Christmas In Snowflake Canyon (16 page)

They barely returned from that excursion and had time for a quick, deliciously hearty lunch catered by Dermot Caine’s café before they loaded everybody up and took off to the Silver Sage Riding Stables in Snowflake Canyon for an afternoon on horseback.

It was really a beautiful area, with towering pines and spruce and steep-sided mountains angling down to a glittery, half-frozen river running through the canyon floor.

“How much longer before the falls?” she asked Eden. “We’re nearly there, I think.”
“Yep,” answered Jake, their guide from the ranch—

who seemed even more taciturn than Dylan, though she wouldn’t have believed that possible. “Not far now.”

The creek beside the trail seemed to bubble and hiss beneath a layer of ice. They turned a bend in the trail and suddenly the falls were there ahead of them.

Gen gasped. She couldn’t help it. It was spectacularly beautiful, a gnarled, twisting column of unearthly blue ice that rose at least a hundred feet into the air.

“Wow,” she whispered.

Some of the guests climbed off their horses to stretch and have a better look. She saw Dylan didn’t dismount, just walked his horse a little away from the group. Was he worried about the difficulty of climbing off the horse without the use of both hands?

He lived up here somewhere in Snowflake Canyon. Spence had pointed out his driveway on the way.

“Climbers come from miles around to strap on crampons and reach the top,” Eden said. “I’m going to do it sometime, I swear.”

“You mean you didn’t bring climbing gear?” Pam Bryant and her fiancé actually looked disappointed.

“Not this time,” Eden said. “We can try to come back before you leave if you want.”

“Not me,” Gen muttered with a shiver. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than climbing up a tower of ice with nothing but frozen air between her and serious injury.

“You’re not ready to try your hand?” Trey Evans had maneuvered his placid gelding beside her. He was another who hadn’t dismounted.

“I’m perfectly happy to stay on solid ground, thanks very much.”

“Yeah, I’m with you.” He smiled, looking young and rather sweet in the pale afternoon sunlight. “I’ve got to say, you folks sure know how to throw a winter around here. This is something to see.”

“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.

“Sure.” He answered perhaps a little too promptly. “It’s nice not to be cooped up in a rehab facility all day long. Everybody here is supernice. Oh, and the cabin’s great. Did I tell you that? You did a good job with the decorations. Last night, I sat by a fire and enjoyed the lights on the tree. I even listened to Christmas carols and enjoyed the lights on the tree. Not ‘Little Drummer Boy,’” he hastened to add.

She gave a rueful smile. “Nobody believes me when I tell them I generally have no problem with that song. I quite enjoy it under the right circumstances. I just wasn’t in the mood for it that night.”

“I’m just teasing you,” he answered. “Not about the cabin. That’s still really nice. In fact, I asked Spence and Eden if I could maybe stay here for a couple of extra days after the session ends. I’m moving into a new apartment in San Antonio when I get back, but it won’t be available until after the New Year. All my things are in storage, and I’d rather just stay here if I can.”

She frowned, saddened to think about him staying here at the recreation center by himself for the holidays after all the others had left. “Don’t you have family somewhere to spend Christmas with?”

“No family. Never knew my dad, and my mom died of an overdose when I was little. My grandpop raised me, but he died, too, when I was fourteen. I was in foster care until I graduated from high school and enlisted.”

Oh, poor man. As crazy as her family made her, at least she knew they loved her and would be there if she needed them. She would see them on Christmas Eve. They would have a delicious dinner, maybe play games. Sometimes they attended church services in town.

“You should have a great holiday here in Hope’s Crossing,” she said, trying for cheerfulness even when sadness seemed to seep through her. “On Christmas Eve just after dusk there’s a candlelit ski down the mountainside up at the resort. Everybody in town joins in to ski or just to watch the procession. It’s really beautiful.”

“That sounds nice. I would offer to join in, except I can just picture me skiing into the person in front of me and starting a domino effect down the whole mountainside, candles tumbling everywhere.”

She laughed at the picture he painted. The sound made her horse sidestep a little but she brought it back.

“Do that again.”
“What? Lose control of my horse?”
“That laugh,” Trey said. “You remind me a lot of…a

girl I used to know.”
“Somebody you cared about,” she guessed.
He gazed at the frozen spill of water. “We were sup-

posed to be getting married this month. This week, actually.”

She stared at him, shocked, even as a rush of sympathy surged through her. She didn’t know what to say, which was stupid since she knew exactly how it felt to go through months of planning to hitch her life to someone and then to have to watch all her expectations implode.

“You remind me a lot of her. Not just your laugh, but other things. She has the same color eyes and her hair was a lot like yours, except shorter. Even her name is similar. Jenna, instead of Genevieve.”

“Jenna what?”

“Jenna Baldwin. She was a schoolteacher at an elementary school near the base where I had basic training. We met at a church service and hit it off right away. She was about the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.”

Though he smiled as he spoke, she sensed his light expression hid much deeper emotions.

“Since you’re here and Jenna isn’t, I guess that means no wedding bells.”

“Yeah. We broke things off…after.”
“After what?”
His mouth tightened. “After I was injured.”
She frowned, shocked even though she had half ex-

pected the answer. First he had lost so much physically and then emotionally. It seemed the height of unfairness. How could any woman walk away from this kind, friendly young man so callously?

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as a cold wind slithered through the trees, rippling the boughs.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“Well, I hope this Jenna and I are nothing alike, other than our laughs and our similar names,” she said tartly.

He looked startled. “Why would you say that?”

For some reason, she was strangely aware of Dylan, who waited nearby on his horse, the reins loosely clasped in his hand, for everybody else to mount up and start down the mountainside.

Though he didn’t appear to be paying attention to their conversation, something told her he was listening. “I hope I wouldn’t have destroyed any chance for a future with someone I care about because of something out of his control.”
She looked up and met Dylan’s gaze. Something glittery and bright sparked in his gaze, but he quickly bent down to say something to his horse, though he didn’t move away.

He probably hadn’t heard them anyway. And what would it matter if he had?

“Take me, for instance,” she went on. “I’m a pretty shallow girl. I’ve never denied it. I can’t say I’m proud of that fact, but I’m not afraid to face reality. I like nice clothes. I love having a facial. I’m careful with my hair and makeup. I like to look good and I work hard to make sure I do.”

“And you look real nice.”

She made a face. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but thank you. I just wanted to make the point that as superficial as I might be about some things, I would hope that if I loved a man, I would be more concerned about his character and about the way he treats me than about what the world might see as a few physical imperfections.”

The words seemed to spill out from somewhere deep inside her—she wasn’t sure where—but as she spoke them, the truth seemed to pound hard against her heart.

Had she changed so very much in such a short time or had that conviction always lived inside her?

What she said to Trey was truth, as well. She had always considered herself superficial. She’d dated Sawyer originally because he was beautiful and because her friends told her they made a perfect couple.

Because all seemed so shiny and bright on the surface, she had overlooked many glaring flaws just beneath it. He was childish when he didn’t get his way; he could be petty to anyone who crossed him; he liked to make cutting remarks about just about everyone, even their so-called friends.

She had been so focused on the perfect fairy-tale romance that she had ignored all the signs. As she sat atop a shifting horse while a cold wind knuckled its way under her coat, she wondered, not for the first time, if she would have been able to go through with the wedding, even if she hadn’t found out that Sawyer had fathered a child with Sage McKnight.

Perhaps she had only seized on the first major excuse that came along not to marry him. Maybe she finally had reason to fix what her heart had been telling her all along was a mistake.

“For the record, she didn’t dump me.”

It took a moment for Trey’s words to pierce her distraction. “She didn’t?” She frowned. “Wait a minute. You dumped
her?”

“Let’s just say I spared her the trouble.” He offered a lopsided smile that held no humor. “I knew it was only a matter of time before Jenna figured out she deserved better than a lifetime stuck with a guy who couldn’t even walk her down the aisle.”

“You hit first.” It was Mr. Fuzzy all over again, crouching under the bed and spitting and clawing at anybody who came close. “You didn’t want to give her the chance to be the one to break things off.”

She wanted to yell at him and ask what the hell was wrong with him. How could he be so selfish that he would push away somebody who cared about him?

“I just spared us both a lot of trouble,” he answered. “It would have happened eventually.”

“You don’t know that.”

He looked down at his legs, dangling in the stirrups. “Come on. Look at me. What kind of woman would want to spend the rest of her life dealing with this?”

“You must not have really loved her, then.”

Trey narrowed his gaze at her, and she suddenly remembered that for all his good humor, this was a dangerous man trained in combat. “You don’t know anything about it.” His voice was suddenly as hard as that frozen waterfall. “You have no idea how much I loved her.”

“I don’t,” she said after a moment. “I just know if I had been your fiancée I wouldn’t have let you push me out of your life without a fight. I would have stuck to you like gum in hair.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Genevieve was aware of Eden ushering everybody back to their horses and helping those who needed it to mount again.

“She doesn’t know where I am,” Trey finally said, his voice so low she almost didn’t hear him over the jingling of tack and the heavy breathing of the horses.

“You didn’t tell her you were coming to A Warrior’s Hope?”

“No. Before that. I broke things off with her six months ago, the night before I was being transferred to a rehab facility in Texas. I made sure nobody told her where I was headed.”

“All this time, she hasn’t known where you are?” With Facebook and Twitter and email, she couldn’t

believe the woman couldn’t have found him, but maybe Trey had stayed off the grid. Closed out his email account, stayed off social networks, changed his phone number.

If a person didn’t want to be found, she imagined it couldn’t be that difficult to make it happen.

“No,” he answered. “It was better this way.”

Better for him, maybe. Not for the woman he had shoved out of his life like a pair of mangy old sweats. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but Eden’s loud call froze her words.

“We should probably start back before those snowflakes get any bigger,” the director said. “Everybody ready to go?”

“Yep,” Trey said, urging his horse forward and effectively ending their conversation.

I
would hope
that if I loved a man, I would be more concerned about his character and about the way he treats me than about what the world might see as a few physical imperfections.

Genevieve’s words seemed to circle around inside his head like Tucker settling onto the rug beside the fire on a wintry night.

He couldn’t push them away. They just echoed there, in all their idealistic glory.

It was a nice thing to say in theory, all noble and well-meaning. She probably liked to believe she was above petty, superficial things like physical infirmities. But the first time one of her snooty friends made some kind of crack about pity dates and taking her charity work a step too far, Genevieve would probably shatter like a Christmas ornament caught under a horse’s hoof.

On the other hand, she surprised him at every turn. Just when he figured he had her pegged, she did something unexpected, like befriend a young corporal from Alabama.

He needed to stop thinking about her. His task here was to get through the next week or so with a minimum of trouble and then move on with the rest of his life.

“How are you holding up?”

He glanced over as Spencer Gregory moved his horse along the trail beside Dylan’s.

“Fine. Better than you. If you looked any more stiff on the back of a horse, we could spray-paint you gold and set you out in front of the library to replace that statue of old Horace Goodwin nobody likes.”

Spence only grinned at the insult. “Yeah, riding isn’t my best thing. I would blame my old baseball shoulder injury but, well, given the current company, that would just make me sound like an asshole.”

Dylan’s own laugh surprised him—and Spence, too, apparently, though he quickly hid it. Dylan had missed his friend over the years. They had been close in high school but had gone their separate ways when he had enlisted and Spence had been drafted to play Major League Baseball.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said now. “I’m doing fine. Haven’t been on a horse in more years than I can remember and I’ll probably ache in places I can’t politely discuss, but so far, so good.”

“Great.”

Spence was quiet for a long moment as they rode along through the puffy snowflakes that clung to the horses’ manes.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable moment. In fact, though he would rather be tied to the saddle and dragged behind this horse than admit it, Dylan was actually rather enjoying himself. The steady, calming rhythm of the horses, the scenery, even the cold air blowing in his face—all of it contributed to an unexpected sort of peace.

He couldn’t let Spence know that, not unless he wanted to hear a resounding
I told you so.

He had been pretty damn antagonistic about A Warrior’s Hope and the futility of anybody thinking they could help guys who had endured hell with a week spent in the mountains, but he couldn’t deny he could feel a little of his own tension trickle away.

It was only the surroundings, he told himself. The sweet citrus scent of the pines, the cold mountain air, the expectant weight of impending snow in the air.

He tried to tell himself he would have had the same reaction working on his property just a mile or so away from this trail, but the argument fell flat.

“I’ve been looking for a chance to talk to you,” Spence said after another moment.

Spence gripped the reins tightly, shoulders tense where Dylan’s had begun to relax.

“Oh?” he asked, suddenly wary.

“Charley tells me I don’t need to clear anything with the family but, well, you and I have been friends a long time and it feels right to let you be one of the first to know.”

“To know what?” He had a strong suspicion he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“I’ve asked your sister to marry me. She said yes.”

Spence spoke the words with a sort of stunned disbelief, as if he were still trying to wrap his head around the whole thing. Despite his own squeamishness—he would probably never be crazy about his sister with
anybody,
and thinking about her with a close friend was just too weird—Dylan almost laughed.

This was Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory, who had women throwing themselves at him everywhere he went. He gave every appearance of a man completely flummoxed by love.

He was glad, for both of them. Charlotte had come a long way in her life. She had worked hard to remake herself and she deserved to be happy. When he thought about it, Spence had done the same. He had taken a chain of his own bad decisions and fate’s bad breaks and turned them into something good.

“Congratulations,” he said.

“I hope you mean that and aren’t secretly wishing you could knock out a few of my teeth.”

“I’m keeping the teeth-knocking-out in reserve. You know Charlotte has six older brothers. I figure you’re either crazy in love or insanely brave to take her on, knowing if things go south you’ll have every single one of us to deal with.”

Spence was quiet, his features soft. “The first one you said. I love her, more than I ever imagined it was possible to care about somebody else.”

Spence Gregory had once had everything a guy could want. He had once been a sports hero with an incredible fortune and a stunning supermodel for a wife. He drove fabulous cars, he had multiple houses, he was on magazine covers and on TV commercials hawking everything from cell-phone providers to sports drinks.

Not once, in all those years, had Dylan been jealous of the man. Right now, though, listening to Spence talk about what he and Charlotte had together, Dylan was aware of a sharp pinch of envy just under his breastbone.

His own life stretched out as cold and empty as that snow-covered mountainside.

“Good,” he said gruffly now. “Just make sure that doesn’t change.”

Spence smiled. “Charlotte is it for me, man. I promise you that.”

Behind them, he suddenly heard Genevieve give that delicious, husky laugh at something.

At the sound, that edge of envy turned to a funny little flutter that instantly horrified him.

No. No way. He would never be stupid enough to fall for someone like Genevieve Beaumont—even if he was drawn to her far more than he knew was good for him.

“Will you slow down? I need to talk to you.”
Back at the recreation center an hour later, Dylan paused on his way to the storage building. He wanted to ignore Genevieve’s call but that would be rude and probably wouldn’t accomplish anything other than to make her speed up to catch him.
He turned with more than a little wariness and shifted the weight of the mesh bag filled with riding helmets. Her cheeks and nose were rosy from the cold, and she wore a really ridiculous little pink stocking cap with a puff on the top that perfectly matched her designer parka and gloves.

He had been grateful they rode back to the rec center in separate vans, half hoping he could avoid her the rest of the afternoon—or at least that weird little clutch in his stomach whenever he saw her.

“Let me help you with that,” she said, reaching for the bulky, awkward bag of helmets.

“I’ve got it,” he said sharply.

At his tone, she backed off, hands in the air. “Sorry. Do it yourself.”

“I will,” he retorted, feeling about as mature as his nephew Carter right about now.

Without breaking stride, he continued on his way to the equipment storage building, and she walked double time to keep up with his longer legs.

“So I need some advice and I think you just might be the best person to give it to me.”

Right now, all he wanted was to be sitting by his fire with his dog at his feet and a stiff drink in his hand— something he suddenly realized he hadn’t had much of since he started at A Warrior’s Hope.

He hadn’t missed it, either, come to think of it. “You need my advice, hmm. That can’t be good.” She made a face as she reached to open the door of the storage building.
Dylan set down the bag of helmets and flipped on the lights, trying to ignore the rows of adaptive equipment that seemed to mock him.

“Where do these go?” she asked.

He had spent entirely too much time in here with Mac helping with inventory and knew more than he wanted about the organization system. “That shelf against the wall.”

He carried them over and set the bag on the empty space provided for it.

“This is really quite amazing, isn’t it?” Genevieve looked around the space, filled floor to ceiling with equipment. “I mean, A Warrior’s Hope just started and they’ve already got all this…stuff.”

“Spence is really good at getting donations and grants. Some of it is donated equipment from people in town but a lot of it was donated by the manufacturers because of his contacts.”

“That’s really great.”

“Yeah. I guess. What did you need to talk to me about?”

She sighed. “I need your advice about Trey.”

His arm suddenly ached, and he realized he was trying to clench a fist that didn’t exist anymore. He relaxed his arm and walked out of the storage room and back into the soft snowflakes.

“You want advice about Trey from me.”

“Yes, from you,” she said impatiently, hurrying after him.

“Don’t know what I can tell you. You obviously have another conquest there.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not looking for a conquest. I like him. He’s a sweet kid.”

That sweet kid had been injured in a vicious firefight in Afghanistan and had probably seen things Genevieve Beaumont couldn’t imagine in her darkest nightmares.

“Sure. Okay.”

“Here’s the thing,” she went on. “He has a fiancée.
Had
a fiancée, I should say. He dumped her after he was injured.”

He had heard some of their conversation near the frozen waterfall.

I would hope that if I loved a man, I would be more concerned about his character and about the way he treats me than about what the world might see as a few physical imperfections.

He pushed the words away again. “Yeah. That’s not a big surprise. A lot of relationships can’t survive the kind of life change Evans is dealing with.”

“Did you have a girlfriend when you were injured?”

The question took him by surprise. He’d had a couple of girlfriends in the past, but nothing that had ever developed into more than casual. The best that could be said about his dating relationships was that he enjoyed lighthearted variety.

“Nobody serious.”

“Well, Trey did, apparently. Her name is Jenna Baldwin and she sounds lovely. I want to find her and I need your help.”

He stared at her. “Why the hell would you want to do that? And why would you ever think I’d help you?” The little yarn puff on the top of her beanie flounced as she gave him a
duh
sort of look—though she probably wouldn’t have called it anything as uncouth. “Because he needs her. It’s Christmas and he’s all alone. He has no parents, no siblings, no one.”
Dylan, by contrast, had too damn many people constantly asking how he was. Every time he turned around, Charlotte or Pop or one of the brothers was in his space, checking on him. “So?”

“He met her when he was doing his basic training, but I don’t know where that was.”

He knew. That very day at lunch, he and Trey had talked about Fort Benning, as both had been stationed there around the same time.

“She was a schoolteacher near the base. Before I do an internet search, I just want to make sure I’m in the right region of the country.”

“What makes you think she’s still in Georgia?”

Her features lit up. “Georgia? Oh, thank you! That helps a
ton.
At least it gives me a place to start.”

Crap. He was an army ranger trained to withstand torture. How could he have given that up so easily? Maybe because of those delectable rosy cheeks or the scent of cinnamon and vanilla that seduced his senses— or maybe just the fact that when she talked to him in that husky voice, he could barely manage to string together a coherent thought.

“I don’t suppose you’re willing to forget I said that, are you?”

She grinned as they walked toward the recreation center again. A few stray snowflakes glimmered on her cheeks and he wanted to lick them off… .

“No,” she answered. “But I might be willing to forget you’re the one who told me.”

“She could have moved. She could have married someone else. What makes you think she wants to be found?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t.”

“They did break up, after all,” he pointed out. “I don’t see her here.”

She stopped walking. “He dumped her the night before he was leaving for another rehab facility. Get this— he left without giving her a forwarding address. I think that’s terrible, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer but Genevieve apparently didn’t need a response.

“I just want to let her know where he is and how he’s doing. What she does with that information is her business.”

He saw the potential for a whole wall of trouble to come crashing down. If he were Evans and had broken up with a woman for whatever reason, he would be severely pissed if somebody stepped into the middle of things.

“Don’t do this, Gen. Just butt out.”
“I have to try. What can a phone call hurt?”

“This is none of your business. Let it go.”

She frowned. “But you should have seen his face when he talked about her. His eyes went all soft and warm. He said my laugh reminds him of hers. I just feel so terrible when I think about him being all alone on Christmas. Wouldn’t it be the most perfect holiday if we could help them find each other again?”

If this Jenna Baldwin was at all like Genevieve, all light and laughter and energy, he could certainly understand how Trey Evans could have been in love with her.

He didn’t want to crush her romantic bubble—which, he had to admit, he found more than a little surprising, given her own less-than-ideal relationship history—but he couldn’t let her pursue this crazy idea.

“There is no
we
here. I don’t want any part of this. This is a huge mistake,” he warned. “Mind your business, Gen. Trust me. Don’t stick your pretty little nose into matters of someone else’s heart. Ask the assistant district attorney how uncomfortable nasal-reconstruction surgery can be.”