Snowflakes and Silver Linings

by Cara Colter

  She did something she had not done in far too long. She gave herself permission to have fun. And she had a feeling it wasn’t just for the sake of her future children!

  She took the hat off her too-hot head and tossed it aside. Aware of his eyes on her, she shook out the curls.

  “Whoa,” he muttered, “when you have hair like that you can be practical in every other respect!”

  He thought she was sexy. And she had no idea what to do with that!

  Thankfully, he tore his eyes away from her freed locks, and put his shoulder to the huge snow boulder. She settled beside him, and together, shoulder to shoulder, with the dog bouncing along, barking and trying to figure out how to insert herself between them, they pushed it into place beside the arch in the fence.

  “Okay,” he said, “we’re on a roll—no pun intended—so now is not the time to rest on our laurels.” He deliberately glanced at the “laurels” she was resting on, grinned wolfishly and then raced back and began to maneuver the next ball across the yard. She joined him, huffing, puffing, giggling, slipping.

  She noticed with relief that her self-consciousness dissipated as she gave herself over to the pure fun of being on the same team as him.

  His shoulder was right against hers. They were pushing together. Their shouts and laughter filled the air.

  His feet slipped, the ball trundled away from him and he flipped over on his back, panting. She lay down beside him and for a moment they both watched wispy clouds float through a bright blue winter sky.

  Peripherally, she was aware of Carol and Andrea on the porch, making garlands out of a huge heap of evergreen boughs, and fastening them to the railings. Cole and Martin were on the roof, taking down old strings of light.

  All that was in the background, but still, she had a sense of being part of something. A little community of people who wanted to make things wonderful for Cole and Emily.

  “It feels so good,” Turner said quietly. “I feel as if I lived to have a moment like this.”

  “Me, too,” she whispered, and realized they were two people who had come through the battlefields of life to arrive at this moment of utter delight. Of peace. She realized she had laughed out loud.

  She had given herself totally to the present moment, something yoga urged her to do, and she had never quite succeeded at until now.

  And she knew you had to take those moments when they were offered. It occurred to her that maybe she and Turner had declared a truce, after all.

  Just when she thought the moment could not be any more perfect, he reached over, took her hand and squeezed it firmly, letting her know he felt it, too.

  They were on the same wavelength.

  Just like they had been all those years ago.

  He turned his head to her, gazed at her through the sooty abundance of his lashes. She wondered, her heart beating in her throat, if he was going to kiss her.

  He leaned close. Against her better judgment, she did, too. She could feel her eyelids drop. Her mouth puckered.

  “So,” he said huskily, so close to her his breath stirred her hair, “tell me what he did.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  CASEY REELED BACK from Turner. She set her mouth in a straight line and opened her eyes wide, in a glare. So much for the truce!

  Just like all those years ago, he was winning her trust, stealing her secrets from her. To what end?

  And that thought spoiled the present moment completely for her. She let go of his hand, found her feet and went back to her next snowball.

  “Look,” Turner said silkily, “it’s probably not even that original. What he did.”

  “Would you please stop?”

  He pursed his lips together grudgingly.

  Still, they had to cooperate somewhat, even if it was in silence, to wrestle two large balls to one side of the walkway and two on the other. Since he didn’t mention it again, she decided to forgive him in the name of teamwork. Plus, there was something lighter in him. There had been since he had tossed those eggs that morning. It was as if he was making a deliberate effort to push away some shadow.

  And she had a feeling the effort was for her. How could you turn down a gift like that, even if Turner was just about the most aggravating man on the planet?

  They began to roll the middle balls, slightly smaller, that would form the tummies of their snowmen. They lifted those into place, and she stood panting, regarding their handiwork, as he cemented those second boulders into place by jamming snow where they joined.

  “We’re good,” she decided. She slid him a look. We.

  “That’s right,” he said, “a team.”

  A team. As in her and him. Was it dangerous to be thinking of them as some kind of team? Definitely.

  “We’re not a team,” she said. “We’re just two people thrown together in an attempt to make two other people happy.”

  “There are worse reasons to be thrown together,” he said, “Take you and old what’s his name—”

  He laughed at the grimace she made, then bent, caught up a handful of snow and tossed it in her face. “Lighten up, Doc.”

  She noticed they were alone in the yard now. Everyone else had gone in. Maybe it was the fact that there was no audience that made her feel so uninhibited.

  She spluttered and wiped it away. Glared at his grinning face, Casey bent, scooped up her own handful of snow and stalked toward him with menace.

  “Chicken,” she called as he made a run for it, then turned and looked at her, ducking this way and that, making it very hard to aim.

  “What? You think I’m going to stand there and let you throw snow in my face?”

  “You can run, but you cannot hide,” she said, and gave chase. She let fly with her snow, shrieked with disappointment when it fell well short of him. He snickered happily. In the time it took her to form a new weapon, he hit her twice with fat wet snowballs.

  “This is war!” she declared.

  “Bring it,” he challenged her, and bring it she did.

  Screeching with wild abandon, she chased him around the yard, trying to hit him with snowballs. Only one of hers landed for every six of his.

  Finally, panting, she leaned her hands on her knees. She wasn’t quite sure how, but somehow while chasing him around the yard, pure frustration had become something else completely.

  Joyous. As if she was playing, in a way she never had as a child.

  Deliberately, hiding snow behind her back, she fell over and cried out. “Turner!”

  “What?” He raced to her side, all playfulness gone.

  “I think I twisted my ankle.”

  “Let me look.”

  Without hesitation, he sank down in the snow beside her, yanked up the leg of her snow pants. He was scowling with intense concentration, trying to get through the layers of snowsuit and socks and boots to her ankle.

  Giggling with evil delight, she yanked her foot away and shoved snow down his back. He shook it out, but when she went to find her feet and scamper away from him, he snagged her ankle and she fell back in the snow.

  He flipped her over and straddled her, pinning her arms.

  “That was wicked,” he said, with a certain amount of approval. “But you know what happens to the girl who cries wolf, don’t you?”

  Casey squirmed underneath him and then gazed up into his face. He looked, right now, like the boy she had once known, his eyes alight with laughter, and she felt her heart go still.

  Suddenly, it didn’t seem funny at all as he stared down at her.

  “What?” she whispered.

  She didn’t feel playful. Or peaceful, for that matter.

  But she did feel more alive than she had in a long, long time. Could feel the beat of her own heart. Feel air that was scented of him touchi
ng her skin, then being drawn inside her, pulled deep within her lungs. Feel the easy strength of his legs, pinning her to the ground.

  “I forget,” he said, then put his hands on both sides of her face. Her sense of being trapped by him was deliciously complete. And then he dropped his mouth over hers.

  Casey met his lips, tasted them and him. What she tasted on his lips was pure, as sparkling as the diamond-crusted snow all around them.

  And what she tasted of him was also pure, his essence: strength and playfulness, depth and courage.

  He sighed with satisfaction when his gloved hands found her hair, tangled in it, used it to draw himself down even more.

  Something unleashed within her as he pulled her in, their snow-damp clothes sticking together. They were generating a world of heat. She wouldn’t be surprised to pull away from him and find the snow melted and spring arriving in a ten-foot radius around them!

  Then his lips parted hers with tender command, and his tongue explored the soft inner swell there, the hard edge of her upper teeth. And then it darted into the hollow of her mouth.

  The potential for meltdown increased. So did the feeling of being intensely alive.

  Casey felt as if the blood was turning hot in her veins, and his energy was melding with her own. She could feel herself surrendering despite her every vow not to surrender to this.

  It took an iron will to remind herself she had lured him to her because she was losing the snowball fight.

  It appeared that if she didn’t smarten up now, she was going to lose this other battle, too.

  From under the fog of feeling, she allowed a memory of past hurt to surface and strengthen her spine.

  She retook control, though she was aware she did it with a sense of loss rather than triumph.

  He had loosened his grip on her hands, and she grabbed snow from either side of her and shoved it down his neck.

  Turner gave a shout of surprised outrage and leaped off her. He performed a little break dance she might have found hilarious if she wasn’t still reeling from the power of what had just transpired between them.

  He shook the snow out of his shirt and shot her a dark look that made her shiver.

  “You don’t play fair,” he told her.

  “All’s fair in love and war,” she retorted, and instantly regretted using both words around him.

  “Yes, it is,” he said with satisfaction.

  She frowned at him.

  “Because let me tell you something, Casey Caravetta.”

  She waited.

  “I found out exactly what I needed to know.”

  She cocked her head, raised an eyebrow in what she hoped could be interpreted as amusement.

  “You,” he said softly, “aren’t ever going to be a nun.”

  She dropped any pretense of amusement and glared at him.

  “And something else?”

  She folded her arms over her chest with what she hoped to pass off as complete indifference.

  “It had nothing to do with you. Him cheating on you.”

  Her mouth fell open. “How could you possibly know that? From a kiss?”

  He grinned. “I didn’t. The nun part was from the kiss. The other part was just a guess. But I did tell you it probably wasn’t even original.”

  “Consider this truce over!” she said. The source of her intense pain was not even original?

  “It’s not like you did anything to deserve it.”

  “The truce?”

  “The cad.”

  It was the absolution she had never been willing to give herself, and she felt driven to let Turner know it was her fault. Who had picked him, after all?

  “It hurt my pride, okay? I should have been smarter than that! I was engaged to him and never caught on to his deceit. A coworker had a little chat with me.”

  It was spilling out of her like water against a weakened dam. She realized Turner had sucked her into talking about it.

  “Better a bit of hurt pride than a life of misery,” he said softly.

  “You don’t get it! I can’t trust myself to make the right choices.” She thought of her choice to have a baby on her own. “About men!”

  Casey turned and stomped away from him, focused on the snow.

  She managed to channel all her angry energy into making snowmen. Without speaking another word to each other they had four snowmen guarding the gate and the walkway by lunchtime.

  Turner walked around them, apparently unperturbed by her silent treatment. He was inspecting their morning’s handiwork with deep masculine pleasure, picking a leaf or tuft of grass out here and there, smoothing the snow with a gloved hand.

  “They look a little naked,” she ventured at last, breaking her silence. She reminded herself it was asking for it to use the word naked around a guy like him. He’d probably tease her until she blushed.

  He didn’t rise to the bait. Casey tried to tell herself she was pleased about that, but instead decided he must like the distance between them.

  And was sorry he had given in to the temptation to kiss her, when he had resisted so successfully on the frozen lake.

  “Andrea told me she got some top hats from the five and dime, and some cheap vests and neckties,” Turner said. “She doesn’t want to get them out until the twenty-fourth, though, in case we get more snow.”

  Casey realized from just a few minutes of standing still that her snowsuit was soaked through and her extremities were freezing. Turner noticed her shivering and shaking her hands to restore feeling.

  “Here.” He came over to her. “Let me warm them up.”

  The temptation of having that happen was too much to resist. She gave him her hand, but with a stern warning. “Just don’t mistake this for a truce.”

  “I got it. A truce has to be sealed with a kiss.”

  He cupped her frozen hand with both his own. How was it they were still so warm?

  Then, her hand clasped in his, he lifted it to his lips and blew on her cold, cold fingertips. They burned at first, and then the most luscious warmth crept into them.

  Honestly, it was worse than being kissed, and just as intimate. And just as sensual!

  She should have pulled away, but really, she was powerless.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She could only nod.

  He released her hand, took the other and did the same thing, his eyes intent on her face.

  “Lots of men are trustworthy,” he said, finally.

  “Are you?” she whispered.

  He dropped her hand as if it was hot, but didn’t step away from her. It looked as if he was pondering the question, and of course, she already knew the answer, if somebody had to think that hard!

  “Hey, you two, everyone else came in for lunch ages ago. It’s getting cold.”

  Carol was standing on a porch that had been transformed into something out of a dream, the railings covered with an abundance of green boughs with beautiful white bows threaded through them. The innkeeper was watching them, a small smile drifting across her lips.

  They pulled apart as if a rubber band had held them and suddenly snapped.

  Not looking at each other, shaking off snow, they walked up stairs fragrant with evergreen and past Carol, who never quit smiling as she reached out to give her dog a pat as Harper followed Turner into the house.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “HAM!” THE SOUND of his own voice startled Turner awake. Had he shouted or whispered?

  “We making cookies now. Not ham.”

  Turner opened one eye warily.

  He looked into the face of Tessa, Rick’s six-year-old daughter. Her eyes were inches from his, huge and solemn.

  “I don’t make cookies,” he said gruffly. He clos
ed his eyes, a hint for her to leave him alone.

  It had caught up with him. Poor sleep, lots of physical activity. Casey, her hair straightened to within an inch of its life, was being frostily polite to him, and avoiding him today, one day after they had built the snowmen and he had pried her life’s secrets from her.

  Maybe not all her life secrets. Nothing she had said to him yesterday seemed even remotely like the major life decision Emily had mentioned.

  Though he’d been able to ascertain she wasn’t becoming a nun.

  And was still hurting enough over some jerk that she wasn’t entering into another bad relationship, either.

  I don’t trust myself. Around men.

  And then the all-important could she trust him? It was a complicated question, but she had seen his hesitancy as all the answer she needed.

  “We got a Christmas tree,” Tessa informed him. “It’s outside ’cause it’s full of snow.”

  Over breakfast the group had been making plans to go in search of a Christmas tree in the nearby woods.

  Casey’s eyes had been shining like a kid about to meet Santa for the first time. And then she had shot him a look and bit her lip.

  He knew if he said he was going to get the tree with them, she would have found an excuse not to.

  For a girl who thought she had been dumb about men, she seemed to be playing it pretty smart with him. After that steaming kiss between them yesterday, she was putting as much space between them as the close confines of the inn would allow.

  Turner knew that was good, of course, really good. He just wasn’t sure why he felt so grumpy about it. Probably because a kiss had been way outside the parameters of his stated mission.

  Not that that explained why he had felt grumpier yet when Casey had announced she wanted to have her turn with the ax!

  What was that about? Obviously, Rick, Tessa’s dad, and a fireman to boot, would be an expert on safety with an ax. Turner did not have to be there to make sure Casey didn’t cut off her foot.

  He needed his sleep way more than he needed to be around a woman as complicated and aggravating as Casey Caravetta. He had taken to the couch as soon as the door had shut behind the tree party.