Chapter One

Savannah heard the pounding of her daughter's footsteps on the wood floors, then the eight-year-old skidded to a stop in front of her, eyes shining.

"Can I go outside? Please?" Hannah begged. "This is so cool. I've never seen snow before."

"I know," Savannah told her, amused despite herself. "We don't get a lot of snow in Florida."

"Wait till my friends back home hear we're going to have a white Christmas. It is so awesome. I am sooo glad we moved to Vermont."

Though she could understand her daughter's excited reaction to her first snowfall, from Savannah's perspective the snow was anything but a blessing. Since her arrival a couple of days ago, she'd discovered that the furnace at Holiday Retreat wasn't reliable. The wind had a nasty way of sneaking in through all sorts of unexpected cracks in the insulation, and the roof - well, the best she could say about that was that it hadn't fallen in on their heads ... yet. With the weight of a foot of damp snow on it, who knew what could happen?

It had been three weeks since the call had come from the attorney informing her that she was a beneficiary of her aunt Mae's estate. The bittersweet news had come the day before Thanksgiving, and for the first time since her divorce the year before, Savannah had thought she finally had something for which to be thankful besides her feisty, incredible daughter. Now that she'd seen the inn, she was beginning to wonder if this wasn't just another of Fate's cruel jokes.

Holiday Retreat had been in the family for generations. Built in the early 1800s as a home for a wealthy ancest