Sleigh Bells in the Snow

“Mine was stuffing snow down my brothers’ necks and then running like hell before they could retaliate. We were more into destroying than creating.”

“I suppose that’s what happens when you have three boys. Tell me about your other brother.”

“Sean? He’s an orthopedic surgeon. I take credit for that choice… .” He slowed as the surface became more uneven. “I broke my arm snowboarding when I was seven. Ran into a tree. Instead of running for help he stood there staring at the bone sticking out.”

“Oh, please—”

“I was yelling at him to get help, and all Sean could do was wonder how it was going to go back under the skin. He insisted on coming with me to the hospital so he could find out. He went to Harvard and then spent time at the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore indulging his fascination for difficult fractures, before switching to sports medicine. At the moment he’s working in Boston and when he isn’t wearing scrubs he dresses in smart suits, drinks fine wine and dates beautiful women.”

He’d done the same, he remembered. There was a time not so long ago when he’d worn smart suits, enjoyed fine wines in good restaurants and dated beautiful women.

Now he rarely wore a suit, and apart from a couple of friendly evenings out with Brenna, who had grown up on the farm nearby and followed them around when they were kids, he hadn’t dated anyone. For the past eighteen months his life had been about saving the business.

“So he’s not back in the family fold?”

“No, but he’ll be home for Christmas.” Following an impulse, Jackson pulled over and parked. “This is one of my favorite views of Snow Crystal. From here you can see the lake, the mountain and the forest. If you come here early in the morning and late at night in the summer you can sometimes see black bear and moose.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

He smiled. “It wasn’t a warning. The wildlife is important to the tourists. Have you ever seen a bear?”

“Never. And truthfully, I hope not to. I don’t think it would be my thing, although I do meet quite a few sharks in my job.” Her eyes gleamed. “Any other wildlife I should know about apart from bear and moose? Er—anything small and friendly and less likely to kill you? A cute rabbit perhaps?”

“The animals leave you alone if you leave them alone.”

“I’ll be leaving them alone. No doubt about that. So what else interests the tourists here?”

“The view.” He considered himself good at reading people but he was finding it hard to read her.

“I’ve already written that down. The view. See?” She turned the screen toward him. “It’s on the list, above ‘moose.’”

“Instead of writing it down, why don’t you try looking at it?”

“At a moose?”

“At the view. Get out of the car.”

“Get out—you mean actually go outside and stand in the snow?” She said it slowly, as if he’d asked her to strip naked and run in circles. “You’re the client, so if you think it’s necessary then of course I’ll—” Taking a deep breath she opened the car door and then gasped and slammed it shut again. “Crap, it’s freezing out there.”

The brief loss of control convinced him he preferred Kayla with her guard down. “If you wear the right gear, you won’t feel the cold.”

“I’m definitely wearing the wrong gear. I felt it right down to my bones.” She shivered. “All right, I can do this. It’s the whole Snow Crystal experience, frostbite and all.” Opening the door gingerly she slid out of the car, one limb at a time, as if bracing herself to enter a cold swimming pool.

Jackson strolled around to her, his feet crunching on new snow. “Close your eyes.”

He could see her weighing up the risk of trusting him against the potential downside of arguing with a client.

She closed her eyes. “If the next thing I feel is a bear’s jaws closing on my arm, I resign the account. I really don’t want the whole Snow Crystal experience to include being a bear’s breakfast.”

He closed his hands over her arms. “No bears. Turn around.” Her hair brushed against his chin and the scent of it mingled with pine and freezing air. He decided that Kayla Green smelled as good as she looked. “Now open your eyes. Look through the trees.”

“What am I looking at?”

“The lake.”

She focused, her breath forming clouds in the air. “I—Oh. People are skating.”

“In Vermont the weather is the ultimate wild card, but the one thing we always have in winter is ice.

“You can skate on the lake?” Her tone was wistful. “That’s magical.”

“You want to try it?”

“It’s not that magical. I think I’m probably more of an indoor skater. But I can see others might find it charming,” she added hastily. “I’ll add it to the list underneath ‘view’ and ‘moose.’”

“Skating is fun.” He tried to imagine the businesslike, composed Kayla Green falling on her butt and then decided not to waste time imagining something that was going to be reality soon enough. There was no way she’d keep her footing in those elegant and totally impractical chocolate leather boots.

Back in the car, he turned the heating up and steered the vehicle back onto the road. “If you look through the trees to the right you can see one of our log cabins.”

She turned her head, the movement sending that blond ponytail swinging. “Is that mine?”

“No. You asked for secluded.” Had he misjudged? Why would a single girl on her own over Christmas want to be in a secluded cabin? “You can change your mind and be closer to the main lodge if you prefer.”

“A secluded cabin is my dream.”

It seemed like an odd dream for a bright, twenty-something woman.

Then he thought about the life she led, the busy nonstop adrenaline rush that was her working day. Maybe she needed a rest. There were plenty of days when a secluded cabin sounded good to him, too.

“Your cabin is right on the boundary of our land and it backs onto a deer wintering area so you’ll probably spot white-tailed deer. You might see snowshoe hare, fox, coyote, bobcats and the odd porcupine.” He slowed as he negotiated the narrowing track. “I’ll give you time to unpack and settle in before you meet the rest of the team.”

Team? He almost laughed. They weren’t a team, they were a circus.

“Do you live with your family?”

“No. I love them, but there are limits. I converted the barn.” So that he could have his own personal brick wall to bang his head against when they drove him crazy.

He drove straight along the forest road that followed the edge of the lake and pulled up outside the little rustic gate that marked the track leading to the cabin.

“We have to walk from here.”

IT WAS PERFECT.

Kayla stepped onto the path and stood for a moment, breathing in the smell of the forest and the crisp winter air. Trees soared upward, branches drooping under the heavy burden of snow. The light was fading and the last rays of the sun glinted off the frozen surface of the lake, giving it a mystical, ethereal quality. Everything was still, the silence broken only by the occasional soft thud as snow tumbled from overloaded branches.

It felt a million miles from Manhattan. A million miles from her life.

A million miles from the all-consuming madness of Christmas.