Christmas In Snowflake Canyon

“But at least I don’t have to spend the night in jail. I couldn’t have done that.” She shuddered. “I don’t even have any moisturizer in my purse!”

Dylan just refrained from rolling his eyes. He noticed Andrew was trying hard to avoid his gaze. “Maybe you should think of that next time before you start barroom fights,” his brother suggested mildly.

“I won’t be starting any more fights. You can be sure of that. I never want to walk into the Lizard again.”

“Good idea. I can’t guarantee you’re not going to serve any jail time for this. Felony assault is a very serious charge, Ms. Beaumont.”

To Dylan, this seemed like a lot of wasted energy over a couple of punches.

“I know.”

“Your father says he can give you a ride home.”

She looked through the glass doors to where Mayor Beaumont waited, all but tapping his foot with impatience. “Do I have to go with him?” she asked, her voice small.

“No law says you do.”

“Can’t you give me a ride to my car? I’m parked behind the bar.”

Did she really think her attorney’s obligation extended to giving his clients rides after a night in the slammer? And why was she so antagonistic toward her family? It didn’t make sense to him. Seemed to him, the Beaumonts were the sort who tended to stick together. Just them against the poor, the hungry, the huddled masses.

“How much did you have to drink tonight? Maybe you’d better catch a ride all the way.”

“Three—no, three and a half—mojitos. But that was hours ago. If you want the truth, I’m feeling more sober than I ever have in my life.”

He had a feeling she would want nothing so much as a stiff drink if she could see herself right now, her hair a mess, dried blood on her cheek from the cut, her sweater fraying at the shoulder where the district attorney must have grabbed a handful.

“Maybe you’d be better off catching a ride with your father.”

“Would you want your father to give you a ride home from the police station right now?” she demanded of Dylan. When he didn’t answer, she nodded. “That’s what I thought. I won’t drive, then. You can just give me a ride to my grandmother’s house. Either that or I’ll sneak out the back and walk.”

Andrew sighed. “I’ll take you to your grandmother’s house. I have to drop my idiot brother off, too. But you can’t just ditch your father. You have to go out there and tell him.”

So much for his puppy-saving lawyer brother. Now she looked at Andrew as if he were making her pull the wings off butterflies. Dylan didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for her. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, sister.

“Fine,” she said and tromped out of the room in sexy boots that had somehow lost a heel in the ruckus.

The minute she left, Andrew turned on him. “Gen Beaumont. Seriously? I do believe you’ve hit a personal low.”

“Knock it off,” he growled. Funny. While he might have said—at least thought—the same thing, he didn’t like the derision in his brother’s voice when he said her name.

“What were you thinking, messing with Gen Beaumont?”

“I was not messing with her.” He didn’t want to defend himself, but he also didn’t want to listen to his brother dis her, for reasons he wasn’t quite ready to explore.

“Yeah, I should have stepped back. It was stupid to get involved, but I could see that if I didn’t, somebody would end up seriously hurt. Probably her.”

“She’s a walking disaster. You know that, right? From what I hear, she’s been leaving a swath of credit-card receipts across Europe, embroiled in one financial mess after another.”

His family was going to make him crazy. For months they had been nagging him to get out of his house in Snowflake Canyon, to socialize a little more, maybe think about talking to somebody once in a while besides his black-and-tan hound dog. But the minute he ventured into social waters, they felt compelled to yank him back as though he were a three-year-old about to head into a school of barracudas.

“Relax, would you? I’m not going to get tangled up with her. I know just what Genevieve Beaumont is—a stuck-up snob with more fashion sense than brains, who wouldn’t be caught dead in public with someone like me. Someone less than perfect.”

He heard a small, strangled sound behind him and Andrew’s expression shifted from skepticism to rueful dismay. Dylan didn’t need to look around to realize Gen must have overheard.

Shoot.

He turned, more than a little amazed at the urge to apologize to her.

“Gen.”

She lifted her slim, perfect nose a little higher. “I’m ready to go whenever you are. I finally persuaded my father I didn’t need a ride,” she said to Andrew before turning a cool look in Dylan’s direction. “I’ll wait by the door. That way I don’t have to be around someone like you any longer than necessary.”

With one last disdainful glance she picked up her purse and her Dior coat and walked back out of the office with her spine straight and her head up.

“There you go. See?” Dylan said after she had left, shoving down the ridiculous urge to chase after her and apologize. “Nothing to worry about. Now she won’t be speaking to me anyway.”

“And isn’t that going to make for a fun ride home?” Andrew muttered, shrugging into his own coat.

* * *

SHE REFUSED TO look at Dylan Caine as his brother drove through the dark, snowy streets of Hope’s Crossing. Since Thanksgiving had come and gone, apparently everybody was in a festive mood. Just about every house had some kind of light display, from the single-strand, single-color window wrap to a more elaborate blinking show that was probably choreographed to music.

“I’m living in my grandmother’s house,” she reminded Andrew from her spot in the second row of his big SUV that had a Disneyland sticker in the back window and smelled of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“Got it.”

“You know where that is?”

“Everybody knows where Pearl lived.”

Genevieve looked out the window as they passed a house with an inflatable snow globe on the lawn featuring penguins and elves apparently hanging out in some kind of wintry playground. She thought it hideous but Grandma Pearl would have loved that kind of thing. She felt a pang of sorrow for the woman who had taught her to sew and could curse like a teamster, especially when she knew it would irritate her only son.

Gen had flown home for her funeral in April, wishing the whole time that she had taken time to call her grandmother once in a while.

Grandma Pearl’s house squatted near the mouth of Snowflake Canyon on a wooded lot that drew mule deer out of the mountains. It was just as ugly as she remembered, a personality-less rambler covered in nondescript tan siding.

“You have the key?” Dylan asked.

“Yes,” she answered, just as curtly.

He opened his door on the passenger side of the front seat. “You don’t have to get out,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to be seen with you, remember?”

He ignored her and climbed out of the SUV and held her door open in a gesture that seemed completely uncharacteristic. She thought about being childish and sliding out the other side, but she figured she had already filled her Acts of Stupidity quota for the day.

Aware of his brother waiting in the car, she marched up the sidewalk to the front door, where she at least had had the foresight to leave a porch light burning before leaving for the bar.

“I’m good. Thanks. You can go now.”