Free-Read Christmas Novella

In the spirit of the holidays and in the joyful style of Hallmark, here is the first installment of Stand Still & Chill, a free-read novella set in West Virginia’s beautiful Canaan Valley. Look for more chapters over the next two weekends!

*****

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoy reading this Christmas romance, done in the heart-lightening spirit of the season, as much as I enjoyed writing it. Set in my home state of choice, West Virginia, Stand Still & Chill is the second half of my Match Made in Almost Heaven duo. The first half, Suspended Aggravation, was released in 2020 as patron-sponsored art and remains available as a free read through Weelunk online magazine and at noraedinger.com.

Releasing Stand Still & Chill as a free read is a celebration of thanksgiving for more than 30 years in the writing business. While I retired from journalism in summer 2023 and am enjoying a second career that has nothing to do with sitting in front of a computer, I still hope to take on occasional projects that capture my interest. So, this might not be the last you hear from me…

Thank you for reading this novella in the meantime. Thank you for sharing this link hither and yon. And, may all the joys and wonders of the season be yours!

Blessings,

Nora

Chapter 1

“You don’t need an app to find a man,” Brianna told her assistant with a saucy grin. She could afford to both take the time to listen to Marcie’s lengthy tale of electronic dating woe and respond with a moment of uncharacteristic playfulness. Brianna’s “guy” – the only man she was currently willing to give any room for in her life — was beaucoup points ahead in the polls and the general election was only a week away.

Brianna wasn’t sure that God was quite as partisan as some believed Him to be, but it certainly seemed as if all of heaven was smiling on the re-election campaign of the Honorable Dwayne Blenning, governor of West Virginia.

Blue skies.

Nothing but blue skies.

She smiled again.

“Watch and learn, my friend,” Brianna whispered with an uncharacteristic hint of a giggle in her voice.

Brianna stood up straight like her mama had taught her – shoulders back, chest up — her tiny frame elevated to almost average height thanks to Jimmy Choo. She launched. And, the timeless allure of clicking high heels echoed around the marble expanse outside the Senate chambers, drawing a glance from every male within range. The fact she had a figure not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s and chestnut hair done up in a tousle that looked like it could be undone with a slight tug kept the attention of many of them — one man in particular.

Not that Brianna bothered to look. She forged ahead as if she had blinders on, pausing only to acknowledge the occasional, “Afternoon, Brianna,” or “Hello, Miz Reed,” with a smile and a nod. She knew Marcie, her workaday friend as well as her assistant, would catch up to her in her own more sensible, rubber-soled wedges. Brianna got that about Marcie even if she couldn’t fathom the whole dating app thing. Marble was hard as, well, rock. Yes, she knew that as well if not better than any other woman who worked in the state house. She just wasn’t willing to adjust her footwear accordingly.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you are a wicked woman, Brianna Reed,” Marcie said with an outright laugh as they turned abruptly away from the main doors to the Senate chamber to disappear down one of the Capitol’s rabbit-hole stairways instead. “But, we aren’t all as beautiful as you are.”

Brianna turned to her co-worker in surprise. “I’m not beautiful, Marcie,” she said with complete honesty. And, she was right. Under all the hair and the high polish, her face was a little too round, her eyes were a little too far apart and a bit small, and her mouth was a little too large. And, though she’d never admit it — there was some serious shapewear under her sweater dress.

She laughed outright herself, then dialed back her volume to a whisper. Marble floors, nothing. It was the Capitol’s marble halls that were the real danger. They amplified conversations like nobody’s business, as generations of politicians had learned the hard way. “I’m a PR maven, Marcie, all smoke and mirrors. I just know how to make the best of what I’ve got.”

“Well,” Marcie said slyly, her eyes darting past Brianna’s shoulder for the briefest of moments. “You apparently do.”

With nothing but that glance and the wink that followed, Marcie vanished around the last twist of stairs and into a little used and even lesser known door to their office, leaving a startled Brianna standing alone. Well, not quite alone. The skin on the back of her neck told her that much. She turned slowly on the narrow step to face a man who was still handsome enough at what might have even been 70 to make her catch her breath.

“I agree,” he said with a wry smile. “You certainly do.”

Brianna took a full second to recover. “May I help you?” she finally managed to get out.

“I hope so,” said the man, still smiling. “I would like to offer you a job, Miss Reed.”

“I have a job,” Brianna said meekly. His comment startled her, but she was more out of sorts at having been caught in such a frivolous moment. She was the governor’s press secretary, after all. And, she was a Reed of the Wheeling Reeds on top of that. It just wouldn’t do.

And, who was this man and how did he know her name? He wasn’t a politician, a lobbyist or even a lawyer. She knew most of those guys by face, name and serial number and she had the general type down cold.

She looked at him more carefully, a bold, head-to-toe inspection that, oddly enough, didn’t even cause the man to flinch. In spite of his casual dress – blue jeans, a turtle neck and a nubby sweater knit in a pattern that included repeating deer antlers — he was fit and well groomed enough that she knew he would look just as good in the priciest of suits.

So, definitely not a journalist. They tended to look rumpled no matter what they were wearing or for whom they were working.

That left only businessman. This was West Virginia. Some of the richest, most powerful men in the state ran around looking like they were ready to haul a vanquished 16-point deer home in the back of a pick-up at a moment’s notice. And, they were. She looked the man up and down once more. She knew pretty much all of those guys, too. Was this one she had somehow missed? He could be someone from the Eastern Panhandle, one of those insider/outsiders who identify more with the Beltway crowd than the Mountain State.

Hmmmm.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

“You certainly do,” he repeated himself, briefly puzzling Brianna as to what he was referring. “You have a very good job, indeed, for such a young lady, and you do it quite well based on what I have seen and heard,” he clarified. “But, I hope I can offer you something even more interesting.”

Ordinarily, a comment like that would raise both Brianna’s antennae and her hackles. But, there was no lechery or even guile on this man’s face. He simply continued smiling at her, looking so ruddy-cheeked and wholesome that she didn’t even bother using her fake laugh in response.

“Whatever would you mean by that?” she asked sweetly. Hey, it never hurts to check.

“My son,” he said in a straightforward tone, fishing a tattered photograph out of his wallet.

Brianna peered at the photo. The kid was a bit on the young side for this particular man. But, he was as handsome as his dad. She’d give him that. Dark, slightly shaggy hair. Dark eyes. Chiseled face. Hard body. She, for one, certainly wouldn’t want to try to budge the soccer ball that he held firmly under his one foot.

“Does he play for a local high school?” she asked, as amused as she was confused at this point.

The man whipped the photo around to look at it himself. “Oopsy. Wrong picture,” he said.

Oopsy?

More wallet fishing. “Here Rafe is now, all grown up.” He put the second image in front of her. Brianna hid her surprise with a slow intake of breath. All grown up. Indeed. The man in the picture was Rafe Davis.

Rafe Davis.

Raphael Davis, more properly.

Rafe Davis as in gorgeous, hotel entrepreneur, not-exactly-bad-boy-but-nobody’s-boy-for-long Rafe Davis. The adjectives could go on and on. When she’d been in the resort business herself not so very long ago, co-workers used to sigh at the very thought of him. He’d even been named one of the nation’s most eligible bachelors in a recent magazine piece after a New York City editor had visited the ski resort where his lodge was located and – according to the tourism grapevine – had nearly swooned at the feet of the man with an angel’s moniker right in the middle of the lobby.

“I’m sure your son already has someone to do his PR,” she said with a broader smile.

“Rafe doesn’t need a PR person. The job part of the deal is for my business,” the man said. He took back the photo and replaced it with a business card. But, before Brianna could read past “Robert Davis,” he said something else that stopped her cold.

“What Rafe needs is a wife. And, you will be perfect for that, as well.”

Oopsy and then some.

Fortunately, Brianna had no end of experience dealing with “situations.” Drunken resort guests who were under the mistaken impression their stay included somewhat more than world-class food and accommodations. Celebrities. People who thought they were celebrities. And, most recently, there were sundry politicians and lobbyists with a variety of agendas, some of which were probably prosecutable in an earlier, kinder era.

Oh, yeah. She was only 28, but Brianna had pretty much seen it all.

Or, maybe not.

The man had more to say.

“I’m doing an Abraham,” the man said cheerily. “You know, the Old Testament story. My wife died not long ago and Rafe is having a hard time working past his grief. He’s young. He needs a wife, someone to focus his attention on the future instead of the past.”

Brianna, who came from a family that had churched for generations, knew the Bible story in question. A patriarch, a grieving son, a helpful servant that was sent to fetch a bride from the homeland. It was all well and good for its time – which was millennia ago. Today, it rang somewhere between crackpot and sinister.

“Well, thank you for your interest, Mr. Davis,” she said somewhat warily, whispering a brief prayer for help in case the guy turned wacky. She’d seen that, too.

Prepared to scream like a banshee if necessary, she turned partly around on her heel to indicate their conversation – weird thing that it was — was over. She headed down the stairs with one hand firmly gripping the rail and one eye still warily on good old Mr. Robert Davis, if that’s actually who he was. “It so happens that I’m not on the market for a job at the moment,” she finished over one shoulder. She decided to leave, “or a husband for that matter,” out of her parting comment at the last millisecond.

“You will be,” was all he said.

Something unusually knowing in his tone gave her pause. She swiveled to face the man once more. “And, whatever do you mean by that?”

“I’ll leave that for you to ferret out, Miss Reed,” he said with a smile as sweet as the guy on the Quaker Oats box. “When you do, give me a call. Canaan Valley will be an excellent place to lay low until it all blows over. I’ll be waiting there for you. So will Rafe.” He tapped the card that was still in her hand with his finger. “I think you’d really like him and the job both. Think about it.”

That’s what he said. And, then, he turned and climbed back up the stairs like he knew exactly where he was going. That alone was mysterious. Most people needed a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way through the Capitol’s smaller passages.

Brianna stood staring after him, already strategizing about whom to call first. She knew honesty when she saw it, as rarely as that tended to be given the nature of her business. In spite of the crazy my-super-hot-son-needs-a-wife thing, this was honesty. There was trouble afoot and she would know what it was before the end of the day.

Or, perhaps even sooner. Her phone vibrated in her hand and a quick check revealed it was a text from her best friend, Allie Morelli, head feature writer for The Wheeling Tribune.

Brace yourself.

That’s all Allie had written and that’s all Brianna knew she would get. Given their jobs’ potential conflicts of interest, she and Allie had formed a strict policy when Brianna had left a hospitality-focused career that included Oglebay and the Greenbrier resorts to work for the governor. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. The fact Allie was actually warning her that something was coming down was so extraordinary a chill ran right down Brianna’s spine.

Her phone buzzed again. This time, the text was from John Carlton, another highly placed PR type at the Capitol.

Meet me at the bench.

That text was enough to get Brianna off the steps where she’d been standing since Marcie had abandoned her to her fate. Her heels sounded decidedly less glamorous this time as she crossed yet another marble passage. There was a note of panic in the rapid clickety, click. Brianna had, in fact, the distinct feeling she was walking straight into some kind of doom.

*****

 “How bad is it?” Brianna asked as soon as she reached the concrete bench where John Carlton conducted the most delicate of his business dealings. Tucked into the park-like lawn that stretched between the Capitol and the Kanawha River, the seat was out of earshot of anyone except squirrels. Never a bad thing in Charleston.

“You need to jump ship,” John said before she sat down.

“What!?”

He straightened his signature bow tie before answering. “You heard me.”

“When?” she asked.

“Within the hour.”

That shook her, but she didn’t let on except for a slight toe bobbing that was suddenly out of her control. “What am I facing?”

“The governor was captured on video in a Capitol elevator.” John paused. A Sunday school teacher at her parents’ rather uptight church before he signed on to iron out the wrinkles of government, John had a distinct distaste for the sordid. He was clearly searching for words. “He was not alone.”

Brianna sighed, instantly catching her friend’s insinuation. Lovely. So much for God’s stamp of approval. And, a week before the election. What was wrong with the governor? Any concerns about ticking off the Almighty and destroying one’s family aside, you would think a politician at this level of government would have enough sense to at least be discreet if he couldn’t behave.

She switched into PR mode. “How clear is the video? Is it really him?”

“It’s him, sadly. But, it’s the young lady that’s more of the problem,” John sighed. “It’s Sen. Martin’s daughter. She’s 18.”

“What!?”

John grimaced, speaking firmly and slowly, as if she suddenly had forgotten how to speak English. “Eighteen. Years. Old. Opposite. Political. Party.”

Until that moment, Brianna had thought it was a figure of speech when people said their heart dropped to the floor. But, she suddenly felt like hers actually did. With a thud, perhaps even a smack. The good people of West Virginia might wink at a bit of backroom business dealings or garden-variety adultery now and then. One past politician had even managed to divorce his first lady and move a second one right into the gubernatorial mansion while still in office. But, a tryst between a handsome mid-life governor known for his pro-family policies and a teenaged girl would never fly. Same party, or not.

“Lord have mercy,” she croaked in a desperate, three-word prayer. Her toe bobbing was suddenly vigorous enough to conduct Flight of the Bumblebee. “How long do I have?”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said you need to resign now,” John said, touching her cheek in the same fatherly way he had taken her under his wing as soon as she’d arrived in the Capitol. The Reed’s ties to old-money Wheeling were that broad and that deep. Friends were everywhere. “This is radioactive. It wouldn’t hurt to take some time off and find a place to lay low for a while. You’re good at what you do, Brianna, very good. There will be other jobs.”

Radioactive.

Lay low.

Other jobs.

Brianna clutched the business card she was still holding. Only when John turned to walk away did her brief brain fog give way to a frenetic consideration of her options. She glanced at the rest of the bold, black print on its front. CORDUROY, the overly plain card said in all caps, Canaan Valley’s Premiere Nordic Ski Resort.

Corduroy?

Her brain kicked into search-engine mode. She’d heard of the business and had a vague memory that the word was ski bum for a freshly groomed cross-country trail – although downhill runs were what was more likely to be found in the Mountain State. Corduroy had been in the early stages of development while she was still at the Greenbrier, a position that made monitoring other recreational outlets for competition or collaboration possibilities a necessity. If she’d known Rafe Davis was involved, she’d have paid more attention. How had she not known that?

As it was, she struggled to remember the bare bones of the enterprise, but failed. The generalities were less difficult to contemplate, however. Resort? Been there. Done that. Cross-country skiing? Not so much. The only thing Brianna knew about that type of sport was that an exercise machine meant to keep people in shape for one and the same during the off season made an excellent place to hang clothes when fully extended. One was serving that very purpose in her bedroom at the moment, in fact.

Canaan Valley, though? Hmmmmm. A girl couldn’t lay much lower than that, could she? The recreational area, however beautiful it was, was remote. And, even though the whole wife thing was utterly ridiculous, the possibility of getting to know Rafe Davis beyond a passing photo or write up in a tourism magazine could be, well, interesting.

Maybe the old guy wasn’t so oopsy crazy after all.

Chapter 2

“You’ve gone crackers, Brianna,” Brianna’s friend Allie declared in crisp British tones one morning, about a week later. “You won’t last more than a few days out there in … in all that nature.”

Gabe Morelli, Allie’s hot teddy bear of a husband, nodded in surprisingly solemn agreement. But, he spoiled the effect with an impish smile. “There might not even be a cell phone signal,” he said. “It’ll just be you, the black bears and the kind of people who wear socks with their sandals. You’re high heels and lipstick. I don’t see it.”

That shook Brianna for a second. Gabe was a highway engineer for the state, but he also co-owned a successful outdoor-adventure business with his cousin that included a catwalk at New River Gorge, the nation’s newest National Park. The guy knew the setting, or at least the type of setting. That moment of doubt didn’t stop Brianna from whipping a cross-stitched pillow off the couple’s cozy denim couch his way, however. Gabe, school jock that he once had been, just caught it expertly and laughed.

She ignored him. “It’s a ski resort, people!” she retorted. “Cell phones work just fine there. And, Rafe Davis – Rafe Davis, as in ski-resort Rafe Davis — and his dad are involved. The dad’s a retired CEO type coming home from decades on the hunt. He has the money to do it right. There’s a small lodge and a half dozen cozy little cabins. How backwoodsy could it possibly be?”

“Plenty.” Gabe’s continuing laughter trailed back to them from the adjacent kitchen, where he had gone to prepare yet another snack for his wife. Allie’s pregnancy had put her appetite on par with the average teenaged boy. A teenaged boy with tape worm. Brianna fumed silently as Allie wriggled her otherwise skinny self around in the red-leather depths of her wingback chair, trying in vain to get into a comfortable position.

It had been bad enough, earlier in the week, when Brianna’s parents had accused her of going “out on a lark.” They’d acted like she was signing up for a stint in the Peace Corps when Brianna had first told them of her plan to “head for the hills.” Their words, not hers. They were so upset with her “downward mobility,” in fact, that they only reluctantly agreed to let her possessions remain in their carriage house, where she’d been living since returning to Wheeling after her abrupt resignation of her government job. Something about “tough love” was mentioned.

“Out on a lark,” indeed. This was business strategy, pure and simple. But, now, Gabe and Allie were balking, too. What if following her impulse to take Robert Davis up on his offer wasn’t as outstandingly good as it felt before the scandal broke? She briefly considered this possibility. Nah. She had an instinct for this kind of thing. Sure, it was impulsive. But, Brianna’s best decisions were the impulsive ones. Plus, she’d checked Robert Davis and the business out thoroughly before committing. This was sound. This was forward motion. This was right.

“Look,” Brianna said testily, acknowledging that other facet of the situation. “It’s not like I have unlimited choices. My guy went down in flames.”

“Flames” was probably putting it mildly. Gov. Blenning had lost the election just two days prior by a higher margin than any incumbent for any office in state history. There were probably county dog catchers who had gotten more votes. The debacle was in every newspaper, magazine and internet or TV feed she’d seen. Thanks to Robert Davis and John Carlton, her name was attached to none of it. But, it still made good career sense to bump the whole Capitol fiasco further down her resume. A short stint at Corduroy would do that if nothing else.

So, why was Brianna’s toe bobbing again? And, why did she have an overwhelming need to run or dance or do anything rather than sit and talk? “I got out instead of going down with the ship and now I’m just trying to reposition myself and get ready for the next thing,” she blurted out. “I made a six-month commitment to Corduroy. It’s not like I’m going to stay there.”

Allie sighed and patted her ever-growing tummy. “It still doesn’t seem like you.”

Tears suddenly stung Brianna’s eyes. How could Allie – she, who wrote mild-mannered fluff for one of the few local newspapers still cranking by day and blissed out in a newlywed/pre-maternal haze the rest of the time – possibly understand? Brianna wasn’t sweet-natured Allie. Brianna was a Reed – born with a harder edge than most, living life on the professional fast track and possessing an unfortunate reputation for going through men like tissues. A reputation that was not entirely deserved, she fumed.

“Is this about Mark?” Brianna instantly countered.

She and Mark, one among Gabe’s multitude of cousins, had dated for an unusually promising several months before Brianna had grown bored and abruptly moved on. Mark had since reconnected with a former flame, married her and seemed plenty happy, but Brianna suspected neither Gabe nor Allie had quite forgiven her for the break up. Particularly given her own “recovery,” which was, also unfortunately, a string of the same kind of one- and two-date “relationships” that had preceded Mark.

Hey, was it really her fault that nothing, or no one as the case may be, had clicked so far? Or that one guy was a lousy tipper at restaurants, or another guy took her to a gory war movie on their first date or another guy had road rage? Or, that still another guy turned out to have a tattoo of his mother’s face on his bicep? Brianna shuddered anew at that last one. Imagine waking up to that every morning.

It certainly wasn’t her fault that a surprising number of her suitors, including a couple of men who claimed to be “Christians,” ending things as soon as they realized her idea of dating didn’t include sleeping with them.

Nope. Not one bit of it was her fault, she assessed in her split-second pondering. She returned to her earlier supposition.

“Are you guys still mad that I broke up with him?” she demanded.

“We’re not mad. We never were,” Gabe said. He was suddenly back in the living room with a glass of milk and a bowl of nuts and raisins for Allie and a custom-made latte for Brianna. Brianna rolled her eyes in spite of the peace offering – which she happily took and sipped, thank you — but he went on. “No one expects you to marry someone who isn’t right for you. Mark’s a big boy. He got that. We got that. This is just about you, Brianna. You — running off to the wilderness like a bat out of … heck. It’s just out of character. Really out of character.”

“I’ve done other adventurous things. I quit my job at the Greenbrier and moved to Charleston just to get to know Mark better,” Brianna fired back, disliking the child-like petulance in her own voice.

“You most certainly did not,” Allie snorted, dismissing Brianna’s alleged leap of love with a nibble of walnut and a wave of her hand. “You were already bored with that job. Plus, the state job paid better and was higher profile and you know it. You would have jumped, Mark or no Mark.”

The truth stank like day-old gym socks.

“Well, I’m jumping again, high heels or no high heels,” Brianna sniffed, popping off the couch like she had suddenly developed springs in her backside. This was the last stop on her goodbye tour of Wheeling. Soon, her hometown, and Charleston for that matter, would be nothing but specks in the rearview mirror of a car loaded to the gills. She was on her way to Canaan Valley. “I had just hoped my friends would be more supportive of my new life endeavors.”

Gabe was the one to roll his eyes as he hauled Allie out of her chair and the pair saw Brianna to the door of their fairy-tale bungalow. Newlyweds. Brianna wouldn’t have been surprised if a charmingly-dressed family of mice had emerged from a tiny door in the molding to join in the merry send off. She could imagine all of them waving, chirping “good bye” with British accents and crying into their tiny, monogrammed hankies.

Such fantastical thoughts were interrupted. “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and give you peace,” Gabe said with grin and a handshake. “Is that supportive enough? We mean it, you know.”

Allie tried her best to lean past her baby bump for a real hug. “Of course, we support you, my friend. You just surprised us. I’m sure everything will be brilliant. Whatever you do usually is.”

Brianna smiled. “Well, ‘brilliant,’ might be a stretch this time,” she said with a wry grin. She loved these two — for the most part.

Allie giggled. Gabe wasn’t done with his teasing, however. “Just remember: If it rattles, growls or has leaves of three, let it be.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Creek Stewart,” Brianna said with a bit of a grimace. She loved these two. She did. But, a few months spent with the socks-and-sandals crowd might not be so bad. All that granola, fresh air and exercise – those kind of people would probably be too chillaxed to be as critical as the other folks in her life.

*****

“Do you think it’s some sort of late-in-life crisis?” Rafe asked with a heavy sigh, propping one elbow on Margaret’s well-worn countertop and dropping his chin onto his open palm. “I mean, mom just died this summer. It doesn’t seem like he should already be looking for another woman. Should he be? I mean, aren’t people supposed to wait at least a year or even more before that kind of whatever?”

“I don’t know, honey,” Margaret said nervously, nearly wiping the boomerang pattern right off the Formica between them, so vigorous was her toweling. The counter, like the rest of her tiny vegan diner, was already spotless. “Some men really don’t like to be alone.”

“I don’t know whether to keep commuting part-time — so I can put out this new fire — or just go back up the mountain like I planned,” he continued. “I can’t keep splitting my time between here and Snowshoe. It’s November. It’s the season. I need to be back at my actual office, at my actual lodge — not stuck here half the time worrying about some gold digger coming after my dad.”

“She might not be a gold digger,” Margaret offered hopefully. “How do you know he’s even dating her anyway? She’s going to be working for him. He really could use a marketer. Maybe that’s all it is.”

“Come on,” Rafe said, rising from his vinyl-topped swivel stool to pour some coffee for himself. “I have plenty of employees I admire, but I don’t go around talking about any of them the way dad is talking about her. They’d probably sue me for sexual harassment if I did. Dad hasn’t exactly been talking much since mom died. But, you should have heard him go on last night on the phone. It was like he was trying to sell her to me the way he described her. You should have heard him. ‘Beautiful.’ ‘Brilliant.’ ‘Charming.’ ‘Low mileage.’”

“Low mileage!” Margaret hooted. “There’s no way Bobby said that about an actual woman.”

“OK,” Rafe admitted, grinning in spite of his frustration. “I made that part up. But, the rest of it is true. Plus, dad claims she had a really good job in Charleston before this. Doing what is anybody’s guess. Why would this Brianna – if that’s even her real name – give up something so good to head for a dinky town like Cranberry with a 68-year-old man if it isn’t for the money?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Margaret said with a raise of one eyebrow. “Especially since she’s going to be living in my upstairs apartment.”

Rafe actually gasped. “What?!”

“Your dad asked me, baby. He called from Charleston a couple of days ago to set everything up,” she said defensively. She went back to wiping the counter when Rafe continued to glare at her. “Hey, a girl’s gotta eat,” she mumbled, still looking down.

Rafe sighed again. He got it. It wasn’t easy to make a living anywhere in Canaan Valley, particularly in Cranberry. Tourism dollars only stretched so far when it came to the actual locals. He should know — he’d started feeling and almost thinking like one over the last few months.

He sighed again. He’d gone this far helping his dad recover from the car accident that had slowly killed his wife, Rafe’s mother. His dad had said very little, but Rafe knew he’d appreciated his son’s presence if nothing else. It looked like he might be living in the Corduroy cabin he’d been using as a second home for a little while longer.

“I guess I can’t quit now,” he thought out loud, not even noticing Margaret’s broad smile. “Not while he still needs me.”

Chapter 3

Rafe didn’t usually stare at women.

There was no need to. He ran one of the poshest lodges at Snowshoe, a mountain-top resort village that offered surprisingly good downhill for the Southeast. That provided a steady parade of every kind of pretty he could imagine. And, every kind of boring, he’d eventually discovered. The hard way.

He’d seen and heard so little of interest in the last year or so – particularly in the months he’d spent helping out his parents — that he was beginning to wonder if he had grown immune to the feminine mystique. When had he been on an actual date? May? Maybe even March? It didn’t help that most of the women he met at Snowshoe were either his employees or short-term guests. Or, that the female population of Cranberry was generally either married, over 60 or, more than likely, both.

That must be it. There had to be some reason he was staring out the diner’s window like he’d been living on an island. Alone. For years. Spearing fish for his supper and letting his hair grow wild and sun-bleached. Without so much as a volleyball named Wilson to keep him company.

Completely distracted from the industry booking trends he’d been studying, he all but gaped at the incredibly attractive female who was jockeying her tiny red car into an equally tiny parking space directly in front of Margaret’s diner. The air around the booth he had effectively turned into a mini office for the day suddenly seemed to crackle with electricity and, oddly enough, carry hints of the screaming trumpets he associated with mambo music of all things.

He smiled. What was it that had him going? The sassy, little car? The way the woman – visible through her open window — pulled down her visor mirror once she was parked, biting her lower lip in concentration as she fiddled with an extravagant tumble of hair? Or, was it the gauzy blue scarf she wound slowly around her neck, her face peeking in and out of view as she did so? He wasn’t quite sure. It wasn’t exactly anything he hadn’t seen before, but – together – it was somehow unusually good.

When she opened the car door to get out, he did figure out one thing. The notion of a personal soundtrack wasn’t his imagination. He smiled again. Vintage Tito Puente spilled into the street for a moment before she cut the engine. He recognized it from the weekly Latin dance nights the lodge hosted. Mambo Mondays.

Whatever it was about this woman that had grabbed his attention, it also got him onto his feet and to the diner’s entrance like some kind of border collie. “Welcome to Cranberry,” he heard himself say as he reached the screened doorway and opened it wide. “Can I help you?”

Welcome to Cranberry? How lame is that? It’s been way too long.

The woman startled, nearly dropping the tiny, box-like purse she carried over one forearm onto the cracked sidewalk outside the diner’s entrance. Rafe realized it must have surprised her to suddenly see someone in the door of what probably appeared to be a darkened, empty restaurant from the outside. The dining room was so dark behind him, in fact, he suspected she could probably only see him in silhouette even now. He stood straighter, instantly glad that he worked out as much as he did.

“Am I too early?” she asked somewhat warily, looking at him, then above his head at the diner sign. She seemed unsure if she was where she wanted to be.

“The diner isn’t open for lunch for another hour,” Rafe said reassuringly. “But, the owner’s already in the kitchen. I can get you a cup of coffee if you want to wait.”

The woman hesitated a moment – scrutinizing his shadowy form — then seemed to decide in favor of his suggestion. “That would be nice,” she said as she passed through the door he was still holding wide open to the unseasonably warm day. A merest hint of something both citrusy and floral reached him as she walked by. He smiled yet again.

“I hope you don’t mind sitting in the dark,” he said, although it wasn’t truly dark in the dining room, just dim. “The owner doesn’t like to turn on the lights until it’s actually opening time,” he said as he poured the coffee with one cream, two sugars that she had requested. “I’m just here catching up on some work on my laptop, not so much to eat really, although the food’s great assuming that’s what you’re here for.”

“I suppose I will need some lunch,” the woman said. “I brought a small amount of groceries with me, but I didn’t want to buy much until I see how big the apartment is.”

Screeeeeeeech!

The instant shift in his brain gears was practically audible. “The apartment?” Rafe croaked, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Yes,” the woman said brightly. “I’m going to be working in town. At Corduroy ski lodge. I’m renting an apartment from the diner’s owner.”

Rafe, her coffee still in his hand, went straight to the bank of light switches behind the counter and flipped them all on at once. “Hey!” a woman’s voice yelled irritably from the space beyond an opening in the far wall, but he paid her no attention.

Instead, he and the newcomer squinted against the fluorescent glare until they could see once more. Then, they locked each other in an appraisal that was head-to-toe pointed on both sides. Rafe slowly exhaled when he was done. OK. His dad obviously had good taste. Make that great taste.

Pity the new object of Robert Davis’s affection was obviously on the make, however. Expensive dress, fitted as if it was couture. Expensive high heels that were impractical to the point of ridiculousness given that they were in Canaan Valley. Expensive make up. Expensive perfume. Rafe could recognize the quality of it all even if he couldn’t begin to name the actual designers or the fabrics. She didn’t buy that kind of luxury on hotel maid or waitress earnings or the wages of whatever it was she actually did for a living in Charleston.

And, she was young. Insanely young – or at least way younger than his own 35 years if he had to make a guess. He steamed in place, tossing around various things he’d like to say to her. “Keep your hands off my dad, tootsie,” was at the top of the list for some odd reason. Even though he’d never told anyone to keep one’s hands off anyone else or so much as said the word “tootsie” in his entire life. If the stiletto fits …

It was the woman who spoke first, however.

“Oh!” she chirped, jumping a bit when she said the word, as if she had startled even herself. “You must be Robert’s son, Rafe! He mentioned you were living here in Cranberry on and off.”

She sprang out of the booth where he had seated her and practically cantered over to where he was standing, her heels clicking merrily across the tile floor. Both of her hands were outstretched, but were held too low for the hug he had at first feared was headed his way. Common manners dictated that he similarly extend the hand that wasn’t still holding her coffee mug for a shake or he wouldn’t have. “I’m Brianna Reed, your dad’s new PR person!”

PR person? Yeah, right. But, Rafe made a mental note of her last name – her alleged last name — for future investigation purposes. On impulse, he decided to play it cool instead of engaging in an immediate confrontation. Really cool. “Ah,” he said, pulling his hand out of her clutches somewhat hastily in the pretense of drinking his coffee, or not his coffee as the case turned out to be. Aaaack. He nearly gagged on the sweetness, quickly setting the coffee back on the counter lest he make the same mistake again.

Somehow, “ah” and that bit of gagging was all he had now that he had abandoned the “tootsie” approach. He stood uncomfortably, not unlike a boy in early adolescence, shifting from foot to foot for what seemed like forever. She again filled the void.

“It was such a beautiful drive down from Wheeling this morning,” she bubbled, waving the elegantly manicured fingers he had released toward the diner window. “I haven’t been to the valley since I was a girl. I’d forgotten how wonderful it is – the ring of hills and the river and the colors of the leaves! The hills! They look like they’re on fire…”

Her list of obvious geographical features was interrupted as Margaret barreled out of the kitchen and into the dining room in a huff. “Rafe, do you think the money to pay electric bills grows on trees?”

“Ah,” Rafe said again, motioning to Brianna with his head and a can-you-believe-it widening of his eyes.

Margaret regarded the younger woman with as much scrutiny as Rafe had. She frowned slightly. “You must be Brianna Reed,” she said finally and flatly. “It figures.”

Brianna was clearly perplexed at such greeting, but she recovered quickly enough, Rafe noticed. She now offered both her hands to the owner. “And, you must be Mag!” she enthused. She was clearly a woman of many exclamation marks.

“It’s Margaret actually.”

“Oh,” Brianna said, checking something on her phone screen. “Isn’t it called Mag’s Diner?”

“Sign was cheaper that way,” she said. Margaret wiped her hands on her apron and gave Brianna a get-moving wave. “Come on. I’ll show you your apartment before I open. It’s not much, but Cranberry is a town where not much is more common than not.” Margaret headed out a side door and into a small stairway that linked a tile-covered lobby with the two apartments that were above the diner. “I have the second floor. You’ve got the third.”

Brianna followed eagerly enough, perhaps too eagerly. Rafe watched her carefully as she nearly bumped into Margaret when the older woman abruptly stopped and yelled over one shoulder. “Rafe! Turn off all those lights, will you?” Margaret said. “We’ll have every old geezer in town in here trying to get an early-bird special if you don’t.”

Rafe harrumphed, but did as he was told. Then, as soon as the women were safely out of sight, he returned to his lap top and began the exhaustive internet search he intended to do on little Miss Brianna Reed. He’d done plenty of background checks on potential employees over the years, particularly the manager wannabe’s. He knew how to dig up whatever dirt was there.

*****

There was no dirt. This pleased Brianna immensely. She ran as tight a ship at home as she did at work. She breathed in the brisk air coming through the freshly opened windows. It was nearly 70 degrees on November 12. That was unusual, even in low-lying Charleston. It was ridiculous in the mountains. But, it was still nice. Sheer, white curtains fluttered across the entire front of the apartment’s large main space, which served as a combination of kitchen, dining room and living room. That room, a single, equally large bedroom and a small bath were furnished with simplicity and good taste.

She turned to her new landlord, surprised but pleased that a woman with purple glasses, white braids that dangled to her waist and – Brianna looked down on impulse – hand-knitted socks under sandals the size of hoagies would go for something so elegantly spare. The space was Ikea simple. Add in ivory walls free of any décor and darkly stained hardwood floors and the apartment rocked.

The few pillows, throws and bits of art tucked in between the suitcases in Brianna’s car trunk would be more than enough to make the place feel like home for the next six months. All she would need was a small desk and chair for her laptop set up – that would all fit in one corner of the bedroom – and she’d be in business.

Her parents and Allie and Gabe were clearly wrong. Brianna already felt at one with the valley. Maybe she’d buy some hoagie sandals for herself on her next trip out. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, naysayers!

“It’s lovely,” Brianna sighed, already imagining herself sitting in front of the main room’s tiny fireplace in lumpy socks or ski-themed leggings, a whip-topped latte in hand. “I’ll take it.”

“It’s pretty much take it, or leave,” Margaret sighed. “It’s the only open apartment in town.”

“Oh,” Brianna stammered. She wondered if Margaret was always quite so unwelcoming or if she had somehow managed to already tick off the woman. They headed back down the stairs in silence. Hunky Rafe was no where to be seen. That was a bit disappointing, but Brianna decided to take him at his word and try the diner’s lunch.

Robert Davis had promised her “interesting” from the first moment he had offered her the job – and his son. Brianna nearly laughed out loud at the very ridiculousness of that latter thought. Just as she had suspected, Rafe Davis obviously didn’t need his dad’s or anyone else’s help finding women — even if he did seem to be a bit on the quiet side.

But, Rafe was single. She was single. Maybe things really would get “interesting.”

Chapter 4

“Unbelievable!”

Rafe stared at his laptop screen in amazement. After a couple of hours of searching, he hadn’t been able to find a single thing that suggested Brianna Reed was after his father’s moderate wealth. If anything, it was more likely to be the opposite.

Brianna, as it turned out, was the youngest of the three children of Martin and Chelsea Reed. The Reeds were ancient Wheeling money that had apparently been nothing but enhanced by Martin’s administrative employment in medical administration. The family owned a stately home in the outskirts of the city. From aerial photos he’d unearthed, it looked meticulously maintained. There was a winding driveway and what looked to be a rose garden in front of the house.

At the back of the property, there was also a small carriage house. From tidbits he’d gleaned here and there during his search, he was pretty sure that that was where Brianna lived on and off. At least that’s where she seemed to be living since – and Rafe nearly cringed at this factoid given his original, frankly classist suspicions – leaving a high-level marketing job at the Greenbrier Resort to become the governor’s press secretary about a year ago.

Everything his father had said on the phone was true – and then some. Brianna Reed really was a public relations expert. She really was beautiful. And brilliant. And charming.

His internet snooping suggested that she was also emotionally stable, socially responsible and – as if that wasn’t enough to surprise him — a Christian. The woman was all over multiple forms of social media. Organizing a fund-raising dinner for the women’s shelter here, spearheading a coat drive for children there, kissing a shelter puppy there, glamming it up for a hospital gala still someplace else. One picture even showed her and a man he assumed was a date attending a retro-style tent revival that had been all the buzz in the Mountain State’s church world in mid-summer. Rafe remembered several members of his own church talking about the event for weeks.

Rafe noticed a long string of the photos included a young businessman from Charleston named Mark Morelli. One of the images was particularly eye catching. Brianna and the Morelli guy were in full formal dress for Wheeling City Hospital’s Snow Ball, a fund-raiser for upgrades to that institution’s emergency room. They were a handsome couple for sure, Brianna’s chestnut hair and sparkly blue dress nicely complementing her date’s Mediterranean good looks.

But, something wasn’t quite right. Rafe zoomed in on Brianna’s face, feeling mildly voyeuristic for prying so far into the woman’s life. Prying or not, there it was. Something wasn’t quite right about her eyes. Her mouth was smiling, but the expression did not reach her eyes. He didn’t know her well enough to tell for sure, but he had seen just enough to suspect she was unhappy about something when the photo was snapped.

As far as he could tell, that was the last picture taken of the pair. About six months ago, that guy disappeared and there were a variety of other men photographed in her company. Other times, she was pictured either alone, with her family or with an attractive young couple named Gabe and Allie Morelli. More Morellis. Odd. And, why did that name sound so familiar?

On impulse, he Googled the whole Morelli gang. Whoa. The couple were the Bridge BAE’z, the ones whose dramatic fall from a catwalk had launched an internet frenzy a while back. A striking photo of the kiss they had shared while dangling from support wires went viral in an insane kind of way. His own PR person had called it the “Kiss Seen Round the World.” The image was so widely viewed, in fact, the resulting bump to state tourism had been deep and wide enough that it even extended to off-season Snowshoe. There had been a noticeable spike in hiker and mountain biker bookings that entire spring and summer.

Rafe kept Googling. Whoa again. Mark, the other Morelli, was now married – and not to Brianna obviously. A wedding announcement and photo of him with a very pretty woman — who closely resembled Brianna, oddly enough — appeared in The Charleston Tribune on Oct. 14.

He sat back in his chair and gazed blindly across the wide, rustic lobby of Corduroy Lodge, where he had moved his office operations for the remainder of the day to take advantage of the rare combination of privacy and wi-fi. It’s not like he could do this kind of research back at the diner. He blew out a breath so deep it puffed out his cheeks for a moment. Brianna Reed was clearly not the “tootsie” he had feared her to be. But, even taking the gubernatorial scandal and what might have been a bad break up into account, he still didn’t get two things.

One, why had she picked such a remote and relatively small business as her next career move? She was young, 28 to be exact, but she seemed like a high flyer. If she needed to jump ship, she could have taken a long vacation and then gone out of state to work for at least a while.

Two, what was going on between Brianna and his dad? Was it just business, as Margaret had suggested? Or, was it some weird May-December rebound after Mark Morelli? None of her photo buddies, other than her parents, appeared to be past their 30s at the oldest. Brianna was both a stunning and well-off woman. Her dates appeared to be comparable. Had she suddenly fallen for his dad?

Rafe thought about this, absentmindedly tousling the ears of Corduroy’s resident golden retriever, Sunny, who had stuck her snout under his fingers with such petting in mind. Robert did have money. Not Bill Gates money, but money. And, he supposed his dad was both charming and a handsome enough guy. But, nearly 70 is nearly 70. And, 28 is absolutely nowhere near 70. It still seemed odd.

And, was his dad seriously interested in such a young woman, or just in her business-generating abilities? Corduroy could certainly use some help along that latter line. The lodge and cabins were ready for the opening his dad had planned for the autumn in spite of the accident and Marilyn Davis’s untimely death. But, a continued lack of snow in the valley was keeping operations at a crawl. There had only been a handful of bookings – all to hikers — since Corduroy officially opened in late October. It’s hard to book skiers when you don’t have anything on which to ski.

Skiing. Rafe was just thankful there was decent enough snow up the mountain.

That thought made him sigh. This babysitting daddy thing was really getting out of hand, no matter what he had told Margaret early in the day. Robert was sad his wife had died. That was to be expected. The couple had been married 43 years. But, his dad was a big boy and he seemed to be doing OK even if he had become unusually quiet in recent months. He was ready for business at the lodge, with a manager/cook and a couple of housekeepers in place to help handle the day-to-day stuff when the snow actually came.

Plus, Robert had been using the unexpected downtime to lobby for the entire tourism industry at the Capitol. His dad really seemed into this new work, in fact, having become such a fixture in a short time that he’d been invited to join a potluck lunch crowd one of the senators hosted on a daily basis. Margaret had sent a rice casserole down with him just this week so he, too, could make a contribution to the buffet table.

The Capitol was obviously where Robert had met Brianna, Rafe realized. And, interestingly enough, that’s where Robert still was at the moment – not chasing Brianna back to Canaan Valley like some sort of love-sick teen. That alone was encouraging.

“Dude, you need to get a grip,” Rafe lectured himself, although Sunny lifted her head to listen, as well. “If dad wants to employ or even date Brianna Reed, that’s his business. He’s a grown up. You’re a grown up. You need to back off and butt out.”

And, with that, Rafe packed up his computer equipment and headed straight for his SUV. He was going back to Snowshoe. To his own home, to his own office and to his own life. His dad would be back from Charleston in a couple of days. There would be plenty of time to catch up on this new development — if need be — then.

*****

“It’s made of cashews?” Brianna asked as politely as her skepticism would allow. She was far too well bred to actually wrinkle her nose at the diner’s lunch special — vegan nachos. But, “cheese” made out of creamed nuts sounded a little, well, nutty. Margaret had been so reserved during their greeting and the apartment tour, Brianna had been surprised by her invitation to share a behind-the-counter meal, on the house. Now, Brianna wasn’t so sure it was the gesture of welcome she had assumed it to be.

“Try it,” Margaret urged, practically shoving the plate in front of Brianna’s face as one would with a reluctant toddler. Brianna wouldn’t have been surprised if the woman had raised a spoon of the goop and made choo-choo noises with it. “You’ll like it.”

Brianna tentatively dipped one corner of a chip into the sauce and brought it to her mouth. It was … okay. And, she said as much. Margaret laughed. “You’re an honest one, aren’t you? Tell you what, no one else’s here yet, let’s add some bacon to your half.”

“Is that made out of cashews, too?” Brianna asked doubtfully.

Margaret laughed again and beckoned her lone “customer” into the kitchen. She pulled a plate of beautifully crisped rashers from the refrigerator. They looked suspiciously like the real thing. “Is that what I think it is, Margaret?” Brianna asked with a conspiratorial smile.

The older woman put a finger across her lips to shush her. “I’m vegan, but it’s my lifestyle choice, not my religion. I keep some other stuff on hand for Bobby if no one else. He’s still an “mmm, bacon,” guy, in spite of Rafe’s and my best efforts.” Margaret crumbled every bit of the bacon across half the platter of nachos and carried it to the low table that ran down the middle of the kitchen. “Try it now.”

Brianna chewed again and gave Margaret a thumbs up. It was way better. The salty, savory bacon made the faux cheese taste almost good. Good enough at least that the rest of the nacho fixings got her attention. It had been a long time since breakfast, and that had only been a piece of toast and some coffee. She sat down at the kitchen chair Margaret had motioned her to and the two of them demolished the giant plate in just a few minutes.

“So,” Brianna finally said after a long sip of truly excellent iced coffee. “Rafe’s a vegan, too? Does that mean he never eats real cheese?” She made such behavior sound vaguely criminal.

Margaret laughed again. “He’s just a vegetarian. But, once you start down that road, I guess it’s surprising what starts tasting good to you.”

“But, Robert eats meat though?” Brianna asked. She’d had multiple phone conversations with the man and one additional face-to-face a couple of days ago. But, they’d never eaten together and the subject of what the lodge served for breakfasts – the only meal it offered to guests – had never come up. She instantly wondered if there were going to be weird menu conflicts given Rafe’s and Margaret’s proclivities. An all-vegan menu at a higher-end lodge sounded like it could be trouble.

Margaret looked surprised for some reason. She clasped the multitude of silver and turquoise bits that hung from her slender neck by a similar number of tiny chains and strings and worried them a bit.

“That’s right, baby,” she finally said. “Bobby grew up here in the valley eating the same stuff the rest of us ate. He didn’t move to Boulder until after he went to college. Colorado’s where Marilyn was from and that’s where they started the coffee company. Rafe’s a vegetarian all by himself. I think all that fresh mountain air got to him.”

Brianna quickly ran through what Margaret had said. She knew about the coffee company. Blue Ocean Brew was a boutique brand – nowhere near the size of Starbucks, but with a cult-like following. Robert had sold it two years ago and moved back to his historic family home at Canaan Valley to start Corduroy as a retirement venture. The family information was new territory, however. “Marilyn was his wife? Robert mentioned she died recently, but that was all he said.” Brianna asked. “Did they have any children other than Rafe?”

Now, Margaret looked stunned. Brianna couldn’t imagine why.

“They were married for 43 years,” Margaret said softly. “She died this summer. There was a car accident at the end of last winter. She hung on but the head injuries were too much for her. Rafe — he’s their only child — has been running back and forth between hospitals and rehab centers and his own home at Snowshoe and Corduroy ever since.

“Bobby was injured, too,” she continued. “Several broken bones in his one arm. Frankly, it’s been a hot mess around here. Rafe’s been operating on fumes for months. I don’t know when the boy actually sleeps. It’s pretty much been the same for me, too, for that matter.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Brianna said. “I’m so sorry.” And, of course, she really was, which made Margaret’s continued look of astonishment all the more difficult to understand.

Brianna covered her confusion with babble. “My best friend and her husband were in a bad accident a little more than a year ago. The doctor said she may always walk with a bit of a limp. That’s kind of hard now that she’s big and pregnant. Gabe — that’s her husband — is always worried that she’ll fall. He waits on her hand and foot. Of course, I don’t think he minds. They’re so in love that it’s almost, well …”

Brianna laughed to cover up her unfinished sentence and the wave of wistfulness that had swept over her when talking about her friend’s happy marriage. There was nothing she could do to conceal the sudden glisten in her eyes, however. “Sorry I’m rattling away,” she said as another diversion. “That must have been some seriously strong coffee.”

“It was. Blue Ocean Brew, of course,” Margaret said with a smile that was less puzzled than gentle this time.

“Well,” Brianna said, nearly jumping off the stool where she’d been sitting. “Thank you very much for the welcome lunch, but I’d better get going. I need to get my stuff unpacked and I hope to at least drive out to see the lodge. I need to get a feel for what Corduroy has that I can promote.”

“You do that,” Margaret said with the first actual smile Brianna had seen from her. “Bobby needs Corduroy to get going. He needs something or someone to give his attention to.”

Brianna looked at Margaret speculatively. “Have you known Robert since childhood?”

“Pretty much since I was born,” Margaret said. “It was his best friend that I married, though.”

Brianna glanced at Margaret’s bare left hand and the woman smiled again. “That’s a story for another day,” she said, shooing Brianna out of the kitchen and toward the car that remained parked in front of the diner. “You’ll have to park your car in the alley from now on, baby. Can’t have you taking up street spaces when I’ve got such a stampede of customers.”

“The snow will come, Margaret,” Brianna said gently, patting Margaret’s hand with her own. She’d lived and worked exclusively at the high end of West Virginia’s “hog,” but it was impossible to exist in a state that was home to a great deal of marginal living and not be aware of how difficult things could be. “It will.”

Chapter 5

Her clothing was unpacked and organized by both type of garment and color. A tidy little row of baby blue hangers now graced her closet, in fact. Check. Art and personal effects were arranged to create a homey atmosphere whilst also displaying hints of personality. Check. The tattered teddy bear that no one knew she still had except she and former-roomie Allie was tucked safely into her bed. Check. Cell phone signals were assessed and found not wanting at both the apartment and various points on the Corduroy property. Check.

Brianna was off to the races.

It was only four o’clock, but she’d already used the map Robert had given her to locate and check out the exteriors of five of the Corduroy cabins. Only one, the one she suspected Rafe was using as a home base given what Margaret had told her this afternoon, had its curtains drawn. She had unabashedly peered into the windows of all the rest. The interiors were very different than the opulence of the Greenbrier, but the cabins were still lovely in a rustic sort of way. Perfect for a ski lodge.

She was now headed for the final outpost, a remote honeymoon cabin reachable only by ski path or a tortuously twisting, one-lane gravel road. Brianna drove with both hands gripping the wheel so hard her knuckles were white, praying there wouldn’t be any good ol’ boys barreling the other direction. Her Mini Cooper was tiny, but the random pull offs that allowed one vehicle to pass another were even smaller.

Snow Angel Lane, my foot. More like, Terror Trail. When Brianna finally got out of her car to check out the exterior of “Bliss,” she was so rattled by the drive, she had to engage in her shake-it-off routine.

Deep, cleansing breath. Check.

Stretch to the sky. Check.

Am I in the moment? Yes, I am. Check.

She opened her eyes, her calm and focus nearly restored. Hmmm. The Bliss cabin certainly lived up to the Corduroy brochure’s description. Cedar shingles were painted forest green and the cabin’s extensive trim and working shutters were stained a dark, chocolaty brown. It was beautiful. Flower boxes were brimming with pinecones, evergreen boughs and piles of the cutest Jack-be-little and Baby-boo pumpkins she had ever seen. The cabin practically reeked of the romance its name promised.

She involuntarily snorted in disgust. Bliss somehow reminded her of Allie’s new cottage, Allie’s new life. It wasn’t jealousy Brianna was feeling; she was absolutely delighted for Allie – the most recent and the last of her college girlfriends to marry. Brianna had initially had her reservations about Gabe, given the whole internet photo thing and the haste of their wedding. But, she’d gotten to know him, liked him and was delighted for him, as well. Allie and Gabe were perfect together, a real-life yin and yang if there ever was one.

No, her snort wasn’t jealousy. It was pure mystification. Bliss. How did a girl get to such a place – literally or figuratively? It had certainly been beyond Brianna’s best efforts, even after a fairly good go of it with Mark Morelli.

The two of them had actually gotten pretty close, she conceded. She ran through the laundry list of requirements that dating Mark had met. Chemistry. Check. Double check that one, actually. Mark was undeniably hot in spite of, or maybe partly because of, the admirable self control he had demonstrated during their relationship. Sense of humor. Check. Spirituality. Check. Intelligence. Check. Ambition. Check. Family members that she could tolerate. Check. She truly loved the Morellis. Readiness for marriage. Check.

But, there had just been something — something missing from their relationship that Brianna couldn’t quite identify at the time. One evening, she had looked at Mark over dinner – they’d been at her dad’s hospital’s Snow Ball — and realized that, even with all that was going for them, she was getting bored. Boredom, only a few months into a relationship, couldn’t possibly be good. She’d broken up with him on the drive home.

Since then, of course, she’d certainly realized what had been missing. She had not discussed the situation, even with Allie, but suspected many, many had discussed it behind her back, particularly since Mark’s recent wedding. Mark had simply been too hung up on his ex-girlfriend during the months he had dated Brianna to be fully available. The lack of, well, passion in his kisses hadn’t been entirely about Christian virtue. It had been about a lack of, well, passion. For her. Brianna sighed. Breaking up had obviously been the right decision.

Check.

Check mate.

Brianna took another cleansing breath and ventured closer to the cabin. She stood on her tiptoes and looked into what turned out to be a single, large room. A four-poster bed swathed in downy puffs of linens and pillows dominated the space. Naturally. She cupped her hands around her eyes, trying to block out the sun to better see into the dark interior. It worked. It wasn’t a single room, exactly. There was an alcove seating area with a settee, a coffee table and a built-in shelving unit loaded with what looked to be board games and hardbound books. There was a minimalist kitchen and a tiny, round table for two in a second small alcove.

She squinted harder and shifted her body to the right. Oh. In yet a third alcove, there was the piece de la resistance. Near a door that she assumed led to a bathroom, a massive claw-foot tub with a wooden rim topped a colorfully tiled platform. Rolled-up towels stood at attention in a nearby basket. Two bath robes, even more fluffy and white than the towels, were draped over a warming rack. Topping it all off, the whole bathing area could be cozily encircled with white sheers and thick, velvety drapes suspended from a delightfully symbolic golden ring.

Nice.

So very nice, these occasional peeps into the world of couples and joyous love. And, so very, very out of reach. The cottage seemed to suddenly repel her, as strongly as the way two magnets can when the wrong polarity is mixed. She leaned abruptly back onto her heels without considering the fact she was standing on pea gravel. Her other heels, the ones made of fine Italian leather, sank like golf tees into the young landscaping efforts. She gingerly lifted one foot to survey the damage. Her shoe looked like it had been through a coffee grinder.

Not nice. And, certainly not Bliss. Brianna sighed and gave a last, longing look through the window. God, is there ever going to be such a thing for me? She didn’t expect an answer to her internal prayer. The whisper that drifted past her heart was entirely a surprise.

Stand still.

Brianna did stand still, alert on a level she had never experienced before. A golden leaf fluttered onto her face, making the softest of noises as it skittered down her cheek then tumbled to the ground. She smiled at herself. Hearing words in the rustle of the leaves. How silly. How very, very silly.

Chapter 6

“So,” a male voice said suddenly from behind her. “What do you think of Corduroy?”

Brianna whipped her head around to find Robert Davis standing in the front doorway of the lodge, his arms ridiculously overloaded with packages. Quicker to respond than even Sunny the dog, she arrived at his side to help via a squirrel-like leap from the couch. That is where she’d been enjoying yet another excellent cup of Blue Ocean Brew. She was already hooked on the stuff. It was a good thing coffee had no effect whatsoever on her sleeping habits.

“Whoa, there, Sparky,” he said with a laugh. “Nothing in the boxes is breakable, but I am.”

The boxes’ unbreakability was also a good thing, Brianna acknowledged. In spite of her quick response, several of the packages had already hit the tiled floor with soft thuds. Nosy by both nature and professional instinct, she looked down curiously at the labels without a second thought. She nudged one package away from Sunny’s enthusiastic sniffing with her foot to get a closer look. Hmmm. Her eyebrows rose. Most of them were from the same high-end furniture store that her mother favored.

Robert had evidently tracked her gaze. “I thought you might be interested in that,” he laughed again. “And, there’s more in the truck. There are still two of the lodge rooms that aren’t decorated yet. This stuff is basically the same as what’s in the other rooms. If you’d like, you can have at it. It’s not like we have to be in a rush on the marketing. There’s still no snow in sight for the valley.”

Brianna had spent the early evening working past her Bliss-induced funk to plot out both a website upgrade and a social-media blast. Corduroy was more than ready for customers, but Robert was wrong. There clearly was a rush of work that would need to be done to actually get guests to the lodge anytime soon. Ski lodges don’t launch themselves, after all.

Still, she couldn’t help but practically vibrate with enthusiasm at the thought of getting her hands on what she knew would be excellent furnishings. At least she assumed they would be based on what she had already seen in the other lodge rooms and the cabins. She didn’t have any formal training as a decorator, but she had never been able to resist an opportunity to make a place look pretty. Even fluffing a pillow or a throw gave her a bit of a buzz.

So, the two of them happily plotted both the pretty and the PR sides of Corduroy for a solid hour. Brianna was especially pleased that Robert listened seriously to her marketing ideas, which made full use of social media as well as more classic venues. Sometimes, she had found out the hard way, older clients didn’t see the value in such efforts. He clearly did. Maybe he was higher tech than she had originally suspected him to be.

But, before she could go into exhaustive detail about what she wanted to do to the Corduroy website and whom she needed to contract out to in order to do it, Robert interrupted. “You know, Sparky, all work and no play will make for a dull girl – and no adorable little grandchildren for me,” he said mischievously.

He fished a retro-style flip phone out from the pocket of his thick flannel shirt. Maybe he wasn’t particularly high tech, she reconsidered. He punched in a single number before Brianna even had a chance to wonder what her new boss had in mind.

*****

Rafe’s cell phone rang, buzzing menacingly against the marble sink of his apartment bathroom. The sound echoed around the room, which was insanely large considering the diminutive nature of the apartment, which was really just three lodge rooms converted into an on-site home. Bzzzzzzz. Before the second ring was finished, he had stepped out of his post-workout shower and answered it out of habit. Bad habit. He was dripping soap all over the floor. “Rafe Davis.”

“Hey, son,” his dad said in a ridiculously cheerful voice. Rafe pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the time – 9:34 p.m. His dad usually wasn’t even awake at such an hour, given the early bird that he had always been.

“Everything OK?”

“Everything’s great!” his dad said.

Rafe heard a giggle of agreement in the background and realized his dad had come home early from Charleston and was clearly not alone. Brianna. In spite of all the good things he’d learned about the woman during his internet search, he was instantly on the defensive. He hit speaker phone and hastily wrapped a towel around his waist even though that silvery little laugh was miles and miles away. Terry cloth was the closest thing he had to armor and he suspected he might need it.

“Sparky and I were talking and…” Robert went on.

“Sparky?” Rafe practically growled.

“Brianna, of course. That’s what I’ve started calling her. She reminds me of a sparky little rabbit or a squirrel, the way she darts around,” Robert said. If Rafe hadn’t known for sure that his Baptist-from-before-birth dad did not drink, he would have wondered if the man wasn’t under the influence at that moment. His dad continued. “Anyway, Brianna is going to decorate the last couple of rooms at the lodge for me before she goes on a ‘full-court press’ with the PR thing. Isn’t that cute? That’s what she calls her work — a ‘full-court press.’ Like a basketball player.”

This was more conversation than he’d heard from his dad in the last month.

“I’m familiar with the term,” Rafe said through gritted teeth. He tightened his towel.

“So, I wanted to do something special to thank her and – you won’t believe this – she can mambo!”

“Robert! That’s just for exercise!” Rafe heard Brianna squeal before he could voice the rather uncharitable response he had been considering. That was something more along the lines of, “I’ll just bet she can.”

“I only mambo in the kitchen, when I’m alone and making dinner,” she squealed on. “Not in public!”

Ah, yes. Brianna Reed: Paragon of public virtue.

“Now, now, Sparky,” his father continued. Brianna was still fussing in the background. “Anyway, Rafe, do you still have Mambo Mondays at the hotel?”

Rafe did not like the way this was going. At all. “Yes,” he said quietly.

“Excellent,” Robert said. “We’ll be there for dinner and with our dancing shoes on. Can you join us? We’d sure love it if you would. I know you don’t like to dance, but I can take care of that part of things. Your mom taught me well.”

Rafe tightened his towel so tightly he let out an involuntary gasp.

“You OK, son?”

“Fine,” Rafe breathed out as soon as he’d yanked the tourniquet of terry cloth loose.

“So, you’ll be there?”

Rafe’s eyes narrowed and he instantly changed his mind about the invitation. You better believe he’d be there. What better way could there be to find out what on earth was going on with his father and little Miss Sparky Mambo?

“Absolutely,” Rafe said, automatically checking the forecast as he had before every winter drive made since his parents’ car accident. Maybe the weather could work for them this time. Yes.

“You know, dad, there’s some snow predicted for the higher elevations late that night. Why don’t the two of you plan to stay over just in case? We’re booked solid right now, but we always keep a couple of back-up rooms for emergencies. You can use those and I can show Brianna around the hotel and the mountain on Tuesday morning if you like.”

“That would be perfect!” Robert exclaimed, somehow even more cheerfully. “I need to head back to Charleston for a meeting or two right after breakfast anyway. That’s if the roads are clear, of course. So, forget this Tuesday morning thing. You can have Brianna all to yourself for the whole day if you can spare the time. We’ll bring two cars.”

Rafe was about to nix the full-day idea when he heard more murmured protesting about time and work commitments on the other end of the call from Brianna and more, “Come on, Sparky, it’ll be fun,” on his dad’s part. Rafe frowned. He couldn’t spare the time. And, he wasn’t any more thrilled with the prospect of wasting a full day on Brianna Reed than she apparently was to be stuck with him. But, he intended to make the time and take full advantage of it.

Oh, yeah. Whatever was going on, he intended to know all about it before she set foot off the mountain.

Chapter 7

To Rafe’s surprise, it was rather like watching Bambi dance. Bambi, as in the wide-eyed Disney deer, not the type of woman who might voluntarily choose to go by such a name. On other parts of the Shredder Lounge’s small dance floor, female skiers in various states of sobriety were mamboing their socks off. Except they didn’t have any socks on. Or much of anything else for that matter.

Brianna, in startling contrast, was wearing a 50s style dress that hugged every curve but had her covered from a folded collar at the base of her throat to a full circle of satin that swished daintily at her knees. Even the kitten-heeled pumps she was wearing were closed toe.

Rafe stared at her and his father from the shadows that separated the restaurant from the lounge. Seriously? Even with the slight sway of her tiny waist and the, well, not-tiny rest of her, she was somehow wholesome enough for a vintage black-and-white TV show. All she would need is a string of pearls and a vacuum cleaner to use as a prop. Mrs. Cleaver Learns To Mambo.

So, why was it so hard to tear his eyes away from the said Bambi dancing to refresh his comparison with the other dancers? He did this only reluctantly. Yep. Everything was still shaking. Right back to Brianna. Yep. Still June Cleavering.

Then, on impulse, he looked at the other dancer’s partners. Oddly enough, their attention wasn’t held by all that jiggled either. He shifted his eyes. Ditto for the band. Rafe did a quick survey. Every male in the room, in fact, was either watching Brianna Reed dance or pretending not to watch her.

Every male except one, that is. Robert Davis was doing the same stiff-legged box step Rafe had seen him do at a variety of corporate dinners with his late wife, who had truly loved all kinds of ballroom dancing. His dad apparently didn’t need to count out his steps any longer, for he seemed to be carrying on an involved conversation with his dance partner, looking past her shoulder as he spoke into her one ear. Something he said must have been funny. Brianna smiled broadly, then bit her bottom lip as if to stop an outright laugh. The band seemed to suddenly speed up. But, that had to be Rafe’s imagination.

The waggle of her fingers in his direction wasn’t, however. He’d been spotted. Brianna and – Rafe verified his suspicion with another quick survey — every male in the room was now looking at him. His father was included this time.

 “Son!” Robert yelled over a sudden calm in the music. “Come on over. Why don’t you have this dance.”

Rafe came over, but shook his head when his father stepped away from Brianna and held out her hand toward Rafe. Out of the corner of one eye, he noticed a band member shake his own head in disbelief. Or, maybe, it was disgust.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m here,” Rafe said. “I’ll just meet you and Bam… er, Brianna at the dinner table,” he said.

Then he turned his back on both them and the room, but not before he’d seen his dad happily transfer his gaze and attention back to his partner. Rafe grimaced as he headed for the table he’d reserved for the three of them in a quiet corner of the restaurant. If he’d had any doubt as to the nature of the relationship between his father and Brianna Reed, he certainly didn’t now.

Brianna Reed. Puppy-kissing, coat-drive-leading, mildly-mamboing Brianna Reed. The woman clearly packed some form of dynamite he had not previously encountered. His poor dad. The guy had never stood a chance.

*****

“Horses! Really?” Brianna squealed, bouncing a bit in her seat in spite of their semi-public location at the back of the hotel restaurant. She took a deep breath, forced herself to calm down and lowered her volume. “I love horses,” she tried to whisper. It was more of a stage whisper in reality.

Robert laughed. “I said I was thinking about getting a pair, Sparky,” he said. “We have the old barn and paddock and plenty of trails, but I’m running back and forth to Charleston too much to take care of them right now and Bertie won’t have time, either. At least she won’t once we start having guests. She’ll need every minute and then some to do her job managing the lodge and cabins plus doing the breakfast cooking.”

Brianna made an instant decision. “I’ll take care of them,” she declared. “At least for the next few months.”

Rafe suddenly rejoined the conversation with an actual snort. “Do you have any idea how much work it is to take care of horses? It’s not just prancing around in leggings and riding boots, you know. There’s the feeding and the watering and …”

“I can do it!” Brianna interjected, instantly miffed that Rafe was obviously underestimating her. She glared at him, the irritation that had been building throughout the evening finally making its way onto her face.

What is the deal with this guy? First, he’d snubbed her on the dance floor. She knew a lot of guys don’t like to dance. Robert had even said as much about his son. So, she had pretty much ignored that. But, he’d gone on to be mildly hostile the entire evening. He’d alternated between being sullenly silent while Robert sang praises over her decorating skills and kicking into prosecuting-attorney mode, grilling her about her past employment. It was almost like he was building an FBI dossier on her. Whatever he was up to, it was really starting to tick her off.

“My grandparents had several horses when I was growing up,” she said in simple explanation, trying to keep her temper under control. “I was probably out at their barn every day when I was a teenager. It was wonderful.”

“I wonder just how wonderful you’ll think it is when it comes to mucking out stalls?” Rafe said with a snide smile and a lift of his eyebrows. There was a sneer in his voice. There was also an internal touché. She could practically hear it as he leaned back in his chair and sipped at his post-dessert coffee in obvious satisfaction.

She leaned toward him and gave him her best smile. “I can do that, too,” she purred.

Rafe gave her a doubtful look, then surprised her by leaning forward himself. “In those kind of shoes?” he purred back. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. It wasn’t a wholly unwelcome feeling. Given the hostility Rafe had been wielding, that realization was enough to make her frown.

Robert interrupted with another laugh. “Well, I suppose we could scare up some barn boots somewhere if that’s the only problem.”

Brianna glared at Rafe in satisfaction – for a brief moment.

“That settles it then,” Robert announced. “I’m getting two horses. One for you, Rafe, and one for Brianna.”

Both recipients whipped their heads around to look at the older man.

“You don’t need to do that, Robert,” Brianna exclaimed.

“And, I don’t need a … a horse,” Rafe stammered.

“That’s true, Rafe. You do not need a horse,” Robert said pointedly. “But, until you wake up and realize what you do need, a horse will have to do.”

Robert glanced Brianna’s way and, for one horrified moment, she was afraid he was going to make some sort of Rafe-I-am-your-father-and-I-have-found-a-wife-for-you pronouncement. He did not. Robert simply stood up from the table, nodded at his son, patted Brianna softly on the shoulder and turned to leave. Before he’d gone two steps, however, he turned back toward them, apparently not quite done.

“The weather forecast is better than we thought it would be. I’m heading out for Charleston early in the morning, so I’ll say goodnight and goodbye now,” he told them both. “Rafe, I am counting on you to make sure Brianna’s day tomorrow is a thoroughly enjoyable one. Brianna, I certainly hope I can expect the same from you, as well.”

He left. It was a mild reprimand, but still a reprimand. Brianna glanced at Rafe, chastened to have been dressed down in daughter-like fashion by an employer. The fact she deserved it didn’t help matters. Rafe was her boss’s son. His son. And, they were having a delicious dinner as that very son’s guests. Rudeness was inappropriate on several levels.

“I’m sorry, Rafe,” she said instantly. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble between you and your dad. I just love horses. And, I really do know how to take care of them.”

Rafe regarded her for a long moment then surprised her with a sigh, a shake of his head and, more surprisingly, a rueful grin. “I’m sorry, too. If dad wants horses, I guess it wouldn’t kill me to come down to Corduroy to ride every once in a while. It’s been a long time. It might be nice.”

“You could even help me muck the stalls, if you like,” Brianna said with a saucy grin. Reprimanded? Yes. Repentant? Not quite. “One of the horses will be yours, after all.”

“Oh, no,” Rafe smiled back. “You made your stall, Miss Reed. I’m sure you know how the rest of that plays out.”

Chapter 8

They met again after breakfast. Brianna wasn’t sure what Rafe had eaten, but she had fared sumptuously. There had been a platter that included a piping hot bowl of oatmeal topped with honey and bits of apples, raisins, craisins and nuts. Add in a soft-boiled egg in a darling wooden cup that had running deer carved into its side; a freshly baked croissant; and all sorts of toppings, teas and juices and Brianna was thoroughly charmed.

It had all been delivered to her door promptly at 7 a.m. She’d guessed the unsolicited room service was either Rafe’s idea of a vegetarian peace offering or was simply a polite wake-up call to make sure she was on time for their planned rendezvous. Either way, she took it, enjoyed it and was out the door in record time.

“Did you have a good sleep?” Rafe asked pleasantly enough when he approached her an hour later in the lobby. A truce from whatever war it was that they were having was clearly in place.

“Yes,” Brianna answered sweetly, declining to ask about his own rest.

She was carefully dressed for a casual day at the office: full makeup, her signature messy bun, salmon-colored leggings, leather booties and a slim-fitting, flower-power tunic that fluttered into a trumpet just above her knees. Rafe was dressed for slope-side down time, however, wearing Levi’s, a white turtleneck and a thick navy fleece that somehow screamed male in comparison to the suits worn by most of the men Brianna had been spending time with lately.

He had a day’s growth of beard and his dark hair was still damp from the shower. The longer sections were curled against his neck. Seeing him so casually groomed — so disarmed — felt oddly familiar, too familiar after last night’s tension.

“Thank you for the room and for breakfast, by the way,” she said instead. “Both were lovely.”

“My pleasure.”

That bare exchange of cordialities seemed to be all they had. For a long moment, they just looked at each other. Rafe finally broke the silence. “Sooooo,” he said. “I thought we could start with this lodge and work our way around the village. Have you been here before?”

“To your lodge, or to the mountain?”

“Both, I guess,” Rafe said with a sudden smile. He had a good smile, Brianna decided. She liked the way his eyes crinkled at the sides.

“No on both counts,” she said, noticing he was surprised. She rushed to assure him that she wasn’t somehow dissing Mountain State downhill. “My dad and my brothers like to ski. They’ve all been here on bunches of weekend trips, although I’m not sure where they stay. I tagged along with them to Vail a couple of times when I was a teen. Mom and I mostly hung out at the lodge. It was usually après ski all day for the two of us.”

Rafe laughed. “Well, I guess we won’t wrap up your visit with a ski run like I’d planned then.”

“Oh, I can ski,” Brianna said. “I’m just not good enough at it to really enjoy it.”

“Well, Vail is kind of starting at the top, no pun intended,” Rafe said. “Maybe we can find something a little more tame here that you would enjoy.”

“Do you know Vail?” Brianna asked, suddenly curious how Rafe had wound up in the ski business.

He gave another muffled laugh. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I grew up in Boulder and Vail wound up being where I trained for competition. I raced.” He smiled. “And, that’s also where I decided to switch to the hospitality side of the industry when the whole training thing didn’t work out quite the way I wanted it to.”

“No U.S. Ski Team for you, huh?” Brianna answered in the same humorous tone he’d used. But, she instantly regretted it. What if he thought she was making light of the death of a dream? “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. You must have been disappointed.”

Rafe didn’t look upset. “I was. At least at the time,” he said thoughtfully. “I was young. I’d been skiing almost as long as I’d been walking and I had dreams. They were exciting dreams. But, they weren’t God’s plan.” He motioned around to the lobby they were still standing in. “Now, I get to help people enjoy themselves doing something that I absolutely love.” He laughed again. “And, I even get to use that business degree my dad insisted I get even though I was sure I was headed for gold medals and corporate sponsorships. Not bad work if you can get it.”

Brianna smiled in appreciation of Rafe’s honesty and humility. Maybe last night’s hostility had had nothing to do with her. Maybe he’d just been tired, or in a bad mood. Or, maybe the odd-looking tofu thing that he’d ordered didn’t quite agree with him. This morning, Rafe Davis was just fun to be with. Interesting, even. Hmmmm. She decided to go with that.

*****

They looked at rooms. They looked at lots and lots of rooms.

Rafe’s lodge — which she learned he had been managing for a national corporation for the last two years after working his way up the food chain at various Colorado resorts — had 157 guest rooms and a variety of banquet, meeting and exercise facilities in addition to the restaurant and lounge.

“It’s hard to believe that most of the village is a pretty recent phenom,” Rafe explained. “When things first started developing here in the ’70s, nobody was used to dealing with the harsh conditions of a village at the top of a mountain. I’ve heard some horror stories from the pioneer types about a steady stream of burst water pipes. Again, no pun intended.”

Brianna laughed anyway. She liked seeing this silly side of Rafe.

Rafe’s lodge didn’t look like it had maintenance problems, she noticed, however. She had already figured out it was one of the higher-end facilities at Snowshoe’s village, which boasted accommodations ranging from small, hotel-style rooms to mini apartments to houses large enough to handle an extended family. Snowshoe wasn’t the silky, coat-and-tie luxury of the Greenbrier, but it was still luxury.

There were so many rooms and so much resort history that, by the time they looked at the pool, Brianna’s eyes were starting to glaze over from an overload of facts and rustic lodgeness. There’s only so much knotty pine, stone fire places and antler chandeliers one woman can take.

Fortunately, the hotel’s small spa was next on the itinerary.

“Hey, Brianna,” Rafe said, almost guiltily, stopping at the spa’s door. “There’s some paperwork that I really need to get done this morning. What would you think about having a massage or whatever other spa service you might like while I’m doing that?”

What did she think? Brianna could have been peeved he was working when he was supposed to be showing her around. But, she’d already seen a whole lot of lodge and, hey, a free massage is a free massage. She went for it.

And, she was so glad she did. Whoever decorated the spa seemed to have realized its mostly female clientele would want a respite from the rustic décor in the rest of the establishment. Entering its lobby was a bit like walking into a conch shell – all pink and coral and peach and blissful quiet. Her massage therapist, who was waiting expressly for her, suggested a quick polish change before an hour-long massage. Brianna happily complied, picking a pale turquoise for her toes only and, then, settling onto the massage table with a happy sigh.

When she emerged from her cocoon of soft music and botanical potions an hour and a half later, she was grinning in the silliest of ways and feeling so putty-boned she would have failed any sobriety test requiring one to walk a straight line.

She was also surprised. Rafe was patiently waiting for her in the spa lobby and, after one look at her chillaxed state, offered her his arm and a warm laugh in greeting. “Am I right in thinking you are having a ‘thoroughly enjoyable day?’ ” he asked mischievously, his mouth whispering the words close to her ear as they went back into the main hotel.

“I am,” she giggled, instantly catching the reference to his dad’s request the night before. “Did I mention that I love this place?”

Things might have proceeded much as they had earlier in the day had she not stumbled slightly on some steps as they walked toward his office, where he said he’d like to introduce her to a few of his employees before lunch. Bizarrely, she somehow managed to actually lose a boot in the process. And, before she could protest, Rafe was down on the carpet on one knee like some sort of prince charming trying to put it back on her foot.

“Trying” being the operative word. She kept lifting the bare foot off the ground for him, but she couldn’t seem to hold it there. Her post-massage balance wasn’t up to par and she kept teetering to one side or the other, her blue toenails moving in a blur.

She giggled. She would definitely fail a field sobriety test.

More surprisingly, he giggled.

“Stand still,” he finally demanded with a full-blown laugh, catching her hand in his and putting it on his shoulder to steady her. “You’re a moving target.”

She giggled again when Rafe stood, brushed off his knees in exaggerated manner and re-offered his arm. And, again when he called her “m’lady.”

Veronique Marlowe must have shown up sometime in between the first and last giggles. She stood blocking the hallway and surveying the two of them, one well-groomed eyebrow sharply raised and one hand now stretching forward with a sheaf of papers that seemed to be intended for Rafe. They must have been. He immediately let go of Brianna to take them.

“Ah, yes, thank you, Veronique,” Rafe said, his tone suddenly all business. “I’d like you to meet Miss Brianna Reed. Brianna, this is Veronique Marlowe, my marketing director.”

Veronique’s hand was now resting on one hip. “No introduction needed, Rafe. Brianna and I go way back,” she said with a knowing smile. “We even overlapped at the Greenbrier for about a year.”

Steel suddenly entered Brianna’s spine. “It’s great to see you again, Veronique,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. It was the truth. She’d always had a soft spot for this straight-talking import from Washington, D.C. It was just a little embarrassing to be caught by another PR pro behaving in such a silly way right outside Rafe’s office.

The older woman transferred her gaze back to Rafe. “There were a couple more things that needed to go out today that we missed the first time you came through,” she said. “I was hoping I’d catch you before you took your ah … guest to lunch.”

Rafe frowned a bit, then looked guiltily at Brianna. “Would you mind?”

“Of course not,” she said, her spa chillax now completely dissipated. “Actually, we can call it a day now if you need to. I’ve already taken up so much of your time already.”

“Hey, I have my marching orders,” Rafe responded with a sudden grin. “Go get your coat. It will be easier to just walk to lunch.”

“Of course,” she said demurely.

“Good. I’ll meet you in the lobby in a half hour then,” he said with an eyebrow raise and a wink that only she could see.

She almost giggled once more in response, but knowing Veronique was watching them carefully, instantly suppressed it. “I’ll be there,” she said with the merest hint of a smile.

*****

Brianna had barely turned the corner to head back to her room when Rafe was treated to a giant eye roll from his favorite employee. Veronique pointed one heavily jeweled finger at him. “One question. Is that little girl after my job?”

“No. Noooo!” Rafe instantly reassured his valued marketer. Veronique was good, really good, at what she did. But, she was as high strung as a polo pony. It didn’t pay to have her out of sorts. “Absolutely not.”

“Good to know.” Veronique stepped back, crossed her arms and examined her boss with amusement. “Well, then I guess it’s you that she wants.”

“Me!” Rafe exclaimed in genuine horror. “No! It’s nothing like that. She’s working for my dad. And, I’m just showing her around Snowshoe and stuff like that…” he trailed off.

“Oh, I got an eyeful of ‘stuff like that,’ ” she continued with a hoot. Rafe began to regret the fact he was not a more authoritarian type of boss. And, Veronique wasn’t even done. “You know,” she continued. “I could believe your dad has something to do with this. He and the rest of us have been wondering just who it would take to finally land Mr. Nation’s Most Eligible Bachelor. My bet’s on Miss Brianna Reed. If that little fire cracker can’t get you tied up in a knot I’m not sure anybody can.”

“Nobody is tying anyone up in a knot,” Rafe responded testily.

“That’s what they all say,” Veronique said with another hoot. “I predict you’ll be down on one knee again before you know what hit you. And, it won’t be with a shoe in your hand if you get my drift.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rafe snorted. “I’m just doing a favor for my dad.”

The words might have carried more weight if anyone had been there to hear them. Veronique had long since sauntered back to her office by the time he’d uttered them. It had taken him that long to take in all that she had said and realize that his own outrageous flirting is what sparked such comments.

What was I thinking? He and Brianna had had a perfectly pleasant and professional morning. He’d played nice. She’d played nice. Just like his dad had asked. Then, she had come out of the spa looking like that and he couldn’t help notice it was, well, a really good look on her.

Rafe rubbed his face with one hand. That was absolutely not the kind of thing to notice about your dad’s girlfriend. He fleetingly wondered if he had discovered some new form of sin.

He stood in the hallway thinking hard. He was clearly going to have to watch his step with Miss Brianna Reed. He might not be able to avoid the woman entirely – assuming she continued to date and work for his dad — but the less he saw of her the better. Starting today. He’d feed her a good lunch and then take her up on her handy suggestion that they end their outing early.

Send her packing back to Corduroy. Yep. That’s just what he’d do.

Chapter 9

Rafe did nothing of the sort. Three hours later, he was kneeling in the snow at the top of the bunny slope wondering just how he had gotten there.

“Stand still,” Rafe demanded for the second time that day.

As if the cold wasn’t enough, his symbolic one-knee position and Veronique’s “prediction” were making it difficult to get his fingers to move properly. Actually, Veronique was the cause of this particular problem. There had been only one pair of shaped skis in the office stash that had bindings that could adjust down to feet as small as Brianna’s. He hadn’t wanted to be seen down on the office floor messing with such stuff, given what Veronique had said. So, he had just grabbed the gear and left, planning to do everything outdoors and out of Veronique’s sight.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with this binding that it’s so stiff, but I’ll never get this second one adjusted if you keep hopping around like that,” Rafe said in exasperation. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you need to pottie like the little ski bunnies always seem to do as soon as you get them booted up.”

He froze, then looked up at her questioningly. Brianna bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“Go,” he sighed and pressed his thumb hard on the release lever to free the one boot that was actually clamped in. He pointed her to the nearest restroom, watched her clomp off in that direction and was instantly grateful Snowshoe’s village was at the top of the mountain. Everything was insanely handy. But not so handy that her brief absence wouldn’t give him the time he needed to both fix the recalcitrant binding and think.

He worked on the ski, finally getting the binding set where it needed to be. Then, he reviewed the early afternoon. It had been a repeat of the morning. He’d behaved. She’d behaved. Just like his dad had asked. But, there was something about her high-octane energy and humor that drew him out. They just couldn’t seem to stop talking.

All thoughts of sending her home early had somehow evaporated as they talked about little stuff like job histories, his teenaged commitment to vegetarianism and her love of mambo music. By the time they had moved on to the big stuff, he was all in. There was no other way to explain the fact he’d openly discussed things like his mother’s accident, his grief and his own return to full-scale faith that followed.

“I know tragedy makes a lot of people hide from God,” he remembered saying. “For whatever reason, it chased me back. That was the one good thing that came out of all this.”

On Brianna’s side, she’d shared some surprisingly personal information about the plusses and minuses of growing up in a well-known West Virginia family. As humorous as her stories were in tone, the Reeds, frankly, sounded both exciting and terrifying. He was surprised Brianna was so joyful – and so normal.

She also told him how excited she was that her best friend – the Bridge BAEs woman — was expecting her first baby at any moment. Rafe read a least a little bit of longing in those latter comments. That surprised him. Brianna was a serious career woman. He hadn’t anticipated this much softer side to her.

It was deep stuff. Personal stuff. Some of which he hadn’t discussed with anyone else, especially his dad, with whom he’d been tip-toeing around any meaningful discussion of his mother’s death. But, he felt entirely comfortable sharing it with her. And, she seemed to feel equally at ease sharing with him. They’d talked so much through lunch, in fact, that he barely remembered the veggie burgers and potato soup they’d eaten or the coffee they’d stayed to drink cup after cup of until the café was all but empty for the afternoon. It had seemed only natural to finish up the day with the ski run he had planned from the get-go. He was too wired from their conversation and all that caffeine to do anything else.

So, here they were, on the bunny slope, much to Brianna’s annoyance. Given her own disclosure about her lack of enthusiasm for the sport, he wasn’t letting her ski down anything more challenging until he could personally assess her skill level. A “thoroughly enjoyable day” did not include a trip to the ER in his opinion.

“I’m back,” Brianna chirped suddenly from behind him. “Me and all the kiddos in the neon dinosaur hats.”

Rafe ignored her gripe and bent to make sure her boots were properly snapped onto the troublesome skis. The collection of extra equipment he kept in the office clearly needed some repairs, or even culling. He was just glad he had managed to unearth a teen-sized set of ski clothes in the mix. Otherwise, it would have been a no go. Short of an injury, he knew nothing that could end a good day on the slope faster than wet clothes.

“OK, Sparky,” he said with a grin as he rose up. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

“Call me Sparky again, and what you’ll see are stars,” Brianna responded in sisterly fashion. Then she swooshed down the slope. Well, sort of swooshed. The hill was too slight for actual speed, but her form was way better than he’d hoped.

“Well, all right!” he yelled as he followed her, ignoring the fact that half the ski instructors were openly laughing to see him here in the first place, let alone actually skiing down the bunny hill with a whoop.

In spite of the lack of speed, she managed to make a bit of a hockey stop at the bottom of the hill, throwing a spray of snow that coated his lower half. He laughed, surprised she knew how to do such a slightly naughty thing, the skiing equivalent to splashing someone in the pool.

“I’m a Reed, Rafe,” she reminded him with a smile. “Consider yourself warned.”  

They moved to a green run, then tried a blue one. Brianna wasn’t exactly skilled, but she was competent. If she got going too fast, she was quick enough to slow herself down by pointing her ski tips together like the business end of a slice of pizza. And, she avoided trees like the plague. Rafe was thankful for that. Eventually, they were both laughing and swinging their skis in tandem as they rode the lift back up to the top for a final effort before she headed home.

“Not bad, Sparky,” Rafe teased her. “Not bad at all.”

“Rafe, I said no to Sparky.”

“You didn’t complain when dad called you that.” There was a silence, during which Rafe would have literally kicked himself for saying such a stupid thing if he’d been able. Her words delivered the kick instead.

“That’s different,” she said.

Yes, Rafe acknowledged only to himself. That’s different.

They were saved from the awkwardness of the moment by the end of the lift ride and the simultaneous cell-phone chime that rang from somewhere inside her gear. They hopped off their bench and he waited while she hurriedly fished into an interior pocket. A broad smile spread across Brianna’s face as she checked the number.

“I need to take this,” she bubbled. “It’s my friend Allie. It might be the baby.”

Rafe heard enough of Brianna’s brief conversation to know that her friend’s delivery was not imminent. He tried not to listen to the rest, but it was impossible given their location, particularly when he heard the words, “No, it’s been great. I just love it and him, too.” He had a pretty good idea who the “him” was and it shocked him as to just how out of sorts that made him. Here was Rafe – a man many people, even those who published a national magazine, considered a highly eligible bachelor – and all he could do was childishly wish that he, not his dad, had found Brianna first.

Brianna chatted on for a minute or so and Rafe mused. He hadn’t sent Brianna Reed packing and the day had wound up feeling more like a marathon date – a really good date — than a favor to his dad. That had clearly been a mistake. One that he didn’t plan on making again anytime soon.

Once she was off the mountain, she’d be off his mind. It would only be a matter of time before some other woman would capture his attention. That’s how it always had been. He’d moved from place to place – dated here, dated there. Why should it be any different now?

Chapter 10

“Score!” Brianna hit the “buy now” button and secured another lot of vintage ski lift tickets. She had big plans for those candy-colored mementoes of both American and European slopes. She’d hit Wikipedia hard and had been running a Nordic ski trivia contest via Corduroy’s updated website and social media for the last week. It had whipped up a surprising amount of participation given its short duration.

“What was the historic lining on the shorter ski of pairs used in Norway prior to the 1800s; and why was it used?” she had asked on the first day of the contest. Brian Wilfong of Baltimore, Maryland was first to answer. “Fur friction,” he’d punned. She was sending him two winning tickets as a bonus for such cleverness.

“The Gulating Law of 1274 promised what?” she had asked on the third day. Connie Zane of Belhaven, North Carolina correctly texted: “No moose shall be disturbed by skiers on private land.”

“From what language is “ski” derived and what did the original word mean?” she had asked at some point or another. Dr. Celeste Dupont, a professor of ancient languages in Quebec City, Quebec knew. “Old Norse, ‘stick of wood.’ ” Celeste had gone on to tell Brianna a great deal more about Old Norse, Nordic skiing and sticks of wood. Brianna decided to also give her two tickets in spite of this.

At any rate of reward, Brian, Connie, Celeste and the rest of the gang of trivia experts would soon be getting their lift-ticket prizes – and plenty of Corduroy promotional materials – by snail mail. The contest had been a fun idea. Brianna smiled as she typed in the new question of the day: “How many poles did early Nordic skiers use?” “One,” she mouthed in silent answer to her own query as she closed out the file.

Perhaps a better question concerning the 5,000-year-old Scandinavian sport might be: “Will it ever snow again in Canaan Valley?”

It was plenty cold enough now to snow. Her apartment windows hadn’t been open since the oddly warm day that she’d moved in. And, when she’d done a tentative bit of hiking on Corduroy’s extensive trail network – all the while keeping a look out for bears that might have missed the memo on hibernation – she’d needed a heavy coat with all the trimmings. But, here it was November 23^rd and there still hadn’t been so much as a flurry, just an occasional drizzly rain on the warmer days and plenty of gray skies most of the rest.

She sighed, but was immediately distracted from that sad thought by a boom, boom from the radiator pipes.

It wasn’t mechanical problems, thankfully. It was Margaret’s signal that Brianna could come downstairs and watch “Jeopardy,” if she liked. It was part of the dorm-like camaraderie they’d developed, partly because of “necessity.” Brianna had driven into Elkins to get the tiny desk ensemble she needed for a minimalist home office from a big-box store. But, she had decided not to bother with a television and a cable connection, even though the apartment was already wired. She just wasn’t going to be here that long. Her laptop didn’t do Ken Jennings justice, however. So, she headed downstairs yet again.

“What is tout le monde?” Margaret yelled as Brianna came through the door. As Brianna sat down next to her on the thickly cushioned wicker couch, she discovered Margaret was responding to an obscure clue in the “Oui, Oui, Monsieur” category.

“Do you speak French?” Brianna whispered, not as surprised as she would have been earlier in their acquaintance.

As if her vegan cooking skills were not enough, Margaret had already wowed Brianna with a multi-windowed display of geraniums whose diversity could rival Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. Not only were the colors and sizes of the plants wildly varied, so were the scents. One specimen smelled like lemons. Another one, more surprisingly, smelled like chocolate.

Add to that the delightful mash up of global décor that graced her apartment. There were carved boxes from India, a woven table runner from the Philippines, an elephant statue from Senegal. The woman obviously got around.

Margaret ignored Brianna’s question for a moment, then casually said, “oui, oui, mademoiselle,” while a contestant was debating what to do with a “double jeopardy” opportunity. Then, she immediately returned her attention to the category, going on to answer every question correctly. In French. With a French accent Brianna suspected could pass muster in Paris.

Brianna shrugged. Her own French was comparatively lousy, even after four years of high school classes and two more in college. C’est la vie…

“Do you want some brownies?” Margaret suddenly asked in English. The game show was over and she rose from the settee to move over to her tiny kitchen.

“Vegan carob brownies or brownies with real chocolate and real eggs?” Brianna asked pointedly. She had learned the hard way to question anything Margaret served.

Margaret laughed. “For you, baby, the real thing. The raw-bits version for me.”

“Then, yes,” Brianna said with a smile.

Margaret served the brownies and a fresh round of coffee on a cup and saucer set meant for espresso. Italian espresso. Served in Italy. Brianna looked unabashedly at the ID marks on the bottom of the delicate china.

“Margaret,” she exclaimed. “Is there anywhere you haven’t been?”

The woman looked at Brianna as if she had no idea what she was talking about. “I haven’t been anywhere, baby,” she said. “Well, I did go to the Outer Banks that one time for my 50^th birthday. My son and his wife took me there as a gift.” She paused and smiled, her mind obviously drifting away. “We went out in a fishing boat and saw real dolphins. It was so cool I got a little tattoo of one on my ankle to celebrate. You don’t turn 50 every day, you know. Or, see dolphins for that matter. Do you want to see it?”

It took Brianna a minute to process all Margaret had said, but she decided she did want to see the tattoo and nodded. Margaret bent low to pull down the edge of her red, wooly socks and, sure enough, there was a dolphin on her right ankle. It was small. Brianna also bent to get a closer look. Turquoise, it was, and splashing through the waves that, oddly, were lime green and yellow.

A tattoo? That did it.

Brianna’s intrigue with just who Margaret was had passed the tipping point. If only she could decide where to start — the language ability, the geraniums, the world-wide collection of knick-knacks, the previously unmentioned son. Margaret had clearly been holding back on her. The woman was downright interesting and Brianna was downright nosy. She smiled again and settled back into her chair to chew on a bit of brownie. This should make for an enjoyable Thanksgiving-week evening.

She lifted the espresso cup high and raised her eyebrows. Margaret laughed. “Venice?” Brianna guessed.

“Goodwill,” Margaret said with a grin. “I always hit the thrift stores when I go to Elkins or Morgantown.”

“You didn’t get that French accent at Goodwill,” Brianna said skeptically. She wasn’t entirely sure her roomie of sorts was telling the truth.

Margaret laughed again. “You can learn all sorts of things on the internet these days, baby.”

Right. “And, the geraniums?”

“I took a botany class at the community college one semester. I order them on-line.”

“The son?”

At that, Margaret nearly clammed up. But, she soon recovered. “My son is a couple of years older than Rafe. He and his wife live in Morgantown. He’s a teacher there. They’ve got two young daughters. They’re happy. I’m happy they’re happy.”

“And?”

“And, that’s all you get today,” Margaret said determinedly. “Is it my turn for 20 questions now?”

“Oh, I guess,” Brianna said with a huff of mock disgust. “Wait! I have one more while I’m thinking about it. Is there a church that you could recommend for while I’m here?”

Margaret’s eyes showed a glint of surprise at that question, but she seemed to seriously consider the possibilities before she answered. “There’s really only two churches in Cranberry proper. There’s a small Catholic church and a Methodist church that’s kind of become the de facto gathering place for everybody else. A lot of the young people in the valley who actually go to church go to one of those rock-and-roll congregations closer to Elkins.”

“Do you go somewhere?” Brianna asked tentatively. There weren’t a lot of tattooed church ladies in her experience.

“Sure,” Margaret said. “All of us – well, Bobby, Rafe and I — go to the little Methodist church. Well, Rafe won’t be going there now that he’s back up the mountain. They have an ecumenical service up there every Sunday morning. He goes to that.”

Brianna considered all this in silence. She wasn’t Catholic, so that was out. The rock-and-roll church was probably more her style, but the idea of attending the tiny white-steepled chapel that sat at the edge of town was, oddly, more alluring. She’d do it, she decided instantly. It was only for a few months. Why not? It would be just another part of her out-of-character, down-in-the-valley experience.

“OK, my turn,” Margaret grinned suddenly. “I have only one question. How did your time with Rafe go the other day? You haven’t said one peep about it, although I did notice you have a new subscription to the Vegetarian Times.”

Brianna would have winced if Margaret hadn’t been watching so carefully. Her day with Rafe? Whew. “It was fine,” she said carefully.

“Fine?” Margaret snorted. “I’m a mother and a grandmother, baby. You’ll have to do way better than that.” She pushed a brownie Brianna’s direction. “I know how to get it out of you.”

Brianna shifted on Margaret’s Moroccan-leather floor cushion and decided to fess up. Maybe the woman would have some insight as to what was actually going on with bachelor No. 1. She’d probably known him since before he was born.

“Well, he certainly seemed to be having a good time. I know I was,” she recalled wistfully. “At times, it was a great time. You know, like a date that you’re actually really, really happy to be on. We talked and talked and I was really starting to get a good feel for who he is as a person and I was really liking that person,” Brianna said. She spread her hands out to convey emptiness. “Then, nothing. He didn’t even ask for my cell phone number when I left.”

“Clueless!” Margaret said, biting down hard on a brownie. “I mean Rafe, baby, not you. Let me talk to that boy. There’s clearly something he hasn’t figured out. You just need to stand still and chill in the meantime.”

Stand still and chill? Indeed, a chill ran right down Brianna’s spine. It was the fourth time she’d heard those words, or at least some of those words, in the last week. What was the deal?

Any further attention to that thought was immediately snuffed out, however. “I have a second question, actually,” Margaret continued. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Rafe is coming off the mountain to be with his dad. They’re all that each other’s got now that Marilyn is gone. I’m going up to Morgantown to be with Rob and Stacy. I don’t like to think about you being here at the apartment by yourself.”

“Oh, I won’t be alone,” Brianna exclaimed, touched that her new friend was concerned about her well being. “My parents host the whole family back in Wheeling every Thanksgiving. We all stay in our old rooms at the house and I get to see my brothers and their wives and play auntie to my heart’s content. It’s usually a wonderful time.”

“I’m glad you’re going home,” Margaret replied.

“Me, too,” Brianna said. And, considering the tension that gripped the family at the time she left Wheeling, she was surprised that she actually was.

*****

That feeling continued as Brianna went upstairs to happily pack for the long weekend, unaware that Margaret was just as busy one floor below her, trying to fix things with Rafe. Unsuccessfully, as it turned out. For the third time, Margaret speed dialed Rafe, heard his voice mail pick up and was then told his in box was too full for voice messages.

“That’s weird,” she said as she reluctantly decided to try a text instead. Rafe was meticulous about his phone. He used it way too much for business to be anything less.

Apparently, the in box couldn’t even squeeze in a text. That effort failed to send, as well. Margaret looked at her phone. She’d received a text from her daughter-in-law just a half hour before, something about a recipe for sweet-potato casserole that she needed for the weekend festivities. So, her own text function seemed to be working. She dialed the local library robo receptionist to check if she could make an outgoing voice call. She could.

There must be something wrong with Rafe’s phone. If it hadn’t have been so late, she would just have called his office. But, it was late and she didn’t want to leave a voice message there. Margaret sighed in frustration. She’d surely see Rafe at some point during the long weekend. They’d just have to wait to get this confusion about Brianna and Bobby straightened out then.

Acknowledgement: It takes a ski village to write any book. A big thanks to Paul Exley, owner of Alpine Skis & Boards of Wheeling, WV. Everything ski related that I managed to get right is thanks to him.

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