Single in the Snow

by Helen Whitaker

Genres: Holiday books; Contemporary Romance; Holiday Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

A smart, fun and wonderfully wintery romantic comedy set in the picturesque mountain ski resort of Whistler, Canada.

Jen is turning 30 and has spent her entire life jumping from man to man. So, when her latest relationship ends without warning, she decides to stop pleasing others and focus on herself. And where better to do that than the famously picturesque Canadian ski resort of Whistler?

Okay, she can't ski and desperately needs to find a job fast, but it's nothing she can't handle. Her only rule is to stay single for the entire ski season.

While Jen is throwing herself into Whistler life, Art is doing his best to keep his distance from the people who remind him of everything he once lost. It's easier to live alone than to love and lose again.

When work forces Jen and Art together, the two of them are determined to keep their distance. It shouldn't be hard, since they hate one another on sight. The problem is, the more time they are forced to spend together, the clearer it seems that staying single might not be quite so simple . . .

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: November 17, 2022

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Acknowledgements

 

This book has been bubbling away in one form or another for a long time. A very different version of it secured me my amazing agent Sarah Hornsley back in 2017, and I would like to thank her for not only taking me on back then, but for encouraging me to dig my Whistler book out of the archives in 2021 and completely overhaul it, and then helping me to turn it into the rom-com it has become. It feels like Art should have always existed!

To Amy Batley at Hodder – thank you for signing this book. I’m so glad it got its moment, and your warm and wise edits made the story (and slow-burn steaminess) much stronger.

A big thank you to my publicist Kim Nyamhondera at Hodder for championing the book and to Natalie Chen and Lucy Davey for the gorgeous cover design, and thank you to my copy editor Helen Parham, for her eagle eye in tightening everything up and saving me from myself.

I have had three books published now, and often still don’t believe that I am a ‘real’ author. Luckily, I married someone who does. Thank you to Ian for always supporting me, for giving me the time and space to write books, as well as knowing what to say when I am dejected and when to raise an eyebrow at the whole bloody thing. Two taps, always.

To Ikey, who will always be the best baby even though I’m not allowed to call you my baby anymore. All the children’s cutest and cheekiest moments in this book are inspired by you, even if I struggle to capture your joyful cackle in words.

To my dad who has always been so encouraging of me and my books, and John, Yorkshire’s best Helen Whitaker library handseller, for being my most enthusiastic monitors of Amazon rankings.

Approximately a thousand years ago (the early 00s), I did a season in Whistler with my best friend Alex, and met one of my now best friends Suzanne. We never did get any better at tricks and I highly doubt our collective knees have it in them these days, but thank you for the fun times and inspiration! Plus, a shoutout to the international cast of transient seasonaires that we worked and played with during those days.

Finally, to everyone who has bought, borrowed, read and reviewed my books, thank you!

Chapter Eight

ART

It was her. Looking about a thousand times less bedraggled in the all-black Platinum uniform, a full face of make-up and the sort of blond artful curls Art understood took a lot longer to create than they appeared to. Her eyes were grey-blue and flinty.

‘We’ve met,’ she told Eduardo, her voice as flat as her expression.

‘Fabulous,’ Eduardo replied, oblivious to the tense atmosphere. Then again, Eduardo wasn’t that interested in his employees other than whether they went to the right school or if they measured up to his impossible standards. The staff turnover on Platinum was constant. Chances were she wouldn’t be working there long.

‘You probably already know, then,’ Eduardo was explaining, ‘that Art doesn’t work for the hotel itself, he’s freelance. But he’s requested by so many of Platinum’s guests that he’s an honorary member of the team.’

Art’s eyebrows shot up. Eduardo had never seemed like the team-spirit type to him. That was one of the reasons he continued to work for the Platinum floor.

‘How wonderful,’ Jen said evenly. Her voice was a lot posher than when she’d spoken to him yesterday. ‘I’m sure the guests – I mean clients – feel very safe in his hands.’ Her face was expressionless, her eyes stony. Art noticed a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

‘He teaches under-nines, so their parents naturally need to be assured that safety is paramount,’ Eduardo said, distracted. He was frowning at something on the screen. ‘Art, who are you picking up today? I don’t have any lessons scheduled until tomorrow.’

‘It’s a new client. Newton Oates is the child’s name,’ Art said quietly. He was used to projecting his voice during lessons to make sure the children both heard and understood him clearly, but amid the hushed elegance of Platinum it automatically dropped. It wasn’t the sort of place you shouted. ‘They asked me to meet her before the lessons start and’ – Art looked at his watch – ‘6 a.m. was the only time they could do.’ In a different life he’d have railed against having to be somewhere, well presented and on his best behaviour, at this time – but today, like so many others, he’d been lying awake for a couple of hours by the time he got up. He liked having somewhere to be. It put a limit on alone time with his thoughts.

‘Sure. Just let me call the suite,’ Eduardo said. ‘Take a seat.’

Eduardo picked up the receiver. ‘Mrs Oates, good morning, Eduardo from the desk. I have Art Jenkins here to meet you ahead of the snowboard lessons you’ve booked for Newton.’

Eduardo nodded, the slightly creepy smile that was permanently on his face during customer interactions in place. He murmured, ‘Of course,’ before hanging up.

‘She said she’ll be out soon,’ he said to Art.

‘Soon’ in rich-people speak could mean any time between now and lunch. Art had learned that his clients broadly fitted in to one of two categories: firstly, those who were so busy that they gave you 0.5 seconds of their time and attention before hiring you, but also wanted ‘measurable results’ in their child’s snowboarding ability and a detailed breakdown thereof emailed to them each day. This usually went hand-in-hand with a ‘mop-up session’ over the phone on how to improve productivity during the next lesson. Then, there were those who operated on a ‘centre of the world’ schedule – ‘creatives’ fit heavily into this category. They claimed to be ultra-laid-back but actually wanted their staff to be constantly available, even when they themselves were hours late.

Art slotted his tall frame into one of the Eames chairs in the all-white seating area near the lifts and prepared to find out which category Mrs Oates fell into as Eduardo continued to talk quietly to that girl at the desk. Art lowered his gaze a little but watched them out of the corner of his eye.

‘Jennifer, while I remember, can I get your passport to scan for HR?’ Eduardo said, his attention still on the screen.

Art noticed a stricken expression cross Jennifer’s face. ‘Um, I don’t have it on me,’ she said, the posh accent slipping slightly.

Eduardo’s head shot up and he glared at her, silent annoyance radiating from him.

‘Sorry,’ Jennifer said, chewing her lip slightly and blushing. ‘I forgot to bring it.’

There was a tense pause. ‘You’re going to need to be more organised than that,’ he said neutrally. Art could tell even from where he was sitting that there was nothing neutral about it, but at that moment the phone chirruped. Eduardo snatched it up and whispered a few urgent words into it, before declaring: ‘I need to deal with this.’ A brief expression of anxiety passed over his face. ‘Cara should arrive on shift any moment but, Jennifer, I’m going to need you to man the desk until I get back.’ He stalked off, managing to keep his exit almost completely silent despite the clip he moved at. If Platinum taught you one thing, it was how to be stealthy. Eduardo was the master of it, much to the horror of any employee who’d dared to slag him off without realising he was standing right behind them.

‘It’s Jen, not Jennifer,’ Art heard her mutter, even though she’d waited until Eduardo had disappeared from view before she risked saying anything at all. Her blond hair fell over her face as she scrutinised a giant binder on the desk in front of her. Her forehead wrinkled a little as she concentrated.

Art pulled out his phone to kill some time. He had a client enquiry from friends of Buddy and Juno’s parents. They would be ‘wintering’ in the resort and asked if he was free to teach their kids. It took him only a couple of minutes to tap out his polite reply, offering his availability and rates, but he felt self-conscious in Jen/Jennifer’s presence. He had an awareness of her just being there building under his lashes, which made him uncomfortable, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint why. Probably because he’d bawled out plenty of idiots on the mountain, but he rarely had to face them again afterwards. There was the odd burly bloke whose embarrassment at being reprimanded made him aggressive and fighty, but Jennifer (or Jen) wasn’t like that. She wasn’t speaking to him at all.

Art stared at the weather app on his phone and tried to sneak a glance at her to see if she was looking his way. She wasn’t. Good. They could just sit here in silence until Mrs Oates came out.

‘How’s the whiplash?’ he found himself blurting.

‘I don’t have whiplash,’ she replied snippily. But then she went to turn the page of the folder and shifted her standing weight. He caught her flinch as she did it, even though she pressed her lips together to try to suppress it. ‘My leg’s quite sore today though,’ she admitted.

‘That’s because you barrelled into a solid block of snow at about twenty miles an hour,’ he said, about to follow up with some advice about how to relieve the pain.

‘Yes, I get it,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘I was stupid.’

The phone chirruped again, and she jumped. ‘Hello. Platinum floor, Jen speaking,’ she said as she picked it up, her posh voice back in residence. The receiver continued to ring in her hand and she started stabbing her fingers at the display. ‘Hello? Platinum floor, Jen speaking.’ It rang again and her voice took on a panicked tone. ‘Shit, how do you actually pick this thing up?’ She peered at the display. ‘What does the number seven mean?’ Her voice was getting shriller by the second and Art tried not to roll his eyes. She didn’t even know how to answer a phone. Further evidence that she was some posh, if older than average, gap-year type who’d probably never had a proper job before. He sighed.

‘It’s coming from Suite Seven,’ he told her.

‘What?’ she snapped. Her face had flushed and the phone was still ringing.

‘The number on the display tells you what suite it’s coming from,’ he explained. ‘But you need to press the green “accept” button to pick up. You know, like a normal phone.’

Art had thought she’d at least be grateful. Instead, she muttered, ‘Unbelievable,’ before doing as he said, and then answering the phone in a velvety-sounding tone.

‘Platinum floor, Jen speaking, how may I assist you today?’ The fixed smile on her face dropped as she murmured, ‘Aha, sure, of course, so that’s . . . oh.’

She pulled the receiver away from her ear and looked at it in her hand. Her eyes had widened, feathery lashes framing them in surprise, and the veneer of indifference had dropped. ‘They hung up,’ she said incredulously. ‘They asked me for something that I was about to repeat back to them as a way of confirming, and now they’ve hung up so I don’t know if I got it right.’

‘Well,’ Art said, slightly impatiently. ‘What did they ask for?’ Jen was never going to last in a five-star hotel if she expected to be hand-held through every task. ‘Just fetch them whatever it was or find someone who can.’

‘All she said was “caffeine”. Which I assume means they want coffee, right? But what sort? And how many? And where do I get it from?’

‘Grande bone-dry triple-shot ristretto,’ said Eduardo, reappearing behind her like a bright orange spectre. ‘Go and find Cara in the kitchen and she’ll tell you where to get it.’ He caught Art’s eye and threw his own skyward as though they were united in noticing Jen’s incompetence. Art looked away. He wasn’t on Eduardo’s side. He wasn’t on anyone’s side.

‘Well go on, then,’ he hissed, shooing her away.

‘Right,’ he heard Jen reply, her voice trembling a little. She set off for the kitchen, visibly limping, as Eduardo shout-whispered after her. ‘And sort out your gait.’

Chapter Eighteen

JEN

All through Mrs Higham’s pug’s wedding later that day, with Newton at her side, Jen had fretted about Art and his hasty exit from the slopes, wondering whether she should have gone after him. Then, once she finally got back to staff housing, with a slice of the bespoke, pug-shaped cake to take with her, she’d considered texting him. She had his number now after all. But something in his face at the foot of the mountain had stopped her. The first day she’d met him she’d seen his judgemental face, and since then she’d seen plenty of his pissed-off face. She’d also seen his proud face when Newton’s snowboarding technique came together, and the sweet, smiling look on his face when she and Newton had referred to the dazzle-covered Chocolate Box concoction he always ordered as his ‘favourite drink’. In the short time she’d known him she’d come to recognise a lot of his different expressions, and that day, his face had shut down. It was as though he had ‘STAY AWAY’ tattooed on there, and she had to respect that.

But she hadn’t been able to stop herself from Googling him. There were dozens of hits, going all the way back to his days as a junior champion right up to newspaper articles that catalogued his ascension to Team GB. Teenage Art beamed out from photos, flanked by his teammates and an enormous hairy man, identified in the captions as the squad’s coach Russ ‘Yeti’ Sullivan. There was a lightness to him in all the photos that Jen had never seen in the man she knew. Around six years ago the local coverage opened out into the national press: a Q&A on a snowboard brand website that implored readers to get to know the people they were sponsoring, and a profile in the sports section of the Telegraph a few months before the last Winter Games.

After that there was a gap, until a slew of stories in both the broadsheets and the tabloids catalogued the avalanche that had ended his career and killed a 23-year-old woman identified alternately as his ‘companion on the mountain’ or ‘his girlfriend’, while Art was still unconscious and unable to confirm which was correct. The final references Jen found were small mentions of Art being awake, and then, after the Winter Olympics started in the February, teammates paid tribute to him and his ongoing recovery. After that there was nothing. A handful of Team GB medallists enjoyed their moment on the winners’ podium and the news cycle moved on.

After that, she couldn’t text him, knowing that this was why he could be so distant and so prickly. Plus, if she was honest, she didn’t know what to say. And if he didn’t want her – or anyone – to talk to him about it, that was his choice, even if the memory of the devastated look on his face as he had walked away from Mr Oates ate her up inside.

She didn’t see Art for a week. None of his clients were staying at The Redwood, and as the days passed, and she neither saw nor heard from him, she told herself it was better to let him handle it the way he wanted.

But this morning he was booked in to pick up eight-year-old Etta and her six-year-old sister Janis, and she’d changed her mind. It was wrong to ignore it. Isn’t that what they told you in articles about how to support someone who was grieving?

Her mouth formed a smile as he walked in, but he didn’t give her the chance to say anything.

‘Hi,’ he said briskly. ‘Just here for Etta and Janis, are they on their way out?’

Jen frowned slightly, but dutifully picked up the phone and made the call to their suite. According to their notes, their parents stayed at The Redwood during the third week of December every year and Art had been teaching the children for three years, so they already knew him.

‘Ten minutes,’ she said, putting down the receiver. Usually, he just sat down patiently to wait. Today he tutted. Something was off.

Don’t ignore it, she told herself.

‘Art.’ Jen’s voice was hesitant and solemn. ‘I wanted to say how sorry I am about Shauna, and about your accident.’

‘What are you sorry for?’ he replied instantly, in a combative tone that put the day she met him in mind. ‘Unless you’re secretly the God of Snow and it’s you who causes avalanches.’

Jen paused, her expression somewhere between shock and hurt. Two weeks ago she would have fired back something equally as cutting. But it felt wrong now. She knew he was in pain.

‘I just meant it must have been really hard for you,’ she said carefully. ‘I can’t imagine having to come to terms with losing someone, and only hearing about it long after the rest of the world. I’m sorry it happened to you. And I’m sorry the avalanche also took away your career.’

His eyes narrowed. As though he knew she’d Googled him and found out all the gory details.

‘I have a career.’ His voice was clipped, forced.

‘I know you do. I meant your Olympic dream.’ She was blushing and stammering. He was making her squirm. She took a breath and looked him in the eye, trying to force an iota of last week’s friendliness. ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

‘Not really. But then, we don’t really know each other, do we?’ His tone was dead and distant. His jaw was set, his brown eyes flat.

Jen gave a small, nervous laugh. ‘I think we know each other a little by now—’

‘It was clear from the off that we didn’t really like each other,’ Art interrupted. ‘So now Newton’s gone home there’s no reason for us to pretend to be friendly.’ The temperature in the hotel now felt lower and frostier than outside on the mountain.

‘Right,’ she said, removing all the emotion from her own voice. ‘If that’s what you want. I mean, I wasn’t expecting us to have a heart-to-heart but—’

He cut her off. ‘It’s best not to expect anything from me.’

A door opened along the corridor and the sound of stampeding children hurtled towards the lobby. Etta and Janis’s mum was calling out questions about gloves and hats and goggles and whether anyone needed the toilet.

‘Janis, how have you grown this much since last year?’ Art said, stretching out his arms as high as they would go, his voice filling with a warmth that Jen knew she was now very much excluded from. ‘And Etta, who took your front teeth? Let me at ’em!’

‘They’ve gone to the tooth fairy,’ she shouted, smiling gappily at him.

‘Oh, that’s OK, then.’ He continued to fire quips at the two girls as he waved farewell to their mum and corralled them into the lift, not looking at Jen as they left.

Chapter Eleven

JEN

How’s the job going?

 

Jen was halfway through replying to Maxie’s message when Art reappeared the next morning. Even though she’d been expecting him any time from 8 a.m., his arrival, signalled by the dong of the lift, startled her enough to press ‘send’ prematurely.

I’m a 29-year-old dogsbody was all Maxie received, which in fairness was not wrong.

‘Morning,’ Art said, as he pulled off his woolly hat and approached the concierge desk looking worn out, but still ten times healthier than he had the previous day. He was in the same navy baggy snowboarding trousers as yesterday and a green Burton-branded jacket. His hair, wet and freshly showered, curled onto the tops of his ears as it dried in the warm hotel, and his nose was red-tipped from the cold. His brown eyes looked focused and they rested now on Jen, who stuffed her phone into the concierge desk drawer, despite angry vibrations suggesting that Maxie was replying, no doubt pressing her for more information.

Jen waited, assuming some sort of apology or explanation for his behaviour the day before was imminent. But instead he furrowed his dark brows and said, ‘What happened to your face?’

Jen raised a self-conscious hand to the swollen red lump on her cheek that she’d tried unsuccessfully to cover up with make-up that morning.

‘It’s from snow tubing,’ she said. ‘I had a crash. With the ground, not a person,’ she added quickly.

Art looked confused and opened his mouth to say something else. But he wasn’t getting in the next word, not today.

‘Don’t even,’ she chided. ‘It’s entirely your fault that I was snow tubing at all.’

His usual combative look was back. ‘How do you figure that?’

‘Because Newton Oates didn’t have a snowboarding instructor yesterday, so her parents were looking for an activity to keep her occupied. I – helpfully – suggested the tubing park, but as her parents are here to work, she didn’t have anyone to take her – again, because she was supposed to be in snowboarding lessons all week. So her mum asked me to go with her.’

Art’s eyebrows darted up in surprise. ‘They let you out of work for that?’

Jen snorted. ‘Eduardo was furious, but he also couldn’t say no because we couldn’t find a stand-in teacher for you and Newton’s parents were desperate.’ Jen had watched Eduardo getting frantic as they rang around, knowing that no one was going to be available in the first week of December at short notice. If they were, it was doubtful Eduardo would think they had the credentials to teach a Platinum guest’s child. ‘I was dispatched on the proviso that I’d make up the “break” time at the end of my shift.’ She couldn’t keep the bitter edge from her voice. ‘Because obviously, babysitting a seven-year-old was a small holiday for me. Anyway, she loved it, while my face loved it less. However, Eduardo is so enraged by the state of my face and the fact that I “skived work” yesterday that he’s making life even more hellish for me than usual.’

‘Oh,’ was all Art said. He looked suspiciously like he was trying not to laugh, which only served to piss her off more.

‘Wait, what was that?’ Jen pricked up her ears theatrically, causing Art to do the same.

‘What?’ he said, looking around for Eduardo.

‘I thought I heard someone say “thank you, Jen” but I must have been mistaken.’

Art took another step towards the desk and Jen inhaled, checking to see if he still smelled of stale whiskey and clothes that had been slept in. He didn’t. Instead, she got a lungful of the citrus-scented shower gel he must have been using.

‘I was about to but I haven’t been able to get a word in edgeways. But I am grateful for you covering for me yesterday, so thank you.’

‘Oh.’ Jen reddened, not knowing what to do with the unexpected sincerity. ‘Well, you were out of order. Massively.’ Her voice came out as sullen and teenage.

‘I was.’ Art nodded. ‘And you were right. I shouldn’t have been teaching.’

Why did Jen always feel like she was on the back foot with him? Sheepish shame-faced Art was more perplexing than bad-tempered Art or even argumentative half-cut Art. Were they being nice to each other now? He was infuriating.

She was about to tell him it was OK, but then reconsidered. He didn’t get to be prickly and then just change the script to suit him. He wasn’t one of her ex-boyfriends. Or her dad. Her father was someone she’d ended up seeing so rarely that she was always on her best behaviour when she did, in the hope he’d make his visits more frequent. She always tried to be accommodating so that people would like her enough to hang around. It had been the same pattern since Matt, her first boyfriend at fourteen, had asked her out, and she’d said yes without really analysing if she wanted to. She quickly discovered that having a boyfriend gave her instant validation. After he broke up with her three years later, along came Chris at university, then Ollie – a couple of years with each and serial dating in between. Nathan was the latest in a long line of guys who trundled along and she trundled alongside, never pushing them for anything more than they were offering. They certainly never saw the less obliging sides of her personality. But Maxie had told her to stop that. And right now some guy who wasn’t even a friend, never mind her boyfriend, was expecting her to mould her personality around him to keep the peace. Not this time. She wanted an explanation.

‘So, what was it all about?’ she asked.

Surprise rippled across his face.

‘Yesterday,’ she persisted. ‘Why were you in that state? And what did you mean about Rob and Snowy telling me? I don’t know you very well, but public drunkenness seems out of character.’

Whatever warmth had been briefly there had gone; the stony look in Art’s eyes was back and the shutters were down. ‘You’re right, you don’t know me very well.’ His voice was clipped.

‘Jennifer!’ Eduardo’s whisper was somehow louder and more resonant than if he’d shouted. He emerged from the staff door and his eyes lasered in on her cheek, though she could tell it was through irritation rather than concern. The one good thing about Art’s annoying presence was that it provided a welcome distraction from Eduardo’s criticisms.

‘Feeling better?’ Eduardo said to him, his voice almost frie. . .