Stranded in the Snow

by Noelle Adams

  Stranded in the Snow

  Holiday Acres, Book Two

  Noelle Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Stranded in the Snow

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Stranded in the Woods

  About Noelle Adams

  About Stranded in the Snow

  AN UNEXPECTED SNOWSTORM. The man she hates the most. One very hot night.

  Olivia Holiday does not expect to spend the weekend stranded in a romantic cottage during a snowstorm with the one man she resents the most. Scott Matheson is a player and holds a grudge against her family, and she really shouldn’t find him so hot. They share a deep history as well as an attraction, and it all comes out as they’re trapped together for one hot night.

  One

  OLIVIA HOLIDAY SHOULD have been having a good day. It was just a week until Christmas, it had started snowing an hour ago, and she was helping with the final preparations for a gorgeous wedding at Holiday Acres. But Scott Matheson had just walked through the door with his smug swagger and a pair of jeans that fit his lean body far too well.

  Her festive mood took a dramatic nosedive.

  She disliked Scott more than anyone else in the world, and that included two asshole ex-boyfriends and Patty Harrison, her high school nemesis, who was still waging a teenage war of aggression against her.

  Scott was different.

  Scott was worse.

  “Why didn’t anyone warn me that the asshole was stopping by?” she asked through her teeth, turning her back to Scott as she spoke.

  Laura, the oldest of the four Holiday sisters, was thirty-one and handled the business end of Holiday Acres, the family’s sprawling Christmas store and tree farm located in a small town outside Charlottesville, Virginia. She was no-nonsense, slim, and pretty with her brown eyes and freckles. She glanced over Olivia’s shoulder at Scott. “Oh. Sorry. It was last minute. Carla and Trent lost their photographer the other day, so they got Scott instead. He’s just going over the event spaces with them to ask about placement and such. He won’t be hanging around for long.”

  Olivia took a deep breath and glanced at him again. It was supposed to be a quick look, but she had to drag her eyes away from his handsome, sculpted features—high cheekbones, strong jaw, supple lips, striking amber-brown eyes. He was smiling down at Carla, the bride-to-be, in a way that was guaranteed to make any woman between fifteen and seventy-five breathless.

  It might have even made Olivia breathless had she been hit by it unexpectedly, but she was immune to Scott’s charms.

  And he never smiled at her like that anyway.

  Every smile he gave her was an implicit challenge.

  “Stop glaring at him,” Laura said with a mild eye roll. “He’s the best event photographer in the area, and we have to work with him sometimes.”

  “I know. I just like to be prepared before I run into him so I can paste on my civil smile.”

  Olivia was usually good at civil smiles and charming small talk. She was better with people than any of her three sisters since Laura had a brusque way about her that some found intimidating, Penny’s artistic nature drifted toward absentminded eccentricity, and Rebecca was sometimes shy. Because she had social skills and a way with words, Olivia had taken on all the public relations aspects of Holiday Acres as well as handling advertising and marketing.

  She’d gotten a marketing major at the University of Virginia and had immediately come back home to work for the family business since her father had died around the same time she graduated and they’d needed all hands on deck.

  Olivia loved her hometown. She loved Holiday Acres. And she loved almost everything about her job.

  She didn’t love Scott Matheson, however, and she wished she wasn’t so hyperaware of his presence.

  She could feel him—some kind of intense masculine energy radiating off him—even when her back was to him.

  It was incredibly annoying.

  She tried to ignore the tingling awareness and instead focused on Laura and her clipboard as they continued around the huge, picturesque barn that was part of the Holiday Acres property and used for events like banquets and weddings. She wished she had her sister’s ability to focus on work no matter what.

  Olivia had never been like that. She enjoyed her work, but her priority had always been people. So her thoughts kept drifting back to Scott.

  Thirty years ago, her father had opened Holiday Acres as a Christmas tree farm, and the business had grown over the years to include a dozen cozy rental cottages, a coffee shop and bakery, the barn and gardens for events, and the Christmas shop, which was so huge now that it had become a tourist destination. When her dad had died five years ago, she, her mother, and her sisters had taken on the business. Her mother died eleven months ago after a yearlong struggle with cancer, and Olivia and her three sisters were managing Holiday Acres now.

  “Olivia? Can you come here a minute?”

  Olivia turned toward the voice, which she recognized as belonging to Carla. Unfortunately, that meant she had to turn toward Scott as well.

  She prepared a cool, unconcerned smile as she faced him, taking a mental inventory of her appearance at the same time. If she’d known she’d be seeing Scott today, she would have put on something more stylish and professional. As it was, her thick black leggings, soft red sweater, tall boots, and handmade infinity scarf were comfortable and flattering but too casual for a Scott outfit. She’d gotten her hair trimmed and highlighted last week, so it swung around her shoulders in a shiny golden-brown fall. She always did her makeup and nails, and the couple of winter pounds she’d put on this season were well hidden under her sweater.

  Her appearance wasn’t ideal, but it would do.

  “Did you need something, Carla?” she asked, avoiding Scott’s eyes although he was standing right there.

  “We want to take some photos in the cottage if that’s all right.”

  Carla and her fiancé had rented out one of their best cottages for their wedding weekend. “Of course,” Olivia said warmly. “The Mistletoe Cottage will make lovely photos.”

  “Can Scott get in it for a few minutes today so he can scope it out beforehand?”

  Olivia forced her eyes over to Scott’s face, and she fought an immediate wave of attraction.

  More than attraction, really.

  Lust.

  Hot, unadulterated lust.

  It was so incredibly annoying.

  “Of course he can,” Olivia said smoothly, shifting her eyes back to Carla. “The couple who had booked it canceled because of the weather, so it’s empty right now. But he’s done a number of events at Holiday Acres. He’s probably been in the cottage before.” She was speaking of him in the third person on purpose. It took strategy to deal with a man as obnoxious as Scott Matheson, and even the small details mattered.

  “I’ve been in the pink cottage and the animal cottage and the one with all the... Christmas doodads.” His tone was edged with an arrogant amusement that made her want to snap her teeth. “Is this one of those?”<
br />
  “No,” Olivia gritted out. Their cottages were all warm, lovely, and tastefully decorated, and Scott had just made them sound tacky. On purpose. “This one is different.”

  “Then I’ll need to see it if it’s not too much trouble.” The corner of his mouth had turned up, bringing attention to the sensual line of his lips.

  Olivia had to force her eyes away. “Of course it’s not too much trouble.” She searched the room automatically for Rebecca, who’d always handled errands like this. But her younger sister had left this morning.

  Rebecca was going to cooking school in Richmond, and she’d also just gotten engaged. Olivia was very happy for her sister, who deserved all the joy she could get, but she missed having Rebecca around all the time, and it would have been nice if Rebecca’s fiancé wasn’t Scott’s younger brother.

  It tied their families together even more than they already were.

  The Holidays and the Mathesons shared a deep, conflicted history. Jed Holiday and Scott’s father, Caleb Matheson, had been best friends until the two men had gotten into a huge fight seven years ago that had turned into a long-standing feud about Jed having cheated Caleb’s father out of a share in Holiday Acres. Jed denied it, and Caleb was a hard, unfriendly man, so most of the community sided with the Holidays in the feud. After the men died (in a tragic accident that killed both of them), it was discovered that Caleb had been right and Jed had indeed cheated his father. So the sisters and their mother had tried to make up for it by offering all the surviving Mathesons a share in the business. At first only Russ, Caleb’s brother, had taken them up on the offer. All three sons had refused. Then earlier this year Phil had finally relented when he’d gotten together with Rebecca.

  Now only Scott and his older brother, Kent, were holding on to bitterness and resentment over the family conflict. For years after their fathers first fought, Scott had never encountered Olivia without saying something cutting and sarcastic, as if she personally were to blame for what her father had done. After a while, the sharp words transformed into mockery, as if he was always silently laughing at her.

  As far as she was concerned, that was just as bad.

  From what she’d observed growing up and what Rebecca had told her recently, Caleb Matheson hadn’t treated his sons well. So perhaps Scott had reason for a dubious personal life.

  But Phil had had the same father, and he’d managed to become a decent person. She wasn’t sure why Scott couldn’t do the same thing.

  “Let me finish this up, and I’ll take him out to see it in a few minutes.” Olivia was still talking to Carla rather than Scott.

  “I can go by myself if you’d rather.” Scott was smiling in that smug way he had. He was laughing at her behind his amber eyes. He knew she was trapped, and he was enjoying it.

  Olivia tried not to growl at him. “No. The cottage is locked. I’ll have to take you. Just give me a few minutes.”

  She held on to her fake smile until she’d turned her back to him, and as she approached her sister, she met Laura’s eyes.

  Laura was laughing silently too but in a more sympathetic way than Scott. “You should really give up on hating him. He’s not as hostile as he used to be. I don’t think he’s really angry anymore. And with Phil and Rebecca getting married, you’re not going to be able to avoid him.”

  “I know. I don’t hate him. I just don’t like him.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so. What are you insinuating?”

  “I’m insinuating that you have a special resentment against Scott. You don’t hate Kent the same way even though Kent is the one who really hasn’t forgiven Dad and the rest of us for what happened. Scott still won’t accept our offer of partnership, but he doesn’t seem to hate us for what Dad did like he used to. Kent does.”

  “Yeah, but Kent is holed up in a cabin in the woods. He’s not a cocky, womanizing asshole who goes around gloating and laughing at me all the time.”

  “That’s just Scott’s way.”

  “I know it’s his way. I don’t like his way. He’s a user, and I can’t stand that.” She let out a sigh. “It’s not just about the family fight. I can kind of understand him still resenting it since what Dad did ripped his family apart. But it was Dad’s fault. Not ours. We did everything we could to try to fix it, and he still acts like he’s too good for us. Plus I wouldn’t like him anyway. I don’t like men who treat women the way he does.”

  Laura frowned. “I’ve never heard of him mistreating women. He just dates a lot of them.”

  “He goes through women like they’re paper cups, using them once and then discarding them.”

  “Yeah, but he never makes promises to them or—”

  “You think that makes it okay? I feel so bad for all the silly girls who gaze at him with stars in their eyes, daydreaming of being the one woman who will finally bring him to heel. They’re so stupid, but I feel bad for them. They all end up crushed in the end, and Scott doesn’t even care.”

  “Maybe he does care.”

  “If he does care, he’d stop sleeping his way through the three surrounding counties. He doesn’t care. He’s an asshole.”

  Olivia generally considered herself a nice, understanding person who knew how to empathize with other people.

  But she had no pity for Scott Matheson. He seemed to exist for no other purpose than to infuriate her—and he enjoyed that fact.

  “Okay,” Laura said with another slightly amused smile. “If you say so. Russ says—”

  “I don’t care what Russ says.” Olivia didn’t normally speak sharply to her sisters, but her emotions had been strained by the encounter with Scott. “You might think he’s God’s gift to creation, but I don’t.”

  Laura blinked, clearly taken aback. “What? What do you mean?”

  Russ Matheson was Scott’s uncle. He was only in his midforties since he’d been significantly younger than his brother, and he had worked in finance for a big company in Richmond for most of his career. But after Laura had discovered their father’s lying and cheating, he’d been the first of the Mathesons to forgive and reconcile. He’d been working with them at Holiday Acres for almost four years now, and Olivia wasn’t blind to how in sync Laura was with him.

  But Laura was clearly oblivious to anything deeper than a business partnership with Russ, and she was openly shocked by Olivia’s insinuation.

  Olivia immediately felt bad about it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “I know. Scott always riles you up that way. But what did you mean about God’s gift?” Laura’s brown eyes were wide and bewildered. “He’s a good guy under all the sarcasm. Tommy adores him.” Tommy was Laura’s six-year-old son, the product of a one-night stand. “But I don’t think he’s God’s gift.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Olivia smiled at her sister, wondering if Laura was ever going to open her eyes. “I was just talking.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve got to show Scott the Mistletoe Cottage in a minute, so let’s finish this up.”

  Laura immediately got back down to business. She was good at that.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Carla and her mother had left Holiday Acres since the snow was getting worse and they didn’t want to get stuck. Olivia killed some time after they left since she wasn’t in a hurry for alone time with Scott and she liked the idea of making him wait, but eventually she had to give up.

  The snow was coming down thick and fast now. If she didn’t get Scott to the cottage soon, he’d be stranded in the main farmhouse with them for who knew how long.

  That wasn’t an acceptable scenario.

  It didn’t snow very much in this part of Virginia, and whenever it came down like this, the whole community shut down to wait it out.

  Olivia found Scott lingering in the entryway, looking at something on his phone. He wore a black overcoat that was hanging open over his jeans and sweater, and he looked ridiculously sexy, even in so many clothes. He straightened up when she appr
oached.

  “Ready?” he asked with an arch of his dark eyebrows.

  “Yes, I’m ready now. I can just meet you at the cottage so you’ll have your car and can leave right from there.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Olivia put on her stylish gray wool coat with gloves and a stocking cap before she walked outside. She stopped abruptly. “Shit. It’s snowing really hard now.”

  “We can take my SUV if you want. I’ve got four-wheel drive.”

  Olivia frowned. “We’ve got four-wheel drive too. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  She had to wade through several inches of snow as they walked toward the private parking lot reserved for staff and family, separated from the large public lot. Once, she slipped on the wet snow and would have fallen had Scott not reached out to catch her. His hand was warm and strong, even through her coat and sweater.

  The shiver she felt was from the cold. It wasn’t from his touch.

  It couldn’t be from his touch. That would be too wrong.

  The Holidays owned a pickup truck and a four-wheel-drive SUV that they used for work around the property. The SUV wasn’t parked in its place, and Penny was getting into the truck.

  Penny was twenty-nine, two years older than Olivia, and she was pretty in a messy, Bohemian way with reddish brown hair and a very curvy body.

  Olivia waved at her sister until Penny rolled down the window of the pickup truck. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m supposed to meet with Sheila Blankenship about those new nativity scenes she’s carving,” Penny explained.

  “Maybe you should postpone until the weather is better. There’s got to be five or six inches of snow already.”

  Penny made a dismissive gesture, looking blissfully unconcerned about practicalities like weather. She’d always been that way. “It will be fine.”

  “Do you know what happened to the SUV?”

  “Laura just took it. She had to go pick up Tommy from his piano lesson.”

  Damn. That was both their four-wheel drives. And Olivia needed one right now.