Snowbound Snuggles

by T. F. Walsh

  She grabbed her coat and half ran out of the shop.

  She should have known it was all too good to be true.

  • • •

  Her first instinct was to confront Rey directly, but she stopped abruptly on the steps leading to the front door of the lodge. If she found another way to find out what was going on, she could avoid a direct confrontation if Rey turned out not to be hiding anything. For a moment she stood there, one foot on the top step, chewing her lip. Then she turned and went back to the shop.

  Perry looked up hopefully as Joely stormed back in.

  “Change your mind?”

  “Nope,” said Joely. She stalked into the office and slammed the door behind her.

  Part of her wondered what the hell she was doing. Why ruin something that was going along so well? But, leafing frantically through her old address book, she knew the answer. She had to know the truth.

  By the time she found the number she was looking for, she had calmed slightly, but not enough to deter her from her purpose. Closing her eyes, she took a long, slow breath. When she could no longer feel her heartbeat slamming in the back of her throat, she picked up the phone.

  “Beckford and Taylor,” said the voice on the other end. “Corporate Law. This is Lisette. May I help you?”

  Joely took another breath, surprise to discover she was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Is Bill Beckford in?”

  “He’s not available at the moment. May I take a message?”

  Joely squeezed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and first finger. “Tell him Joely Birch called. I need to ask him some questions.”

  There was a pause on the other line. Joely assumed the receptionist was writing down the message, but then the woman said hesitantly. “Is this about Rey?”

  Surprised, Joely lowered her hand. “I’m sorry. What did you say your name was again?”

  “Lisette. Look, Ms. Birch, I don’t know what made you decide to call, but please don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. Maybe you can answer my question, then. Did he or did he not come out to Colorado on a case?”

  The pause alone was incriminating. “He did, but—”

  “Something to do with Cherokee Ceramics?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then that’s all I really need to know.” She hung up the phone.

  She turned and looked out the window, at the wide valley sweeping away in front of her. She felt as if she’d just flung herself out that window and was freefalling toward the ground, uncontrolled, with no hope of rescue or aid. Part of her wanted to scream and weep, to wail and tear her clothes, or dump ashes on her head. The rest had contracted inside her, forming a small, cold, hard ball where her heart had been.

  Now she knew the answer. She knew why Rey had come out here. It hadn’t been because he’d suddenly realized how much he loved and missed her. It had been work.

  So what did she do now? She had no idea. She put her face in her hands, pressed the heels of her hands against her dry eyes, and sat very, very still.

  • • •

  Rey rubbed his hands together and surveyed the small room with a smile. Everything was perfect. The room he’d picked out for them at the lodge was appointed in lavender and dove gray. A delicate tracery of violets adorned the wallpaper, echoed in the pattern on the quilt. Or maybe it was a duvet. He wasn’t sure what the difference was, but this one was delicate and pretty and seemed like it should be called something more sophisticated than a quilt.

  Virginia had been more than happy to help him in his quest for a romantic room. In fact, she’d bumped a honeymooning couple from this room to another one. “They’re not coming in until tomorrow. And if you’re not gone by then, well, they’re young. They’ll recover. And the other room’s nice. It’s just not Joely.”

  This room, Rey had to admit, was very much Joely. Something about the color combinations had made him think of her the minute Virginia had waved him through the door. And on the chest of drawers sat two decorative vases and a bowl full of potpourri. Rey had thought the style looked familiar, and when he turned them over, he hadn’t been surprised to find Joely’s initials scratched into the bottoms.

  Dinner was meticulously planned. The lodge didn’t offer room service, but he’d arranged for the diner to deliver a gourmet meal, which Virginia would have one of her staff bring up. It had cost him a bit, but it would be worth it to see Joely happy.

  He stepped out onto the room’s small balcony, breathing the fresh mountain air and absorbing the scenery. Though it was still technically dusk, the sun was no longer visible, having dipped behind the mountains. The reddish light of the sunset combined with a medium cover of cloud to lend an orange tint to everything. Rey had never seen anything quite like it. It was beautiful and surreal, as if a giant, cold flame had engulfed the earth. He shivered a little, not sure why. The breeze that had touched his face wasn’t quite cold, and the shiver had gone deeper than his skin.

  Behind him, he heard the door to the room open. He didn’t have to look to know it was Joely. Turning around, he met her with his brightest, most content smile.

  She didn’t smile back. Her face was drawn and pale. The last time she’d looked like this was the day she’d walked out on him.

  His smile faded. “Joely, what’s wrong?”

  She pointed at a chair. “Sit, Rey. You need to answer some questions.”

  Rey opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out. So he did as she’d said and sat in the chair. She loomed in front of him, arms crossed over her chest, blue eyes smoldering.

  “Why are you here, Rey?” Her voice shook. He stared at her, not sure he’d heard her correctly.

  “I’m sorry, Joely, I don’t understand.”

  Her hand jerked, as if it intended to grab him by his collar, but it clenched into a fist before it reached him and lowered again. “Why did you come to Colorado? Don’t lie to me. I know it wasn’t just to see me.”

  He swallowed. How the hell had she found out? There’d been no reason for her to suspect anything.

  Apparently, his silence had gone on too long, because she broke it. “I had some customers today who told me Cherokee Ceramics is selling pieces that look exactly like mine. Pieces I made after I left the company. What’s the deal, Rey?”

  He’d learned a long time ago to shut off his emotions in court. This wasn’t court, but it was an interrogation, and the switch flicked without any conscious effort on his part. He stood, taking on a calm, professional demeanor. “Cherokee’s in a great deal of trouble. There are several complaints against them right now—fourteen, I believe, at last count. I’ve been gathering evidence from several different artisans.” He paused, took a long breath, and sealed his own fate. “Yes, I came out here to get evidence from you.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you just tell me that?”

  He shook his head. “It didn’t seem like the best way to tell you I still loved you.”

  Tears had gathered at the corners of her eyes. “You are an idiot, Rey.”

  “Yes, I am. I thought I’d gotten over that, but apparently not.”

  He’d hoped she might laugh, if only a little. But the corners of her mouth tightened, curling down against a sob. “I thought we had a chance.”

  “We do, Joely—”

  “Don’t, Rey. Just don’t.” She squeezed her eyes shut and a tear slid down her face while she shuddered, fighting the rest of them.

  “Joely—” he ventured.

  “No.” Her emotions reined in again, her eyes opened and flashed fire into his face. “No. Don’t you understand? You told me you changed, but you haven’t changed. You left me because of your job, and now you’re coming back because of your job.”

  “You left me, Joely—”

  “You know what I mean. Your heart and your mind and everything that counted were gone from that house a long time before I walked out.”

  He took a step forward; she stepped back
, her body so shaky, so unsteady, she could barely balance on her tiny, half-inch heels.

  “No,” she said again. “Rey, if it hadn’t been for this case, would you be here right now? If I hadn’t been shoved right in your face along with Cherokee Ceramics, would you have even bothered to come to Colorado?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, dammit, Rey, it does.” She took another step back. “You’re still letting your life be dictated by your job.” She shook her head helplessly. “If it had been any other reason. Hell, a last-minute ski vacation would have been easier to take than this.”

  Desperate, he played the only card he had left. “Joely, I love you.”

  But she just shook her head. “I don’t doubt that, Rey.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that I can’t trust it. I can’t trust it to be enough to hold us together.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it wasn’t enough to bring you back.”

  He threw up his hands. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Hell, if “I love you” didn’t work, what would?

  She wheeled and grabbed the doorknob, then stopped. “Oh. One more question. Why the hell does this Lisette person know more than I do about this?”

  This couldn’t possibly get any worse. There was no way he could explain Lisette’s involvement without making Joely even angrier than she was. It was too complicated, and he could tell Joely was in no mood to really listen to him. He shook his head against the cold anger filling his chest.

  With his voice under tight control, he said, “Is there any point in trying to explain? Is there anything I could say that would change your mind?”

  She lifted her chin, her expression hard, but her lips trembled. “No. No, I don’t think there is.”

  Helpless, he watched her walk out of his life. Again.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next several days went by in a blur, as Joely tried to put her life back together. She should have known this would happen. It had been too much to expect that Rey could just drop back into her life and they’d automatically find a way to fix everything they’d broken the first time around. There were times when high expectations just set you up for a fall.

  She found herself trapped between wanting to forget all about him and deliberately bringing his presence back. The ideas and notes he’d left behind for expanding her business were too important, she felt, to ignore. But looking at pages of his handwriting made her heart hurt.

  “Just put this aside for a while,” Perry told her one night, a week after Rey had left. “It can wait until it’s not so hard for you.”

  “It’s not hard,” Joely snapped, and then refused to meet Perry’s gaze because Perry, of course, was right.

  She walked into her house at night and it was empty. It had always been empty—what was the difference? She kept telling herself that everything was the same as it had been before Rey had appeared in the shop, but it was hard to internalize that. Yes, she still had her job, her little cabin, and everything she’d had just two weeks ago. But Rey had filled all the empty spots for a while, and now they were all the emptier for his absence.

  She couldn’t seem to bring herself to talk to anyone about it, either. Not even Perry. Every time she tried to form words, they stopped somewhere in the back of her throat. She couldn’t even cry over it. There was just nothing inside her willing to come out.

  So she went to work, came home, went to sleep, woke up, went to work again. Every day. Sometimes she turned on the TV, but nothing she watched stayed in her memory for very long. Every day seemed identical to the day before. Every day was exactly the same as every day had been before Rey, but with one vital difference. All the joy had been sucked out of it.

  Two weeks after Rey’s ignominious departure, she sat looking at the spreadsheets again, at the rising bar graph and the profit charts. They were better even than they’d been at the end of October, but the light, heady joy she’d felt then was gone.

  She shut the computer down and stared out the window. Snow filled the highest branches of the trees, weighing down the pine branches. The mountainside looked like a Christmas card. Everywhere around here looked like a Christmas card when it snowed. Nothing special about that.

  Nothing special, to tell the truth, about anything anymore.

  The door opened behind her and Perry came in, a worried expression on her face.

  “Betty next door says you need St. John’s Wort,” she said.

  Joely shook her head. “Prozac, more like. Or maybe a lobotomy.” She sighed, surprised to feel a little of her old sense of humor coming back. “Maybe I could hire a hit man to get rid of Rey. That would make me feel better.”

  Perry didn’t laugh. She just shook her head. “Go home, hon. Eat some tofu.”

  “Tofu?”

  “Betty says if she knows you, you’ve been chocolate binging. She says you need protein.”

  “How does Betty know so damn much?”

  “Betty’s smart.”

  Joely had no desire to argue. She just didn’t have the energy. “Okay. I’ll go home. I’m not making any promises about the tofu.”

  When Perry had left the room, she scooped the handful of miniature Hershey’s wrappers out of her drawer and stuffed them in her purse. No sense leaving evidence for Perry to show Betty.

  At home, she didn’t notice the blinking answering machine for a few minutes. Nobody ever called her, so she rarely paid much attention to it. Tossing a tofu-less but protein-heavy TV dinner into the microwave, she finally spotted the blinking light and frowned. Surely Rey hadn’t called.

  She pushed the button. A vaguely familiar woman’s voice came from the machine.

  “Ms. Birch, this is Lisette, Rey’s secretary. I’m sure you don’t want to hear from me right now, but this really has to stop. I’m getting tired of seeing Rey mope around the office, and I think Bill’s about to fire him. Could you please call me back? I’ll give you my home number so you can talk to me this evening if you want.” She left a Manhattan number Joely didn’t recognize. “As soon as possible. Please. We’re dying here, I’m telling you.”

  The exaggerated exasperation in Lisette’s voice almost made Joely laugh. Then wicked satisfaction began to seep through her. It was a strange sensation, since she’d felt so very little over the past week. So Rey was in pain, too.

  Good. He deserved it.

  She finished her dinner and watched the news as far as the weather before she picked up the phone.

  To her surprise, something that felt like panic clawed its way up into her throat. She only managed to dial the first four numbers before she jerkily turned the handset back off.

  “What the hell are you scared of, Joely?” she muttered. But there was no point asking, because she knew. Exactly the same thing she’d been scared of two weeks ago when she’d so recklessly let Rey back into her life. That he would hurt her again. Except now, he’d actually done that.

  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .

  She turned the TV back on and pretended to care about last night’s Broncos game.

  But the next night when she came home, she was almost disappointed not to see the answering machine blinking again. She ate her dinner—more protein, since it had seemed to help, but still no tofu—watched the news, then replayed last night’s message.

  “I think Bill’s about to fire him. We’re dying here, I’m telling you.” Both phrases made her smile, but this time the smile didn’t feel so smug.

  Rey was in danger of losing his job over her. Wasn’t that what he’d said he’d be willing to do? Except now it was out of mourning rather than celebration. Her smile faded. She’d been willing to give up her career, as well, hadn’t she? For about five minutes there, before everything had gone haywire?

  Closing her eyes, she let herself do the one thing she hadn’t allowed herself to do since she’d walked out on Rey at the lodge. She thought about him.

 
; Not just about him in general. About the way his fingers felt, trailing over her skin. The way his mouth fit against hers. His tongue tracing her breasts. The sweet slide of his body entering hers. The way her heart had expanded, warmed, pounded, as she looked up into his desire-darkened eyes. The sounds, the smell, the touch of him. The warmth of him asleep in bed beside her.

  Tears gathered in her eyes. She picked up the phone and dialed Lisette’s home number.

  “Lisette?” she said to the other woman’s “Hello.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Joely Birch.”

  “Joely, I’m so glad to hear from you—”

  “Lisette,” Joely broke in. “I’m sorry, Lisette. I can’t do it. Tell Rey if you have to. I just can’t do it.”

  Uncertain of her own resolve, she hung up before Lisette could protest.

  • • •

  It got better after a while. By Thanksgiving, Joely felt like she’d fallen back into her old patterns. She ate turkey and played Trivial Pursuit at Perry’s house, then, back home, spent an hour on the phone with her mother, talking about anything but Rey. The world started to look friendly again.

  Which was, of course, when it happened.

  Wednesdays were usually quiet at the shop, even this close to Christmas, so Joely was surprised when Perry came fluttering into the office, looking frantic. Assuming a crowd of customers had just arrived, Joely said, “I’ll be right there.”

  “No, Joely,” said Perry. Her voice squeaked strangely. “It’s him again. It’s Rey.”

  Joely stared at her. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “No way. I’d recognize that ass anywhere.”

  Joely straightened the papers on her desk, then wondered why she’d done it. Thinking only marginally more clearly, she stood, straightened her hair, and went for the door. With her hand gripping the knob, she threw a last, desperate look back at Perry.

  “Go!” said Perry. “Kill the man if you have to, but go!”

  Joely went.

  It was déjà vu all over again. Rey stood next to the display of wolf-themed pots—only two of which had sold since his first appearance—only this time he wore jeans and a New York Rangers sweatshirt instead of an Armani suit. He looked better in the jeans.