“If you are looking for a great story that sizzles and truly likable characters, read Chantilly White.” –Lucy Monroe, USA Today bestselling author

Snow Angel is a New Adult contemporary romance novel (about 130,000 words), and the first book in Chantilly’s High Desert Hearts series featuring the Honeywell-Carlisle clan and their friends. Book two, Desert Damsel, will release spring~2015.

Characters
Melinda Honeywell: A twenty-one-year old junior at Cal State Fullerton, she’s glad her best friend, Jacob, will be around on their annual multi-family ski trip. She needs his company to cheer her up after getting dumped on Christmas Day, though she could do without the attack of rebounditis that’s making her think crazy-sexy thoughts… about Jacob.

Jacob Tanner: Melinda’s best friend since birth, and fellow junior at Cal State, he’s freaking out over his inability to keep her safely corralled in the Friendship Zone where she belongs. And when he sees answering sparks in her dark-blue eyes, it shoots his good intentions all to hell.

Karen & Stan Honeywell: Melinda’s parents. They own the local plant nursery.

Zach Honeywell: Melinda’s older brother, he is currently living in Japan for work, but he’s promised to be home in time for the next summer camping trip—he’ll be around for book two: Desert Damsel!

Bill & Lois Tanner: Jacob’s parents. Bill is a homebuilder, and Lois is everyone’s favorite shrink.

Allan & Pat Carlisle: Melinda’s aunt and uncle (Uncle Allan is Melinda’s mother’s older brother.) Aunt Pat is a lawyer, and Uncle Allan is an artist and professor.

Danny, Rick, and Christian Carlisle: Melinda’s cousins, Uncle Allan and Aunt Pat’s sons. The brothers are blond, blue-eyed, American-born Thors, and Melinda loves them desperately. Danny, the eldest, is studying to be an attorney like his mother. Rick, the middle child, is an actor. And Christian is a senior in high school, getting ready to make his final decision on which college’s football scholarship to accept, where he’ll play quarterback.

Gabe McConnell: Darkly handsome, he has a bad-boy reputation he worked hard to engineer as a young teen, but underneath it all, he’s a total marshmallow. Gabe is Danny’s best friend.

Eddie Thomas: The polar-opposite of his best friend—Melinda’s actor-cousin, Rick—Eddie is quieter and more introspective than the others, but he has the heart of a champion.

Peter and Nancy Thomas: Eddie’s parents. They own the local horse ranch.

Wendell Page: The carrot-top of the group, Wendell is known for his flamboyant sense of style. He’s Christian’s best friend and is hoping they’ll choose the same college for next year.

Seth Mazer: Though Seth sadly passed away three years ago, in the spring of his, Melinda’s, and Jacob’s senior year of high school, his bright life and tragic death continue to influence all those who knew and loved him.

Dane Olsen: A ski instructor at the resort.

Mitch Gaveston: Melinda’s rat-bastard ex-boyfriend who didn’t even have the cojones to break up with her in person on Christmas Day.

Setting
Snow Angel takes place primarily at a ski resort in Utah, though the High Desert Hearts series is actually set in Pasodoro, a fictional town located in southern California’s high desert along the Mojave River.

Melinda ran, hot on Jacob’s heels, though she had no hope of overtaking his extra-long stride. He took the stairs three at a time, his endless legs gifting him with a totally unfair advantage.

She grabbed one of the dogs’ toys on the fly and chucked it at his feet, hoping to slow him down, but he only laughed when her missile sailed harmlessly past his left knee.

“Nice try, apple seed!” he yelled over his shoulder as he cleared the final step.

Instead of continuing down the hall to her room, Jacob stopped abruptly at the top of the staircase, whirling to face her and tapping his foot.

“My God, you’re slow,” he said in a snooty French accent, then grabbed her around the waist before she could respond and whirled her into a fast dance step.

Tangoing the two of them through her bedroom door, he dropped her into a deep dip over the threshold, making her squeal and clutch at his arms.

Jacob raised her partway up one-handed, both of them laughing, and for a moment their faces brushed close together, their breaths mingling, his sparkling topaz eyes staring deeply into hers.

Everything went quiet.

Melinda’s smile faded. Her lungs stilled. Her heart rolled over with a heavy thud, then picked up its pace, pounding frantically, and something at the base of her spine snapped like an electric jolt.

Whoa, her brain stuttered. Sexy much?

The relaxed camaraderie from dinner vanished as her whole being thrummed with a sudden, outrageous burst of lust.

She licked her lips. Swallowed. Her pulse scrambled.

If the house hadn’t been brimful of people, she might have leapt up, might have pounced on him right there in the doorway. Might have ripped her best friend’s clothes off in a fever and had her way with his luscious body, never mind their friendship or their impossibly divergent goals.

Or the consequences.

“Good to know you haven’t lost your moves,” Jacob said into the throbbing silence, the heat pumping from his muscular body enveloping her, their clasped hands still raised above their heads.

The pulse points on her inner wrists, inside her elbows, and at the base of her neck beat a wild rhythm.

“You, too,” she managed. She’d meant it to be teasing, but the words came out all breathy and flirtatious, not at all like her normal voice.

Poised in their half-dipped position, with Jacob looming above her, surrounding her, his chest almost—not quite—touching her aching breasts, every muscle in her body melted like warm wax.

She couldn’t have raised herself up if she’d wanted to.

And she didn’t want to.

Gaze intent, Jacob’s eyes swept along her flushed cheeks, up to her forehead, then slowly down to her chin, with a long, potent pause on her mouth that robbed her already starving lungs of oxygen entirely.

He said, “You’re so pretty,” in a musing sort of way. Almost as if he were talking to himself.

“I am?” She said it stupidly, and could only marvel at her own ridiculousness.

Her brain fogged over, the intensity of the need rocketing through her body turning her mind to sexually charged mush.

She couldn’t think clearly.

It wasn’t as if he’d never called her pretty before. Only there was something different in the way he’d said it. In the way his eyes traveled over her face.

As if...

“Jake?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Her voice, light, wavery, softened to a hush.

Jacob’s gaze dipped to her mouth, then slowly, ever so slowly back to her eyes.

“Like what?” His words rumbled in her ear, a low timbre that shivered through her body.

Like you’re about to kiss me.

“Like that,” she whispered, unable to articulate the dreamy wonder stealing over her, breathless desire mixed with a tiny drop of nervousness.

Her eyelids slid half-closed, heavy and slow, like blinking through syrup. Her lips parted. Went soft.

Oh, God, please kiss me…

Jacob blinked, as though waking from a dream. Shaking his head and straightening, he pulled her upright with him and flashed a sudden smile, his dimples winking into view. He seemed to throw off whatever mood had taken them both for a spin in a single heartbeat, while Melinda struggled to stand on her own, to silence the screaming need, to force air back into her empty lungs.

“All part of the dance, ma cherie,” he said, eminently casual. He drew her hand to his mouth and gave her a friendly kiss on its back.

She had no breath to reply.

Jacob grasped her shoulders, turned her in the general direction of her closet, and with both hands on her ass, pushed her forward, all business now.

“Pack,” he directed, mimicking her mother.

Pack. Right. I’ll just—

“You don’t want your mom to come back up here.”

That got through the daze, and gave her the impetus she needed to snap back from the edge of the sexual cliff she’d almost plummeted right over.

Clearing her throat, she said, “Yeah, yeah,” forcing herself to go casual when all she wanted was to drag him over that cliff with her, the consequences be damned. She gave thanks for the nearly normal quality of her voice.

Had she seriously just been swept under by a wave of molten lust for her best friend?

Melinda counted the beats of her frenzied pulse, still banging away at the base of her throat, and her body answered, Oh, yeah.

Giving herself a shake, she grabbed for inner control. If Jacob could act like nothing had happened, so could she.

Probably.

She had to consciously resist the urge to fan her heated cheeks.

Ordering herself to calm down, to throw off the deep pang of disappointment now that the moment had ended, Melinda focused on her clothing. She pulled jeans off hangers and obediently tossed them next to the suitcase still yawning open and empty on her bedroom floor.

She stared straight ahead and tried to ignore the still-sparking nerves tingling all over her body. She’d never experienced such a powerful response to anyone in her life, not even Mitch.

It had to be a rebound thing. Like those people who had crazy sex after a funeral. Because it was life affirming or something.

A breakup was a type of death, really. The demise of a relationship.

Sexual energy was just a release.

Purely physical.

With relief, she latched onto the explanation her spinning brain had supplied.

Rebounding.

Yes, of course.

Jacob was a handsome guy. Hot, even. She might be heartbroken, but she wasn’t dead. He was a man who’d flip any woman’s switch. Especially one feeling a little lost and needy, one who’d just been dumped.

It was just physical.

So there was that issue settled…

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