A Haven Point Beginning Read online

  New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne brings readers a heartwarming snowed-in romance in this prequel novella!

  Gemma Summerhill wanted a fresh start in Haven Point, a place where no one knew about her accident and would treat her like a fragile rose because of it. Getting stranded on the side of a mountain was not part of that plan, nor was being rescued by Josh Bailey—a man too confident for his own good—and going back to his ranch to wait out the storm. But the snow isn’t letting up, and with a warm fire keeping them cozy, Gemma and Josh might let their guards down...if past grief doesn’t overshadow their present—and future.

  Check out the rest of the Haven Point series!

  1. Snow Angel Cove

  2. Redemption Bay

  3. Evergreen Springs

  4. Riverbend Road

  5. Snowfall on Haven Point

  6. Serenity Harbor

  7. Sugar Pine Trail

  8. The Cottages on Silver Beach

  9. Season of Wonder

  10. Coming Home for Christmas

  11. Summer at Lake Haven

  Praise for RaeAnne Thayne

  “[Thayne’s] books are wonderfully romantic, feel-good reads that end with me sighing over the last pages.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

  “Emotional and deeply satisfying.”

  —Sarah Morgan, USA TODAY bestselling author, on The Cliff House

  “Entertaining, heart-wrenching, and totally involving, this multithreaded story overflows with characters readers will adore.”

  —Library Journal on Evergreen Springs (starred review)

  “Deliciously flirty and totally engrossing.”

  —Library Journal on Sugar Pine Trail

  “Serenity Harbor is riveting to the very end.”

  —BookPage

  “RaeAnne Thayne is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors... . Once you start reading, you aren’t going to be able to stop.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Endearing small-town residents and bratty cats add humor to this heartwarming, steady-paced holiday romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Sugar Pine Trail

  A Haven Point Beginning

  RaeAnne Thayne

  AUTHOR NOTE

  I have to confess that this novella was a bit of an afterthought in the Haven Point universe.

  More than two years ago I came up with what I thought was a great idea for Samantha Fremont’s book. Wouldn’t it be great if, as a seamstress and boutique owner, she was designing and creating the wedding gown for a bride in Haven Point and ends up falling for the bride’s brother? Many, many readers have asked me for Sam’s book over the years and I knew I would absolutely use her as a heroine someday. It seemed fitting that Sam’s would be the last book in the series, as she was the final significant secondary character whose story I hadn’t told yet.

  With great excitement, I plotted Sam’s book and couldn’t wait to finish other projects first so I could start writing. A funny thing happened in the writing process, though, as it often does. Shortly after starting Sam’s book (Summer at Lake Haven), I realized I hadn’t planned very well. I had never told the story about the bride-to-be, the sister of Sam’s hero, Ian Summerhill. Oops! I know my readers well enough (and adore you all!) to anticipate that as soon as Sam’s book hit stores, readers would start emailing me or messaging me to ask if they had missed Gemma’s story somewhere. I proposed to my publisher that I write Gemma’s book, or at least the very beginning of her story, as a short novella to come out along with Summer at Lake Haven. I was thrilled when they were enthusiastic about the idea!

  I had so much fun writing this novella. I loved Gemma and Josh (whom eagle-eyed readers may remember from a brief appearance in Serenity Harbor, Katrina Bailey’s book) and this seemed the perfect way to help me wrap up the series. Thank you all for coming along with me on this wonderful adventure!

  With love and appreciation to all the medical personnel on the front line.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER ONE

  THIS WAS A mistake of epic proportions.

  Gemma Summerhill gripped the steering wheel of the hybrid SUV she had purchased six weeks ago, when she first came to the States. She was going only about five miles per hour but that still seemed entirely too fast as she steered through treacherous conditions with giant snowflakes slapping against the car with astonishing force.

  She shouldn’t be here. She should be safe and dry in her charming rented cottage beside Lake Haven, sitting by the fire with a cup of tea at one elbow and a good novel on her lap.

  Whose crazy idea was it to go into the mountains today, with a storm coming on?

  Hers. She sighed. She should have checked the weather report more carefully and shouldn’t have relied on one app that had promised a beautiful fall day.

  In her defense, the October day had been lovely when she set off that morning for an easy hike, all warm sunshine, clear skies, comfortable temperatures. Oh, how quickly conditions could change. Now the Idaho mountain road was slick, precarious, and the rain that had hit with ferocious strength about twenty minutes earlier had shifted just as quickly to snow.

  Gemma peered through the windshield. With the sun quickly setting and those wildly churning snowflakes coming at her, she felt as if she were driving at warp speed through a galaxy far, far away.

  A song came on the radio, a country ballad about a woman who made one bad choice after another. Gemma wanted to roll her eyes. That could well be her anthem right about now.

  She had so been looking forward to exploring the backcountry. She had been in Haven Point for six weeks and had mostly hiked around the lake. This had been her one time to see more of the countryside.

  It had been spectacular, Gemma had to admit. The aspens were a beautiful golden color and the other trees provided contrasting colors in reds and oranges. As she had hiked the route McKenzie Kilpatrick had told her about, an easy trail to a beautiful alpine lake, she had felt good. Her leg had bothered her, as it always did when she pushed it too much, but the gorgeous setting had helped distract her from it.

  Once she reached the lake, she had the place all to herself and had sat for a good hour, in awe that she was there. She had been thrilled to see two moose in the distance as well as a handful of elk.

  This was exactly why she came to Idaho and took the job with Caine Tech—the chance to experience beautiful settings like that one, as far removed from their neatly manicured home in Dorset as she could imagine.

  And then everything went wrong. The trail back to her vehicle should have been easier but she had found even slightly downhill terrain more difficult to navigate with her bad leg. And then she had stumbled on a rock when she was about a half mile from her vehicle, twisting her ankle enough that she’d had to hobble the rest of the way.

  The snowflakes seemed to whirl and dance with increasing intensity now and her tires fought for traction on the road. If she went out of control, she would plunge down the mountainside with only trees to block her fall. There were no guardrails on this backcountry dirt road, no warning signs. Only darkness that plunged down for hundreds of feet.

  What if she couldn’t make it down the road the rest of the way? What if she was stranded here on the mountainside? She had passed a few ranches on the way up. Surely she could find someone who could give her shelter until she could make her way home.

  She shouldn’t have come alone. Gemma knew the rules about never hiking into the backcountry without a buddy. The salesperson at the sporting goods store in town had been firm on that.

  She had figured she would be going only on a short hike and would be fine on her own. While she had made friends since she came to town, she didn’t know any of them well enough to call them on a whim on a Saturday afternoon and ask if they would like to go hiking with her.

  Anyway, she had stocked up on survival supplies at the sporting goods store, extra rations in her backpack, even bear spray.

  None of that would do her any good if she slid down the mountain in her car.

  She should have heeded the warning signs that a storm was coming. Clouds had been gathering all afternoon. She had thought she might have to deal with one of the regular squalls that hit the area in the afternoons. She just never expected the rain to turn to sleet and now full-on snow.

  What had been her big hurry, anyway? She could have saved her exploring for the following spring and summer, when the weather would be nicer and she wouldn’t run the risk of frostbite. She was in Haven Point for the long term. This was a life choice she had made, a chance to start over away from her family’s loving but suffocating influence.

  The vehicle slid again on the slick road. Gemma gasped, her hands sweaty and her stomach in knots. From the depths of her subconscious, memories clawed to the surface.

  A screech of tires, shattering glass, the sickening, horrible silence afterward as she cried out her brother’s name and received no answer in return.

  Her right leg ached a vicious echo of her thoughts, a constant reminder of that horrible day.

  As she had been trying to do for three years, she attempted to push away the memories so she could focus on the crisis at hand
. They never entirely left her, always hovering just on the edge of her awareness.

  This wasn’t at all the same situation. She was in full control, even when the tires were sliding. The car’s all-wheel drive and traction control were doing their job. An out-of-control lorry was not about to run through a stop sign and plow into her.

  She had only to drive slowly, carefully, down the mountainside to her cottage, where she could turn on the gas fireplace, change into dry clothes and drink something hot and comforting.

  The sun seemed to set extraordinarily quickly. One moment she was driving through murky, snowy twilight, the next it was full dark.

  Only a little farther. She had to be close to where the dirt road changed to pavement. A few more moments. She could do this...

  She heard a rumble outside the car, distant at first and then growing louder. The trees on the mountain side of the road seemed to tremble and then the next instant, before she realized what was happening, a river of mud and rocks and debris poured across the roadway directly in front of her.

  She slammed on her brakes and felt the vehicle’s rear tires fishtail. She had braked too fast, too hard. The car was out of control now, heading for the trees on the downward slope. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. She couldn’t die in a car accident, after all the work it had taken her to survive the last one.

  She hit the brakes again and somehow, miraculously, the car bumped gently into the trunk of a pine tree and came to a shuddering stop just inches from plunging down the mountain.

  She wasn’t dead. How was she not dead?

  Gemma could feel herself shaking violently. What the bloody hell had just happened?

  Her mother would die if she heard such unladylike language coming from her. But Margaret wasn’t here, was she? She and Henry were safe and sound at Summerhill.

  A wave of homesickness washed over Gemma and for a wild moment, she wanted to be with them, even though their overwhelming concern had been strangling the life out of her.

  She sat for another moment, trying to calm her racing heartbeat. How was she going to get out of there? She checked her phone. While she had some remaining battery life, she didn’t have a signal, something not uncommon, she had learned, in the mountains surrounding Lake Haven.

  So she couldn’t call someone to rescue her. She would just have to find help. She thought of those ranch houses again. Maybe someone would be home at one of them and she could call for a tow—though how a tow truck from Haven Point would cross that mountain of debris that was taller than she was, Gemma had no idea.

  Still shaking, she opened her vehicle door and started to climb out. The snow immediately soaked her coat, cold and merciless. She needed supplies and her backpack was in the rear seat. She carefully made her way there and had just started to open the back door when her stupid bad leg decided to give out. Gemma had to grab hold of the door frame so she didn’t end up in the mud.

  She reached in for her backpack. When she stood again, she saw a huge creature emerging from the darkness, heading straight toward her.

  Gemma screamed. She couldn’t help herself, afraid she was about to become dinner for a bear or a cougar. The creature faltered for a moment but then kept coming. She aimed the torch she instinctively grabbed out of her pack at it and realized it wasn’t a mountain lion, it was a happy-looking chocolate Labrador retriever wearing a red collar.

  “Where did you come from?”

  The words were barely out when an even larger creature emerged from the darkness. It took her several seconds to realize it was a man on horseback wearing a cowboy hat and an oiled slicker against the elements.

  “Hey there. This looks like trouble.”

  Gemma knew that voice, with its slight Western drawl. She narrowed her gaze and then recognized Joshua Bailey, who owned the outdoor supply store in Haven Point where she had bought her backpack and other hiking items. She had met him several times since she came to town, as she was friends with cousins of his, sisters Katrina Callahan and Wynona Emmett.

  She didn’t know him well but had the impression he was the kind of man she generally despised, the sort who thought he could charm his way into any woman’s bed, that every female should come running when he crooked his finger.

  She couldn’t have said why she thought that. Maybe because of that drawl or that wide smile he freely bestowed on women of all ages or maybe because he was so extraordinarily good-looking.

  Or perhaps because of the intense way she had caught him looking at her a few times since she came to town.

  “Oh. It’s you.”

  “The one and only.” His teeth flashed in the darkness as he dismounted from the horse with a grace she tried not to resent.

  “You look like you’re in a pickle, Miss Summerhill. What happened?”

  “I was driving along, minding my own business, when half the mountainside fell away.”

  She seemed to be shaking more in delayed reaction. She would be having flashbacks to that slide for a long time.

  The dog nuzzled her hand and she reached down to pet its wet fur, finding an unexpected comfort from the warmth and protective stance.

  “I was afraid that would happen with the first hard rain. A couple acres on that mountainside burned up in a wildfire a few months ago, leaving it prone to mudslides without the trees and undergrowth to anchor all the rocks and dirt in place. I hope you weren’t hurt.”

  “I was able to swerve at the last minute and ended up hitting the tree. Not so much hitting it as bumping it, I suppose. I wasn’t even going fast enough for my airbag to deploy.”

  He frowned. “What were you doing on the mountain? Seems like a nasty day for a picnic.”

  “It wasn’t a nasty day when I started out. This only started about an hour ago. I went on a little hike and was trying to make it home.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t a few seconds earlier or the mudslide would have carried you over the side of the mountain.”

  She could have died.

  Was she cursed somehow? Other people went their entire lives without near-death experiences. She had now experienced two.

  She looked at the debris field and then at her car, her head spinning and her knees weak. She felt dizzy and sick. She sagged against her car for support—and the next thing she knew, Josh Bailey was next to her, his arm around her and his face close to hers.

  “Easy there. Easy. You’re okay.”

  How had he made it to her side so quickly? “What...happened?”

  “I’m not completely sure. You were talking to me one minute then slumped against your car, unresponsive, the next. If Toby hadn’t been there to prop you up, you would have fallen to the ground. I think you may have passed out for a few seconds. Are you sure you didn’t bump your head somehow when you hit the tree?”

  “No.” Not this time, anyway. One other fun side effect of her accident three years earlier was an unfortunate propensity to faint in times of great exertion or emotion. It never lasted long. Doctors thought it might be a result of the head injury she had sustained.

  “I’m fine. I’m sorry. It...it must have been stress.” She didn’t want to move. He was warm and smelled delicious, rugged and masculine, and she felt safe for the first time since the rains started.

  Longer than that, if she were honest.

  She frowned. They were both drenched, the snow was piling up and she had to figure out a way to get home.

  Anyway, she was a perfectly capable woman, a smart, innovative computer programmer who didn’t need a man to make her feel better. Especially a man she didn’t know and didn’t particularly like.

  But, oh, it had been so very long since someone had held her.

  She knew exactly how long. Three years, since the accident that had changed everything. Facing months of recovery, she had pushed away Kevin, the man she had been dating at the time.

  She hadn’t known what else to do. Doctors hadn’t known if she would be able to walk again and as she and Kevin had only started dating, she hadn’t been willing to subject him to the uncertainty and turmoil.