Snowflakes and Silver Linings

by Cara Colter

  A wedding guest from her past…

  After a rocky year, Casey Caravetta pulls herself together and puts on a smile for her best friend’s Christmas Eve wedding. However, she hadn’t expected to see Turner Kennedy, the first man to break her heart.

  Special Forces commando Turner is now hard, dark and dangerous, tortured by his experiences of war. Coming face-to-face again with beautiful Casey is a painful reminder of the path he might have taken.

  Back then they were living on borrowed time, but now—with a sprinkling of holiday magic—they have a another chance…if only they’re prepared to believe it!

  The Gingerbread Girls

  Coming together in time for Christmas

  The Gingerbread Inn is where best friends Emily, Andrea and Casey spent much of their childhood. Now all grown-up, they’re back—older, wiser, but still with as much need of a little Massachusetts magic as ever. As Christmas approaches, and three gorgeous men appear on the scene, is it time to create some new treasured memories?

  Don’t miss

  HER SECRET LITTLE BABY BUMP

  by Shirley Jump in October 2013

  MARRY ME UNDER THE MISTLETOE

  by Rebecca Winters in November 2013

  And SNOWFLAKES AND SILVER LININGS

  by Cara Colter in December 2013

  Dear Reader

  You have probably heard the analogy about a duck swimming in a pond: all you see is seemingly effortless grace, a beautiful picture. But beneath the surface of the water the duck’s feet are paddling like crazy!

  A series like this one, about childhood friends The Gingerbread Girls, is the same way. By the time it gets to you, the reader, our hope is that all the stories fit together with effortless grace to create a beautiful total picture. But below the surface a great many people have been paddling like crazy!

  Shirley took the lead on these stories and came up with a great premise and setting. Her preliminary structure made my job relatively easy. Still, you would not believe how many emails go back and forth just to name a lake! And a town. And what was the name of the dog again? And is it a male or female?

  While we were working on this book, my days unfolded with, Where is that email? What did we decide about that? Can we change that character’s name? The dates of my story are making Rebecca’s timeline terribly challenging. I think I made a change to my hero that I forgot to tell Shirley about.…

  In the end I think the ones paddling the hardest might have been our amazing team of editors. They read carefully for inconsistencies, caught embarrassingly glaring errors and did it all with patience and grace, never losing their enthusiasm for creating the best possible story.

  So my heartfelt thanks to everyone who made sure all the ducks lined up on this one!

  Sincerely,

  Cara Colter

  SNOWFLAKES AND SILVER LININGS

  Cara Colter

  Cara Colter lives in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recipient of an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the Love and Laughter category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website, www.cara-colter.com.

  Recent books by Cara Colter

  HOW TO MELT A FROZEN HEART

  SECOND CHANCE WITH THE REBEL*

  SNOWED IN AT THE RANCH

  BATTLE FOR THE SOLDIER’S HEART

  THE COP, THE PUPPY AND ME

  TO DANCE WITH A PRINCE

  RESCUED BY HIS CHRISTMAS ANGEL

  RESCUED IN A WEDDING DRESS

  WINNING A GROOM IN 10 DATES

  *Mothers in a Million

  These and other titles by Cara Colter are available in ebook format from www.Harlequin.com.

  With thanks to Shirley and Rebecca

  I am in awe of your creative genius, amazing discipline, and unflagging professionalism.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT

  PROLOGUE

  CHRISTMAS.

  Turner Kennedy was a man who took pride in his ability not just to cope with fear, but to shape it into a different force entirely.

  He had jumped from airplanes at 8,200 meters into pitch blackness and an unknown welcome.

  He had raised all kinds of havoc “outside the fence” in hostile territory.

  He had experienced nature’s mercurial and killing moods without the benefit of shelter, sweltering heat to excruciating cold, sometimes in the same twenty-four-hour period.

  He had been hungry. And lost. He had been pushed to the outer perimeters of his physical limits, and then a mile or two beyond.

  He had been the hunted, stranded in the shadows of deeply inhospitable places, listening for footfalls, smelling the wind, squinting against impenetrable darkness.

  It was not that he had not been afraid, but rather that he had learned he had a rare ability to transform fear into adrenaline, power, energy.

  And so the irony of his current situation was not lost on him. After a long period away, he was back in the United States, a country where safety was a given, taken for granted.

  And he was afraid.

  He was afraid of three things.

  He was afraid of sleeping. In his dreams, he was haunted by all the things he had refused to back down from, haunted by a failure that more fear, on his part, might have changed a devastating outcome.

  And maybe it was exhaustion caused by that first fear that had led to the second one.

  Turner Kennedy was afraid of Christmas.

  Maybe not the coming Christmas, specifically, but of his memories of ones gone by. Those memories were lingering at the edges of his mind, waiting to leap to the forefront. Today, it had been seeing an angel Christmas tree topper in a store window.

  Without warning, Turner had been transported back more than two decades.

  They came down the stairs, early morning light just beginning to touch the decorated living room. The tree was eight feet tall. His mother had done it all in white that year. White lights, white Christmas ornaments, a white angel on top of the tree. The house smelled of the cookies she had baked for Santa while he and his brothers had spent Christmas Eve on the backyard skating rink their dad had made for them.

  It had been past ten when his mother had finally insisted they come in. Even then, Turner hadn’t wanted to. He could not get enough of the rink, of the feeling of the ice beneath his blades, of the cold on his cheeks, the wind in his hair, the power in his legs as he propelled himself forward. The whole world had seemed infused with magic....

  But now the magic seemed compromised. Though the cookies were gone, nothing but crumbs remaining, Santa hadn’t been there. The gifts from Santa were always left, unwrapped, right there on the hearth. This morning, that place yawned empty.

  He and his younger brothers, Mitchell and David, shot each other worried looks.

  Had they be
en bad? What had they done to fall out of Santa’s favor?

  His parents followed them down the steps, groggy, but seemingly unaware that anything was amiss.

  “Let’s open some gifts,” his father said. “I’ve been wanting to see what’s in this one.”

  His dad seemed so pleased with the new camera they had gone together to buy him. His mother opened perfume from Mitchell, a collectible ornament from David. She’d looked perplexed at Turner’s way more practical gift of a baseball mitt, and then laughed out loud.

  And just as her laughter faded, Turner had heard something else.

  A tiny whimper. Followed by a sharp, demanding yelp.

  It was coming from the laundry room, and he bolted toward the sound before his younger brothers even heard it. In a wicker basket with a huge red bow on it was a puppy. Its fur was black and curly, its eyes such a deep shade of brown a boy could get lost in them. When Turner picked it up, it placed already huge paws on his shoulders, and leaned in, frantic with love, to lick his cheeks. Much to the chagrin of his brothers, Chaos had always loved Turner best of all....

  Turner snapped himself out of it, wiped at cheeks that felt suddenly wet, as if that dog, the companion who had walked him faithfully through all the days of his childhood and teens, had licked him just now. The last time Chaos had kissed him had been over a dozen years ago, with the same unconditional love in his goodbye as had been in his hello....

  To Turner’s relief, his cheeks were not wet, but dry.

  For the third thing he was afraid of, perhaps even more than going to sleep and the coming of Christmas, was tears.

  He got up, restless, annoyed with himself. This was the fear, exactly. That something about Christmas would weasel inside him and unleash a torrent of weakness.

  He went to the barracks window. It was temporary housing, between missions. Would there be another mission? He wasn’t sure if he had it in him anymore. Maybe it was time to call it quits.

  But for what? It had been a long time since he had called anyplace home.

  He could not stay here, at the military base, for Christmas. He hated it that emotion seemed to be breaking through his guard. It was too empty. There was too much room here for his own thoughts.

  There was too much space for that thing he feared the most.

  A yearning for the way things had once been.

  David and Mitchell hadn’t told him not to come for Christmas, but hadn’t asked him, either. Of course, they probably assumed he was out-of-country, and he hadn’t corrected that assumption.

  It was better this way. He had nothing to bring to their lives. Or anyone’s.

  There were lots of places a single guy could go at Christmas to avoid the festivities. Palm trees had a way of dispelling that Christmassy feeling for him. A tropical resort would have the added benefit of providing all kinds of distractions. The kind of distractions that wore bikinis.

  Turner was aware he wasn’t getting enough sleep. Not even the thought of women in bikinis could shake the feeling of ennui, mixed with the restless, seething energy that wouldn’t let him drift off.

  Just then his cell phone rang.

  He must have another mission in him, after all, because he found himself hoping it was the commanding officer of his top secret Tango Force unit. That Christmas would be superseded by some world crisis.

  But it wasn’t his CO’s number on display. Turner answered the call. Listened. And was shocked to hear himself say, “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

  It had been a voice from that thing he most wanted to avoid: the past. A time he remembered with the helpless yearning of a man who could not return to simpler things, simpler times, his simpler self.

  But Cole Watson, his best friend from before Turner had ever known he had a gift for dealing with fear, had been trying to track him down for weeks. Said he needed him.

  And Turner came from a world where one rule rose above all the others: when a buddy needed you, you were there.

  Okay. So it wasn’t a life-or-death request. No one’s survival was on the line.

  Cole was putting his life back in order. He’d lost nearly everything that mattered to him. He said he’d been given a second chance, and he planned to take it.

  Was that the irresistible pull, then—second chances? It certainly wasn’t a place in the backwoods of New England called the Gingerbread Inn, though the fact that Turner had never been there was a plus, as it held no memories.

  No, Cole had casually mentioned that the inn sat on the shores of Barrow’s Lake, where a man could put on his skates and go just about forever. That sounded like as good a way as any to spend the holiday season.

  As good a way as any to deal with the energy that sang along Turner’s nerve endings, begging for release. It sounded nearly irresistible.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CASEY CARAVETTA SIGHED with contentment.

  “Being at the Gingerbread Inn with the two of you feels like being home,” she said. She didn’t add, “in a way that home had never felt like.”

  “Even with it being in such a state?” Emily asked, sliding a disapproving look around the front parlor. It was true the furniture was shabby, the paint was peeling, the rugs had seen better days.

  “Don’t you worry,” Andrea said, “You are not going to recognize this place by the time I’m done with it. On Christmas Eve, Emily, for your vow renewal, the Gingerbread Inn will be transformed into the most amazing winter wonderland.”

  “I am so humbled that all the people Cole and I are closest to are going to give up their Christmas plans to be with us,” Emily said.

  “Nobody is giving up their Christmas plans,” Andrea answered. “We’re spending a magical Christmas Eve together, and then scattering to the four corners, to be wherever we need to be for Christmas.”

  Except Casey, who didn’t need to be anywhere. And the inn, despite its slightly gone-to-seed appearance, would be the perfect place to spend a quiet day by herself.

  The thought might have been depressing except for the gift Casey had decided to give herself....

  Outside, snow had begun to fall, but the parlor’s stone hearth held a fire that crackled merrily and threw a steady stream of glowing red sparks up the chimney.

  Until she’d received Andrea’s plea to take a little extra time off work and come to the Gingerbread Inn to make magic happen for Emily and Cole’s renewal of vows, Casey had been looking forward to Christmas with about the same amount of anticipation she might have for a root canal.

  In other words, the same as always.

  Except, of course, for the gift, her secret plan to get her life back on track.

  Now, here with her friends, cuddling her secret to her, Casey actually felt as if she might start humming, “It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas....”

  “That sense of home doesn’t have a thing to do with looks,” she said, wanting to share what she was feeling with her friends.

  Belonging.

  She had never felt it with her own family. At school, she had been the outsider, the too-smart geek. Her work was engrossing, but largely solitary.

  But being here with Emily and Andrea, the Gingerbread Girls all together again, Casey felt hope.

  Even though, sadly, Melissa was not here. Why did it take a tragedy for people to understand that friendship was a gift to be cherished, and not taken for granted?

  Casey and Andrea had spent two days together here early in December, Casey seeking the refuge of friendship to try and outrun her latest family fiasco. Really, any given year she might as well block out all of December on her calendar and write “crisis” on it.

  But before her meeting with Andrea it had been far too long since she and her friends, who’d always called themselves “the Gingerbread Girls,” had been together.

 
After seeing Andrea, Casey had made her decision.

  Now, she was loving the fact that they were as comfortable as if they had been together only yesterday. Sentences began with “Remember when...” and were followed by gales of laughter. The conversation flowed easily as they caught up on the details of one another’s lives.

  “Speaking of looks, I can’t believe the way you look,” Emily told Casey for about the hundredth time. “I just can’t get over it.”

  “You should be modeling,” Andrea agreed.

  “Modeling?” Casey laughed. “I think models are usually a little taller than five foot five.”

  “The world’s loss,” Andrea said with a giggle, and took a sip of her wine.

  Casey sipped hers, as well. Emily, pregnant, her baby bump barely noticeable beneath her sweater, was glowing with happiness and was sipping sparkling fruit juice instead of wine.

  Next year at this time, that could very well be me, Casey mused, and the thought made her giddy.

  “How do you get your hair so straight?” Andrea asked. “You didn’t have it like that when I saw you earlier this month. Remember how those locks of yours were the bane of your existence? All those wild curls. No matter what you did, that head of hair refused to be tamed. Remember the time we tried ironing it? With a clothes iron?”

  Would her baby have wild curls? Casey hoped not.

  “I always loved it,” Emily said. “I was jealous.”

  “Of my hair?” she asked, incredulous. She touched it self-consciously. She had a flat iron that was state-of-the-art, a world away from what they had tried that humid summer day.

  Still, her curls surrendered to the highest setting with the utmost reluctance, and were held at bay with enough gel to slide a 747 off a runway. And yet as she touched her hair, it felt coiled, ready to spring.

  “I thought you were quite exotic, compared to Andrea and me.”

  “Really?”

  “Why so surprised?”