Winter Wedding Bells. Jennifer Snow
was measured in minuscule increments that amounted to monumental variations. A hundredth of a second meant the difference between international acclaim and obscurity. And he wanted each of the lugers to earn that chance.
But life guaranteed nothing.
Most of all, love. His nightstand drawer had once guarded an engagement ring and a nearly memorized proposal speech. Each time Julie promised to join him in Switzerland, he’d removed both. When she gave another excuse, he returned them to the darkness of their hiding place, his hopes banished with them—until finally they left him altogether.
Yet he’d never stop taking risks when it came to the rest of his life. Would always throw himself headlong into whatever came next. Not knowing what loomed around the bend made living in the moment exciting. If only Julie shared that philosophy. He’d begged her to join him for over a year, before he finally heard her postponements for what they were: rejection. She didn’t want his gypsy life.
Snow rose above his ankles as he approached her. She sat on a bench outside the warming hut, white and dazed looking. He couldn’t look away. Why had she fled the lodge? From what, or from whom, did she want to escape? Not that it was his business. Yet the time between them fell away when he was near the woman he’d once loved. Broken promises or not, he wanted to help. Figure out what changed since he’d encountered the bride-to-be on the trail. Sure, she’d looked preoccupied. But he’d assumed she was uncomfortable seeing him. Now he suspected the problem went deeper.
“All set?” Julie swallowed the last bite of a cheeseburger—her second—and stood. She always ate more when stressed, he recalled.
“Looks fine. Just the wind triggering the motion detectors. How about you? Ready to go back?”
Her bag of empty fast-food containers swung at her side and the moon turned in her eyes. In the crackle-cold air, she resembled an ice carving of herself. Brittle. Frozen. Chipped away one shaving at a time.
A bright white silence floated down the mountain, too big for him to burst. He tamped down the questions rising inside and waited for her to speak.
“No. Not ready,” she whispered at last, her voice snuffly. Long, dark strands whipped across her oval face, obscuring her expression. The aroma of pine, balsam and holly berry floated on the arctic current swooping from the north.
Against his better judgment, he reached her in two steps and guided them back to the bench. “What’s going on, Julie?”
Her back curved and she dropped her head, her hair falling across her face, shielding it like a curtain. “I don’t know,” she groaned into her fingers.
“Are you having second thoughts? Is your groom?” The last word tasted bitter on his tongue. Despite the years that had passed, he couldn’t picture her with anyone else. Couldn’t imagine another man holding her. Loving her the way he once had.
“I don’t know what I want. Sound familiar?” She peered up at him through strands of hair, her arms clutching her gut.
“Yes,” he blurted out, regretting his harsh reply the moment it left his mouth.
She shot to her feet. “I shouldn’t be doing this. Complaining to you, of all people. I need to go back. Face the music, or quinoa...or...or...”
He stood and twined his hands in hers, the soft pressure of her palms warming him despite the dropping temperature. Around them, ice crystals falling from trees tinkled like Christmas bells. “We’ll go back when you’re ready. No rush to face quin-whatever. I’m here for you, Julie. We were friends, once.”
“More,” she whispered, her eyes anguished and wide as they searched his.
“But you didn’t want more,” he forced himself to say. His voice firm. Steady. “You wanted Connecticut. Your home. It took me a while, but I finally understood. I’m not holding any grudges. Talk to me and maybe I can help. Give you perspective as an old boyfriend.”
“Why would you do that?” She lobbed her bag in a nearby trash can.
“Because I care.” There. The truth. Something he hadn’t admitted, even to himself, until now.
“Oh.”
A shiver swayed them.
“Did you and your fiancé argue?” He tucked a silken lock behind her ear, resisting the urge to cup her cold face.
She collapsed on the bench again. A cut-string marionette. “He gave me a picture.”
He sat and stared. Puzzled. “As in a Paint-by-Number? A velvet painting of Elvis? Classic.”
She laughed. She had a good laugh—rich, open. It rang through the hollow spaces inside him.
“I might have liked that,” she said, a wry flip to the corner of her mouth. “But the picture was of a house. One he bought for us.”
“That’s a nice surprise—” He stumbled on the last word, finally understanding. “And you hate surprises.”
She fiddled with the top button of her navy coat, drawing the lapel tight around her neck. “But it was more than that,” she said to the distant mishmash of trees that had taken centuries to grow—birch, oak, spruce. “It looked exactly like my parents’ house.”
“You love living there.”
“I know. That’s what’s crazy. When I saw it, I pictured everything. Every day of the rest of my life. And I didn’t like what I saw.” Julie turned her head toward him, and the slice he could see revealed a tense jaw and the faraway sheen of one eye.
“What about your fiancé?”
The breeze moved through laden boughs, showering the earth with snow and ice. Over the tumult, his pulse thrummed, filling his ears. Did he want her to break things off? Reopen a door for him to step through again?
As he studied her delicate profile, the answer slammed his gut, as if it’d waited, all these years, to be asked.
Yes.
He still loved Julie. Despite it all. But because of her indecisive nature, he knew he could never trust her again.
“I don’t know.”
He handed her a tissue and she swiped at her running nose. “I’m such a mess. I ruined everything. Everyone. I hurt you.” She peered upward. An under-the-lashes look at him. “Now I’m breaking Mason’s heart. My parents’. I’m a—a—succubus.”
He chuckled. Couldn’t help it. She’d learned that term in a mythology class and they’d found every excuse to work it into conversations the entire semester.
But his mirth dried up when she dashed a tear away.
He cradled her face with both hands and met her eyes, gazing at her steadily until her breathing steadied. “You’re not a succubus. What you are is confused. Indecisive. Cautious. A bit of a glutton. And a pack rat with appalling taste in music, if I’m honest.”
A short laugh ended in a watery gulp. “Stop sweet-talking me.”
“Haven’t even gotten started.” He smiled, warming to the topic. “You’re also smart, funny—especially when you don’t mean to be—caring, loyal, and you have the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, Austin.” She sighed. Her eyes glistened, tears suspended on her eyelashes. “What am I going to do?”
“What you want. Life is full of second chances. Give yourself one.”
“Even if it means hurting other people?”
His thumbs skimmed the soft underside of her chin. “Off like a bandage. One rip and it’s over. Trust me. It’s kinder that way.”
“Unlike us.” Her mouth twisted. “I held on until you peeled away.”
He leaned close. Breathed in the vanilla scent of her, sharp,