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

Ross watched him write. It couldn’t be Ash. There was no possible way this guy was Ash. “That guy—the one I’m thinking of—he was right handed. You’re writing with your left.”


“I’m still not using my right side so well. I don’t know if you’ve noticed.” Mysterio smirked, but didn’t look up from his work. His phone rang, and he answered it right away. “Hey, John. Yeah, I’m still holed up here. We’ve got water, no food. Yeah, I’ve got food for Porthos for a week, but we’re not dipping into that.” He frowned, heavy eyebrows knitting together as he looked at the ground. “For one thing, because it’s dog food, John, not people food. It’s a different standard of quality when you’re feeding someone whose system has evolved to eat garbage and, er, waste.”


Ross made a face. He hadn’t given much thought to just how gross dogs could be.


Chapter 7