A Cold Creek Holiday by Raeanne Thayne

Author:Raeanne Thayne [Thayne, Raeanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Contemporary, Romance
ISBN: 9781426844645
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2009-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

This had all been a terrible mistake.

Not just the day spent with Nate, though she had a sinking feeling she would have an even more difficult time extricating herself from his and the girls' world after today.

But coming to Idaho in the first place had been a foolish, rather pathetic attempt to forge a connection that didn't exist.

Coming here, meeting the Daltons, had seemed like such a good idea back in Virginia, wrapped in the familiar safety of home and still reeling from grief and shock after her mother's death. She had no one else, and this fragile connection had seemed the only thing she had to hang on to.

Mostly she had been curious about them. What kind of men were the Dalton brothers? Were they happy? Healthy? Did they treat their families kindly?

She never expected everything to become so tangled.

The truth was, just as she had told Nate, she was an outsider here and nothing would change that. And hadn't she spent enough time feeling like an outsider, even in her own family?

Her mother and father loved her. She had never doubted that. But they preferred to show that love from a distance, in between Junior League meetings and rounds of golf and social engagements.

Coming here changed nothing, except maybe to reinforce how alone she was.

"Don't worry."

She blinked at Nate across the width of his SUV. "Sorry?"

"That frown of concentration. You look like you're scared to death I'm going to spin out and drive into a ditch. Relax. We're okay. The roads aren't slick. Besides, I've been driving in snow since I was fourteen."

"Except the years when you were driving in sand."

He smiled. "True enough."

She looked out the window and now that she wasn't lost in thought, she realized snow whirled around the vehicle and a few inches had piled onto the road while they had been shopping and having lunch.

"I'm not worried," she said, forcing a smile.

"Lie."

Not about the snow. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you have a built-in polygraph unit in here."

"Don't need one. I can tell these things."

As she couldn't tell him the real reason for her frown, that she was regretting ever stepping foot in Pine Gulch, she decided to let him believe what he wanted. "All right. Distract me from the snow. Tell me what it was like to grow up in Idaho and why you're not thrilled to be back."

That last had been a shot in the dark, but the sudden tightness around his mouth confirmed her hunch.

He shrugged. "I couldn't wait to leave. I enlisted in the army the moment I was old enough for them to take me and I haven't looked back."

"Why?"

"Lots of reasons," he said, then added somewhat reluctantly, "most of them ugly."

She said nothing, waiting for him to tell her if he wanted. If he didn't, she respected his privacy enough not to pry. Heaven knows, she had enough secrets of her own.

For a long moment, the only sound in the vehicle was the swish of the wipers beating back the flakes and the tires whirring on the road.

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