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 would have been perfectly content to go the rest of his life without ever seeing or hearing from Ash again. That was fine—Ash hadn’t exactly been pining away. But he couldn’t sit here and pretend that one night of pleasure meant he had a home now, or that he was part of something. An accident of nature and a car wreck didn’t exactly make true love—even if it was a beautiful fantasy.


He disentangled himself from Ross’ arms. The guy had always been an octopus when it came to cuddling. Funny, Ash used to put all sorts of meanings onto those tendencies when they’d been together. The way Ross clung to him in his sleep made Ash feel special, and cherished. He was older now, and he understood more. Ross wasn’t clinging because he wanted to keep Ash close. He did it with everyone and he probably just liked having a heat source close by, kind of like a lizard.


Chapter 17