Scrooge and the Single Girl

Jilly let out a startled cry and stomped on the brake as a doe leapt from the cover of the trees and directly into her path.

Luckily, she managed to stop before she hit it. And then it did what a deer always does. It froze directly in front of her vehicle and stared into the beams of her headlights, an expression of total surprise and dumb-animal disbelief in those big, sweet, bulging brown eyes.

Jilly rolled down her window, stuck her head out into the freezing storm and yelled, “Go on, you! Get out of here! Get lost before I make a jacket out of you!”

The doe blinked and took off, disappearing into the leafless bushes and pine trees at the other side of the driveway. Jilly pulled her head back inside, rolled up the window and brushed the snow out of her hair. Then she drove on, straining to see, the snow hitting the windshield so hard and thick, there was nothing but whiteness three feet beyond her front bumper.

The driveway was very long. Or at least, it seemed that way in the dark, with near-zero visibility. Jilly rolled along with great care, hunched over the steering wheel, peering into the wall of white in front of her, trying not to run into a pine tree or another startled deer.

Okay, truth. She was getting worried. She could end up snowed in up here in the middle of nowhere, with nobody but Missy to turn to. “Oh, not good,” she murmured under her breath. “Not good at all….”

But then she reminded herself that she did have her cell phone, that people knew where the old house was and knew she was headed there. She would be all right. She could call for help and get it eventually if it turned out she really needed it.

However, on the subject of the house, where was it? What if she’d somehow managed to miss it? What would happen if she—

And right then she saw it.

“Oh, thank you,” she cried. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, God!”

Not twenty feet ahead, the driveway opened out into a clearing. And in the middle of the clearing she could make out the looming shadow of the old house, with its high-pitched roof and long, deep porches. Smoke trailed up from the chimney-pipe and the golden light inside shone like a beacon through the swirling, blinding—

Wait a minute.

The golden light inside?

The house was supposed to be unoccupied.

Jilly reached the clearing. She pulled in beside the vehicle already parked there. Then she turned off the engine and sat for a moment, staring at the lighted house as snow gathered on the windshield, obscuring her view. Who could be in there? What in the world was going on?

About then she turned her head and looked through her side window at the other car. The window was fogging up. She rubbed at it with her open palm and peered closer.

“Omigod.”

It was Will Bravo’s car. She was sure of it. It was a very distinctive car, the Mercedes Benz version of a sport utility vehicle. Silver in color. What did they call it? A G-Class, she thought.

Will Bravo’s car.

Jilly shivered. Will was Caitlin’s middle son. The only one of Caitlin’s three sons who remained a bachelor, the other two having married Jilly’s two dearest friends, Jane Elliott and Celia Tuttle.

Will Bravo’s car….

Everything was starting to make way too much sense. “Caitlin, how could you?” Jilly whispered under her breath. She felt tricked. Used. Thoroughly manipulated.

She grabbed her purse from the floor in front of the passenger seat and fumbled through it until she came up with her phone. She’d stored Caitlin’s number, just in case she might need it. She punched it up. But when she put the phone to her ear, instead of ringing at the other end, all she got was static.

Jilly yanked the device away from her ear and glared at it. Terrific. So much for being able to count on her cell.

Missy meowed.

Jilly shoved the phone back in her purse, stuck her arm over the seat and got her coat and hat. She pulled on the coat and jammed the hat on her head. Then she hooked her purse over one shoulder, grabbed the cat carrier, leaned on her door and climbed out into the raging storm.

Chapter Two

Will Bravo was just about to sit down to his solitary dinner of franks and beans, with a copy of Crime and Punishment for company, when someone knocked on the kitchen door.

What the…?

His grandmother’s cabin was off the beaten path in every way. To get there, you had to have directions. Even when the weather was good, nobody ever just dropped in. Which was why he was here in the first place. He wanted to be left alone.

Whoever it was knocked some more.

Will went over and pulled open the door, and Jillian Diamond blew in on a huge gust of snow-laden wind. She was wearing a red wool hat, a big shearling coat, faded overalls, lace-up boots and a red-and-green striped sweater with a row of red reindeer embroidered on the turtleneck collar. In her left hand, she clutched an animal carrier from which suspicious meowing sounds were issuing.

Will couldn’t believe this. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Now, wasn’t that going to be fun to explain? Jilly thought. She caught the door and pushed it shut, then set Missy’s carrier on the warped linoleum floor, sliding her purse off her shoulder and dropping it next to her unhappy cat.

“I asked you what you’re doing here,” Will demanded for the second time.

She didn’t know where to start, so she countered provokingly, “I could ask you the same question.”

He studied her for a moment, his head tipped sideways. And then he folded his big arms across his broad chest and informed her, “I’m here every year from the twenty-second or twenty-third until the day after New Year’s.”

Jilly swiped her hat off her head and beat it against her leg to shake off the snow. “Well, sorry. I honestly didn’t know.”

He grunted. “You could have asked anyone. My mother—” Oh my, Jilly thought, surprise, surprise. “—my brothers. Even, more than likely, your two best friends.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“Well, this may come as a rude shock to you, but asking if you were going to be here never even occurred to me.” Yeah, okay. Maybe it should have occurred to her. Given what she knew about Caitlin Bravo, it all seemed achingly obvious now. But that was called hindsight and it and $3.49 would get you a venti latte at Starbuck’s.

He was glaring at her, as if he suspected her of all kinds of awful things, as if he didn’t believe a word she had said. She didn’t even want to look at him.

So she didn’t. She looked away, and found herself staring at the single place-setting and the thick hard-bound book waiting on the ancient drop-leaf table about three feet from the door. Delicious comfort food smells issued from the pot on the stove.

“Answer my question,” he growled at her. “What are you doing here?”

From the carrier, Missy meowed plaintively. “Look,” Jilly said with a sigh. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I swear I didn’t have a clue that you were going to be here.”

He made a low scoffing sound. Jilly could see it all, right there in his gorgeous, lagoon-blue eyes. He thought she was after him. He believed she had known that he was staying here, that she’d followed him up here to the middle of nowhere to try and hook up with him.

She threw up both hands. “Think what you want to think. The deal is, though I truly hate to put you out, it’s very bad out there. I’m stuck here for the night and we both know it.”

He did more scowling and glaring. Then at last he gave in and muttered grudgingly, “You’re right. You’re going nowhere tonight.”

Oh, thank you so much for admitting the obvious, she thought. She said, “Right now, I need to get a few things in from my car.” Missy meowed again. “Like a litter box and some cat food, for starters.”