Snowy Mountain Nights (8 page)

This shivering and helpless version of Marceline scared Reyna. If she, the strongest of them, could be brought so low by a relationship, then what chance did the rest of them stand? She saw the same worry in Bridget's and Louisa's faces.

“Don't worry, honey,” Reyna murmured. “We'll take care of you. You don't have to be strong tonight. We'll be your strength.” She poured more hot water over Marceline's back.

Bridget gathered a robe for Marceline while Louisa left the bathroom. Reyna soon heard the sounds of the kettle in the kitchen, the dim flare of the gas stove.

“Let's get you in bed,” Bridget said, holding up the robe.

They dried off an unprotesting Marceline and guided her from the tub and under the covers. Louisa brought hot tea spiked with rum for all of them and sat on the edge of the bed.

The women stayed with Marceline deep into the night, speaking softly of trivial things while the specter of her breakdown and grief surrounded them all. Although she knew what she was afraid of, and knew that Louisa and Bridget were scared of the same thing, Reyna didn't know how to say it. Or even if she should. The selfishness of her thoughts, however, kept her mouth shut.

The three women sat around their friend as if they were at a wake, keeping vigil over her sunken spirits. They drank their tea and stroked Marceline's back, distracted each other with nonsense until they all eventually fell asleep.

Reyna jerked awake sometime later, an abrupt motion that slammed her head into the headboard. She groaned silently, her mouth tasting of stale tea and sadness. She had fallen asleep on the bed with the other women. The queen-size bed was barely big enough for their twisted bodies—Marceline spread out under the covers, Bridget in a fetal position at the bottom of the bed, Louisa next to Marceline with her arms around her waist.

Only Reyna was still wearing her day clothes, the two layers of thermal shirts, pants and thick socks. It was late. Nearly midnight, according to the clock peeking from behind Louisa's shoulder.

Reyna crept from the bed and to her own room. There, in the privacy of her empty bedroom, she sat in the dark and allowed the sadness to engulf her. Seeing Marceline like that brought painful memories of her own divorce rushing back. As she'd told Garrison earlier that day, she hadn't been destroyed by the divorce, but it had deeply shaken her foundations.

She wondered now, though, how close she had been to losing herself.

Over the past few months, she had watched Marceline shrivel in confidence, question her life and shut herself off from the rest of the world, as if that would somehow help deal with what happened with her husband. The shutting off was understandable. Reyna had done it herself. No man had gotten close to her in the years since her divorce. But to take withdrawal and pain as far as Marceline had? Reyna shuddered.

No. She would not be that. She would
not
.

Chapter 7

A
knock on his cabin door pulled Garrison from a sound sleep.

He rolled over and squinted at his watch on the bedside table. Almost two in the morning. He blinked again at the time. Who the hell...? He threw aside the heavy blankets and rose from the bed, hissing when the relatively cool air washed over his bare chest and stomach.

“Who is it?”

The voice on the other side of the thick wood shocked him into quickly opening the door. A blast of cold chilled his skin, and he shivered, although he wasn't sure if the shiver was from the cold or because Reyna stood in his doorway at a very suggestive time of the night.

“Good morning,” he said with a hint of irony. But his heart began a thick, heavy beat in his chest.

Her gaze flickered over his bare skin with surprise, lingering on his stomach, then on the pajamas hitched low on his waist before coming back to his face. “Can I come in?”

He pulled the door open wider. “Please.”

Reyna looked tired. The corners of her mouth drooped with sadness, and her shoulders hung low. Dark semicircles smudged beneath her eyes. As she walked in, she scanned the cabin's main room, the fire he'd allowed to blaze while he slept, the files he'd left in a neat pile on the wooden coffee table. He'd kept the old-fashioned log cabin clean enough, just as efficiently tidy as his own apartment. But he'd made himself at home, setting up his iPod and mini speakers so he could play the music he liked without the restriction of earphones.

“It's hot in here,” Reyna said. Her voice was soft, much lower than he had been used to hearing it.

“I like it hot.”

“No kidding.” She took off her jacket and gloves and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. Her eyes dropped again to his bare chest before she turned away.

Her gaze on him was like a warm touch on a cold day. Distracting and infinitely welcome. He excused himself to get a sweater from the bedroom, quickly pulling it on before joining her again. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“So formal.” She raised an eyebrow, though it was only a shadow of her normal attitude. “Maybe a glass of lemonade. It feels like a Georgia summer in here.”

“I was going for more of a Florida winter.” He grabbed a pitcher of iced cider from the kitchen. It was the same one they served at the resort. Once he'd tasted it that first day, he couldn't get enough. He'd asked the attendant to make him a batch to last him the entire weekend. As he poured a glass for Reyna, he thought it could very well be a metaphor for how he felt about the woman herself: one taste, and he wanted more.

When he returned to the living room, she'd already made herself comfortable. She added a fresh log and stoked the fire with a poker, her butt tilted up in the air. He paused to appreciate the view.

“You don't have to do that,” he said. “I know it's a bit warm for you.”

“Warm isn't necessarily a bad thing.” She smiled briefly over her shoulder before continuing with the fire. “You know, this is the cabin we usually get every year. It's got the biggest master bedroom and best view of the sunrise.”

He sat on the thick rug in front of the fire and put Reyna's cider on the hardwood floor near him. “My secretary booked it for me, probably months ago.”

Garrison leaned back against the couch and admired the play of firelight over her serious face, the length of her throat, the curl of her fingers around the iron poker. Reyna was truly, truly beautiful. Since he saw her on the train, it had taken an act of will to control his reactions to her, both physical and emotional.

He'd faltered the few times when he kissed her—and she kissed him back—but here, in the isolation of his cabin, knowing that she had come to him, he released his control and simply enjoyed the madness that she evoked in him. His body hummed with his attraction for her. He imagined he could smell the faintly sweet lotion she'd used on her skin, the warm and feminine essence of her.

“You're a lucky man. This place holds a lot of great memories for me.” She picked up her cider and sat next to him with her legs curled beneath her. “Thank you for this.” She lifted her cup.

“My pleasure.”

He waited for her to speak, simply enjoying the vision of her in his cabin, sitting quietly in front of the fire and watching the flames while taking occasional sips of her drink. “It tastes good cold,” she finally said.

“Yes, it does.” Garrison nodded in agreement. But he was sure she hadn't come over to his cabin in the middle of the night to talk about the flavor of his cider. He opened the conversational door. “How is Marceline?”

“She's asleep now.” Reyna glanced briefly toward the door, as if she could see through it to where her friend lay. “But in the morning, who knows how she will feel?” She fell quiet again, her face pensive. “Why is it that women always seem to be the ones to lose the most in a divorce?”

“I think that's just a perception. Men lose, too. Most women just never see how much.”

She made a noise of disbelief, a soft sound that made him want to pull her into his arms and comfort her. “I had been perfectly happy in my marriage. I thought my husband was, too. Nine years.” Her fox eyes blinked slowly as she looked somewhere he could not see. “Ian and I dated in high school. We planned forever together. We were happy. Then I found out he was cheating on me with some of the women he met at work.”

At work.
Garrison knew well enough what that meant. In the entertainment business, the lines between work and play were often blurred. He heard it enough from his movie-and TV-star clients. He saw it himself at their wrap parties and closed sets. Many costars ended up sleeping together. Some of those relationships ended in marriage, while others merely ended when it was time for the next project and the next costar.

“The cheating was terrible,” Reyna continued. “But I thought we could move past it if Ian agreed never to do it again. But he didn't think he did anything wrong. He was beautiful, and the women on set were beautiful, too, he told me. Of course it was natural they would end up together. I couldn't deal with that. When I demanded fidelity, he demanded a divorce.”

Her tortured gaze fastened on Garrison's face. “Why is it so damn hard for men to keep their pants zipped? No place in our vows did it say
I'll be faithful until somebody better-looking comes along
.” She drew a heavy sigh and shook her head. “I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm talking about this with you.”

Garrison hoped it was because she was starting to trust him. Her story was a familiar one, but an ache grew in his chest at the thought of her being hurt. The urge rose in him to break every bone in Ian Barbieri's pretty face. “Is that what happened to Marceline? Her husband cheated on her?”

“She won't tell any of us what happened. That's part of why it's so hard for me. One minute she was strong, the next she was broken down into a million pieces.” She gripped her cup between tense hands. “It's not a very fair world, is it?”

“It isn't. I agree.” He chose his words very carefully, aware that she was still forming her new impression of him. “I take any promise I make seriously. But in my business, I meet a lot of men and women who don't.”

Reyna relaxed her grip on the cup then put it at her side. “Truthfully, if it wasn't for my parents, who've been together since before I was born, I wouldn't think that it was possible to have a happily-ever-after ending.” She gave a tiny shrug, a helpless gesture so at odds with her personality that it pressed an unexpected ache in Garrison's chest. “I think they look at me with disappointment and wonder why I never made it work with my ex.”

“I doubt that.”

“I don't.” She smiled, although the expression did not reach her eyes. “Mama and Daddy think it should be easy for me to find a love as perfect as theirs, but not everybody gets to have that. Love doesn't find its way to everyone's home.”

She sounded resigned and sad. Never mind that she only echoed what Garrison felt about love and relationships in general. But to hear Reyna say the words sounded wrong on a visceral level. And yet he didn't know how to take that particular ache from her heart.

Garrison opened his mouth to give her some platitude about love and forever, but couldn't make himself say anything so empty. Instead, he allowed his attentions to be distracted by a hint of a design on her lower arm, a curled tendril of dark green. A tattoo.

“What's that on your arm?” he asked.

Reyna looked almost grateful for the subject change. With a pained smile, she rolled her sleeve down, completely obscuring the beginnings of what Garrison had seen.

“Ivy leaves,” she said.

“Can I see?”

Reluctantly, she bared her arm again. A black ivy leaf with tender vines dipped from the scrunched-up sleeve of her sweater. More of it disappeared above her inner elbow. It was like a layer of fine black lace on her caramel skin.

“It's beautiful,” he said. “Can I see it all?”

She flashed him a more genuine smile. A thawing. “We don't know each other well enough for that yet.”

He fought a full-on grin when he realized what she said.
Yet.
“The evening is still young. And I can keep my fire going all night long just for you.”

“Do you ever stop?”

“Only if you want me to.” This time he did smile. And he could feel her responding to him, pulling herself from whatever fever she had been suffering through since her friend went missing. He doubted that she even knew why she had come to his cabin. She seemed content to simply sit by the fire and sip her drink. Except she kept shoving at the sleeves of her sweater, obviously getting overheated.

“You can take that off if you like,” he said. “I assume you're wearing something else underneath. I know it's warm in here.”

“Thanks. I think I will take you up on that.” Reyna tugged off her sweater, leaving her form clad in a pale blue long-sleeved shirt. She sighed and tossed the sweater behind her. “Why do you keep it so hot?”

“I like it hot.” Garrison unabashedly stared at her newly revealed skin, the seductively angled clavicles, her slender arms. “I grew up in Tampa, where the weather is consistently warm most of the year. Even though I've been in New York since college, I never got used to the cold.” He shrugged without apology. “I keep my apartment warm year-round.”

“I'm sure that only encourages all the women you entertain to take off their clothes around you.”

“All the women?”
Is that what she thought he was about? “Why would you say that?”

She laughed, curling a finger around her necklace and moving the charm—a star?—back and forth across the chain. “Are you fishing for compliments, counselor?”

“Not at all.” Garrison dipped his eyes below the slow and seductive motion of her finger at her throat. Her skin was luminous in the firelight. “I am simply curious what you think of me.”

A touch of color moved under her cheeks. “I think you know very well what I see.” She tilted up her chin, facing him head-on with her forest-dark eyes. “You're an attractive man. There's an undeniable masculinity about you that I imagine women find hard to resist.”

“Do
you
find me hard to resist?” He raised an eyebrow, teasing. Assuming she wouldn't play the game.

“I do.”

Her reply stunned him into silence. For the first time, he didn't have a ready answer. This was what he wanted, but he had not really expected to get it. Garrison cleared his throat. “Is that why you're in my cabin at this time of night?”

She blushed again but did not back down. “You knew it was me at your door. Is that why you answered without a shirt?”

He smiled, warming to their game. “You know answering a question with a question won't lead me astray from my original point, don't you?”

“I've heard that you're relentless. In your work.”

“In play, as well.”

She shook her head, a spasm of a smile moving over her mouth. “I don't think I'm in your league.”

“You're very wrong about that.”

“So...” Reyna drawled out the beginning to an abrupt conversation change, making no attempt at subtlety. “What made you decide to become a lawyer?” Their game was over then.

He allowed her to retreat. “My mother,” Garrison said. “She raised me on her own with very few resources. I wanted to thank her properly for all the sacrifices she made for me over the years. I wanted to be able to give her the things she never had. Short of becoming a crime boss, being a lawyer seemed one of the easier ways to provide for her and for myself.”

Her eyes widened as he spoke. He could tell that he had surprised her.

“I would've never thought you came from a single-parent home.”

He shrugged. “It's nice to know you thought of where I came from.”

“Conversation with you never goes where I assume it will,” Reyna said.

“That's good. I am a lawyer, but I like to think I still managed to escape being boring.”

“You're never that.” She smiled again. But he could sense the discomfort in her. A restlessness that had not been fully eased by their small talk. “I did think you were boring before, but not now.”

“What about you, Ms. Allen?” He teased her with her last name. “What made you decide to become a tattoo artist?”

Her wry laughter filled the cabin. “Desperation.”

“Really?” He didn't hide his surprise. “You don't strike me as the desperate type.”

“After the divorce, that was the only job I could find. It was either take that position or risk being homeless.” She gave him an arch look. “I've never tried being without a place to lay my head, but I hear it sucks.”

“I don't think that lifestyle suits anyone.”

“True enough.” Reyna toyed with the handle of her mug, her slender fingers hypnotically stroking the white ceramic. “I've been working at the studio for about five years now.” Garrison watched her fingers, their slow and seductive motion leading his thoughts astray. He wondered how they would feel against his skin, or tangled with his as he sank between her thighs and she sighed his name.