Snowed In with the Billionaire, page 1
Her awareness that love was the most dangerous thing in the world felt more threatening than the raging storm.
That just felt wrong. To be thinking of Trevor and love in the same sentence. He was Caitlyn’s.
But what did that mean now?
Stop it, Jacey told herself. If anything, Caitlyn’s death and his suffering, and her own, just proved her point. Love was the most dangerous threat of all.
Still, what did it mean to her relationship with Trevor now that Caitlyn was gone? Did it have to mean anything? Did everything have to mean something? Did her whole life have to be a study in the seriousness of unintended consequences? Did she have to ferret out catastrophe because it had visited her in the past?
Of course not. She could consciously decide not to be timid, couldn’t she? Jacey was aware she needed to accept this gift in the spirit it had been given.
Was it not possible to just relax and enjoy the unexpected adventure? Even being caught in a storm with an extremely capable guy could be interpreted as an adventure instead of a harbinger of doom, couldn’t it? What was it other people said?
Enjoy the moment.
Dear Reader,
I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, in the shadow of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. My step-grandfather, Edward Day, was born and raised in Banff. I recall an old photo of him ski jumping at Mount Norquay.
My sisters, Anna and Avon, and I were introduced to skiing at a young age at Calgary’s ski hill, Paskapoo. It would go on to become Canada Olympic Park when Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics.
We considered Banff and Kananaskis Country our backyard, and we spent our teens and early adult years skiing the greats: Fortress Mountain; Mount Norquay; Lake Louise; and of course, Sunshine Village, the resort the fictional Moonbeam of this story is loosely based on.
My older sister, Avon, like the heroine of this story, was “small but mighty.” Her innate strength was particularly evident on the ski hill. I was the less athletic tagalong, trailing her down the slopes, longing to go in for hot chocolate, while she scorned taking a break in favor of “one more run.”
Whether you have skied all your life or not at all, I hope you’ll experience some of the power, majesty and magic of the mountains in the backdrop of this story.
With warmest wishes, as always,
Cara Colter
Snowed In with the Billionaire
Cara Colter
Cara Colter shares her home in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband of more than thirty years, an ancient, crabby cat and several horses. She has three grown children and two grandsons.
Books by Cara Colter
Harlequin Romance
A Fairytale Summer!
Cinderella’s New York Fling
Cinderellas in the Palace
His Convenient Royal Bride
One Night with Her Brooding Bodyguard
Matchmaker and the Manhattan Millionaire
His Cinderella Next Door
The Wedding Planner’s Christmas Wish
Snowbound with the Prince
Bahamas Escape with the Best Man
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
In memory of Avon
1956–2019
Praise for Cara Colter
“Ms. Colter’s writing style is one you will want to continue to read. Her descriptions place you there.... This story does have [an] HEA but leaves you wanting more.”
—Harlequin Junkie on His Convenient Royal Bride
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM THEIR ICELANDIC MARRIAGE REUNION BY SOPHIE PEMBROKE
PROLOGUE
JACEY TREMBLAY SHUT the door of her apartment and looked down, with a frown, at the rectangular eight-by-ten cardboard envelope in her hand.
Registered.
In her experience, nothing good ever came by registered mail. Her divorce decree, of several months ago, being a case in point.
She turned the letter over in her hands. It was from a law firm she had never heard of, which made her dread worsen.
Obviously, she was being sued. By someone. For something.
She took a deep breath. Who sued a music tutor?
Johnny Jordan’s parents, of course. They had entrusted her with their protégé. Given her firsthand experience, she should have known that was not going to work out!
Fourteen-year-old Johnny, musically brilliant, had not gained admission to the Canadian Academy for Betterment of the Arts. That was despite near perfection on that devilishly difficult Chopin piece they had rehearsed for his audition.
Really? Jacey should have warned his parents she was something of an expert on failed protégés!
No, it wasn’t that, she told herself, but doubtfully. While turning the envelope over in her hands, she scanned her mind for other possibilities.
What about that little fender bender on Bloor? Jacey had exchanged insurance information with a delightful geriatric, who had accepted all the blame and admitted she had pulled right out of her parking spot without shoulder checking or signaling. There had never been another word, and that had been at least three months ago.
But that didn’t mean said granny hadn’t died, or suffered an after-injury that she or her family were now suing for.
With her heart racing at the endless possibilities for catastrophe to visit her life, Jacey took the envelope and sat down on her love seat, which acted as the sofa in her tiny apartment. It was white with a backdrop print of large purple pansies. She had purchased the piece of furniture after the divorce, in a futile attempt to find the bright side in the failure of her marriage.
See? I don’t have to consult anyone about what furniture I buy. Her ex, Bruce, who in retrospect she could see had been stingy with his approval, would have hated every single thing about the love seat: form, function and especially the flamboyant color.
She turned her attention, resolutely, back to the envelope.
“Not this week,” Jacey told it firmly. “It’s a bad time.”
So bad, she had taken the week off and canceled on all of her students. Given her failure with Johnny, her most promising student ever, she was not sure she should go back to teaching music. The local supermarket around the corner always had a help-wanted sign up...
But a new career was for next week. This week she had laid into an extra-large bucket of Neapolitan ice cream and bought new comfy pajamas. The pajamas, covered in adorable cartoon kittens, were, like the sofa, a statement about not needing to care what anyone thought.
Jacey had also made a list of movies she planned to watch. It was a shorter list than what she had hoped for, as she had crossed anything romantic, and anything sad, off her list.
“Open it,” she commanded herself, turning her attention, again, to the envelope.
For some reason they made these kinds of official-looking packets extremely hard to get into. But finally, Jacey wrestled a single slip of paper and a bulkier brown envelope from the now mangled packaging.
Surprise!
She felt the blood drain from her face as she continued reading the familiar handwriting.
...and I know nobody hates a surprise more than you.
CHAPTER ONE
“GO AWAY,” Trevor Cooper called, annoyed, from his prone position on the couch. “Unless you have pizza. Then you can just drop it on the doorstep.”
Not that he’d ordered pizza, though come to think of it, that wasn’t a bad idea. He tilted his head, looking away from the three side-by-side wall-mounted TV sets, where he was, thanks to the miracle of modern electronics, keeping a close eye on several sporting events simultaneously.
And keeping his mind off what day this was.
Maybe ordering pizza was not such a great idea. His huge open-concept living room, dining area and kitchen was already littered with greasy empty boxes, begging the question: Could man live on pizza alone?
Apparently, he could.
Even when he didn’t want to. Live, that was. Because two years ago today, his reason for living had gone.
The knock came again, persistent. Trevor thought, crankily, he shouldn’t be paying exorbitant gated community fees to be fielding unannounced solicitors at the door, because, Lord knew, he was not expecting company.
When the knock came the third time, he unfolded himself from the couch, glanced down at his naked chest and low-hanging pajama bottoms, and stalked across the room. It was not appropriate to answer your door half-naked, especially in an upscale estate neighborhood like this one, and as he flung open the door he had the thought, but w
But as it turned out, it wasn’t a wide-eyed Girl Scout.
It was imminently worse.
“Jacey,” he said. Inside he cursed. If there was one person he did not want seeing him like this—disheveled, unshaven, only partially dressed in the middle of the day—it was her.
Or maybe his concern wasn’t so much for his appearance, but for that of the house. The outside grounds, of course, were impeccably kept by the community association. The gatehouse, just visible in the distance, was winter-themed, like a dollhouse. In the central man-made lake, which his house fronted, the fountain had been replaced for winter with an extravagant ice sculpture of a mother grizzly bear trailed by two cubs.
No, it wasn’t his state of undress, or the state of the house. It was the day.
“Trevor,” she said.
He let the uncomfortable silence bleed between them.
“The gatehouse didn’t call,” he said, aware his tone was faintly accusing.
“Interesting,” she said, mildly. “I thought maybe your phone was broken, permanently set to off, or at the bottom of that lake.”
“You can’t order pizza without a phone.”
“Does it come by cab? That’s probably why we were waved through the gate.”
She sidestepped slightly, to squint into the dimness behind him. He thought he detected disapproval in her look. He folded his arms over his naked chest and planted his feet, a go-away stance if ever there was one.
She ignored the message. Completely.
“May I come in?”
“No!” There. If she couldn’t get the subtle messages of his body posture, he’d have to be forthright.
He didn’t want her to see the house. How could she not think his neglect was a desecration of Caitlyn’s dream house?
Trevor hated it when this happened—unexpected flashes of memory. And he especially hated it today. But there it was, the image of him and Caitlyn entering this house for the first time. Her wide eyes, her excited laughter, her tears of joy.
This is what he could expect from a visit with Jacey. The very thing he had been running from for two years.
Memories.
People said the first year was the worst, but Trevor was not sure he believed that. People said time healed all wounds, and he didn’t believe that, either.
“You should have called,” he said, though, in fact, despite the mess the house was in, he could not deny the sense of connection he felt with Jacey Tremblay that he probably would never feel with another human being. They had been through a war together.
“I tried,” she said, and lifted her chin at him. “Apparently, your phone is used exclusively for pizza delivery.”
It was true. His phone had been set to go straight to voice mail for a couple of days. He hadn’t checked them. Still, he wasn’t apologizing.
“Maybe you should have taken that as a hint.”
Something in the deliberate braveness of her expression faltered, and Trevor felt the smallest niggling of something.
Shame. Jacey lived over three thousand miles away from Calgary in Toronto. She’d obviously made a huge effort—misguided as it was—to be with him for this awful second anniversary.
She had been the one, of all their friends, and all their family, who had never shirked. Who had stayed the course. She’d given up her music clients and abandoned her husband to be there in those final weeks for her best friend—his wife—when she was dying of cancer. Jacey had made it possible for Caitlyn to be here, in the home she had loved, right until the end.
Which had not been pretty, but this woman had not flinched.
Trevor took Jacey in. Even under a trench coat that didn’t look warm enough for this cold day and that hid most of her—Caitlyn had always said of her friend she was small and had no idea how mighty she was—she looked even more slender than he remembered.
She had cut her blond hair short, and it was sticking up in spikes all over her head, whether from travel or by design he had no idea. Her ears, exposed by the new haircut, were tiny, like a doll’s, and pink from not wearing a hat in the January chill. The haircut also made her eyes look huge and showed her features to be gamine.
She had applied the lightest dusting of makeup. It didn’t cover that spattering of freckles across her pert nose, or the shadows under—or in—those green eyes.
Why had Jacey come here?
She was obviously travel rumpled and tired. And yet, even underneath those things, he recognized something of himself in the expression in those deep green eyes.
Unrelenting sorrow.
So much for time healing all wounds.
His sense of shame at the abruptness of his greeting deepened. He had a sudden awareness of how angry Caitlyn would be with him for this lukewarm—make that as ice-cold as this January day—greeting to her dearest and most loyal friend.
Still, shame was a feeling, and as such it felt dangerous.
And anger, more powerful, now battled with it.
If Caitlyn wanted him to be a better man, she should have stuck around to finish the job she had started.
The shame swept forward again. How could he act as if she’d had a choice? She didn’t want cancer. She would have done anything to stay in this life they had built together, to have those babies she had been so desperate for.
So it wasn’t Caitlyn he was angry at.
And not Jacey, either.
It was the whole world. It was his powerlessness, his fury at himself and his inability to change anything when it had truly mattered.
Really? This world—this dark space he was in, that he tried to shut out with games and multiple television sets—was no world to invite Jacey into, no matter how rude that seemed; no matter how good her intentions in coming.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Look, it’s not a good day.”
“You think I don’t know it’s not a good day?” she asked, incredulous and miffed.
And yet, even knowing that, there she stood. She didn’t wait for him to finish his explanation, or for an invitation. She put a hand on his naked chest. It felt as if it burned him. Shouldn’t her hand be cold, since she was standing outside on a frosty morning without gloves on?
Before he could come up with a defensive maneuver, Jacey shoved him. Given her size, her strength was shocking, and for the first time he noticed a rather frightening detail. One of those wheeled suitcases followed her like an obedient puppy as she marched right by him and into the deeply shadowed house.
She paused and took it all in. The darkness of pulled shades, the pizza boxes, the rumpled clothes on the floor, the layers of dust, the film of sadness everywhere.
He reluctantly closed the door against the blast of cold air that came in with her and then turned and stared, not at her, but at her suitcase. It wasn’t one of those tiny ones that fit in the overhead bin.
He wasn’t quite sure what it meant that Jacey Tremblay had arrived with a full-size suitcase.
Though he was pretty sure it wasn’t good.
* * *
Jacey drew in a deep breath as her eyes adjusted to the murky light inside the house. It did not smell good. Not dirty, exactly, but stale. Stuffy.
She quickly turned her attention from Trevor. She looked beyond his state of undress—difficult as that was—and the lack of warmth in his greeting, to realize he looked haggard, and her heart went out to him.
Now, two years later, it was evident from how Caitlyn’s space looked and smelled that he had used up every single ounce of his considerable strength in those last weeks with his wife.
But she had seen this man tested beyond the limits of what any person should endure, and so she had a sense of knowing what this man was capable of.
Bravery.
Depth.
Selflessness.
Despite the current state of the house, Jacey had a sense of homecoming. She had spent so much time here, and the mark of Caitlyn’s beautiful spirit remained.
