She’d experienced nothing but heartache at the caprice of love.
And with that firmly in mind Casey wrapped her hand around the handle of her suitcase and turned back to the inn with a certain grim determination. She ploughed through the growing mounds of snow and marched up the steps, out of the snow, onto the cover of the porch.
Something wet and cold brushed the hand she had her car keys in. Casey dropped the keys and gave a little shriek of surprise, and then looked down to see Harper had thrust a wet snout into her hand.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked the dog.
A deep voice, as sensual as the snow-filled night, came out of a darkened corner of the porch.
“Keeping me company.”
Snowflakes
and
Silver Linings
Cara Colter
CARA COLTER lives in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the “Love and Laughter” category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website: www.cara-colter.com.
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With thanks to Shirley and Rebecca
I am in awe of your creative genius,
amazing discipline, and unflagging professionalism.
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHRISTMAS.
Turner Kennedy was a man who took pride in his ability not just to cope with fear, but to shape it into a different force entirely.
He had jumped from airplanes at 8,200 meters into pitch blackness and an unknown welcome.
He had raised all kinds of havoc “outside the fence” in hostile territory.
He had experienced nature’s mercurial and killing moods without the benefit of shelter, sweltering heat to excruciating cold, sometimes in the same twenty-four-hour period.
He had been hungry. And lost. He had been pushed to the outer perimeters of his physical limits, and then a mile or two beyond.
He had been the hunted, stranded in the shadows of deeply inhospitable places, listening for footfalls, smelling the wind, squinting against impenetrable darkness.
It was not that he had not been afraid, but rather that he had learned he had a rare ability to transform fear into adrenaline, power, energy.
And so the irony of his current situation was not lost on him. After a long period away, he was back in the United States, a country where safety was a given, taken for granted.
And he was afraid.
He was afraid of three things.
He was afraid of sleeping. In his dreams, he was haunted by all the things he had refused to back down from, haunted by a failure that more fear, on his part, might have changed a devastating outcome.
And maybe it was exhaustion caused by that first fear that had led to the second one.
Turner Kennedy was afraid of Christmas.
Maybe not the coming Christmas, specifically, but of his memories of ones gone by. Those memories were lingering at the edges of his mind, waiting to leap to the forefront. Today, it had been seeing an angel Christmas tree topper in a store window.
Without warning, Turner had been transported back more than two decades.
They came down the stairs, early morning light just beginning to touch the decorated living room. The tree was eight feet tall. His mother had done it all in white that year. White lights, white Christmas ornaments, a white angel on top of the tree. The house smelled of the cookies she had baked for Santa while he and his brothers had spent Christmas Eve on the backyard skating rink their dad had made for them.
It had been past ten when his mother had finally insisted they come in. Even then, Turner hadn’t wanted to. He could not get enough of the rink, of the feeling of the ice beneath his blades, of the cold on his cheeks, the wind in his hair, the power in his legs as he propelled himself forward. The whole world had seemed infused with magic....
But now the magic seemed compromised. Though the cookies were gone, nothing but crumbs remaining, Santa hadn’t been there. The gifts from