Imogen
The bar is a fever dream of red lights and fake snow.
I’m wearing a scrap of velvet that keeps riding up and thigh-high boots that make my ass look amazing. My best friend's bachelorette party has hit the “Naughty Santa” portion of the evening, and the DJ just tossed a stack of cocktail napkins into the crowd like confetti.
“Write your Christmas naughty list, people! Twelve lines. No rules.”
I’m still on number one on my list, and my third Fireball and Coke, when a tall shadow falls over my table.
“Mind if I help?” The voice is low, warm, and dangerous.
I look up and forget how to breathe. Rolled sleeves. Tattoos. Eyes the color of a coming storm. He smells like pine needles and freedom.
He slides onto the stool beside me, steals my pen, and writes the first line before I can protest. I read it, laugh so hard I snort, and write the second. We pass the napkin back and forth like a dare, each line dirtier and funnier than the last. By the time we hit twelve, I’m feeling more than a little turned on.
We never exchange last names. He calls me Vixen. I call him Soldier, though he never confirms it.
We never leave the bar, his hand on my thigh under the table, my fingers tracing the ink on his forearm, our heads bent together over that ridiculous napkin like it’s the most important document on earth.
At 3:30 a.m., somebody shouts that the Little White Chapel is still open.
Twenty minutes later, I’m standing under fluorescent lights while a sleepy Elvis mumbles through the shortest ceremony in Nevada history. We sign where they tell us, laugh the whole time, and kiss like the world is ending at sunrise. They assure us that nothing will be filed, both of us promising to make sure of it tomorrow.
The next day, he’s gone.
Imogen
I bang on the cabin door with a frozen fist, divorce papers flapping like a white flag in the howling wind. It’s pitch-black, the kind of dark that swallows everything, and the snow is coming down so hard my Jeep is already buried behind me. My teeth are chattering so violently, I’m afraid I’ll crack one.
If he doesn’t answer in the next ten seconds, I’m going to have to go back to the jeep and figure out a way down this mountain. I so don’t want to do that.
The door rips open, and every ounce of air leaves my lungs in a rush.
The man filling the doorway is massive. Shoulders that block out the warm light behind him. His beard is so thick I can barely see his mouth. Flannel stretched tight across a chest that definitely didn’t look like that when he was twenty-three. Eyes the same winter-storm gray I remember, only now they’re narrowed, hard, and completely unimpressed.
He looks like the kind of man who chops wood for fun and scares grizzlies for sport.
He also looks like he’s two seconds from slamming the door in my face.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
He raises one thick brow. “You lost?”
His voice is gravel and smoke and scrapes straight down my spine.
I shake my head too fast. Snow flies off my hood. “No. Are you Flynn Jones?” I don’t know why I ask, I know he is.
He doesn’t answer. Just stares. Hard.
I thrust the manila envelope at him. “I’m Imogen Woods. We, um, we need to talk.”
His gaze drops to the envelope, then drags slowly back up my body. Not rude, exactly. More like he’s cataloging every inch of me. My coat is unzipped just enough to show the curve-hugging sweater underneath. His eyes linger there for one heartbeat too long. I feel it everywhere.
Finally, he steps aside, just enough for me to squeeze past without touching him, and jerks his chin inside. “You’re letting the heat out.”
I step over the threshold. The door slams behind me so loudly that I jump.
The cabin is small. One room. Kitchenette along one wall, couch facing a river-stone fireplace that’s already roaring. A single bed in the corner, made up tight with navy wool blankets and one lonely pillow. There’s no TV, and although Christmas is just five days away, there isn’t a hint of decorations.
