Read Online Snowed In with Her Ex by Andrea Laurence - Free Book Online

He was engaged to Missy. He was determined to be a good father, better than his own. That meant marrying the mother of his child and being a part of his life, whether it made him happy or not. He knew what it was like to not feel important enough to matter. Ian might not be happy about the turn his life had taken, but he would never, ever let his child feel that way. His son or daughter would feel loved, special, important... He would see to that.
    Being attracted to someone else while the future mother of his child was miles away was an epically bad start.
    Ian needed a distraction. He picked up a random book from his bookshelf and forced himself to read it for nearly an hour. By then, he thought perhaps the phone gods had smiled on his pathetic situation and brought back his connection to the world. As he slipped from his room, the house was quiet. Bree was probably asleep by now. He ventured back out into the living room and found that all the lights were off on the ground floor. Only the small light over the kitchen sink was burning. His phone was on the counter where he’d left it. There was still no connection, making it just as useless as before, except now it also needed charging. He dug the cord out of his bag and plugged it in by the coffeepot.
    He picked up the house phone. No dial tone.
    With a sigh, he went back into the living room and flopped down on the couch. It was nearly midnight now, but he couldn’t sleep. His brain was spinning and there was nothing to soothe it.
    When he was younger, the music had helped. The doctors had diagnosed him with a hyperactivity disorder when he was a child, but his mother had refused the medicine. She had been determined to find a way for him to channel his energy. He’d played soccer for a while, but the real change had come with a chance encounter at a pawn shop.
    He and his mother had gone there to pay off a debt she had against her mother’s wedding ring. They’d needed the money for rent. While they were there, a guitar had caught Ian’s eye. It had been way more expensive than he could afford. He had been only thirteen at the time. The man who ran the shop had offered to trade Ian the guitar for help on the weekends cleaning up the stockroom. He’d snapped up the opportunity and continued to work there after it was paid off to fund guitar lessons.
    Music had changed Ian’s life. It had given him focus. It had helped him in school. Writing songs had come easier to him than any homework assignment. When he’d gotten to high school, he had joined the jazz ensemble. Some of the happiest days of his teen years had been spent holding the very same guitar that was in the closet right now.
    Ian felt a pang of guilt for handling it the way he had. It wasn’t the guitar’s fault that the person playing it wasn’t any good. He sprung up from the couch, walked to the closet and turned on the light. The guitar was haphazardly lying on the ground, a flutter of loose Monopoly money on top of it. Apparently, he’d knocked the game off the shelf when he’d flung the guitar inside.
    Reaching down, he picked up the instrument and carried it back into the living room. A quick inspection proved he hadn’t damaged it, thankfully. Ian sat down on the couch and cradled the weight of the guitar in his lap. It seemed like forever since he’d touched a guitar. He’d quit his music cold turkey. If he didn’t have what it took to succeed, he hadn’t wanted to waste another minute of his life on it.
    Now his fingers itched to brush the strings. What could it hurt? Bree was asleep upstairs. If he played quietly enough, just one song to soothe his curiosity, no one needed to know.
    He turned the guitar and gripped it. The first few notes were off, so he took a moment to adjust and tune it. His first solid chord sent a shiver down his spine. It was like his soul had reconnected with its true passion again. He began a quiet, mellow song—one of his coffee-shop favorites—to test