Snowed In
Page 1
Romance in the Freezer Aisle
“Did your dog die?”
“What?”
“Is that why you’re crying? Your dog?”
“No, I don’t have a dog.”
“Well, what else is there to cry about?”
“My boyfriend, okay? My stupid boyfriend decided after two years that he’s ‘not feeling it’ so he dumped me.”
“Idiot.”
“And I was naked!”
She caught him looking her up and down, no doubt taking in her spinster sweats and frazzled hair. “Double idiot.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You know what you need?”
“A hit man?”
He laughed again, quick and smooth. “No. What you need is someone to take your mind off your boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.”
“Are you propositioning me? In a grocery store?”
Also by Sarah Title
Kentucky Home
Kentucky Christmas
Home Sweet Home
SNOWED IN
SARAH TITLE
A Southern Comfort Novella
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Romance in the Freezer Aisle
Also by Sarah Title
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Copyright Page
To the real MMM, my oldest and dearest friend.
Thanks for the inspiration, but not in the way you
are all thinking about, you pervs.
Chapter 1
“I don’t think this is working out.”
It sure isn’t, Maureen thought as Dave climbed off her, tossing one leg to her side of the bed.
But he had never commented on it before.
“I’m sorry. What?” Maureen pushed her sweaty hair out of her eyes. Not her sweat, she thought with a little grimace. She never got around to working up a sweat with Dave.
“Love daze, huh? I just said, I don’t think this is going to work out. This thing with us.”
Maureen saw his thin lips forming the words, words that looked remarkably like the words she was hearing. She just wasn’t sure she believed her eyes—or her ears. This thing? Was he referring to their two years together, three months of which had been spent crammed into his studio apartment because he was “too busy” for them to look for a place together? Two years of her bringing him lunch when he ran out of cash, writing his résumé when he lost his job recently, and unreciprocated oral sex?
“Are you dumping me? In bed? While we’re still naked?”
“Come on, you would have wanted one last hurrah,” he said, slapping her affectionately on the ass. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. I’ll give you plenty of time to find a new place. Now, hush, the weather’s on.”
Still naked and sprawled on top of the covers, Dave flipped the TV on. The familiar, hair-gelled, goofy-tied Channel 11 weatherman told them about a cold front coming in. Duh, it was February.
Maureen just sat there, the minimal post-coital glow disappearing into waving blobs of blue and white over the mountains to the east. She was naked, dumped, and watching the weather.
She hated winter.
Chapter 2
By the time she got to the ice cream freezer, Maureen couldn’t hold it in any more. So she just let it go. Why not? It was a Friday night. Now that she was apparently single, why not let fat, ugly tears stain her oversized, hooded sweatshirt while she stood in the ice cream aisle of the grocery store?
“There’s frozen yogurt, you know.”
Maureen jumped and turned to see . . . well, a god. He was at least a head taller than she. His brown hair was a smidge too long and curled into the collar of his flannel shirt. His jaw was strong and sharp—a man face. His dark eyebrows emphasized deep blue eyes—eyes that were looking at her with curiosity, sympathy, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, a hint of mischief.
“I’m sorry?”
“If you’re so upset about the calories, try frozen yogurt.”
“Oh, no, it’s not that, it’s just—” Maureen was stammering. Stammering in front of a god.
“Kidding.”
“Oh. Ha.” Bad jokes. Okay, so he wasn’t perfect.
“Sorry. I do my best work in produce.”
Damn, that was cute. He’s definitely perfect, Maureen thought as she stood there dumbly, unable to process the perfection of his face (and those shoulders—even through his beat-up leather jacket she could see he had strong shoulders). Not to mention the fact that a god was making bad jokes at her while she stood crying with the freezer door open.
“Can I just—” He reached around her for a pint of mint chocolate chip.
“Oh, my gosh, yes, sorry.” Maureen completed that articulate thought by backing into her shopping cart.
“Hey, easy now,” the god said as he placed a steadying hand on her arm. Even through her sweatshirt she could feel his hand was warm and strong.
“Listen, are you okay?”
“What? Yes! I’m fine.”
“It’s just that I don’t always see beautiful women crying in front of the ice cream.”
Ha. Beautiful. “Where do you usually see them crying?”
He laughed. “Nowhere, if I can help it.”
“Well, I don’t usually do this. I’m just a little . . . emotional,” she sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Smooth, Maureen. Real smooth.
“I can see that.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“The only thing that will bother me is if I leave this store without seeing you smile. I bet you have a great smile.”
She raised an eyebrow. Was he flirting? He was pretty sure of himself. Probably came from being so perfect.
“Ah, a look of disdain,” he said. “We’re getting somewhere. So, what’s it gonna take to make you smile?”
“Maybe I just don’t feel like smiling, okay? Maybe I have nothing to smile about.”
“Did your dog die?”
“What?”
“Is that why you’re crying? Your dog?”
“No, I don’t have a dog.”
“Did you lose your job?”
“No.”
“Inoperable cancer?”
“No! That’s not funny.”
“Well, what else is there to cry about?”
“My boyfriend, okay? My stupid boyfriend decided after two years that he’s ‘not feeling it’ so he dumped me.”
“Idiot.”
“And I was naked!”
She caught him looking her up and down, no doubt taking in her spinster sweats and frazzled hair. “Double idiot.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You know what you need?”
“A hit man?”
He laughed again, quick and smooth. “No. What you need is someone to take your mind off your boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.”
“Are you propositioning me? In a grocery store?”
He looked a little flustered, but soldiered on. “I’ve seen it dozens of times. Beautiful, sharp women dropped by undeserving idiot men. And you’re going to go home and drown your sorrows in ice cream and wonder what you did wrong.”
“Are you suggesting I shouldn’t eat ice cream?”
“Hey, I’ve got no problem with ice cream,” he said
, indicating the pint melting in his cart. “I have a problem with you feeling bad.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know you’re gorgeous.”
Maureen snorted.
“Okay, almost a smile. Have a drink with me?” He took a step forward.
Maureen felt somewhere in the back of her mind that she should step back. But he smelled good, like that crisp Irish soap she loved, so she didn’t.
Instead, she matched his step forward.
“Gorgeous, huh?”
“Absolutely. I love this hair.” He fingered a blonde curl that had escaped her ponytail. “Your freckles are adorable.” He ran a finger over her cheeks. “Your lips,” he ran a thumb over her lower lip, and Maureen couldn’t take it anymore.
She took that last step, closing the distance between them, and his mouth came down to meet hers. His lips were soft and warm, and she felt his fingers gently tickle her neck as she opened her mouth to let him in.
All of her tension, all of her heartache rushed out of her the moment her tongue touched his. At first he was tentative, but she began to wrestle his mouth, fighting to get closer. His hands moved boldly down her back, pulling her hips until she slammed into him. She threw her arms around his neck and tilted her head so he could move deeper, deeper, exploring her with teeth and tongue. She lifted her foot onto the lip of the open freezer, tipping her knee out so she cradled his hips and the impressive bulge in his jeans. She clamped her fingers in his hair to get a hold on him because she thought she was melting away and she wasn’t ready for this to be over. This was nothing like kissing Dave. This man was a complete stranger and his kiss possessed her, bewitched her more thoroughly than Dave ever had. He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet so she was pressed against him, molded to solid muscle. He felt so strong and so sure.
But a girl had to breathe. Reluctantly, she pulled back and he gently lowered her to the ground. She was glad to see he was as dazed and breathless as she was.
“Whoa.”
His simple exclamation, said on a swift exhale, hit her right in the gut. She had done that to him. She, disheveled and in sweatpants, had flummoxed a god.
She looked up into those deep blue eyes, still dark with passion.
And she smiled.
“I guess I do have something to smile about.”
And she turned and pushed her cart toward the produce aisle.
By the time Gavin’s body registered his brain’s message—Go after her, stupid!—she was gone. He abandoned his cart and ran—not quite like a madman, but close—but she wasn’t in produce, not in canned goods, not in the bread aisle. For Christ’s sake, the store wasn’t that big. But he’d lost her.
The hottest kiss he had ever experienced in thirty years of kissing women, and he didn’t even know her frigging name.
He went back to retrieve his cart, and stuck his head in the freezer for a few seconds, just for good measure.
Chapter 3
Gavin groaned as he reached blindly for his cell phone. It couldn’t be past six in the morning—way too early for a phone call. If this was the new guy again, he was getting fired. Gavin had hired him a week ago based on his impeccable résumé, and so far his business sense had proven sound. His personality was another story. It wasn’t that Gavin didn’t enjoy nineties hair metal. He just did not enjoy it filtered through someone else’s headphones when he was trying to concentrate. His new employee knocked it off when Gavin asked him to, but it was too late. Gavin was singing Mötley Crüe all day.
Where the hell had he left his phone? Ever since that hot kiss with the mystery woman in the grocery store, his brain had been fried. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus on work, and had been to the grocery store every day, standing in the ice cream aisle like a lost puppy. And apparently throwing his phone under his pillow at night.
“Hello?” he mumbled, trying to convey both annoyance and competence.
“Get your ass out of bed. I need a ride to the grocery store.” Pippa. He should have known he’d regret giving the sweet, elderly widow who lived next door his cell number. Ha, sweet. But still: the grocery store. He shook his head—that had to stop. He had to accept that the mystery woman would remain a mystery.
“Pippa, it’s”—he fumbled toward the clock radio—“ugh, it’s six-thirty.” Not as early as he’d thought. Still, too early for the grocery store.
“I told Marv I’d make him cupcakes for his birthday.” Marv? Right, the new boyfriend.
“Isn’t Marv massively diabetic?”
“Yes, but I found a sugar-free recipe online.” Gavin would also regret setting up Pippa’s internet connection. “I need some of this weird sweetener stuff. And that dumb-bum weatherman on channel eleven says a snowstorm is coming. You need bread and milk.” Gavin took a bachelor’s approach to grocery shopping: takeout menus and frozen dinners. And ice cream. He groaned.
“Can it wait until lunch?”
“Fine. I just wanted to hear that sexy morning voice of yours, anyway. Take an early lunch. Pick me up at eleven-thirty. If you’re late, I’ll call again.”
“Yes, ma’am. How long until you get your license back?”
“The judge said not in his lifetime. He seemed pretty out of shape, though, so hopefully soon.” Pippa’s favorite saying was, “I’m old, I ain’t slow.” The latter, the ain’t slow part, definitely applied to her driving. It was terrifying, especially since she could barely see over the steering wheel.
“Okay. Eleven-thirty.”
“Sweet dreams, Gavin.”
Gavin snorted into the phone, but only got a dial tone in return. He wanted to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. The grocery store. Enough of that. He would just wait in the car.
Chapter 4
Maureen really wished she could stop crying. Dave wasn’t worth any tears, let alone two weeks’ worth. But here she was on a Tuesday afternoon, standing in front of the ice cream—again—crying her eyes out.
It wasn’t just the double chocolate brownie flavor that brought back fond memories of Dave taking care of her when she had strep throat last year. It wasn’t Dave at all.
It was that damned god.
She still could not believe she’d acted so brazenly. She wasn’t even that brazen in private. But there was something about that guy and the way he looked at her that made her want to, well, make out with a stranger in the grocery store. Maybe he was right. Maybe she needed someone to get her over Dave. Dave wasn’t worth it. But they had a long history, and it was going to take more than one hot kiss with a god in the freezer aisle to erase two years together.
Thinking of that kiss still curled her toes. It had been two weeks¸ but every time she thought of it she could feel his arms wrapping around her and lifting her up to get closer.
She opened the freezer to cool her heated face and screwed her eyes shut against the embarrassment. Sure, yes, the kiss was hot—amazingly hot—but he was a stranger. And they had been in public.
Was it any wonder she’d avoided the grocery store for two weeks?
“What’s the matter, girlie?”
Maureen jerked her head out of the freezer, then sniffled at the tiny, bronzed woman standing in front of her.
“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.”
“Then why are you crying into the novelties?”
This woman was truly tiny. Maureen was used to women being smaller than she, but this woman barely reached five feet, even with her curled and teased bleached-blonde hair.
“Because there’s only one reason I can see crying into the novelties,” the tiny, strange woman said, “and that’s because you just found out you’re lactose intolerant. Any other reason probably has to do with a man and I didn’t burn my bra in 1969 to have liberated young women of the twenty-first century crying into a perfectly good box of Drumsticks over something as ridiculous as a little heartache. Hey, that sounds like a country song. What’s your name, girlie?”
Maureen hesi
tated. She shouldn’t talk to strangers, should she? Last time she did, she’d practically melted the inventory. But this woman had a voice like sandpaper and her skin was as tan and leathery as her beat-up purse. Not too much danger of a hot make-out session.
“I’m Maureen.”
“Pippa. Nice to meet you. Now get your head out of that freezer and tell ol’ Pippa what the trouble is.”
“You’re not going to want to hear it. It’s about a man.”
“I’m going to be mad that it’s about a man, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it.”
The idea of unburdening herself to a complete and tiny stranger had a sudden appeal to Maureen. Sure, she’d told her friends about her break-up, but there’s only so much “I told you so” a girl can take before she considers changing her number. Pippa didn’t know Dave, who didn’t know that he wasn’t good enough for her but still dumped her. Pippa would be an impartial judge. That’s what Maureen needed, because she felt that an impartial judge would surely rule in her favor.
She would leave out the part about kissing the god.
“I got dumped.”
“Figured that out. I’m old, but I ain’t slow. Did you love him?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so, yes.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Maureen and Dave used to say “I love you” all the time. Dave said it to her after just a few months. So what if by the end of the relationship it was just a way to end a phone call? That didn’t mean they didn’t love each other.
“Yes. I mean, I’m sure that I did love him . . . at one point.”
“How long were you together? Let me guess. Six months?”
“No, two years.” There was maybe a small hint of satisfaction in proving the stranger wrong.
“Hmm, long time. How did you meet?”
So Maureen launched into the story. She’d finished library school and was trying to settle into Kentucky and her new job. She’d made some friends in town—Hollow Bend was friendly like that—but she wanted more, so she tried online dating. The first few guys she went out with were nonstarters, to say the least—she was pretty sure the guy with the lisp was lying about being divorced. Then she was matched with Dave. He was handsome, funny, interested in doing stuff, just like her.