by Leslie North
She held it together, even managed to find the ornaments before January appeared at the attic door. One sweet, sympathetic smile, and Livie’s resolve crumbled. January hugged her and said, “Meier men are prone to hissy fits with the tail still on them. But they always come around. Usually sooner rather than later.”
“I should leave.”
“On Christmas?” January shrieked, as if Livie had suggested an oracle circle and a séance on the most holy of nights. “Not a chance. Come on. Willie’s egg nog makes everything better. You’ll swear you’ve seen the Coming firsthand.”
She led Livie down the attic steps, ornament box in tow.
Wes did not make an appearance on Christmas Eve. Each of his brothers, in turn, came out to the barn, pretended to care about the internal mechanisms of their grandfather’s truck, then made Wes feel like a shit heel for whatever it was that had happened with Livie. They knew none of the details; that didn’t change their opinion any. Mona came out with a portable feast and another opinion—hers most surprising of all: She’s a Yankee. Bless her heart, they do things differently up there.
By the time Olive darkened the barn door, Wes expected her. He knew the steady parade of visitors was meant to gauge his internal temperature like a cooked bird. With each consecutive hour, he cooled. Regret, it turned out, was a holiday dish best served cold.
Olive looked ridiculous in an ugly sweater Mona had gifted her—elves in their workshops with paintbrushes. That she took one for the team broke down his defenses even more. Despite his intention to convey the seriousness of the situation, how he felt, he couldn’t suppress a smile.
She pressed her frames closer to her face and matched his tentative smile. “Wait until you see yours. Santa in ass chaps and Mrs. Claus embarrassed about his naked butt.”
On her barely-there lilted accent, he had never heard anything more sublime.
Fully inside the barn, she held out a gift with a single blue ribbon. The wrapping paper was a repeating image of some moody-looking dude in an old brown coat. Upon closer inspection, the dude looked an awful lot like him.
This time, the laughter came more reflexively. “Léon Bonnat?”
“Told you he was dreamy.”
Wes scrubbed the growth on his jaw, hoped to hell he favored G.I. Joe more than the mopey French guy. He reached behind the hay block by the door and retrieved her gift. He’d had it reframed and re-matted from a specialty place near Austin. The wrapping was shit, nowhere near the time she put into hers, but every day for the past two weeks, his stomach had hitched from the anticipation of seeing her face when she opened it.
He spread a saddle blanket on a haybale and invited her to sit beside him.
“You first,” he prodded.
Her eyes widened as she took his gift in hand. “It’s so big.”
He loved that she seemed to genuinely not guess what the flat, rectangular present was, that Christmas came hours early, not wrapped in bows but in the flush of her cheeks, the energy in her smile, the innocence that came with an unexpected gift. He wanted to swallow back everything he had said, but the moment was too pure to taint with talk of misplaced anger.
She tugged at the brown paper too carefully for the blood racing through his arteries. He helped her with a corner that revealed George Langley’s The Infinite Nows from the front, how a surprise was meant to be shared.
At her first, full glimpse, she froze. Mouth open, fingertips spanning her lips, her eyes swimming behind glass like a fishbowl.
He had hoped for happiness. The tears were unexpected.
“Oh, Wes. It’s…” she hesitated, still stalled on her thoughts about the piece. Ultimately, she decided on “generous,” “cherished,” and “perfect.”
As quickly as she was swept up in the gift, her expression fell.
“I’m afraid yours isn’t as extravagant.”
“Between Santa’s ass chaps and Léon Bonnat, I already have everything I want.”
Right here. Everything Wes wanted was right here. Every. Single. Thing. Sitting beside her, knowing how much he must have hurt her, bringing up Daniel in the way he did—all of it made it hard to breathe.
Fresh from the Olive Blake school of paper preservation, he unwrapped his gift, careful not to split dream guy’s chiseled face. Inside the box was an ornament of an old red truck with a cut Christmas tree in the bed.
“To remember the Christmas you restored your grandfather’s Ford.”
Wes nudged her with his shoulder. “Be a little hard to forget this Christmas.”
Her tepid smile didn’t reach her eyes. Something was wrong.
“I wanted to give it to you before I packed up my things,” she said.
His gut clenched, the way it had when he woke up with her in his bed. He had been a fucking mess and smelled like death, but she was there beside him, fingers resting in his palm as if she had held his hand but relaxed in sleep, so serene and delicate without her glasses, and he knew she had found him. He remembered none of it. The ache traveled to his scalp at the thought of her side of the barn empty.
“Don’t…” he said on a sigh then repeated it with more conviction. He leveled her with a stare. “Don’t go.”
“It’s clear that my being here is a problem. I have an artist friend in Dallas who said I could use part of her warehouse. It might be a few days before I can arrange transport of the pieces but—”
“Olive…”
She rose. Her sexy black combat boots rearranging hay fibers was all he could focus on because meeting her eyes, seeing all he had done to her in their depths, would break him.
“What, Wes? What do you want from me? One day you’re kissing me and the next you tell me I’ve ruined your peace here and you can’t get past my dead brother to see me. I can’t work like this. Not knowing that you’re counting the seconds until I’m gone.”
“Look, I’m sorry for the way I said it, but every single word was true. And we said we’d always be honest.”
“And that’s the best you can do?”
“No. No, I can do better.”
His gaze scaled her body, fighting for courage, temporarily detouring past the hideous sweater to the way her skin-tight jeans hugged her willowy curves, to the summit of her charged stare. Honest. If there was ever a time to be honest, before she was gone for good, it was now.
“I’m falling in love with you.”
10
Clearly, Olive’s speechlessness wasn’t limited to George Langley.
“Say something. Please.”
She looked as if she had just been asked to sculpt a fifth face on Mount Rushmore. Her body moved back inside his orbit, within reach. He wanted to take her hand as she had taken his the night the snow flew, but he was driving one-sixty, here, at midnight with no headlamps. She sat beside him again.
“No one’s ever said that to me before.”
“Never?”
She shook her head. “Once, but he was talking about my work.”
“I haven’t seen your work.” Dismissing that possibility, he hoped his meaning was clear. It was her. All her.
“What about earlier? You said I’m everything you’re trying to forget.” Her words were soft, like a whisper between lovers.
“Not you. And not Daniel, either. It’s time I realized that.”
God Almighty, she wasn’t fighting it; she was trying to come to grips. His body was already at the end of that road, one-sixty, one-eighty, every part of him more alive than he had ever been, surpassing heavy fire, surpassing guilt that he wore every day like body armor.
“I shouldn’t have pried,” she said. “I needed to feel…something.”
He nuzzled her bangs, much as he had the time he tugged her scarf to bring her close and called her art and nearly took her inside the cab of the old truck and re-sculpted her body until her pleasured cries filled the barn. This time, a kiss on the forehead wasn’t enough. Not by miles.
“And now?” he said, closer to a thought than a whi
sper.
Her exhales warmed his neck, subtle puffs of shaky air.
She took off her glasses, as much an invitation to fuck her mindless as anything he could have imagined. His cock tensed. Still he waited. A woman like her, refined, worldly, but not as much as she led others to believe, deserved to drive this as far as she wanted.
“I feel everything.”
This time, when he corralled her lips, there was no modesty, no feather-touch, no slightest hint of her inner world. This time, it was a pedal-to-the-floorboard, eyes-closed leap of hearts and heads and intentions. All reserve drained from her body. She met the kiss with the same passion with which she inhaled art and binged on creation. Her mouth tasted sugary, a just-from-the-oven holiday cookie to a starving man.
With her first sweep of tongue past those firm, heart-shaped lips, his control shattered.
He scooped her onto him so she straddled his lap, the knees of her impossibly tight jeans at his hips while tongues fought to recapture leverage. Her denim was thin, stretchy, and humid at the crotch. The knowledge that she was ready for him, maybe had been since she had darkened the barn door—or, like him, clear back to the moment they exchanged looks on a moon-splashed street—was a rocket-propelled grenade to his libido. The athletic pants he had slipped on earlier were no match. His dick was in a crisp, precision salute faster than the time it took a lusty rasp to escape her throat.
Her spine lifted, arched, so statuesque atop him, he wondered if everything she touched turned to art. She broke the kiss long enough to cross her arms, grasp the sweater’s hem, and lift it over her head. Breasts, rounded in glorious, pert relief against the straining white cotton of an undershirt that was little more than a flimsy excuse for a tank top. Along the seams, the surprising intricacy of white satin loops and smoke-gray ribbon came into view. She was small, to match her slight physique, but what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in the glow of her skin. Set against her shiny black hair, the cotton-white shell of her body was flawless.
She pressed her forehead to his and reclaimed her breath.
“I’m sorry, Olive. I shouldn’t have pushed you away. I want to make it right.”
Her velvety lips and the rise and fall of her breasts mesmerized him. In his mindless state, she could have asked him to strip naked at the Knights of Columbus Hall on ladies’ canasta night, and he would have asked if she wanted a cowboy hat with the action.
“There is one way.”
“Name it. Anything.” Truly, anything.
She pulled away. Her lips pressed into a frown. “I’m afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of what you’ll say.”
He tucked her hair behind her ears. His commitment to restitution doubled. “Honesty, Amsterdam. Remember?”
She bit her lip and took both of his hands in hers. “I want you to dress in your combat uniform. Just once. So that my touch will know.”
The air left his lungs. For a long stretch, it did not return. He wanted to do this for her, more than anything, but there had to be rules, boundaries, so he didn’t end up a fucking mess, quivering like a newborn calf in his pajama bottoms in the pasture.
“It can’t be me, Olive. Your sculpture. Maybe someday I’ll be able to live with what I’ve done, but I can’t live with being the hero. Driving past it each day, knowing I deserved none of it. Promise me.”
She blinked twice, three times. Damned if she didn’t look like she was about to cry, before her expression eased and the corners of her succulent mouth tipped upward. The nod that followed was swift, decisive.
Her combat boots hit the barn floor, disturbing the hay between his boot soles. He had never wanted to strip someone of boots more. She had replaced the laces with alternating black and white silk and tied them like a lattice X. Even her shoes were an artistic fucking turn-on.
She tugged him to his feet, toward the partition that once separated them. Now, five bales rose to eye level.
Wes leaned over to the box at his feet, the one that caused him to nearly drive her away, and lifted his desert-sand jacket and pants free. He kissed the back of her hand; he didn’t want to let go.
She leaned close and whispered in his ear. “I’ll be right there with you.”
With a chaste kiss on his earlobe, she smiled and disappeared to her side of the barn. The pulley attached to the roof squeaked and the cable lowered her rust-colored scarf like a flag of complete surrender. This time, to each other.
By the time it reached the ground, Wes’s discipline, his command, his will, fell to her desires.
He was magnificent.
Wes’s uniform fit him like second skin. The pixelated-looking black boxes inside the camouflage matched the buzzed hair at his sideburns, the ebony stipple on his molded jaw, his healthy drizzle of charcoal lashes she wouldn’t be able to fashion from clay in a million years. He defied her skills as an artist, but she had to try.
He had buttoned his shirt most of the way up his chest. The collar hung open, emphasizing the angle of the slanted chest pockets where the name Meier was stitched. In the depth of winter, his cuffs were rolled up, past his elbows—something she knew was left to a commander’s discretion but represented a kind of unspoken defiance for Wes that did not go unnoticed. His wide shoulders and broad chest filled the durable cotton fabric. Pockets spanning his biceps were flush and pressed.
“Not even a peek for this?” He motioned toward her sculpture, covered by a drop cloth a few feet away.
“I might be tempted. If you give me something that inspires.”
“All night long, Amsterdam.”
His drawl on such a confident declaration and the resurrection of his nickname for her fired every synapse through her thighs and ass. Her panties dampened with a rush. Lightheadedness had already set in. Anything she churned out from this encounter would be more impressionist Rodin than realist Daumier.
“The artist blushes.” He put on a Texas-sized smirk she wanted to kiss right back off.
She play-punched his arm.
His body was a statue. Her knuckles felt like she’d hit bedrock.
“Good thing this isn’t a nude,” he added.
“I’ve done my share, Sergeant.”
“That’s First Sergeant to you, Fresh Blood.”
They shared a smile.
Against the rodeo lights set up to flood her workspace, Wes squinted and slipped the cover atop his head to shade his eyes. Wes in his cover, pulled low across his brow, was the sexiest thing she had ever seen. A veil of seriousness came over his features, a testament to his mental toughness to surge ahead of his past or a conditioned response to donning a sacred uniform, she couldn’t be sure. Whichever it was, Livie vowed to be a respectful steward of the moment.
“Tell me about ‘em,” he requested. “First nude. Go.”
She clicked off the cluster of lights closest to him then decided to eliminate another set. Sculptural detail was so removed from the visual that she might have explored his lines in the dark if it wouldn’t deny her the indulgence of seeing Wes in his element. He was a fine Marine. Daniel’s letters attested to that. That Wes agreed to share this with her was an intimacy rivaled only by their heated prelude.
“It was a man. Still want to hear?”
Wes thought about that for a moment. “Was he a Bonnat?”
“Not even close. He had ginger hair and unfortunate teeth.”
“An extra toe and he’d be Clyde Hammond.” Wes’s lips twitched in suppressed humor. “Did his naughty bits turn you on?”
“Male genitalia are quite clumsy, artistically speaking.”
“Only if it’s flaccid, Amsterdam.”
The endearment, tossed so casually on the back of the word flaccid delighted her more than it should have.
“The last thing Close Call needs on Main is a bronze with a boner.”
His once-severe countenance disintegrated on a robust chuckle. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what this town needs.”
“Control yourself.”
“I make no guarantees. Especially if you take those magic hands of yours to my inseam.”
Livie clicked off most of the bulbs in the final light cluster. The change tossed the barn into severe shadows, all but the multi-colored Christmas lights Mona had strung along Livie’s tool cable to “keep her in the mood.” Mona’s words. Livie doubted this was what Mona meant.
Near-darkness plunged them back into a more determined state. The barn settled around them.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Stand tall. Raise your arms over your head. Right leg back.”
He took orders well. She centered herself in front of him on the makeshift platform Willie had built her, laid her hands on his shoulders, and closed her eyes.
Livie traced the gather of the fabric—always the hardest part of sculpture to get correct. Early on in her career, she took color and black and white photos, but her method had evolved to something more organic and kinesthetic. With time, she had learned to trust herself.
“Look down.”
He did.
She blind-measured the space between his substantial arms and his defined, prickly chin then skimmed her fingers along the most intimate spaces of his face—the cleft above his solid lips, the way his cover made his profile a thousand times stronger, the warm eyelids he slid closed at her touch.
“Am I like Atlas holding up the world? Because my face would be more…”
Muscles in his face strained as if he had bench pressed enough to put his bowels in jeopardy. As quickly as his face transformed, it relaxed. She touched his smile.
“Not telling.”
For too long, she sculpted his features, until she was worried he would know that she had not been honest. For the first time since that promise in the truck, she had lied. The inspiration was him. She had convinced herself he would be okay with it, in time. Forgiveness? Well, that was something he had a harder time with.
She spent time with the iconic eight-point cap then circled him to run her hands along his back, again to study the bunch and lift of fabric. When she reached his ass, he squirmed.
