He was wondering where they were when he heard a burst of laughter coming from the den. The door was closed, presumably to keep the dogs out.
Congratulating himself on finally having imposed rules and discipline on the household and relieved that whatever was bothering Jess at school didn’t seem to be affecting her at home, Tyler walked across the hall and pushed open the door.
“Go away!” Jess screamed and stuffed something back in a bag as Ash sprang up, barking frantically.
Tyler raised his brows. “Always good to have a warm welcome at the end of the day.”
“You can’t come in here!” Jess pushed bags under the sofa. “It’s Christmas, Dad. You have to knock on doors before you enter, not barge in.”
“This is my house. I’m allowed to barge anywhere I want.”
“Presents are supposed to be a secret! Wait there a minute.” There was rustling and muttering and finally Jess mumbled, “You can come in now.”
Accepting that grudging invitation, Tyler opened the door fully and saw Ash and Luna lying on either side of Jess like bookends. “I thought we agreed to keep them out of the den and the living room.”
“This is their favorite room.”
“Funny, because it’s my favorite room, too.” He glanced at Brenna, thinking that she looked every bit as good in skinny jeans and a blue sweater as she did in that black dress.
“We weren’t expecting you home yet, Dad. You said you had a late lesson.”
“She canceled.” His gaze flicked to the screen, and he saw an image of himself on the notorious Hahnenkamm, considered to be the most challenging course on the World Cup circuit. He remembered that particular run well. The light had been flat at the top, the visibility difficult. Three racers had fallen.
He turned away. “I assume you haven’t eaten. I’ll cook.”
“I’ll do it.” Jess jumped up. “You hate cooking.”
He hated it a whole lot less than he hated watching himself on TV.
“I’ll cook steaks.”
Ash whined and sprang to his feet, and Jess grinned.
“I swear he knows that word.”
“I’m prepared to cook for humans, but I draw the line at cooking for dogs.” But Tyler stooped and made a fuss of Ash. “You are a bad boy.”
“And you are an expert on that subject.” Jess gave him a look. “By the way, I’m staying at Grandma’s tonight.”
“Again?”
“What can I say? She has a tree and her house is Christmassy. Ours is a Santa-free zone, and the fridge is empty again. At this rate, Christmas is going to pass us by.”
Feeling a stab of guilt, Tyler raked his fingers through his hair. “I’ll go to the store tomorrow. And we’ll go and get a tree this weekend. We’ll take the snowmobile.”
“It’s probably too late. They’ll all be gone.”
“Jess, we live in a forest.”
“All the good ones will be gone.”
She stalked past him toward the kitchen, and Tyler turned his gaze to Brenna, who was unusually quiet. “Am I missing something here?”
“She’s excited about Christmas. We should decorate the house and get a tree. It’s important.” Without looking at him, she gathered up gift wrap, and he realized he still hadn’t done anything about Christmas gifts.
“So if you were writing to Santa, what would be on your list? What do you want for Christmas?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
“There must be something.” He pressed her. “What would you love more than anything in the world? What do you dream about?”
She sat still, a pair of scissors in her hands and a faraway look on her face.
Then she put the scissors down and finished tidying away the mess. “I can’t think of anything.”
“Yes, you can. There’s something you want, I can tell.” Whatever it was, he wanted to buy it for her. He wanted to give her something she really wanted and see her smile on Christmas morning.
“I’m not really a possessions person. You know that.”
He did know that. What she loved more than anything was being outdoors. She loved being on her skis, enjoying the beauty of the mountains. The forest. But he couldn’t see any way of giving her that as a gift. “Jess wants to decorate the house. Will you help?”
“Of course.” She put the DVDs back on the shelf. “Do you have decorations?”
“Not many. Let’s go to the kitchen and we can talk about it over dinner.”
“I’m tired. I’m going to skip dinner and have an early night.”
Tired? Tyler tried to remember what time she’d arrived home last night and whether that would have given her time to go back to Josh’s house.
“Do you want me to bring you something up? I can heat soup.”
“No, thanks. I’m going to have a long bath and then go to bed.”
Distracted by a disturbing mental vision of Brenna naked in the bath, Tyler backed away and crashed into the door. “If you change your mind, shout.”
SHE TOOK A long bath and then lay on the bed with a book on climbing, but instead of reading, she watched the snow settle on the forest, layer upon layer, piling up on branches and obscuring the winding trails around the lake. She heard Jess and Tyler leave to go to his mother’s, and then heard him return alone.
She turned the light out and tried to sleep, but her stomach growled, protesting at her decision to skip supper.
Checking her phone, she saw it was midnight. She’d missed a text from Kayla asking if she was going to join them at the main house for “girls’ breakfast.” Realizing it was days since she’d spent any time with her friends, she was about to text back and then remembered Kayla’s habit of never switching her phone off. The last thing she wanted to do was wake her and Jackson in the middle of the night.
She slid out of bed and stood for a moment, looking out the window. The snow gleamed, ghostly white. The frozen surface of the lake shimmered under the light of the moon.
Pulling on a sweater, she walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the beautiful living room with the huge glass windows that faced over the lake and the mountains.
She’d thought she could never love anywhere as much as Forest Lodge, but she’d been wrong. Lake House was perfect and Tyler, for all his apparent lack of interest in anything but skiing, had style.
The house was still and quiet, and she curled up on one of the deep, comfortable sofas and stared at the snow falling against the darkness of the night, thinking about Christmas. Thinking about the times she’d hovered near bunches of mistletoe, hopeful, thinking maybe, maybe this Christmas he’d finally kiss her.
He’d asked what she wanted as a gift, but she had everything she wanted except one thing.
Him.
She watched as the snow erased all traces of the day before. Animal tracks would be covered, branches coated in thick dollops of snow, the trails around Snow Crystal hidden under the heavy cloak of winter. This was how she loved it, smooth and untouched, before the snowplows came to clear the roads and tracks, before the sun coaxed the snow into submission.
Deciding that hot chocolate might help her sleep, she walked