Chapter Seven

Her cheeks still warm from her flush, Lyssa fled downstairs and into the kitchen, the one place she could feel sure Nick wouldn’t follow. But to her dismay, as she stood inspecting the contents of the refrigerator, he ambled into the room.

He walked much better than he had the day before, and she felt glad for his sake that his ankle seemed to be recovering quickly. But she didn’t at all like seeing him settle onto a stool at the breakfast bar as if he had no intention of moving again.

“The kids are in the living room. You might be more comfortable in a chair in there,” she suggested.

“I’m fine right here.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and set it on the counter, then began turning it over again and again on the flat surface. Click-pause-click-pause-click…

She took a nearly full casserole from the refrigerator and set it on the counter.

When she stripped off the foil covering, he leaned over to inspect the contents, then murmured appreciatively. “Quiche Lorraine, isn’t it? Gotta hand it to Amber, she knows how to set out a great buffet.”

Click-pause-click-pause-click…

“This was more for the adults than the kids, I think,” she said. “I wonder if I could get away with calling it Scrambled Eggs and Bacon?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“They might not eat it otherwise.”

“Call it by its real name,” he advised. “Let the kids live a little, spread their wings—the way I tried to convince you to do.”

“Not that again, Nick, please.”

Click-pause-click-pause-click…

She turned back to the refrigerator and deliberately took her time looking through it, rearranging items on shelves, peeling back foil to check out other casseroles. Anything to avoid getting into a conversation she didn’t want to have with Nick.

As one of the oldest Barnett siblings, she had always felt pressured to set a good example. In high school, she had been proud to take her first job as a clerk at Holidaze and even more proud to work her way up to manager. But then a former friend accused her of being afraid of success, afraid of taking a risk, and the woman’s claims had left her confidence shaken. When Nick learned about her job, he had encouraged her to think bigger, to spread her wings. His advice had only revived both her worries that her position at the gift shop wasn’t important enough and her guilt about not aiming for higher goals.

A few months ago, she had let the matter drop rather than get into an argument with him. But with the distance of time, she felt able to push the issue while keeping her temper in check. Abruptly, she turned back to face him. “Managing a gift shop is a worthy job.”

“It is,” he replied. “It’s also the type of position that leads people to settle into a rut.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” she said with heavy sarcasm.

“There’s never anything wrong with moving on to something bigger and better.”

The way you did with me?

She rested her hands on the counter and leaned forward, looking directly into his eyes. He stared back. Those unblinking eyes, like two deep pools reflecting moonlight on their dark surface, pulled her in, distracting her from her thoughts. She shook her head to break the spell. “This is a small town, Nick. There is nothing bigger or better.”

“That’s why I encouraged you to look outside Snowflake Valley.”

“And that would mean moving to a big city where—to hear you tell it—finding top-level jobs I qualify for would be as easy as pulling presents from Santa’s pack.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Lyssa. You’ve got lots of options. And you deserve the best of everything.”

Confusion raced through her. In the few hours she had spent with him here, she had discovered how much she still cared about him. But how could she give a darn, after the way he had dismissed her feelings? How could he not care about her and yet compliment her the way he had just done?

He reached out and covered her hand with his. Now desire raced through her, warring with her confused thoughts. Warmth from his palm spread through her fingers, and some traitorous part of her wished he would take both her hands and pull her closer. That he would lean in and take her lips with his.

She stepped back, tugging her hand free. “I’ve already told you, your options won’t work for me. They would mean leaving my family and my home and everything that makes me happy.” That ought to put him in his place.

She grabbed the casserole dish and took it to the oven to heat. With her back to him, she began taking plates and cups from the cupboard near the sink.

She could almost feel his gaze on her, but he said nothing, and she had nothing left to say.

From behind her came the familiar click-pause-click-pause-click…

Irritated, she slapped a handful of napkins onto the counter beside the plates.

His options didn’t work, but worse than that, they seemed to show he thought there was something wrong with her for not wanting the best of everything. As he had phrased it months ago, all the world has to offer.

Couldn’t he see she had all that right here?

Click-pause-click-pause…

The intermittent rattling noise made her suck in a breath. She would not respond to it. She just would not.

Click-pause-click-pause-click.

She spun to face him. “You’re very attached to that thing, aren’t you?” He laughed, which irritated her even more. Of course, he had continued playing with his phone deliberately to get a reaction from her.

“‘Attached’ is the right word,” he agreed. “This phone is like a lifeline for me. I couldn’t run my business without it.”

Everything with him revolved around business. It was why they would always stay worlds apart. “Maybe you should try cutting the cord sometime.”

“Why? You’re telling me you don’t rely on a phone or a computer or both at work, at least once in a while? What do you do, send up smoke signals?”

“Nick, there’s more to life than the challenges of business.” She had tried to tell him that before.

“Yes, there are all the good things being successful can bring.”

She shook her head. “That’s success on your terms, on how much money a deal will make. And that’s still about business. I’m talking about life in general. Like my small-town life here in the valley. And yes, my small-town values. Like believing in home and family. Caring about others. Making homemade gifts. Creating Christmas traditions. All things that money can’t always buy.” She still hadn’t forgotten how close she had come to sacrificing those values while she’d been caught up in their whirlwind romance. Their one-sided whirlwind romance. “This conversation is pointless. We’ll never see eye to eye.”

“We won’t if you keep turning your back on me, that’s for sure.”

The smile he gave her was warm enough to make something melt inside her, which only increased her irritation. She had to have more willpower than this. “Don’t waste your troubleshooting tactics on me. We’re not going to wind up in a win-win.”

She wouldn’t fall for his charms again.

During breakfast, Lyssa’s annoyance gradually started to fade. Then Nick began insisting upon inspecting the lodge’s garage, swearing his ankle was up to the trek through the snow. She didn’t want him to go alone, and she didn’t want to send Brent along with him. Luckily, she knew better than to say either of those things to Nick.

Instead, as he left the lodge, she hurriedly asked Brent to keep an eye on the younger kids. To her relief, after only a blank-faced hesitation, the teen agreed. She ran to grab her jacket and follow Nick.

Outside, the sky was dark and filled with heavy clouds promising more snow. A frigid wind blew with enough force to cut through her layers of jacket and sweater, chilling her to the bone. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders and across her face. She heard nothing but the muffled silence of the mountainside blanketed in snow and the crunch-crunch as Nick’s boots broke through the crusted snow on the lodge’s front steps.

He stopped at the foot of the steps and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. When she reached his side, she heard him swear under his breath.

“Still no reception?” she guessed.

“No. But I’ll move around, try to climb above the tree line. Maybe that will get me within range of a signal tower.”

Doubtfully, she glanced overhead.

They crossed the open space between the lodge and the five-car garage. “What do you think you’re going to find inside?” she asked. “Even if Michael does have a chainsaw, it won’t do us any good since we can’t get the car on the road.”

“When he’s staying here, he needs some kind of transportation. With all the skiing he does, I’m thinking he’ll have a snowmobile. That’ll be good enough to get me down this mountain.”

But when he opened the side door, she was at his heels. At once, she could see he was due for disappointment. There were no vehicles in the garage, nothing with a motor except a gasoline-powered lawnmower that looked as if it had sat idle for years.

Still, he prowled the building.

“Now what are you looking for?”

“Boards. Plywood. Anything wide and flat we could put under the wheels of your car.”

“I don’t think we ought to go anywhere.”

He turned and frowned at her. “Since when? Yesterday you were as eager as I was to get out of here.”

“Yes, because I was concerned about getting the kids home to their families for Christmas. Not,” she added pointedly, “about getting back to my job. But that was yesterday. Today, it looks like we’re in for more snow.”

“And the sooner we get moving, the sooner we can beat the storm down the mountain.”

“What if we can’t?”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Not if it means the risk of taking the kids out in another blizzard. It would be better to wait for help to arrive.”

“And when do you think that might be?”

She had managed to avoid this conversation yesterday, but she had known eventually they would get around to it. She shrugged, taking a moment to brace herself for the unhappy response she knew she would get from him.

“We’re experts at handling snow removal in Snowflake Valley,” she said at last. ”With the number of snowstorms that blow through the area, we don’t have a choice. Nothing would ever get done in the wintertime if we couldn’t clear the snow out quickly. No matter the weather, life goes on. We all manage to take care of our own.”

“But…?” he asked.

She frowned. “What?”

“I told you, you had potential. You might have a great future in real estate, since you just gave me an excellent pitch on the advantages of living in the valley. However, you sidestepped my question. I know there’s a ‘but’ hanging onto that last sentence.”

Shrugging again, she looked away and admitted, “But at first, no one will have time to worry about the outlying areas.”

“You mean, anything outside the valley.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t we stop dancing around the subject, Lyssa,” he said harshly, “and throw it out on the table. What you’re saying is that the folks of Snowflake Valley might not come to dig us out until they take care of everyone else in town. That even if Amber realizes something’s wrong, we’re not getting out of here anytime soon.”

She said nothing.

He exhaled heavily. “As that’s obviously the case, it only makes sense to find a way out of here. And when I find one, I’m taking it.”

All for one and all for me.

Without a word, she turned on her heel and left the garage. There was no point in arguing. He’d made up his mind. And she knew from experience that it was impossible to get him to change it. She wouldn’t argue. If he found a way off the mountain, she would let him go. She didn’t need him here—or in her life anymore. There were too many things they didn’t agree on. Too many ways in which their beliefs and value systems collided—for example, that night she had fallen asleep while he made his overseas phone calls.

They had planned to go out to dinner, but he had gotten wrapped up in a conference call with a hot prospect in Europe. That one call led to another. And another. And another.

She had hoped they would spend their time after dinner sharing kisses with each other and not making phone calls that involved only one of them. Obviously, Nick’s hopes and hers hadn’t matched. Eventually, she had fallen asleep.

The next morning, she had opened her eyes to find sunshine streaming across her on the couch. The bright light had woken her up in more ways than one.

Nick was all business, almost all of the time. And with him, business would always come first—not her, not their relationship, and worst of all, not the children she had foolishly begun to hope they would have someday.

But that was before she’d discovered the real Nick.

A man hardheaded and driven when it came to getting what he wanted—which, she had finally and reluctantly had to face, didn’t include her.

…

Back at the lodge, Nick stripped off his jacket and dropped it on the bench inside the front door.

All three kids sat in the living room. Mollie and Tommy sprawled in front of the coffee table with a deck of playing cards Lyssa had given them. Brent had taken the chair near the fireplace and sat with his ever-present earbuds in his ears and a blanket pulled up to his chin.

Immediately, Mollie crossed the room. “How is your foot, Mr. Nick?”

She had asked the question a lot less grudgingly than Lyssa had that morning. He didn’t want to think about Lyssa. “Well, let’s see. It didn’t hurt while I was outside.” After he removed his boots, he flexed his right foot, testing his ankle. “So far, everything seems to be fine.”

He wished he could say the same of Lyssa.

And there he was, despite himself, thinking about her again. That didn’t come as a surprise considering he’d had plenty of trouble keeping her off his mind the past few months. When Michael had gotten in touch to ask him to play Santa again, Lyssa hadn’t been far from his thoughts, either.

He hadn’t wanted a reunion with her. And he’d agreed to reprise his role only after Michael’s assurance—by way of her sister, Amber—that Lyssa couldn’t attend the party this year, let alone play elf. One of these days, somebody was going to have a lot to answer for.

“Since your foot is all better,” Mollie said, “can we go outside and make snow angels?”

Before he could answer, Lyssa appeared, as if she might have been hovering just inside the kitchen doorway waiting for an opening to join the conversation. It bothered him to think she didn’t want to talk with him alone. It bothered him even more that she couldn’t see he wanted only to help her.

“No trips outside today,” she told Mollie. “It looks like it’s going to start snowing again any minute.”

“Again?” Tommy yelped. “But Miss Lyssa, you said when the snow stops, we can go home.”

Nick took his turn at jumping into the conversation. “What did you do with those cards, Tommy? I’m challenging you to a game.”

“Can we play Go Fish?” The boy began sweeping the cards into a pile on the coffee table.

“Can I play, too?” Mollie asked.

“You sure can.” Though he spoke to the kids, over Mollie’s head he met Lyssa’s eyes. “You two shuffle the cards. I want to talk to Miss Lyssa for a minute.”

Lyssa’s eyes widened a fraction, but she turned and went back the way she had come.

He followed her into the kitchen. “There was nothing in the garage I could use to get the car back on the road. Not even a bag of rock salt.”

“Amber probably carries that in the trunk of her car.”

“Smart woman. But it won’t do us much good there. Haven’t you gotten in touch with her yet?”

She shook her head. “I checked the cell phone. Nothing.”

“Yeah. I hiked up the mountain a-ways to try for a signal. Nothing doing there, either.”

“I expected that.”

And nothing like beating a man at his own game. Of course, she had local knowledge of the area. If he’d done some Internet research…if he’d had Internet access to do research… He fought not to scowl. “You knew all along we weren’t going anywhere, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “And you do know your card game is only a temporary distraction?”

“Yeah.” For him. He needed something to take his mind off Lyssa. But he’d also already acknowledged what she had said—to himself, at least. He wasn’t about to broadcast the info. The truth was he, who always had answers to everyone’s problems, couldn’t find a solution to this one. “What do we do when Tommy gets tired of Go Fish?”

“I’ll look around. I found the cards. Amber might have some board games here, too. If not, I’ll figure something out.”

“Something that’ll keep all three kids happy?”

She nodded. “Don’t worry about that. I had lots of experience entertaining my sisters and brothers when I was younger.”

“And since then?”

“Plenty of time with the local kids, between babysitting, leading a Scout troop, and volunteering at the preschool. My older sister, Callie, teaches at the grade school. She’s Mollie’s teacher this year, as a matter of fact. And Callie never passes up an opportunity to get me to help her out, too. I can always find something to do to amuse a child.”

“Let’s hope so, or those kids are going to be in for a very long day.”

She nodded and reached up to run her hand through her hair. The long brown strands tumbled over her shoulder. Her borrowed sweater, a shade snug on her, clung in all the right places.

Swallowing hard, he turned and made his way back to the living room. The kids weren’t the only ones who would suffer through a long day here.

He hoped she would find something to keep the kids occupied…because he’d been all too right about needing a distraction himself.