She’d lost the bookstore. She’d lost her family’s legacy. Still, it was barely dinner time. The sheriff would have delayed the developers, as long as he could. Maybe she still had a chance.
Daniel cleared his throat, as if she’d forgotten he was there. "If you need to call your lawyer—"
"My lawyer?” When had her life become a sad comedy? “Yes, let me telephone her straightaway and then after that I’ll call the President." Jessica slipped off the bed but realized her thin hospital gown gaped at the back, so instead, she pulled the sheets tighter around her. "What happened to my clothes?”
“They had to cut them off—and there’s no need to be sarcastic. I’m trying to help you.”
What did Daniel think he could do to help? She’d lost the bookstore. Her worst fear had come true. She’d lost her concentration for a moment and lost…everything. "My computer and my clothes and my phone—”
"The owners claimed they have rights to the bookstore inventory but they are transferring your personal belongings to a storage facility off Park. I'll drive you there. Where can you stay tonight? We need to get you in before the blizzard hits."
She covered her face with her hands and let out a moan. After all this time and sacrifice—she’d lost the bookstore anyway. What was she going to do? Where would she go? How was it that in all the daydreaming she’d done over the past few months, she’d never considered a scenario where she lost the bookstore?
His voice broke through her thoughts. "So…you said you had someone? A friend?” He paused. “Boyfriend?”
She winced and opened one eye. "Your compassion is overwhelming. Does this make you popular with the people you save?"
"No." His lips hinted at a smile. "Saving people's lives makes me popular with the people I save. Come on, I’ll drive you wherever you need to go."
"I want to see it. My store.”
Daniel studied her through squinted eyes, like he was trying to figure something out. Then he picked a plastic bag off the floor and handed it to her. "Put these on."
She rifled through the bag, which bore the gift store logo: a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and serviceable loafers.
"Thanks."
She’d always hoped his first gift to her would be flowers.
***
Daniel Hennessey was cruising down Main Street with Jessica Mendez, his childhood crush who was connected to him in ways he wasn’t even sure she remembered. One of the things he liked about life was how it could knock you on your ass, lift you up, and then smack you back down in a matter of seconds. It was always a surprise.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure she’d see it that way. He kept glancing at her and had to remind himself to keep his eyes on the road, but his gaze strayed anyway. She was easy on the eyes. But beneath the sultry, warm eyes, the tangle of hair that practically invited a guy to run his hands through it, and those bowed lips—why hadn’t he taken advantage of those when he had the chance?—there was something else. A sense of peace she made him feel even amidst her own chaos, and buried beneath, that wanting-to-rip-her-clothes-off urge.
He remembered wanting to cozy up next to her when he was a kid, and it appeared that old habits died hard. They’d stopped at the storage place for her to pick up her belongings first. Even the way her hands had run over her laptop and phone had reminded him of how she used to draw her fingers down the spines of those cloth-bound books.
“My life is a box,” she’d muttered as she placed the laptop, camera, fold-up tripod, microphone, and a handful of clothes and her wallet into a box which he’d carried out to the van for her.
She’d been silent ever since.
“Stop—we’re here,” she said, nearly clawing the door.
He pulled over and expected her to run across the street. Instead she went entirely still and stared at the bookstore through the van window. He could tell by looking through the window that the store’s contents had already been emptied, and the front door was boarded up. The wreath was long gone. She pressed her knuckles tight against her lower lip and swallowed.
Daniel was the saving type. He had always known that about himself, and it was why he loved this job. Now, he wanted to save her. He wanted to make every bad feeling she’d ever felt disappear.
She opened the door and walked quickly across the street to Rosie’s Bakery, where the sheriff was coming out with a cup of coffee. As she and the sheriff talked, Daniel had an urge to run out and offer his help, but it wasn’t his place. After a few moments the sheriff put his arms around Jessica’s shaking shoulders. But by the time she walked back to him, she’d dried her eyes.
“Please take me to a hotel,” she said as she got back into the van. Mitten fought her way up to Jessica’s seat and settled in her lap, all warm and snuggly in a way that made him jealous.
“You said you had someone.”
“Yeah, well, I lied.”
“No one can watch you at a hotel. You have to be monitored for the night, at least. Doctor’s orders. Preferably a health professional, since who knows if an ambulance could get to you once the blizzard hits.”
She stared at Mitten in her lap. “Fine, I’ll wait up at the diner."
He started the van and drove past her store. Past the diner.
“Hey, wait—”
“I’m not leaving you in a diner.” The Wiseman brothers were probably qualified to watch her, but Daniel didn't care.
“I don’t want to go back to the hospital.”
“Who said anything about the hospital?”
“Then where are we going?”
“I know a place you can stay where someone will keep an eye on you.”
It was a dumb idea, but there it was, fresh in his brain. Enticing as ever. He never had been good at impulse control. Adrenaline junkies like him never were.
He hit the gas and drove like hell to his cabin.
Chapter Three
Jessica wrote and rewrote an email to her Mami and Papi in her mind. One they would never receive because last she checked, Heaven had no email address. But she owed it to them to tell them personally.
It vaguely occurred to her that Daniel was driving…somewhere…preferably off a cliff. Although she didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, or to Mitten. She ran her fingers over Mitten’s ears.
Hey Mom and Dad,
How’s the great book store in the sky? Things here are…different. You know how I love dogs and you never let me have one since they might tear up the books, so I practically molest every dog I see on the street? Well, gosh, that backfired. And remember how you always yelled at me not to live in my pajama slippers 'cuz one day I was going to slip and break my neck? Good news, you were only half-right! Get to the point, you say? Sure…I lost the store. One hundred percent lost it.
The sheriff had explained her options to save the bookstore.
One—do nothing because there was no saving it.
Two—try to do something, and she still wouldn’t succeed.
The insurance company had made it pretty clear they weren’t going to pay out, even though she was on her third appeal. She could rob the Snow Creek bank but the store title was gone. She’d have to convince the developers to let her buy back the place, which wasn’t going to happen. They weren’t exactly on friendly terms.
She had failed in the biggest way, and unlike the black moment in the books her family loved, there would be no miraculous, last-minute reversals. That’s what was so great about daydreams—they were always better than the reality.
She snuck a glance at Daniel’s profile as he drove. He was as good as reality got.
He parked in front of an A-frame cabin with a triangle of pillowy snow covering it. She didn’t recognize the cabin—and as far as she knew, Snow Creek didn’t have a halfway house for failed activists.
He pulled a set of house keys from his pocket.
“Are we at your home?” she asked.
“Yep.”
In her fantasies, Daniel Hennessey lived in a
condo, which of course made no sense since Snow Creek didn’t have condos like the resorts up the mountain. This cabin was cozy, comforting. The kind of place you raised a family. Not the kind of place a sexy, adventurous bachelor lived. “Why are we at your home?”
“Because you don’t have any other place to go.”
He jumped out of the car, Mitten on his heels, and slammed the door. She stared slack-jawed out the window.
“Come on, it’s cold,” he said.
She opened the door and sucked in a cold breath as the wind bit through her T-shirt. Daniel grabbed her belongings and beckoned her to follow as he walked up to the cabin and opened the front door.
She shut the car door and trudged the ten steps through ankle-high snow to make it inside the warmth of the cabin. The A-frame’s first floor was open—living room, dining room and kitchen all flowed into each other. A ladder at the back gave way to an open loft on the second floor.
She was surprised by the warmth of the house and the oversized, plush furniture. Mitten made herself at home in the corner of the sofa, tucked her nose into her body and fell asleep.
Daniel walked into the kitchen, grabbed a glass and filled it with water. Jessica took in the two packed duffel bags in the front foyer, the lack of decorations.
“You’re going somewhere,” she surmised.
“Isn’t that what people usually do for Christmas?”
“No, people usually stay in town and watch the Christmas Parade and dance at the Fezziwig Ball.”
“Is that what you do?”
“No,” she mumbled. “But that’s not the point. That’s what other people do.”
“Well, sometimes other people’s families move to Denver.”
“You’re going to see your parents!” She groaned. “Great, I’m a pain in the ass who ruins Christmas.”
“Hardly. Here. Drink up.”
She kicked off the wet loafers and followed him into the kitchen. She was soaking up every detail of the house—the carved wooden animals lined up on the fireplace mantel, the framed family photos on the walls. “Your family’s expecting you.” No one was expecting her. She told herself to shut up—she hadn’t earned anyone’s pity.
“I’m not going anywhere tonight. I already missed the flight that was supposed to go out before the blizzard.”
“Was that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.
He shrugged and hung his jacket on the hook beside the front door. “Facts are just what they are. You can feel any way you want about them.”
She blinked like he’d slapped her—she hadn’t expected that. The Daniel in her imagination was always saying sweet, romantic things, whereas this real Daniel was so…so…so infuriatingly grounded and reasonable.
“Are we okay?” he asked.
She nodded and bit her lip. “I just don’t like to be a bother.”
“You kept those developers spinning their wheels for a whole year, and you don’t like being a bother?”
“Hey!”
He grinned. “It’s no bother. Just stay. I owe you. You did save Mitten, after all.”
She smiled. She had saved Mitten.
“Plus you got Mitten a reprieve from going to the boarding house. That pretty much makes you Mitten’s hero.” Daniel knelt down and patted the puppy, who had gotten off the sofa and was twining herself around his legs. “We should make you an honorary paramedic.”
“Is that a real thing?”
“No.” He smiled.
“I always thought you’d end up doing something like becoming a paramedic.”
“Really?” He furrowed his brows. “Why?”
Great, here’s where she confessed she stalked him. “You always seemed to have your head in an anatomy book in high school.”
He laughed. “Oh, that! I was just…you know…curious about…girls.”
She scrunched her eyes to get that image out of her mind. “So that’s not why you became a paramedic?”
“Actually, I became a paramedic because…aw, shit.” He glanced out the window and frowned at the falling snow.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I still have to turn the paramedic van over to my replacement.” He opened the front door and stepped outside without his jacket. “Stay out of trouble for fifteen minutes or so? I’ll be right back.”
She bit back the urge to tell him to wear a coat. That was a girlfriend thing to say. And she wasn’t his girlfriend. She was, however, the girl who’d saved his dog. And then…oh God, she groaned and buried her head in her hands. Then she’d molested Daniel in front of the whole town. The whole gossipy-ass town.
Well, so what if they got a load of her staying in his cabin? What would they say then? Jessica’s eyes darted around the cabin. She was in Daniel Hennessey’s house. Where he slept, showered, changed and probably did other things she didn’t want to think about—or, rather, she did, but she wanted to think about them with her and not other women.
Now that she was left alone, she searched for the bathroom. Her hands unwittingly traveled the soft back of the couch, the textured wood railing of the stairs. She found the bathroom in the back of the cabin and, after making quick use of it, she washed her hands with the simple white bar of soap by the sink. No fancy liquid soap for this guy.
It was easy to turn around and peek into his shower. She sniffed a bottle of shampoo and wondered if she’d crossed the line to crazy stalker yet. Or maybe she’d crossed that when she kissed him. She groaned inwardly at the memory.
As long as you don’t go upstairs and roll around in his bed, Mendez, you’re doing okay.
Except now she wanted to go upstairs and roll around in his bed. Her cheeks heated at the thought—she’d been in her own space for so long. Her hands found his flannel jacket against the back of the door. The material was soft and worn beneath her fingers. She turned her head and looked out the living room’s sliding glass doors to the snow-covered deck. Flakes fell in the never-ending snowfall that she’d watched for months, wishing she could be outside, head tilted back, catching flakes on her tongue.
She didn’t just have to watch the snow fall anymore.
***
Daniel didn’t know what he expected to find when he got back to his cabin. He'd already run into his hockey hero, Paul McAlester, making out in the snow—so he shouldn't have been surprised. But he was.
He’d watched Jessica go through so much in the last year, and he’d been impressed and eventually inspired by her tenacity. Snow Creek was a small town, and she was easily one of it's favorite gossip topics on slow news nights. Most of the town had given her a week, a month. But he’d known she wouldn’t give up. He’d recognized the stubborn gleam in Jessica’s eyes from when they were kids. She had always imagined things bigger and better than this town.
So he didn’t expect to come back to find Jessica broken and crying over what had happened. But he also didn’t expect to find Jessica lying in the snow making a snow angel. She was grinning and giddy, even giggling, as she flapped her arms.
Jessica was wearing the coat he’d left behind—and just seeing her in it sent a fierce sense of possession through him. Not for the coat, but for her. He slowed to a walk—he’d jogged pretty much the entire way back from the call center in the blizzard’s first onslaught. Tiny wisps of snow stuck to her cheeks and eyelashes and yep, he pretty much wanted to kiss those off her.
He stood over her, arms crossed. “Hypothermia is the number one source of our calls during the winter.”
She got up and dusted the snow off his jacket. “I haven’t done that in ages.” She spun around. “I haven’t been outside in ages. Oh, it feels so good!” She fisted her hands and raised them over her head.
“Come on, we need to get you out of those wet clothes.” He brushed past her before his mind could go anywhere with that euphemism.
They made it inside, brushing the snow off. From the loft, he threw down a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. “Warm shower,” he ordered, p
ointing her to the guest bathroom on the first floor. “Stat.”
He went to the kitchen and rifled through his cabinets and fridge until he had the makings for chili. It was simmering on the stove by the time she came out, towel drying her hair. She should have looked shapeless beneath the baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt, but instead she looked adorable.
He told himself to knock it off.
Since when did he care about adorable? He liked women who were hot. The sort of cool and calculated beauty that drove an icicle through your heart. He was not about to get hot and bothered over sweatpants and dripping wet hair, especially when it was his fault she was in this mess.
“Smells good,” she said, dipping her nose closer to the pot.
“It’s all I had. I was kind of expecting to be eating my mom’s cooking,” he confessed.
“It’s still better than how I eat most nights. When you can’t run out for groceries, you tend to eat a lot of peanut butter.” Jessica opened a cupboard, then another, and before he could stop her, she was setting his small, round kitchen table with bowls, spoons, and water tumblers. He liked that she seemed at home in his kitchen even though he didn’t know why he should care.
He spooned up a bowl of chili for each of them, wishing he had some bread, and they sat down to eat. They ate without speaking as he struggled to find something to say to her.
Because there was a lot he could say. He just didn’t know how.
"So…how long are we going to do this?" she asked.
"Until we’re not hungry anymore?"
"Not, not eating. I mean…how long are we not going to talk about what happened."
He frowned. “What happened?”
She set down the knife. "I kissed you."
Oh, that. That, he’d happily talk about all day long. "I know. Thank you. My lady-killer status is cemented.”
“I think it was the head bump,” she said.
This was the hardest Daniel had ever had to work to get a girl admit she wanted to kiss him. “Knocked some sense into you, did it?” When she just gaped at him, he added, “How does your head feel now?”
Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas Page 22
