Christmas In Snowflake Canyon

She could just cave. It would be easy. Her father would take care of everything, as he had been doing all her life—as she had let him do, especially the past two years.

He couldn’t have it both ways, though. He couldn’t one moment tell her he was cutting her off financially to fend for herself and then still try to control the rest of her life.

“I have an attorney,” she said, a little more firmly. “Andrew Caine.”

Her father gave her a conciliatory smile that made her want to scream. “You’re overwrought, my dear. I’m sure this has been an upsetting evening for you. You’re not thinking clearly. Mr. Caine is a fine attorney, but how would it look if you had someone else represent you?”

As if she had finally found a little backbone?

She was spared from having to answer by the arrival of the police chief of Hope’s Crossing, Riley McKnight.

William spotted him at the same time. “Finally!” he exclaimed and headed out to apprehend the police chief, leaving her and Dylan alone.

An awkward silence seemed to settle around them like the cold snow falling outside. “Wow. Your dad...”

“Is incredibly obstinate. Either that or he has selective hearing loss,” she finished for him.

“I was going to say he’s concerned about you. But those work, too.”

She could feel her face heat. “He’s tired of cleaning up my messes. Can you tell?”

“Caught a hint or two. What kind of messes, Genevieve?”

Oddly, she didn’t mind his exaggerated French pronunciation of her name this time. It was actually kind of...sexy. “It’s a very long and boring story.” One she didn’t feel like rehashing right now. “Listen, I am sorry you were messed up in this whole thing. I had a bit too much to drink and I guess I went a little...crazy.”

“I would describe it as completely bat-shit, but that’s just me.”

“I did, didn’t I?” It wasn’t a completely unpleasant realization.

“I wish I’d thought to shoot some video of you punching that woman. I haven’t enjoyed anything that much in...a long time.”

She was glad, suddenly, that she’d given him something to find amusing.

“Thank you for trying to protect me.”

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I would say anytime but I’m afraid you might take me up on that,” he answered, just as Andrew Caine walked in.

“Take you up on what?”

“Nothing. Never mind. What the hell took you so long? Did you stop off for Thanksgiving leftovers at Pop’s on the way?”

Andrew Caine looked very much like she remembered Dylan looking before his accident. Gorgeous. Brown hair, blue eyes, chiseled features.

Tonight, Andrew’s short brown hair was rumpled a little on one side and she wondered if Dylan’s call had caught him in bed, or at least dozing on the couch while a basketball game played or something. His blue dress shirt was tailored and elegant but a little wrinkled, as if he had yanked it out of the laundry hamper at the last minute.

“Tell me why I never get calls about you during business hours. I ought to leave your ass in here overnight. Hell, I should leave you here all weekend. It would serve you right.”

“Guess it’s my turn for the annoying family lectures,” Dylan murmured in an aside to her.

A little laugh burbled out of her; she couldn’t help it, and he gazed at her mouth for a moment before jerking his gaze back to his brother.

“A bar fight at the Lizard. Really. Couldn’t you try for something a little more original?”

Dylan shrugged and aimed his thumb at Genevieve. “She started it.”

“Tell me you weren’t fighting with Genevieve Beaumont.” Andrew narrowed his gaze. “Pop is seriously going to kill you. And then Mayor Beaumont will scrape up what’s left of you and finish you off.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Annoyance flickered across his expression. “I haven’t sunk that low.”

“It was all my fault,” Genevieve said. “I...lost my head and your brother stepped in to try to calm the situation.”

“It obviously didn’t work.”

“Well, no,” she admitted.

“What’s this I hear about you scalping a county prosecutor and breaking her nose?”

She had actually physically attacked another human being. She flushed, hardly able to believe she had actually done that. She didn’t know how to respond. Fortunately, Dylan’s brother didn’t seem to require a response.

“Never mind,” he said. “I’m sure your father will fix things for you. Where is he?”

She gestured to the back of the police station. “He’s talking to Chief McKnight. But he’s not my attorney. You are.”

The man’s eyebrows rose just about to his hairline. “Since when?”

“Now. I want to hire you.” Of course, she didn’t have much money to pay him right now but she would figure something out.

“You really think your father will go for that?”

“I’m twenty-six years old. I make my own decisions.” Most of them had been poor the past few years but she decided not to mention that. “I would like to hire you to represent my interests. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

He studied her for a long moment and then shook his head. “Sure. Far be it from me to turn away business, especially when it’s guaranteed to piss off William Beaumont. No offense.”

“None taken,” she assured him.

“I’m going to assume I’m entitled to some kind of referral bonus for steering new clientele your way,” Dylan said.

Her new attorney frowned at his brother. “You can assume you’re entitled to shut your pie hole and let me see if I can get you and your new friend here out of this mess.”

CHAPTER THREE

“THAT’S IT? We’re really free to go?”

An hour later, Jahn-Vi-Ev Beaumont looked at Andrew as if he had just rescued a busload of puppies from a burning building.

Dylan wasn’t quite sure why that made him want to punch something again.

“For now. Between your father and me, we were able to work the system a little to get you both out of here tonight. You’re still facing charges for felony assault. It’s a very serious accusation.”

“But at least I don’t have to spend the night in jail. I couldn’t have done that.” She shuddered. “I don’t even have any moisturizer in my purse!”

Dylan just refrained from rolling his eyes. He noticed Andrew was trying hard to avoid his gaze. “Maybe you should think of that next time before you start barroom fights,” his brother suggested mildly.

“I won’t be starting any more fights. You can be sure of that. I never want to walk into the Lizard again.”

“Good idea. I can’t guarantee you’re not going to serve any jail time for this. Felony assault is a very serious charge, Ms. Beaumont.”

To Dylan, this seemed like a lot of wasted energy over a couple of punches.

“I know.”

“Your father says he can give you a ride home.”

She looked through the glass doors to where Mayor Beaumont waited, all but tapping his foot with impatience. “Do I have to go with him?” she asked, her voice small.

“No law says you do.”

“Can’t you give me a ride to my car? I’m parked behind the bar.”

Did she really think her attorney’s obligation extended to giving his clients rides after a night in the slammer? And why was she so antagonistic toward her family? It didn’t make sense to him. Seemed to him, the Beaumonts were the sort who tended to stick together. Just them against the poor, the hungry, the huddled masses.

“How much did you have to drink tonight? Maybe you’d better catch a ride all the way.”

“Three—no, three and a half—mojitos. But that was hours ago. If you want the truth, I’m feeling more sober than I ever have in my life.”

He had a feeling she would want nothing so much as a stiff drink if she could see herself right now, her hair a mess, dried blood on her cheek from the cut, her sweater fraying at the shoulder where the district attorney must have grabbed a handful.

“Maybe you’d be better off catching a ride with your father.”

“Would you want your father to give you a ride home from the police station right now?” she demanded of Dylan. When he didn’t answer, she nodded. “That’s what I thought. I won’t drive, then. You can just give me a ride to my grandmother’s house. Either that or I’ll sneak out the back and walk.”

Andrew sighed. “I’ll take you to your grandmother’s house. I have to drop my idiot brother off, too. But you can’t just ditch your father. You have to go out there and tell him.”

So much for his puppy-saving lawyer brother. Now she looked at Andrew as if he were making her pull the wings off butterflies. Dylan didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for her. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, sister.

“Fine,” she said and tromped out of the room in sexy boots that had somehow lost a heel in the ruckus.

The minute she left, Andrew turned on him. “Gen Beaumont. Seriously? I do believe you’ve hit a personal low.”

“Knock it off,” he growled. Funny. While he might have said—at least thought—the same thing, he didn’t like the derision in his brother’s voice when he said her name.

“What were you thinking, messing with Gen Beaumont?”

“I was not messing with her.” He didn’t want to defend himself, but he also didn’t want to listen to his brother dis her, for reasons he wasn’t quite ready to explore.

“Yeah, I should have stepped back. It was stupid to get involved, but I could see that if I didn’t, somebody would end up seriously hurt. Probably her.”

“She’s a walking disaster. You know that, right? From what I hear, she’s been leaving a swath of credit-card receipts across Europe, embroiled in one financial mess after another.”

His family was going to make him crazy. For months they had been nagging him to get out of his house in Snowflake Canyon, to socialize a little more, maybe think about talking to somebody once in a while besides his black-and-tan hound dog. But the minute he ventured into social waters, they felt compelled to yank him back as though he were a three-year-old about to head into a school of barracudas.

“Relax, would you? I’m not going to get tangled up with her. I know just what Genevieve Beaumont is—a stuck-up snob with more fashion sense than brains, who wouldn’t be caught dead in public with someone like me. Someone less than perfect.”

He heard a small, strangled sound behind him and Andrew’s expression shifted from skepticism to rueful dismay. Dylan didn’t need to look around to realize Gen must have overheard.

Shoot.

He turned, more than a little amazed at the urge to apologize to her.

“Gen.”

She lifted her slim, perfect nose a little higher. “I’m ready to go whenever you are. I finally persuaded my father I didn’t need a ride,” she said to Andrew before turning a cool look in Dylan’s direction. “I’ll wait by the door. That way I don’t have to be around someone like you any longer than necessary.”

With one last disdainful glance she picked up her purse and her Dior coat and walked back out of the office with her spine straight and her head up.

“There you go. See?” Dylan said after she had left, shoving down the ridiculous urge to chase after her and apologize. “Nothing to worry about. Now she won’t be speaking to me anyway.”

“And isn’t that going to make for a fun ride home?” Andrew muttered, shrugging into his own coat.

* * *

SHE REFUSED TO look at Dylan Caine as his brother drove through the dark, snowy streets of Hope’s Crossing. Since Thanksgiving had come and gone, apparently everybody was in a festive mood. Just about every house had some kind of light display, from the single-strand, single-color window wrap to a more elaborate blinking show that was probably choreographed to music.

“I’m living in my grandmother’s house,” she reminded Andrew from her spot in the second row of his big SUV that had a Disneyland sticker in the back window and smelled of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“Got it.”

“You know where that is?”

“Everybody knows where Pearl lived.”

Genevieve looked out the window as they passed a house with an inflatable snow globe on the lawn featuring penguins and elves apparently hanging out in some kind of wintry playground. She thought it hideous but Grandma Pearl would have loved that kind of thing. She felt a pang of sorrow for the woman who had taught her to sew and could curse like a teamster, especially when she knew it would irritate her only son.

Gen had flown home for her funeral in April, wishing the whole time that she had taken time to call her grandmother once in a while.

Grandma Pearl’s house squatted near the mouth of Snowflake Canyon on a wooded lot that drew mule deer out of the mountains. It was just as ugly as she remembered, a personality-less rambler covered in nondescript tan siding.

“You have the key?” Dylan asked.

“Yes,” she answered, just as curtly.

He opened his door on the passenger side of the front seat. “You don’t have to get out,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to be seen with you, remember?”

He ignored her and climbed out of the SUV and held her door open in a gesture that seemed completely uncharacteristic. She thought about being childish and sliding out the other side, but she figured she had already filled her Acts of Stupidity quota for the day.

Aware of his brother waiting in the car, she marched up the sidewalk to the front door, where she at least had had the foresight to leave a porch light burning before leaving for the bar.

“I’m good. Thanks. You can go now.”

“Genevieve. I’m sorry you heard that.”

“But not sorry you said it.”

“That, too,” he said.

She still burned with humiliation, though she wasn’t sure why. Everyone saw her that way. Why did it bother her so much that he did, too?

“Forget it,” she said. “I have. Do you think I really care about your opinion of me? After tonight, we won’t have anything to do with each other. We don’t exactly move in the same social circles.”

“Praise the Lord,” he said in an impassioned undertone, and she almost smiled, until she remembered he despised her.

“Good night, Dylan.”

“Yeah. Next time, try to have a little self-restraint.”

She nodded and quickly unlocked the door, hurried inside and closed it shut behind her.

She had to will herself not to watch him walk back to his brother’s waiting vehicle. Instead, she forced herself to focus on the challenge ahead of her—the horrible green shag carpeting, dark-paneled walls, tiny windows.

She was so tired. Exhaustion pulled at her, and she felt as if her arms weighed about a hundred pounds each. Mental note: lingering jet lag and adrenaline crashes didn’t mix well.

She headed straight for the hideous pink bathroom and managed to wrestle her clothes off with those giant, tired arms then stepped into the shower.

At least she had hot water. Always a plus. Actually, the house had a few things going for it—decent bones and a fantastic location at the mouth of the canyon, to start. The half-acre lot alone was worth at least a couple hundred thousand. If she could transform the house into a decent condition, anything else would be a bonus.

She stood under the hot spray until the water finally ran out, then toweled off, changed into her favorite pair of silk pajamas and climbed into the bed, grateful for the sheets she had thought to bring down from her parents’ house.

She could do this. Yes, it was overwhelming, especially on an extremely limited budget. Difficult, but not impossible.

If she pulled this off, she might be able to leave Hope’s Crossing with a nice chunk of cash, at the very least, and maybe pick up a little hard-earned pride along the way.

She supposed it was too much to hope that she might even earn her family’s respect—or anything but contempt from a tough, hardened ex-soldier like Dylan Caine.

* * *

OVER THE WEEKEND, Dylan tried not to give Genevieve Beaumont much thought. He was surprised at how difficult he found that particular task.

He would think of her at the oddest times. While he cleared snow off his long, winding driveway in Snowflake Canyon with the thirty-year-old John Deere he had fixed up. While he went through the painstaking effort of chopping wood for the fireplace one-handed and carried it into the house—also one-handed. While he was sitting by said fire with a book on his lap and Tucker curled up at his feet.

Monday morning his cell phone rang early, yanking him out of a vaguely disturbing but undeniably heated dream of her wearing a demure, lacy veil that rippled down to a naughty porn-star version of a wedding gown made out of see-through lace.

His phone rang a second time while he was trying to clear that vaguely disturbing image out of his head.

“Yeah?” he growled.

“Cheerful this morning, aren’t we?” His father’s Ireland-sprinkled accent greeted him. “I suppose I might be a mite cranky, too, if I had spent my weekend on the wrong side of the law.”

Dermot made it sound as if his youngest son had been riding the range holding up trains and robbing banks. Dylan imagined his father viewed the transgressions the same.

“Not the whole weekend,” he answered, sitting up in bed and rubbing a little at the phantom pains in his arm. His now-narrowed world slowly came into focus. “Only Friday night. I spent the rest of the time shoveling snow. How about you?”

“You didn’t come to dinner last night.”

Dermot threw a grand Sunday dinner each week for any of Dylan’s six siblings who could make it and their families. The combined force of all those busybodies was more than he could usually stand.

“I came to dinner on Thanksgiving, didn’t I? I figured that would be sufficient. Anyway, it took me a couple hours to clear the snow and by then I figured you’d be eating dessert.”

“Nothing wrong with coming just for the dessert. It was a delicious one. Erin brought that candy-bar cake you like so much and we had leftover pie from Thanksgiving.”

His stomach rumbled at the mention of the signature recipe Andrew’s wife made. “Sorry I missed that.”

“She left a piece especially for you as she knows how you favor it. You can stop by the house when you’re in town next.”

That was an order, not really a suggestion, and Dylan made a face he was quite glad his pop couldn’t see.

“I’m to give you an important message from your brother.”

“Which one? I have a fair few.”

“Andrew. He tried to call you earlier but couldn’t get through. He said the call went straight to your voice mail, and he left orders for me to try again.”

Dylan hadn’t heard his phone but sometimes the cell-tower coverage up here could be sketchy. He checked his call log and saw he had three voice-mail messages, no doubt from Andrew.

“What’s the message?”

“You’re to meet him at the district attorney’s office at noon. Don’t be late and wear a tie if you can find one.”

Now, that sounded ominous. He had always hated dressing up, something Pop and all five of his brothers knew. A lifelong healthy dislike had become infinitely more intense over the past year.

“A tie.” Another of his many nemeses. He defied anybody to knot a damn Windsor one-handed.

“Do you have one?” Dermot asked when he didn’t respond. “If you don’t, I can run one of mine up to you.”

“I can find one. You don’t need to drive all the way up here.” He didn’t know whether to be touched or guilty that his father was willing to leave the Center of Hope Café during the breakfast rush to bring his helpless son a necktie.

“Did Andrew tell you why I’m supposed to meet him wearing a tie?”

“Nary a word. All I know is he was heading into court and ordered me to make sure I personally delivered the message. If you didn’t answer your phone this morning, I was under orders to drive up Snowflake Canyon to drag you down. You’ll be there, right?”

“I’m not five years old, Pop. I’ll be there.”

A guy might have thought multiple tours in Afghanistan would be enough to convince his family he could take care of himself.

Then again, since he had come home half-dead, they could possibly have room for doubt.

“See that you are,” Dermot said. He paused for a moment, long enough for Dylan to accurately predict a lecture coming on.

“I’m disappointed in you, son. Surely you know better than to find yourself in a fight at a place like The Speckled Lizard, no matter the provocation.”

“Yes. I’ve heard the lecture now from both Jamie and Andrew, thanks, Pop.”

“What were you thinking to drag that pretty young Genevieve Beaumont into your troubles?”

He snorted at the blatant unfairness of that. “Who dragged whom? You obviously didn’t hear the whole story. I was minding my own business, waiting to share a drink with my brother. I can’t help it if the woman is bat-shit.”

“Watch your mouth,” Dermot said sharply. “That’s a young lady you’re talking about.”

He shuddered to think what Pop would say if he knew the kind of semipervy dreams Dylan was having about that particular young lady, crazy or not.

“Right. A young lady with a particular aversion to Christmas carols and a right hook that needs a little work.”

“Ah, well. She’s a troubled girl who could use a few friends in town. You treat her kindly, you hear me?”

When Dermot was riled, the Irish brogue he’d left behind on the shores of Galway when he was just a lad of six peeped out like clover in July.

“I hear you.”

“Now you had best be hurrying along if you’re to make it to meet your brother on time.”

“Yeah. Message received. I’m up. I’ll be there. I’m heading into the shower right now.”

“See that you are.” Dermot’s voice was stern but he tempered it to add, “And I’ll expect to see both of my sons here afterward for a bite and any news from court.”

He hung up with his father and slid out of bed. After letting Tucker out with a quick check to make sure he didn’t have to plow again in order to make it down to the main canyon road, he hurried into the shower, trying to pretend he wasn’t wondering whether Genevieve would be there.

* * *

“NO. HELL NO. Are you freaking kidding me? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Absolutely not.”

Through her own shock at the proposal Andrew Caine had just laid out for the two of them, Genevieve found Dylan’s reaction fascinating.

“Geez, Dyl. Don’t hold back,” his brother said with a raised eyebrow. “Seriously, why don’t you tell us how you really feel?”

“You want to know how I really feel? I feel like I’ve just been steamrolled.”

“Come on. It’s a hundred hours of community service. It’s not like you’re being sentenced to hard labor on the chain gang. I hope I don’t need to tell you how far I’ve had to bend over in the last forty-eight hours to make this deal happen. You’re lucky you’re not serving hard time for assaulting two officers of the court.”

Beside her, she was aware of Dylan’s hand clenching on his thigh. Despite the evidence of his frustration, she couldn’t help thinking he looked quite different from the disreputable hellion who had brawled at The Speckled Lizard just a few nights earlier. Though his hair still needed a trim, he had shaved off the stubble that had made him look so dangerous, and he wore tan slacks, a light blue dress shirt and a shiny hammered silver bolo tie that gleamed in the fluorescent lights.

She wouldn’t have taken him for the cowboy sort but the look somehow worked.

“I’ll do the community service,” he growled to his brother. “I’ve got no problem with that. Just not there. This is a damn setup, isn’t it? They got to you, didn’t they?”

Andrew Caine looked slightly bored. “Who’s they?”

“Charlotte and Smoke Gregory. Since the moment the two of them hooked up, they’ve been trying to drag me into this stupid Warrior’s Hope business. I won’t do it. Have the judge throw me in jail for contempt if you have to, but I’m not going out there.”

“What’s the problem?” Genevieve asked. “I think it’s a fantastic deal! My father has been calling me all weekend to warn me I could be going to prison if I didn’t let him take over my defense. I’m really glad I didn’t listen to him.”