Troping Through the Snow by Alexa Riley

“I know.” She’s quiet when she says it, but now I’m wondering, if she knew it, why didn’t she say it like every other person in this town she talks to?

“I’ll get to the point.”

“You seem like the kind of man that doesn’t beat around the bush.”

Now I’m thinking about her bush and what I’d like to do to it. Focus, Clause. “I saw you.”

“You saw me?” she asks as she leans against the chair on the other side of my table and tucks her hands into her overalls. “Here?”

“No, in Westchester.”

I watch as her smile slowly falters, and then she shakes it off. “Oh, I was just running a few errands for my cousin that lives out there.”

“Is that the story you’re telling?”

“It’s not a story,” she snaps and then realizes what she’s done. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Deciding that I’m not going to get anywhere like this, I stand up from the small chair and bring myself to my full height. She has to tilt her head all the way back to look up at me, but all I do is take out my wallet and drop a few bills on the table, along with a card.

“Thirty boxes of store-bought cake mix tell a different story.” She gasps as I walk to the door and stop right before pushing it open. “When you feel like talking, there’s my number.”

Walking out into the snowy late afternoon, I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. Hope.





CHAPTER 3





FROSTIE





I watch as Clause stalks out of my bakery. The way he walks reminds me of a predator; each step is taken with precision. He looks like at any moment he could pounce, and I hadn’t been wrong. That’s what he did to me today, and I hadn’t seen it coming.

It’s not until he’s out of my sight that I rush over and lock the door. How the hell did he see me buying the cake mix? I had a wig on, and the man is a giant. The better question is, how did I not see him? What was he even doing over in Westchester?

He probably has a girlfriend over there or something. If there is a girlfriend over there, I bet she wouldn’t be too happy that her man is handing out his phone number. Then again, he could have a bunch of women for all I know because we know nothing about him.

The one thing we do know is he doesn’t date anyone from Troping. Maybe it’s a don’t-shit-where-you-eat kind of thing. The women around here respond to Clause in one of two ways. They swoon, which he doesn’t appear to notice, or they stay the hell out of his way.

I stay the hell out of his way, but only because I’m inwardly swooning. They don’t make men like him except in the pages of my romance books. He’s a tatted-up lumberjack, and I have more than once dreamed about tracing his tattoos with my tongue because I’m a dork. I always wonder how much of his body is covered in them. I can only see a few peeking out of his shirt and sleeves. Do they go across his back and chest? How far down his chest?

Oh my god, I need to get it together because this man knows my secret. I stare down at his phone number and wonder why he wants to talk to me about it. Honestly I don’t see why he cares. Okay, I used some box mixes and plan on using some more. I have them hidden away upstairs, and I’ll bring down what I need each morning before anyone gets here. No one noticed or said a word. It’s my frosting everyone loves, anyway.

I have no clue why Clause comes here. I’ve never seen him in any other restaurants in town. When he does come to town, he ends up here, so it has to be the frosting. I shake my head because I really don’t know what the hell brings him in here. I don’t know anything.

What is weird is that I can’t see Clause running around town gossiping that I’m using boxed cake mix. No one would believe him, and I could call him a liar. That’s what Tinsel would tell me to do even if I was caught with the box in my hand. She’d scream that it was planted and I was framed. Her policy is if you start a lie there is no going back. You take that shit to the grave, and it doesn’t matter what proof they have.

The thing is I’m not a badass like Tinsel. I’ll crack because I can’t call someone a liar to their face even if they are one. It’s probably why Tinsel and I are best friends because we balance each other out. I don’t even debate calling her about this because that would only make this worse. I don’t even want to contemplate what her response would be.

I shove Clause's number into my pocket before I finish closing up and letting the rest of my staff go for the night. Today I felt lighter and like I could breathe. The box mix helped cut so much time off my day, and I was getting everything done. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but then Clause came and clouded everything,

I’ve always enjoyed his darkness, and from the first time I spotted him, I felt a pull. He gives off this don’t fuck with me vibe, and I had this desire, or maybe it’s a fantasy, that I could be the girl to get past that. That maybe I could be the exception.

He came out of nowhere one day, and my crush was instant, but I knew that was never happening. I’m a mess whenever he comes in, and I can’t bring myself to even meet his eyes because I fear I’d get lost in them.

I saw Tinsel stomp around about Jack for a few years, and I didn’t want to do the same thing. So I’ve done what I could to keep my distance from Clause, knowing we’ll never be anything. Now there’s no avoiding him, and I’ll have to call him. Wait. I can’t call him. That’s what serial killers do.