Snowed in at Silver Resort: Snowed in for Christmas Clean Romance by Stephanie Fowers

Author:Stephanie Fowers [Fowers, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Jag glanced back at Hope before throwing more wood onto the fire. Her back stiffened. His eyes were worried like he was afraid he’d hurt her irreparably.

I’m not that fragile!

It didn’t help that Hope was almost completely dependent on him or she’d try to prove her point, which she’d tried to do earlier when she’d thought she’d scoot all the way into the entertainment room to meet him for his big Christmas Eve surprise that night.

True to form, Jag had caught her halfway there, likely because she’d taken so long to come. He wheeled her the rest of the way. The pool glittered behind the soft couch while he did his best to put her at ease, making sure she was warm enough, comfortable enough, relaxed enough.

Her heart started to ache for him.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “This was just a little thing I used to do with my family.” The sinewy veins tightened over his muscular forearms as he worked on building the fire. “My mother was the heart of the home, and once she was gone, my dad and I just spent Christmas Eve watching NFL.” He glanced back at her again.

She almost felt guilty for being so sullen when she saw that concerned look again.

Maybe she was the one pouting? Still, why was Jag so hard on himself? His story about his addiction tore at her soul. Sure, she couldn’t remember much from that night, but now she was almost certain that whatever memories were hiding in her mind would vindicate him. He was clearly the victim of the system there, and he didn’t even see it. Perhaps his overactive conscience said something about the character that he used to have before he’d lost his men in that ambush.

One bad call while he was on duty and he was changed forever. Yeah, he was right. It didn’t seem fair, but just not for the reasons he’d stated. He had survivor’s guilt, PTSD, and had tried to self-medicate with drugs because he hadn’t trusted anyone to help him, probably didn’t think he was worth it, knowing him. How long had he been trying to strike out on his own?

“I guess I stopped celebrating when it was just me and my dad. After my mother passed away, we just kind of did away with all the fancy stuff…”

He’d been doing this since he was five.

She took a deep breath and tried to play along with this tragic farce of him setting up a Christmas Eve tradition that he barely remembered. “NFL is fun,” she said. “I’d watch a game with you.”

A brief smile flashed across his face. “Yeah, that would’ve been nice.”

Thoughts of throwing her feet over Jag’s lap and cheering for the Cornhuskers rushed through her mind like it was almost real. It would’ve been idyllic. New resentment washed over her at the lost future, and she decided to exert her independence again. She inched over in her roller chair and picked up a piece of log to throw in.

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