Massachusetts State Trooper Ross Huber is giving one last sweep of the roads before heading in for the night. The nor’easter hitting the Boston area is worse than expected by an order of magnitude, and the governor has just issued a travel ban. Ross finds a wrecked car half-buried in a snowbank and rescues its human and canine occupants from carbon monoxide poisoning, but is forced to take shelter with them in a vacant or abandoned house when the roads are blocked. When he gets the victims indoors, he thinks the human looks uncomfortably familiar ... Ash Machado has been through a lot in his career as a war correspondent. Sidelined by an injury, he’s returned to Boston to take up a job as a news anchor. After he loses control of his car on an icy road, he wakes up in an unfamiliar home, looking into the face of the guy who broke his heart in college. Neither Ross nor Ash are the same men they used to be, but now they’re trapped in the abandoned house with no place to go. Can they get past old hurts long enough to get through the storm, or will the same misunderstandings that drove them apart years ago make this confinement unbearable?

Snowed In: Ross and Ashton

That was enough for Ash. He pulled Porthos a little closer to him. “His name is Porthos,” he growled. Since when was his voice so raspy? “Not Buddy.”


“Ah. My apologies.” Ross sat up straighter with that fake mildness he’d always had when he was being insincere. “I had to call him something when you were out cold. He wasn’t answering to ‘Hey, you.’” Then he relaxed a little. “I guess you must be a big Three Musketeers fan.”


Ash stared at him. Had he meant so little to Ross that he’d just forgotten how much he’d loved Dumas? “Yeah, I still am. That’s not the kind of thing that’s likely to change.”


Ross tilted his head a little, like he didn’t quite understand, but pressed on. “It’s just funny, I used to date this guy, he was super into The Three Musketeers.”


Chapter 4