HarperCollins
November 15, 2016

Snowbound at Christmas

When a snowstorm pummels the western half of the country, three couples find once off-limits love just in time for Christmas. An unforgettable holiday anthology from bestselling authors Jennifer Ryan, Maisey Yates, and Lia Riley.

Close to Perfect: A Montana Men Novella by Jennifer Ryan

At sixteen, Abigail gave Dex the gift of a lifetime, but the cost of it was more than he ever knew. Now she’s back in town with a secret that has been ten years in the making and this time it’s Dex’s turn to make the ultimate sacrifice or risk losing her forever.

Snowed in at Copper Ridge: A Copper Ridge Novella by Maisey Yates

Mia Landry has always had it bad for brooding cowboy Devlin Grayson. Too bad he’s her best friend’s older brother. But when they find themselves snowed in at Copper Ridge Lodge, Mia finally has the chance to tell the man of her dreams exactly what she wants… him.

Hot Winter’s Night: A Brightwater Novella by Lia Riley

While Brightwater is being covered in snow, Goldie Flint is stuck in her flower shop. She never expected her hero to be Kit Kane, the former love of her life. Kit knows that what he had with Goldie isn’t just in the past and with the help of a little bet, an ornery grandmother, and a lot of snow, he’s ready to show her that what he really wants for Christmas is a second chance.

Also In this Series:

Shoulda Been a Cowboy

March 1, 2015
#.5
A Copper Ridge Christmas

November 1, 2015
#2
Hometown Heartbreaker

February 1, 2016
(Aiden's book)

Excerpt

Mia Landry had fought tooth and nail to get up the mountain. Because nothing, nothing, was going to stop her from spending Christmas with her best friend’s family.

The Graysons were the closest thing to a functional family she had ever known. She’d started spending holidays with them in Copper Ridge back when she was a kid. Her mother had never understood that.

Why she opted to go out into the middle of nowhere and spend summer on a farm when she could spend it at their family home in New England was beyond her mother. But the other woman was always grateful to extend the time between her daughter’s visits. So she hadn’t looked into it deeply.

If she’d known Mia had spent the Fourth of July with grass stains on her knees, dirt on her bare feet and pie on her face, that she’d spent Christmas sledding down mountainsides and wandering through the woods behind the farm, freezing rain dripping from the trees and sliding down the back of her coat, then she imagined her mother wouldn’t have been quite so relaxed about it.

But that was where the distance worked in Mia’s favor.

Trying to gear up to face the cold wind, Mia opened the door on the rental car and shrieked when sleet blew straight into her eyes. She swore, then got out of the car, doing her best not to slip on the icy driveway, bracing herself on the door as she slammed it shut.

She leaned against the car, surveying the grounds. Everything up here was white. She had spent several Christmases in Copper Ridge over the years, but typically, she stayed down in town with the Graysons. This year, Joshua, the youngest Grayson brother, had insisted that they converge on a lodge up in the mountains east of the town.

All well and good, except, apparently, prone to snowstorms.

She had heard something about that on the radio. Something about the storm of the century blowing through the Western United States, but, given that she had spent the past two years living in Portland and they used the word snowpocalypse to denote the presence of three flakes on the ground, she was somewhat inured to dramatic proclamations of weather.

She could certainly see the attraction to spending Christmas up in the Copper Mountain Range. It was like a Christmas card. Only the thinnest sliver of green peeking out from beneath the blanket of snow on each evergreen bough. The Lodge itself was nowhere near as rustic as Mia had imagined.

It was closed in by trees, constructed of honey colored logs, a broad, river rock chimney rising up from the middle of the green, steep pitched roof. In spite of the fact that its basic ingredients were rustic by their very nature, the structure itself was almost elegant in a way.

She supposed that reflected the change in the family’s economic status. Her best friend, Faith, was quickly becoming one of the most famous architects in the country. The company that she ran with her brothers was spearheaded by Joshua’s brilliant business mind and her other brother Isaiah’s PR skills.

Only the middle brother, Devlin, wasn’t involved in the firm at all. Which really didn’t surprise Mia at all. Devlin was… Well, he was uniquely Devlin. Sometimes, she was completely certain he did things just to be in opposition to what everyone else was doing.

All of this money at his family’s disposal now. But as far as Devlin was concerned, that didn’t give him a right to it. And it didn’t give him a sudden desire to go work in the glass and steel building his siblings had in Seattle. No. Instead, he had opted to continue on with a life of ranching. Not what his mother and father had wanted, which Mia knew because his mother had confided in her the last time they had visited.

Mia always felt a little bit twitchy whenever Devlin was brought up, especially in the presence of his parents. Like they could see down into her thoughts. Her thoughts that she tried really hard to control. But it was inevitable. His name came up and her cheeks started to feel warm.

Not just because she felt…well, protective of him in a way, though that was part of it. She was proud of his ranching spread in Copper Ridge, and of all he’d accomplished. But also because she had a case of the long-standing hots for him that could never, ever become anything.

She cared too much about the Grayson family to compromise her place with them by doing something as ridiculous as making a move on Devlin. And anyway, he was immune to her.

She pushed those thoughts to the side as she did a controlled slide to the trunk of her car and popped it open. She reached inside, grabbing hold of her suitcase, but as she did, her feet slipped forward, her shins butting up against the bumper, stopping her from falling on her butt, but still leaving her in a precarious position.

She swore again, tugging on the suitcase, putting one hand down on the bumper and pulling hard. Then, suddenly, it was like the suitcase didn’t weigh anything at all.

“Careful,” came a low, masculine voice from behind her. And that was when she realized she wasn’t the only one holding the suitcase.

She jerked back, and found herself falling again, but just as quickly found herself braced against a hard, hot wall.

She was no longer holding her suitcase, and she was being propped up by a strong body and an equally strong arm.

“Hi there, chipmunk.”

Oh that voice. That nickname. Given to her at a time when he cheeks had been much rounder, and her braces had yet to do their good works on her teeth. Only one person still called her that.

She looked up, her heart slamming into her breastbone. “Devlin. You’re here already.”