A Texas Rescue Christmas

by Caro Carson

  She set her hand on the rounded shaped of his shoulder. He remained still, so she drew her hand down his arm. It had to be twice as big as her arm, fascinating in all its hills and valleys. She followed it all the way to his hand, made a little U-turn on the back of his hand with her fingertips, and started sliding back up again. Stroking him was as soothing as being stroked by him.

  “That is the life you know?” he said, with that husky note back in his voice. “Old men who expect young women to marry them for their money?”

  “And prove their virility by walking around with a pregnant belly in the latest designer’s maternity wear. Don’t forget that part.”

  “But you left, and crashed a wedding.”

  Her hand rounded his shoulder. She could press hard into his muscle; there was so much of it. With a deeper touch, she traveled down his biceps. “Mother wanted to go on another vacation. Christmas in the Caribbean. Who wants to spend Christmas in the Bahamas?”

  “Apparently, my brother and your sister do.”

  His dry humor surprised her. “One, she’s really not my sister, remember? And two, it’s their honeymoon. That’s different. A regular Christmas should be cozy at home. I want a big Christmas tree with a family all around it, opening gifts and drinking hot chocolate, like you see on TV.”

  “You haven’t had that, not even as a child?”

  “Kind of. When my mother married into the Lexingtons, they put on the big family Christmas. I always kind of felt sorry for the staff, though. It was like we were supposed to enjoy a big Christmas, but they weren’t. They made all our beds while we opened the presents. We ate the big meal while they stood in the dining room, wearing the black-and-white uniforms to serve the turkey and mashed potatoes. I tried to help clean up the wrapping paper one year, but that was a big no-no. My mother said they were paid time and a half on holidays, and not to do their jobs.”

  He kissed the top of her head. She was used to being treated like a child, but with him, she didn’t like it.

  “You don’t have to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I’m not a child anymore.”

  “I know. That kiss was for the little girl you used to be. You tell her I think she’s a sweetheart for being sympathetic toward people who have to work on Christmas.”

  He made her heart hurt, saying that. She wanted to cry, but crying never turned out well. She lapsed into silence, determined to close off that little piece of her heart. She could think about it some other time.

  He let the silence last a long while before he spoke. “You listened to a message on your cell phone before you took off. That’s what my cousin said.”

  Becky only nodded in reply. It was easier to ignore that little ache in her heart if she concentrated on his body. She kept pressing her fingers into him, sliding down his forearm.

  “Rebecca, why did you run away? What were you so afraid of?”

  When she reached his hand, she slid her foot away, and interlocked her fingers with his. It was as if her hand wanted intimacy, but her voice stayed light, joking, impersonal, even though she spoke the truth. “It was simply awful. I handled it so badly.”

  She tried to laugh at herself, a society laugh like her mother would have used. Oh, kids these days. They can be so crazy. What can you do about it except wait for them to outgrow those teen years?

  “I ran away because I didn’t want to be forced to spend the week naked in bed with a stranger. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  She laughed as if she had a martini in her hand and diamonds around her throat, but Trey, he didn’t laugh at all.

  Chapter Seven

  “So your mother is a—” Trey swallowed the only food he’d thrown into the survival gear. It was beef jerky, which took forever to chew, and which gave him a chance to search his lame mind for the right term. “Your mother is a call girl?”

  “Oh, my goodness. Not at all. She would never consent to a one-night stand. Men court her. They woo her. They buy her diamonds and take her to the Riviera.”

  “Here, finish this water bottle. They take her to the Riviera without sleeping with her?” He knew he sounded as skeptical as he was.

  “She always insists on separate rooms. It makes them all the more eager to take her on trips. They’re hoping she’ll consent to sleep with them, I’m sure. Until the past few years, though, she held out for marriage, every time. She’s a big believer that men won’t buy the cow if they get the milk for free. Now she holds out for the long-term affair. A house. Vacations. You’ve got to show her you mean to keep her around for a while.”

  As if Rebecca hadn’t just told him about a way of life that violated everything he’d been raised with, she took a hearty bite out of the beef jerky. “This is the best beef jerky, ever, and I’m not just saying that because I’m starving.”

  Trey scrubbed his hand over his face. He was having a hard time being sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard. She reported it all so factually, without seeming to be involved herself, yet she was telling him about her life. A real life. She really lived with a woman who’d made a career of marrying rich men.

  “Where do you fit in the picture? You said your mother likes you to accompany her to what, exactly?”

  The thought was there, of course, of sick bastards who would sleep with a mother and move on to the daughter. It happened. That it could happen to Rebecca made him feel ill. Angry. Willing to fight.

  “It’s taken me a long time to figure it out, but I’m her proof that she’s fertile. Men want to prove their virility with the young wife, right? Well, as long as she has little Becky around, I make her look younger than she is.”

  “Little Becky? You’re twenty-four.”

  She seemed startled by this, sitting up even straighter in his arms.

  They were sitting up in the sleeping bag to eat and drink, but the bag wasn’t wide enough for them to sit side by side, hip to hip, without stretching the fabric. Instead, Rebecca was a little in front of him. Trey had managed to jerk some of the sleeping bag’s material up between his legs, covering his crotch a bit, so she could sit between his thighs without her backside pressing directly against— Well, that would have taken awkward to a whole new level.

  “How’d you know I was twenty-four?”

  He bit off another chunk of the beef jerky. It bore zero resemblance to the garbage one could purchase at an Oklahoma gas station, because it was made here on the ranch. He handed it back to her. “I saw your driver’s license. Eat some more.”

  She obeyed, and knowing more of her life story, it almost bothered Trey that she was so compliant. She needed the food more than he did, however, so he couldn’t complain that she was obediently eating it.

  “My driver’s license,” she repeated, sounding disappointed. “No one ever guesses my age. For years now, I’ve been passing as eighteen. Mother encourages it.”

  “You don’t have the body of a teenager.”

  She stopped chewing.

  Trey cursed himself, and the stupid way he blurted things out without thinking.

  “I don’t?” she asked, and damn if she didn’t sound hopeful.

  He ran his hand down her thigh as he had a hundred times tonight. “Not that I’m trying to—but it’s pretty obvious—yes, you’re built like a woman.” He scrubbed his face once more. “This is a hell of a conversation.”

  “If you’d seen me with my clothes on, you wouldn’t think I was all grown up.”

  He remembered the cashmere and its little-girl collar. All those damned buttons. “By the way, I ruined your sweater.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. He couldn’t see it, of course, but he could feel the movement in the sleeping bag. “There’s more where that came from. She dresses me very demurely.”

  “Why don’t you buy your own clothes, then?”

  “She tra
cks my credit card.”

  The final piece of the puzzle fell in place. It would be nice to have a real job, she’d said. She was ready to be free of her mother’s life, but she had no way to do it on her own. He’d crashed at a teammate’s house when he’d first left college. He’d slept on a friend’s couch for a couple of months when he started working for a landscaper, so he could save up enough for that first-month and last-month rent on an apartment.

  Rebecca’s mother made sure she had no money of her own. When she’d been backed into a corner, Rebecca had run to a former stepsister for help. It hurt Trey to know that her closest relation, her only hope for an ally, was a former stepsister. Poor, isolated Rebecca.

  “I’d assumed you were running away—”

  “—from a fate worse than death,” she finished for him.

  It wasn’t what he’d been about to say.

  “When I was hugging that tree and waiting for a miracle, I had a lot of time to think. I realized that I’ve been too patient. All this time, I’ve been waiting for permission to leave.”

  They’d eaten all the food and drunk all the water they wanted. There was nothing left to do but sleep or talk. Rebecca leaned against him, like he was her support, and she seemed to settle in for a long chat.

  Grateful for the material that kept his awareness of her body from being too obvious, he listened. He caressed her, because it had become a habit. And he dropped an occasional kiss on her shoulder, because she was in his arms and she didn’t object and her skin felt smooth beneath his lips.

  “I read a newspaper article about the foster care system,” she said, as though talking in the dark like this was something they routinely did. “It focused on foster kids who were aging out of the system. That was the term they used, aging out. I realized that was what I’d been doing with my life, waiting to age out. Eventually, I’d have to get too old for my mother to keep pretending I was eighteen. I thought she’d release me, and I’d finally get to go to college or get an apartment, or something exciting like that.”

  Caress. Kiss. Listen.

  “But I found out at six this morning what aging out meant. She’d told Hector Ferrique that I was twenty-one. He likes his women young, she said, but he doesn’t want to risk any messy legal troubles. To be told I was twenty-one when he’d assumed I was younger...it was a little Christmas present from her to him.”

  Rebecca crossed her arms over her chest in that self-preserving way she had. He crossed his arms over hers, and held her tightly.

  No one will hurt you while I’m around. But he didn’t say it out loud.

  “We were to fly out at four this afternoon. His home in Bimini had a marvelous location, she assured me, but only two bedrooms. It would be best if I stayed in the master suite with Hector. Mr. Ferrique. I should continue addressing him as Mr. Ferrique, unless he asked me to do otherwise. It makes me seem younger, you see. I’m already on the pill, of course. She’s had me take that for years, just in case. I’m not to bother Hector about any other precautions.”

  Trey knew every inch of her skin, every shiver of every muscle. He knew exactly when her first tears fell. He kissed her shoulder, and kept her wrapped tightly in his arms, and swore to himself that Hector Ferrique would never touch her.

  “At four this afternoon, I was nearly dead. You think sleeping with a man in Bimini is the worst thing in the world, but then you freeze, slowly, and you start to think that maybe it wouldn’t have been that bad. Maybe your life was worth screwing some old guy.”

  She was crying in earnest now, and Trey thought his heart would break with hers.

  “I was waiting for permission to grow up. I didn’t deserve it. I was acting like a child when I ran away.”

  “It was a jail break. Rebecca, you were trying to get out of a kind of prison.”

  “When she called, she said I hadn’t fooled anyone, and she knew I was in Austin. ‘That bitch Patricia didn’t invite you to her wedding.’ I hung up the phone, and I had to go. Just go, anywhere. I wasn’t thinking straight. It was crazy.”

  “You’re allowed to have moments of craziness. Everyone does.” God knew he had. Stupid, stupid moments that could have gotten him killed. Hanging out with other kids who knew they were flunking out. Drinking moonshine. Walking down the center line of a highway.

  Rebecca hadn’t been thinking straight, but she hadn’t intended to run out of gas with an ice storm on the horizon. He’d practically dared the universe to kill him.

  “You’ve lived to tell the tale, Rebecca. You’ve got a chance now to live your life, your way. I know you’ll grab that with both hands.”

  It was more than he’d done. He’d stayed in one spot. Scared every time his brain let him down, he’d stuck to the undemanding life he’d stumbled into. Spreading mulch. Pulling weeds. Eating instant soup from the convenience store that he could see from his apartment, the one he couldn’t get lost walking to.

  Ten years later, he owned his own trucks and employed a dozen men, but he was still that same guy, stuck where life had dropped him.

  But Rebecca Cargill, she was special. Ten years from now, she would be living her own life, free from her mother’s demands. That life was starting here. He was witnessing a new beginning, her independence emerging as he sheltered her in his arms.

  God, how he wanted her. He, who never left his safety zone, wanted her, a woman who could choose to go anywhere and be anything she wanted, after they survived this storm.

  After they spent this night together.

  He could seduce her. When she’d first regained consciousness, she’d kissed him with a hunger that could burn them both up. It would be a pleasure to change the tone of these caresses. He could touch her in a way that would ignite the flames that simmered inside her. They’d have a night to remember, because the one thing he’d never had to doubt about himself was that women enjoyed him in bed. But outside of bed...

  There was a reason he’d never come home. As one of the top football players in the nation, the city of Austin had known his name. The whole town had been disappointed in him, their native son. He hadn’t wanted to face that, so he’d waited a decade for the city to forget him. He couldn’t drag Rebecca into a life with a man that cowardly.

  He hadn’t been good enough for any other girlfriend in his own estimation. Not good enough for Elaine, who’d passed the bar while he’d only passed high school. Not good enough for Bonnie, who’d loved to throw a party, always bringing in new people, new faces, too many for him to learn, too confusing for him to mingle with. Not good enough for Robin, who’d been able to teach anyone to read piano music. Anyone but him. He’d pretended he wasn’t even trying when she’d pulled him over to the piano bench to show him how to play.

  What made him think he’d ever be good enough for Rebecca Cargill, whose life lay before her, pure potential?

  But God above, he could make her happy for one night.

  The temptation was too much. He dropped one last kiss on her bare, delicious shoulder, unzipped the sleeping bag and left.

  * * *

  “Where are you going?”

  Becky was mortified. Trey was leaving her, going into the dangerous, freezing outdoors. What had she done? What had she said?

  “I need to make you a fire,” he said, blanket wrapped around him as he stomped into his boots. “I have to gather the wood before it storms again.”

  “It’s too dark. What if you get hurt? How would I help you?” She sat up in the sleeping bag, her face filling the circular opening, tracking his every move as if she could jump up and stop him.

  “I won’t get hurt. I’ve got a flashlight, and we’ve got mesquite trees right here. I’m just going to pick up what wood is already on the ground.”

  She felt like a child who was being left alone to face the monsters under the bed. Her monster was the cold w
ind, and it was forcing its way into the cabin, driving through the walls. Without Trey to keep it at bay, it would get her.

  “I’ll be right outside the door,” he said, bending to scoop his sheepskin coat off the floor.

  “Don’t go, please. We’re plenty warm. We don’t need a fire.” She sounded like a child, petulant and pleading.

  He smacked the coat against the cabin wall, sending ice crystals showering to the floor. “We need a goddamned fire. Our clothes are frozen.” He picked up a smaller item from the pile of clothes, and closed his fist around it. It made a slight noise, like a piece of tissue paper crumpling.

  He hurled it at the wall, the blanket falling from his shoulder. In the moonlight, she saw his arm muscles flex in chiseled relief, the power in his throw impressive and intimidating.

  But he didn’t leave. One by one, he smacked each item of clothing against the wall to shake off its ice, then hung it on a peg or nail. There was a neat row of wooden pegs to the right of the fireplace, but there were also random nails driven in various places, no doubt hammered there over the years to serve as hooks for hunting or fishing gear.

  The item he’d hurled against the wall, she saw, was plaid boxer shorts. Her bra, pink and plain, hung on the nail next to them. The sight should have made her blush.

  She bit her lip. The sleeping bag was already less warm without Trey by her side.

  “I thought it was strictly survival,” she said, “and no clothing was the best way to stay warm.”

  “It is. It was.” He crouched by the hearth and twisted to look up the chimney, checking that it was clear. The blanket shifted with his moves, and she knew it wasn’t keeping his body heat in very well. She could hardly stand to watch. He would freeze.

  She didn’t want him to freeze. It was painful, the way the muscles shook. It was scary, the way feet and hands lost all sensation. She didn’t want him to go through it.

  “Get back in the sleeping bag,” she pleaded. “We don’t need our clothes.”