Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
Abbie Walker can’t wait to spend two weeks alone in a remote cabin. No overbearing mother. No nagging sister. Just one grumpy cat, a carload of snacks, and a heart full of cheer. It’s going to be the best holiday ever.
Then, in the middle of a blizzard, he shows up.
Not Santa, unfortunately. Instead an injured Reed Knowles stumbles into Abbie’s cabin, ruining her perfect holiday. Abbie has good reason to hate him—and Reed doesn’t like her any better.
But they’re stuck together. And there’s only one bed. So until the snow thaws, they’ve got to bite their tongues, keep each other warm…and maybe, during those cold winter nights, discover their worst enemy is the one person they’ve needed all along.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Abbie
“This is going to be the best Christmas ever,” I declare. My fingers, already aching after three hours of white-knuckling the steering wheel, tightly grip the wheel again when my chained tires jerk over a rut hidden beneath the snow.
Hot Biscuit Slim—never the jolliest cat to begin with—yowls mournfully from his carrier on the passenger seat. No doubt he’s lamenting the day I fell in love with his grumpy little face and wishing himself back at the rescue shelter.
“It is going to be the best Christmas ever. And we aren’t going to die,” I mutter the last part forcibly, as if speaking the words aloud will prevent our likely imminent death on this narrow forest road.
At least, I hope I’m on the road. Rapidly falling snow has completely obscured the ground. I lost cell reception two hours ago, my GPS gave up any pretense of knowing where to go when I turned off onto the first, slightly less narrow forest road a few miles back, and my sense of navigation is reduced to ’try not to hit any trees.’
When a low-hanging branch burdened with snow scrapes across the side of my car, I amend that to ‘try not to hit any tree trunks.’
Hot Biscuit Slim yowls again.
“Oh, hush! The weather app said it wasn’t supposed to begin snowing until tonight. This is not my fault!”
The stink that suddenly erupts from the cat says he heartily disagrees. Frantically I roll down my window—and I’m hit with a wave of sheer mountain bliss. My lungs fill with clean, crisp air. Only a degree below freezing, it isn’t bitterly cold but delightfully refreshing. Fat flakes drift downward, so soft and quiet and lovely that for an instant, the painful tension of hunching over my steering wheel while trying to navigate an increasingly treacherous road eases from my back and shoulders. Then a branch overhead releases a giant glop of wet snow that bombs the edge of my open window and explodes. By the time I brush the worst of it off my lap, icy water has soaked my crotch.
Hunching over the steering wheel again, I grind out from between gritted teeth, “Best. Christmas. Ever.”
Fifteen minutes later, Harris’s cabin pops out of nowhere. One moment I’m crawling along with trees to either side of me, the next moment a clearing opens up and the road ends. Squatting beneath the tall firs is the log cabin where I plan to spend the next two weeks. I’ll give myself a perfect Christmas, the kind I’ve always dreamed of—which ought to be easy, since I’ll be alone.
Almost alone.
My spiteful ball of claws and orange fur growls menacingly as I lug his carrier through the snow to the tiny covered porch. After fumbling with the key ring in my gloved fingers, I open the padlock that secures the door to the frame, then the deadbolt. Cold, stale air greets me when I push inside.
My heart gives a happy skip. Though the shuttered windows allow in barely any light, what I can see of the interior is exactly as Harris described. Aside from the closet-sized bathroom, the cabin is laid out as a single large room. A queen bed is shoved into the far corner with a chest of drawers at its foot. To my right, two leather armchairs face a stone fireplace. In the center of the cabin sits a round table with two wooden seats tucked underneath; a kitchenette and cabinets fill the wall to the left. Altogether, it isn’t much bigger than my first studio apartment was, so I feel right at home.
Despite the exhaustion of my harrowing drive, renewed energy surges through me. I pull out Harris’s instructions, then go around igniting the pilot lights for the fridge, stove, and water heater. I find a snow shovel in the shed behind the cabin, clear the short path to my car, and begin unloading my bags and boxes. My efforts are accompanied by the merry sounds of Hot Biscuit Slim yowling in the bathroom, where I’d locked him in with his litter. The last thing I need is for him to escape through the front door while I’m carrying everything in. Undoubtedly he’d scamper out into the forest—forcing me to chase after him, probably only to get lost and freeze to death. Meanwhile, he’d scamper back to the cabin, tear his way into my Christmas ham, and not miss me one bit.