Chapter Four
Glory insisted on a cooling-off period, not that her father heeded her. A week after they’d returned to Seattle, he had listed the house and was showing her bids from architecture firms in Montana. Once he signed with one, dear God did they have a lot of questions about color schemes and materials.
Tip of the iceberg, she knew, but at least it kept him busy, freeing her up to try working on Brock and Pandora. No luck. The house felt oppressive and her energy kept directing itself to emptying linen closets and boxing up the last of her mother’s clothes. Fortunately, her mother had culled through most of her things before she died. It saved Glory from having to make hard decisions, but her father was even quicker to divest, which shocked her.
“We might need it,” had always been his mantra, but he’d bought a second-hand cargo trailer into which everything must fit. He was driving his wife’s barely used SUV and Glory had the hatchback she had been driving for years.
She concentrated on culling her own childhood mementos like participation ribbons and class photos. What had possessed her to think bangs would work with this kinky hair of hers? Braces and a shirt with a droopy bow in a forget-me-not print had completed her look of joyless adolescence. Grade nine had been a true horror show of a year.
Her stomach tightened in memory. Fucking Garrett Waters. On top of old humiliation sat adult outrage and a serious desire to kick the ass of a shit who would read a teenaged girl’s journal aloud. Mortified anguish still made her eyes sting. Small wonder she’d had no friends. The snickering had continued until she graduated. She never told her parents, too embarrassed that she had even tried to write.
It had taken years for her to scribble a word of fiction again. She was better off running her mother’s business than writing anything of her own, she believed wholeheartedly. Even when she had finally begun writing again, it was editing. Rewriting her mother’s older books to add smart phones and fix other details that dated the stories and smacked of rampant sexism. She still snorted over some of the things her mother had gotten away with that wouldn’t fly these days. Spanking? Not the erotic kind? Mom.
“That’s really good,” her mother had said more than once about Glory’s work. “You should write something of your own.”
Glory had always shrugged it off. Imaginary people had played out stories in her head since she was a kid, but she didn’t have the nerve to write them down. It was enough, and far safer, to paint over her mother’s work. She liked earning her mother’s approval for a twist she’d added while leaving her mother’s name on the cover to take all the heat if someone didn’t like it.
Since her mother had died, she hadn’t accomplished even that much. Her fake friends had abandoned her. No one talked in her head, not her mother’s characters and certainly not her own.
Not until Brock and Pandora.
And they refused to show themselves here in Seattle. Pandora couldn’t pick a hair color. Blonde? Brunette? Was she tall? Sharp-tongued or warm-natured? Was she even pregnant? How? Had it been the night with Brock in the tub?
Nothing seemed to fit so Glory abandoned the idea of pursuing their story.
What did that leave her with, though? A father who was taking on a huge debt, spending what income his dead wife still made. If she didn’t keep up with managing that, he’d go broke.
She knew as sure as rain fell on Seattle’s holiday weekends that if she didn’t go to Montana and keep the purse strings firmly knotted, he would burn through her mother’s money that much faster. She added the condition that she would go, “For one year,” and made him promise she could approve all the purchases and contractor invoices.
He agreed and she accepted her fate.
Secretly, she was buying herself a year to figure out her own life. Talk about a late bloomer. At this rate, she was going to be thirty before she moved out and supported herself. It had been hard to strike out on her own, though, when her mother had needed her and their time together had been finite. She didn’t consider that time ‘lost,’ but she did see how stuck she was. Curse her father for being right about that much.
As for him, he disappeared a couple of times over the next weeks, visiting the lodge with an accredited design team. He came back with a scope and proposed budget that made her blanch.
“It has to be world-class, Glory.”
Barf. The outlay just to get this report, which detailed critical deadlines and deliverables, was more than Glory took as a yearly salary from her mother’s business. Promoting her mother’s backlist wasn’t going to keep them afloat. They needed a new release.
In desperation, she went dowsing for gold through her mother’s archived files on her oldest laptop, unearthing a very early, very thoroughly rejected manuscript that her mother hadn’t had the energy to rework. Glory hadn’t had the balls.
The premise was awfully weak. An arrogant rancher was offended by his dead brother’s fiancée because she was a model. Nothing personal, he just hated makeup. The heroine had disdain for nature and sweat, but was staying at the ranch when her fiancée was kicked by a horse and died. So romantic. She wasn’t broke. Her parents were rich Bostonians who sent her a ticket to come home, so why was she still on the ranch?
Glory did what any self-respecting author would do when faced with such a daunting revision. She hit ‘Save’ and walked away, spending the rest of the day driving boxes to Goodwill and posting furnishings for sale online.
Please let the muse still be in Montana when she got there. It was the only way they could get through what her father was doing.
*
Staffing problems began before they even left Seattle. Three weeks from moving day, the general contractor quit.
“He brought in the cleanup crew and said he would get the water and gas back on,” her father told her. “He can even get a satellite Wi-Fi hooked up, but with all the new activity coming to the area, he has people in Haven calling him. He doesn’t want a long commute out to the hill if he can stay in town and work.”
That didn’t bode well for finding someone else in the area willing to take on the project. Glory went online with the specs and scope. She received only a handful of bids, most of them with obscene surcharges tacked on for travel from bigger centers.
One, Devon Lewis of Roadside Renovations, showed the most interest and claimed to have, ‘a traveling band of dedicated people’ who specialized in remote locations. His website showed a nice portfolio with warm testimonials. They were stationed in Minnesota.
We only take the jobs we want, he wrote when she emailed to set up a phone interview. He offered to meet her in Haven to check out the lodge.
All Glory could think about was the old Tom Hanks movie, The Money Pit. Finding someone to even look at the place on short notice was a win.
On April Fool’s Day, she woke in a motel in Haven. She peeked one eye toward the clock. Ten past five. She rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, but the reality of where she was began to smother her like a lead blanket. She could hear someone through the wall between their rooms, snoring like a diesel engine.
Rolf, she thought with a snigger, wondering if he was here in Haven. Her father hadn’t talked about him and she hadn’t asked, but it hadn’t stopped her from thinking about him more often than she should.
They were practically sharing a bed, she thought dreamily. Brock, she corrected, but had to wonder how Rolf was in bed, being an athlete and all. Selfish? Energetic? Insatiable?
BLESSED WINTER – Prologue
Page 1, word count = 0
He was hot. Not just to look at, but to touch.
As he took off his shirt and she stroked her hands over the planes of his chest, molding the dip along his sternum and tracing the pathways between the squared muscles of his abdomen, his skin was so hot she thought he must be near scalding inside. The narrow line of hair descending from his navel ought to be glowing and hissing like a fuse.
This wasn’t her. She didn’t start peeling off her clothes with a stranger barely an hour after meeting him. Thirst for revenge might have had her bringing him home, half of it merely to prove she had something men wanted. She was not something so cheap and damaged that she had to settle for a guy who cheated.
Proving that to anyone, least of all herself, wouldn’t come from a one-night stand with someone else, however. That’s why she’d been this close to telling this guy she had changed her mind.
Then he had kissed her.
And now they were in her bedroom. He swept his hands down her body, briefly clasped her hips, then abruptly brought his hands up, taking her shirt over her head at the same time. When he drew her into his arms again, her naked skin brushed his. His body was so fiery, she flinched from the contact.
He locked his arms around her, forcing her to take that heat against her, to feel it burn and make her twist inside.
Her arms rose to twine around his neck and she kissed him again. Oh, he knew how to kiss. His mouth opened over hers with command, plundering deeply, tongue thrusting with such confidence and suggestiveness, she reacted with a gush of wetness between her thighs.
This was sheer madness. Lust. She wasn’t thinking about who they were, or where, or how. All she could think was that she wanted to be on her back with his weight upon her. His cock inside her.
She shaped him through his jeans and got her wish very quickly. With a gruff noise, he walked her backward until the mattress hit her behind the knees. As she sank onto it, he reached to pull her pants down and off, throwing them aside as he straightened. Then he jerked his own pants open and down his hips, unabashedly revealing how aroused he was.
His thick, flushed cock popped free of his boxers and she rose on her elbows to admire his form, so perfectly crafted of toned muscle and golden skin, lovingly decorated with the right amount of hair. He didn’t show any self-consciousness as he took himself in hand and gave himself a few easy pumps, gaze eating her alive.
She swallowed and crooked her knee in invitation, revealing how easily her slippery lips parted, lubricated and longing for him to delve between.
He calmly rolled a condom on that thick length, all the way down to the dark base. His balls were pulled tight against his body and his nipples were hard. He set one hand on the mattress by her ribcage, pressed his other hand flat against her abdomen as he set his knee between hers, then slid his touch up to cradle her breast, brushed his thumb across her nipple, then drifted down to explore where she was wet and throbbing.
He took his time, thick fingertip easily sliding against her moist flesh, unerring in his quest to find her clit and incite her. He pushed a finger in deep, making her give a needy sob of pleasure. Then he cruelly withdrew.
She bit her lips, whimpering in agony.
He gave her two.
She let her head hang back as he fucked her like that, easy and slow, thumb flicking her clit so she grew wetter and hotter and spread her legs even wider.
When he slowly pulled his hand away, she clung to his fingers, head lifting in protest. He licked the back of his fingers before settling over her. Hard thighs pushed her knees further apart. He dropped his hips low between her legs and the domed head of his cock nudged for entry.
She was so slippery and molten she melted under the light pressure, parting and taking him in. He drew in a hot breath as he forged deeper, his thick length sliding into her in one determined thrust.
Somehow, she had expected more finesse. She had expected she required more finesse, but she loved the smoothly assertive way he drove in. He propped himself on his elbows, covered her mouth in another deep kiss, and began to thrust.
She lifted her knees to bracket his hips, ankles joining behind his lower back and urging him deeper, as deep as he could go. She traced his shoulder blades and the dip of his spine, arching to receive him, clinging to each withdrawal.
It was intense, maybe because she didn’t know him. She found herself reacting purely from instinct. There was no inhibition available to her, nothing to hide behind, not when she was gripped by such a fierce and basic need for the thrust of his cock plunging deep inside her.
He increased the tempo. She lifted to meet the slam of his hips, each impact sending a quake of sensation through her. His head rose and the muscles in his neck grew taut. The next thrust took her a step higher toward the crisis. Then the next. She lifted her hands to the headboard, to hold herself steady for the faster, harder, animalistic slap of his sex into hers.
They were both making ragged noises, breathing heavily between unfettered groans and snarls of agony. Tension gripped her, coiled her tighter, drew her closer and closer to orgasm. So close. So fucking close.
She raked her fingernails down his back and dug them into his flexed ass. He thrust with more power and climax arrived with a sudden rush to dismantle her, sending her in all directions, diffusing her across the universe. Then, two heartbeats later, she was pulled back into her body as a fresh wave of explicit joy engulfed her.
Now came the thunderous pulses, formidable and nearly painful, they were so concentrated and gratifying.
He continued to thrust as she was held in that grip of ecstasy, holding back, holding back, so fucking hard within her. His arms were columns of hot marble where she clung to them. He thrust and thrust, rapid and sure, extending her pleasure as long as he could before he released a feral cry, like a warrior. His hips shoved hard against hers, driving deep. He stayed there, a firm hand on her hip keeping her tight to his ramming hips as he pulsed deep inside her. The powerful throbs of his release played against the still-quivering walls of her sheath while scalding heat pooled inside her.
His body shuddered once, twice, and he made a sexy, growling noise that was pure possessiveness. Coated in sweat, he sank his weight down upon her.
She let out a breath of exquisite satisfaction.
*
Glory came up on an elbow, brow damp. Had Rolf just mind-fucked her?
Some Christmas story. Jeez. She was blushing alone in her darkened hotel room.
And why was Pandora taking home a stranger anyway?
It’s a rebound thing, Pandora said.
Glory sat all the way up and threw off her blankets, balked at the chill, but her compulsion to write was stronger. She quickly dressed before looking for the in-room coffeemaker. Seriously? None?
Bah. She checked online for a coffeehouse and saw Lazy Suzanne’s Bakery and Café was in the next block. Open? She would soon find out.
What was she doing here? It wasn’t even properly light out. The wind had a serrated edge and tried to saw the ears off her head as she stomped through the swirling snow. They’d left mild, if damp, temperatures along with cherry blossoms and daffodils in Seattle. Why?
We have two seasons here. Cold winter and warm winter, Pandora said.
Glory hurried her step only to come up against a locked door. Not open. Whimper. But someone was inside. She cupped her hand against the glass and saw a light slanting from the back. A body moved behind the dark counter.
A moment later, a middle-aged woman in chef whites came to the door.
“We’re not open yet,” she said with a smile, standing back to let Glory in. Homey smells of yeasty breads and cinnamon saturated the warm air. “I was planning to change my hours this week. My daughter said she would come home to help, but she’s not here yet. She’s my wild child.” She shook her head with affection. “Are you looking for work, by any chance?”
“Just a place to work.” She indicated her laptop. “With a cup of coffee?” she added hopefully.
“Machine’s not warm yet, but I have my little drip brewer going in the back. I’ll bring you a cup. Would you like a carrot muffin?”
“Love one. Thanks.”
For the next hour, Glory was in heaven. Suzanne Adams became her very best friend, working in her own quiet way to fill the shelves inside the glass counter, topping up Glory’s coffee, but not saying much, just letting her write.
And write she did.
BLESSED WINTER – Revised opening
Page 5, word count = 1185
Despite her reputation as a wild child, [thank you, Suzanne] Pandora had only slept with three guys, all of them long-term boyfriends, the last being that jackass musician she had deluded herself into believing was faithful, even though he was on the road more than he was home. No man went weeks without sex. Finding out he was cheating shouldn’t have been a shock.
It wasn’t. Not really. The bigger shock was that she had fallen for his line that it wouldn’t happen more than once. That she had let him stay after the first time. This time, she wanted their breakup to take.
So she went for a one-night stand herself. She brought home a stranger with a scruff of stubble, an air of confidence that bordered on arrogant, and eyes bluer than a clear, winter sky.
It wasn’t like her at all, but while she was delivering his pint of draft, he asked to buy her dinner when she got off shift. His gorgeous features wore a fresh tan with a stripe of paler skin from his sunglasses. His hair was sun-streaked, like he surfed all summer. He smelled like the slopes, having spent the day enjoying Tahoe’s spring skiing no doubt. His lazy smile was a much-needed balm to her cracked ego.
“Why don’t I cook us dinner at my place?” she suggested, earning a small elevation of surprise in his dark brows.
“I’d love that.” He skimmed his gaze down her slender figure with another ego-boosting sweep of approval.
He followed her in his own car and she took enormous pleasure in offering him one of her former lover’s pretentious import beers.
“Thanks.” He cast a speculative glance around her little apartment above a garage, gaze lingering on the framed, signed, heavy-metal rock band posters, the guitar-strap she used as a yoga strap, the turntable and box of vinyl collectibles. “Big fan of rock operas, are you?”
She wasn’t, not any more than the average person, and could see that he knew it.
“My ex was.”
He scratched under his chin. “For sure he’s an ex?”
“He’s not going to barge in here, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Annoyed, partly because she had let that stupid ex in the door—and into her bed—as recently as three weeks ago, and partly because she didn’t like being accused of being a cheater, she crossed her arms and said, “I’m ready to move on.”
His mouth pursed with suppressed humor. “Are you?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“On the contrary, I want to believe you. I’m happy to take all that passionate anger…” He motioned as if she had an aura radiating off her. “For the male collective. But not if you’re going to regret it.”
Regret was kind of the point in self-destructive behavior, wasn’t it? She was punishing herself for being stupid and proving she wasn’t worth respect. And dang, now that she’d gone that far in thinking it through, she was pretty damned confused.
“It’s okay if you’re changing your mind.” He sighed and set down the beer. “You don’t even have to cook me dinner if you don’t want. Can’t say I’m not disappointed, but it’s fine.”
“No, wait. See? Already you’re a way better guy than he was. Which was something I wanted to prove to myself. That I don’t have to settle for jerks.” That was as true as the rest.
“You don’t have to settle for ‘only in town for the weekend,’ either.” He said it kindly, but she heard it for the warning it was.
The idea of a quickie to cleanse her palate fell away, but a genuine desire to know this man better very easily slid into its place.
“Your honesty is refreshing,” she told him sincerely.
“I’ll be honest, then, and tell you that all I can think about is kissing you. If that is not something you’re thinking about…”
She found herself studying the shape of his mouth. Wide and smooth, his top lip held a wicked curve with a pointed dip in the center. His bottom lip was full and begging to be nibbled. His mouth would have been almost feminine if not for the stubble that surrounded it. As it was, she found herself wondering how it would feel pressed against her own.
And somehow, here he was. The corner of his mouth twitched as he drew her closer and closer.
She set nervous hands on his chest. Warm, firm muscles flexed beneath her touch. He wore a layer of flannel and a thinner layer of some kind of insulating pullover, but she could feel his heat, his strength, and it made something elemental slither through her. Something earthy and pure.
Letting her head fall back, she offered her mouth.
He set his hands on her hips and the world stilled. Her lips tingled with anticipation—
*
The bell on the door of the café jangled. Glory looked up, still in the fog of her first kiss.
Rolf.
Her guilt-ridden conscience poured liquid fire through her veins as her early morning fantasy took a brief sweep of the room. He wore boots, black jeans, and a cable-knit sweater that clung with adoration to his chest and shoulders. His jaw was unshaven, his dark hair damp from his morning shower. His mouth, with that distinctly well-defined top lip and damned near sumptuous bottom lip, firmed as he glanced at her.
Damn, he was good-looking.
She smiled in greeting, hoping like hell he couldn’t read minds.
His cold-coffee gaze met hers for the barest hint of a second, just long enough for her to read recognition and even quicker dismissal. In fact, it was an old-fashioned cut. No, ‘Good morning.’ No nod of greeting. Nothing. He walked right past her to the counter and asked for his thermal mug to be filled with coffee and a breakfast sandwich to be heated.
That casual disregard took the wind right out of her sails. Her shoulders prickled with awareness of him standing that close, ignoring her, while she wondered what the hell she’d done to piss him off. And why it distressed her.
She made herself ignore him right back, but took the precaution of tilting her screen down, even though he was not likely to come stand where she sat with her back to a wall and try to read what she’d written. She hit another obsessive ‘save,’ then double-checked it was in a password-protected folder before she closed the document.
It occurred to her that if she was writing one of her mother’s books, Brock’s cynical gaze should be full of derision, like Rolf’s. Actually, she would go back and make Brock blond as well as blue-eyed so it wasn’t obvious she was using Rolf as inspiration.
She sipped her cooling coffee, taking in that the café had filled with a handful of patrons while she’d mentally been in Tahoe. There were a couple of retirees, a man eating eggs while reading an honest-to-God newspaper, and a statuesque African-American woman wearing a smirk of speculation, as if she had watched the small interplay between her and Rolf.
That woman would have stood out even in multicultural Seattle. She was like an Amazon with an air of give-no-shits that made her memorable. From what Glory had seen of Haven, it was a seriously white-bread town. This wasn’t Suzanne’s wild child? Her short Halle Berry haircut, round, boyish face and expression of mild disgust, like she was the furthest thing from a morning person, gave off a badass vibe. She wouldn’t take Rolf’s shit.
The woman noticed her staring and met her gaze with a cool one of her own.
Glory gave her a small, quick smile and debated checking email, still trying to pretend she didn’t care that Rolf stood practically in front of her.
“You Glory Cormer?” the woman asked. “From the ski lodge?”
The other heads in the café swiveled to look at her. Rolf didn’t pay any attention.
“Um, yes.” Was she some kind of local celebrity now? Her stomach cramped. She hated being the center of attention.
“Saw your photo online. I’m Devon Lewis from Roadside Renovations.”
Glory’s surprise and instant doubt must have showed. Devon Lewis gave her a flat look and said an aggravated, “What.”
“I thought—” Glory swallowed back admitting she had thought Devon was a man. What kind of sexist did it make her that she believed a man was better qualified to lead the renovation of the lodge than a woman? She thought she was more qualified than her own father to run it.
But she didn’t intend to hold a level or run a power saw. She intended to hire a Real Man to do that. Or so she had thought.
“I thought we were meeting in an hour,” Glory lied.
“I know what you thought. That’s why I don’t post my photo online.” Devon made a sucking noise with her teeth and looked out the window, lips pulled into her teeth with disgust. “Have I wasted my time? Because it was a long drive from Minneapolis.”
“No, of course not. Can I buy you a coffee?”
“I bought my own.”
Awesome. She had alienated the one person who might actually take on this insane project.
Rolf finished his transaction and walked out in long, unhurried strides. Did he remind her that the snowcat into the lodge was leaving at nine? No. Jerk. He would probably leave without them if they weren’t there at eight-fifty-eight precisely.
Devon noticed her gaze follow him out the door. Her brows, narrow arches that were barely visible, went up.
Glory fought a blush without success. “Well, um…” She glanced at the time and realized she’d been in Tahoe longer than she’d thought. “Did you want to chat now, before we go up to the lodge?”
“I don’t chat.” Devon sipped her coffee. “I work. When I’m on the clock, which I’m not.”
Far out.
“Okay. I’ll, um, see you at the pullout by the—”
“I know where we’re meeting.”
So great.
But as she picked up her laptop, Glory remembered that at least her fictional friends were back. She hugged her laptop to her chest, more lighthearted than she had been in a very long while.