Page 79 of Snowbound in Her Boss's Bed

Now she was incredulous with herself.

Just a week with Benjamin and she was already disdaining regular air travel?

She could handle a short ride in a helicopter. The vast majority of helicopter flights made their itineraries, and she was obviously losing her grip out here with him.

And the time it took to get through the airport and home would give her time to adjust to her reentrance into the real world, where she had no idea what it was like to make love to Benjamin Silver and women like her moved slowly and deliberately through quiet lives.

“I’ll take it. Thank you,” she said, her cadence more like a sob than a sentence.

That was fine, too. There was no law against crying on planes.

“Sounds good, miss. He’ll get it fired up. Probably be about thirty minutes till you’re in the air.”

Thirty minutes.

She could handle that.

It was short enough that she could tell herself there wasn’t time to say goodbye.

It was barely enough time to pull herself together enough to make the trip.

Twenty minutes later, Benjamin’s assistant drove a bundled-up Miri to the helipad in a snowmobile.

Even temporarily clad in outerwear from his incredible wardrobe, with hat and gloves and all, it was too loud and cold for either woman to have brought up Benjamin.

Did he even know she was leaving?

Miri assumed he did. His assistant reported to him, after all.

If he did know, he didn’t come for her.

Outside, what had been a thin layer of snow when she’d arrived was now a transformed landscape.

Forests had disappeared, replaced by mounds and hilltops of sparkling powder dotted with only the tallest of frosted trees.

Benjamin’s gargantuan mountain cabin needed only enormous gumdrops to have transformed into a massive gingerbread house, its immediate vicinity and walls kept clear of snow by what looked like some kind of ground-based heating, while its thick-beamed roof lay covered with even thicker sheets of bright snow.

It was so cold outside that it was almost hard to breathe, but the deadliness of the chill did nothing to diminish the beauty of the wintery landscape.

Miri was amazed.

She had never imagined that snow could be so beautiful, the storm that had created a world of its own for Benjamin and her leaving behind still yet another new wonder to explore.

It invited one to do classic winter things like sled and build snowmen and drink warm beverages but only when it was time to come in from playing—things Miri hadn’t spent much time thinking about before, but now would forever regret having missed the chance to try.

Benjamin had ruined everything.

He’d ruined her disdain for the cold and winter and snow, just like he had ruined good wine and doughnuts and probably Hanukkah, too.

Thank God she’d gotten what she needed from him for the gala, otherwise he probably would have ruined that, too.

That she would have to face him again at it certainly constituted a level of ruin.

Though she wore a thick jacket meant for the snow, she was shivering by the time they reached the helipad.

“Think you’re going to want to keep that on for the ride. It’s not bound to be the warmest today,” Benjamin’s assistant told her when she tried to return the jacket, and Miri sighed.

She didn’t want to take anything from him, but she wasn’t willing to freeze to death to make a point.

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