Celeste Teller was in the driver’s seat of her Mercedes Convertible, hands gripping the leather steering wheel while the rest of her shivered. The cloth top of the car was up, but it wasn’t doing much to cut the cold wind that swirled around outside of the vehicle. It was late October, nearly Halloween, and the weather back in Los Angeles where she was from would have been mild, almost warm this time of year. Here it was windy and cold, and the cold had hit all of a sudden. Celeste didn’t even have a coat heavy enough to cover her against the below freezing temperatures that had come on seemingly overnight. They weren’t necessary back in LA. You could get by with a light jacket in even the coldest months of the year. She thought she’d been prepared for a move here, but she’d been far from ready.

The ground around the law office Celeste was headed into was covered with a dusting of snow. Snow… She didn’t think she’d lived anywhere there was snow that fell on anything like a regular basis in her entire life. She was Southern California born and bred. You could tell it by looking at her. She had that sun-bleached blonde hair that looked like it belonged on a beach instead of a board room. It was the color that people always tried to emulate when they dyed their hair, but could never quite reach artificially. Her eyes were the same blue as the Pacific Ocea, that light blue gray that changed depending on the light and her mood. She was thin and curvy in all the right places and always dressed to the nines. Celeste was essentially Southern California in human form.

Yet, here she found herself in Colorado, completely out of her element. This was not where she’d imagined herself being at this point in her life. Celeste had worked for years, trying to make her way up through the ranks of one of the most prestigious law firms in Los Angeles. Myers, Murphy and Associates had branches all over the country, but her career had been firmly planted in Los Angeles. She’d had her sights set on a managing partnership since she’d gotten the first job with them a few years ago, and it seemed like she was well on her way to finding herself with the corner office she’d been gunning for.

Then, she got the knock on her office door she hadn’t been expecting. It was a promotion, but not the one she was looking for. She was going from being an associate to being a partner, but it wasn’t in the Los Angeles office. They needed her help in the Denver office. Business was growing. They had new clients who needed her expertise in real estate, and they had no one who could fill the job quite the way she could.

At least it was a partnership. That was what she’d been telling herself since she packed her Los Angeles apartment up and headed north. She’d been to Denver before, but never to stay more than a few days for a skiing vacation. Now, she was supposed to live there for however long it took for her to manage to get her way back to LA. One of the managing partners there was old, getting close to retirement age. If she proved herself invaluable here, then maybe that was the next line of advancement for her. Her best friend, Amanda, was an associate back in the office she’d come from, and she promised to keep her updated as soon as any of them heard anything about either a Partnership or the Managing Partnership coming open any time in the future.

For now, she was just going to have to bide her time here and do the best job she could manage with what she had to work with, but first, she was going to have to learn to deal with the weather. She loved her car, but she wasn’t sure what was going to happen when winter actually arrived here. It was late October. You could still go sit on the beach in a bikini without catching too much of a chill in California. Here, you needed a coat to make it from the car to the front door of the law office. She made a mental note to go shopping after work and pick up something heavier as soon as she could.

She greeted the receptionist and grabbed a stack of phone messages from the desk of the secretary charged with answering her phone before heading into her office. She dropped her bags behind the desk and fished her phone out of her purse to flip through her schedule for the day. She had a few meetings, but the largest event was an appointment with a client. He was by far the largest client of this branch of the firm.

Drake Fulton, owner-operator of Broken Saddle Brewing Company, owned one of the largest regional craft breweries in the state of Colorado. He’d built it up from a business he started in the kitchen of his ranch house fifteen years ago into a thriving business all on his own and without having sold out to one of the larger brewing companies like many of his competitors had done in the last few years. He was getting ready to expand and turn one of his smaller sites into a full-scale operation, but he needed to make sure he could get through local legal requirements and to ensure that the new brewery expansion wasn’t going to have a negative impact on the surrounding environment. It was something he’d insisted on during his communication with the firm.

This account had been handed to Celeste when she walked through the front door. The partner she was replacing here had been Drake Fulton’s attorney since he’d moved to Colorado, but the older man had retired a few weeks ago, leaving this account a little up in the air until she’d walked through the door. This had been the exact reason she’d been brought here as a matter of fact. With her experience in business and real estate back in Southern California, she was the ideal candidate for handling exactly what Mr. Fulton had in mind.

Celeste had done her research, not only on the legal requirements around the expansion but also on Drake Fulton himself. She knew he was divorced, and that his ex-wife had gone on to a successful modeling career back in Los Angeles. She was retired from modeling these days, but she’d turned into an acting career that left her with fairly steady work. She wasn’t any kind of household name, but Celeste had heard of her. In fact, Celeste had been at a few of the same parties as she had been back in LA, though the two of them had never been formally introduced. She was gorgeous, even now that she was a little older. But Celeste had no idea what Drake Fulton looked like.

She’d found plenty of pictures of his first wife, but only one of him taken when the two of them in Los Angeles. Since then, he’d kept to himself, taking care of business at the brewery and avoiding the spotlight whenever he could. Celeste was due to share her research on local regulations with him and answer some of the questions he had about the expansion out at the build site. The two of them had only communicated via email until now. She hadn’t even heard his voice. She had no idea what to expect except the fact that the receptionist had mentioned him being all business.

Celeste took a deep breath and rubbed her hands over her eyes. She could feel a headache building behind them. She sat like that for a moment, just trying to gather her thoughts, until the sound of the intercom from her secretary’s desk startled her back to attention.

“Ms. Teller, Mr. Ellison is here for his nine o’clock appointment.”

Celeste glanced at her watch. Her first appointment was right on time, down to the minute. It didn’t give her a moment to think or plan out the rest of her day before she had to get into the full swing of things.

“Please send him in.” She leaned over to make sure they could hear her outside, speaking directly into the microphone into the ancient machine. It was something else she was going to have to make a note to replace in here. It was all left over from her predecessor except for the things she’d packed up from LA and brought here with her. There were a few things she was going to need to do to make this office hers.

She was a little lost in mentally redecorating the place when her client walked in. She needed to get her focus back on her game. She had a big day ahead of her that included a drive out into the middle of nowhere Colorado and a meeting with this branch’s biggest client. She needed her head in the game for the rest of the day.

---

A few hours later, Celeste found herself behind the wheel of her convertible, still cursing the cold under her breath as she navigated her way out to Drake Fulton’s ranch. The GPS on her phone telling her the turn by turn directions that were slowly leading her out into the middle of nowhere. The snow was growing thicker on the ground the further she got away from the city.

She was on a two-lane road out in the countryside surrounded by nothing on either side but vast expanses of empty land. The mountains were off in the distance, ringing the area and turning it into a natural bowl of land. It would have been beautiful on a postcard or a calendar page. Being out here alone in real life was something else entirely. It was a little nerve wracking knowing that she was so far from anything that she considered to be civilization.

The next turn was onto a dirt road, or at least what should have been one. It was covered in snow, and Celeste had no idea how deep it might be or if her car was going to be able to make it through all of that. She really had no choice though. She was supposed to meet her client out here in less than half an hour, so she was just going to have to chance it. She turned the wheel right and started to ease down the side road.

The snow wasn’t as deep as she’d expected when she first turned onto the side road, and as she made her way away from the main highway, Celeste gained confidence in her ability to drive down the path without incident. She was slowly speeding up, and it wasn’t long before she lost sight of the road behind her. According to the directions, she still had a half mile to go before she reached her final destination.

It was that moment that every single ounce of her confidence left her during the instant that she felt the tires slipping beneath her. She tried to turn the wheel, but instead of following the curve of the road, the car began fishtailing. Celeste had no experience with how to deal with all of this. She was entirely lost and tried pushing pedals and turning the wheel until she found herself spinning out at the side of the road. Her heart was beating hard, and she’d narrowly avoided screaming out loud until the car finally came to a stop. All Celeste could do was shut it off and rest her head against the wheel with a sigh.

No one was going to come looking for her except her client, and no one was going to be able to see her from the road this far away. She was stuck and nearly a quarter a mile away from the work site and just as far from the highway. She glanced down at her feet with a soft sigh. The stiletto heels she’d worn into work this morning weren’t cut out for walking even half that far and definitely not in the snow. She was absolutely stranded unless she could get this car out of the snow.

It was then that she saw the pickup truck pull up beside her car. She hadn’t even noticed it was behind her as she was driving, but she was lucky it had been. When the driver got out of the car, she was a little surprised.

He was older than her, but not by too terribly much, and it was starting to show in the light splash of gray hair that sprouted from his temples. The rest of his hair was dark in contrast. His eyes were a deep brown, the kind that looked like something you could fall into forever. Add onto all of that the muscles that were barely concealed by the button-down shirt that clung to him in all the right places through the opening in the unbuttoned coat that he wore..

She rolled down the window and murmured a greeting.

“Hello. Sorry. I guess I’m stuck, and I’m supposed to meet a client out here soon. I don’t suppose there’s any way you could help me get out?” She was hopeful that the stranger was going to take pity on her and know how to drive in the snow, but Celeste didn’t have any clue exactly who this guy was. Maybe he was a worker on the ranch or one of Mr. Fulton’s employees. He was certainly dressed like he worked out here. She could only hope that she was right

“Well Miss. If you’ll let me into the driver’s seat, I think I can help you out, but you might want to consider a more practical car if you’re living here in Colorado.” His voice was a little gruff as he motioned for her to get out of the car. She pulled her jacked around her and climbed out of the car scoffing as she stood out of his way.

“I think this one will be just fine. Me being out here is pretty temporary. I’ll be heading back to Los Angeles first chance I get. Thanks for helping me out, though.”

“Yeah, I could tell by those shoes alone you weren’t from around here.” His laugh shocked her a little, and the expression on his face was maddening. She didn’t know who this guy was, but she was more than a little irritated at his reaction.

“Yeah well, I’m pretty sure these shoes cost more than your entire outfit and probably more than you make in a week, so I wouldn’t trust you to know much about them.” She held her hands on her hips and scowled in his direction.

“I don’t know anything about any damned shoes, but I know about cars and snow. This thing isn’t practical for anything except puttering around a city street on a sunny day, but if you’re so damned determined to drive it, you might want to learn how to handle it. I saw you from a mile back there, and I’ve seen teenagers handle themselves better.”

Celeste started to come back with some kind of retort, but he cranked up the car and slammed it into gear in that moment, tires spinning until they threw up a sheet of snow that rained down on her head and left her shivering. She huffed and walked over to where he’d gotten the car back onto the road and prepared to give him a piece of her mind as he climbed out of the driver’s seat, leaving the car idling.

“I have no idea who you think you are…” She began, but he interrupted her in mid-sentence.

“Most days I think I’m Drake Fulton, and I’m pretty sure you’re my new attorney. So if you’re done being obstinate and tottering around on those useless heels, then maybe you’d better get your prissy ass back in this car and we can get the rest of this show back on the road.”

Celeste was absolutely stunned though she wasn’t going to be able to muster up an apology as she moved to take the car back over and follow him the rest of the way down the dirt road. She’d really put her foot in her mouth this time. Even if every fiber of her being was telling her he deserved it, she was going to have to at least try to smooth things over somehow. She just had no idea how she was going to do that.