Snowflakes and Silver Linings

Snowflakes and Silver Linings
Cara Colter

After a rocky year, Casey Caravetta pulls herself together and puts on a smile for her best friend’s Christmas Eve wedding. However, she hadn’t expected to see Turner Kennedy, the first man to break her heart.Special Forces Commando Turner is now hard, dark and dangerous, tortured by his experiences of war. Coming face to face again with beautiful Casey is a painful reminder of the path he might have taken.Back then they were living on borrowed time, but now – with a sprinkling of holiday magic – they have a another chance… if only they’re prepared to believe it!

She’d experienced nothing but heartache at the caprice of love.

And with that firmly in mind Casey wrapped her hand around the handle of her suitcase and turned back to the inn with a certain grim determination. She ploughed through the growing mounds of snow and marched up the steps, out of the snow, onto the cover of the porch.

Something wet and cold brushed the hand she had her car keys in. Casey dropped the keys and gave a little shriek of surprise, and then looked down to see Harper had thrust a wet snout into her hand.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked the dog.

A deep voice, as sensual as the snow-filled night, came out of a darkened corner of the porch.

“Keeping me company.”

Snowflakes

and

Silver Linings

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CARA COLTER lives in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the “Love and Laughter” category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website: www.cara-colter.com.

With thanks to Shirley and Rebecca

I am in awe of your creative genius,

amazing discipline, and unflagging professionalism.

Contents

PROLOGUE (#uc76d63af-a0ca-5685-b9d6-2cbe06fb2d1e)

CHAPTER ONE (#u667e6598-17d8-5544-8a34-f99b05f9eb4f)

CHAPTER TWO (#u771677d6-fed8-5655-bd7a-1857205825a3)

CHAPTER THREE (#u787250ba-e75a-5f42-9fb8-3f300e445b6a)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

PROLOGUE

CHRISTMAS.

Turner Kennedy was a man who took pride in his ability not just to cope with fear, but to shape it into a different force entirely.

He had jumped from airplanes at 8,200 meters into pitch blackness and an unknown welcome.

He had raised all kinds of havoc “outside the fence” in hostile territory.

He had experienced nature’s mercurial and killing moods without the benefit of shelter, sweltering heat to excruciating cold, sometimes in the same twenty-four-hour period.

He had been hungry. And lost. He had been pushed to the outer perimeters of his physical limits, and then a mile or two beyond.

He had been the hunted, stranded in the shadows of deeply inhospitable places, listening for footfalls, smelling the wind, squinting against impenetrable darkness.

It was not that he had not been afraid, but rather that he had learned he had a rare ability to transform fear into adrenaline, power, energy.

And so the irony of his current situation was not lost on him. After a long period away, he was back in the United States, a country where safety was a given, taken for granted.

And he was afraid.

He was afraid of three things.

He was afraid of sleeping. In his dreams, he was haunted by all the things he had refused to back down from, haunted by a failure that more fear, on his part, might have changed a devastating outcome.

And maybe it was exhaustion caused by that first fear that had led to the second one.