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Snowed in with the Boss
Jessica Andersen
Table of Contents
Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, JESSICA ANDERSEN is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi!”
“We’ll reach the estate soon,” Griffin Vaughn said to his executive assistant, Sophie LaRue, as their rented SUV thundered down the Colorado highway, headed into the mountains.
He was driving; he preferred to drive himself rather than hire limos because he disliked putting his safety in someone else’s hands, professional or not. Sophie sat in the passenger seat, her entire attention focused on the breathtaking Colorado scenery. The sweeping vista was shadowed by the distant Rocky Mountains, and the entire scene was overhung by an ominous gray winter sky.
At Griffin’s words, she glanced over at him. “I hope so. We need to be done at Lonesome Lake and back down off the mountain before the weather hits.”
In her mid-twenties, with wavy, dark blond hair and light brown eyes almost the same color, Sophie was a knockout, hands down. The cinnamon-colored sweater she wore beneath a stylish wool coat accented her undeniable curves, and her neatly tailored pants managed to be simultaneously professional and sexy. Even a cynical, “been there, done that, got the scars to prove it” businessman like Griffin could appreciate the aesthetics. However, that didn’t change the fact that she was a dozen years younger than his thirty-nine, and she was his employee, both of which meant she was way off-limits, even if he was looking. Which he wasn’t.
Yet he kept feeling the need to fill the silence that stretched between them as the highway unwound beneath the rental’s wheels. The fact that he bothered trying to make small talk, which he wouldn’t have done with Sophie’s middle-aged, über-experienced predecessor, Kathleen, just went to prove what Griffin already knew: he was badly off his game.
He was tired, hungry and irritable. His meeting in New York City had started off bad and had gotten worse the longer he and Sophie stayed, forcing him to pull the plug after only two days of negotiations. He’d decided to return home to San Francisco and see if things went better long-distance, only to have his private jet delayed several hours on the tarmac while air traffic control tried to reroute them around a series of major snowstorms that were blanketing the Midwest.
The frustrations and delays had all added up to Griffin being in an admittedly foul mood by the time they’d finally taken off. That was why, when he’d gotten the voice-mail message that renovations to his Rocky Mountain retreat in the Four Corners region of Colorado had been delayed yet again by another “accident,” he’d ordered his private plane to set down near Kenner County. Griffin had suspected for some time that his contractor, Perry Long, was taking him for a ride, and it was past time to deal with it.
The pilot, Hal Jessup, had warned him that there was some serious weather on the way, but Griffin had been adamant. He might not have sewn up VaughnTec’s acquisition of the HiTek memory module he was jonesing to get his hands on, but he was going to get something done on this trip, damn it. He was going to deal with Perry Long, once and for all. The swindling contractor wasn’t going to know what hit him.
Besides, according to the weather forecast, they had a few more hours before the blizzard hit. That should be plenty of time for him and Sophie to drive out to the estate, get a look at the renovations, and then drive back down into Kenner City, where Sophie had already booked them into a decent B and B. She had also arranged for them to meet with Perry the following day, weather permitting. And it damn well better permit as far as Griffin was concerned. He was done with the contractor and his excuses.
“Looks like someone’s getting a jump on being stranded in the snow,” Sophie said as they rounded a corner and an accident came into view up ahead. Behind a row of cherry-red flares, a battered pickup truck was stuck partway in a ditch off to the side of the road. A police cruiser and tow truck were on-scene, their lights flashing brightly in the gloom. Several men were huddled around the rear of the entrapped vehicle, working on securing a winch to the rear axle.
“Don’t let the weathermen talk you into blizzard-induced hysteria,” Griffin said. “They’re in cahoots with the grocery stores, trying to sell out all the bread, eggs and milk.”
She grinned a little and lifted a shoulder. “I’m a California girl. I’ve never been in a snowstorm before. Until three days ago, I’d never even been on a plane.”
Griffin stifled a wince at the reminder of just how green his new executive assistant was. He’d told the retiring Kathleen to find her own replacement—someone efficient with no social life to speak of, who wouldn’t mind working the crazy-long hours required by his position as head of VaughnTec. He hadn’t bothered reminding Kathleen that his new assistant should be middle-aged and highly experienced, because he’d figured that would’ve been a given.
Yet Kathleen had hired green, gorgeous Sophie LaRue and disappeared on her retirement cruise. Worse, she had either left her cell phone behind, or she was ignoring his calls, in a blatant signal of “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Griffin should know; he was a master with that line. But he’d given up after a while anyway, because what good would it do him now to bark at Kathleen? She’d retired. What happened next was up to