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CHAPTER ONE

“Can’t you sedate her more?”
Taryn Geiger cast her eyes at the far-off ceiling of the Seattle-Tacoma airport and exhaled with all the calm control she wished she felt. “You said you gave her as much as I told you to, right?”
“Sure, but she’s . . .” Seth waved his hand in the general direction of the terrified Great Dane scrabbling madly on the linoleum while Taryn hunkered beside her, both arms around her neck.
“Not remotely sedate?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should’ve given her the medicine earlier.” As opposed to right before you put her in the car.
Seth brushed invisible contagion off the lapel of his coat. “Didn’t think of it. Hindsight, eh?”
Taryn didn’t wait for an apology. Seth didn’t do apologies. She’d gotten used to it over the course of their relationship, but that didn’t mean she’d ever learned to like it.
Seth didn’t do apologies, he didn’t do details, and he didn’t do forethought. For the year and change they’d been together, Taryn had been the planner, the one who made sure the rent got paid and the taxes got filed on time and the waitstaff got trained appropriately on their employment rights. Seth was the creative mind. The dreamer.
Which meant it fell to Taryn to kneel here on the floor of the vast check-in lobby, sweating through her festive red wool sweater as she tried to figure out how to fit a panicked hundred-pound dog into a sixty-pound dog’s crate.
Check the crate, she’d told Seth over the phone a week ago. Make sure she still fits.
She’d have done it herself, but the crate was one of many pieces of flotsam that she’d lost control of when her relationship with Seth broke apart. It had remained in storage at Seth’s place for the past two months; Taryn hadn’t.
Today was one of Seth’s days to have Betty, which meant Taryn had needed Seth to bring the dog and the crate to meet her at the airport. All she’d asked was that he sedate the dog and make sure Betty still fit in the box.
And Seth had said, in a tone that clearly telegraphed his intention to ignore her request, It’ll be fine. Quit trying to control everything.
But the problem with letting other people steer the ship was that they almost inevitably ran it aground.
Betty was no longer a puppy. She’d grown considerably since Taryn and Seth had adopted her from a rescue society seven months ago. Now she was practically the size of a Mack truck, and even if she were feeling compliant, it would be a tight squeeze to get her into the crate.
Betty was not feeling compliant.
Taryn pushed her dog gently on the rump. “Sit.”
Betty sat, her flank trembling with nervous energy. “I know, baby,” Taryn said. “I don’t like the airport much, either. But here’s the deal.” She scratched and stroked Betty’s head between her ears, where her gray-brown fur was short and soft as a mouse’s belly. “We have to get you in this crate so we can get you on this plane and take you home to see Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. You want to see Grandpa, right, Betts?”
Betty’s tail thumped against the floor. Even stressed out and amped up on Benadryl, Betty loved Taryn’s father enough to respond to the word “grandpa.”
“So let’s give it another try.”
Taryn pressed down on Betty’s head and urged her forward into the crate with a hand on her hind quarters. Betty whined loudly and dug in her nails. Seth sighed and put his hands on his hips, his car keys jingling.
“You don’t need me here, right, Tare? I think I’m just going to take off.”
She managed not to say, Are you fucking kidding me? but just barely. Her flight left in an hour, she had a too-big dog and a too-small crate and acres too much luggage, and Seth was going to leave her on the airport floor.
He really was a cad.
He’d seemed so nice a year ago—so handsome, so charming, so perfect. This latest evidence of his lack of gentlemanliness made her want to fling luggage at his head.
But Seth would hate it if she made a fuss at the airport, and she would hate his discomfort.
“Sure, go ahead,” she said. “Betty and I, we’ve got this all in hand.” As she said it, Taryn loosened her hold on Betty, and Seth took a rapid step back as the dog lunged at him, threatening to slobber on his perfectly creased wool slacks and his butter-soft Italian leather jacket.
He held Betty at bay with one hand and directed raised eyebrows at Taryn until she gave in with a sigh and yanked Betty back by her collar. Well-trained to the end.
“I’m sure you do. You’re good at . . .” Seth circled his hand vaguely in the direction of the clusterfuck of Taryn plus dog plus crate plus two giant pieces of luggage on the floor of the check-in area. “. . . at this kind of thing. And I’ve got the dinner service starting soon. I didn’t figure on this taking so long. I thought I’d just be dropping off Betty and the crate.”
“And saying goodbye to your dog.” And to me.
“Right.”
“Forever.”
“Yes. Of course. But I already did that, so . . .” Cue breezy smile. “I’ll see you around.”
There were so many things wrong with that statement, Taryn didn’t know where to start. She wouldn’t see him around. She was moving from Seattle back to her hometown of Salem, Oregon, tail between her legs, for the express purpose of ensuring she never saw Seth around again. Never walked past his new restaurant on her way to the one they’d opened together, in a haze of new love and big dreams, eight months ago.
She’d shut down her whole life in Seattle, sent all her things south on a moving truck two days earlier, and now the last tangible thing left that tied her to this place was Betty.
And Seth. Who, it seemed, couldn’t be rid of her soon enough.
“Yeah. See you around.”
His smile didn’t quite pass inspection. It had a wincing quality that betrayed his awareness of the awfulness of what he was about to do.
But he did it anyway. Seth walked away, and Taryn and Betty watched him go.
She should’ve just taken Betty when they split up instead of creating a shared-custody arrangement. All her attempts to be equitable, reasonable, fair— What was the point? This was where she’d landed. On her knees on the shiny floor at Sea-Tac, trying to shove a dog into a crate while a crowd of Christmas Eve travelers parted around her—shoes clacking, bags rolling merrily along—and Seth walked away.
Betty whined again and craned her neck around to blow hot, horrible-smelling breath in Taryn’s face. Fear breath. Oh, man. When Betty got the fear breath, there wasn’t much hope of making her do anything she didn’t want to do—and all she wanted to do was stick her nose in Taryn’s crotch and fall asleep.
Which is exactly what she attempted, burrowing and snuffling and whining in the back of her throat while Taryn let out a deep breath and focused on the departure screen so she wouldn’t have to think about the fact that there were stupid tears in her eyes for the second stupid time on this stupid, endless, awful day.
The departure screen blinked with delayed flights and cancellations. Probably bad weather back east. They wouldn’t cancel the shuttle flight from Seattle to Portland just because of a little rain.
Taryn looked down and stroked one hand down Betty’s back. “It’s you and me now, kiddo. The only way through this is forward. So let’s try it again, huh? You can curl up in there, take a little nap, and before you know it, we’ll be home.”
She left out the part about the car. When they got to Portland, her father would pick them up, and Betty would have to ride in the backseat of his Mercedes for the fifty-mile drive to Salem. Betty was going to hate that. She was not a big fan of cars.
Taryn picked up Betty’s gigantic front paws and placed them over the lip of the crate. “All your favorite toys are in there, sweetheart. And a treat, too!”
Betty shot her a look full of woe. Taryn wrapped her hands around the dog’s ribcage and sort of hefted her up while she knee-walked toward the crate. She succeeded in pushing in five or six inches of Betty. And possibly tweaking something in her back.
She straightened, putting her hand to her spine, and Betty slunk back out of the crate.
“Motherf—”
“You need some help?”
Taryn looked up and recognized in one beat of her heart that there were worse things than this dogtastrophe she was embroiled in.
There was the possibility, for example, that the man who had ruined her family seven years ago would turn up and offer to help.
And, because she was cursed, there was also the possibility that he would wear a straw cowboy hat and a blue Hawaiian shirt over a long-sleeved thermal one. That he would still have a deep tan and that crinkly-eyed smile she remembered from countless company Christmas parties and dinners at the country club.
That she would be on the floor, plump and disheveled and sweaty, and Jason Schram would look absolutely fantastic.
Yep. That was worse.
“No, we’re good, thanks.” Taryn picked up Betty’s hindquarters and sort of heaved them toward the crate. Betty scrabbled her paws and yelped. Jason frowned.
“You sure? Because I could—”
“No, no, I’ve got it.” Another heave. It had become astonishingly important that she accomplish this task, and she accomplish it now, with Jason watching, and she be as competent and pulled-together as circumstances allowed, and—
One of Betty’s back paws connected with Taryn’s nose, and for a second she felt nothing but a blooming, black-edged pain, but she kept hold of Betty for dear life and shoved. The crate leapt forward across the linoleum. Taryn followed on her knees, hands full of dog.
And then suddenly Betty was in, and Taryn fastened the door and turned her back on it, collapsing in relief as her poor, lovely, confused dog began howling in earnest.
From way up high in the airport stratosphere, where all that denim-and-Hawaiian-shirt-clad man ended in fair hair peeking out from an absurd, juvenile hat, Jason smiled and pointed at her chest. “You’ve got a little . . .”
Taryn looked down. Boob. She had a little boob sticking out of her now-crooked sweater, if by “little” one meant “enormous and right on the verge of popping free.” She yanked her red V-neck into alignment and pushed her breast back where it belonged in one quick move.
“Thanks. Really. I’m sure you have . . .” Better things to do than consort with the enemy.
“Sure. Yeah. I have to check in. But you’ve got a lot of stuff here. You need me to carry a bag or something?” He lifted his own duffel. “This is all I’m traveling with.”
The notification of his carefree one-bag status made Taryn want to spill something large and sticky all over his obnoxious shirt. Judging by the way he was dressed, Jason Schram was spending some of his ill-gotten gains to head for the tropics. He would probably spend Christmas stoned, laying on a nude beach in the sun, having suntan lotion rubbed into his skin by topless island women, while Taryn shared eggnog with her parents and slept in her teenage bedroom, surrounded by Justin Timberlake posters.
And she’d flashed him.
She’d flashed him.
Worst. Christmas. Eve. Ever.
“Come on, Taryn. Let me help. You can go back to wishing I was dead afterward.”
And just like that, a laugh burbled up in her throat, completely unbidden. She stared up at him, stunned that he could find humor—even gallows humor—in a situation like this.
But then, Jason always did have a knack for making her laugh.
She dusted off her knees and rose to her feet. “Can you take those bags for me? I’ll see if I can push the crate.”

#

Jason scratched the back of his head where the hat band itched and listened to Taryn Vargas very sweetly order around an airline employee who had no idea what she was in for.
“Okay, I hear what you’re saying,” Taryn said. “I understand. The flight to Portland is canceled. Absolutely, I know you can’t do anything about that. But what I’m saying is that I’d like you to check whether any of the other airlines are flying to Portland tonight. Could you do that for me?”
“I could, ma’am, but even if they were, this is a weather-related cancelation, and that means the airline isn’t responsible for—”
“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I understand. Your policies won’t allow you to pay for my flight. Just look that up for me, will you? And then we’ll see. We need to have all the information.”
The airline employee’s fingers started clacking over her keyboard from 1984, and Jason’s eyes drifted south, toward the hem of Taryn’s red sweater, stretched tight over her curves.
Look away.
No sense in letting himself ogle her, even if she was all ripe and round and just about the best-looking thing he’d seen in forever.
Because under that veneer of sweetness, Taryn was bossy and manipulative, a born meddler.
It wasn’t entirely a bad thing—he’d always found that side of her personality entertaining. Even so, it didn’t bear forgetting that Taryn Vargas was one hundred percent her father’s daughter.
Plus, she hated his guts.
He focused on her dog instead. Who could forget the dog? The dog was caterwauling inside its cage like a giant, smelly, unmanageable baby. It had the unwilling attention of everyone within the vast, cantilevered space of the check-in lobby.
Jason lifted his wrist to look at his watch, then frowned. He didn’t wear a watch anymore. He hadn’t worn one in years, and he’d long since gotten out of the habit of checking.
Live for the moment, that was his motto now. Because he’d done the whole corporate drone thing, had devoted himself completely and slavishly to Vargas Industries from that first summer internship until the year he turned thirty. Tomás Vargas had told him jump, and he’d asked, How high, sir?
He’d sucked up to the boss, buddied around with the boss’s son, and nursed a crush on the boss’s too-young, entirely-off-limits daughter. And then one day he’d found out the boss was betraying everything he believed in, and Jason had veered off that path onto a new one.
He rubbed his hand over his wrist.
“We can rebook you on a flight that leaves Thursday,” the employee told Taryn.
“Three days from now?” Taryn shook her head, making wavy black hair swish back and forth in a way that caught Jason’s eye and held it. “It’s Christmas Eve. I need to get home tonight. What else can you do for me?”
Typical Taryn, never taking no for an answer. Probably a good thing she’d never picked up on his interest back when she was just back from college and starting out in the marketing department. Younger or not, she’d have bulldozed his will flatter than a pancake.
Not anymore. He’d been such a weenie back then, but the trial had taught him to go after what he wanted. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as he’d always imagined it would be. There was really no knack to it, and certainly no need for the kind of convoluted machinations Taryn favored.
These days, Jason just figured out what he wanted and took it.
Tonight, he wanted to get home to Bethel to visit his parents. This morning—God, had it really been this morning?—he’d been sitting in a Wailea cafe eating toast, listening to a tinny rendition of “Good King Wenceslas” over the speakers, and he’d had a sudden urge to spend Christmas in Oregon. To eat those pasty thumbprint cookies his mother always made and look at the snow-dusted mountains from the front deck of the house he’d grown up in. Maybe exchange a few last-minute, half-assed gifts.
Sure, his timing was a little off, but once he made up his mind to do something, he did it.
He was going home. The flight had been canceled. He’d get a car.
Simple.
Jason picked up his bag off the floor and stepped out of line.

#

By the time she got Betty’s crate and her luggage and herself off the elevator in baggage claim, the urge to cry had become a physical pressure behind Taryn’s eyes and in her throat. Her chest kept heaving with it, as if her frustration and anger were a living thing trying to escape through her windpipe.
Not happening.
She’d rent a car and drive home. It was only five hours to Salem—maybe six or seven, if the rain was bad enough to slow her down. She could be home by eleven o’clock. Piece of cake.
If there were any cars left.
She scanned the counters—Avis, Budget, Enterprise, Hertz, Dollar. Every one had a line longer than the one up at the check-in desk, and every line was full of discouraged, wilted-looking people upon whom Taryn would soon impose the further annoyance of Betty, howling her own loud contribution to the Chorus of Suck.
Though maybe if Betty was extra annoying, someone would let her go the front of the line. Maybe—
Something blocked her view of the rental counters. Something tall and broad that smelled like brine and coconuts.
“Want a ride?”
Taryn blinked. Had Jason always been this . . . this much? His hair was longer than she’d ever seen it, sticking out from that goofy hat to curl around his ears and the nape of his neck. His skin was all golden and . . .
And the fact was, Jason Schram looked like a giant, man-sized Christmas present. One hundred and one nights of hot island fun.
Which she really shouldn’t be noticing, because her official stance on Jason Schram was one of steady, nonjudgmental disapproval.
But on the other hand, he was dangling car keys in front of her nose.
“I have a dog,” she said. Inanely.
“I noticed. I have an SUV.”
“And you’re going to Salem?”
“Close enough. To Bethel.”
Bethel. The little lumber town where they’d both grown up was only fifteen miles from Salem, the city her father had moved the family to when their big house in Bethel had become too small for his expanding tastes.
Bethel, where everyone had worked at the Vargas plant until the Vargas plant closed down, and now a lot of people didn’t work at all.
She was surprised Jason had the balls to visit. It had to be uncomfortable, seeing what had happened to Bethel since he’d set its ruination in motion.
“I can drop you off,” he added. One corner of his mouth twitched with a smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes.
His eyes were more cautious. Like maybe he wasn’t sure if this was such a hot idea.
Maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea. Five or six hours in a car with a man who smelled like beach sex and couldn’t even drop her off at the front door of her parents’ house, because her father would shoot him on sight?
Unwise, at best.
But she wanted to go home. She wanted to see her mother’s Christmas trees—the formal one in the front window, the family one in the den—and hug her father and weep her way through It’s a Wonderful Life.
Plus, she needed to get out of Seattle and lick her wounds before she started bleeding all over the airport carpet.
“All right, but I’m in charge of the music.” She bent down to free Betty from her prison. “You carry the crate, okay?”