Snowflakes and Silver Linings

by Cara Colter

  He was good at missions. Surely he could leave his own ghosts behind him long enough to show her that even the most mundane thing could be fun?

  His parents had showed him that. The kitchen had been a playground for them. His dad chasing his mom with a towel, tossing eggs around like a professional circus juggler, the dog underfoot...

  For the first time, Turner was aware of remembering his parents with a sense of the gift they had given him, rather than all he had lost.

  He needed to forget the kiss—she obviously now realized that had been a mistake—and coax a little laughter from Casey, to show her there were no hard feelings, and no benefit in taking life too seriously, either.

  Maybe he could learn the lesson at the same time, accept his parents gift! Life had been a way too serious matter for him for way too long.

  “Casey,” he said in an undertone, “you don’t need to be mad at me.”

  Not even a glance.

  “Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you?” Her own low response was said way too sweetly.

  “Look, we both know why.”

  She said nothing.

  “Because I hurt your feelings.”

  “Oh, you mean you hurt my feelings because you rejected me?”

  “I didn’t reject you. I acted sensibly,” he hissed. “We’re only here for a few days. Neither of us needs that kind of complication.”

  “I don’t need you to decide what I need. You are a chauvinist.”

  “Okay, I am. I admit it. Can you lighten up now? Can we leave it behind us?”

  “I already have,” she said. Obviously a lie, since she continued to ignore him. He picked an egg out of the container, tossed it high up behind his back and caught it effortlessly over his shoulder.

  Casey glanced his way, pursed those delectable lips disapprovingly and then squinted hard at the cheese she was grating feverishly.

  Still, she could not resist casting him a glance when he did it again. He smiled when she looked, but her disapproving frown only deepened.

  His proficiency with eggs was a morning-after trick that usually impressed, but Casey rolled her eyes as if he was an eight-year-old boy who had presented her with the unwanted gift of a frog. She turned her shoulder slightly, blocking her view of his escapades.

  Of course, except for that kiss, it wasn’t the morning after.

  Turner was stunned by the heat that thought of morning afters created in him: waking up beside her, to that wild tangle of curls cascading across a pillow, her olive skin dark against white sheets, her eyes darker than dark with hunger and wanting....

  Stop, he ordered himself. If it was about making her smile, there was no room in there for thoughts of morning afters. Or kisses.

  He was a highly disciplined man. He needed to prove that.

  “Hey, Casey, catch!”

  She turned just in time to catch the egg he tossed at her.

  “Nice and light,” he said approvingly of her catch. “It’s like life. You try to hold it too hard, it breaks and you end up with the very thing you were trying to hold on to running through your fingers.”

  “Oh,” she said, and tossed the egg back to him. “The philosopher king. Who would have known?”

  He caught the egg easily, spotted a glimmer of a smile as she turned back to her cheese.

  Having seen that faint smile, he felt encouraged to clown around a little, amazed that he still had a part of him that could do so. By coaxing that part of her that he had glimpsed long ago back to the surface, he found a lighter part of himself.

  He juggled two eggs, and then three. Casey actually stopped to watch him. So did Emily.

  Naturally, being a guy, their attention drove him to new heights, literally. He tossed the eggs higher and higher. And then missed.

  One splatted on the floor; he tried to catch the next one and it broke in his hand; the third whizzed by him to explode spectacularly against a cupboard door. He never missed. It had to be these sleepless nights catching up with him.

  “We love the juggler best when he fumbles,” Emily said.

  Turner was not sure he wanted the word love bandied about when he was anywhere in the vicinity of Casey, with his judgment badly clouded by sleep deprivation.

  “It’s like life,” Casey said. “You toss it around too lightly and you end up with it running, rather messily, through your fingers.”

  Harper was thrilled with the fumble, and began to lap eagerly at the mess at Turner’s feet.

  “She prefers her omelet uncooked,” he deadpanned, reaching for a cloth to clean his hands.

  And then Casey laughed. It was everything he had hoped for when he had set out to entertain her: the ever-present worry line gone from her forehead, the slight downturn gone from her mouth, the stern disapproval gone from her eyes.

  She was lovely, and Turner felt a desire, probably a foolish one, to hear that laugh again. He hoped one more time would be enough.

  And another desire, even more foolish, was to finish what they had started this morning, to show her what she had been playing with when she had kissed him that way. It wasn’t some dream out of a sweet-sixteen journal.

  It was a prelude.

  Which was exactly why there would be no kissing, Turner warned himself. That was well outside the parameters of his mission, which was to get Casey to lighten up.

  Since he had managed to break the ice, Turner followed his juggling act, after he cleaned up the mess, by breaking the eggs one-handed, dropping the white and yolk from increasing heights into the bowl.

  He shook himself, annoyed with the direction his thoughts had taken. Even though she was not the young, inexperienced girl she had been when he’d first met her, she was still not the kind of woman a guy should have those thoughts about.

  Casey was intense, not a girl you could kiss lightly or playfully, unless you wanted to go to hell.

  But then again, he reminded himself, he had already been there.

  Just to be ornery, because after he’d coaxed that laugh out of her she seemed more eager to resist his charms than ever, he made her engage with him, still amazed that there was anything in him that could be this light.

  Or maybe it wasn’t in him. Maybe it was her. Maybe there was something about Casey that had always inspired what was best about him to rise to the surface.

  “I was the boy you didn’t like getting as a science project partner, wasn’t I?”

  “I didn’t like getting any boy as my science project partner. I’m sure you would have been as good as any of the other ones. Eager to be my partner because you were guaranteed an A and wouldn’t have to do any of the work.”

  “You were cynical very young,” he said sadly.

  “And frankly, nothing has happened since to change my mind.”

  Oh, boy, she was just not going to let him off the hook for what she saw as his defection all those years ago.

  All that had happened a long, long time ago. And it hadn’t been his fault. He would show her his charming side, and was willing to bet she would forgive him by the time the omelets were up.

  “So, Casey,” he said casually, getting back to the conversation he’d had with her last night. “What makes you happy? Tell me what you do for fun.”

  What surprised him was that he really wanted to know.

  She glared at him as if he had asked for a peek of her underwear. “I take yoga,” she offered reluctantly.

  “I’ve always wanted to try that.”

  She pursed her lips in disapproval at the lie. “No, you haven’t.”

  He debated telling her about the hazards of frown marks, and decided against it. For now.

  “I heard it was great for strength and flexibility.” Not to mention the counselor it was mandatory he see right now, because of th
at gong show on the other side of the world, had told him he should give it a shot. To find peace.

  Peace was a word that was bandied around a lot. It was supposedly the reason men went to war. Was he the only person who saw how ridiculous that was? Not that it had seemed ridiculous when he was a young man intent on changing the world in honor of his father.

  Still, that promise had made him check a yoga class schedule, but he had never quite made it through the doors. The advertisements for the class had showed young women in tights turning their bodies into pretzels.

  “Are there any men in your yoga class?” he asked.

  “While some of the best yoga masters are men, in my experience,” she said primly, “most men aren’t good at yoga. They fall asleep during savasana. And snore. And they—” She stopped, began to grate cheese with a vengeance.

  “They what?”

  “You shouldn’t eat before doing yoga,” she said, not looking up, “or at least not a ten-ounce steak and a pound of fries. Men never seem to get that.”

  She shredded cheese; he glanced at her. She was blushing! What would be making her blush about men eating full meals before yoga? Suddenly, he got it, and hooted with laughter.

  “Are you telling me you have some flatulent Freddy in your yoga class?”

  “It’s not funny,” she warned him.

  “Not even a little bit?”

  “Ten-year-old boys find flatulence funny,” she said cuttingly, “not full-grown men.”

  “That shows how many full-grown men you know,” he retorted, grinning, hoping to tug a smile out of her.

  But she gave him a scathing look, obviously intent on not letting him get her guard down again, and returned to her work.

  He should warn her just to give up now. He was on a mission, after all.

  “What does shavasana mean?”

  “Death or corpse pose,” she said.

  “That’s what you do for fun?” He was glad he had never made it through the doors of a yoga class. He was searching for peace, yes; death he had seen quite enough of. Especially in Beza-zabur, the worst mission of his career. They had known, going in, the odds were against them. The mission had succeeded, but at an enormous price. He could feel the sadness of loss of good men tugging at him, and tried to shake it off.

  “It’s a relaxation pose, at the end of class.” Casey was watching him closely, as if she knew something had shifted in him.

  He pasted on his grin, not liking the sensation of being stripped, as if she could see his soul.

  “Well, yoga just doesn’t sound fun. Flatulent Freddy falls asleep during it. I’ve never known a single person to fall asleep while having fun. I always wondered if downward dog had any potential.”

  Harper’s tail thumped happily at the word dog.

  “For what?” Casey asked suspiciously.

  “Fun. It’s got that sound about it.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

  “It’s downward-facing dog,” she said, but she was still watching him closely, as if she detected he was trying to use humor to slip away from something too intense. “And it’s a strength and balance pose.”

  “Not fun?” he said sadly.

  “I think you can eliminate yoga as a source of fun,” she said.

  “So, what else, then?”

  “Pardon?”

  She had the snootiest look on her face. Snooty people said “pardon?” instead of “huh?” or “what?”

  That expression was endearing for a reason he could not decipher.

  “For fun?” he reminded her. “Now that Freddy has destroyed the serenity of yoga class, and you’ve said yourself it has little potential, what else do you do for fun?”

  She was silent.

  “Didn’t you say you were taking calligraphy?” Emily said helpfully.

  “Calligraphy?”

  “Not for fun,” Casey said defensively. “It helps me relax.”

  “Look, maybe it’s not for me to say—”

  “It’s not!” she exclaimed, almost panic-stricken at having her ultraboring life exposed.

  “But I think you are getting quite enough relaxation in the shavasana department.”

  The cheese grater was put down. She folded her arms across her chest. “And what would you suggest for fun, Mr. Kennedy? Since you are apparently some kind of expert on the subject.”

  He ordered his eyes not to veer to her mouth. They did anyway.

  She licked her lips uneasily, then, realizing what she had done, pulled her cute little tongue back in her mouth and pressed her lips into a straight line.

  She regarded him solemnly, and then said, in a low voice Emily couldn’t hear, “Why do I get the impression, for all your talk, it’s been a long time since you found life fun, Turner Kennedy?”

  “You seemed to enjoy skating with me this morning,” he said. “We should try that again. As long as we both understand the limits.”

  She actually blushed at the reference to her uninvited advance, but looked as haughty as ever at the very same time.

  “I understand Andrea has a very ambitious plan for the next few days, so why don’t we just leave it for now?”

  He stared at her.

  Casey Caravetta had just said no to him!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CASEY CARAVETTA HAD said no to him, and Turner told himself just to be grateful. Damned grateful. She’d picked up that particular lesson very quickly.

  He’d always known she was about the smartest girl in the world. No doubt she had seen straight through the act—the egg juggling and the one-handed breakage—to the damage beneath.

  The damage that would make a man refuse a pretty girl’s kiss. For her own damn good.

  “Forget I asked,” he said gruffly.

  And he didn’t like the way she was gazing at him, too closely.

  “Did I hurt your feelings now?” she asked softly.

  Okay, his head was starting to hurt. There were just way too many feelings being bandied about.

  He shot her a look. “No, you didn’t.”

  She appeared skeptical and sympathetic.

  “You can’t hurt my feelings.”

  “Oh, right,” she said in a wounded tone. “The girl you can reject has no power over you. How silly of me.”

  “I thought we left that behind us? You can’t hurt my feelings because I don’t have any feelings to hurt.”

  She looked at him, and the sympathy in her eyes deepened. “You can’t possibly believe that.”

  “Believe it? I know it.”

  She looked sympathetic and then exasperated. But it was like reading an open book. He could tell the moment she realized it wasn’t safe to sympathize with him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said primly, just as if he had said she had hurt his feelings. “My not wanting to skate anymore is not about you. It’s about me.”

  He knew a dig when he heard it.

  “We don’t want things to get complicated, after all,” she said sweetly.

  “Let’s get something straight. Skating and kissing are not the same thing.”

  “Thanks, Sherlock, now I won’t have to look them up in my dictionary.”

  “I just thought maybe you’d like to have some fun.”

  “And I need you to do that?”

  “Are you always this aggravating?”

  For a second, from the spark in her eye, he thought she might just demonstrate true aggravation by throwing the cheese grater at his head. Sadly, she regained control and stepped back from the counter.

  “There’s enough cheese here for ten omelets, Emily. If you’ll excuse me, I have wild adventures awaiting me in the fun department.”

  “Ha. Rereading War and Peace?” Turner muttered.
<
br />   Casey cast him one more disparaging look. “At least I know how to read.”

  Emily was watching his reaction as Casey marched by him, nose in the air, and out the swinging kitchen door.

  “I don’t think she handles being teased very well, Turner.”

  He turned and gave her his toothiest grin. “I was just trying to be friendly. Who would have thought discussing yoga class could be dangerous?”

  “My, my. It’s been a long time since anyone said no to you, hasn’t it, Turner Kennedy?”

  He kept the grin. “The week is young.”

  “Don’t play with her, Turner.” Emily bit her lip. “Casey’s having a bit of a tough time right now.”

  He wasn’t quite sure why, but he didn’t like thinking of Casey having a tough time.

  “Why?”

  Em hesitated, decided to trust him. “We all lost our friend Melissa this year. Casey also had a breakup. And her dad died.”

  “Poor kid,” he said, surprised by how genuine his sympathy was.

  “I don’t think she’d appreciate you seeing her as a kid.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Something else is going on. Some reason she doesn’t want to spend Christmas with her mom. It seems odd. Her mom’s first Christmas alone.” Emily shook her head. “It just seems as if it’s the wrong time for Casey to be making such a major life decision.”

  Something prickled along the back of Turner’s neck. “What major life decision?” he asked softly.

  Emily laughed uneasily. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t think she’d appreciate me mulling over her personal life with a guy she barely knows.”

  He thought back to the night of Emily and Cole’s wedding. Somehow it did feel as if he knew Casey Caravetta, though he knew that assessment was not completely rational.

  “So,” Emily said, with a soft smile, “don’t play with her, but don’t give up on her, either.”

  And as soon as Em said that, he realized he had already decided he wasn’t going to.