Chapter 1

ChapterOne

Sadie

Who answers an ad to spend their Christmas holiday with a stranger?

Crazy people. That’s who.

Essentially, that’s me. I’m crazy.

Six weeks ago, I answered an ad I stumbled across to spend the holiday—Christmas—with a woman I don’t know. A woman who, sadly, is as lonely as me. We started emailing. We spent two days writing back and forth before we were lured by overly compatible online conversation, into chatting on the phone. Conversations with her came easy. She’s sweet. She’s interesting. She reminds me of Mom.

The knot around my heart cinches a little tighter at the thought of Mom, but I force it away.

Mrs. Emerson talks about drinking wine on the patio and sitting around a fire. She talks about moonlit dinners and falling in love. She talks about her husband.

She talks about him as though he is still alive, but that can’t be right—I know it’s not right—because her ad sought lonely soul for lonely soul this Christmas. It was because of this I figured she lost him recently. The love of her life. Her person. The other half of her soul…

Like Mom, she’s a romantic. I’m not. It’s not by choice, either. I’ve just never had that. Romance. It’s never really been in the cards for me. If it were, I’d be a romantic. I’d be the biggest romantic there was.

Mom always said my romance would come when it was right. That I would find my love. The thing that made me happy.

The person that made me happy.

I’m not so sure. I’ve dated, but I’ve never felt for somebody what Mom felt for Dad. And if I don’t feel that, then it’s not worth it. Because it’s not real. It’s not love. It’s not what I want. It’s not what I promised myself I would hold out for.

So even though they’re gone, I don’t want to spend Christmas alone. The emails turned to calls and the calls turned to video chats.

I really like her, Mrs. Lucy Emerson. I like her so much that if she had a son, I think I’d agree to a life with him just to make her my mother-in-law. I know, I know, I’m crazy.

We’ve established this.

I’m also lonely. Terribly, painfully, deeply lonely.

It’s this crappy boat of lonely that we’ve found ourselves in that inspired her to make the ad that initiated our contact, established our friendship, and led me to now.

In the back seat of a car with a man I don’t know. In a snowstorm.

I’m an Arizona girl. A Yuma girl, in fact. We don’t do snow.

So, this blizzard has me clutching the door with one hand, and the seat next to me with the other. The weight of the falling snow is so thick, it swirls like a dream I can’t see through. I can’t escape.

I want to escape right about now. Like I said, I’m a Yuma girl. We do sun. We do sand dunes and wide-open blue skies. We don’t do blizzards. We definitely don’t do blizzards that we can’t see through. And we most certainly don’t drive in these blizzards. But the man who picked me up from the airport—Mrs. Emerson’s driver—he does blizzards. He does blizzards at a speed that has my nails digging into leather and my skin crawling over chilled bones.

I think I’m going to be sick.

These roads aren’t for the faint of heart.

Mrs. Emerson misled me. She doesn’t live in the beautiful scenery of Colorado. And she doesn’t just have a Mountain View. She lives up the mountain. Way up the mountain, all the way to the frickin top.

That’s how it feels, anyway. We’ve been driving for forever, and he’s not crawling the way he should be in this blizzard, on these slick roads. His body isn’t pitched forward, his eyes squinted in a foolish attempt to see through the hypnotizing swirl of white.

I’ve asked him to slow down twice. Because as lonely as I am, I happen to want to keep my life. I’m not ready to join Mom and Dad. Not yet. Although I’m lonely, and what brought me here is being so lonely that I couldn’t imagine spending my Christmas holiday under the crushing weight of the silence that has become my life, I’m not ready to be dust, either.

I also couldn’t imagine spending this Holiday as I’d spent the last. At my best friend’s dinner table, surrounded by the joys of Christmas cheer and family—pretending the sympathetic gazes filled with pity didn’t bother me. That I didn’t notice them. That they didn’t make the loss so much more acute.

Pity could hurt a man with a shell of stone. I don’t have a shell of stone. I’m soft inside and out. Mom always said I was a bleeding heart with an ooey gooey center. So, when people look at me with pity, I don’t deflect it—can’t deflect it. It seeps right in through my skin to that gooey center, and it hurts so much. Because when everyone around you looks at you as though you’re broken, you start to believe it as fact. When they look at you like you’ll never be happy again, the same applies. Because when they died, they took that happiness. They took that ability from you, and you won’t ever get it back. You can’t.

It makes the hope that you can heal feel hopeless. And feeling that around a holiday table is brutal. So here I am in a car with a man I don’t know. A man who has balls of steel, and I’m driving up a mountain to spend Christmas with a woman I’ve had six weeks of conversation with.

I’m crazy. Off my rocker.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

There’s a part of me that wants to turn around. There’s a part of me that wants to beg him to turn back and take me to the airport so I can flee back to my lonely existence in Yuma. But what am I going to do there? Apart from what I’ve always done?

The Diner is still going to be there when I get home. My tiny trailer with my sad little plant is still going to be there, watered by the kind, widowed Mrs. Peck two doors down.

I have nothing. I don’t even have a cat to come home to. Apart from my best friend, Katie, nobody will miss me.

It’s not like I date. I haven’t bothered since they left. And, honestly, dating feels like a joke now. Everyone seems more interested in a hookup than they are in finding a life partner. Again, that’s not me. I think I’m one of those people who were born cursed with a love once heart. There is space in my heart for one person. One great love. One forever. After that…

I believe in soul mates. And since the founding of Tinder and other hookup apps, soul mates are a rare thing. People aren’t looking for forever. They’re looking for fun for now. It sucks, but I’m just not a for now girl.

I don’t even know if I’m fun.

It’s not like I’m saving myself for marriage, because I’m not. I’m just saving myself for him. The one who was made for me.

If he even exists.

Katie spent years telling me that if I don’t get myself out there, I won’t meet Mr. Made For Me. So, I’ve dated. I’ve dated a lot. Too much. I’ve kissed more than my fair share of toads in the hopes of finding my prince. After Mom and Dad, though, it feels pointless.

Maybe it’s the grief.

Maybe I’ve been out of the game so long that I can’t seem to find my path back in. It’s not like I haven’t been asked. I have. At the diner where I waitress, I’m often asked to go for drinks. I just never go. I don’t know why.

The ass end of the car skates over what I’m sure is the center line, and I think I feel my stomach pitch into my throat. Swallowing my stomach loudly, a low chuckle sounds from the front seat.

“Easy, girl.” The man is still laughing at me, but I’m struggling to concentrate, because I’m pretty sure I saw a flash of those bright white lights people see before… “Just a patch of black ice.”

Just a patch of black ice?! The man has definite balls of steel and absolutely no fear of the white light that precedes the great beyond.

“Maybe if we slow down—”

“Almost there,” he interrupts.

Under my breath, but loud enough for him to hear, I mutter, “Hopefully we get there alive.”

His only answer is another amused chuckle.

I think again about turning back, but the idea of venturing all the way back down this mountain in this blizzard has the blood freezing in my veins. Besides, it’s not like I have nothing to bring to the table for this Holiday. Mrs. Emerson has a sweet tooth, and I’m a mean baker. I can make a Viennese Whirl like no one else, and for Christmas morning, I’ve got a killer recipe for cinnamon buns. Mrs. Emerson had asked about my talents in the kitchen after sharing her love of sweets, and she’d assured me she’d stocked her kitchen with all the ingredients necessary to make the treats for this Holiday.

Living in Arizona where orange and lemon trees grow, Mom taught me how to make a to-die-for turkey. It’s juicy and bursting with citrus flavor from the slices of orange and lemon tucked under the skin before setting to bake. I’ve told Mrs. Emerson about my turkey recipe, and she’s assured me she is stocked up on lemons and oranges, as well as all the ingredients I’ll need to take over the holiday baking in her kitchen. I know three weeks is a long time to spend with a stranger, but I was looking forward to it before the nerves caught up to me.

I hadn’t taken a vacation since they died. What was the point? What would I do?

I’d been looking forward to this time away from my life of sun and dust for a while now. And to be honest, I’ve been looking forward to my first snow covered Christmas.

I just hadn’t expected there to be so much snow.

Still, the idea of spending three weeks with a stranger had nerves jittering in my belly, and my heart beating unsteadily. When I told Katie, her eyes had bulged, and she’d asked if I’d fallen and bumped my head. She wasn’t off base with her question. This wasn’t me. Isn’t me.

I don’t do things like this. Crazy things. Wild things. Spend the holiday with a stranger in another State, kind of thing.

I’m simple. Quiet. I like routine and the comforts of familiarity. But I hadn’t always been this way. Before they died, life had been something to live. After, I guess I lost my way. I lost myself in the grief and the fear of doing this without them.

Still, Mrs. Emerson had comforted me that her mountain home that was nestled enchantingly in the hard gray stone capped in snow white, surrounded thickly with needled green trees, had more than enough space for two. That if I needed, I would have time to myself.

I would need this, so for that I was grateful. Especially after this drive. After this drive, I would need a space to calm myself.

The car slows to a crawl as the man who introduced himself as Bruce, while holding a sign with my name at the airport, turns the wheel onto another road. This one is narrower, because outside the window it’s not just blowing snow I see. Beyond the thickly blowing snow, the drive is edged with thick needled trees, their branches weighed heavily by the dump of fresh white. We inch forward, the car bumping over the drive until I think I see an amber glow of light through the windshield.

My heart sighs in relief and my fingers ache as they uncurl from their clutch of leather. The tension in my back and neck is thick, and I figure it won’t leave until I’ve escaped this death trap of a car to the warmly lit interior of the rustic home I’ve been day dreaming about spending my Christmas holiday in for the last six weeks.

The car stops and Bruce turns to flash me a cheeky grin. “We’ve arrived, safe and sound.”

“Barely,” I grumble.

He chuckles. “Never seen snow, huh?”

“No,” I admit, squinting through the swirling white at the house. “I haven’t done much traveling, actually.”

I can’t make out the house, and disappointment swells.

“You picked the right day for it,” he teases. “With the blizzard.”

I look back at Bruce. “Will you be staying the night?”

“Me?” He shakes his head. “No. I’ll drop your bags at the door and be on my way. I don’t want to get stuck up here.”

Stuck?He doesn’t give me time to ask as he pushes open the door and steps out into the blizzard. Gathering my purse and my courage, I do the same.

The bite of wind is cold. The lash of the snow as it whips through the valley of Mrs. Emerson’s property is violent. I shiver as I catch my hood from being whipped right off my jacket and follow Bruce, who already has my suitcase and carry-on in his grip and is running for the front stoop. I don’t take it in as I would have liked, but I can see it’s rustically stained timber and stone. Beautiful.

I hurry for the door, shocked when Bruce turns to me with an odd expression that makes my belly lurch and my heart flip. “Good luck to ya, Sadie.”

“Wait!” I call as I watch him rush from the stoop, through the blowing white, to the car. Before I can turn back to the abnormally tall, charmingly rustic wood front door, Bruce is in the car and driving away.

Confused, but excusing his abrupt departure with the thought that he likely wants to get back down the mountain before the storm gets worse, I turn back to the front door and knock. I wait, listening to the howl of the wind through the mountains as I shiver under the weight of the puffy snow jacket I purchased for my holiday. Then, when no one answers, I knock again.

She’s home, I figure, because the lights are on. Maybe she has music on and can’t hear my knock. I know Lucy likes music. I stab the doorbell twice and hear the chime echo from inside the house.

Again, I wait. And I wait. Then I hear the thud of heavy steps before the door is thrown wide.

I gasp and take a quick step back in shock at the sight of the man and his face. The man glares, hostility reconfiguring the set of his features. His eyes, deep, dark brown, sweep the length of my body before they rest on my suitcase, my carry-on, and then slide back to me. “Can I help you?”

“Um…”

“You break down somewhere?”

“I think there’s been a mistake,” I stutter, feeling my insides begin to quiver. The bitter taste of anxiety swells in my belly like a balloon about to pop.

The man scowls at me as he peers around my body to his driveway, looking for a car and not seeing one.

“You walk here with both of those?” He gestures to my bags. My eyes move from his face to his hands. His left hand is like the left side of his face, rippled with deep, angry looking scars. I wonder what happened to him. I wonder what tragedy leaves a scar like this. I wonder—is his whole left side scarred the same?

“N—no.”

He lifts a cool brow. “Then how’d you get here?”

“I was dropped off.” I force my eyes down to my boots, my face flaming. Even with his scars, he’s a very attractive man, but I sense I’ve offended him by my shock. In my defence, I wasn’t expecting a man to answer the door. Neither was I prepared for the sight of him—or his scars.

I feel bad. Rude. Small. And a little frightened.

There’s been a mistake.

“By who?” he clips, clearly not in the mood to deal with me now or ever.

“There’s been a mistake. A horrible mistake.”

“You’ve said.”

My face feels like it’s on fire despite the cold. “You see, I’m supposed to be spending the holiday with a Lucy Emerson.” His face gets tense, and I feel hope rise inside me. “Do you know Lucy?”

“You’re supposed to spend Christmas with Lucy Emerson?”

“I am.” I nod. “Is she perhaps a neighbor of yours and her driver mistakenly dropped me at your door instead?”

His mouth twists into a deeper scowl, and I’m pretty sure he grinds his teeth before he pitches forward to grab for my bags, dragging them roughly into his house. My heart lurches as he pins that dark, harsh gaze on me again. “Come in. Not gonna sort this with you standing on my porch in this blizzard. I’m losing heat.”

“Oh.” I step quickly inside. “Of course.”

He closes the door behind me, and I feel—things.

His home is lovely.

If I could paint myself a dream, it would be this house in these mountains right here. I would change not a single thing.

And, oddly enough, the man scowling down at me with his large arms folded over his large chest makes me feel things too.

Fear? Definitely.

Curiosity? Most assuredly.

Interest? Possibly.

Attraction? Absolutely.

Even through all of that, I sense that he does not like me.

Not at all.