Through the glass I see outside. The snowy landscape is stark in the small clearing, rimmed by tall firs, branches heavy and laden with ice and snow. In the clearing, I see the car, headlights glowing, cones of light illuminating the lane as it drives away.
My heart sinks.
Don’t let it! The person who did this doesn’t deserve your sadness. Get mad, damn it.
As the trembling in my body eases, I feel a swell of anger slowly rising. My fingers grip the upper rung on the ladder so hard my knuckles show bone white. The sound of the engine fades.
As it has before.
“I’ll get you,” I vow, my words hoarse but at least intelligible as I glare at the retreating vehicle, its taillights blinking red through the trees, reflecting blood-like on the snow. “You’ll never get away with this.”
I’ll make sure of it.
CHAPTER 2
Cascade Mountains
December 1
“You prick!” Fighting tears, Megan pounded the steering wheel of her Toyota, then hit the gas. The tires spun, snow and gravel spraying as she backed up, threw the car into gear, then, the beams of her headlights splashing on snowy landscape, tore down the long lane leading away from James Fucking Cahill’s farmhouse. And then, as if he were seated in the passenger seat, she kept ranting. “How could you? How the hell could you?”
She shouldn’t have been surprised.
Once a cheater, always a cheater.
So why had she expected him to be her boyfriend, the man she thought was the love of her life, her soul mate, the goddamned “one,” if you believe that rot? Of course, he’d shown his true colors and had turned out to be a two-timing dick.
She blinked hard, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks as she reached the county road, cut in front of a snowplow clearing the roadway, and sped through the night toward town. Angrily, she dashed the offensive tears away, while fence posts and fields of white passed by in a blur. At the stop sign, she slowed, then cranked the wheel and headed west, circumventing the heart of Riggs Crossing and speeding through the near-empty side streets of this little backwater town that purported itself to be an honest-to-God, year-round Christmas village. But then she knew as well as anyone how appearances could be deceiving, didn’t she?
Out of the corner of her eye, she spied an elderly woman walking a little black Scottie dog in a sweater. Gray curls poking out from a red beret, the woman, in the glow of a streetlamp, shook her head and wagged a finger before making a “slow down” gesture by patting the air.
Megan didn’t care. It was all she could do not to make her own gesture by flipping the woman off. But she didn’t.
No reason.
Other than her heart was broken, her mind mush.
Why, why, why had she been such an idiot as to fall in love with James Cahill? She should have known better. “Crap.” She had known better. In her rearview, she saw the old lady now on her cell phone, probably dialing 9-1-1 and reporting an erratic driver terrorizing the usually serene, almost bucolic streets of this little town tucked into the mountains of Washington State.
Too bad.
But she eased off the accelerator.
Didn’t want or need a ticket.
It wasn’t as if she was blind, for God’s sake. She’d seen how James had been looking at that new girl in the restaurant, the way he’d once looked at her. But what had she expected? Didn’t she know from personal experience how easily James’s head had been turned? And women were always throwing themselves at him, a tall, handsome man with a cowboy attitude and a get-ready-for-the-ride-of-your-life smile that could turn even the most wary heart. They didn’t even have to know that he was rich, or would be, to fall for him.
Hadn’t she?
“You’re an idiot,” she said, not for the first time.
Oh, she couldn’t wait to get to Seattle and her sister! Once in Rebecca’s condo, she’d pour herself into a bottle of vodka and forget the bastard.
“Lying, cheating prick,” she grumbled.
He belonged to her!
Didn’t he get that?
Probably not now.
But he would. She’d see to it.
You know what?
She should just disappear on him.
Make him miss her.
Make him regret ever cheating on her to the depths of his soul!
Yeah, that’s what she’d do.
Sniffing, she brushed the tears from her eyes with a gloved hand, then gripped the wheel so hard her fingers ached as she headed out of town and into the surrounding mountains. Then, as the snowfall increased, she flipped on her wipers.
Rebecca was expecting her.
Her sister. God. It was almost impossible to accept that James had been interested in Rebecca first. And, damn it, Rebecca, the ice queen, had fallen for him too! Well, nearly. As much as Rebecca would allow herself to fall for a man like James—a sexy bad boy with a reputation . . .
That was the trouble with James! He was handsome as hell and enough of a cad—yes, a cad!—that women found him attractive without even realizing he was rich. Or . . . would be, once he inherited the rest of his share of the Cahill fortune. Even without that knowledge, women were continually flinging themselves at him, and he, prick that he was, didn’t exactly discourage them.
Fortunately, in Rebecca’s case, she’d put all that behind her.
Her sister was long over James.
Right?
Didn’t matter, Megan told herself, chin jutting as she squinted through the windshield, snowflakes swirling and dancing in the glow of her headlights.
Rebecca would know what to do.
She always did. Rock-steady, determined Rebecca Travers would help Megan set things right. Despite any latent feelings Rebecca might harbor toward James.
Megan’s conscience twinged a bit. How many times had she relied on her sister? How often had she run crying back to her older sibling, who always helped? Even when . . . ?
She felt a small stab of guilt, which probably should have
