Sleigh Bells in the Snow(120)

The cabdriver leaned on his horn.

“I’d better be going—” Kayla turned and walked back down the path. As she slid into the cab she felt as if someone had taken one of the boulders from the top of the mountain and pushed it onto her chest.

She sat, flattened by misery and something heavier that she didn’t recognize.

The car moved silently along the snowy track toward the road, and Kayla stared at the lake, her vision blurring. She blinked a few times, remembering the first day she’d arrived here.

“Home for the holidays?” The taxi driver glanced in his mirror and she shook her head.

“I was working. Home is New York.”

Her life was in New York.

She’d come here to escape Christmas, and Christmas was over, so why didn’t she feel more excited about going back?

Trying to pull herself together, she reached for her phone and tried to check her emails, but the signal was so patchy it was impossible to work. Or maybe it was her concentration that was patchy. All she knew was that her head throbbed and she still had preparation to do for her meeting. The meeting with the partners to discuss her promotion.

She should have been buzzing with excitement.

Instead she kept thinking of Alice’s face in the window. Of Walter hugging her. Of Maple licking her toes as she’d stepped out of the shower.

Of Jackson.

Feeling tears burn her throat, she reached into her bag for tissues, and her fingers closed over the envelope she’d forgotten. Her Christmas gift. Numb, she ripped it open and read the card. The message inside was printed, a generic festive greeting that would have been sent to all her father’s clients.

She waited for the thud of disappointment, but it didn’t come.

Somewhere along the way she’d given up expecting anything different from her family. Given up wanting something they couldn’t deliver.

They weren’t close, and nothing she did was going to change that.

Stuffing the envelope back into her bag, her fingers scraped against something rough, and she found the pinecone Jackson had given her the night he’d taken her on the sled ride through the moonlit forest.

And suddenly she realized why she wasn’t more excited about going back to New York.

She didn’t feel as if she was going home.

She felt as if she was leaving home.

Somehow, over the past week, she’d fallen in love with Snow Crystal. And not just Snow Crystal, but with the whole O’Neil family.

And Jackson.

Oh, God, she was in love with Jackson.

Crazily, madly in love with Jackson.

She leaned her head back against the seat.

No, no, no. How had she let it happen?

This was what she’d avoided.

“Stop the car!”

“What?”

“Stop the car—just for a minute—”

She gripped the pinecone, her brain spinning.

What the hell was she doing?

Her life was in front of her, and she only ever looked ahead, didn’t she?

She should do the sensible thing and return to New York and her promotion. She should go back to living behind the walls she’d built and keeping herself safe. She’d direct the account, but someone else would do the real work. Someone else would be the one spending time at Snow Crystal with Walter, Alice and Elizabeth.

Someone else would work with Jackson.

And eventually he’d meet someone.

“Lady—”

“Just a minute...” She pressed her fingers to her forehead, feeling as if she were being torn in two directions, like the rope in a tug-of-war.

Jackson was right, she thought. She was scared.

Most of her life, decisions had been driven by fear. She didn’t form close relationships because she was scared of losing. She was good at building walls, but hopeless at opening doors. Jackson had smashed down those walls, pushed his way through the door she’d never opened and found the person she’d hidden away all those years before.

He knew her better than she knew herself.

She thought about their walk through the forest, about skiing together, about the nights lying in his arms on the shelf while they talked about things she’d never talked about before.

The pinecone lay in her palm and she looked down at it, remembering the night he’d given it to her. The kiss she knew she’d never forget.

And then she thought about the life waiting for her in New York. Promotion. Security. She’d have to be crazy to throw that away, wouldn’t she?

The taxi driver glanced in his mirror. “Lady, you need to make up your mind.”

Why was she hesitating?

There was only one decision she could possibly make.

* * *

JACKSON STOPPED THE snowmobile and examined the damage to the trail.

Trudging back to the snowmobile, he removed the sticks he’d brought up with him and marked the area.