Chapter 4

It was nearing midnight, and Marley was bordering on panic.

Trey Austin hadn’t called or sent her any messages about being delayed. But the snowfall was so heavy, she couldn’t see beyond the porch. She’d been pacing from room to room, from window to window, seeing nothing beyond the faint glow of barely visible security lights.

She kept envisioning him trapped in the storm somewhere along the route, then telling herself that life wouldn’t deal him two blows like that within the same month.

She didn’t question the validity of their emotional link. It was obvious he felt it, or he wouldn’t have been so adamant to meet her. And she’d held him in her arms for what had felt like a lifetime before the ambulance arrived. They’d survived a traumatic event together. It was to be expected.

Then, as she was standing at the windows, she heard a voice.

Turn on all the lights.

“Yes! Of course!” she cried, and began running through the downstairs, turning on every light switch, and then up the stairs to turn on lights in the hall, and then lights on the upstairs balcony that ran the length of the house, and back downstairs to the garage, and turned on all the outer lights around the shed and the parking lot, and then ran back to the front windows in the lobby. She still couldn’t see much beyond the blizzard, but all of the lights and blowing snow had turned the lodge into a pulsing, glowing orb.

She was convinced that if they’d told her to turn on the lights, that meant he must be near and needed something to guide him in. She was staring into the white void, waiting, hoping for headlights to appear, when suddenly there they were.

Relieved beyond measure, she watched the lights as the car approached the lodge, then stopped. The headlights went off. She saw a shadowy figure emerge, waited until he was coming up the steps, and then ran to the door and flung it open.

***

Trey was driving blind, relying on the shadowy shapes of trees on either side of the road as a guide. From her message, she’d indicated the lodge was close to the main road, but in the dark, in a blizzard, close felt like a hundred miles. All he could do was keep moving.

When he finally saw a glow in the distance, he guessed he was almost at his destination. The closer he drove to it, the larger the glow became, until he realized she hadn’t just left a candle burning in the window to light his way. She’d lit up the whole place to guide him. Emotion washed over him at the thoughtfulness of the gesture.

The moment he reached the lodge, he wasted no time getting out, but as he did, he actually staggered from the wind and snow. He grabbed his bags from the back seat, ducked his head against the blizzard, and trudged through the knee-deep drifts piling up around the porch. It wasn’t until he felt a tread beneath his feet that he realized he was finally at the steps.

He looked up just as the huge door swung inward, and then he saw her, bathed in so much light he didn’t think she was real.

“Careful on the steps!” she called as he started up, and then suddenly she had him by the arm and was leading him inside, into a place of warmth and beauty.

Marley was taken aback by how big he was standing up beside her, when she’d only known him lying down and unconscious. What did register was that he was covered in quickly melting snow and appeared exhausted from that drive.

“I was so worried about you,” she said.

He couldn’t stop staring at her. Standing beneath the lights of a huge crystal chandelier with all that glorious hair framing her face, she looked like an angel. Then he looked down and saw the snow melting at his feet.

“I’m getting snowmelt all over your floor.”

She laughed, and the sound rolled through him like music. “When it snows up here, everybody melts on the entryway.” She held out her hand. “Welcome to Corbett Lodge.”

He dropped his bags and clasped her hand as if he’d been reaching for a life preserver. “I was afraid I’d never find you, and now that I have, I am at a loss for words.”

“You’re safe. I’m never at a loss for words. Come to the fire and take off your boots. They’re probably full of snow. The drifts outside are piling up.”

He followed as if she’d tethered him to her, took off his coat, then his boots, and stood them by the fire before he turned to sit down and found himself looking into the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

“I have so many questions. All I remember is nearly getting struck by lightning, then swerving. I have very little memory of any part of the actual wreck.”

Marley was focused on his eyes. They were so dark they were almost as black as his hair. And the sound of his voice was a deep, raspy rumble that made her feel it inside, the same way thunder did when it rolled across the mountain.

Then she heard him mention lightning and gasped. “Lightning! I wondered what caused your accident.”

He heard her talking, but the words barely registered, and he knew he was staring. “The day of the wreck…how did you find me? How did you ever get me out of the car? You’re half my size.”

Marley leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Oh, I didn’t find you by chance. The angels did it. If they hadn’t stopped me at that fork in the road, I would have taken the one on the right. But there was this huge white light in that road blocking my way. I thought maybe a bridge was out up ahead or something like that. I always pay attention to their messages, so I took the left fork and, within minutes, drove up on the wreck. That’s when I knew they’d meant for me to find you.”

Trey’s head was spinning. He interrupted her, certain he’d misunderstood. “Did you just say ‘angels’?”

She glanced up, forgetting that usually freaked people out, and was afraid she would see that look on his face, but it wasn’t there.

She shrugged. “Sorry. Everybody who knows me takes this for granted. I hear angels’ voices. Sometimes the messages guide me. Sometimes they warn me. Can’t explain it. I was born this way. Anyway, back to you. I was frantic when I realized there was a person still inside the car. The windshield was missing, and the driver’s side door was gone. I could see you hanging upside down, so I knew your seat belt must still be fastened. I jumped out and started running through the downpour. You were alive, but unconscious and very close to drowning. The water in that ditch was deep and rising.”

Riveted now by her story, he set aside the subject of angels.

“How did you get me out?”

“I climbed in with you and tried, unsuccessfully, to unfasten your seat belt. I think your weight was pulling against it, so I ran back to my car and got my Swiss Army knife.”

He zoned out on the phrase “Swiss Army knife.” How many women did he know who carried one of those? Then he realized she was still talking and picked up the conversation.

“Ran back to cut the belt. I knew you would fall when it began to release, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to catch you or keep you from going headfirst into the flooded ditch, so when I crawled inside to cut the belt, as soon as I felt it give, I grabbed you and leaned backward, pulling as hard as I could. Your weight propelled us both out, but then I was trapped beneath you, and I couldn’t wake you up, and all I could think about was that no one else knows what’s happened or where we are.”

“I fell on you?”

She waved away the concern. “You didn’t hurt me. But it took a good deal of effort before I managed to roll you off. Our feet were still in the flooding ditch, so I got myself up and out, then pulled you up into the road, only to realize you had a good chance of drowning anyway, just being face up in that deluge. That’s when I began to panic. I didn’t know how badly you were hurt. I didn’t know if, by moving you, I might have injured you more, but it was done. I ran back to my car again to get an umbrella, then got down on my knees behind you to form a windbreak and held the umbrella over the both of us to keep the rain out of your face and called 911.” She sighed. “I didn’t know where we were, but I knew the road I’d been on. They followed the GPS location of my phone to find us. I kept talking to you, but you never woke up.”

“I heard your voice…more than once,” Trey said. “I wasn’t conscious enough to know what was happening, but I remembered you kept saying, ‘Hold on, honey. Hold on. Help is coming.’”

Marley’s eyes welled. “Oh…I didn’t know you’d heard me.”

“The sirens. I heard the sirens,” Trey said. “That was what woke me. I had a faint glimpse of you right before a deputy moved you back. I saw you walking away, and then nothing. I didn’t know if you were okay. I didn’t know anything…and then the deputy found your shoe. When I asked for it, he gave it to me. It was the only connection I had to the woman who saved my life, and I knew I would never rest another day of my life without finding you and thanking you face-to-face. So, thank you, Marley Corbett. Thank you for being my angel. Thank you for saving my life.”

He reached across the space between them with his hands outstretched.

Still a little teary, she gripped them firmly. “We’ll both thank angels, because if it hadn’t been for mine, I would never have found you.”

“I don’t know what to think about you,” he said softly.

“There’s nothing to think about. I’m just the Cinderella you were looking for.”

That’s when he remembered the shoe and opened his bag. “Now that you mention it, I have something that belongs to you,” he said, and pulled it out.

She smiled, and then kicked off her left shoe and extended her foot. “Do your thing, Prince Charming.”

He knelt before her and slipped the little red shoe on her very small, slender foot. “A perfect fit!”

Marley pointed to a muddy little shoe on the floor beside the firewood.

“And there’s its mate.”

Trey saw the mud-caked shoe and sighed. The final proof. Before he cleaned up his shoe, it had looked just like the muddy one.

And then, as if on cue, the old grandfather clock in the hallway began to strike the hour. When it did, they looked at each other and smiled, thinking of the clock striking midnight in the fairy tale.

“Midnight. Talk about timing,” Trey said.

“Well, I’m not going to turn back into a cinder maid because I already am one, and there’s no coach about to turn into a pumpkin, just a blizzard having its way with the mountain. And I am being terribly remiss in not getting you to your room so you can rest. Are you hungry? There’s always food already made here. How about I show you to your room and then you come down to the kitchen?”

“Are you sure that wouldn’t be too much trouble?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” she said, and quickly took off the shoe and put her other one back on. “Leave your boots. They’ll dry by morning. Grab your things and follow me.”

Trey picked up his coat and went back to get the luggage he’d left sitting, while Marley ran to get a key from the front desk. They started up the staircase just as the clock struck twelve. He paused at the landing and looked down into the lobby at the blazing fire, the flickering lights of the Christmas tree, and the garlands of greenery hanging everywhere, then up at the huge wooden beams in the ceiling and the massive logs that made the walls of the great room below. This princess already lived in a castle; it was just made of wood. Then he realized she was already gone and hurried to catch up.

Marley was holding the door open as he approached. She stepped aside for him to enter, then followed him in, giving him the quick rundown of amenities.

“You get yourself settled and comfortable, and then follow your nose. The hallway to the kitchen is on your left as you come down the stairs. Oh…is this too late for coffee? I can do hot chocolate or—”

“Don’t go to the trouble to make coffee unless you want some, too. I’ll drink anything but matcha tea.”

She laughed. “Understood. I’ll see you downstairs,” she said, and pulled the door shut behind her.

By the time she reached the kitchen, she already knew what she was going to do—toast the blueberry muffins she had left over from this morning and scramble some eggs with diced onion, chopped ham, diced red and bell peppers, a few bits of diced pickled jalape?o peppers, and a handful of shredded Fontina cheese. By the time Trey came down, the eggs were done, and she was taking the muffins from the broiler.

“Whatever it is, it smells wonderful,” he said.

“Nothing much,” Marley said. “It’s just late-night food or, as my daddy used to call it, hangover breakfast—minus the tomato juice with a hard dash of Worcestershire. You get your choice of a longneck ale or orange juice.”

“Then in honor of your father’s recipe, I’ll take that beer.”

Marley put the plate of food in front of him, then popped the cap off the beer and set it in place.

“Am I going to eat alone?” he asked.

“No, sir. Dig in,” she said as she snagged a half of a blueberry muffin and a glass of her favorite soft drink and sat opposite him at the table, while delighting in his obvious enjoyment of her food.

Trey took a bite out of one of the toasted muffin halves and rolled his eyes as he chewed and swallowed.

“Did you make these?”

She nodded.

“Who taught you to cook like this?” Trey asked.

She frowned, thinking back. “I don’t really remember who specifically, but I grew up here. It was my grandparents’ home before he added the upstairs and the whole front of the lodge, including this massive kitchen, and turned it into a B and B before there was such a thing. My dad also grew up here and took over in later years. I was born here, in the family area at the back of the lodge. January fifteenth I will be twenty-eight. They were snowed in that night, kind of like tonight.”

“Wow! You started life off with a bit of drama, didn’t you?”

Marley shrugged. “Totally out of my control. I was just along for the ride.”

Trey laughed. “Touché.”

She nodded and kept on talking. “Mom and Daddy taught me everything about this business, and my college degree was in hotel management, so I was okay in that department. Jack and Wanda Wallis worked for Mom and Dad, and now they work for me. They are all the family I have left. We just finished putting up apple butter before the snow came in. We already made strawberry jam, peach preserves, and blackberry jelly earlier in the year. We have a full basement under the lodge, and all of that is stored down there. We’ll serve it all year round, or until we run out. I keep the lodge open year-round and serve lunch to the public six days a week and a Sunday brunch. We’re closed now only because the guest rooms were being renovated while I was in Arkansas.”

“Why were you in Arkansas? It’s a long way from Colorado Springs,” Trey said.

“Research trip. I’d made prior contacts with some of the elder ladies in the Ozarks and was there visiting different places and eating food in their homes, learning how they made things. I came home with some wonderful old-time recipes to add to my menu. Ever hear of chocolate gravy?”

He glanced up as he was scooping up another bite. “No. Are you serious? What do you eat that on?”

“I guess anything you’d put syrup on, but my favorite way they made it for me was when they split a hot biscuit, buttered it, and poured the hot chocolate gravy on it. So good,” she said. “So, why were you in Arkansas? It’s also a long way from Phoenix.”

He bought time by chewing and swallowing before he answered. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t talk about being a writer to anyone. But what he did tell her was true.

“Mostly, I was on a sentimental journey. My grandmother and her people were born and raised in the Hot Springs area. I barely remember her, and my mother tries to forget she came from humble beginnings.”

Marley frowned. “If I’m not being nosy, why on earth would she want to do that?”

“Because she married up. Ever hear of Austin Enterprises?” Trey asked, and popped the last bite of eggs into his mouth.

“Maybe… Isn’t that a Fortune 500 company?”

Trey nodded as he chewed and swallowed. “Yes, and my mother, a pretty young thing from the Ozark hills, married Anders Austin the second…the heir of the man who founded it.”

Marley sat looking at him and letting that statement sink in. “Your name…Trey. Does that mean you’re the third Anders Austin?”

“Anders Allen Austin, the third, at your service, Cinderella.”

Her eyes widened. “Lord. You really are a prince…a prince of commerce, for sure. So, your parents must have been horrified to learn of your near-miss with death.”

“They don’t know,” Trey said. “We’re not close.” And then he gathered up his dishes and carried them to the sink. “Is the dishwasher empty or…?”

She jumped up and ran to the counter. “Oh…you don’t need to do that.”

He stopped her with a touch and a smile. “I invited myself here. I am so happy to have found you. I apologize that I’ve arrived in time to get myself snowed in, but you’re not going to wait on me like a guest, okay? I live alone in my house and am fairly competent at taking care of stuff.”

She was superaware of his hand on her arm, and trying to be casual about it. “Well, your quest to find me has made me feel a bit special. I can honestly say I have never been the object of a nationwide search before. Yes, the dishwasher is empty. Feel free to rinse and load. I’ll clear the table.”

“Deal,” he said, and then when she wasn’t looking watched her flit from one side of the kitchen to the other. She reminded him of a hummingbird. Beautiful, and tiny, and moving too fast to see the wings she must surely have.

A short while later she was standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching him go up for the night, but when he stopped at the landing and looked back down at her, she smiled.

“Sleep well.”

“Thank you,” Trey said, then started to say something else and changed his mind. She didn’t need to know how deeply she’d already dug herself into his thoughts, and he went the rest of the way up and into his room.

Once Marley heard the door shut, she began going through the lodge, making sure everything was locked, and turned out all of the lights except the usual night-lights. She banked the fire, made sure the fire screen was in place, and then took herself to her room and, as always, locked the door to the family quarters before getting ready for bed. It was something she’d seen her father do a thousand times, and it was something he’d imparted to her as important.

“Ladybug, we welcome people into our lodge, and for the time they are here, they are our guests. We cater to their wishes. We enjoy them. But they’re not our family, and we don’t know them. So, it’s not that we’re afraid they might hurt us. It’s because they are strangers, and you never trust a stranger to be telling the truth until they are no longer strangers. Then you can make the judgement about unlocking the door.”

And the moment she turned the lock, she thought of the stranger upstairs. The angels had sent her to help him. She’d held his life in her hands. Granted, he’d been very public about trying to find her, so he wasn’t trying to hide anything. But despite everything they’d said tonight, they were still strangers.

She could still hear the wind as she went to her bedroom, but her worry about his safe arrival was over. He was here, and for now, that’s what mattered. Being snowed in with Trey Austin was going to be a little bit like making a stew. It all depended on how much they added to their knowledge of each other. Would they form a friendship or a relationship? Would there be more revelations? Or would this just become a charming interlude to talk about in the years to come? She was still thinking about him when she crawled between the covers and turned out the light.

***

After Trey’s hairy drive through the snowstorm, he was reveling in the warmth and comfort of his suite, and so very grateful he was here. He didn’t know what Marley Corbett thought about him. She was so friendly and congenial that she was hard to read.

He’d been so adamant about coming to see her, and now that he was here, he didn’t want her to feel uneasy about him in any way. For all he knew, she could be fretting about being alone in the lodge and snowed in with a stranger. The deal was, he didn’t want to be a stranger. She was delightful and funny and amazing in a thousand ways he couldn’t begin to express. He already knew he wanted the whole story of her, and anything else she was willing to share.

He turned out the lights, leaving only a night-light burning in the hall leading to the bathroom, and then moved to the windows and parted the curtains, but there was nothing to see. The snow was but a blur in the darkness. He let the curtains drop and crawled into bed.

As he did, he heard the central heat kick on and closed his eyes.

Heat was a really good thing.

***

Despite going to bed late last night, Marley was up with the sunrise. Her first thought was the weather. She threw back the covers and raced to the window. It finally stopped snowing, but the world, for as far as she could see, was blanketed in white.

The first rays of sun were sparkling like diamonds on the new-fallen snow. It was awe-inspiring, even majestic, but getting caught out in that wonderland would turn a person’s world cold and deadly.

Nobody was going anywhere until the county cleared the main road and Jack cleared her drive, and fortunately, it didn’t matter. She had no need to go anywhere, and secretly, she was happy that Trey was snowed in with her. She was curious about the rich man’s son and was convinced there was more to him than he let on.

She dressed quickly, clipped her hair up, and went to start her day. She began by unlocking the back doors and stirring the embers in the fireplace before adding kindling to start a new fire. As soon as the kindling caught, she added a log before replacing the screen. It was as routine to her as brushing her teeth before going to bed. Things she did without thinking. She started coffee brewing and thought of Jack, although she didn’t expect them to show up today. There was no need and nothing to be done.

***

Trey woke up to silence.

The wind had laid. The sun was up, and he thought he could smell coffee. That meant his little hummingbird was up, too. He bailed out of bed to shower and shave, and as he was dressing, wondered what this day would hold. Before going downstairs, he got his laptop to check email and saw a message from Meredith.

Trey, are you still searching for your Cinderella? Also…are you going to be home for the holidays? I want to send you a gift.

He responded:

M…

No, I won’t be home. At the moment, I am snowed in with Cinderella at a mountain lodge in Colorado. Yes, the shoe fit, and she had the mate, still caked in dried mud. No need to worry about my welfare. She knows nothing about Chapel Hill and is about half my size. Tiniest little blond on the face of the earth. How the hell she dragged me out of my car, I’ll never know. She owns and runs the lodge. I am here as her guest. Save the gift until further notice. Be on the lookout for your candy.

Happy holidays,

Trey

As soon as he hit Send, he closed the laptop and pocketed his phone. As he stepped out into the hall, he heard the roar of an engine in the distance and wondered what it was, then guessed he’d find out soon enough.