Snowbound, page 1
part #3 of Discovered by Love Series
A Discovered by Love Novella
Carla Laureano
SNOWBOUND
Published by Laureano Creative Media LLC
P.O. Box 3002
Parker, CO 80134, U.S.A.
www.CarlaLaureano.com
© 2021 by Carla Yvonne Laureano
Cover photograph of couple © SolominViktor/Deposit Photos. All rights reserved.
Cover concept by Mark Lane II
Copyedited by Deborah Raney
This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission from the publisher.
First edition 2021
This place was a teardown.
That was Meg Anderson’s first impression of the house when she pulled up into the cracked asphalt driveway and stepped out of the car. It wasn’t just the state of the house, a few square feet short of a mansion, because despite the peeling paint and piles of fallen leaves drifting into the corners, it wasn’t in that bad of shape. It was the unholy mix of styles that could have only come from the mind of either an insane or drunk architect, a sort of faux English country mixed with mountain rustic and seasoned with an ill-advised sprinkle of Austrian chalet.
Meg had never wanted a job so badly in her life.
She slammed the door of her Jeep and pulled the lapels of her down parka together against the sudden rush of frigid wind. Her deep determination to win this project for her architecture firm—and prove her worth once and for all—was the only thing that could have compelled her to drive into the Colorado mountains eight hours before what meteorologists were saying could be the storm of the decade. Vail was less than two hours from her home in Denver, but she wasn’t stupid . . . she’d booked herself a room for the weekend in case the weather shifted and she couldn’t make it home. She might be ambitious, but she wasn’t about to die of hypothermia on the side of the road, waiting for a snowplow to dig her out.
With that cheery thought in mind, Meg marched to the front door and punched in the code she’d gotten from the client. The lockbox snapped open with a reassuring click, revealing a brass key. The fact she was even being given the chance to bid on this project was something of a miracle. Eleanor Gratz was an eccentric heiress who owned homes all over the United States and Europe just in case, on a whim, she decided to summer or winter outside her native Austria. Right now, Mrs. Gratz was living at her house in the Hamptons while she took bids for the full remodel of her Vail ski home; apparently, the first batch of bids had displeased her so much, she’d dumped them all and started searching for what she’d called in the brief “lesser known talent.”
You couldn’t get much lesser known than Meg.
That thought propelled the key into the lock, and she shoved her shoulder against the door to dislodge it from the frame. It creaked open on disused hinges, disgorging a plume of dust that floated around her head, dusted her shoulders, and made her sneeze. Clearly Mrs. Gratz didn’t employ a caretaker for the home and hadn’t for the past ten years.
Technically, Meg didn’t even need to be here. If this really was a teardown, it meant abandoning the house’s original footprint, excavating, and pouring a new foundation. She could have drafted all that from her office or her own cozy home in Denver instead of walking through a house so cold she was surprised she couldn't see her own breath.
But despite her flippant attitude when she’d first seen the exterior, now she wasn’t so sure. The soaring wood-paneled ceilings with their reclaimed wood were meant to be rustic, but they could go fully contemporary when paired with the massive panes of glass with which she intended to replace the far wall to frame views of the valley. And there was no real reason to close off the foyer with solid wood paneling when she could tell at first glance that it wasn’t structural.
The wheels started turning in her head, even though she’d just added to her own workload. A teardown was easy to sketch and lay out. Working with the existing structure was harder, especially considering her previous requests for a floor plan had gone unanswered. She wandered around the great room, wishing she’d brought her laser measure with her so she could take some actual dimensions.
She was so focused on the vision in her mind’s eye that she didn’t immediately notice the footsteps outside the great room. Hair lifted on her arms. Her first wild thought went to ghosts, but as quickly as it surfaced, she shook off the thought. “Hello? Who’s there?”
No answer. For the first time, she realized how isolated she was out here, a full three miles outside of Vail city limits, on the edge of twenty acres with no neighbors nearby. Feeling foolish even as she did it, she reached for the fireplace poker and wrapped her fingers around its comforting heft. As quietly as she could, she moved through the room and back out into the shadows of the foyer . . . and let out a yelp when she came face to face with a stranger.
His hand came up automatically to grip the poker. “What are you trying to do? Take my head off?”
Meg froze before she could begin to put up a struggle. She knew that voice. And the stranger scenario was preferable to the presence of the man in front of her.
Declan McKenzie.
“You,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”
“Meg Anderson. I thought that was you.” Amusement tinged his voice, deepening the Irish lilt that she had once—against her will, of course—found irresistible. He eased the poker out of her hand, retraced his steps, and then flicked a switch near the door. Instantly, warm light flooded the foyer.
Meg flushed in embarrassment. Of course Eleanor Gratz wouldn’t do anything as plebian as turn off the electricity in one of her homes. And of course Declan, with his prep school upbringing and his famous father, would know that.
The heat in her cheeks intensified as she looked him over properly. She’d seen him at parties and open houses over the last few years, infrequently and distantly enough to convince herself that he couldn’t possibly be as good-looking as she remembered.
She was wrong.
Worse yet, he looked even better than she recalled. Last time she’d spent any length of time with him, they’d just completed an internship straight out of their graduate architecture program at the University of Colorado, Denver: she, twenty-five; he, almost twenty-seven. Now, six years later, the roundness of youth had sharpened into planes and angles, highlighting his high cheekbones, drawing attention to dark-lashed gray eyes that had never failed to enchant his multitude of female admirers. He did wear his hair shorter now, almost military-cropped, with none of those irresistibly youthful curls that just begged a woman to bury her fingers in them.
She shook her head angrily against the errant thought. Her youthful fantasies about him had no business remaining so close to the surface after all these years, especially considering how well-acquainted she was with ugly reality. She would have thought all that had happened between them would have destroyed any lingering attraction.
She cleared her throat and repeated, “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you, I’d imagine. Leave it to Eleanor Gratz to send out a design brief at two o’clock on a Friday before a snowstorm.” He thrust his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels. “The consequences of being second tier, I suppose.”
“I never thought I’d hear you call yourself second tier.”
He shrugged. “Even I have my moments of humility.”
And only he could be so casual that even that statement seemed arrogant. She rolled her eyes. “Do you happen to know if we’re expecting any other . . . competitors?”
“Are we competitors now?” His eyes danced in a way that made it clear he was laughing at her. Then he sobered under her pointed stare and cleared his throat. “No. I think we’re the only two people mad enough to drive up here at the last minute. But since we’re here . . .” He gestured ahead of him, as if he was gallantly allowing her to precede him. Unsurprisingly, it irritated her.
At this point, his very living, breathing presence was an affront.
It hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, she’d thought they could be friends. They both had lived all over the world as children; they both had done degrees in architectural engineering, which set them apart from their B.S. and B. Arch classmates. And for about five seconds, she’d thought maybe they could be more than that.
No, that was a lie. He had acted as if they could be something more for all of five seconds. She, on the other hand, had spent an entire semester gazing longingly across a classroom at him, hopelessly infatuated. The situation was all the more embarrassing because she’d never been the type to . . . pine. She’d dated, she’d had relationships, but they’d all been easy, mutual, and they’d ended that way too. Until she’d laid eyes on Declan McKenzie the first day of her graduate design program, she’d thought the overwrought stories of instant, overwhelming chemical attraction were simply fiction.
But then he’d proved himself to be an arrogant tool. He’d rebuffed her every friendly overture. Argued with her in class. One-upped her in presentations. And most unforgivably, sabotaged her during their shared summer internship at Klein & Company, a top architectural firm in Denver, so that he got an offer of a permanent position and she got an unceremonious farewell. It had taken her eighteen months to land somewhere half-decent after that, at a boutique fi
She’d thought that, finally, all the anger she’d felt toward him had broken that inexplicable draw. Apparently, she’d been wrong.
Meg waited until they were both gazing at a stone fireplace that would have been more at home in a theme restaurant than a multi-million-dollar Vail retreat to say, “I’m surprised they called you in. Wasn’t your firm the one who designed this monstrosity in the first place?”
The barb struck, but didn’t seem to wound. “The old managing partner. As you might guess, they’re ready for some fresh ideas.”
And just like that, he deflected her jab and reminded her of the disparity in their positions. Declan had always been much better at this game than her. She might have a gift for snark, but she had neither the confidence nor the bearing to pull it off. Seemed to be one more advantage bestowed on him by his father.
Meg bit back her sharp response, raising her phone instead to take a photo of the fireplace. She was getting dangerously close to petulant and that was never a good look on anyone. For one thing, it made her a victim, and she was not a victim. She was a winner.
She was going to win this bid and end this competition once and for all.
She led the way through the rooms, Declan trailing behind her. She didn’t know why he kept on her heels—making sure she didn’t discover something super-secret and exciting?—but his very presence made her edgy. She kept expecting him to say something, but he seemed content to walk in her footsteps and take photos of the same things she did. The whole time, she resisted the impulse to break the silence, make small talk. Ask him if he was married, for example, as if she wouldn’t have heard about that through the grapevine. Ask if he already had an idea of how to handle the joist configuration. Comment on the weather.
Which, she suspected, was his whole plan. Make her break first. She wouldn’t.
They toured the entire house that way, all eighteen rooms including a master suite the size of her entire first floor, an enormous kitchen, and a media and game room in the walk-out basement.
In the end, she was too eager to escape to wait for him to break the silence. “So I guess that’s it.” The fireplace poker was leaning by the front door where he’d left it, but she wasn’t about to draw his attention to it by putting it back. “May the best architect win.”
He smiled—smirked really—but she didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. Instead, she fished the key from her pocket, yanked the front door open, and took a step outside.
Into a solid wall of white.
* * *
It would be funny if it weren’t so inconvenient.
Declan McKenzie watched the shock on Meg’s face turn to dismay as she realized that the whole time they’d been touring the massive home, they’d been quietly getting snowed in.
“So much for the storm arriving at midnight,” he said blandly.
She fixed him with a glare, and he held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying. I checked the forecast before I ever got in the car. It wasn’t supposed to start for another six hours, let alone accumulate—” he peered around her to check the depth of snow on the porch— “four inches.”
Meg straightened her back and zipped up her jacket, pulling locks of her long brown hair free of the collar with an irritated flick. He recognized that stubborn look all too well—it meant she was preparing herself for a battle. “I only have to make it three miles. I got a room in Vail just in case.”
“Smart,” he observed. “But I don’t think you’re going to make it three feet, let alone three miles.”
That determined glare again. “Watch me.”
Declan sighed and zipped up his own jacket. “Okay then. If you’re so determined, we might as well both give it a go.” He was driving a sedan, but it had all-wheel drive and the snow wasn’t yet deep enough to give him a problem. It was better than being stuck here with her. Not because he minded so much, but because he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t try to murder him in his sleep.
He’d had plenty of people dislike him in his thirty-two years, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever been hated with such pure, unadulterated passion before Meg Anderson. In all fairness, he probably deserved it. But it would have been so much easier if the feeling was even remotely reciprocated.
Meg waited, shivering on the porch, until he turned out the lights and shut the door behind them. Then she locked up and replaced the key in the lockbox. He made a mental note to include smart house functions in his proposal, then followed Meg into the swirling maelstrom of white.
“Meg—” he began dubiously, but she was already marching to a Jeep SUV that looked only slightly more capable than his BMW. “I’m not sure it’s—”
She climbed in and slammed the door.
“—safe.” He stood there for a moment until she flicked on her headlights, illuminating him in a swirl of white, then realized just how cold it was. The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees when the sun went down, and it hadn’t been much above freezing in the first place. He trudged across the driveway, opening his car with the remote, and climbed into its usually cozy interior, which was now only one step above frigid. Slowly, he turned his car around and followed Meg away from the house.
The drive was a quarter mile of packed gravel, so neither vehicle had a problem gaining traction, though the ten-foot visibility was another story. The snow was coming down in clumps now, so thick that his headlights created a white glare that Meg’s taillights could barely penetrate. He flicked off the low beams in favor of running lamps and side markers and said a prayer that their stupidity wouldn’t get them stuck or killed.
At the stop, Meg turned left onto the county road with confidence. He prepared to hang a right to rejoin the highway. Meg’s taillights were already fading into the blizzard, but still he sat, motionless, torn. Which was stupid. She only had three miles to go. She had a four-wheel-drive Jeep. Surely she’d be fine. He was the one who should be worried, especially if it had snowed heavily enough on his path to turn the front bumper of his low-slung car into a snowplow.
He turned left.
“Mental,” he muttered to himself, but his conscience demanded that he follow her all the way to town and make sure she got to the hotel safely. Or if not conscience, then a sense of equity. He couldn’t deny that he owed her. It was the least he could do.
He drove slowly along the paved road, feeling the instability beneath his tires that told him there was a layer of ice under the snow, and he reduced his speed even further. Judging how fast Meg had pulled out and how long he’d vacillated, he’d be lucky to catch up with her before they reached town.
But it was only a few minutes before a hazy red glow caught his attention. He headed straight for them, unable to see beyond the dim circle of his running lamps until he realized the lights weren’t on the road. They were coming from a ditch.
Declan braked too hard and immediately the grinding sound of the ABS system kicked in as he skidded to a stop on the shoulder. He put on the parking brake and threw the car door open, then scrambled to the side of the road where the Jeep was tilted at an awkward angle. There didn’t seem to be any major damage, but that didn’t mean Meg wasn’t hurt.
He slid down the slope, his heart hammering, and rapped sharply on the driver’s window before brushing the accumulated snow from it. No airbags. A good sign. Slowly, the window slid down.
“Are you all right?”
Meg looked pale and shaken and her lack of a flippant answer proved it, as did the fact she actually seemed happy to see him. “I’m okay, I think. It was more of a slide than a crash.”
“What happened?”
In the dome light’s dim illumination, he saw her color flood back. “An owl swooped down in front of me. I braked automatically and . . .” She waved a hand with a grimace.
“Okay, well, let’s try and get you out. There’s a tree stump right outside your door, so it’s either going to be through the back or the window.”
