Housekeeper Under the Mistletoe

by Cara Colter

  But he had seen Anslow from the water a thousand times before. He was aware, again, of the sway Angie was holding on his perception. He dared to glance at her.

  She was what was beautiful. He made himself look away, cut back the engines and focus on docking at the public pier that was at the heart of downtown Anslow.

  He was almost afraid to look at her, again, and he was annoyed with his fear. Still, he leaped out of the boat and onto the dock to moor his boat. When he looked back at her after fastening the lines, he understood his fear completely. Angie’s skirt had ridden up her legs. Her hair was crazy. Her cheeks were bright from wind and sunshine. Freckles were darkening over that little snub of a nose. Her lips were curved up in a delighted smile. And her eyes were shining with a light that a man could live to see.

  It was with reluctance that he leaned from the dock and held out his hand to her. As he suspected, when she took it, it was as if an electrical circuit had been completed. His awareness of her was jolting. Her hand was soft in his, and yet strong. He gave a little tug and she flew up onto the dock beside him. He didn’t release her. They stood staring at each other.

  “There are no words for the way you just made me feel,” she whispered.

  Because of the boat ride? Or the confidences they had shared? Or the way it had felt, just now, when their hands touched and the circuit was completed?

  And then, he supposed because there were no words, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, in almost exactly the same way he had kissed hers the night before.

  Her lips were as soft as a hummingbird’s wings on his skin. He felt that electrical awareness of her tingle right into his belly.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and stepped away from him, embarrassed. As well she should be!

  You didn’t kiss your boss! But, somehow, the words evaporated within him. Instead, he said, “The store is right across the street. Just walk to the end of the pier, go through that gate, turn right and cross the street. Have them put everything on my account.”

  She wasn’t fooled that he hadn’t been affected. It bothered him that she wasn’t fooled. Then she ducked her head and scurried away.

  He touched his cheek. That moment of weakness—of wanting to make her happy—had cost him. He knew that. He knew something so small as that kiss could change everything. It could make a man dissatisfied with what he’d had before.

  If he let it.

  “Hellooo, Jefferson.”

  He had just left the dock area and was making his way through the summer-crowded streets to the post office. He whirled around.

  Maggie. He hoped she had not seen him receiving kisses on the dock.

  “I’ve been hoping to run into you. Are you going to come, Jefferson? To our fund-raising event? A Black Tie Affair?”

  Jefferson was annoyed with himself. He’d been so distracted by that damned grocery list, and by Angie, that he hadn’t really prepared himself for an encounter with Maggie. For him, going into Anslow was often like running the gauntlet.

  He looked at Maggie’s face. In its wrinkled lines he saw wisdom and compassion and caring...for him. She was trying so desperately to try to make something good come from something bad. She was trying so desperately to bring him back from the abyss.

  A few days ago, he would have made an excuse. He would not have been able to see the naked caring in her face. No. Maybe he would have seen it. But he would not have allowed himself to feel it.

  But now, after he had just lectured about people throwing away the things that mattered? But now, after he had made an effort to be better man? After he had comforted the crying, terrified woman instead of walking away? After he had committed to giving her that moment’s enjoyment she had not experienced as a child? After he had committed to making her laugh? It was hard to put that particular horse back in the barn.

  He reached out and touched Maggie’s shoulder. “Of course, I’m coming,” he heard himself say.

  “Oh, Jefferson, that means so much to me.”

  Her eyes had tears in them. He was not sure he could handle any more tears this week. He was at his quota. So, he gave Maggie’s shoulder one more squeeze and went on his way.

  He wanted to believe nothing about him was changed.

  But the fact that he was considering feelings—those pesky unpredictable things—meant something major had changed already, not needing any kind of permission from him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ONCE JEFFERSON HAD turned back to the boat, Angie touched a finger to her lips. She had just kissed her boss.

  Oh, it had been a casual thing, an impulse when words had evaded her. She had just wanted to let him know how much she had loved the boat ride, and she wanted to acknowledge she knew he had made an extra effort to make it pleasurable for her. Maybe, she had even wanted him to know, in that brief touch of her lips to his cheek, that she saw, despite how much he did not want her to see it, that he was a good man.

  She could tell he felt guilty about his wife not liking the lake, that it was a burden that had become heavier because Hailey had died. Maybe she had hoped that kiss could tell him what she could not: that his guilt was uncalled-for.

  It was a lot to expect of a kiss.

  And it had rocked her world more than she had expected it to. She had intended a light peck on his cheek, and really, that was all it had been.

  And yet she had been so aware of the rough scrape of his whiskers, the sun and water scent of him, the color of his eyes, the easy strength and confidence of him.

  “No more kisses on the cheek or otherwise,” she ordered herself internally. Otherwise? How had that crept in there? But you did not kiss a man like Jefferson Stone on the cheek without wanting more, without contemplating the sweetness of his lips.

  Distracted as she was by the pure and unexpected pleasure of the boat trip—and her lips on the roughness of his cheek—Angie made herself focus on Anslow. She had passed through here briefly just yesterday. It was a measure of how fraught with anxiety she had been that she had barely noticed the town.

  Now, she saw the sleepy lakeside village was like something you would see on a postcard of a perfect place to be in the summer. The pier jutted out from the main street. That street had a row of single-story false-fronted stores on one side of it, facing the lake. The buildings were authentically old, mostly whitewashed, though some were weathered gray. Oak whiskey casks, cut in half, served as planters, and spilled abundant displays of colorful flowers. All in all, downtown Anslow looked like a set for a Western movie!

  Along the wooden boardwalk the Emporium was front and center, but there was also a post office and a museum, an ice-cream parlor and a law office. There was a bookstore and a place to rent canoes and bicycles and, farther along, a barn-like structure that was the community hall.

  Apparently, many people shared her view of Anslow’s summer perfection, because the main street was currently clogged with tourists. The general store, which billed itself as the Anslow Emporium, was packed with holiday goers. Just a short while ago, the crush of people might have made Angie panic. Today, all that summer happiness cemented her sense of well-being.

  Or maybe it was knowing that Jefferson was just a few steps away, going about his errands, somewhere on that boardwalk. Though it might be silly, she felt as if his mere presence in such close proximity was protecting her. It felt to Angie as if he would never let anything happen to her. That made Angie feel as at ease as she had felt in months.

  Exploring the shop, which stocked everything from clothing to lawn mower parts to groceries, Angie was taken, again, with how delightful it felt to be normal and to be shopping for normal things. She snooped contentedly through the crammed aisles of the general store with a sense of discovery instead of with the ever-present fear shadowing her.

  She came to a rack, a slender po
rtion of which had been dedicated to bathing suits. Angie hesitated. In her rush to leave her apartment, swimming had been the furthest thing from her mind.

  But now the water of the lake beckoned on these sultry, hot days. The selection was tiny. The one-piece model was a leopard print with no back that was available in four sizes, small to extra-large. The two-piece selection was not much better: the scanty bikinis were available in two different prints, leopard or red polka dots, in the same four sizes.

  She snatched a small red polka-dot one before she changed her mind. He never had to see it, but it would allow her to enjoy the lake. She could pay Jefferson back for it out of her first check.

  She almost sighed out loud. Enjoyment had not been part of her vocabulary—or her experience—for quite some time!

  After that one impulse buy, Angie focused on her list. While Jefferson had been right that it did not stock anything exotic, it did have all the basics and a nice selection of spices, too. Since getting to the store was not an easy matter, even if it was delightful, she planned several meals in advance. Was it delightful to be normal? Or was it delightful to be planning meals for Jefferson? She ignored the heavy black lines he had drawn through many of the items on the list.

  When she got to the checkout counter, there was a stand of movies for rent. The rental period was a surprising two weeks. When Angie saw the movie Wreck and Me, she could not resist adding it to the purchases. As instructed, she put them on the Stone House account. The clerk looked at her with interest but asked no questions, for which she was thankful.

  Her things were loaded into her cart, which she took out into the bright sunshine. The thunderclouds were building over the mountain and there was an ominous pressure in the air. The heat had become absolutely stifling. There was not a breath of wind.

  She began to push the buggy toward the dock, but Jefferson materialized at her side and began to lift bags from it. Between the two of them they got everything down to the boat in just one trip. She stowed it under the deck, absently putting her frozen items in the cooler he had brought while contemplating him. Was he avoiding looking at her? Was it because of that kiss? Should she apologize?

  When she came back above deck, he was eyeing the clouds and she could sense a certain urgency about him.

  “Ready?” he asked tersely. He didn’t wait for her reply. She took her seat, and he ignored her completely, scanning the water and the clouds with intensity of focus. Was she a little disappointed that his terseness might be more related to the building clouds than the building tension between them?

  When they came out of the protected bay in front of Anslow, she was taken aback at the change to the water. The wind was quite ferocious out in the open and the water had gone from silky smooth to choppy.

  “That was sudden,” she said.

  “This lake can turn in a hair,” he said. Under the gathering wind, the chop deepened. The boat began to feel as if it was climbing in and out of swells.

  Angie watched Jefferson’s face. He looked grimly determined, but not in the least afraid. And then the rain began to pelt down. Lightning hit the water, seemingly right in front of them, and the thunder was so close that the boat shuddered.

  The brightness of the day was swallowed in the darkness of the storm. The heavens opened up and the rain began to pelt down.

  “This falls into the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department,” he told her.

  She remembered saying, when they had set out this afternoon, that she had wanted to stand in the rain. “I’m not at all sorry I wished for it,” she said. “It’s exhilarating.”

  He cast her a surprised glance, and she grinned at him. He returned to focusing on what he was doing.

  Angie was aware she could allow herself to feel the exhilaration because of him: unruffled by the storm, radiating confidence in his ability to handle it. She experienced, again, the exquisite sense of being protected.

  She could feel the electricity in the air; she could feel the pitch and power of the water beneath the boat. After the heat of the day, having the water pour down, soaking her hair and then her clothes, felt lovely and sensual in a way she was not sure she had felt before. She felt no danger at all, only the exhilaration of being on such intimate terms with the storm, of sharing this experience with him.

  The boat rolled, and she rolled toward him and then away. She realized there was no one she would rather be with in these circumstances than him. Despite the powerful twin engines at the back of boat, the boat was bobbing like a cork on the stormy waters.

  “Summer storms like this don’t usually last long,” he called over the noise. “I’m going to pull into one of those coves and drop the anchor. We’ll wait it out.”

  The water calmed as soon as he made it past the mouth of the cove and into its shelter. He dropped the anchor, and they stood side by side watching the fury of the storm out on the main lake. The lightning show was amazing. The echo of the thunder was caught in the steep mountain sides of the forested land around the lake.

  Angie was so aware of everything: her clothes plastered to her, and his to him. The rain plastering her hair to her head, and his hair to his head, the water running down her face, and his. The blessed coolness in the air after the heat of the day. The feel of the boat moving beneath them, as if it were a living thing—a dragon—that they were riding.

  Finally, the thunderstorm moved by them, though they could still hear it as it pressed down the lake.

  “That,” she finally said, “was amazing.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “it was. We still won’t be going anywhere for a while.” Despite the storm passing, the wind remained, and the waves in the main lake were huge.

  Was it wrong to love that, to love it that she could hang on to the intensity they were sharing for just a little bit longer?

  “Jefferson?” Yesterday she had not even known this man. But after she had accepted his comfort, and offered him some of her own? After she had seen how the man handled a storm on a lake? Her sense of knowing him deeply was complete.

  “Hmm?”

  “We have a problem.”

  He turned and looked at her. His eyes went dark as he took in her soaked shirt. She could see the outline of his chest through his own wet shirt.

  “Please, don’t tell me the boat is leaking.” His tone suggested he knew that was not the problem.

  “No.”

  The problem was that the storm had passed and the electricity still leaped in the air between them.

  “What’s the problem?”

  She looked at the slick wetness of his hair. The problem was she wanted to run her hands through it. The problem was that she wanted to press her wet body against his. She gulped and looked away from him.

  The problem, she reminded herself. Her mind was blank for a moment, and then she remembered.

  “Ice cream!”

  “Huh?” He ran a hand through that wet hair where her own hand wanted so badly to go. It freed droplets that ran down the line of his temple, and then his cheek and his jaw.

  “You know you took the ice cream off the list?” she said in a rush. “I bought it anyway.”

  “Why am I unsurprised?” he said, his voice full of irony.

  “And the cooler is not going to prevent it from melting.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “That’s our problem. We have to eat it now. All of it.”

  “Sounds like kind of a fun problem to have,” he said.

  “And since you didn’t want dark chocolate, I bought two kinds. The dark chocolate for me, and one for you. I tried to guess what you might like.”

  “And?”

  “Salted caramel.”

  “I have to know,” he said drily, “what would make you look at me and think salted caramel?”

  “The contra
dictions,” she blurted out. “Sweet and salty.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. There is nothing sweet about me.”

  But that, she knew, was a lie. She remembered his tenderness from the night before. She thought of how he had deliberately made the boat ride to Anslow exhilarating. Still, she played along with him. “It was Salted Caramel or Nutty Road.”

  His lips twitched. And then he laughed. It was no less delightful because it was so reluctant.

  “I hope you like Salted Caramel. A lot. Because you have to eat a whole bucket of it.”

  “We don’t exactly have to,” he pointed out pragmatically.

  “I should have got the Nutty Road because only a nut would even consider letting ice cream melt,. Even with the cooler it won’t last long in this heat.”

  Aware that something was easing between them, Angie went below and retrieved the two containers of ice cream. She came back topside and he turned from where he had been digging through a side compartment. In his hand he had one of those Swiss Army combination knife sets. He unfolded it to reveal a spoon.

  “We’re going to have to share,” he said. “Only one spoon.”

  The danger of the storm had nothing on this: sharing a spoon with him. The new ease between them became laced with something else, something as sensuous and unpredictable as that storm.

  Jefferson gestured to a bench seat at the back of the boat, sat down and patted the seat beside him. She took the seat, not quite touching him but close enough to be aware of the heat radiating from under his damp shirt. She set down one bucket of ice cream, put the other on her lap and popped the lid off it. She looked into a vat of chocolate the same color as his hair.

  “It’s already started to melt,” she said.

  “That lends a sense of urgency to the whole situation,” he said.

  She glanced at him and realized he was teasing her. The ease and the electricity braided themselves together even more completely.