WARM HANDS

The woman was sitting on the bench at the edge of Lincoln Park, and Brooke almost didn’t see her.
Five thirty-two in the morning, still dark, the kind of February cold that turned breath into something visible and then stole it. Brooke’s route took her past this bench every day — north along Starkweather, cut through the park, loop back down Professor — and every day the bench was empty. Not today.
She was older. Maybe sixty, maybe forty-five and weathered past recognition. A coat that wasn’t enough coat, a plastic bag from Marc’s that held what looked like everything she owned, and hands — bare, ashen, curled against her stomach like something she was trying to keep alive.
Brooke’s stride broke.
She didn’t stop running. Not at first. Her feet carried her three steps past the bench on autopilot, the way feet do when the brain is already somewhere else — already at the station, already reviewing overnight model runs, already assembling the forecast that half a million people would hear in twelve hours. Three steps past, and then the image caught up to her.
The hands.
Brooke slowed. Stopped. Stood in the dark with her breath pluming and her heart rate climbing for reasons that had nothing to do with the run.
Her gloves were Italian leather lined with cashmere. She’d bought them at Saks two years ago, back when buying nice things still felt like something she deserved rather than something she was performing. They were the warmest gloves she’d ever owned. Frank had said they made her look like a spy. She’d laughed. That was before.
She turned around.
The woman watched her approach with the particular stillness of someone who’d learned that sudden movement attracted the wrong kind of attention. Brooke stopped a few feet away. Close enough to be heard, far enough to not be a threat.
“Ma’am.” She pulled the gloves off. Her fingers flinched against the air. “These are yours if you want them.”
The woman looked at the gloves. Looked at Brooke. Her eyes were clear and sharp and not at all what people expected when they imagined someone on a bench at five thirty in the morning with a plastic bag for a life.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
The woman took them. Slid them on slowly, finger by finger, the way you handle something you know you’ll remember. The leather was still warm from Brooke’s hands.
“God bless you, baby.”
Brooke nodded. She didn’t say you’re welcome because that implied she’d done something generous when really she’d done something inevitable. She didn’t say stay warm because that was the kind of thing people said to feel better about walking away. She just nodded and turned and started running again, faster now, her bare hands balling into fists against the cold.
By the time she reached the station, her fingers were stiff and aching. She wrapped them around her first coffee and held on.
“Forgot your gloves?” Tasha Bryant asked from the weather producer’s desk, not really looking up.
“Must have,” Brooke said.
She sat down at her monitors. She pulled up the overnight GFS and Euro runs. She started building the forecast, her fingers still clumsy on the keyboard, still burning with cold she’d chosen and would choose again and would tell no one about because that wasn’t the point.
The point was the woman’s hands, finally warm.
The rest was nobody’s business.

A Valentine’s Day blizzard. A dead body. And the estranged husband she couldn’t trust. Now, he’s the only one who can keep her alive.

As Cleveland’s most trusted weather expert, Chief Meteorologist Brooke Wilder can predict every storm system that rolls off Lake Erie. What she couldn’t predict was finding her colleague murdered in the TV station; or that the FBI agent assigned to the case would be her estranged husband, Frank. They’ve been separated for eleven months, their marriage destroyed by grief, addiction, and words left unsaid. The divorce papers are ready to sign. Brooke just needs to find the courage to make it official. But when a historic Valentine’s Day blizzard bears down on her city, everything changes. The station goes into lockdown. The killer strikes during the chaos, and evidence suggests Brooke isn’t just a witness—she’s the next target.
Frank Wilder has spent fifty-two days sober, fifty-two days trying to become the man his wife deserves. Now he has one chance to prove it. Trapped in a darkening building with a methodical killer, dwindling power, and deadly cold closing in, Frank must protect the woman he never stopped loving.

As the blizzard rages and the body count threatens to rise, Brooke and Frank are forced into an intimacy they’ve avoided for two years. Old wounds resurface. Painful truths emerge. And the attraction that first brought them together burns hotter than ever, even as a murderer circles closer. With the clock ticking, Brooke must decide: Can she trust Frank with her life when she couldn’t trust him with her heart? And can Frank prove that second chances are worth fighting for—before the storm, the killer, or their own demons destroy them both? This Valentine’s Day, the greatest threat isn’t the record-breaking blizzard outside… it’s the lethal obsession hiding in plain sight.

In the heart of an Ohio winter, the most dangerous thing isn’t the cold—it’s the truth.

Tropes:
Forced Proximity
Protector Hero
Ticking Clock
Second Chances
Emotional Healing
Dangerous Obsession
Women in STEM

The Coldest Valentine is a gripping romantic suspense novel that combines pulse-pounding mystery with an emotionally charged second-chance romance.

Content warning: Stalking, miscarriage, alcoholism, gun/knife violence.

WINTERKILL: A Cleveland Crime Series
Book 1: The Coldest Valentine
Book 2: Storm Cell
Book 3: Ice Line
Book 4 Lake Effect Lies
Book 5: Dead Calm