Chapter One

Two cars pulled up to the old Victorian farm home. Amelia Paige Myers followed the smooth large, black SUV with tinted windows until it came to a graceful stop on the ice and snow-covered roadside. She fishtailed past, driving the over-packed, smaller car without snow tires, and turned into the ice-slick driveway, bouncing off a snowbank. She braked abruptly only a few feet into the drive, seeing that the rest of it hadn’t been cleared of the several-inch coating of snow.

Paige let out a huge sigh. She was twenty-six and far from Atlanta and completely unfamiliar with winter driving. After pouring her concentration onto the white-knuckle drive on the slick mountain roads, she was at finally her aunt’s house, which was to be her home for the following weeks. Her next thought was of the incredible man who dropped everything to lead the way on those roads—her Michael, her handsome rebound Michael, her know-what-he’s-doing Michael. Was he really hers? If so, for how long?

She shook her head free from that worrying thought. No time for that. It was cold, and she couldn’t wait to see her aunt and the home she had last visited as a child.

Michael Yotahala Lukas stepped smoothly out of his black car, both he and his expensive overcoat having their share of salt and road-dirt stains from earlier mishaps. He was striking, tall, lean, long-nosed, dark-haired with a slight caramel color to his skin.

“You made it.” His expression showed relief in his smile as he walked with firm strides toward her.

She stepped free from her car, which had been stuffed to the roof with her possessions. “Of course, I made it,” she said with a distinct Carolina drawl. Her words puffed cold as she spoke, but she smiled warmly to Michael.

He readily put his arm around her. “Who needs snow tires, all-wheel drive or even unobstructed view for that matter?”

“You do if you plan on living with me for a while.” The interrupting voice boomed from around the bend of the driveway.

“Aunt Linney!” Paige turned away from Michael just as he had bent to kiss her. Though, just an hour earlier, they had embraced and shared kiss after heated kiss at a rest stop on a winding mountainside pass.

“Hey.” He moaned, his face hinted at a distinct pang of rejection.

“Sorry.” Paige grinned and reached up to peck him on the cheek before running toward her aunt with open arms for her reunion hug. She was hampered by the thick snow to an awkward stomp as she trudged through it wearing only clogs.

Her aunt was somewhere in her early fifties and somewhere thirty plus pounds extra with a sometimes-stoic air. She was not stoic now. With cold-nipped rosy cheeks, she beamed at her.

“There’s my favorite niece,” her aunt called out with a gravel to her voice.

“I’m your only niece,” Paige replied happily at the mantra the two had always shared.

Linney Smith’s hair was a rich brunette, several shades darker than Paige’s hair, which ranged from honey blonde to dirty wheat-colored, depending on the amount of sun she’d had. Paige had had plenty of sun recently. Linney had not. Her hair was cut in a style that could only be described as, “it will grow in soon.”

In a hearty rural Pennsylvania accent, Linney said, “Sagey-Paigey, how’s my strong-willed, southern squirt doing?” She gave Paige an even heartier hug.

“Not as strong-willed as you might hope. I ran away from Atlanta when I was laid off,” Paige said.

“I don’t know about that. Your mom and I thought it took a lot of courage to pile up and drive up here to help me fix up this old place.”

“Maybe.” Paige looked up at her grandparents’ home and did a double-take. It was far more worn than when they had been alive. “Whoa. Now I can see why you said it was courageous. This house isn’t anything like I remembered.”

“They let it go for quite a piece. Happens with illness hitting the elderly. Just locked the doors and left it alone in the end. Squatters didn’t help. The snow’s hiding more than a paint problem. Got our work cut out for us.”

Paige nodded, shielding her eyes from the bright sunshine reflecting off the snow. She took in the view of the home. It looked neglected, cold, and gray especially with the window shades drawn. The triangle of roof over the middle of the attic sported a broken, boarded circular window. She huddled closer into her thin jacket and noticed Michael had kept his distance, his computer bag in hand. She motioned for him to come closer.

“Working on this place should help you put Buckhead behind you,” Linney said. “And I don’t mean the condo. I mean that lug David… Davis…Dookey, whoever you lived with. That blockhead came off lazy and about as smart as the football he loved.”

“It was Davis. Davis Martin Greer, but you’re right. He’s a thing of the past,” Paige said through her chattering teeth.

“Thank heavens. And I suppose this one is the future?” Linney tilted her head and eyed Michael with a critical stare as he approached.

Paige chuckled. “This is—”

Her aunt cut her off with a wave of a hand. She scrutinized the dark-haired, strong-bodied man and said something to him in Mohawk language.

He shook his head. “Part Oneida.” He followed with, “Natuhkwa Michael Yotahala Lukas, with a K, but Paige calls me Kanaskwiyo Ukwe.” He shrugged at her aunt’s surprised look, then nodded, chuckling. “Groundhog Man.”

“His birthday was yesterday on Groundhog Day. Only fitting that I called him that,” Paige interjected in her own defense. A shiver added to her teeth chattering. “Not for anything, when did you learn Oneida? I thought Uncle Roger was part Mohawk.”

Her aunt started to usher Paige toward the house. “He was. Lucky I didn’t skin him alive Mohawk style when I left him.” She explained for Michael’s benefit, “I found him with that…kalyo tanu yanit. That yonhehti!”

Paige’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t know what it means, but it can’t be good.”

“Terrible animal. Bitch,” Michael said with heightened emphasis matching her aunt’s. Both women glared at him. “What? Just translating.”

Paige laughed. “So, Aunt Linney, it still doesn’t explain the Oneida.”

“You know I’m a nurse. I’ve been working in hospice. It helps for communication to learn a few words of various languages as they come through at such a trying time. There must have been an Oneida community or suburb nearby since several spoke it. One woman was without family, and she…well, she taught me. Sweet thing, that one. Was old as the hills and wrinkled as a prune, but um…” She paused in reflection. “Iyo…Iyo…”

“Ukwe?” Michael offered.

Aunt Linney shook her head. “More than good woman. Soul. Beautiful, good soul. She hung in there longer than anybody expected, and I stayed with her. She actually helped me through the divorce with Can’t-keep-his-pants-up Roger.”

Her aunt stood on the front porch, more of a stoop since it had only half a roof and the remaining part hung on a precarious angle. The railings were mostly missing, having long fallen over. Stomping her feet, she swung open the door, “Well, welcome to Dusty Haven. Your hoarding paradise for as long as you can take it.”

“Oh, Michael, don’t listen to her. It can’t be all that bad.”

It was worse.

****

Paige took in the view, or the lack of it. Though the bay windows in the living room faced a vista of a sloping meadow, the window seat was obscured with several collapsing boxes and old cartons. The walls might have seen paint forty years earlier, all dulled to a dirty tone except where paintings were removed and wires hung loose.

A handful of newer grocery store boxes were clustered in one corner of the foyer as if to ready to fight against stacks of yellowed magazines and newspapers piled up six feet thickly throughout what might have been the living room. A handful of disheveled furniture pieces were unburied from their surrounding rubble and newspaper walls.

“I made a lot of progress in here,” Aunt Linney proudly declared. “You could barely walk in here before. Took forever to get the house out of probate. Some squatters broke in while the courts took their time. Still have rooms upstairs and down where you can’t see the floor.”

Stunned, Paige said, “So this is squatters doing, not Grandpa Benny and Grandma Ida’s?”

“More of a combo. That’s the trouble. We need to weed out the heirloom from all of this. Treasure from the trash.”

Michael nodded, his hand wiped the dust off an antique frame holding a picture of a wedding couple that had been taken over a hundred years ago. Paige moved to his side. Several other sepia-toned photos were stacked on the rickety mantel begging for attention.

“Okay, okay. Before you two go sentimental treasure hunting, there’s shoveling to do, outside this time, and a car to unload. I vote you two do it,” Aunt Linney said, shaking them out of their stupor.

Paige still shivered as she looked questioningly at her Aunt.

“I’ll get some soup going. You can use my spare boots, and, uh, just add socks or newspaper since your feet look smaller. Here, take my coat, too.” Linney handed a heavy oversized parka to Paige.

“I can shovel. Michael has work. He just helped me find my way here,” Paige said, with a thicker drawl emerging from her discomfort at putting Michael on the spot.

Both Michael and Aunt Linney sighed. “Is she always like that?” he asked.

“Nah…worse.”

“I do have a work crisis, though.” He looked at this watch. “Any chance I can plug into your Wi-Fi and start another report running before shoveling?” Michael scanned for outlets.

“What Wi-Fi?”

“No Wi-Fi?” both Paige and Michael asked, Paige, in amazement, Michael with deflation.

“Nope. Limited cell reception, too, at least with my carrier.” Aunt Linney plunked down a pair of oversized boots in front of Paige.

“Is that why you never texted or called me back?” Paige watched Michael turn and press button after button on his phone.

Aunt Linney just shook her head. “Nope. I’m old school. Not into texting. Just real phone or emails. I was wondering why you didn’t call me. You must have been trying to reach my cell. Gotta find that thing. It’s out of battery and hiding. Your mom called though and mentioned you made it to Pennsylvania at least.”

“I drove through the night. Weren’t you even worried about me driving alone or getting into trouble during the icy storm the other night?”

“Nah. You might have grown up in the South, but you have tough Pennsylvania farmer blood in you—Dornheim blood. I saw how you handled your older brothers. You usually have your wits about you. Smart enough to dump Buckhead dork, so I don’t have to worry much about you, Paige. You’ve always been prepared and careful, if not orderly.”

Michael let out a snort. His hands went up in defense at Aunt Linney’s scrutinizing look.

Paige grinned. She couldn’t really argue with Michael’s objection. She might never have met him had she been the normal, hard-working, over-scheduled person she was in Atlanta. Her mind flashed back to how they met in an icy snowstorm just a couple days ago. Michael had been in town on business when she landed at Sizzle, a gay bar in a college town, after driving through the night. He’d been thrown at her and taken her underwing as part of the “Breakup Special” his gay cousin manipulated.

She and Michael spent a whirlwind of nights sequestered in his room at a bed and breakfast. Snowed in, they were plunged into the circumstance, and now, even a glance at his smile made her long for the rebound to continue to something more, much more. She worried that walking into this hoarded, decrepit home would change things.

Paige snapped out of her concerns and back into the discussion.

Michael was defending his reaction. “She’s bright, yes. But…prepared and orderly? No snow tires and did you see how her car’s packed?” He plugged his computer into a wall socket and pressed something on his cell.

“Not yet. It’s too far down the driveway,” Linney responded. “That’s why you both need to get to work while the sun is shining.” She turned to Michael. “And what the hell did you just do?”

“I set up a temporary Wi-Fi hotspot. It’ll chew up my data plan, but this way I can test the reliability of…” Michael stopped at Linney’s glazed expression.

Paige nodded as if to urge him on.

Her aunt just looked cross-eyed at him, grunted, and left the room.

“Go on,” Paige encouraged. Light spilled in from the front door window pane, bouncing off his dark hair.

Finally, with privacy, he moved toward her. “…reliability of the perimeters set. They have to be in close range.” He pulled her in tight, hugging her through the fluffiness of the borrowed coat. Her eyes locked onto his rich amber ones. They were golden brown in the center with a rim of chocolate brown, all of which was much brighter in the reflection of the snow. She drank in their delicious intensity.

“Uh huh,” Paige whispered. “Very close range.”

Without hesitation, he pulled her into a deep hungry kiss. That kiss. The one that drew a soft moan from her. Her hand moved to his face. The feeling of the slight grizzle to his chin sent her body a flashback to when he was with her in bed, entwined and pulsing. His kiss sent tendrils of longing through her. Another moan escaped her lips as she returned his deepened kiss.

“Oh brother,” her aunt exclaimed, reentering the living room and dropping a second shovel. “And here. I brought extra gloves to keep you two warm—like you need it.” She tossed the gloves and walked toward the kitchen with a waddle and a laugh.

“Shovel?” Paige asked, offering the red scoop-shovel to Michael.

“Now that’s a nickname I haven’t been called before.” He took the shovel from her. “And no plow jokes or I stop.”

She almost said something but stopped and mimicked a zipped lip.

“After you,” Michael said with a groan that sounded very much like an animal sound. A very ill-behaved animal. That earned him a snowball almost as soon as they stepped back outdoors.

****

“Owwwww. What the hell was that?” Michael pulled a limp lump with inch long spikes from Paige’s car and flung it into the snow. “It bit me.”

He began to yank out the needles from his gloved hand and wrist. Two or three hours earlier, he had been warm and spike-free. A day ago, he had been curled up around Paige in a gorgeous bed. A week before that was just a blur. That was before Paige had fled Atlanta straight into his life and no longer seemed to matter much.

They had shoveled the winding driveway, pushing the heavy snow to the sides, potholes making the smooth strokes rougher. Only a few snowballs were thrown when they began. He couldn’t help it. It had been so long since he was with someone playful other than family. She was a handful years younger than his thirty-one and energetic.

So, when she pegged him with a snowball a third time, he had to prove his own stamina and show her the proper way to dunk someone into a snowbank. He tossed her into a mountain of the fluffy stuff and followed her into the snow drift, kissing his way out any retaliation. He even had helped her up. She had reached to brush off snow from his hair but instead smashed a fistful on his head.

She had tried to run, but her boots flopped, so he caught her near the tree line and pressed his body to hers, his overcoat opened up enough so that he knew she could feel everything that was surging through him. Then, as she fell backward into the birch, the tree shook loose a mountain of snow on top of them, sending them chasing again. She escaped and hopped into her car.

Oh no. Is she going to flee again like she had this morning?

He had jammed his reports into his computer bag and fled from the bed and breakfast to follow her in his company car. Just before she reached the most dangerous part of the mountain road, he caught up with her, kissed her within an inch of his life, and had her follow him on safer roads. He had no idea how long his work projects would keep him in the area. What he did know was that he didn’t want their time to be over, at least not yet.

His panic at her leaving again calmed to a sigh of relief when she pulled her car up to park closer to the front door.

“Unloading time,” Paige announced with a bright, enthusiastic smile and hoisted a box. She was nothing like his ex who’d been older, demanding, and continually serious.

Paige was fascinating and, from what he could tell, able to handle what was thrown at her and still keep her sense of humor. Her sexy, playful nature drew him in. Compared to his exacting ex, who had treated their relationship as if it were another task on her managerial to-do list, Paige hadn’t pushed expectations on him. She even seemed to relish his assistance. Still, the sting from his breakup a year ago made him cautious. Very cautious if he reflected on it.

He watched Paige’s movements as he followed her inside with each load from the car. His reflection on her took on a whole new facet with the fluidity of her backside wiggling up the steps. That made him think other thoughts, naked-under-the-covers thoughts, which let caution take a back seat, a curvy back seat.

And now, out for another load, Michael hadn’t been paying attention to what he had been reaching into and was bitten by Paige’s dead plant, requiring him to pluck out several hurtful spines.

“Ohh…I forgot. I must have brought Cackty, my cactus. I think it must be a victim of my move.”

“As am I, it appears. Ouch.” He shook his head.

She dropped what was in her arms and pulled out the last needle. “Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?”

“Yes, and then I want you to feed it and make it better. I’m starved. Let’s finish fast.” He lifted and carried several more garbage bags of items inside, careful to set them away from the water they dripped near the entry. Aunt Linney gave directions, usually indicating the foyer or downstairs hall since both busy workers were trailing in wet snow.

Paige had unloaded the trunk, including a second basket of laundry, which may or may not have been washed by the looks of the wadded-up clothing. Lamps, gadgets, and a small table somehow made their way out of the car in Michael’s arms. The box of books had shoes thrown in with it. She carried her summer hats stacked on her head as she retrieved more items. Her business clothes were more carefully handled.

“This should be the last of it. Not big on planning this out, were you, Flee?” He picked up a rickety box with a notable, “Oof.” The box rattled, threatening to break the heavy items inside.

“I just threw things together. I think that’s a few kitchen items. Take it that way, please.”

He did, groaning with every step.