Chapter 1
Chapter One
Rachel
First week of February
The death rattle under the car’s hood was the sound of her career dying.
Rachel Hart was driving up an impossible incline on a dirt road that forked off State Route 33 on the outskirts of Luview, Maine, a dinky backwater town she had never, ever wanted to set foot in.
But here she was, brought from Los Angeles by a work project.
And her own sheer stupidity.
“No!” she ordered the car, as if it were her assistant. “You are not allowed to break down. You are not allowed to make that sound.”
She pressed down on the accelerator and the car began to lurch, as if it begged to differ.
“I’m eleven miles from town. Come on. You just have to make it eleven more miles,” she encouraged as the car began to cough.
Cough. Like her Grandma Hart, sucking on Virginia Slims back in the 1990s.
The speedometer dropped from thirty to twenty-seven to twenty-three, gravity and a faulty piece of metal or plastic or some sensor–whatever those were–making the car slow down.
And ruining her life.
“You cannot do this. You have to work. Have to! I did not fly from L.A. to Boston and rent this dumpy car to drive three hours into the backwoods of Maine only to have this happen. THIS! IS! NOT! HAPPENING!”
The car halted. Bam. Just like that.
Like it decided to go on strike.
Rachel’s gaze cut to the backseat, filled with her luggage. There was more in the trunk. Her boss had dangled this assignment in front of her three weeks ago, the memory now painful.
She put the car in park and began gently banging her forehead against the steering wheel.
Luview, Maine–“Love You, Maine”–was the silliest place on Earth. Known as the town where “Every Day is Valentine’s Day,” it was a cheesy tourist trap, the worst parts of the Poconos, Niagara Falls, and Vegas all put in a Vitamix, pureed, and poured out into heart-shaped molds.
Much like the chocolate her entire career now relied on.
Yes, chocolate.
The very same chocolate that was to blame for why she was here.
Even worse, Luview, Maine, was the hometown of the most enigmatic, elusive, and frustratingly maddening man in her life:
Kell Luview, a former co-worker.
A former friend.
A former… well, a former.
As in the past.
Good thing he’d taken to big-city life when they’d worked together in Washington, D.C. Plus, she knew through back channels that he didn’t live there.
Kell Luview was living his best life right now, Rachel assumed, somewhere in L.A. or Chicago, or maybe still in D.C.
Possibly even London, or Toronto.
Anywhere but here.
Whew.
Why was she thinking about the guy she almost kissed five years ago?
The guy who rescued her from near death in a lemur costume?
The guy who didn’t believe her when she decided to warn him that his girlfriend at the time–half a decade ago–was just using him for access to his powerful uncle in Maine government?
Maybe she was thinking about Kell Luview because her rental car had just died eleven miles from the town named after his great-great-great-grandfather.
“Okay, okay, okay,” she whispered to herself.
“Think. You have gotten yourself out of worse messes than this. Remember the time that sewer rat got into the building and nearly destroyed the Kardashian yoga shoot? You caught it with nothing but your own bare hands and an Armani jacket. Have confidence. Confidence, Rachel. You can fix this.”
Pressing the ignition button, she willed it to start.
Nothing.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and tried to remember the calming ritual she’d been taught.
“I trust the universe,” she said aloud, lying through gritted teeth. “I breathe in panic, and I breathe out calm.”
Inhale through the nose, imagining the cloud of fear emanating from her being sucked in like a kitchen fan absorbing a burnt dinner.
Exhale a fine, warm mist of love, wrapping her in safety and goodness.
Inhale failure and frustration.
Exhale success and achievement.
Inhale all that is broken with the world, including the car’s engine.
Exhale a connectedness with the eternal peace of the wise mind.
She did the cycle three times, following her business coach’s instructions.
And then she tried the ignition again.
Nothing.
“YOU STUPID, USELESS BUCKET OF BOLTS!” she screamed, clutching the steering wheel and shaking it.
That felt so much better than all that trusting the universe crap. Sometimes, anger was the appropriate response.
More than appropriate now.
Although it was futile, she reached for her phone.
No Service.
The car was broken.
Her phone had no signal.
She was eleven miles from this state’s version of “civilization.”
The truth asserted itself, like it or not.
Rachel Hart was stuck on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
And her bladder chose that moment to announce that it needed a wee bit of attention.
“OH, COME ON!” she screamed.
The rental car’s interior was cooling quickly, her ski jacket bulky and uncomfortable. An L.A. girl like her only wore it for weekends in Tahoe.
Not for survival.
All the land around her was blanketed in a solid foot of beautiful, pristine snow as she stepped out of the car, stuffed her purse under the front seat out of habit, keys clutched in her hand, and slammed the door, needing to pace.
She never wanted this assignment in the first place. Her boss, Orla, offered it to her after a charity event where she’d met Rachel’s mom, fading ’80s television actress Portia Starman.
Portia had done some festivals and then a short-lived reality TV series here in Love You, Maine, and still gushed about the town, even when Rachel begged her not to. The memory of how Portia came to Love You was bitter and spiked with nothing but pain.
Her mother didn’t care. Not in a cruel way; she just literally didn’t remember that Rachel got her the festival gig because she was good friends with Kell Luview and had “met” his mom, Deanna, on FaceTime.
While Deanna was wearing a red lips costume inspired by The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but never mind that.
“Why am I thinking about this?” she moaned, shoving the ridiculous memory out of her head as she paced, her suede UGG booties sinking into the snow as she walked, the chunky high heels forcing her calves to work twice as hard.
Fashionable, warm, and reasonably functional, the boots were a fine choice when she bought them in L.A.
At the time, she thought this trip would be a breeze, a three-day pop-in while she convinced the owners of Love You Chocolate to sell to Markstone’s, the international chocolatier she worked for, who was looking to grab market share in the U.S.
by leveraging the small-town, feel-good image of Love You, Maine.
Breaking down on an icy logging road was not part of the plan.
Her new boots, cute in the store, pinched the tips of her toes, which now doubled as frozen grapes. Could body parts get this cold and not fall off? She tried to remember what you did for frostbite.
Crisp, impossibly fresh air assaulted her nostrils, like icicles had formed in there.
Snotcicles were not part of the plan, either.
Still aching from the long red-eye plane ride, waiting in lines, a luggage delay, and driving three hours north of Boston, she lifted her hands over her head and stretched.
Her adorable ski jacket pulled up and her exposed midsection instantly froze, so she yanked her arms down hard.
A twinge in her shoulder signaled a muscle spasm that rippled down her back.
No part of her body was okay.
No part of her mind was, either.
An image of Kell Luview standing on a city street, angry and righteous as he yelled at her the last time they were together, washed over her. They’d been fellows at a D.C. think tank, and everything had ended badly, but Rachel still couldn’t help but want him.
His chiseled jaw. The closely cropped dark hair. Those beautiful slate-gray eyes.
And when he wasn’t angry, that wicked, wicked smile.
How they watched Nordic noir television shows together. The night he’d covered them with the same blanket while they munched on snacks and drank beers, having fun, just starting to hint at maybe, just maybe…
Except that last part wasn’t how everything had actually ended with him.
Instead, he’d stormed away from her, quitting his fellowship on the spot, leaving her life with a big misunderstanding she’d never been able to fix. Hardening her heart had been the answer and, so far, it had served her.
Screaming a curse word into the woods only led to the flutter of bird wings as a bunch of blue jays scattered.
Halting in place, the realization slammed into her: I’m really trapped.
Mental inventories ran through her simultaneously, a symphony of panic in her brain.
Food? She had two protein bars and the bag of mini pretzels they gave her on the plane. If calories ended up mattering, she had a box of cough drops. Flavored lip gloss? That must be edible, right?
Water? She looked around at the snow. Okay, not a problem.
A snowflake, lazy and erratic as it fell, landed on her nose. She looked up, searching for more. Where there was one, there were always others.
Heat? The car would provide insulation, and she had two bags full of clothes she could cover herself with in a pinch.
Bathroom?
She surveyed the area and groaned. No powder room here.
Crouching by a tree wasn’t exactly her style, and in these boots, she’d be more likely to fall over and end up with her warm butt in the cold snow.
Cryotherapy was a trendy spa thing back in L.A.
, but this was not how she imagined trying it out.
And suddenly, she really regretted that full waxing session she’d had three days ago.
Eerie quiet settled in as she began to pace again, the crunch of snow underfoot only emphasizing the silence. The cold was starting to chill her hands. A city girl her entire life, the only time she ever spent in the woods was on dates, when she pretended to be more outdoorsy than she really was.
This was unprecedented.