Snowflake Wishes (3 page)

“I'm going to kill you,” she muttered to Molly as Dougie hefted his ex-football-player bulk her way. “Kill you dead and leave you for the crows.”

The deejay called nine more couples to the floor, and when the music started, Piper tried to pretend interest in Dougie's running monologue about migrating frogs as she subtly shifted his paws upward off her butt. “Hands, buddy.”

“Sorry.” He rolled his eyes like he wasn't sorry at all, then continued talking. She tuned out, but then felt bad. Dougie wasn't a bad guy. Not really. He was a forest ranger, which was a perfectly respectable job. He didn't live with his mother, he didn't spend his weekends playing video games in his basement, and he had actually graduated from college.

She sighed. Maybe she was just too picky. Maybe she wasn't trying hard enough, or maybe it was time to adjust her expectations. Dougie was a perfectly normal, good guy. He wasn't even that hard to look at, if you liked blonds.

Which she didn't.

No, she liked the tall, dark, and handsome shtick, even though it was way more cliché than she wished. Guys like—for instance—Noah were the ones
she
fantasized about.

Or maybe it just
was
Noah that she still fantasized about, seven years later.

She sighed again, adjusted Dougie's hands upward—again—and prayed for the song to be over. When the last notes leaked out of the speaker, Piper smiled tightly.

“Thanks for the dance.”

He squeezed her waist, raising his eyebrows hopefully. “Never know. Might get another one in before the night's out.”

She worked to keep the smile on her face as she backed out of his grip. “You never know.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, she was back at the table, just biting into a decadent double-layered brownie, when the deejay did his walk-to-the-trees maneuver.

“No more,” she begged, looking at Molly and Ethan. “I really should have gone camping.”

“You'd be a freeze pop by now.” Molly raised her eyebrows.

“But I wouldn't be dancing. Win-win.”

“Shush. Listen for your name.”

Piper put her hands over her ears. “La, la, la, la—I can't hear him.”

But she could, and though she was sort of joking, a part of her
was
mortified to have her name still on the singles' trees. A part of her was completely, utterly depressed that year after year, she attended wedding after wedding, but her own happily-ever-after still eluded her. She'd thought, long ago, that it was destined to be Noah, but she'd ended that hope with a quick, jagged breakup, and apparently she'd never really recovered.

She made a damn good bridesmaid, but one of these days—preferably before her entire reproductive system shut down for good—she'd like to be the one in the
white
dress.

She half listened as the deejay plucked snowflakes and matched up couples, and once he'd gotten to the ninth pair, she thought she might actually be safe for this round.

“Okay, last gal for this dance is … Piper Bellini!”

She groaned as she slid down in her chair, glaring at Ethan and Molly. “I hate you.” She turned toward the stage, wondering whose hands she'd be shifting off her arse this time. The deejay pulled a blue snowflake from the tree, but narrowed his eyes in confusion before he said the name.

“And the last guy for this set is … Noah Drake?”

Chapter 3

Piper sat up straight, her mouth wide open. It couldn't—
he
couldn't—
what?

She looked at Molly, whose eyes were wide. Ethan shrugged slowly, his eyebrows high as he scanned the room.

Then a hand touched Piper's shoulder, and she jumped in her seat, spinning around to see a man she'd never stopped dreaming about, as hard as she'd tried.

“Noah?” Her voice came out in a strangly whisper, and she swallowed hard, trying to make her throat remember to let air through.

“Hey, Piper.” He smiled, and it was a damn good thing she was already sitting down, or her knees would have turned to Jell-O at the sight. He looked the same … but different. Still six feet-something, still with a body that incited drooling, still with that dimple in his left cheek when he smiled. His hair was still as dark as rich cocoa, his eyes still the color of a stormy summer day, and his body …
God,
his body.

Where he'd been just into his twenties last time she'd seen him, this time he was all—
gulp
—man. His shoulders had broadened, his waist had tapered, and under his dress shirt, she could see the outline of pecs, biceps, abs.

She swallowed again.

“What are you—how are you—why—” Try as hard as she might, she couldn't seem to form a complete sentence, and she couldn't miss the amusement in his eyes as she tried.

Just then, Luke came up behind Noah and clapped him on the back. “You made it! Piper, you look like you're seeing a ghost.”

“Something like that,” she whispered.

Noah put out a hand. “Would you like to dance?”

Piper's eyes widened. “Seriously? Seven years, and you want to—dance?”

“Sorry. I figured it was sort of protocol, since we've been matched. Didn't want to upset the snowflake rules on my first night back in town.”

“Back in town?” The rest of the room melted away upon his words, and Piper's eggs threw off their afghans. “You're … back?”

“Not
back
back. Just—weekend back. Here till Sunday.” His words came out as choppy as her stomach suddenly felt, and the eggs sighed and went back to their chick flick.

“Oh.” The word fell heavy between them, but she didn't know what else to say. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been in a hospital bed, and she'd been saying good-bye. And though it had been the right decision at the time, she had no idea whether she'd make the same one again, if she got a do-over.

“Come dance with me?” He smiled the smile that had felled her years ago, and though it had been almost a decade since she'd last seen it, its power hadn't faded one little bit. As much as she knew better than to succumb, the thought of being wrapped in his arms on the dance floor sounded better than anything had in a long, long time.

She stood up, but didn't immediately take his hand, afraid of how it would feel if she did. He waited for her to cross in front of him, and as they headed to the center of the barn, where the dance floor had been set up, she felt his fingers brush her lower back—just the lightest of touches—and she closed her eyes for a brief second.

She'd been trying to forget his touch forever, it seemed.

When they got to a clear space among the other couples dancing, she turned around, and for a moment, wasn't sure what to do. Every instinct urged her to melt against his body and lay her cheek against his chest, but good Lord, she hadn't even seen the man for seven years. And last time she had … she'd chosen a life without him in it.

He smiled as he looked down at her, and the years faded away. Then his hand came up to touch her cheek, and she closed her eyes, drinking in the sensation of his skin against hers.

“I'm sorry to surprise you like this, Pipes. You look a little bit like a baby deer in the headlights.”

“I feel like one. It's been forever, Noah. How is it you're suddenly … here?”

He reached an arm around her, smoothly cradling her, then took her other hand in his. It was all she could do not to close her eyes and lean closer to drink in the scent of his aftershave as they started swaying slowly to an old country love song the deejay had cued up.

“It's kind of a long story,” he finally spoke.

“Okay? How about you start with the first chapter? Last I knew, you were hanging out in the wilds of Costa Rica … or somewhere.”

I mean, not that I've been checking up on you for years—in a purely just-friends, just-curious sort of way, of course.

He paused, and in that pause, she could practically hear the wheels turning inside his brain as he processed the fact that she knew exactly where he'd been last.

“I came up here to see … Luke, actually. He's got a project he wanted some input on, and I was on a layover between trips, so I said I'd come up.”

Piper nodded slowly. “I had no idea you guys still talked.”

“We talk like guys talk.” Noah shrugged. “Once every few years, maybe. Just got lucky and connected this time.”

He paused. “I wasn't sure I should come, honestly … but I figured maybe it had been long enough. I hoped it would be all right. I hoped …
you
would be all right.”

As he said the words, the song wound down, and the deejay took the mike once more, ready to announce another singles dance. Standing still now in Noah's arms, Piper hated that she didn't want him to let go.

As if he could hear her thoughts, his arm tightened slightly around her waist. “Is he about to pull more snowflakes from the trees?”

Piper cringed. “Looks like it.”

Noah pulled back and put both of his hands on her upper arms. “Want to go for a walk? Maybe? Somewhere where we can just—talk?”

Piper's stomach zinged, a mixture of fear and excitement flooding her body. Did she want to be alone with him? Did she
dare
to be alone with him, knowing full well how he was awakening a gazillion long-dead sensors?

“It's—freezing out.”

There. She'd resisted. Good girl.

He raised his eyebrows. “Is it better than dancing with Dougie again?”

Piper pressed her lips together. Then she looked around the sea of people and nodded. “Let's get our coats.”

*   *   *

As he and Piper set off up the walkway away from the barn, Noah took a deep breath. No matter where life took him, he would forever associate this fresh, mountain, theme-park sort of aroma with Echo Lake … with Piper.

“You know, there is nothing like the scent of Snowflake Village. Nowhere else in the world smells like snow and pine trees and fried dough.”

She laughed softly. “Better than Costa Rica?”

“Different.” He nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets so he wouldn't take her hand. He was surprised at how automatically he'd started to reach for it. “And yeah, better.”

She gave a quick, fleeting smile, and now that they were outside, alone under the twinkling lights, he saw the trepidation in her eyes. Her tension had been palpable as they'd danced, and he could almost feel her fighting herself as she tried to figure out what to do with his sudden appearance tonight.

When he'd first spotted her across the dance hall, he'd stopped dead. The way her dress had sparkled drew his eyes straight to her, despite the hundreds of people in the room. The blue of it matched her eyes, and her dark, wavy hair had fallen down her back in a way that made him ache to run his fingers through it again. As he'd watched her laugh with Molly and Ethan, he'd actually felt a stabbing pain in his chest.

He'd given up this beautiful woman once.

No—check that. He hadn't been the one to give up.
She
had.

He sighed. But he'd been the one to hand her a hospital room full of reasons to do so.

*   *   *

“C'mere, Pipes. Give me a kiss.”

Piper's eyes were wide as she approached the hospital bed where Noah lay, his leg propped up on a pile of pillows. He knew he looked like hell—he'd busted his collarbone
and
his ankle in the fall, and his face looked none too pretty, either—but all he wanted was to feel her arms encircle him … hear her whisper in his ear.

“No.” She shook her head, stopping five feet from the bed, her eyes wide with fear.

“It looks worse than it is, sweetheart. Promise. I'll be good as new in no time.”

She crossed her arms carefully, like she was trying to hold her own ribs in place. “And then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean … and then what? Once you're healed? Are you going back out there? Risking your neck for the story? Breaking perfectly good bones in some—some ridiculous search for the ultimate adrenaline high? Again? How many bones does it take, Noah?”

Alarms rang low in his gut as he watched color rise in her cheeks. Ever since he'd met her, Piper'd had a thing about his high-risk lifestyle, but they'd always worked around it. She went with him on the low-key stuff, nerved up the entire time, and when it came to the hard-core trips, he headed out with his buddies instead. It worked.

Or at least he'd always thought it was working.

The fact that he'd turned his love of the wilderness into a job offer was a dream come true—one he was scheduled to start in one short month. He'd be traveling the world for a company that custom-designed high-adventure trips, traversing the globe in a quest to find newer, better, scarier experiences. He'd be guinea-pigging the adventures, designing the trips, and then writing up the tours for outdoor magazines. He couldn't think of a better way to combine his journalism degree and his love of the adrenaline high, and he'd popped open a bottle of champagne the night he'd told her.

He'd asked her to come with him, knowing in his heart that it'd be a hard sell to get her to leave Echo Lake—even temporarily—but he'd figured he had time to convince her. They were so damn good together. Surely she could see that. Surely she'd come with him. She could do her art anywhere, he'd argued.

Looking at her face right now, he knew he'd been wrong. Dead wrong.

“Piper? Come here, honey.” He motioned with his good arm, pulling out his most disarming smile, though it was now rooted in abject fear.