out there.”
The brief loss of control convinced him he preferred Kayla with her guard down. “If you wear the right gear, you won’t feel the cold.”
“I’m definitely wearing the wrong gear. I felt it right down to my bones.” She shivered. “All right, I can do this. It’s the whole Snow Crystal experience, frostbite and all.” Opening the door gingerly she slid out of the car, one limb at a time, as if bracing herself to enter a cold swimming pool.
Jackson strolled around to her, his feet crunching on new snow. “Close your eyes.”
He could see her weighing up the risk of trusting him against the potential downside of arguing with a client.
She closed her eyes. “If the next thing I feel is a bear’s jaws closing on my arm, I resign the account. I really don’t want the whole Snow Crystal experience to include being a bear’s breakfast.”
He closed his hands over her arms. “No bears. Turn around.” Her hair brushed against his chin and the scent of it mingled with pine and freezing air. He decided that Kayla Green smelled as good as she looked. “Now open your eyes. Look through the trees.”
“What am I looking at?”
“The lake.”
She focused, her breath forming clouds in the air. “I—Oh. People are skating.”
“In Vermont the weather is the ultimate wild card, but the one thing we always have in winter is ice.
“You can skate on the lake?” Her tone was wistful. “That’s magical.”
“You want to try it?”
“It’s not that magical. I think I’m probably more of an indoor skater. But I can see others might find it charming,” she added hastily. “I’ll add it to the list underneath ‘view’ and ‘moose.’”
“Skating is fun.” He tried to imagine the businesslike, composed Kayla Green falling on her butt and then decided not to waste time imagining something that was going to be reality soon enough. There was no way she’d keep her footing in those elegant and totally impractical chocolate leather boots.
Back in the car, he turned the heating up and steered the vehicle back onto the road. “If you look through the trees to the right you can see one of our log cabins.”
She turned her head, the movement sending that blond ponytail swinging. “Is that mine?”
“No. You asked for secluded.” Had he misjudged? Why would a single girl on her own over Christmas want to be in a secluded cabin? “You can change your mind and be closer to the main lodge if you prefer.”
“A secluded cabin is my dream.”
It seemed like an odd dream for a bright, twenty-something woman.
Then he thought about the life she led, the busy nonstop adrenaline rush that was her working day. Maybe she needed a rest. There were plenty of days when a secluded cabin sounded good to him, too.
“Your cabin is right on the boundary of our land and it backs onto a deer wintering area so you’ll probably spot white-tailed deer. You might see snowshoe hare, fox, coyote, bobcats and the odd porcupine.” He slowed as he negotiated the narrowing track. “I’ll give you time to unpack and settle in before you meet the rest of the team.”
Team? He almost laughed. They weren’t a team, they were a circus.
“Do you live with your family?”
“No. I love them, but there are limits. I converted the barn.” So that he could have his own personal brick wall to bang his head against when they drove him crazy.
He drove straight along the forest road that followed the edge of the lake and pulled up outside the little rustic gate that marked the track leading to the cabin.
“We have to walk from here.”
IT WAS PERFECT.
Kayla stepped onto the path and stood for a moment, breathing in the smell of the forest and the crisp winter air. Trees soared upward, branches drooping under the heavy burden of snow. The light was fading and the last rays of the sun glinted off the frozen surface of the lake, giving it a mystical, ethereal quality. Everything was still, the silence broken only by the occasional soft thud as snow tumbled from overloaded branches.
It felt a million miles from Manhattan. A million miles from her life.
A million miles from the all-consuming madness of Christmas.
She smiled.
She could have been the only person on the planet.
And then she heard the car door slam and remembered she wasn’t the only person.
He was here.
The chemistry was a tight knot in her stomach and the frantic race of her heart.
She’d spent the journey with her head down, trying not to think about the man in the driver’s seat next to her, trying not to think about his hands, strong and sure on the wheel or his thighs, hard and muscular, dangerously close to hers. But Jackson O’Neil wasn’t easy to ignore. And he’d kept glancing at her, as if trying to work out who she really was behind the person she projected.
He made her edgy.
Striving for normality, she reached for her phone, but he shook his head as he put her bag down next to her.
“The signal is patchy here. It’s better in the cabin. I’ll leave you for a couple of hours to catch up on whatever you need to do, then I’ll pick you up and take you to the main house. I’ll do my best to keep the experience as painless as possible.”
It seemed an odd thing to say. Or maybe he thought she was nervous with no team to back her up. “It’s a meeting. I’ve taken plenty of meetings in my time.”
“This one might be a little different.”
“Different keeps things interesting. I’m looking forward to meeting your family and getting straight down to business.” She emphasized the word business as much for her benefit as his.
She didn’t want this to be about anything other than work.
As far as she was concerned, the chemistry was as unwelcome as Santa.
Telling herself that all she had to do was ignore it, Kayla turned to pick up her bag only to find he was already holding it.
“This path can be icy. You might want to hold my hand.”
What?
Certain that holding his hand would be a fast route to the dark side, she curled her fingers into her palm. “I’ll be fine.”
“We sweep the snow but there are always a few icy patches.”
She’d rather hit an icy patch than lay a hand on any
