With the car at an angle, he needed to crawl over the center console.

The woman extended her gloved hand. “Here.”

With the grace of an elephant, he managed to get one leg over and into the passenger seat, and then the other, before taking her small hand.

Outside the car, he stepped into half a foot of snow, and his Hugo Bosses slid.

She glanced down. “Looks like you’re about as prepared to deal with this as I am.”

He took in her footwear. “At least you have boots.”

“I don’t think this is what Steve Madden thought of when he designed them.” She shivered, closed her arms around her waist. “You sure you’re okay?”

Jason looked back at her car, the flashers blinking over the snow with every blip. “My pride is bruised, my bones are fine.” He reached into the car, removed his overcoat, and retrieved his cell phone.

She started moving from foot to foot, the cold obviously settling in.

He handed her his coat.

“Let’s call from inside my car.”

“Do you let strange men into your car often?”

Those lips smiled and his stomach flipped.

“Only during blizzards.”

“This isn’t a blizzard.”

“It is to me. C’mon, I won’t bite.” She didn’t take his coat before walking back.

Jason followed, his eyes moving to her license plate before he opened the passenger door and climbed inside.

She already had the heater on high. Rubbing her hands together, she shook her head, sprinkling melting snow over the both of them. “Thanks for stopping,” he said.

“I almost bit it myself. Still kinda surprised I didn’t, to tell the truth.”

“I noticed your plates. California?”

She nodded, her cheeks turning redder as her body warmed. “My first snowstorm. I had no idea this was in the forecast, or I would have bought chains.”

“Took me by surprise, too.”

She found his eyes, and he realized he was staring.

He remembered his phone and dialed for help.

Nathan answered on the fourth ring. “Hell of a night, Jason.” His mechanic and keeper of the family’s personal aircraft had a thick Scottish brogue.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“What can I do for you, lad?”

“I managed to park my car in a ditch.”

When Nathan stopped laughing, he asked, “What are ya drivin’?”

“The Audi.”

“Well, that would be your first problem. This is a Jeep kind of day.”

“Your words of wisdom astound me, Nate.” He proceeded to tell him where he was and noticed his female companion looking at her watch. “How soon can you come?”

“I need to finish up here and I’ll be on my way.”

“Finish up where?”

“I’m at Betty’s. Her power is out and she needed a proper fire set.”

The widow Betty was on a property adjacent to his, but far enough away in a snowstorm to delay Nathan’s trip.

“So how long?”

“Her road isn’t plowed. I need to get back to the house and collect the truck. Might take a little time to find a tow. At least an hour.”

“An hour?” On a good day he wasn’t twenty minutes from home. He considered asking the woman with eyes as blue as the sky to drive him there. But she looked about as anxious to drive in the snow longer as he was to sit in his car for an hour waiting for a ride.

“Longer if you keep yammering at me.”

“Fine.”

Jason hung up, knowing he wasn’t going to rush a man twice his age.

“An hour?” his companion asked.

“Yeah. Tow trucks will be at a premium tonight. I can wait in my car.”

She looked at him like he was crazy. “And watch as another car comes over that hill and plows into you?”

He glanced over his shoulder. She had a point.

“I live close by.” She looked at her watch again. “And I need to get home. Why don’t you wait there for your friend?”

He wanted to ask if her husband would mind but realized how that might sound to a woman alone on the side of the road, much as he wanted to know her marital status.

“You sure?”

She lifted her pink lips in a half smile. “You’re not an ax murderer, are you?”

“Gave that up last week. Messy.”

She grinned and looked through her rearview mirror. “Need anything from your car?”

“My briefcase.” He opened the door.

“You might want to put your flashers on,” she told him. “A dead battery is better than a smashed in hood.”

Jason’s eighty-thousand-dollar car sat sadly in the ditch, and all he could think of was the next hour of his life in the company of a woman who looked like an angel.

I hope you’re not married.

“Thank you for this,” Jason said as they inched away from his abandoned car.

“It’s all good.”

He watched her hands gripping the steering wheel and noticed the tightness of her jaw as she concentrated on the road in front of them. “Does this have four-wheel drive?”

“I wish. When I bought it back in LA, I never thought I’d be driving in the snow. First time for everything, I suppose.”

She crawled through a right-hand turn, her eyes wide.

Jason stopped staring at her hand when her words registered in his brain. “This is your first time driving in the snow?”

“Yep.”

His heart skipped a beat and his hand moved to his seat belt. He’d driven in the snow since he was old enough to reach the pedals. Easy to do when you grew up on fifty acres of private property that housed an airstrip. There was no lack of motorized toys growing up, and he and his brothers raced them all against each other.

There was no risk of this woman racing.

He tried to see the speedometer reading on the car but couldn’t without making his intention clear. If he had to guess, she wasn’t going over fifteen miles per hour, which would normally make his skin itch to press the gas.

“You’re doing well,” he said.

She turned her head, briefly, and flashed a smile. “I think a turtle could move faster.”

He almost agreed before she turned down a residential street and pulled into what he assumed was her driveway. Her sigh was short of comical when she cut the power to the engine.

“You don’t park in your garage?”

“I’m not completely unpacked.” She glanced at the closed garage door. “It’s still full of boxes.”

“Oh.”

She grabbed her purse from behind his seat and pushed out of the car. Jason followed her a few short steps along a snow-covered path to a small patio. He found himself holding his breath as he awaited what was on the other side of the door.

One step inside and his hope that this California bred, reluctant snow driving woman was single plunged.

“Owen?”

She’s married. Of course she’s married. Why wouldn’t a woman with a snow-melting smile be married?

“In here.”

A young voice.

Married with children.

She shook the snow from her jacket by the front door and started to take it off when a teenage boy walked around the corner. “I was starting to worry.”

Jason stared.

The boy stopped short and sized Jason up from head to toe.

“I made it. I told you I could handle it.”