“I’m sure I can figure something out.”
“Oh? How, exactly?” He challenged her with a familiar studying frown. It was a look she remembered from when they had been paired up at school; brought out whenever he judged her actions as impractical, illogical, or, most likely, both.
She opened her mouth to offer a retort, but the words died on her tongue, and with them, her resistance. Her chances of getting home that night without his help were slim to none. It would be worth a few awkward hours in a car if she could make it home and avoid letting yet another person down today.
“What would my part of the rental be?” she asked.
“No need,” he said, waving it off.
“Then I guess we’re going to Elk Ridge together,” she said, feeling vaguely defeated. Gavin replied with a half smile and a brisk nod. As he pulled away from the wall, a sprig of holly came with him.
“Hold on a sec,” said Rowan, getting in close to rise on her tiptoes to reach the holly. The spines of the dark, waxy leaves clung to his salt-and-pepper locks, and she had to tug to get it free. Her other hand came to rest against his arm to steady herself, and she was keenly aware of the taut slopes of biceps beneath her palm and the scent of him—oakmoss and amber.
He looked down at her hand with a raised eyebrow, and then his eyes darted down her body, leaving her conscious of the evening gown she was still wearing and all the places it clung tight to her full figure.
“Did you flee a ball before this?” he murmured—playfully? Gavin McCreery knew how to be playful?
“Something like that.” She flushed and took a step back, holding the holly out by way of explanation. “You had a hijacker.”
“Thanks,” he said with a clipped nod before heading toward the exit. The view from behind gave her a chance to appreciate the fit of his tailored jeans, but she shook away the thoughts.
I know it’s been a while, but this is Gavin McCreery you’re checking out. Keep it frosty.
She glanced at the holly leaf in her hand and, without another thought, popped it into her pocket and jogged to catch up.
“So, what kind of car is it?” she asked. “Something with snow tires, I hope?”
He paused, knitting his brow. “Haven’t you heard?”
Something in his tone caused her to stop, a sense of dread creeping its way up her spine. “Heard what?”
“There’s no snow in Elk Ridge yet.”
Her mouth flapped in surprise. “None?”
The tension in his voice was clear as he confirmed, “Not a flake.”
Her heart constricted. No snow in Elk Ridge in late December? That was bad. Very bad.
3
As the rented car sped east down the freeway, the lights of Seattle gave way to thickly forested foothills. High enough to be called mountains anywhere east of the Rockies, but only the craggy toes of the mountains ranging ahead. Rowan watched their approach with mounting dread, scanning for where the snowlineshouldbe and most certainly was not.
She pulled out a crochet project—an amigurumi otter—hoping it might distract her. But she dropped into an unconscious rhythm, and one glance at the driver’s seat, at Gavin commanding the wheel, was all it took to move her thoughts back to the strangeness of the situation.
The years had brought his features into definition, filling out his once boyishly handsome face with a strong jaw, prominent brow, and definition in the cheekbones. His dark brown eyes, fringed by enviably long lashes, were familiar, as was his quietly guarded look. Whenever they had paired up for group work in school, she’d relished the challenge to change his expression—a laugh, a smile, a scandalized widening of the eyes.
He had been an inordinately serious child and teenager. Though maybe not always. Rowan briefly recalled a twinkling-eyed boy. But his mother had died when he was eleven, and the melancholy of grief settled into a permanent feature.
Were he endowed with fewer of life’s advantages, that sullen demeanor might have left him as much of a social outcast as Rowan had been, but between money and looks, he’d never had that problem, even if his own “friends” ribbed him for his standoffishness.
He’d never lacked for dates either, but then Rowan supposed girls lined up for quiet boys with soulful eyes because they could imagine their minds exempt from the kinds of thoughts the loud ones advertised.
Nother,of course, but others.
He’d rolled up his sleeves, revealing forearms with thick, dark hair. Ridges of muscle cut channels from elbow to wrist where his hands wrapped firmly around the wheel. His eyes might have been the same, butthosewere certainly new. His thumbs idly stroked circles along the nibs of raised stitching in the steering wheel cover, and she forced herself to look away, cheeks flushing at less innocent thoughts of thumbs stroking.
Her gaze landed on his hair, and the heat in her cheeks shifted from embarrassment to shame. She double-checked the position of the stocking cap on her head, hoping it would hide any early signs that her hair was changing back to white.
