Snowbound - Harlequin.com

190 SNOWBOUND
there had been in November, but there was plenty for
cross-country skiers and snowmobilers. She passed
several turnouts with a couple of vehicles parked in
each and various tracks in the snow leading away.
She came around a curve in the road and suddenly,
there it was. Sooner than she’d expected. Thunder
Mountain Lodge, the familiar sign announced. Just
beyond it, the highway ended against a low wall of
snow. Fiona shivered in memory of her stupidity. She
and the kids had been the last people to make it over the
pass heading toward eastern Oregon, and would be the
last until sometime next spring. How long would it have
taken for them to be found if they’d gotten stuck up
there somewhere, with the snow that fell for two days
burying the van?
Thank God for Dieter, she thought, for at least the
hundredth time.
The narrower lane had been plowed, too, but patches
of snow clung to the hard-packed gravel. She drove carefully
on the steep descent, her heart thudding as she waited
for the lodge to come into sight. She had grown to love it,
Fiona realized; in comparison, her town house was bland.
No massive river rock fireplace, no deep, claw-foot
bathtub, no peeled log walls and broad plank floors.
One more curve, and the lodge appeared, looking just
as she remembered it the day they left, when she had
turned back just once, wanting to remember it accurately.
The steep, shake roof was punctuated by dormers
with small-paned windows for the bedrooms, a smaller
one behind which she knew lay the bathroom with that