Snowfall at Willow Lake

Acclaim for New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs

‘… Truly uplifting …’

—Now magazine

‘This is a beautiful book’

—Bookbag on Just Breathe

‘… Unpredictable and refreshing,

this is irresistibly good’

—Closer Hot Pick Book on Just Breathe

‘A human and multi-layered story

exploring duty to both country

and family’

—Nora Roberts on

The Ocean Between Us

‘Susan Wiggs paints the details

of human relationships with

the finesse of a master.’

—Jodi Picoult, author of Lone Wolf

‘The perfect beach read’

—Debbie Macomber on Summer by the Sea

Also by

Susan Wiggs

The Lakeshore Chronicles SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE THE WINTER LODGE DOCKSIDE SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE FIRESIDE LAKESHORE CHRISTMAS

The Tudor Rose Trilogy AT THE KING’S COMMAND THE MAIDEN’S HAND AT THE QUEEN’S SUMMONS

Contemporary HOME BEFORE DARK THE OCEAN BETWEEN US SUMMER BY THE SEA TABLE FOR FIVE LAKESIDE COTTAGE JUST BREATHE All available in eBook

Snowfall at Willow Lake

Susan Wiggs

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Rose Marie Harris,

who owned and operated Paperbacks Plus, the best

little bookstore in Washington State for the past

twenty-seven years. She’s the kind of bookseller every

writer dreams about—well-read, enthusiastic, caring

and helpful, with an uncanny knack for putting the

right book into the hands of the reader who is sure

to love it. A book signing at Paperbacks Plus always

involved plenty of food, friends and fun, making for

unforgettable events, year in and year out.

To Rose Marie, Kate, Lois and the rest of

the staff—it was a great run, ladies.

Thanks for everything.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The daily work of a writer involves spending many hours alone with a roomful of fictional characters, and it takes a lot of love and understanding from the real people in my life to put up with that.

Thanks to the real Momzillas, who are nothing like the ones in this book.

I am truly blessed by the women writers in my life. Their moral support and brain power enrich the entire experience of making stories and art, and their talents keep me in awe—Anjali Banerjee, Carol Cassella, Sheila Rabe, Suzanne Selfors, Elsa Watson, Kate Breslin, Lois Faye Dyer, Rose Marie Harris, Patty Jough-Haan, Susan Plunkett and Krysteen Seelen.

Thanks also to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, my ever-patient editor, Meg Ruley, my agent, and her associate Annelise Robey, for invaluable advice and input.

Thanks to my publisher and readers for turning the Lakeshore Chronicles into a great success. The books came from me, but the success from you.

I’m so very grateful for my family, including our newest arrival, Barkis the wonderdog. Special thanks to my wonderful mom and dad—I only wish I could be as good as you think I am.

Part One

February

Lake Effect

Each winter, when cold arctic air sweeps across North America, snow squalls may form along the lee shores of lakes. These squalls, known as lake-effect snowstorms, bring locally heavy snowfalls to a relatively small area. Often, while squalls hit one area, brilliant blue skies prevail only a short distance away.

One

Avalon, Ulster County, New York

Every station on Noah Shepherd’s truck radio was broadcasting the incessant warning. The National Weather Service had issued an advisory—a prediction of snow, ice and wind—whiteout conditions in a lake-effect snowstorm. Authorities were urging people to stay home tonight, to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles only. The county airport had closed hours ago. Even the heaviest snow-removal equipment was having trouble lumbering along the highway. Only madmen and fools would be out in this.

Well, madmen, fools and large-animal vets. Noah wished his windshield wipers had a faster setting. The wind-driven snow was coming so hard and fast it was like a solid wall of white. He could barely tell whether or not he was on an actual road.

Legend had it that during lake effect, magic happened. Right, he thought. If this was magic, he’d stick with reality.

After delivering the Osmonds’ foal, he should have taken them up on their offer to stay the night, waiting until the weather and roads cleared before making his way back to his home and adjacent clinic miles away. However, according to reports, it could be days before the storm played itself out and it was likely to get worse before it got better. He had the Palmquists’ geriatric beagle in the clinic, a cat recovering from spinal surgery and his own animals, which currently included an abandoned pup. He knew he could always call his neighbor, Gayle, to look in on them, but he hated to bother her. With her husband serving overseas and three kids underfoot, she sure as hell didn’t need to go traipsing over to his place to check on the animals.

Besides, his scrubs were covered in birth blood and fluid. He needed a shower, bad. He was wearing his favorite hat, a wool cap with earflaps. It was from his “early dork” phase, as one of his former girlfriends had called it. Noah had quite a few former girlfriends. Women his age tended to want something other than life with a country vet.

He leaned forward over the steering wheel, squinting at the road ahead. Illuminated by his headlamps, the snowflakes appeared to be flying straight at him in a movielike special effect. He thought of Star Wars, when the Millennium Falcon went into warp speed. And that thought, of course, inspired him to whistle the Star Wars theme between his teeth. Bored with crawling along, he imagined his windshield was a window to a galaxy far, far away. He was Han Solo, and the snowflakes flying at him were stars. He issued orders to his copilot, who perked up at the sound of his master’s voice. “Prepare for throttle up. Chewie, do you read? Go at throttle up.”

Rudy, a mutt in the passenger seat, gave a huff in response, fogging the window.

Noah’s last girlfriend, Daphne, used to accuse him of being a kid who would never grow up. And Noah, who had the subtlety of a jackhammer, suggested only half-jokingly that they make a few kids of their own so he’d have someone to play with.

That had been the last he’d seen of Daphne.

Yeah, he had a real way with the ladies. No wonder he worked exclusively with animals.

“General Kenobi, target sighted, a thermal detonator,” he said. In his mind, Noah pictured a galaxy slave clad in a chain mail bikini. If only the universe would actually send him someone like that.

Then he changed his voice to a wise baritone with a bad English accent. “I trust you will find what you seek. And … shit.” A pale shadow glimmered in the road right in front of him. He turned the wheel and eased off the accelerator. The truck fishtailed. Rudy scrabbled around on his seat, trying to stay put. In the middle of the road stood a big-eyed doe, ribs showing through its thick winter coat.

He leaned on the horn. The doe sprang into action, sprinting across the road, leaping the ditch and disappearing into darkness. Midwinter was the worst time of year for the wildlife. The starving season.

The radio station played its usual test of the emergency broadcast system. He turned it off.

Almost home. There were no landmarks visible to tell him so, just an inner sense that he was nearing home. Other than college and vet school at Cornell, he’d never lived anywhere else. Each rural mailbox was supposed to be marked by a tall segment of rebar, but the snowdrifts were too deep and the rebar and mailboxes were buried.

He sensed but could not see Willow Lake, which lay to the left of the road. Willow Lake was the prettiest in the county, a natural beauty fringed by the Catskills wilderness. At the moment it was invisible behind the curtain of snowfall. Noah’s place was across the road from the lake and slightly uphill. Along the lakefront itself were several old summer cottages, unoccupied in winter.

“General Azkanabi, we need reinforcements,” he said, hearing the imaginary music swell in his ears. “Send me someone without delay!”

In that instant, he noticed … something. A glimmer of red in the snowy shadows. The whistled theme song died between his teeth. He eased off the accelerator and kept his eyes on the crimson glow, eventually making out a matching light. Taillights, which seemed to belong to a car stuck in a snowbank.

He stopped the truck in the middle of the road. The car was still running; he could see a plume of exhaust coming from its unnaturally angled pipe. The taillights poured an eerie red light into the night. One of the headlights was buried in the snowbank. The other illuminated the deer that had been hit.

“Stay, boy,” Noah ordered Rudy. He grabbed his kit, which contained enough tranquilizer to put down the deer. He lit his flashlight, an elastic headlamp.

Switching on his hazard lights, he emerged into the stormy night. The flying snow and howling wind sliced at him like blades of ice. He hurried over to the car, spying a single occupant inside, a woman. She seemed to be fumbling with a cell phone.

She lowered the window. “Thank God you came,” she said, and got out of the car.

She was inadequately dressed for the weather, that was for sure. A high-fashion coat and thin leather boots with tall, skinny heels. No hat. No gloves. Blond hair, blowing wildly in the wind, partially obscured her face.

“You got here so quickly,” she yelled.

He figured she thought he was from roadside assistance or the highway department. No time to explain.

She seemed to share his urgency as she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the front of the car, wobbling a little on her boots. “Please,” she said, her voice strained with distress. “I can’t believe this happened. Do you think it can be saved?”

He aimed the beam of the headlamp at the deer. It wasn’t the doe he’d spotted earlier, but a young buck with a broken antler on one side, three points on the other. Its eyes were glassy and it panted in a way Noah recognized—the panicked breaths of an animal in shock. He saw no blood, but so often, the injuries that killed were internal.

Damn. He hated putting animals down. Hated it.

“Please,” the stranger said again, “you have to save it.”

“Hold this,” he said, handing her a flashlight from his kit to supplement the headlamp. He eased himself down next to the animal, making a soothing sound in his throat. “Easy, fella.” He took off his gloves, stuffed them in a pocket of his parka. The rough coat of the deer warmed his fingers as he palpated its belly, finding no sign of fluid, no abnormal softening or heat. Maybe—

Without warning, the deer scrambled into action, legs flailing for traction in the deep, soft snow. Noah caught a sharp blow to the arm and backed off. The animal lurched to its feet and leaped over a snowbank; Noah instinctively moved in front of the woman to shield her from the hooves as the animal clambered off into the woods.

“I didn’t kill it,” the woman said. “You saved it.”

No, he thought, although it must have looked impressive, what with the deer jumping up as soon as he placed his hands on it. He didn’t say so, but there was still a good chance the buck might collapse somewhere in the forest, and die.

He turned off the headlamp and straightened up. She shone the flashlight into his face, blinding him. When he flinched, she lowered the beam. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Pulling on his gloves, he asked her, “Where are you headed?”

“Twelve forty-seven Lakeshore Road. The Wilson place. Do you know it?”

He squinted, getting his bearings. She had run her car off the road right by his driveway. “Another few hundred yards down toward the lake and you’re there,” he said. “I can give you a lift.”

“Thank you.” Snowflakes caught in her eyelashes, and she blinked them away. He caught a glimpse of her face—startlingly pretty, but pale and strained. “I’ll get my things.” She handed him the flashlight, then fetched a purse and a big tote bag from her car. There was also a roll-aboard, fluttering with tags. In the glow of the dome light, he could see words in some foreign language—’s-Gravenhage? He had no idea what that was. And another with an official-looking seal, like from the State Department or something. Whoa, he thought. International woman of mystery.

She turned off the ignition and the lights. “I don’t suppose there’s anything to be done about the car,” she said.

“Not tonight, anyway.”

“I’ve got a few more bags in the trunk,” she said. “Do you think it’s safe to leave them?”

“Probably not a huge night for thieves.” He led the way to his truck and opened the passenger-side door. “Get in the back,” he ordered Rudy, and the dog leaped into the jump seat behind.

The woman hesitated, clutching the purse to her chest and staring up at him. Even in the dim light from the truck’s cab, he could tell her eyes were blue. And she was no longer regarding him as the Deer Whisperer. Now she was looking at him as though he were an ax murderer.

“You’re looking at me as if I’m an ax murderer.”

“How do I know you’re not one?”

“Noah Shepherd,” he said. “I live right here. This is my driveway.” He gestured. The drive leading up to the house, flanked by pine trees weighted with snow, now lay beneath knee-deep drifts. A glimmer shone from the front window, and the porch light created a misty yellow aura around the front door. The entranceway to the clinic, kennels and stables lay off to the left, the security lights barely visible.

She paused, touched her teeth to her lower lip. “Even ax murderers have to live somewhere.”

“Right. So how do I know you’re not an ax murderer?”

She seemed completely unperturbed by the question. “You don’t,” she said simply, and got in the truck.

As he walked around the front to the driver’s side, Noah wondered if strange forces were at work. He wasn’t given to thinking of such things, but hadn’t he just been wishing for someone? Was the universe listening after all?

Of course, he didn’t know anything about his unexpected passenger. As she’d aptly pointed out, he didn’t even know whether or not she was an ax murderer.

Like that mattered. With those looks, she could be Lizzie Borden and he probably wouldn’t care. She was gorgeous, and she was sitting in his pickup truck. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? A gift horse. Ha-ha.

He hoped the smell of snow-wet dog and birth fluid wouldn’t bother her too much. Don’t blow this, he cautioned himself as he climbed into the driver’s seat. And quit jumping the gun. He didn’t know if she was seeing someone, married, engaged, gay or psychotic. The only thing he knew for sure was—

“Damn,” he said before he could stop himself, “Why didn’t you tell me you were wounded?” Grabbing the flashlight, he shone the beam on her, following a viscous crimson stain up her leg to the ripped knee of her trousers.

She made a sound in her throat, a wheeze of fright so intense that Noah cringed. Then she began to tremble, her breath coming in panicked little gasps. She said something in a foreign language, like a German dialect, maybe. It sounded like a prayer. She looked up at him with wild fear in her eyes, as though he were her worst nightmare.

So much for not blowing it, Noah thought.

“Hey, no need to freak out,” he said, but she was lost somewhere, drowning in panic, and then … nothing. She simply melted against the truck seat, her head tilting to one side.

“Hey,” he said again, louder now. Shit, had the woman passed out? He ripped off his glove and felt her carotid artery for a pulse. She had one, thank God. “Come on, miss,” he urged her, gently cupping her cheek in his hand. “Snap out of it.”

Behind him, Rudy scrambled to and fro, whimpering. He could probably smell her terror and her blood. Then he paused, put back his head and howled.

That’ll teach me, Noah thought. When he asked the stars to send him someone, he should be a little more specific. “Send me a Hooters waitress” was what he should have said, not some crazy-ass stranger who fainted at the sight of her own blood.

As far as Noah could tell, this was a loss of consciousness brought on by injury, fear and anxiety. In animals, it was sometimes a defense mechanism. In humans … he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. Regardless, he needed to check her blood pressure, tend to her wound.

He made sure the truck was still in four-wheel drive, then eased it up the driveway. He passed the house and continued to the next building, which was his clinic. The property had once been his family’s dairy, and this building had housed the company offices. When he set up his practice three years ago, he had transformed it into his veterinary clinic.

He got out of the truck and motioned to Rudy. With a yelp, the agile mutt cleared the front seat and bounded away, racing across a snowy field. Clearly he was eager to flee the stranger.

Noah jumped out and ran to the passenger side. “Miss? Can you hear me, miss?”

The woman was still unresponsive. He rechecked her pulse, then awkwardly pulled her from the cab, staggering backward in the knee-deep snow. She wasn’t a large woman, but her deadweight dragged at him as he carried her to the clinic. He shouldered open the door and stepped inside, pausing to disarm the alarm system, which he managed to do without dropping the woman. Then he crossed the dimly lit reception area to an exam room. He lowered her to the stainless steel table, extending it to accommodate her length. It wasn’t designed for humans, but he had no other choice. “Miss,” he said yet again. Damn. He wondered if he should start CPR.

“Come on, come on, come on,” he said, jiggling her with one hand, pulling out an oxygen mask with the other. The cone-shaped mask was designed to fit over a muzzle, but by pressing down hard, he made it work.

Her eyes flew open. Wide awake, she struggled and cried out. Noah backed away, holding his hands palms out. “Yo, calm down, okay?” he practically pleaded, thinking about the horse tranquilizer in his kit. He wondered what she would do if he said, Don’t make me get out the horse tranquilizer … Bad idea. He was at a loss here. Should he touch her? Soothe her? Or throw water in her face? Touch her, definitely.

“Miss …” He put a gentle hand on her wrist, intending to check her pulse.

Big mistake. She jerked away as though he’d burned her, scrambling to a sitting position and regarding him as though he were Jack the Ripper.

“Miss,” he said again, planting himself in front of her so she wouldn’t fall off the table if she passed out again, “you’re going to be all right, I swear. Please, look at me. I can help, but you need to focus.”

Finally, his words seemed to penetrate. He could see the glaze of fear in her eyes begin to soften. She took a deep breath in a visible effort to calm herself.

“Hey,” he said, resisting the urge to take her hand. “Calm down. It’s going to be all right.” He used his most soothing tone, the one he reserved for feral cats and skunks with distemper. “We’re in my clinic. I’m a—I have training.” Best to hold off explaining he was a vet. “I need to check you out, okay? I swear, that’s all I want to do. Please?”

She began to shake, her face as white as the moon. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, thank you. I … I don’t know what came over me.”

No shit, he thought.

“My guess is you experienced a vasovagal syncope,” he said. “In layman’s terms, you fainted from the sight of your own blood. There’s been some physical trauma, so I need to ask you some questions, check your pulse and blood pressure.”

This time, finally, his words seemed to penetrate. He took a risk, touched his fingers to her chin and studied her pupils. Her skin was velvet smooth, but chilled and clammy. He felt her effort to stop trembling, saw the resolution on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice still slightly tremulous. “That was unforgivable of me.” She squared her shoulders and tipped up her chin. She seemed to grow in confidence, transforming herself into a different person. The cowering victim disappeared. In her place was a controlled—though clearly shaken—young woman.

“No apology necessary,” he said. “Lots of people freak out when they’re hurt and bleeding.” He shrugged. “Proves you’re only human.”

“What is this place?”

“My clinic,” he said.

“I crashed my car in front of your clinic? That was good planning.” She offered a weak smile.

“Has this happened before?” he asked her. “The syncope—fainting.”

“No. Good heavens, no, never.”

“Before the episode, do you recall experiencing headache, back pain, chest pain, shortness of breath?”

“No. I was right beside you. I felt fine up until … I don’t recall.”

He took off his parka, then remembered his scrubs were stained with blood and fluid from the foaling. He quickly turned away so she wouldn’t see, peeled off his shirt, stuffed it into a hamper for the service, then grabbed a clean lab coat.

His patient was extremely quiet now. He turned to find her staring at his naked torso. Her mouth—a beautiful mouth, even for a crazy lady—formed a perfectly round O of surprise. Her face was still pale though; she was probably still at risk for syncope. And despite his fond wish, it was not over his physique. Something had spooked her, and he hoped it wasn’t him.

“Just need to put on a clean shirt,” he said.

Her gaze flicked away from him and darted around the clinic.

He felt her trust in him draining away. At vet school, they didn’t teach you not to take your shirt off in front of a patient, because as a general rule, the patient didn’t care.

“Sorry,” he muttered to her, and quickly slung a stethoscope around his neck, hoping that might reassure her. “I swear, I just want to help.”

“And I appreciate it,” she said, bracing her hands on the waist-high stainless steel table, the array of supplies and instruments on the counter. “I won’t go into a panic again. That was … it wasn’t like me. And this is all very … Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Noah instantly flashed on Susan Sarandon in her bra and panties. I wish.

He used a foot pump to lower the table. “You’re still bleeding—no, don’t look.” He didn’t want another fainting episode. “I really need to check out that leg.” He scrubbed his hands at the sink, then plucked a pair of latex-free gloves from a dispenser, eyeing her leg as he drew them on. “I might need to cut your trousers off,” he said, then couldn’t suppress a grin.

“Is something funny?” she asked.

“It’s just that I’ve never said that to a patient before. Have a seat on the table, okay? And scoot back so your leg’s stretched out.”

To his surprise, she obliged, propping herself on her hands as she looked around the exam room, focusing on canine growth charts and a calendar from a veterinary drug company. “You’re not a real doctor, are you?”