Snowy Mountain Nights by Lindsay Evans Read Free Book Online

legs to his advantage.
    â€œMs. Allen.”
    She turned, startled, her large black eyes widening even more. Dark curls tumbled into her face, and she took a step back.
    â€œAre you following me?”
    â€œYes.”
    She looked surprised again. Then turned away from him to continue walking. Garrison took that as an invitation to fall in step with her. Reyna glanced at him.
    â€œI don’t want you following or stalking me,” she said. “I had enough ruin from you to last a lifetime.”
    â€œRuin?” He frowned. This wasn’t the almost welcoming woman he’d talked with on the slopes earlier that afternoon. Reyna was acting as if that conversation between them never happened.
    â€œYes. Ruin.” Her face grew harder, a beautiful mahogany mask under the falling snow. “Ian was not smart enough to think of all those conditions in the divorce papers by himself. It had to be you.” Reyna’s black eyes crackled with anger. There seemed to be some sort of fever burning inside her. She walked faster. “You helped him to leave me on the edge of desperation. After the divorce I had to start over completely.”
    Garrison nodded silently, feeling again the weight of the blame for how the Barbieri divorce had been settled. In hindsight, he should have never allowed Ian Barbieri to do the things he’d done to the woman he’d supposedly loved since high school. Reyna hadn’t known what she was getting into. She hadn’t even retained a lawyer of her own, for heaven’s sake! But despite his attraction to her then, Garrison had been too caught up in his job, in the pure facts of the case, to do what was right.
    â€œThe divorce left me vulnerable and more alone than I’d ever been.” She slowed her steps, and her harsh breaths steamed the air. Then she looked annoyed with herself that she’d told him that much.
    Because of Reyna and her divorce, he’d become more human, more aware of the larger picture where both parties in the separation were concerned. Garrison was almost ashamed to admit that it had been because of his attraction to her that he’d even begun to second-guess the methods that had worked so well for him in the past. Shallow, but true. After Reyna, it was no longer about simply allowing his client to escape a previous romantic entanglement with the most money possible. It was about being fair.
    â€œIt wasn’t my finest hour,” he said finally. Inadequately. “And although it means nothing now, please allow me to apologize.”
    He’d spent untold weeks and months torturing himself with what he could have done to be fair to her five years ago. Then he dreamed about being the man to come to her rescue and save her from her marriage. Now he simply wanted to be the man in her bed.
    He swallowed and fisted a gloved hand in his jacket pocket. The fierceness of his desire for her was almost frightening. Before he saw her on the train that morning, she had existed at the back of his mind as a sort of angel, inspiring him to be a better man. Now he wanted to pull her down in the dirt with him and kiss the innocence from her lips.
    Reyna walked quietly by his side, thankfully oblivious to his yearning. She pushed the hood back from her face, and the snow fell on her hair, the white settling in her beautiful black curls. She tilted her face briefly up at the sky. Garrison watched a lucky snowflake melting against her lips. He watched, burning in his thirst, as those lips parted, and her tongue licked away the wet.
    â€œWhy apologize now?” she asked. “It’s been five years.”
    â€œBecause I didn’t mean to hurt you then, and I don’t want you to hold the past against me now.” He paused. “And I want you to know that I’m not that man anymore.”
    â€œWhy do you care what I think?”
    â€œIsn’t it obvious? I want to...woo you.”
    She made a disbelieving noise, the