Snowed in with the Firefighter (Shadow Creek, Montana #7) - Victoria James Page 0,1
of the fact.
She buttoned up her coat and slipped on her gloves, pushing aside those thoughts. She was also going to work on her stress while she was here, starting with downloading a yoga app. Her muscles were so tight, they felt like they might snap in the cold.
As she opened the door, a gust of bitter wind hit her face along with a blast of icy snow. After gathering her purse, suitcase, giant bag of pity-party food, and extra-large fully loaded Luigi’s pizza, she trudged up the walkway, barely managing to hold it all. She was grateful the porch light had been left on. She dumped everything—except the pizza, she was guarding that with her life—on the adorable front mat featuring a vintage red pickup truck with a Christmas tree sticking out of the back and a dog in the driver’s seat. The scent of cedar from the fresh wreath on the red door teased her nose and almost made her wish she was happy for the holidays.
Finally finding the front door key they’d given her, she managed to juggle all her belongings over the threshold and into the semi-dark house.
She placed her bag of groceries on the large island with a thud and immediately tensed.
Movement sounded behind her.
She spun around just as a man’s silhouette emerged from the dark hallway. Shrieking, she dropped the pizza and made for the door.
“Melody?”
She froze. I know that voice…
The light flicked on, and Ben’s brother Finn stood there, wearing nothing but a pair of navy and white striped boxers and a frown. Sensory overload. She hadn’t seen Finn in…forever. He had changed since she’d last seen him. He was thinner maybe, making every hard ounce of muscle more clearly defined. He also had a beard, and it seemed so strange on him…not that he didn’t look good. He looked…scruffy, disheveled, in a way that was oddly appealing to her. Finn was a guy who’d always made her heart race, and that hadn’t changed. His brown eyes weren’t sparkling like she remembered, and his dark brown hair was longer.
He’d been through a hard year himself. After getting injured on the job as a firefighter, he’d been forced to take an indefinite leave of absence until he was fully healed. He’d been in the ICU for a long time, and for a while, no one knew if he’d pull through. Her heart squeezed as he walked forward, his limp obvious.
Ben and Finn had always been the kind of guys who would stand out in a crowd…or downtown Shadow Creek when she asked him to prom. She’d had such a huge crush on him, but there was no way a boy like Finn Matthews would ever ask her. So she decided to suck up the courage and ask him herself, if only to prove to her mom that she could find a date just as easily as Molly, her beautiful sister, who was already madly in love with Ben.
She’d never live down the humiliation of falling on her ass in front of him, her mother, and half the town when he turned her down outside of Luigi’s Pizza in downtown Shadow Creek.
Ever since then, she’d gone out of her way to avoid him. He never mentioned it and was always overly polite to her—the kind of polite a person was when they felt bad for the other person. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. They never would have worked out. She’d been ridiculous and insecure and desperate. She was an adult now. She only had half the issues she used to have.
“I, uh, wasn’t expecting you,” he said, glancing over her shoulder. “Are you by yourself or is the entire family going to burst through the door behind you?”
She was slightly relieved that he seemed to find “just her” more palatable than the entire crew. But why was he even here? “Just me. And pizza.”
He ran a hand over his jaw, his eyes traveling from her to the box on the ground. “We need to save that pizza. I haven’t had Luigi’s in months.”
Of course he was happier about the locally famous pizza than he was about her impromptu arrival. Maybe he really wasn’t expecting her up here at all, and not just at this hour of the night. She certainly hadn’t been expecting him. She crouched down and picked it up, placing the closed box on the counter. “Right. Well, help yourself. I’m pretty sure it’s ruined.”