Christmas In Snowflake Canyon. RaeAnne Thayne

behind him and Andrew’s expression shifted from skepticism to rueful dismay. Dylan didn’t need to look around to realize Gen must have overheard.

      Shoot.

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

      “Gen.”

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

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

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

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

      * * *

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

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

      “Got it.”

      “You know where that is?”

      “Everybody knows where Pearl lived.”

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

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

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

      “You have the key?” Dylan asked.

      “Yes,” she answered, just as curtly.

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

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

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

      “I’m good. Thanks. You can go now.”

      “Genevieve. I’m sorry you heard that.”

      “But not sorry you said it.”

      “That, too,” he said.

      She still burned with humiliation, though she wasn’t sure why. Everyone saw her that way. Why did it bother her so much that he did, too?

      “Forget it,” she said. “I have. Do you think I really care about your opinion of me? After tonight, we won’t have anything to do with each other. We don’t exactly move in the same social circles.”

      “Praise the Lord,” he said in an impassioned undertone, and she almost smiled, until she remembered he despised her.

      “Good night, Dylan.”

      “Yeah. Next time, try to have a little self-restraint.”

      She nodded and quickly unlocked the door, hurried inside and closed it shut behind her.

      She had to will herself not to watch him walk back to his brother’s waiting vehicle. Instead, she forced herself to focus on the challenge ahead of her—the horrible green shag carpeting, dark-paneled walls, tiny windows.

      She was so tired. Exhaustion pulled at her, and she felt as if her arms weighed about a hundred pounds each. Mental note: lingering jet lag and adrenaline crashes didn’t mix well.

      She headed straight for the hideous pink bathroom and managed to wrestle her clothes off with those giant, tired arms then stepped into the shower.

      At least she had hot water. Always a plus. Actually, the house had a few things going for it—decent bones and a fantastic location at the mouth of the canyon, to start. The half-acre lot alone was worth at least a couple hundred thousand. If she could transform the house into a decent condition, anything else would be a bonus.

      She stood under the hot spray until the water finally ran out, then toweled off, changed into her favorite pair of silk pajamas and climbed into the bed, grateful for the sheets she had thought to bring down from her parents’ house.

      She could do this. Yes, it was overwhelming, especially on an extremely limited budget. Difficult, but not impossible.

      If she pulled this off, she might be able to leave Hope’s Crossing with a nice chunk of cash, at the very least, and maybe pick up a little hard-earned pride along the way.

      She supposed it was too much to hope that she might even earn her family’s respect—or anything but contempt from a tough, hardened ex-soldier like Dylan Caine.

      * * *

      OVER THE WEEKEND, Dylan tried not to give Genevieve Beaumont much thought. He was surprised at how difficult he found that particular task.

      He would think of her at the oddest times. While he cleared snow off his long, winding driveway in Snowflake Canyon with the thirty-year-old John Deere he had fixed up. While he went through the painstaking effort of chopping wood for the fireplace one-handed and carried it into the house—also one-handed. While he was sitting by said fire with a book on his lap and Tucker curled up at his feet.

      Monday morning his cell phone rang early, yanking him out of a vaguely disturbing but undeniably heated dream of her wearing a demure, lacy veil that rippled down to a naughty porn-star version of a wedding gown made out of see-through lace.

      His phone rang a second time while he was trying to clear that vaguely disturbing image out of his head.

      “Yeah?” he growled.

      “Cheerful this morning, aren’t we?” His father’s Ireland-sprinkled accent greeted him. “I suppose I might be a mite cranky, too, if I had spent my weekend on the wrong side of the law.”

      Dermot made it sound as if his youngest son had been riding the range holding up trains and robbing banks. Dylan imagined his father viewed the transgressions the same.

      “Not the whole weekend,” he answered, sitting up in bed and rubbing a little at the phantom pains in his arm. His now-narrowed world slowly came into focus. “Only Friday night. I spent the rest of the time shoveling snow. How about you?”

      “You didn’t come to dinner last night.”

      Dermot threw a grand Sunday dinner each week for any of Dylan’s six siblings who could make it and their families. The combined force of all those busybodies was more than he could usually stand.

      “I came to dinner on Thanksgiving, didn’t I? I figured that would be sufficient. Anyway, it took me