A Magical Christmas

“And then they called my mom, and both our parents were hauled up to the school. Mom grounded me for the weekend. As we walked out of the school, she was telling me how I’d embarrassed her and all I heard was your dad asking you what the snow was like.”

“I still remember the look your mom gave my dad. If she could, she would have buried him in a snowdrift. The O’Neils were never her favorite people. She thought Dad was irresponsible.” He stared straight ahead. “I guess a lot of people thought that. Still think that.”

She felt the change in his mood. “He was a good man.”

“He was a lousy businessman. He was trapped in a life he didn’t want, and instead of dealing with it he let a lot of people down. Hurt them.”

“Does your mom ever talk about it?”

“Never. She’s nothing but loyal. She loved him, faults and all.”

“Isn’t that what love really is? Loving someone as they are. If you want someone to be different, how can that be love?” Brenna watched as a bird swooped between the branches, showering snow across the forest floor.

They were alone in this wintery wilderness, wrapped by the cold and the endless white, with only the breathtaking beauty of the forest for company.

“Without Jackson, she would have lost her home. So would Grams and Gramps. Sometimes it’s hard not to let the bad memories overtake the good.” His rough confession, his unusual admission of inner struggle, made Brenna catch her breath.

Why was it that whenever he hurt, she hurt, too?

It was his pain, and yet it felt like hers.

It had been the same after his accident. The same after his father had died.

Whatever he felt, she felt, as if they were connected by an invisible wire that transmitted his emotions straight into her with no filter.

“I always think of your father when I’m skiing in the glades.” She chose her words carefully, hoping to heal not hurt. “We skied here so often. I can still hear his voice telling me to look at the gap between the trees, not the trees themselves.”

“I think of him here, too.”

Breaking her own rule, she put her hand on his arm. “There was so much good. He was fun. Adventurous, and he encouraged you to be adventurous. There wasn’t a single day when he wasn’t proud of you, when he didn’t encourage you. He was a skilled outdoorsman, and he saw those same skills in you. It was your dad who taught me to ski, and he was brilliant.”

“His idea of teaching was to stand at the top of a vertical slope and say ‘follow me.’”

“Exactly. My parents never let me do anything remotely risky. He encouraged you to pursue your dreams.”

“And he pursued his own. A little too enthusiastically.” He drew breath. “I don’t usually talk about this. I guess because you knew him—”

“I loved him,” Brenna said simply, and Tyler turned his head.

His blue eyes fixed on hers, and she caught her breath because what they shared in that moment was intimate and deeply personal.

“And he loved you. He thought you were the coolest girl on the slopes.”

“I envied you so much because you had a dad who really understood your passion. Shared it.” Shaken by the strength of her feelings, she let go of his arm. “I tried to talk to my mother about it. I tried to explain how it felt to surf down soft powdery snow while the sun turns the forest and mountains from snowy-white to burned-orange. I tried to explain how when I’m skiing, all my problems vanish, how I can’t think of anything else but my skis and the mountain, how it clears my head and makes my heart feel free.”

“She didn’t understand?”

“She delivered a lecture on how education would be my ticket out of this place.” She’d never understood that Brenna would have been happy to ski the mountains around Snow Crystal for the rest of her life. That she hadn’t wanted that ticket. “Everything I ever wanted is right here, and she never understood that.”

His gaze was fixed on her face. “What is it you want?”

“The mountains. This life.” Tyler O’Neil.

Careful not to reveal that part, she dipped her head and poked her ski pole in the deep snow. “I guess I’m lucky. Most people don’t get this close to living their dream. But I envied you that day. I imagined you going back and sitting round your kitchen table telling everyone about it. I bet Elizabeth made you hot chocolate.”

“Probably. I’m guessing you didn’t get hot chocolate?”

“I got a lecture on being responsible and how easy it was to sabotage a life by making bad choices.”

He gave her a slow, wicked smile. “And let me guess, I was one of those bad choices she was warning you about.”

Brenna’s heart skipped and bounced like skis on rough ground.

“Only because she never understood that I would have done all those things even if you hadn’t been there.”

“She didn’t approve of our friendship.”

“My mother didn’t approve of anything I did. It wasn’t personal.” She frowned, because sometimes it had felt personal even though she knew it couldn’t be. The O’Neil family had never been anything other than warm and civil to Maura Daniels, so there was nothing to explain the frozen atmosphere except that she resented their lifestyle and their easy relationship with her daughter. “She didn’t like me spending time at your house, and I’ve never understood that.”

Tyler reached out and brushed snow from her shoulder. “She was worried we were a bad influence. Three boys and her baby girl.”

“Are you patronizing me?” Brenna raised an eyebrow. “I did everything you did. And most of the time, I did it better.”

“I guess that’s why she was worried. Did your mother ever know you climbed out through your bedroom window?”

“No. If she’d known, I would have been grounded for a month.”

“If she’d known half the things we did together, she would have grounded you until you were eighteen.” There was laughter in his eyes, and she thought about how many times in her life she’d been ready to kill him for something he’d said or done, only to be cut off at the knees by that smile. All the anger, the irritation, the frustration, would leave her in a rush, leaving only one emotion. The most powerful emotion of all.

Her heart fluttered as if trying to remind her of its existence. Awareness washed over her, warming her skin and stealing her breath. To him, she was a friend, but to her, he was always a man.

She loved his strength and his unapologetic determination to live the life he wanted to live. He broke hearts but not promises, mostly because he never made any. To his friends and family, he was fiercely loyal and protective.

What would it feel like to be kissed by him? For a fleeting moment she wished she were one of those women who flirted and enjoyed his attentions. Maybe their time with him was fleeting, but she was willing to bet they enjoyed every minute.

His eyes held hers for a moment, and then he turned away. “We should go.”

“Yes.” Her voice was croaky, but it didn’t matter because he was already skiing away from her, picking a route through the trees while she stood for a moment hoping that, on this occasion at least, he hadn’t been able to read her mind.

When it came to her feelings, he was uncannily perceptive, which was why she’d learned to hide what she felt.

She followed more slowly. This time she didn’t try to keep up, not only because the trees were closer together as they neared the bottom of the slope, but also because she didn’t trust her legs.

They were shaky. Unstable.

Deciding that thinking about kissing Tyler was a quick way to a serious accident in this terrain, she tried to focus on her skiing. She’d already fallen once. She wasn’t going to do it again.

She reached the lift to find him already waiting for her, and as she removed her skis, her phone chimed.

“Back to reality.”

“You shouldn’t have had that switched on.” He sounded impatient. “Ignore it.”

“I can’t. I’m supposed to be working.” Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she read the text. “I didn’t bother switching it off because there’s no reception in the trees anyway.”

“Who is it?”

“Kayla.” She texted back. “Emergency staff meeting at 7:45 a.m.”

“Emergency?” Tyler dragged off his gloves. “My future sister-in-law has a strange definition of an emergency. For us it’s an avalanche. For Kayla it’s a journalist with a deadline.”

Brenna smiled because it was true. “She has helped transform this place. She has a lot to do with the fact Snow Crystal has a future. And she and Jackson are so cute together. I never thought I’d see him so crazy about a woman.”

Tyler bent to unfasten his boot. “Does it bother you?”

“Why would it bother me?”

“You had dinner with him a few times.” His voice was casual. “You’ve worked together for years. I wondered, that’s all.”

“There’s never been anything between Jackson and me except friendship.” Whereas her feelings for Tyler were something different entirely. Not wanting to dwell on it, she slid her phone back into her pocket and bent to pick up her skis. “We’d better go back before they send out a search party.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“SO THERE’S GOOD NEWS, and there’s bad news.” Kayla paced across the room as she always did when she was thinking. “The good news is that all the snow has brought another flurry of bookings. It’s incredible. I never thought we’d be this busy, this soon.”

“Me, I am always this busy, and right now I should be in the kitchen preparing for lunchtime service.” Impatient to be back in the restaurant, Élise tapped her foot on the floor. “What is the bad news?”

“The extra bookings mean that we’re right at capacity.” Kayla sent Brenna a guilty look. “I’ve had to book Forest Lodge. I’m so sorry. I feel terrible about it, but I had no choice.”

Brenna’s stomach swooped. It hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to stay in Forest Lodge over the winter. Dismay was followed by disappointment and concern about where she’d live in the short-term.

Jackson frowned. “Forest isn’t for rent. Put them in one of the other lodges.”

“The others are booked. And they specifically requested Forest.”

“It’s fine,” Brenna said quickly, but Jackson shook his head.

“Brenna has stayed in that lodge since it was built. Why would they request it? It isn’t on the website.”

“They must have seen it on the resort map and liked the position. They offered full brochure price for it, Jackson. What was I supposed to do? We’re running a business, and they wanted Forest Lodge.” Visibly stressed, Kayla rubbed her fingers over her forehead. “Maybe I made the wrong decision. I should have told them we were full. I’m sorry. Look, I’ll call them back. Tell them I made a mistake.”

“No, you can’t do that!” Brenna told herself it was ridiculous to be hurt when Kayla was doing her job, and doing it well. “You’re right. We’re running a business. Not only that, we’re trying to save a business.”

Kayla gave her a grateful look. “The numbers are looking healthy, but maybe I’m getting carried away. Jackson always says that one day he’s going to find people sleeping in the stable.”

“Well it is Christmas,” Elizabeth murmured, and Brenna forced a smile.

“You did the right thing. Don’t worry. When do I need to be out?”

“They’re arriving Saturday because they wanted the week before Christmas. It’s always quieter on the slopes. Then I’ve booked out the full two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s after that.”

“This coming Saturday?”

“Yes. It doesn’t give us much time to get the lodge ready. They’ve made lots of special requests. Tree, extra logs—” Waving her hand, Kayla recounted a vague list, and Brenna realized that someone else would be spending Christmas in Forest Lodge.

“I’ll work something out.” She spoke firmly, as much to convince herself as Kayla.

“You can have a room in the hotel,” Jackson said, but Kayla shook her head as she checked something on her phone.

“Lissa booked the last room this morning. It’s free tonight, but Brenna doesn’t want to be moving her things around.”

Brenna felt a flash of anxiety. She didn’t have the time to hunt for somewhere new to live with less than two weeks to go until Christmas. “I don’t have many things to move. I’m not a possessions person.”

“You need somewhere you can treat as home, and a soulless hotel room isn’t the answer even if we did have one available, which we don’t.”

Jackson intervened. “Firstly, our hotel rooms aren’t soulless, and secondly you’re babbling.”

Kayla looked flustered. “I have a lot on my mind. I’m sorry, Brenna. I know how much you love Forest Lodge, and it’s conveniently close to the ski lift. You could stay with Jackson and me, but we’re farther away so—wait a minute!” Her face brightened, and she turned to Tyler. “You have four bedrooms, right?”

Tyler had been glowering through the entire exchange. “You know I do.”

“So why doesn’t Brenna stay at Lake House with you? It’s stunning since you finished the renovations, and you’re even closer to the ski lift than Forest Lodge, so the position couldn’t be better.” She clapped her hands. “I’m a genius!”

Jackson frowned. “Kayla, you can’t just—”

“I wish I’d thought of it before, then I could have presented the solution with the problem and saved all the anxiety.” Ignoring Jackson, Kayla beamed and paced the length of the room like a general marshalling troops. “Brenna can stay on at the resort, and we can rent Forest Lodge for top rate. This is all turning out brilliantly. Champagne is called for.”

“At eight-thirty in the morning?” Jackson’s tone was mild, and he was looking at Kayla with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.

Brenna wasn’t amused. She was appalled.

Move in with Tyler?

She couldn’t think of anything worse. “I can’t live with Tyler!” She didn’t dare contemplate his reaction. She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t need to because she knew exactly what he was thinking. Because of Jess, he’d been forced to curtail his wild lifestyle, but now he was on the verge of getting back out there again. The last thing he needed was his childhood friend moving in with him. “That’s not a solution. I’ll rent an apartment. I was always going to have to do that once Snow Crystal started to recover, but there was no reason to do it when the place was half-empty.”

“You won’t be able to rent an apartment before Christmas.” Kayla was still pacing. “And even if you found one in the New Year, it wouldn’t be practical for you to be driving backward and forward. That’s why you started living in the resort in the first place.”

Brenna didn’t know which option was worse—the thought of renting somewhere away from Snow Crystal, or the idea of moving in with Tyler.

“I can stay with my parents as a short-term solution.”

“No, you can’t.” Tyler’s voice held none of its usual humor. “Visiting drives you insane, so living there is not an option. You can live with me. Jess and I have loads of room. It makes sense.” Those blue eyes locked on hers, and everyone else in the room faded into the background. It was just the two of them and her feelings, which were so huge, so out of control, she thought surely he’d see them.

He read her so well, but for some reason he was blind to this one thing.

She should tell him. She should stop avoiding the issue and be honest about how hard it was for her. That’s what he would do.

But she wasn’t going to do that in public, so instead she gave a shake of her head. “It wouldn’t feel right.”

“If it makes you feel better, we can share the cooking.”

“You’ll come off worse from that deal. I’m a terrible cook.”

“You can cook bacon, so we’ll put you in charge of breakfast.” Tyler stretched out his legs, those powerful thighs pushing against the fabric of his ski pants. “Bacon is a perfect way to start the day. And Jess would love having you around. She’ll drive you mad talking about skiing. That will ease the load on me, and we need extra hands to keep the dogs off the sofas.”

“I will fill your fridge,” Élise offered. “That will be my contribution to make up for the inconvenience you must suffer, Brenna.”

Food was going to be the least of her problems.

They were asking her to live with Tyler.

She’d have to watch him dress up and go out with some other woman. Maybe even bring one home. And it wasn’t only Tyler, was it? There was Jess to think about. She was relishing the time alone with her father after all those years apart.

How would she feel about having another person intruding?

It was Christmas. A time for families.

She’d be in the way.

“Perhaps I could stay with Elizabeth.” Desperate, she scrabbled for an alternative. “Until I can work something else out.” She looked at the woman who had been more of a mother to her than her own. “Elizabeth, would it inconvenience you hugely?”

“Stay with Elizabeth?” Kayla’s face fell, and she looked thrown, as if that option hadn’t crossed her mind. “Well, I er—”

Elizabeth stirred. “I’m so sorry, dear, at any other time of course you could, I’d love having you, but I’m expecting hordes of relatives over from England.”

“Relatives?” Jackson raised an eyebrow. “Which relatives?”

“Very distant,” his mother murmured, “second cousins. You’ve never met them. They’re on my mother’s side. British. You know I have relatives you’ve never met.”

“Hordes of them?”

“I don’t exactly know how many,” Elizabeth said vaguely. “I issued an open invitation, which probably wasn’t very sensible now I think about it. They wanted to come to Vermont, and it’s always a little lonely in the house at Christmas, so I suggested they visit. Oh, what a nuisance. Such bad timing. I’m so sorry, Brenna.”

“Lonely?” Tyler looked incredulous. “I would pay money to be lonely around here. The place is teeming with people night and day, and it sounds as if it’s going to get worse if Kayla keeps this up. We can offer many things at Snow Crystal but lonely isn’t on the list. Brenna, you can move in with Jess and me. You’d be doing me a favor. Otherwise, I’m going to turn round one day and discover Kayla has rented my empty rooms to tourists.”

Kayla’s face brightened. “That’s a—”

“Don’t even think about it,” Tyler growled. “Are we about done here? If there’s one guaranteed way of ruining a perfect powder day, it’s filling it with meetings.”

“I’m done! I’m so glad it’s settled.” Kayla threw them all a look of relief. “Now I don’t feel so guilty. Oh, my goodness, is that really the time?” She glanced at her phone in a panic. “I have a press interview scheduled for nine. And, Tyler, one other thing. I have a reporter coming to ski powder with you this morning. Hope that’s okay.”

“It’s one piece of good news after another,” Tyler drawled. “Which publication does he work for? Cartoon Weekly?”

“He’s freelance, and his work is published everywhere from The New York Times to Outside magazine, but this is a piece for a ski blog. They’ve got half a million followers. He’s doing a piece on undiscovered ski resorts and happened to be in the area, so he called me first thing. Fantastic coincidence that you’re free. He’s going to live tweet it.”

Tyler’s expression turned from menacing to stormy. “He’s going to what?”

“Live tweet skiing with you.” Kayla avoided his eye as she typed an email on her phone. “He wants to give his followers a feel for what it’s like to ski with Tyler O’Neil.”

“I hope his followers enjoy the part where he skis off a cliff.” Tyler rose to his feet, and Jackson sighed.

“Sit down, Ty. They guy only has two hours to spare and it will be good publicity.”

Tyler shrugged on his jacket, his powerful frame simmering with suppressed volatility. “I will take your stupid master class, I will help coach the high school team if I have to, but I am not pausing in the middle of a run so that some guy I’ve never met and don’t care about can share the experience of making first tracks in powder with another half a million people I’ve never met and don’t care about.”

Kayla froze. Slowly, she let her hand drop. “I’m sorry. I can see I’ve overstepped.” She sounded contrite. “I thought it was a good idea.”

Jackson smiled. “It was a good idea. Ignore him. He’s been indoors for a full five minutes. That always puts him in a filthy mood.”

Tyler scowled. “If it’s such a great idea, you can do it.”

“I would do it,” Jackson said calmly, “but no one is interested in skiing with me. You’re the one with the crowd-pulling power, although I’ve never been able to understand why, given that you’re such a moody son of a—”

“Jackson!” Elizabeth gave her son a reproving look, and Jackson closed his mouth and shook his head.

“We’re all doing what we can to get publicity for the place, that’s all.”

Sensing that Tyler was about to combust and knowing that if that happened, they wouldn’t see him for the rest of the day, Brenna decided her own problems could wait. “The reporter can’t live tweet it. That isn’t possible.” Everyone turned to look at her and she shrugged, wondering why she was the only one who could see the problem. “If he only has two hours then that restricts where on the mountain he can ski. If he wants powder, then he’ll have to ski the runs above the resort and down into the glades, but he won’t be able to use his phone. There is no reception there. It cuts out constantly.”

Jackson pulled a face. “She’s right. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And if he really wants to get a feel for what it’s like to ski with Tyler O’Neil,” Brenna continued, “then he’ll be skiing fast, hard and probably way out of his comfort zone. That is expert terrain. I’m assuming he’s an expert, but either way, he needs to concentrate or be killed. I suggest instead of live tweeting, which could easily become dead tweeting, he writes a piece afterward about how it felt. Maybe add a few quotes from Tyler.”

Tyler’s eyes gleamed. “Great idea. Here’s a quote. ‘Get the hell off my mountain.’”

Brenna suppressed the desire to laugh and a flash of envy that he was never afraid to speak his mind. “Give him my number, and I’ll give him some quotes on what it’s like to ski powder here.”

Kayla bit her lip. “He thought if the world knew Tyler skied here, it would draw the crowds.”

“I hate crowds.” Tyler’s tone was dangerous, but Jackson laughed.

“I love crowds. Crowds mean business. It’s fine. Tyler will do it. If he doesn’t, I’ll kick his butt.”

Tyler sent him a glance. “Can we live tweet that?”

Now that the crisis was averted, Brenna’s mind drifted back to her own problem. They’d moved on. They were already talking about other things. This didn’t matter to them; it wasn’t significant. But to her it was hugely significant.

Not just because she would no longer be living in Forest Lodge, which she adored, but that they expected her to move in with Tyler.

She didn’t know which part upset her most—the fact that Kayla could have put her in this awkward position when she knew how Brenna felt, or the fact that Tyler clearly wasn’t bothered.

If she needed further evidence of his lack of feeling toward her, she had it now.

He didn’t see the situation as awkward because it wasn’t.

To him, she was a lodger, nothing more.

He wasn’t worried that he might bump into her in her underwear.

Kayla was talking details. “The journalist will be here at 9:30 a.m. Will you do it, Tyler?” She looked anxiously at him, and he sighed.

“Yeah, I’ll do it. But you owe me.”

Kayla beamed, strode across the room and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you, have I told you that lately? You’re going to be a perfect brother-in-law.”

“Going to be? I’m already perfect.” He glanced between Kayla and Jackson. “So have you two finally set a date to get this thing over and done with?”