicity’s cottage an hour earlier.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. No call. No text. His heart sank; only then did he realize he had been waiting for her to contact him, but Felicity had been utterly silent.

  ~*~

  Felicity glanced up when the doorbell rang. Stifling a sigh, she dragged herself from the couch and peeked out through the peephole. Carolyn stood on the other side of the door. Felicity pasted a smile on her face and opened the door.

  Carolyn looked up. Her smile faded. “My goodness, Felicity, what happened?” She stepped into the cottage and looked around. “Cody’s not here, is he?”

  “He was, but we had a fight and he left.”

  Carolyn took Felicity’s hand and drew her back to the couch. “Tell me about it?”

  Felicity’s shoulders sagged on a sigh. “Not much to tell. He wanted me to go to Evergreen…move in with him.”

  “Oh,” Carolyn said.

  A wealth of emotion, Felicity realized, was conveyed in that small sound.

  “And what did you say?”

  “No.”

  Carolyn’s eyes widened. “You did? Why?”

  “Because I have a job I love and a home I love—”

  Carolyn smiled with fond affection.

  Felicity continued. “And because I’m not going to let Cody use me as a substitute for his family. If I’m down there with him, it’ll be too easy for him to find excuses not to come up to Boulder.”

  Carolyn chuckled. “I’ve never seen anyone tackle problems head on the way you do. You’re probably very uncomfortable for Cody, who has spent years insulating himself from his family. You’re not insulation. You’re a conductor. If he hasn’t figured it out, then he only has himself to blame for his shortsightedness.”

  “But he did so well yesterday.”

  “He took a huge step yesterday, but you can’t undo twelve years of damage overnight. I expect it will be awhile before we’re truly a family again, but we’ve all made progress. You were responsible for it, Felicity. You helped us move forward.”

  “And I think I just set him back a few steps.”

  “He’s a grown man. Your response was your responsibility. His reaction was his.”

  Felicity pressed her lips together. “Did I make the right decision, though?”

  Carolyn said nothing. She waited in patient silence.

  “I think…not moving to Evergreen is the right decision, but I know I could have explained it better. He caught me off-guard, and I reacted emotionally.” Felicity ground her teeth. “He’s so annoying…so deluded…when he just dictates what he wants and expects that everyone will jump to attention and say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

  “Cody has always had that problem. He probably gets it from Reed.”

  “Reed? But he’s such a sweet man—”

  “With an extremely hard, even unyielding edge beneath all that polished politeness. Since retiring, he’s mellowed a great deal, but a less-demanding man could not have built Hartwell Financial Investments into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Cody has a bit of his father, but he also has a bit of me. Reed is fundamentally a strong man, inside and out; he’s incredibly—even annoyingly—well adjusted. Eric is a great deal like Reed, but even more urbane, if that’s possible. Cody, like me, is a bit more buffeted by his insecurities. In trying to cover them up, we overreact, which is what I suspect he did. And he loves you—” Carolyn’s reflective sigh was offset by a smile. “—which makes him far more likely to overreact.”

  Felicity glanced out the window. “I think I need to go to him and explain things better. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  Carolyn nodded. “We’ll set a place for you, but you should bring a change of clothes, just in case. The weather is expected to take a turn for the worse, and the mountain passes are a killer in snow.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Felicity parked her car in front of Cody’s apartment and stepped out into the first snowflakes swirling down from the overcast sky. She shrugged into her jacket, grabbed her bag and a floral arrangement from the trunk, and hurried to the front door.

  Cody answered within moments of her first knock. He stared at her. “What are you doing here?”

  She held up the basket of flowers. “Making your weekly delivery. I’d leave this outside except that it’s starting to snow, and the hyacinths won’t survive the cold.”

  He stepped aside, rather grudgingly, she thought, and let her into the apartment.

  “What’s with the bag?” he asked as he took the flowers from her and set it on top of the mantle.

  “An overnight bag, just in case. Your mother said it was going to snow, and she didn’t want me driving back if it got too bad.”

  “We’re expecting at least three feet here, and more in the mountains. You need snow tires on that car of yours, and even so, a two-wheel drive isn’t going to hack it in bad weather.”

  Were they going to talk about snow tires when they both knew it was the last thing either of them cared about? Felicity looked around before setting down her bag next to the hallway closet. “I’ll just put it here, out of the way.”

  “I’ll take it to the room,” Cody said. “You’re staying the night.”

  He stepped forward to pick up her bag, and without warning, seized her and hugged her tightly. His breath tickled her ear. “I’m sorry we argued.”

  “I am too. I came to talk about it.”

  Cody nodded and released her. “Now?”

  He could not have looked tenser if a killer had pulled a gun on him. Felicity shook her head. “It would be horrid if we argued again, and I couldn’t leave because of the weather. Can we just chill out and have ourselves a snow day?”

  Cody laughed, the sound dispelling his grim mood. “Sure, why not? I have everything we’d need to sit out a day or two.”

  “Two?”

  He gave her a sly look. “You’re not afraid of spending time here with me, are you? Not afraid that you might fall in love with the idea of just the two of us, sharing our lives, away from the in
terference and presence of others?”

  She refused to be baited. “I’ve been alone for a long time. In New York, even when I was dating Drew, I still felt alone most of the time. We saw each other twice a week, regular as clockwork. He picked the restaurant the first night, I picked for our second.”

  “Sounds about as dull as watching paint dry.” Cody led the way into the kitchen and set the kettle to boil.

  Felicity sat at the table, enjoying the gust of warm air blowing down from the vents. “Drew wasn’t dull. We had some great conversations and good times, but he wasn’t really into me, and I guess I didn’t mind as much as I should have.”

  “Probably because you weren’t really into him either,” Cody said shrewdly. “What happened to him?”

  “He went on to marry Marguerite Ferrara.”

  “Who?”

  “She’s a model. You’ll probably recognize her if you see her.”

  Cody gaped. “Wait—she’s the one whose nude photos, I mean videos, last year—”

  “That’s the one. I gather it became the turning point—the positive turning point—in their relationship. They’d been friends long before, but started dating shortly after that video incident, and eventually got married.”

  “Ballsy of him.” Cody’s tone was admiring. “Don’t think I know many men who could endure having other men see his wife naked.”

  “Drew’s a good man. And we all have different things we can endure and can’t endure.”

  The kettle whistled, and for a few moments, Cody busied himself with making coffee for him and tea for Felicity. He brought both mugs to the table and slid one across to her. “What’s yours?”

  “Huh?” She looked up from her steaming mug and stared at the handsome man seated across from her. He really did have the sexiest crooked smile, the kind that made it hard for a woman to recall that she was—just a little—angry with him. “What’s my what?”

  “What you can endure and what you can’t?”

  She slouched in her chair. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment of silence. “Sometimes you have to reach the edge of your endurance before you figure it out.”

  “And you haven’t?”

  “I don’t think so. What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I keep thinking there’s an edge, and I’m about to go over it—like when I ran away from home with nothing, really, not even a plan, or when Darrell died—but just when I think I’m about to fall, I look down and realize I’m still standing on ground, not air.”

  Felicity smiled at the mental image of Wile E. Coyote, hovering in midair, his skinny legs pumping desperately in an attempt to keep him aloft, seconds before the endless plunge into a fall.

  Cody continued. “Like you, I guess the edge wasn’t where I thought it was going to be.”

  “Guess you’re tougher than you look, Mr. Alpine Rescue,” she teased.

  He shrugged, and his smile turned sheepish. “The physical stuff is easy enough. It’s all the other stuff…”

  Felicity followed his gaze to the window. The snow was coming down harder and faster, blanketing the ground in white powder.

  Cody grimaced. “Digging out is going to be so much fun.”

  “At least it’s white. I remember, in New York City, it was gray and muddy within two seconds of hitting the ground.” She wrapped her hands around her mug, content to sit in the warm kitchen with Cody. Was this what living with him would be like? Easy conversation and the comfort of knowing that he was there and would always be there for her?

  Felicity understood the lure and power of his request. She wanted the happy ending too. She just wondered if she was taking the wrong shortcut to it.

  ~*~

  The day passed easily enough with old movies and board games. She accused him of cheating at Monopoly; he insisted that kisses, hugs, and tickles were considered valid currency in some cultures and surely the $2,000 Boardwalk rent she demanded from him could be repaid in different ways.

  He had carried her off to his bedroom and made love to her so thoroughly that, several orgasms later, she was prepared to allow that his sexual prowess was possibly worth more than $2,000 of Monopoly currency.

  “Possibly?” He looked insulted. By the time he was done making sure she got her $2,000 worth, she was too physically and sexually spent to get out of bed, so he brought dinner to her instead. They cuddled in bed, watching old movies over dinner trays heaped with spaghetti and pasta sauce, and chunks of French bread smothered in olive oil and raw garlic.

  The day had been perfect, Felicity reflected after Cody took the trays away. As she brushed her teeth, she stared at her reflection. The woman in the mirror looked flush with life and joy. Realist that she was, Felicity knew that not every day would be perfect, but even if half of them came as close to what that day had been, it would be an amazing life.

  She heard him moving about in the kitchen, probably cleaning up and loading the dishwasher. He loved her; he wanted her. She loved him; she wanted him. The only thing that separated them were the forty miles between Evergreen and Boulder—a trivial distance, really.

  In her head, her reasons for saying “no” were no longer clear.

  ~*~

  Felicity fell asleep easily that night, wrapped in the safety and security of Cody’s arms. Outside, the snow continued to fall.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Felicity woke to the soft rustling of cloth and the awareness that she huddled, alone, in the subtle indentation on the mattress vacated by Cody. She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at Cody as he quietly dressed in warm clothes.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered, even though there was no one else to wake up.

  She dragged her hand over her face. What time was it? It was still dark outside, although the moon reflecting off the snow created a silvery landscape. Snow was still falling hard. “You’re going in to work?”

  “It’s an emergency. Just got report of a group of climbers stranded on Capitol Peak. They weren’t prepared for the turn in the weather and are snowed in. The ‘copter’s going to pick them up. The pilot needs a trained team member to come along for the ride, just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” She tried to keep her voice calm, but she was certain Cody must have noticed the spike of alarm.

  “It’s no big deal,” Cody assured him. “Completely routine. We’ve done this hundreds of times. Land the ‘copter. Pick up the climbers. Come home. Drink hot chocolate. It’ll be a couple of hours, only because it’s a ways away, but it’s not difficult. I’ll be home in time for lunch.”

  His easy confidence dulled the edge of her concern but did not eliminate it.

  Cody zipped up his bright yellow parka, leaned down to kiss Felicity, and then walked away.

  She waited until she heard the front door lock before settling back in bed. She closed her eyes and drifted into uneasy sleep.

  ~*~

  Cody slouched against the cold steel wall of the helicopter as it puttered west. He looked out through the glass windows upon his favorite view in the world—the Southern Rocky Mountains blanketed in snow—but he was not in a mood to enjoy it just then. “Crazy punk kids. What possessed them to climb the toughest fourteener the day before a snowstorm?”

  “I don’t know, man,” Jake, the pilot, replied. “I wouldn’t even take on Capitol Peak on our best summer day.”

  “How much farther?” Cody asked. He recognized the familiar outline of the mountain, but it would take longer to get to where the climbers were stranded.

  “About another fifteen minutes. Hopefully, there’ll be a place to land, or you’ll have to rappel down to them.”

  Cody frowned. “I don’t recall many places to land on Capitol Peak.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” Jake sounded worried.

  Cody’s fears were realized when the helicopter circled the four climbers. He could not make out any sounds above the whirl of the helicopter blades, but he could see the climbers jump t
o their feet and wave their arms wildly. He looked at Jake. “How close can you get?”

  “Close enough to give you a fifty-foot drop.”

  “Good enough.” Cody fastened his rope to the helicopter, clipped the other end onto his belt, and then slid the door open. Frigid air blasted into the helicopter, so cold it immediately chafed his cheeks and lips. Best get it over with.

  Gripping the rope with his glove-covered hands and with his knees, he rappelled down to the climbers who stumbled wearily to meet him. “Everyone all right here?” he asked.

  Cody received muted assents from the four men. He looked them over. They appeared tough enough, shivering, but in great shape, everything considered. He jerked his chin up at the helicopter as he unclipped the rope from around his belt and attached it to the biggest man in the group. “One at a time. I’ll anchor the rope here while you climb. You first. The rest of you, give me a hand. Between the four of us, we should be able to keep the rope from moving around too much.” His gaze landed on the smallest of the four. “You’ll go next-to-last.” Cody grinned. “And don’t worry; I’ll be able to anchor you.”

  The first man, quick and agile in spite of his large build and the bulk of his winter clothes, clambered up the rope into the helicopter. Moments later, the clipped portion of the rope was tossed back down to the snow. The man looked out of the helicopter, waved a hand, and said something, although the wind whipped the sound away.

  Cody picked up the clip and fastened it to the next largest man. “You’re next.”

  The second man was halfway up the rope when a thunderous roar came from the mountain. Cody jerked his gaze up to the peak as a tidal wave of snow rushed toward him.

  From behind him someone screamed, “Avalanche!”

  A massive powder cloud blurred the landscape. Beneath the cloud, snow raced down the mountainside faster than a man could run, faster than a car.

  “Go, go, go!” Cody ordered. “Stay on top of the snow!” He spun and began running, dimly aware that overhead, the helicopter had jerked up spasmodically.

  The man on the rope screamed as he lost his grip and fell. The clip on his belt kept him from plunging to his death. He was still dangling from the rope when the helicopter vanished into the powder cloud.