Cara Colter - Snowflakes and Silver Linings

It was better this way. He had nothing to bring to their lives. Or anyone’s.

There were lots of places a single guy could go at Christmas to avoid the festivities. Palm trees had a way of dispelling that Christmassy feeling for him. A tropical resort would have the added benefit of providing all kinds of distractions. The kind of distractions that wore bikinis.

Turner was aware he wasn’t getting enough sleep. Not even the thought of women in bikinis could shake the feeling of ennui, mixed with the restless, seething energy that wouldn’t let him drift off.

Just then his cell phone rang.

He must have another mission in him, after all, because he found himself hoping it was the commanding officer of his top secret Tango Force unit. That Christmas would be superseded by some world crisis.

But it wasn’t his CO’s number on display. Turner answered the call. Listened. And was shocked to hear himself say, “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

It had been a voice from that thing he most wanted to avoid: the past. A time he remembered with the helpless yearning of a man who could not return to simpler things, simpler times, his simpler self.

But Cole Watson, his best friend from before Turner had ever known he had a gift for dealing with fear, had been trying to track him down for weeks. Said he needed him.

And Turner came from a world where one rule rose above all the others: when a buddy needed you, you were there.

Okay. So it wasn’t a life-or-death request. No one’s survival was on the line.

Cole was putting his life back in order. He’d lost nearly everything that mattered to him. He said he’d been given a second chance, and he planned to take it.

Was that the irresistible pull, then—second chances? It certainly wasn’t a place in the backwoods of New England called the Gingerbread Inn, though the fact that Turner had never been there was a plus, as it held no memories.

No, Cole had casually mentioned that the inn sat on the shores of Barrow’s Lake, where a man could put on his skates and go just about forever. That sounded like as good a way as any to spend the holiday season.

As good a way as any to deal with the energy that sang along Turner’s nerve endings, begging for release. It sounded nearly irresistible.

CHAPTER ONE

CASEY CARAVETTA SIGHED with contentment.

“Being at the Gingerbread Inn with the two of you feels like being home,” she said. She didn’t add, “in a way that home had never felt like.”

“Even with it being in such a state?” Emily asked, sliding a disapproving look around the front parlor. It was true the furniture was shabby, the paint was peeling, the rugs had seen better days.

“Don’t you worry,” Andrea said, “You are not going to recognize this place by the time I’m done with it. On Christmas Eve, Emily, for your vow renewal, the Gingerbread Inn will be transformed into the most amazing winter wonderland.”

“I am so humbled that all the people Cole and I are closest to are going to give up their Christmas plans to be with us,” Emily said.

“Nobody is giving up their Christmas plans,” Andrea answered. “We’re spending a magical Christmas Eve together, and then scattering to the four corners, to be wherever we need to be for Christmas.”

Except Casey, who didn’t need to be anywhere. And the inn, despite its slightly gone-to-seed appearance, would be the perfect place to spend a quiet day by herself.

The thought might have been depressing except for the gift Casey had decided to give herself....

Outside, snow had begun to fall, but the parlor’s stone hearth held a fire that crackled merrily and threw a steady stream of glowing red sparks up the chimney.

Until she’d received Andrea’s plea to take a little extra time off work and come to the Gingerbread Inn to make magic happen for Emily and Cole’s renewal of vows, Casey had been looking forward to Christmas with about the same amount of anticipation she might have for a root canal.

In other words, the same as always.

Except, of course, for the gift, her secret plan to get her life back on track.

Now, here with her friends, cuddling her secret to her, Casey actually felt as if she might start humming, “It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas....”

“That sense of home doesn’t have a thing to do with looks,” she said, wanting to share what she was feeling with her friends.

Belonging.

She had never felt it with her own family. At school, she had been the outsider, the too-smart geek. Her work was engrossing, but largely solitary.

But being here with Emily and Andrea, the Gingerbread Girls all together again, Casey felt hope.

Even though, sadly, Melissa was not here. Why did it take a tragedy for people to understand that friendship was a gift to be cherished, and not taken for granted?

Casey and Andrea had spent two days together here early in December, Casey seeking the refuge of friendship to try and outrun her latest family fiasco. Really, any given year she might as well block out all of December on her calendar and write “crisis” on it.

But before her meeting with Andrea it had been far too long since she and her friends, who’d always called themselves “the Gingerbread Girls,” had been together.

After seeing Andrea, Casey had made her decision.

Now, she was loving the fact that they were as comfortable as if they had been together only yesterday. Sentences began with “Remember when...” and were followed by gales of laughter. The conversation flowed easily as they caught up on the details of one another’s lives.

“Speaking of looks, I can’t believe the way you look,” Emily told Casey for about the hundredth time. “I just can’t get over it.”

“You should be modeling,” Andrea agreed.

“Modeling?” Casey laughed. “I think models are usually a little taller than five foot five.”

“The world’s loss,” Andrea said with a giggle, and took a sip of her wine.

Casey sipped hers, as well. Emily, pregnant, her baby bump barely noticeable beneath her sweater, was glowing with happiness and was sipping sparkling fruit juice instead of wine.

Next year at this time, that could very well be me, Casey mused, and the thought made her giddy.

“How do you get your hair so straight?” Andrea asked. “You didn’t have it like that when I saw you earlier this month. Remember how those locks of yours were the bane of your existence? All those wild curls. No matter what you did, that head of hair refused to be tamed. Remember the time we tried ironing it? With a clothes iron?”

Would her baby have wild curls? Casey hoped not.

“I always loved it,” Emily said. “I was jealous.”

“Of my hair?” she asked, incredulous. She touched it self-consciously. She had a flat iron that was state-of-the-art, a world away from what they had tried that humid summer day.

Still, her curls surrendered to the highest setting with the utmost reluctance, and were held at bay with enough gel to slide a 747 off a runway. And yet as she touched her hair, it felt coiled, ready to spring.

“I thought you were quite exotic, compared to Andrea and me.”

“Really?”

“Why so surprised?”

Maybe it was her second glass of wine that made her admit it. “I always felt like the odd woman out. Here was this wonderful inn, out of an American dream, filled with all these wholesome families, like yours and Andrea’s. And then there was the Caravetta clan. A boisterous Italian family, always yelling and fighting and singing and crying and laughing, and whatever we were doing, we were doing it loudly. Next to you and Andrea, I felt like I was a little too much of everything.”

“But you weren’t like that,” Emily said. “You were always so quiet and contained. If you were too much of anything it was way too smart, Doc. Thinking all the time.”