Baby, It's Cold Outside

By Donna Kauffman

Previously appeared in Jingle Bell Rock
 
Along with a blizzard, this Christmas is bringing Jace Morgan’s past roaring back with a vengeance. Not only will he and his three brothers be in Rogues Hollow and under the same roof for the first time in years—Jace is about to be reunited with his first, and maybe only love, Suzanna York—for better or worse. Every inch of him is aching for better, but he can’t forget the way Zan broke his heart once they left home for college a decade ago. Too bad he can’t forget the heat they generated either . . .
 
Zan didn’t expect Jace would be the one to pick her up at the station. She didn’t expect to see him again at all—though she’d fantasized about it countless times. When it came to Jace, she had a lot of explaining to do. But now, with Christmas Eve just hours away, the storm threatening to snow them in, and the electricity still irresistibly crackling between them, the last thing on Zan’s mind is talk . . .
 
Praise for Donna Kauffman
 
“Charming characters, emotion galore, a small town—you’re going to love Donna Kauffman!”
—Lori Foster
 
 “We all know where there's Donna Kauffman, there's a rollicking, sexy read chock‑full of charm and sparkle.”
—USAToday.com

 
  

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zebra Books
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781420148923

Donna Kauffman

Donna was first published with Bantam's Loveswept line in 1993. After 14 books, she moved on to write contemporary single titles for Bantam. In 2001, she returned to her category roots and had her first release from Harlequin's Temptation line. Walk on the Wild Side was the number one selling Temptation on Amazon the week of its release. Donna is also writing for Harlequin's Blaze line. She enjoys creating characters that like to push the edge a little. Donna lives in Virginia with her husband and rapidly growing sons. She also has a rapidly growing menagerie of pets. Her two Australian terrors, er, terriers, were recently joined by a baby cockatoo named Cha Cha. Donna's husband is fairly sure it won't end there. Donna's fairly sure he's right.

Book preview

1-4201-4892-3

Chapter One

Jace Morgan slammed the hood down on his father’s old truck, then ducked his head against the driving snow as he trudged back around to the driver’s door. At this rate both he and Suzanna would be stuck in town. For the first time since arriving back in Rogue’s Hollow the day before, Jace felt like smiling.

Being stuck in the snow with Suzanna York was very probably the best thing that could ever happen to him. Or the worst, he conceded, as he rumbled on down the two-lane country road. He was still a good half hour away from the train station . . . and his reunion with the woman he’d given his virginity to the summer he turned seventeen. Then walked away from the summer he turned eighteen. Ten years. A lifetime ago. An eternity. So much had happened since that summer, when they’d both had scholarships clutched in their hands . . . and dreams held just as tightly in their hearts. Dreams only a college degree could provide. He’d gone west to Indiana State and a basketball career that had ended just shy of the pros, but provided him with the immense pleasure of teaching the stars of tomorrow . . . both in the classroom and on the court. Zan had left their country life in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in Virginia and headed south to Georgia on an academic scholarship.

They’d had plans. Such mature plans. They’d set each other free during their college years, to experience life in and out of the classroom. But free or not, they’d vowed to maintain their close friendship, not really believing anyone would ever replace the other in their hearts. Their bond was special, ageless, timeless. Had been from the moment they’d laid eyes on each other, skating on Old Man Ramsay’s pond when they were thirteen years old, days after Zan and her mom had moved into the guest house on the Sinclair property in the Hollow. Pretty much from that moment on, Jace couldn’t imagine a world without Zanna York in it.

Suzanna, however, had apparently found a world without him a bit easier to conceive. Christmas hadn’t even arrived before she’d stopped replying to his letters, was unavailable when he called. He’d realized the hard way that he wasn’t as mature as he thought, because his heart had been shattered. And all these years later, he still hadn’t figured out how to reclaim every last piece of it.

But he’d long ago assigned that broken heart to one of the many milestones a man had to pass on the way to adulthood. So what if he’d been an adult for some time now and still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the reason he couldn’t give his whole heart to anyone else was because Zan York still held a small piece of it. The most vital piece.

Swearing under his breath now, he focused on keeping the damn truck on the road. He should have told Frances he’d book Suzanna a room in town, find some way to get her picked up and delivered home by Christmas Day. Seeing as it was only hours to Christmas Eve and the snow was coming down blizzard strength, with no signs of letting up anytime soon, he knew that was a promise he couldn’t have kept. And why he should care was beyond him.

But Frances’s phone call had caught him at a low point. Sitting alone in his father’s big empty house, his past weighing so heavily on him he thought it might crush him completely, he’d begun having serious second thoughts about taking that job offer. About coming back to Marshall County for good. If only his brothers had made it in before the storm. All four of the Morgan siblings were finally coming home for Christmas. Not all that unusual for some families, but for the Morgan clan, it was downright miraculous. Flung to the four corners of the earth, mostly to get away from their tyrant of a father, they hadn’t all been under the same roof in well over ten years.

Sentimentality and a warm holiday spirit had never been enough to draw the siblings back together. No, it had taken the death of their father, Taggart Morgan, to accomplish what love alone never would. In fact, only his oldest brother, Tag, had made it back for the funeral a month earlier, before heading back to the project he was overseeing in some South American jungle. But with the old bastard finally gone, there was a hell of a lot to consider about what to do with the two hundred plus years of Rogue’s Hollow legacy left behind.

The snowstorm had stranded his three brothers in various locations, none of them being the train station in Porterville. So he’d been the only one wandering the rooms, staring out across the fields, trying to answer the stable hands and majordomo’s questions, when all he had was more questions himself. There were appointments set up for after the holidays, with the lawyers and such. He supposed it would all be settled then, after he and his brothers shared some time alone to come to some of their own decisions.

He stared through the windshield, as the wipers whipped back and forth, losing the battle to keep the windshield clear. Frances’s phone call had surprised him. He hadn’t spoken to her since he’d left for college. Had never, in fact, been back to Rogue’s Hollow since. He and his brothers kept in touch via the wonders of e-mail and cell phones, but none of them discussed home and hearth. Probably because none of them considered it such. Home for the Morgan boys had become wherever they hung their hat. And it had been a long time since any of them had hung anything in Rogue’s Hollow.

Jace didn’t bother wondering how Frances knew he was back home. The Hollow, along with the little town of Highland Springs, was too closeknit a community to hide much of anything