Stranded for Christmas by Noelle Adams

Author:Noelle Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: holiday, christmas, snowed in, friends to lovers
Publisher: Noelle Adams
Published: 2018-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

BETWEEN THE SUN AND Chuck and Ed’s work, the road through the tree farm was passable. Russ parked his SUV in its normal place and then went into the big farmhouse to see what was going on.

Nothing was going on.

No one was around.

Most of the employees had gone home yesterday and hadn’t come in today since everything was closed because of the snow. Penny and Olivia had both been stranded overnight and weren’t back yet, and Phil and Rebecca were in Richmond.

Laura was picking up Tommy.

The quiet in the offices on the first floor of the house was unsettling. Disturbing. Russ checked email and straightened up his desk and then just sat in his chair in the silence.

It felt like he’d been gone an eternity, but it had been less than twenty-four hours, and Holiday Acres had been closed for most of it.

No crises had occurred.

No urgent business had come in.

He had a lot of email to sort through since he normally stayed on top of everything that came in throughout the day, so it never piled up this much.

But other than that... nothing.

Everything was normal.

He could sit here for a few more minutes, clear out the easy stuff in his email, and then go home and take a shower and change into clean clothes. He could rest and recover and start again after the weekend.

That was what he should do.

Give himself a break.

Get away for a little while.

Let his heart recover from what had happened to it.

No one needed him here. Laura wasn’t going to want to see him. Not today. The easiest thing for him to do would just be to get out of here.

If he was alone, if he was at home, he wouldn’t have to work so hard at holding it all together.

The idea was so tempting that he speed-read his email, deleting the junk, filing the nonessential stuff into folders, replying to the simple messages, and then leaving the few messages that needed more complicated answers or required work to be done.

Then he turned off the computer and got up.

He could sit here for the rest of the afternoon and suffer for no reason, or he could go home where he could be alone and let down his guard for a while.

No one was going to care if he stayed here or not. Laura would probably prefer him to be elsewhere.

He was going home.

He got his stuff together and left the office, scrawling a note on the front desk in case someone wondered where he was.

He had a phone. If they needed him, they could call him.

He was heading for the front door of the house when someone burst in through it and nearly slammed into him.

He barely caught his balance and hers.

Olivia.

One of Laura’s younger sisters.

She was about Laura’s height and had the same shiny brown hair, but she had blue eyes and didn’t have Laura’s freckles or her no-nonsense intelligence.

Russ had always liked her though. She was pretty and spirited and kindhearted.

“You made it back,” he said as he reached out to hold her shoulders to steady her.

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