Snowed In Sample Chapters

Chapter Two

BEN

She wasn't kidding about the dogs. They were on me the second I stepped into the house, leaping, sniffing, and whining in such an excited frenzy that it was like there were five of them instead of two. I barely had space to get my gloves and coat off.

Ella raised her voice to be heard over them. "Sam, Fred, meet Ben. Ben, I'd advise you not to let them touch you with their tongues. You'd understand why if you saw what else they've licked today."

I cracked a smile and squatted down to their level so they could smell me to their hearts' content. I loved dogs. It had been way too long since I'd been around them.

Jack was nowhere to be seen, but from my past visits, it was easy enough to guess that he was in the living room, stacking more logs on the fire. I'd made the mistake of telling him I was originally from Hawaii, and now he worried I would freeze to death if the house fell below 80 degrees, regardless of the fact that I also told him I'd lived in the Midwest for a while and was used to the cold.

He'd acted as though this was all brand-new information. Like he had no idea who I was.

I took advantage of his absence and snuck a glance at Ella. She definitely knew who I was. It was obvious from the deer-in-headlights look she gave me in the driveway, though she recovered quick enough. Now I just needed to see what she'd do with this knowledge. If she was 'good people', like Jack claimed, she'd respect my privacy. But part of me, the part that had grown hard and bitter and disillusioned with humanity, was waiting for her to whip out her cell phone and upload my face and location to Twitter for all the world to see, ruining the peace and quiet I'd managed to find here.

Ella moved to the coat rack, stepped out of her boots, and then shoved down her snow pants, revealing lilac-colored leggings with little white reindeer prancing across them in a horizontal pattern. She was tall, maybe 5'9" or 5'10", with narrow hips and the long, solid legs of a distance runner.

I peeled my gaze away from her to ruffle the fur of the dog currently trying to dart past my defenses with his plague-tongue. I liked to think that I didn't have a "type", but if I was being honest with myself, that was bullshit. Looking back over my years of dating revealed a definitive pattern of tall, athletic women. Women who could help hold themselves up if we had sex in a shower or against a wall. Women who could wrap their muscular legs around my torso and use their strength to pull me closer, or flex their toned thighs over and over as they rose and fell above me.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up to see this tall, athletic woman pull off her coat. Beneath it she wore an olive-green long-sleeved running top. I'd had just enough fashion lessons crammed down my throat over the past decade to recognize how spectacularly the outfit clashed. It looked like she got dressed in the dark.

She glanced down and froze at the sight of herself, eyes wide, lips twitching apart in open horror. Her head started to turn toward me – likely to check if I'd noticed her fashion faux pas – and I averted my gaze back to her dogs before she could catch me staring.

I risked another glance a minute later, just in time to watch her pull her shirt down a few inches to rest the hem of it against the fabric of her leggings to double check that, yes, those colors were truly heinous together. She let it go with a huff, then yanked off her knitted hat. A rat's nest of flame-colored, sweat-damp hair tumbled loose.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror, made a choking noise, and raked the mess into a ponytail. "Of all the frigging days," she muttered.