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snowflake.”
    His eyes probed hers. “Can you promise me you won’t melt?”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    His voice dropped even lower. “Because you tempt me more than I can say.”
    â€œBack atcha. Oh, and I’ve been told that someone booked me into a room with a feather bed and a woodburning fireplace.”
    â€œIs that right?” His tone was casual but his expression was not. “How thoughtful.”
    â€œSo what happens after we land?”
    â€œI left my car at the airport, so I’ll drive us to Gingerbread and...drop you off at the inn.”
    She didn’t think it would go that way. “Will I need to check in?”
    â€œNot tonight. I didn’t want to disturb Mrs. Gustafson at this late hour, so I asked her for the front door key and your room key. You’ll sign the register in the morning. You’re on the second floor. You can go straight to bed.”
    She lowered her lashes. “That sounds lovely.”
    â€œDoesn’t it, though?”
    â€œI’ll need some help with my bag.”
    â€œI bet you will. I suppose you’d like me to bring it up for you?”
    She lifted her lashes. “Oh, yes, please. All the way up.”
    â€œGood Lord.” He sucked in a breath. “What have I gotten myself into?”
    â€œNothing, yet. But I’m hoping before too long, you’ll remedy that.”
    â€œ
Taryn.
”
    â€œIf you keep feeding me these great lines, how can I resist?”
    â€œThe bigger question is, how can
I
resist?”
    â€œYou can’t, and you know it.” She smiled at him. “Surrender to the inevitable, Cole Evergreen.”
    * * *
    Cole was going to do exactly that. He’d been a sucker for her smart mouth back at MIT, and nothing had changed. She still delighted in taunting him, and he wanted her more with every saucy word that passed her sweet lips. Luckily he found a twenty-four-hour drugstore on the way back to Gingerbread.
    Because he had to concentrate on his driving instead of thinking about sex, especially on snowy roads, he resorted to a trick he and Taryn had come up with at MIT. Switching on the car radio, he found a station that played eighties tunes—the same music they’d memorized as kids. Then the two of them belted out the lyrics along with Duran Duran, a-ha and The Police all the way to Gingerbread.
    Somewhere on that journey, as they laughed and sang together, he became twenty-two again, complete with reckless thoughts and powerful sex drive. When he’d first heedlessly plunged into a relationship with Taryn, she was the hottest, smartest female he’d ever met.
    She was everything he’d wanted, with one tiny exception. She wasn’t a witch, let alone a witch from the Winter Clan. He’d glossed over that detail, certain that he’d find a way around her inconvenient status as a non-magickal being. But then, he’d been called away on a family emergency and he’d never gotten the chance to return to college and figure out a way to address the problem.
    Someday he might bitterly regret falling in with her plan. But that was someday, and this was now. A now filled with the kind of heart-pounding excitement he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
    After parking the sleek black sedan in a lot adjacent to the inn, he hauled her suitcase out of the trunk and they hurried, still laughing from their sing-along, to the inn’s front porch.
    She stood next to him, shivering a little, as he located the keys in his coat pocket. “I feel like a kid out after curfew.”
    â€œIt’s the music. We stepped in a time warp.” He opened the front door and gestured for her to go inside.
    â€œExactly.” She spoke in hushed tones. “It’s just like that first time we spent the night together. Remember that?”
    â€œI’ll never forget it.” He breathed in the scent of lemon oil and apple strudel. The main floor was