Dylan didn’t consider himself staff but Charlotte grabbed his elbow and basically dragged him forward. Eden quickly started handing out assignments and instructions.
“Dylan, do you mind helping Trey to his cabin? Genevieve, will you escort Joe and Tonya and their girls?” Genevieve nodded, though he could tell she was uncomfortable at the prospect. It couldn’t be the wheelchair, since she had been completely at ease with Trey.
What made her uneasy?
The youngest little Brooks girl beamed up at Genevieve and reached for her hand. After a long pause, she took it, though with obvious wariness. He nearly chuckled. Of course. She wasn’t used to kids. In her perfect little society world, she probably hadn’t had many interactions with children.
That was one area where he, on the other hand, was completely at ease. Coming from a big family with an overabundance of nieces and nephews had given him plenty of experience with kids.
He almost offered to trade assignments with her and then changed his mind. The corporal didn’t need more opportunities to fall head over heels—or wheels, in this case—for Gen.
He approached Trey, who was chatting up Chelsea, the office manager.
“Guess you get to be my tour guide,” Trey said. “Yeah,” Dylan said.
“I’ll see you later, Chelsea,” the kid said.
She waved and Trey started wheeling toward the door that led to the cabins.
“You need help or anything?” Dylan asked.
“Naw. Just hold the door and point me in the right direction.”
“Left,” he said.
Trey wheeled outside and headed in the direction of the cabins.
“Man, it’s gorgeous here,” he said. “Only mountains
I’ve seen this big were the Hindu Kush, and they weren’t nearly this pretty.”
“Except in springtime,” he answered.
“No shit.”
Trey was silent as they moved toward his cabin, the closest to the recreation center. It was the first one he and Genevieve had decorated together.
“Smoke Gregory said you were a ranger. You lose your hand in Afghanistan?”
He wanted to tell the kid to mind his own damn business, but he didn’t have the heart to stomp on all that open friendliness. More power to the guy for not letting bitterness eat away at him.
“Helmand Province. Twelve-year-old insurgent with a suicide pack.”
“Oh, man. That’s rough. Kandahar for me. Firefight. Got hit by three rounds. My battle rattle stopped most of it but I caught one in my spinal column just below my flak.”
Bad business, there. He wondered how Trey was coping, but that wasn’t the kind of thing guys asked each other outside group therapy or something.
“Rehab’s a bitch, am I right? I do the exercises, but six months later, I don’t know how much good it’s doing. My left leg still works but it’s weak. At least I can walk with crutches when I have to. The other one might as well be fake, all the good it does me. Sometimes I think a fake leg might even be better. I could put weight on it then, you know?”
“Flesh and blood is better than a prosthetic any way you slice it. So to speak,” he muttered.
Trey chuckled as he wheeled up the ramp. “I’ll take your word on that.”
Dylan helped him with the door and made sure all his luggage was inside waiting for him.
“There’s food in the lower cupboards. Should be within reach.”
“Thanks.”
He felt a little bad about leaving the kid here by himself, especially where everybody else had some kind of family or loved one for support.
“Anything else you need before I take off?”
Trey shook his head. “I should be good. Thanks.” He paused. “This is a nice thing you’re doing here.”
“Not me,” he said, quick to disabuse him of any idea to the contrary. “Charlotte, the bossy blonde, is my younger sister and Smoke is an old friend. They dragged me along. I’m only here because I’m doing community service.”
Trey looked first surprised and then amused. “No kidding? Seems to be an epidemic of that around Hope’s Crossing.”
“You must mean Genevieve. We were arrested together.”
“Same bar fight?”
He relived that fateful punch and almost laughed out loud. The more he came to know Genevieve, the more funny and completely out of character that moment seemed.
“Yeah. And the same crooked defense attorney— who also happens to be my older brother—arranged this plea deal for us both.”
“Doesn’t matter why you’re here, I suppose. It’s still a good thing. And I’ve got to say, Hope’s Crossing might turn out to be more interesting than I expected.”
“It has its moments,” Dylan answered. “See you later.”
“’Bye.”
Dylan headed out into the afternoon sunlight that reflected diamonds in the snow, his mind still on the conversation.
Trey might be young and fairly wet behind the ears but he was right about one thing. There was more to Hope’s Crossing than some pretty storefronts and a gorgeous setting. There was pain and sorrow, humor and grace.
He had spent his time since returning to town hiding away in Snowflake Canyon, content to be alone in the mountains. While he was busy feeling sorry for himself and thinking his world had ended, others in similar circumstances had somehow managed to move forward. He had to wonder what they had figured out that he hadn’t yet.
“I’ll tell you what A Warrior’s Hope needs most. A hot tub.”
Genevieve issued her heartfelt declaration to Eden Davis, riding alongside her on a big chestnut mare. They were bringing up the rear of the large group heading up a trail to visit what was supposed to be a spectacular iced-over waterfall.
She looked up the trail, overhung with pines on either side that randomly dropped cold little clumps of snow on them.
“I mean, this is beautiful, magical, a winter wonderland. Yadda yadda yadda,” she said to Eden. “I just have to think, if I’m aching this much after a morning cross-country skiing and a half hour on horseback, how much worse must some of the guys feel?”
“I know. Believe me, I know.” Eden rotated her shoulders, looking cute and still perky, her cheeks rosy beneath a shiny white Stetson she had probably purchased new just for today’s outing. “A hot tub is definitely on the list. We can always use the hot tubs inside by the pool when we get back to the recreation center, but I would really like a few outside. After our first session in early fall, I wrote a grant for a couple. We have the funding, but the ground froze before we could run the electricity for the project. That will be first priority when the snow melts, I promise.”
That wouldn’t help Genevieve. Not when she needed one now—and they still hadn’t reached their destination. Then she had the whole ride home to endure.
Every single muscle in her body ached, right down to her fingers from gripping first telemark poles and then the reins—not to mention priming her dining-room walls long into the night.
She wasn’t a completely inexperienced rider. Her mother had insisted on lessons even though Gen hated heights and had always been uncomfortable on horseback. Her horse today was quiet and good-tempered, with a soft, easy gait that would have made riding her a joy if Genevieve hadn’t already been stiff from her other activities that day and the night before.
She was achy enough that she was almost tempted to drive to her parents’ house after her day ended here at the foundation to soak in theirs.
“It’s been a fun day, though, hasn’t it?”
“Yes. I think everyone enjoyed it so far,” she answered. That morning, they had left early to go crosscountry skiing on the groomed trail that ran beside the river and up into U.S. Forest Service land.
The guests of A Warrior’s Hope seemed to have all enjoyed it, especially when they skied around a bend and spied a huge moose standing in a hot springs across the way, steam rising up around him and moss dripping from his antlers.
They barely returned from that excursion and had time for a quick, deliciously hearty lunch catered by Dermot Caine’s café before they loaded everybody up and took off to the Silver Sage Riding Stables in Snowflake Canyon for an afternoon on horseback.
It was really a beautiful area, with towering pines and spruce and steep-sided mountains angling down to a glittery, half-frozen river running through the canyon floor.
“How much longer before the falls?” she asked Eden. “We’re nearly there, I think.”
“Yep,” answered Jake, their guide from the ranch—
who seemed even more taciturn than Dylan, though she wouldn’t have believed that possible. “Not far now.”
The creek beside the trail seemed to bubble and hiss beneath a layer of ice. They turned a bend in the trail and suddenly the falls were there ahead of them.
Gen gasped. She couldn’t help it. It was spectacularly beautiful, a gnarled, twisting column of unearthly blue ice that rose at least a hundred feet into the air.
“Wow,” she whispered.
Some of the guests climbed off their horses to stretch and have a better look. She saw Dylan didn’t dismount, just walked his horse a little away from the group. Was he worried about the difficulty of climbing off the horse without the use of both hands?
He lived up here somewhere in Snowflake Canyon. Spence had pointed out his driveway on the way.
“Climbers come from miles around to strap on crampons and reach the top,” Eden said. “I’m going to do it sometime, I swear.”
“You mean you didn’t bring climbing gear?” Pam Bryant and her fiancé actually looked disappointed.
“Not this time,” Eden said. “We can try to come back before you leave if you want.”
“Not me,” Gen muttered with a shiver. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than climbing up a tower of ice with nothing but frozen air between her and serious injury.
“You’re not ready to try your hand?” Trey Evans had maneuvered his placid gelding beside her. He was another who hadn’t dismounted.
“I’m perfectly happy to stay on solid ground, thanks very much.”
“Yeah, I’m with you.” He smiled, looking young and rather sweet in the pale afternoon sunlight. “I’ve got to say, you folks sure know how to throw a winter around here. This is something to see.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.
“Sure.” He answered perhaps a little too promptly. “It’s nice not to be cooped up in a rehab facility all day long. Everybody here is supernice. Oh, and the cabin’s great. Did I tell you that? You did a good job with the decorations. Last night, I sat by a fire and enjoyed the lights on the tree. I even listened to Christmas carols and enjoyed the lights on the tree. Not ‘Little Drummer Boy,’” he hastened to add.
She gave a rueful smile. “Nobody believes me when I tell them I generally have no problem with that song. I quite enjoy it under the right circumstances. I just wasn’t in the mood for it that night.”
“I’m just teasing you,” he answered. “Not about the cabin. That’s still really nice. In fact, I asked Spence and Eden if I could maybe stay here for a couple of extra days after the session ends. I’m moving into a new apartment in San Antonio when I get back, but it won’t be available until after the New Year. All my things are in storage, and I’d rather just stay here if I can.”
She frowned, saddened to think about him staying here at the recreation center by himself for the holidays after all the others had left. “Don’t you have family somewhere to spend Christmas with?”
“No family. Never knew my dad, and my mom died of an overdose when I was little. My grandpop raised me, but he died, too, when I was fourteen. I was in foster care until I graduated from high school and enlisted.”
Oh, poor man. As crazy as her family made her, at least she knew they loved her and would be there if she needed them. She would see them on Christmas Eve. They would have a delicious dinner, maybe play games. Sometimes they attended church services in town.
“You should have a great holiday here in Hope’s Crossing,” she said, trying for cheerfulness even when sadness seemed to seep through her. “On Christmas Eve just after dusk there’s a candlelit ski down the mountainside up at the resort. Everybody in town joins in to ski or just to watch the procession. It’s really beautiful.”
“That sounds nice. I would offer to join in, except I can just picture me skiing into the person in front of me and starting a domino effect down the whole mountainside, candles tumbling everywhere.”
She laughed at the picture he painted. The sound made her horse sidestep a little but she brought it back.
“Do that again.”
“What? Lose control of my horse?”
“That laugh,” Trey said. “You remind me a lot of…a
girl I used to know.”
“Somebody you cared about,” she guessed.
He gazed at the frozen spill of water. “We were sup-
posed to be getting married this month. This week, actually.”
She stared at him, shocked, even as a rush of sympathy surged through her. She didn’t know what to say, which was stupid since she knew exactly how it felt to go through months of planning to hitch her life to someone and then to have to watch all her expectations implode.
“You remind me a lot of her. Not just your laugh, but other things. She has the same color eyes and her hair was a lot like yours, except shorter. Even her name is similar. Jenna, instead of Genevieve.”
“Jenna what?”
“Jenna Baldwin. She was a schoolteacher at an elementary school near the base where I had basic training. We met at a church service and hit it off right away. She was about the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.”
Though he smiled as he spoke, she sensed his light expression hid much deeper emotions.
“Since you’re here and Jenna isn’t, I guess that means no wedding bells.”
“Yeah. We broke things off…after.”
“After what?”
His mouth tightened. “After I was injured.”
She frowned, shocked even though she had half ex-
pected the answer. First he had lost so much physically and then emotionally. It seemed the height of unfairness. How could any woman walk away from this kind, friendly young man so callously?
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as a cold wind slithered through the trees, rippling the boughs.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“Well, I hope this Jenna and I are nothing alike, other than our laughs and our similar names,” she said tartly.
He looked startled. “Why would you say that?”
For some reason, she was strangely aware of Dylan, who waited nearby on his horse, the reins loosely clasped in his hand, for everybody else to mount up and start down the mountainside.
Though he didn’t appear to be paying attention to their conversation, something told her he was listening. “I hope I wouldn’t have destroyed any chance for a future with someone I care about because of something out of his control.”
She looked up and met Dylan’s gaze. Something glittery and bright sparked in his gaze, but he quickly bent down to say something to his horse, though he didn’t move away.
He probably hadn’t heard them anyway. And what would it matter if he had?
“Take me, for instance,” she went on. “I’m a pretty shallow girl. I’ve never denied it. I can’t say I’m proud of that fact, but I’m not afraid to face reality. I like nice clothes. I love having a facial. I’m careful with my hair and makeup. I like to look good and I work hard to make sure I do.”
“And you look real nice.”
She made a face. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but thank you. I just wanted to make the point that as superficial as I might be about some things, I would hope that if I loved a man, I would be more concerned about his character and about the way he treats me than about what the world might see as a few physical imperfections.”
The words seemed to spill out from somewhere deep inside her—she wasn’t sure where—but as she spoke them, the truth seemed to pound hard against her heart.
Had she changed so very much in such a short time or had that conviction always lived inside her?
What she said to Trey was truth, as well. She had always considered herself superficial. She’d dated Sawyer originally because he was beautiful and because her friends told her they made a perfect couple.
Because all seemed so shiny and bright on the surface, she had overlooked many glaring flaws just beneath it. He was childish when he didn’t get his way; he could be petty to anyone who crossed him; he liked to make cutting remarks about just about everyone, even their so-called friends.
She had been so focused on the perfect fairy-tale romance that she had ignored all the signs. As she sat atop a shifting horse while a cold wind knuckled its way under her coat, she wondered, not for the first time, if she would have been able to go through with the wedding, even if she hadn’t found out that Sawyer had fathered a child with Sage McKnight.
Perhaps she had only seized on the first major excuse that came along not to marry him. Maybe she finally had reason to fix what her heart had been telling her all along was a mistake.
“For the record, she didn’t dump me.”
It took a moment for Trey’s words to pierce her distraction. “She didn’t?” She frowned. “Wait a minute. You dumped her?”
“Let’s just say I spared her the trouble.” He offered a lopsided smile that held no humor. “I knew it was only a matter of time before Jenna figured out she deserved better than a lifetime stuck with a guy who couldn’t even walk her down the aisle.”
“You hit first.” It was Mr. Fuzzy all over again, crouching under the bed and spitting and clawing at anybody who came close. “You didn’t want to give her the chance to be the one to break things off.”
She wanted to yell at him and ask what the hell was wrong with him. How could he be so selfish that he would push away somebody who cared about him?
Christmas In Snowflake Canyon Page 17
