Snowflakes and Silver Linings

by Cara Colter

  She hit the snowbank at high speed and catapulted into it, facedown, rump in the air. She flipped over and spit snow out of her mouth, looking up at the inky, star-crusted sky.

  “Argh.” She tried to get up, but the skates made it nearly impossible to get her feet under her. She collapsed back into the snow.

  Turner glanced over, then turned and raced toward her. “Are you okay?” He leaned down, held out his hands. She took them and let him yank her to her feet.

  He pulled a little too hard and she fell against him, her feet wobbling.

  She looked up at him, saw the soft clouds of warm breath leaving his mouth, his eyes lustrous as polished silver in the darkness.

  No matter what she had told herself, she knew this was why she was really here. To feel this once again, if only ever so briefly. Uninhibited. Unfettered. Brave, somehow, as if life was an adventure she was willing to embrace.

  Without any forethought, she reached up and touched her lips to his. He tasted of ice and magic, of moonlit nights and the sharp cut of skate blades. He tasted of the memory of carefree laughter, and a time when she had let go of all control.

  She could feel that control slipping away again, blissfully, completely....

  He pulled back from her, but couldn’t let her go because she would fall again.

  “Casey. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Kissing you,” she said huskily.

  “That wasn’t in the lesson plan.”

  Just as she had figured. He was teacher, she was student. As long as he was in control, everything was great.

  “Get this straight,” she said firmly, the magic of the kiss dissolving to embarrassment she didn’t intend to let him see. “I am not your student. Or your little sister.”

  He let her go. Her ankles wobbled, but somehow she maintained her balance.

  “Okay,” he said, his arms folded over his chest, his voice remote. “I think we’re clear on that.”

  And then he skated away from her, went to the edge of the ice, made the transition to the snow easily, and walked to the bench. He took off his skates without glancing at her, slung them over his shoulder, and with the dog’s nose an inch from his thigh, headed for the inn.

  What had she done? Casey wondered, watching him go. She’d given in to the temptation to be alive fully. But there was no excuse for using her lips to do it!

  Besides, she had ended up not at all certain she could resist his appeal if she was put to the test. What had she expected?

  That he was going to be helpless in the face of her charm. But why would he be? He hadn’t been all those years ago, or he would have stayed, instead of left.

  Still, she had a feeling she had just rattled Turner Kennedy, the unflappable, and she couldn’t help but feel the smallest satisfaction over that.

  Of course, she had rattled herself in the process. Right to the core. She had never felt like that when she’d kissed Sebastian.

  Oh, it had been pleasant enough.

  When she had confronted Sebastian about his infidelity, he had said woefully that he’d never crossed “the line.” He was so sorry. He was just testing the water, looking for something more.

  When pressed, he hadn’t been able to tell her what that “more” was, what it looked like or felt like, even though, presumably, he had been in hot pursuit of it with someone else.

  But right now, Casey felt as if she knew exactly what more was. It was touching someone else and feeling the sizzle of his energy. It was tasting someone else, and feeling as if you were eating something you could never, ever get enough of. It was a longing, deep and primal, that suddenly felt as if only that one person could satisfy it.

  That part Turner never had to know.

  He had rejected her, which was sad only because she had planned to reject him first.

  “For the sake of future generations,” she told herself, as if it was a motto for battle.

  She did a few more defiant if graceless spins around the ice, just to show him he could not affect her, that she was still having fun. But there were no witnesses to her lack of grace or her fun-filled effort.

  Turner did not glance back.

  Not even once.

  * * *

  Casey had kissed him! Hard not to give in to that, Turner thought. Hard not to explore the sweetness of her offered lips until Casey and he were both gasping with need and desire. Thankfully, she had arrived on the ice hard on the heels of his ruthless self-evaluation.

  There was no sense him giving her the idea that he was the kind of guy she needed in her life. There was no sense in that at all.

  He was not the kind of guy anyone needed in his or her life. That kiss, and the innocence in it, despite the fact she had intended to prove she was now a woman of the world, had led him one step closer to realizing he was too wounded to return to a place like her lips had offered him. Like his boyhood home. Like the homes of his brothers.

  Not that anyone was rolling out the red carpet in welcome. His brothers had never felt he was vindicating the murder of their father. They had felt he had abandoned his family when he was most needed, that he had left his mother when she was at her most fragile.

  His brothers saw him as going off to save the world when his own family was more in need of saving.

  When he had not been able to come back for their mother’s funeral, something had broken irrevocably between him and his brothers.

  Casey should be careful whose lips she tangled with. With that in mind, Turner headed for the shower, hoping to wash the sweetness of her from his mind. He could not get rid of the dog. She pushed into the bathroom with him, waited in the steamy room until he was done.

  An hour later, he hit the stairs at about the same time as another woman.

  “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “Not sure why we haven’t bumped into each other before. I’m Carol. I run the old place.”

  “Turner Kennedy.”

  Her hand was the hand of a woman who worked really, really hard, probably doing all kinds of things women weren’t intended to do.

  “Nice to meet you. And there’s my missing dog! Harper, where have you been?”

  “She was with me,” Turner said.

  “All night? Actually, for two nights?”

  “Sorry if you worried. I tried to shake her, but she wasn’t having any of it.”

  “How odd. I mean, she’s a goldie, so she likes everyone, but I’ve never seen her become attached to anyone so completely before. Look, she’s not leaving you even now.”

  Sure enough, after a token tail wag for her owner, the dog sat down beside him, leaning heavily into his leg.

  “Poor judge of character,” he said, but with a smile.

  Carol regarded him with unwanted compassion. “I’d say the exact opposite is true, Mr. Kennedy. The dog knows exactly who you really are, even if you have lost sight of that yourself.”

  Turner was annoyed that his plan for long, mind-clearing days of hard work and skating had turned into something else—thanks to Casey. It now seemed his tormented soul was so close to the surface anyone who looked could see it.

  “Nice meeting you,” he said, eager to turn his back on Carol’s way too perceptive gaze. He took the stairs two at a time and followed the smell of coffee into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Carol said. “Harper, aren’t you going to spend some time with me?”

  But the dog cast her owner one faintly guilty look before wiggling through the swinging door with Turner just before it closed.

  He heard Carol laugh tolerantly. He hoped to sneak into the kitchen and get a cup of coffee, and maybe try to sleep for a couple hours before seeing what Cole had planned for them today.

  Maybe it hadn’t been fair to these people to come here, either.

 
He’d seen that on Casey’s face last night after he’d thought an IED had gone off, and he’d smacked her down to the floor. He might never be able to fit in.

  Casey.

  He had not succeeded in washing the sweetness of her kiss from his lips. Thinking of her made him ache for the road not taken.

  In a way, Casey had been the beginning of his journey away from all he knew, and toward a job that forced him to make choices that hurt people, intentional or not.

  Emily was in the kitchen. “Coffee’s ready,” she sang. “Oh, look, you’ve got a friend. Good morning, Harper.”

  The dog wagged her tail, but when Emily slapped her knee to coax her over, Harper sat down stubbornly on Turner’s foot.

  “I slipped her a doughnut,” Turner lied, not wanting anyone making assumptions about the nature of his character just because the dog liked him.

  He regarded Emily for a moment, and allowed himself to feel happy for the pure reason that his best friend’s wife was happy, that maybe the Watsons were going to make it through the minefields that were relationships and life.

  “The coffee smells good.” Turner said, shaking the dog off his foot so he could get some.

  “You’re up early.” She looked at him, “I bet you’re going skating?”

  “I’ve already been.”

  “This early?”

  “Or late, depending how you look at it.”

  “Have you been up all night?”

  “I have jet lag.” It was the convenient lie he told to cover the fact he was having so much trouble sleeping.

  “Where are you coming from? Oh, I remember. Cole said something about Turkey.”

  Turkey was not the exact location, of course. It wasn’t even close; just a stop on the way to the end of the world. But he did not correct her.

  “I remember you skating,” Emily said, “from when Cole and I were dating. You were amazing. Weren’t some hockey scouts interested in you?”

  A road not taken. A carefree life of playing games. Turner never thought of that, because, inevitably, it would lead him to wonder who he might have been had he chosen a different fork in the road.

  “That was a long time ago,” he said, a little too harshly.

  He rolled his shoulders. All these people, Emily and Cole, Andrea, Casey, despite the problems they might have suffered, still were what he was not.

  They were basically good. Wholesome. Uncomplicated. Not one of them had ever had to make a decision about whether another human being got to live or die. Not one of them had ever sat with their best friend’s blood soaking into their clothing.

  Maybe he should not have come to a place where people were going to begin their sentences with the words I remember.

  “Good coffee,” Turner said, to move the subject away from his recent travels and the past.

  “Thanks,” Emily said. “It was an early Christmas gift. Melissa’s folks sent it from Kona for Andrea and Casey and me. They retired there.”

  “Have you been to Hawaii?”

  She took the bait easily, and Turner was relieved to hear her chatter about the beauty of the islands rather than the places where their histories had touched when she had first met Cole.

  Casey came through the swinging kitchen doors, screeched to a halt when she saw him, then flounced by him to the coffeepot. “Good morning, Emily. Good morning, Harper.”

  No “Good morning, Turner.” Well, she was a bright girl, probably the brightest he had ever met, a whole lot brighter than a golden retriever.

  “Is this the coffee Melissa’s parents sent? It’s wonderful. That was so thoughtful of them.” Casey took a sip and eyed him over the rim of her mug, while still not acknowledging him. “What can I help with?”

  Turner noticed Casey had little smudges under her eyes from being up all night, but other than that she was an unconventional beauty. Her lips looked bruised. How could that be? They had shared about the shortest kiss in history!

  She had showered before coming downstairs, and her hair, which looked as if it would take a day to dry completely, was curling as wildly as he ever remembered it. How could a man not dream of burying his hands in those wayward curls?

  Had she left it like that because he had said he liked it that way?

  She was not wearing a speck of makeup, her olive skin dewy from the shower, her eyes dark and deep. He looked at the puffy fullness of her lips again and knew it was going to be a long time before he shook off the taste of them, or the longing for it.

  She had a beautiful figure, though she had lost some of the endearing chubbiness he remembered of her in her bridesmaid’s dress. She still seemed to dress to understate, today in a buttoned-to-the-throat blouse that was too big for her, and a pair of jeans that looked as if she had tried to wrestle her curvy hips into a strait jacket.

  “Well, I was thinking omelets,” Emily said, a bit doubtfully. “Casey, if you want to start grating some cheese, that would be a big help. Do you remember Turner?”

  Casey busied herself slamming through cabinets looking for a cheese grater, and she barely glanced at him.

  “We bumped into each other,” she said, her voice flat.

  Literally, he thought, remembering her soft curves beneath his on the porch the other night, her clinging to him as he’d pulled her from the snow at the edge of the ice.

  She managed to convey, without elaborating, that it had not been her favorite experience, which, of course, was repayment for the fact he had rejected her kiss.

  For her own damn good.

  But she had probably left her hair in that natural glorious state for his benefit, to torment him.

  And damn, if it didn’t seem to be working!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I’LL JUST TAKE my coffee and leave you to it,” Turner said.

  He didn’t miss the fact that Casey looked smug that she had managed to make him uncomfortable.

  He was pretty sure she knew he was having trouble not watching her as she drew an elastic band from her slacks pocket and began to pull that wild hair back with elaborate care.

  He wasn’t sure why that was so sexy it was making his mouth go dry. Her hair didn’t like being tamed, and little strands were already breaking out of the band, curling wildly.

  “No you don’t, Turner,” Emily said with a laugh. “No chauvinism allowed. The little ladies are not going to fix you breakfast.”

  Casey snorted with satisfaction.

  “I actually wasn’t expecting breakfast,” he said in his own defense.

  “Well, I’m just learning to cook, believe it or not, so I need all the help I can get. I’m regretting telling Carol I’d look after it this morning.”

  “I hope you’re not counting on me,” Casey said, slightly panicky. “I’m not a great cook, either.”

  “What are you good at, Turner?” Emily asked.

  Despite the fact he just wanted to escape, he could see they were both in a little over their heads.

  Casey looked inordinately pleased that he had been identified as a chauvinist, though her pleasure seemed short-lived when she realized she was going to have to share the kitchen with him.

  “I’m pretty good at breaking eggs,” he said. Since he had to suck it up, anyway, Turner could show her a thing or two in the kitchen. He set down his coffee, found a carton of eggs in the fridge and a big bowl under one of the counters.

  “Harper, would you stop?” he growled, as the dog stuck her nose in every cupboard he opened. He glanced around the kitchen. Where to set up? Casey obviously did not want him anywhere near her.

  But she’d started it! That was where the available counter space was, anyway, so he went and set up there, trying to ignore her glare and the shower-fresh scent of her ticking his nose.

  “How many
eggs do you want?” he called over his shoulder to Emily.

  “Let’s see, there will be six of us, plus Carol, and I’ll invite Martin in, too. Plus Tessa, so we should do three-egg omelets for the guys, two-egg ones for the women, and a one-egg omelet for Tessa.”

  Harper whined.

  “And a little left over for the dog,” Emily said with a smile. It looked as if she was going to have to go for a piece of paper and a pen to figure it out, so Casey took pity on her.

  “Twenty-two eggs,” she said, “which means one for the dog. Not that I think Carol would approve.”

  “Maybe not of me inviting Martin, either, though he’s good for her. She’d resent me saying so, but Carol seems much happier when he’s around,” Emily noted with satisfaction. “Love is in the air here at the inn.”

  Casey hunkered down and stared hard at the cheese grater. Turner tried not to flinch. Had anyone been looking out the window at them skating?

  He shot Emily a glance. No, there was no guile in that girl, and even if there was, he didn’t have to worry about Casey. It was obvious, after he’d rejected her kiss, she had her defenses up against him. Good!

  And it was also obvious she had defenses now. She’d had none back then on the night of Emily and Cole’s wedding, and in the days that had followed. And he was not going to wonder what had changed her. He wasn’t!

  No, he was going to do what he did best: do the job he’d been assigned, quickly and efficiently, and then leave the kitchen. He wasn’t going to think about the fact that women didn’t generally have their defenses up against him.

  He glanced at Casey.

  And remembered last night when he had said to her, “Are you happy?”

  She hadn’t really answered, but she had not been able to hide the stricken look on her face, either.

  For a while, out there skating, she had looked happy. And before the fiasco of the kiss, he had been deeply gratified by that.

  So, what if he made that part of his assignment this morning? To take the high road? To remember the girl she had been, a long time ago, a too-big, pure white terry-cloth robe wrapped around her, jumping on a king-size bed? To remember the look on her face when he had knelt before her and painted her toenails candy-apple red?