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

“You’re right. I didn’t have faith that a guy who’d already refused to commit was going to change his mind after already saying no.” Ash headed into the kitchen. “I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk everything, school and my career and everything, for a guy who had me in a damn rotation.” Porthos followed him into the other room. Ross did not.


Ash tried to convince himself that was exactly what he wanted. 3


Ross checked in with headquarters while Ash went through whatever exercises he was doing in the kitchen. He didn’t follow Ash into the other room. He wanted to. Lord knew, he wanted to check up on Ash and see just how bad things were for him, physically. Maybe a little bit of massage therapy would help with the pain he was so clearly in.


Chapter 10