Snowbound

school. They compared Thai food at a restaurant to food

they’d had in Thailand, snorkeling off Belize to experiences on the Barrier reef. They wore designer clothes, had every electronic gadget and drove BMWs the

minute they turned sixteen.

But there were also huge gaps in their knowledge.

They spoke of maids instead of having to carry out the

garbage. She doubted most of them knew how to mop

a kitchen floor or scrub a toilet. Maybe even how to

wash dishes, although they were smart kids—they’d

figure it out. They seemed not to have been expected to

be responsible for much of anything. She had one

student in her U.S. History class who’d wrecked two

cars since March, and both times his parents had just

bought him a new one.

Many of her students were great kids; some, like

Erin, were clearly driven. But others were spoiled and

simply marking time. She had two this year in Knowledge Champs that she suspected were merely padding their résumés for college: Amy and Troy. Amy was

also one of the weakest participants. But Troy was

different.

As a senior, he was on the A team. He was smart.

But she’d also found him to be lazy. He often missed

practice. His grades were top-notch, but when she

looked at his file she saw that he had participated in

very few extracurricular activities in his first three

years of high school. That had changed this fall, when

he joined Knowledge Champs and won a part in the

fall musical.

Well, it wasn’t her business, but it would be interesting to see how they responded to her expectations if they were stranded at Thunder Mountain Lodge for long.

And even more interesting, she decided, as she set

the washing machine to a normal cycle and started

picking out light-colored garments, to see whether John

Fallon opened up to her—or started hiding out in his

quarters.

Of course, she shouldn’t care, considering she’d

never see him again after the snowplows came through.

What was it he’d said? I prefer the solitude. But then,

with the way he looked at her sometimes, she wondered

whether that was true.

Would he tell her how he’d been hurt if she asked?

Or would he be offended by her nosiness?

She frowned and closed the lid on the washer. Probably the latter, and she wouldn’t even blame him.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was an

enigma: an intelligent, well-educated man who’d presumably had a high-paying job and yet was now cooking and cleaning up after strangers at this remote lodge, glad when he had his midweek solitude. A man who hid

his pain, who had been dismayed by the sight of the

woman and kids on his doorstep but had been kind in

large and small ways since then. He was a man who

looked as if he badly wanted to kiss her, and yet he

seemed to have forgotten how to flirt.

More assumptions on her part, Fiona thought with a

sigh as she headed back to the kitchen to see how the

kids were doing with cleanup. She was tantalized by

him, so, ergo, he must be attracted to her.

Because she was so irresistible, of course.

Another sigh. She was pretty on a good day, which

this was not. True beauty, she’d never achieve.

Face it: she was unlikely to have a shot at learning

what had wounded John Fallon psychologically as well

as physically. And, honestly, even if the attraction was

reciprocal, where would they go with it, living several

hours apart as they did?

Stick to fixing the kids’ problems.

“Watch it!” she heard one of the boys say, followed

by the crash of a dish shattering on the slate floor.

Fiona winced and hoped the man she’d been obsessing about was out of earshot. Clearly she would have to supervise the kitchen crews.

It might have been far more interesting to have been

stranded here without eight teenagers.

GETTING THE KIDS out the door was a chore, even after

John went to the effort to round up a fair selection of

parkas, gloves, hats and several pairs of boots. One

girl—Amy—didn’t want to go. John was sympathetic

until she started to whine.

“It’s cold.”

“Come on, you gotta be on my team,” Hopper coaxed.

“I don’t like getting cold.”

“But you ski!” one of the other girls said in apparent surprise.