She had protected them, Massimo later realized. His distant grandfather had, too, in his own way, when he’d left the business to the two boys when they came of age, to govern alongside their impulsive and distracted father. The subsequent twelve years since leadership had come into their hands had been spent reviving the business while putting out their parents’ fires. Massimo would not allow Catarina to become yet another fire he needed to put out. That was the first message he would make clear when he found her.
As the plane landed on the tiny runway of the Tromsø airport, heavy flakes of snow were falling everywhere, melting on the windows and settling on the snowbanks left by a season’s worth of plowing. By the time he walked down the steps and onto the tarmac, the snowfall had shifted from flurries to a storm.
One of his assistants handed him gloves and a change of boots. He waved them off. “I won’t need those,” he said, picturing the well-groomed path from his car to his favorite resort in the Alps. This would be simple. Quick.
“The storm warning has been upgraded, sir,” said the assistant.
Massimo frowned.
“I won’t be needing your services until I return,” he added, dismissing his staff. “Stand by for my call.”
Bringing Catarina back to Milan was a delicate matter, best done alone, no matter how much he trusted his staff. He might even need to adjust his strategy slightly, though first, he needed to figure out why she ran away when the deal was all but signed. He flashed to the smile she had given him just before she had ushered him out of their family’s estate, and an unfamiliar wave of uneasiness washed through him. She was not quite the biddable, naive young woman he had taken her for, but this just meant that his new strategy likely needed to involve a more nuanced effort, including some of that…charm his brother mentioned. There was no reason for the wariness this idea seemed to invoke. His intense reaction to her was likely just surprise at his unexpected attraction, nothing more.
A thick layer of snow had settled on the ground as Massimo drove through the narrow streets of Tromsø, passing buildings painted in bright reds and yellows, topped with mounds of white. He crossed a bridge, following the GPS coordinates Giuseppe d’Avalos had given him, and began climbing up the side of the mountain. As he ascended, the lights from the town disappeared, and the only evidence of civilization were the car tracks that guided the way through the newly fallen snow. Great walls of it lined the uphill side of the road, and the downhill side disappeared into a white abyss. The higher his car climbed, the less visible the curves of the mountainside were, as thick, wet flakes hit his windshield. He had rarely driven in more than a centimeter of snow, but he was Massimo Carandini. He could do anything he set his mind to.
When he heard an ominous rumble from the mountainside, he followed his instincts and put his foot on the gas. The SUV fishtailed around the curve, skidding dangerously close to the edge, but he focused on the road in front of him. The GPS told him he was close to the spot where Catarina’s mountain home sat, perched on a remote cliffside, so he ignored another rumble from the mountain and sped up. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement in the haze of white, uphill from him. It looked as though an enormous snowbank was racing toward him. He slammed his foot on the gas as snow pelted his roof, bumping over mounds as more came crashing down all around him. An avalanche. There was nothing he could do but keep driving, so he raced onward. Too late, he realized he was driving much too fast for the growing layer of wet snow on the road. But he would make it. He was sure of it. The snow was everywhere, covering the windshield now, blocking all hope of seeing what was in front of him. Massimo slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded and spun until it hit something solid. Then everything slammed to a stop.
As the storm picked up, blowing its wind in swirls, what Catarina felt was relief. Phone service was already down, and with any luck, the roads would close soon, too. Planes would be delayed from the heavy spring snow piling on the runway, falling too quickly for the plows to clear.
Catarina sat on a bar stool at the island counter of her kitchen, dressed in her favorite cashmere sweater and leggings, birthday presents from her mother years ago. She warmed her hands with a mug of tea as she looked out the tall windows. In one direction was the barely visible road, and in the other, there was only a hazy white, where on a clear day the fjord would stretch out below her. Today wasn’t anywhere near clear.
Thank goodness she had a stocked refrigerator to wait out the storm. On the plane ride from Milan, she had called Signe, their longtime cook, who had filled the refrigerator and cabinets with her favorite Norwegian delicacies as well as ingredients for the meals she would fix after Catarina had settled in. Somehow, Signe had managed to bake cinnamon rolls between the time Catarina had called and the time she had arrived, and she really hoped that Signe hadn’t done that in the middle of the night. If she had, at least their family paid her a generous full-time salary for what was very part-time work, so Catarina hoped this made up for the last-minute, late-night inconvenience.
She shivered and shifted her gaze to her third attempt at a fire that was currently smouldering in the fireplace that rose from the opposite side of the great room. This one seemed to be headed in the same direction as the other two. She couldn’t get the logs to catch fire properly. It took a while for the central heating to find its way through the many rooms of this house, so for now, she was a bit cold. But at least she was free.
Catarina avoided letting her gaze pause on the piano. There had been a time when music had been her constant companion, playing through her mind. When her mother had entered the last stages of life, that music had faded. Catarina didn’t notice until a few weeks after her mother’s death, when she sat on the familiar bench, but the music no longer played. She had reached for the keys, playing a few measures by rote, but grief overcame her. After weeks of this, she gave up, and it had been years since she had bothered even to try.
But she wasn’t here to think about that time in her life. Instead, Catarina focused on the fact that she’d arrived in the darkness and fallen into bed, burying herself in the billowy layers of down for the most peaceful sleep she’d had in a long time. This morning she had awoken to a breakfast of boiled eggs with caviar, pickled herring on crisp bread and an assortment of fruit, the Norwegian breakfast she and her mother had always eaten when they were here. Now she was working her way through her first cinnamon roll of the day. On her last visit, the ache of loneliness and loss had both pulled her here and then driven her away. Even four years after the funeral, it had felt as if her mother’s death took up too much space for anything else to exist in her life.
But this time was different. This time, the ache was tempered by the relief of getting away from her father’s autocratic decisions, away from an even more autocratic fiancé. It was a reprieve, a chance to come up with a plan that fulfilled her mother’s last requests, both for her father and for herself. Because while her father seemed to believe that a strategic marriage was the path to her happiness, Catarina was sure her mother would agree that there was no happiness in the arrangement Massimo had so clearly laid out for her. As the snow continued to pile up on the windowsills, covering the bushes and trees outside and surrounding her in a soft blanket, thick enough to keep the world at bay, she would come up with a new plan, a plan with her freedom at the center.
She was not ready to think about the dreams that had filled her sleep, dreams of the way Massimo Carandini’s gaze had burned into her. But touching him had fully entranced her, the electricity that had skittered over her skin as her lips met his cheek. Her dreams erased the moment everything had shifted to coldness. Instead, in the fantasies born in the deep recesses of her mind, Massimo had angled his head and brought those full, sensual lips to the sensitive skin of her neck, then lower…
Catarina gave herself a little shake. There was no reason to think about this fantasy world her mind had created. Instead, she stared out the window,notthinking about Massimo’s lips nor his broad shoulders nor any other part of him, parts that she had already imagined in exquisite detail.
These not-thoughts were interrupted by a low rumble from outside, and the floor began to shake underneath her. She grabbed the countertop as she saw the great blanket of snow on the mountain crumbling, dissolving, moving. An avalanche, inevitable in these parts when new snow piled on the thawing layers. Close, but not a threat. More relief flooded inside her. Maybe this one would cover the road for days, giving her more time to come up with a plan.
There was a flash of black that burst through the white haze of the road. An SUV, covered with snow, careened much too fast around the curve of the road. Who was driving in this weather? The car skidded and spun until it hit the snowbank at the base of her driveway with a crunch of metal that reverberated through the triple-paned glass of her kitchen window. The sound was a punch in the gut. Someone was in that car. And she was the only person around for miles.
Catarina abandoned her tea and cinnamon roll and raced to the entrance of the house, the one that had been shoveled and groomed when she’d first arrived but was now covered with snow. She grabbed her pillowy down parka and pulled on the furry boots that covered her calves, then opened the door into the storm. The wind blew the thick flakes in swirls around her as she made her way down the steps, slick with new snow from the storm. She ran down the driveway until she came to the vehicle that was now wedged between the snowbanks, blocking her path out.
She detected no movement inside the car except a haze of white dust that drifted inside, probably from the airbag. Catarina knocked on the window. Nothing. She knocked again, her heart pounding. Still nothing. Then the door creaked until it was wide enough for a person to move through.
When she looked up, her breath caught in her throat. Massimo Carandini appeared out of the dust. He climbed out from behind the airbag, stepping into the snow, raising himself to his full height. He was standing so close to her, the snow dancing around him, landing in his tousled hair and on the shoulders of his woollen coat.
Then she saw the blood. His hair had hidden it, but a stream of red was coming from his forehead near his hairline. Catarina meant to speak, but her voice died in her throat as the intensity of his stare hit her. His eyes were dark, and she felt that fire from those first moments after they met buzzing between them. He gazed at her with something she might have calledwonderif she didn’t know better. Still, a rush of desire ran through her, unwanted and ill timed.
Massimo continued to gaze at her with a strange, searching expression, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. He stared at her with a focus in his dark brown eyes that made her feel as if he truly saw her. It took her breath away, so she found herself looking everywhere but his eyes, at his silky black hair that was collecting wet flakes of snow, at his charcoal-gray jacket, appropriate for a cool night on Lake Como rather than a blizzard in the remote mountains of Norway. And then there were his hands, those lovely, long fingers, completely bare. Who drove into a Nordic blizzard without a hat or gloves?
Massimo Carandini did. Only an arrogant man with the confidence of a king would assume that he was above Mother Nature. Also, he had just crashed his car, she reminded herself.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, and her cheeks burned in the cold air.
The sound of her voice seemed to startle him, and whatever openness she had seen closed. The intensity of his eyes turned to something more ominous.
“You forced me to follow you to the Arctic and now the car is…” He gestured at the airbag.
She blinked. “Iforcedyou to come?”
