Love Story for a Snow Princess (Siren Publishing Classic) by Beth D. Carter Read Free Book Online Page A

be a mail-order bride?”
    The question pulled her abruptly back. She swallowed and hunched her shoulders, her muscles stiffening under his expectant stare.
    “That’s a personal question,” she said softly.
    “You don’t answer personal questions?”
    “Do you?” she shot back.
    Paden only shrugged. “I moved here to have peace and quiet to write my books.”
    She didn’t believe him. His answer was too smooth, too polished, and too quick. Had she been a regular person, however, she would have accepted it at face value, but she had her own practiced statement and recognized the falseness in his tone.
    “Ditto,” she said instead, “except for the book part.”
    He raised an eyebrow at her but let the subject drop. “So why didn’t you marry him?”
    “Again, personal.”
    “You know there are a couple of bets going on about you, that you’ll stay and which man you’ll marry. Not many pretty girls come to River Ice, so you’re a hot commodity right now.”
    It took her a moment to process the last part of his sentence. Her brain sort of went haywire when he called her pretty. She blinked. “Which man is winning right now?”
    Again, he looked at her with one eyebrow raised. Thea came to realize this was his surprised look.
    “It’s pretty much even between all the single men, but the majority thinks Caleb will wise up and whisk you away.”
    “I never pictured you as a gossiper,” she replied.
    He shrugged. “All I’ve been hearing for the past few days is Panthea Snow this and Panthea Snow that. I feel like you’re a celebrity.”
    She waved away his words. “I’m here till the snow breaks is what I am. But River Ice seems like a nice place.”
    Paden snorted. “There are about five hundred people living here, and 70 percent are male. Everyone is showing you their nice side on purpose.”
    “Not everyone,” she muttered under her breath.
    But Paden must have supersonic hearing because he stopped and took her arm. She looked at him under the faint lights from the town and stars above. His eyes were in shadow, but she didn’t need light to know he studied her.
    “You think I’m not nice?”
    “I’m sure you’re a lovely person. I must be the one who brings out the disagreeable in you.”
    “You almost froze to death your first night here! Sorry if I was a little curt about it.”
    “All right, I get it! You don’t have to—”
    He kissed her. All coherent thought fled her mind as his lips settled on hers. At first it was just chaste, a mere brush of mouths. But then he leaned into the kiss, and his tongue grazed the seam of her lips seeking entrance to the dark caverns of her mouth. She allowed him access, and his tongue slipped in to dance with hers. It was a bold kiss, a long, sexy, sensual one that demanded a response, and to her surprise, she gave it. Her body strained against his as far as the bulky coats would let them and she grasped his shoulders. His hands snaked around her to pull her into him. Fire zinged through her blood, and her heart pounded with desire.
    Then, suddenly, he pulled back. She half fell forward from his desertion, catching herself by shifting her foot. Her lips tingled at the loss of his.
    She still couldn’t see his eyes, but his mouth flattened out in a straight, unfriendly line. “The hotel is right up this hill,” he said, his voice strangely distant. “Good night, Thea.”
    And then he left her, standing in the snow, turned-on, and absolutely bewildered.

Chapter Seven
     
    Paden berated himself all the way back to his snowmobile which he’d parked behind the Suinnak restaurant. How foolish he was acting, over a wounded girl no less. Like he could offer her something better, kind words of understanding or some shit. Those eyes of hers had gotten to him. From the first moment he’d seen the emptiness in those gray eyes, it had called to the thing inside him. Only someone who had lived through hell had those kinds of eyes, and damn if it didn’t