Chapter One
Her tires made a high-pitched, helpless whine when she pressed the accelerator. Damn. Even the sand she’d poured beneath the wheels for traction hadn’t made a bit of difference in freeing her SUV from the deep divot. Hard to get traction on pure ice.
“Great. Just effing great.” Angeline peered out the window in the gray, sleety twilight, hoping to see some sign of civilization—the outline of a house, a friendly light shining from a window. Anything. But only wind-whipped, ice-encrusted pine trees and crystal-glazed snow entered her vision.
She glanced down at her cell phone and saw the now-familiar signal annoyingly informing her she was out of coverage.
The weather forecast had been for heavy rain when she’d left her parents’ farm on the upper peninsula of Michigan earlier that afternoon. The temperature had dropped unexpectedly, hovering just at the freezing point and causing hazardous conditions. Now the meteorologists had done a one-eighty, predicting a snowstorm and heavy winds to follow the messy sleet.
Just her luck. Damn Mitchell for spawning such a sulky, anti-social son. Why did he have to live in a barren, frozen wilderness anyway? Why did Mr. Contrary Alex Carradine have to flip off the Ivy-League education his father had so generously given him, the lucrative job at the Chicago Board of Trade and the lakeshore penthouse, which would have been both warm and convenient for a Christmas visit, in order to make some kind of social statement and go all nature-boy on them?
“Ski resort, my ass,” she said, squinting into deepening dusk. People’d have to be nuts to actually pay to come to this place.
A gust of wind caught the SUV, making the vehicle shudder. Angeline cursed softly.
The narrow, winding road that led up the forested hill was snow and ice-covered and downright treacherous in spots. Angeline hadn’t seen so many sharp twists and turns since she’d ridden on a roller coaster as a teenager.
The reality of her situation settled on her like an ice-laden cloak. She was stuck in the middle of a sleet-storm with a blizzard to follow. There wasn’t a scrap of civilization in sight. According to her directions, Heavenly View Ski Resort was at the top of the hill, which might be anywhere from a half-mile to five miles away. It’d been hard to tell how far she’d gone since the turn-off, what with the nauseating twists and turns, and constantly being on high-alert due to the slick conditions.
Not that she’d been alert enough, apparently.
Mitchell was supposed to drive up from Chicago and meet her at his son’s resort at 4:30 p.m., but Angeline guessed that was unlikely. She’d already learned from her car radio that I-94 had been completely shut down between Chicago and Milwaukee due to conditions more suitable to an ice rink than an interstate.
She reluctantly turned off her vehicle and pulled up the hood of her coat, securing it tightly around her chin, preparing for an unpleasant, possibly dangerous trek to the top of the hill. She’d learned a few things growing up in the frigid winters of the Upper Peninsula. Thankfully, she had a flashlight in the back. There wasn’t a single streetlight lining the treacherous drive. Apparently Alex “Grizzly Adams” Carradine expected the patrons to drive up this hell mountain in pitch blackness.
Mitchell must occasionally tear hunks out of that sexy black and silver hair of his whenever he thought about his surly son. Thinking about Mitchell’s handsome face and charming smile made her heart sink to the vicinity of her belly button. She’d been so looking forward to getting to know him better over Christmas. The glowing fantasy of spending hours upon hours with Mitchell, of chatting intimately beside a roaring fire…of finally sharing a bed with him dimmed and cooled with the reality of oncoming night and the clicking sound of ice on the roof of her SUV.
She jumped in alarm when something thumped heavily on the window. A scream tickled her throat at the sight of the dark, hulking figure looming just inches away. Without thinking, she clicked the lock button. A great paw thumped on the window again. It took Angeline’s stunned brain a moment to realize the paw was covered in a black ski-glove. The frozen metal of her car door handle rattled.
“Unlock the damn door,” the monster-man growled.
Realizing her foolishness, Angeline hit the unlock button. The door swung open. He bent his tall form and glared at her briefly. Angeline had a fleeting impression of flashing, furious blue eyes and a scowl surrounded by a dark beard encrusted with ice crystals. She had to resist the urge to slam the door shut again.
“Can’t you read?” he demanded rudely.
“Eh…excuse me?” Angeline sputtered.
“This road is closed. What’d you do? Remove the barricade?”
“There wasn’t any barricade. I drove right up here, just like any poor, unsuspecting soul might—”
“Unsuspecting idiot,” he interrupted. He straightened. “Apparently you’re the one person on the planet who doesn’t know we’re in the midst of a sleet storm with a blizzard to follow. This road is dangerous.”
“You’re telling me that?”
“Come on,” he said tersely, ignoring her heated outburst. “It’s getting dark. I don’t want to be wandering around this skating rink in the pitch black.”
Angeline hesitated. She didn’t relish the idea of going with this intimidating, rude, bear of a man any more than she did trekking up the mountain alone in search of the resort.
“That’s all right
. Thank you. I’ll just follow the road up to Heavenly View. You needn’t bother yourself. I’ll be fine.”
“That’s doubtful, considering the resort is shut down.”
“Shut down? How do you know?”
“Because I own the place. Like I said, this road is dangerous. I don’t want people risking their necks on it. Are you coming or not?”
Angeline swallowed back her retort in the face of his rudeness. She shouldn’t have been surprised that she spoke to Alex Carradine in person. The male outside her door was huge, and hadn’t Mitchell said his son won a football scholarship to Princeton? She should have expected he’d be built like a linebacker—or a bear, which he resembled presently in his insulated, hip-length black ski jacket and black knit hat.
She tossed her keys and phone into her purse and clambered out of the SUV. She threw his large, shadowed form a dark look as she slammed the door, although she doubted he could see it in the encroaching gloom.
“Where are we going?”
“To my house,” he said as he turned and started to walk through two feet of snow, his boots making a cracking sound as he broke the thin layer of ice on top. Angeline plunged in after him, glad he didn’t notice when she nearly did a face plant on her slippery first step.
“You don’t live up at the resort?”
“No.”