“Why the hell am I back in Winter Pass?” she shouted, slapping her palms against the steering wheel. “I can’t believe I was this stupid.”
Putting on the hand brake, Penny leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. Trying to convince herself that things weren’t that bad, that her life didn’t suck as much as it did at this particular moment. She wanted to think that it was just a bad day, but that wasn’t close to true. A bad month, more like. Or a bad five years, if she were honest.
As much as she hated Winter Pass’s small-town mindset and distance from any decently sized city, things really hadn’t gone right for Penny since she’d left. All during college she’d stayed close to Winter Pass, managing to graduate with honors despite her parent’s mud-slinging divorce and her mother’s subsequent high-profile remarriage.
When her new stepfather, a skeezy lawyer and wannabe town politician named Steve, had come onto her repeatedly and forcefully, Penny ratted him out. Her mother threw it back in her face, gave Penny endless grief over it, and eventually Penny decided to get the hell out of Dodge.
Moving to the city for a thankless job teaching art at a fancy private school, Heston Academy, Penny met her very recent ex-boyfriend. Strangely enough, he was also named Steve. This one was a real estate salesman, which was different enough for her taste, apparently. Penny should have known then and there that the boyfriend would be just as bad as the stepdad, but noooooo.
Penny refused to see anything bad about her new beau, even when she caught him in small lies. Then bigger ones, hurtful ones. Even when she found his shirts marked with lipstick and smelling of strange perfume, which he always explained away. Even when he borrowed large amounts of money from her meager teacher’s earnings, promising great returns on a real estate deal, then pronounced that the deal fell through and the money was gone with the wind.
No, no. None of that had driven Penny away, besotted as she was. After all, Penny was a short, curvy redhead with freckles and a timid personality. Steve was a muscular, tanned charmer who’d never met a stranger, her complete and magnetic opposite. To be fair, Steve was kind of short. He also lacked the ability to… fulfill… Penny in the bedroom, but she let that slide.
All the time, wondering why Steve was with her when he could be with someone else.
And then Penny caught Steve with someone else. Her boss, actually. The tall, elegant, snooty headmistress at Heston Academy. Specifically, she caught Steve banging Headmistress Samuels on his desk, during what was usually the one lunch period a week that Penny and Steve both had free. He’d canceled at the last minute, and Penny showed up with some takeout, trying to be sweet.
Instead, she’d got an eyeful. When her boss finally managed to notice Penny standing there, brown paper bag of burgers and fries in hand, she gracefully pushed Steve off and stood. Then she righted her skirt and cleared her throat.
I suppose there isn’t a better time to tell you, then. Heston Academy has decided to go in another direction with your position, Penelope. We’re letting you go.
It sounded a lot like what Steve said later, after a silent car ride back to their shared apartment.
You’re just not what I need, Penny. Look at you, and look at me. What did you expect? Still, take your time moving out…
Three weeks later, things were so bad that when Penny’s crazy, narcissistic mother called and invited her home for a long weekend, promising that her stepfather was gone on a retreat of some kind and that Penny wouldn’t bother him, Penny actually jumped at the chance. All her stuff was in storage, since her name wasn’t on the lease of her and Steve’s place. She had no job and no prospects. Her sometime-friend Amber, whose couch she’d been crashing on, had politely asked her to find somewhere else to stay because Penny was such a bummer.
Then it had all boiled down to one moment. Penny pulled up outside her mother’s house. The front door swung open as Penny climbed the porch steps. Her mother and stepfather came out…
Followed by her ex, roses in one hand, a ring box in the other.
“He called and said you two had a fight,” her mother gushed, holding her own Steve’s hand. “He sounded so remorseful, and we always did like you two together…”
That did it. Finally, after months of pent-up frustration and blaming herself, something inside Penny broke.
She turned and fled to her car, backing all the way down the driveway and flooring it down the rural one-lane road, heedless of the steadily increasing snowfall.
All of which led to this singular moment of foolishness, with Penny sitting in her car and crying because she was stuck between an untenable situation and a freaking mountain of snow… and right now, facing the snow was easier.
Penny glanced at her fuel gauge and frowned. Only a third of a tank. Wishing she’d filled up before she got into Winter Pass, she sighed and tried to think of what to do next. Leaning over to the glove box, she popped it open and rifled through the contents. To her relief, she had a local map stacked in with her insurance paperwork and other car junk.
Unfolding it across the steering wheel, Penny found her mom’s house and then traced the turns she’d made. Tapping her fingertip on the map, she found the spot where she was idling, then looked all around it for something nearby, anywhere she could go to get out of the storm.
“Come on, come on…” Penny whispered. Part of her wanted to shout that she’d literally let herself freeze before going back to her mother’s house, but in truth she’d managed to get almost five miles away and now she might be too far away to go back… even in dire circumstances.
The map was old and a little faded, and Penny knew for a fact that the trailer park, gas station, and tennis shoe warehouse listed in driving distance were long gone. Her finger wandered across the map, seeking…
“Winter Pass Ski Lodge,” she muttered, brow creasing.
Of course she remembered the place from her childhood, having taken day trips there before her dad passed away. Some of her fondest early memories took place at Winter Pass Lodge. The image of it popped into her mind: a huge dark wood and granite building surrounded by smaller cabins, lots of roaring fireplaces and cozy couches for sipping hot cocoa.
Yeah, that sounded good right about now. But there was something else breaking into her thoughts, a fuzzy memory of her mother giving her the town gossip a few years back.
What had it been?
Something about the owners passing away and the place closing for a while. Mr. and Mrs. Harbin had passed away, their son and daughter had inherited their business and land, but he wasn’t around to care for it. Wasn’t that it? Penny tried to remember something about the son, but couldn’t get anything solid.
Blowing out a breath, she looked at her options again. The ski lodge still might be closed. Then again, she knew everything else was closed… Even if it was closed, she might be able to get inside, warm herself by lighting a fire in one of the many fireplaces. It might be trespassing, but the storm outside was only growing with each passing minute.
Surely no one would mind… no one would probably even notice. And it wasn’t like she had a lot of other choices in any case, not with the snow piling up in huge banks all around her car. Penny threw her car into drive and moved down the bumpy rural road at a crawl. The last thing she needed was to hit a patch of ice and lose control.
Her caution cost her a little. It took her over half an hour to drive just over half a mile. When she spotted the old Winter Pass Lodge sign, barely readable through the ever-growing snow drifts, she almost cried with relief.
Unfortunately, she could only make it about halfway up the ski lodge’s long, unpaved driveway. The road