Christmas In Snowflake Canyon

“Genevieve. I’m sorry you heard that.”

“But not sorry you said it.”

“That, too,” he said.

She still burned with humiliation, though she wasn’t sure why. Everyone saw her that way. Why did it bother her so much that he did, too?

“Forget it,” she said. “I have. Do you think I really care about your opinion of me? After tonight, we won’t have anything to do with each other. We don’t exactly move in the same social circles.”

“Praise the Lord,” he said in an impassioned undertone, and she almost smiled, until she remembered he despised her.

“Good night, Dylan.”

“Yeah. Next time, try to have a little self-restraint.”

She nodded and quickly unlocked the door, hurried inside and closed it shut behind her.

She had to will herself not to watch him walk back to his brother’s waiting vehicle. Instead, she forced herself to focus on the challenge ahead of her—the horrible green shag carpeting, dark-paneled walls, tiny windows.

She was so tired. Exhaustion pulled at her, and she felt as if her arms weighed about a hundred pounds each. Mental note: lingering jet lag and adrenaline crashes didn’t mix well.

She headed straight for the hideous pink bathroom and managed to wrestle her clothes off with those giant, tired arms then stepped into the shower.

At least she had hot water. Always a plus. Actually, the house had a few things going for it—decent bones and a fantastic location at the mouth of the canyon, to start. The half-acre lot alone was worth at least a couple hundred thousand. If she could transform the house into a decent condition, anything else would be a bonus.

She stood under the hot spray until the water finally ran out, then toweled off, changed into her favorite pair of silk pajamas and climbed into the bed, grateful for the sheets she had thought to bring down from her parents’ house.

She could do this. Yes, it was overwhelming, especially on an extremely limited budget. Difficult, but not impossible.

If she pulled this off, she might be able to leave Hope’s Crossing with a nice chunk of cash, at the very least, and maybe pick up a little hard-earned pride along the way.

She supposed it was too much to hope that she might even earn her family’s respect—or anything but contempt from a tough, hardened ex-soldier like Dylan Caine.

* * *

OVER THE WEEKEND, Dylan tried not to give Genevieve Beaumont much thought. He was surprised at how difficult he found that particular task.

He would think of her at the oddest times. While he cleared snow off his long, winding driveway in Snowflake Canyon with the thirty-year-old John Deere he had fixed up. While he went through the painstaking effort of chopping wood for the fireplace one-handed and carried it into the house—also one-handed. While he was sitting by said fire with a book on his lap and Tucker curled up at his feet.

Monday morning his cell phone rang early, yanking him out of a vaguely disturbing but undeniably heated dream of her wearing a demure, lacy veil that rippled down to a naughty porn-star version of a wedding gown made out of see-through lace.

His phone rang a second time while he was trying to clear that vaguely disturbing image out of his head.

“Yeah?” he growled.

“Cheerful this morning, aren’t we?” His father’s Ireland-sprinkled accent greeted him. “I suppose I might be a mite cranky, too, if I had spent my weekend on the wrong side of the law.”

Dermot made it sound as if his youngest son had been riding the range holding up trains and robbing banks. Dylan imagined his father viewed the transgressions the same.

“Not the whole weekend,” he answered, sitting up in bed and rubbing a little at the phantom pains in his arm. His now-narrowed world slowly came into focus. “Only Friday night. I spent the rest of the time shoveling snow. How about you?”

“You didn’t come to dinner last night.”

Dermot threw a grand Sunday dinner each week for any of Dylan’s six siblings who could make it and their families. The combined force of all those busybodies was more than he could usually stand.

“I came to dinner on Thanksgiving, didn’t I? I figured that would be sufficient. Anyway, it took me a couple hours to clear the snow and by then I figured you’d be eating dessert.”

“Nothing wrong with coming just for the dessert. It was a delicious one. Erin brought that candy-bar cake you like so much and we had leftover pie from Thanksgiving.”

His stomach rumbled at the mention of the signature recipe Andrew’s wife made. “Sorry I missed that.”

“She left a piece especially for you as she knows how you favor it. You can stop by the house when you’re in town next.”

That was an order, not really a suggestion, and Dylan made a face he was quite glad his pop couldn’t see.

“I’m to give you an important message from your brother.”

“Which one? I have a fair few.”

“Andrew. He tried to call you earlier but couldn’t get through. He said the call went straight to your voice mail, and he left orders for me to try again.”

Dylan hadn’t heard his phone but sometimes the cell-tower coverage up here could be sketchy. He checked his call log and saw he had three voice-mail messages, no doubt from Andrew.

“What’s the message?”

“You’re to meet him at the district attorney’s office at noon. Don’t be late and wear a tie if you can find one.”

Now, that sounded ominous. He had always hated dressing up, something Pop and all five of his brothers knew. A lifelong healthy dislike had become infinitely more intense over the past year.

“A tie.” Another of his many nemeses. He defied anybody to knot a damn Windsor one-handed.

“Do you have one?” Dermot asked when he didn’t respond. “If you don’t, I can run one of mine up to you.”

“I can find one. You don’t need to drive all the way up here.” He didn’t know whether to be touched or guilty that his father was willing to leave the Center of Hope Cafе during the breakfast rush to bring his helpless son a necktie.

“Did Andrew tell you why I’m supposed to meet him wearing a tie?”

“Nary a word. All I know is he was heading into court and ordered me to make sure I personally delivered the message. If you didn’t answer your phone this morning, I was under orders to drive up Snowflake Canyon to drag you down. You’ll be there, right?”

“I’m not five years old, Pop. I’ll be there.”

A guy might have thought multiple tours in Afghanistan would be enough to convince his family he could take care of himself.

Then again, since he had come home half-dead, they could possibly have room for doubt.

“See that you are,” Dermot said. He paused for a moment, long enough for Dylan to accurately predict a lecture coming on.

“I’m disappointed in you, son. Surely you know better than to find yourself in a fight at a place like The Speckled Lizard, no matter the provocation.”