He’d learned long ago that romance, if it existed at all, wasn’t for him. No woman, not even one as intriguing as Veronica with the thick rope of dark hair and a smile as warm as morning sunshine could change that one simple inalienable fact.
*
“So we can count on you and Amy for Christmas?” Shelly asked as she shoved the final box into the back of her battered old station wagon. She and Veronica had spent the past twelve hours packing the last of the orders to be shipped for Christmas, while Amy had “helped” stuff packing into boxes or sat coloring or played in the snow-covered yard between the house and garage-warehouse.
“Sure,” Veronica said. “Why not?”
“Because you hate the holidays,” her sister said as she searched in her purse and pulled out a heavy ring of keys. Three inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier than her sister, Shelly was blessed with the same dark hair and eyes, but a more rounded, softer face, larger breasts and more than the start of a belly that she’d never lost after her pregnancy with the twins, who were now six and hell on wheels.
“I love Christmas,” Ronni argued.
“Sure you do. That’s why you’re always vowing to go to Mexico or Brazil or the Bahamas every year.”
“Idle threats.”
“I know, but I just wanted to make sure you’d be around. Vic and I are counting on you, and the boys would die if Amy wasn’t coming.”
“Sure. I’ll bring the rum cake and spiced cider and molded salad.”
Shelly grinned. “Just bring Amy. And maybe a date.”
“A date?” Veronica laughed at the absurdity of it. Just like Shelly to suggest something so silly. “On Christmas Eve? Oh, sure. Just let me check my little black book.”
“Come on, Ronni.” Shelly slammed the tailgate and climbed into the front seat. “You must meet lots of cute, eligible bachelor types up on the mountain.”
“I do. But they’re usually wearing casts and using crutches,” Veronica teased.
“Think about it.”
“Oh, right. Long and hard,” Veronica said as Shelly buckled her seat belt and closed the door.
Shelly twisted the key in the ignition. The old car wheezed, sputtered and died. Pumping the gas several times, Shelly winked at her sister and tried again. A plume of blue smoke shot from the exhaust and Shelly rolled down the window. She patted the dashboard fondly. “Hasn’t let me down yet.”
“Knock on wood.”
“See ya tomorrow.” Shelly shifted into first and was off, the station wagon gently coasting along the lane that wound through the trees.
A date? Trust Shelly to come up with some lamebrained idea. Veronica smiled as she watched the blue car disappear past a thicket of fir trees. No matter what her troubles, Shelly always looked on the bright side of life. Though her husband, Victor, who had been a sawyer for a mill that had shut down last winter, was still unemployed, Shelly refused to worry. Victor managed to make a little money doing odd jobs. He chopped and hauled firewood or helped out at the gas station in town when the crew was shorthanded. Right now he spent his time down at the D&E Christmas Tree Lot, helping Delmer and Edwin Reese sell natural, flocked and even some artificial trees. Shelly just wasn’t one to dwell on her troubles. “As long as there’s bread on the table and gas in the tank, we don’t need much more,” Shelly was fond of saying. “The Lord has a way of providing for everyone.”
Ronni crossed her fingers and hoped Shelly was right. She spied Amy drawing in the snow with a stick. “Come on, let’s go feed Lucy and Sam,” she said, motioning in the direction of the barn. Both horses were standing outside, their winter coats thick and shaggy, their ears turned back as they stood beneath one of the fir trees in the paddock.
“Can’t we make a snowman first?” Amy said, her little face crumpling in disappointment. “You promised.”
“That I did,” Veronica said, even though she was dead-tired.
“And put up the tree?”
“Another promise that won’t be broken.” If only she had her daughter’s seemingly endless supply of energy. “Come on, we’d better get started.”
They spent the next half hour rolling snowballs, piling them on top of each other and sculpting Mr. Snowman’s face and belly. The result was a decent enough Frosty, especially when he was given a stocking cap, carrot nose and stones for eyes.
Setting up the tree proved more difficult. After the horses were locked into the barn and fed and watered, Ronni and Amy struggled with the little fir tree. Veronica had to keep biting her tongue to keep from swearing as she tried to adjust the trunk in the stand while attempting to keep the tree standing as close to straight as possible. “You know, when Uncle Vic sold us this tree, I thought it was straight,” she grumbled. “I don’t know what happened.” When she was finally finished, she decided to prop the tree in a corner so that it wasn’t so obvious that it still listed.
For dinner they ate home-baked pizza and after the dishes were done, Ronni took a quick shower. Amy helped her string lights, popcorn and ornaments. The red tinsel that Amy had used as a boa a few nights earlier was draped in the appropriate places. But there was no star or angel for the top of the tree. “We’ll find one at the bazaar.” Veronica promised as she turned out all the overhead lights. Amy was sitting in the big wooden rocker—the one Hank had built before his daughter was born—and staring at the tree as Veronica plugged in the electrical cord. Hundreds of miniature lights sparked to life.
“Oooh,” Amy breathed, clapping her hands together. “It’s sooo pretty.” Her face glowed in the reflection of the tree lights.
“That it is. You did a good job.”
The doorbell chimed and Veronica nearly jumped out of her skin. “Who in the world…?” she asked, glancing out the window to the porch. Travis Keegan, holding a bag, one shoulder propped against the door frame stood under the porch light. Snowflakes clung to his hair and the shoulders of his battered aviator jacket, and his expression was set, grim and determined, no hint of a smile in his beard-shadowed jaw. For a second she thought that something was wrong, that something must have happened to his injured son and her heart leaped to her throat. That poor kid—then Keegan’s gaze touched hers through the glass and her heart jolted. His eyes were intense and bright and his expression softened a bit.
“Who is it, Mommy?”
“A man I met last Sunday.”
Amy scampered across the room but Ronni barely paid attention. She was struck by the same feeling of power in him that she’d recognized in the clinic. His features were large, chiseled, all male, and the tiny lines near the corners of his mouth indicated he’d frowned too many times in the past few years and a deep-seated harshness had developed. Yet there was something in his eyes that suggested a kinder man who wanted to learn how to smile again. Never, since Hank’s death had she been attracted to another man. Travis Keegan seemed about to change all that. She couldn’t help but notice the way his faded jeans hugged his hips, the wayward lock of hair that fell forward over his forehead or the tiny scar near the corner of one eye.
So what was he doing on her porch?
There was only one way to find out. Bracing herself, she yanked open the door. Wind, cold and raw, swept into the room.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong? No.” Black eyebrows slanted together.
“But—” She sounded like a ninny. “Then why are you here?”
For the first time, a hint of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Everything’s fine, it’s just that I thought I owed you a thank-you…or something for seeing that Bryan got down the mountain safely. Everything happened so quickly, I didn’t have a chance earlier.” He hesitated, shook his head and smiled.
So he did have a kinder side.
A blush climbed up his neck and Ronni swallowed a smile of her own. Keegan didn’t look like the kind of man to show any kind of embarrassment. “Now, to tell you the truth, I feel like a damned fool,” he said.
“That
makes two of us. No one ever stops by here at night, and when I saw you, I thought that something might have happened to your son, though why you’d be on my porch—” She tossed back her head and laughed. “Forgive me. I’ve been accused of being a pessimist, worrywart, you name it.” She stepped out of the doorway, “Come in, we were just admiring our work.” Still holding the door, she motioned to the little tree with her chin. “And before you say anything, the Christmas tree is straight, it’s the house that’s crooked.”
By this time, Amy, curiosity being one of her primary personality traits, was hiding behind her mother like a skittish foal, while peeking around her legs and sizing up Travis, who was still standing on the other side of the threshold.
“So who are you?” Keegan said, bending a knee so that he could look Amy square in the eye.
“Who are you?” Amy repeated, refusing to answer.
“I guess it’s time for formal introductions,” Ronni said. “Travis Keegan, this is my daughter, Amy. And Amy, this is Mr. Keegan. He has a son, Bryan, who was hurt on the mountain a couple of days ago. I helped take Bryan to the clinic.”
“You can call me Travis.”
Amy’s eyebrows drew together in concentration and cold air swirled into the house. “Where’s Bryan?”
“At home,” Travis replied as he straightened and his gaze touched Ronni’s again.
“Come on in before we all freeze.” She stood aside to let him pass, only then noticing that there was no truck or car parked anywhere nearby, though the snow was broken by a steady path of footprints leading into the woods. For the first time, she felt a drip of fear slide down her spine.
Still on the porch, he stomped the snow from his boots while Veronica kicked herself for asking a total stranger into the house, one who’d appeared on her doorstep like a vagabond, one whom she knew nothing about other than he had a son, could afford to go skiing and wore expensive jeans.
“You walked here?” she asked before softly closing the door. Surely she could trust him. If not, there was Hank’s old deer rifle. But it was unloaded and locked in a crate in the attic. Not too handy. But then, Veronica didn’t believe in owning a gun. She just hadn’t been able to sell any of Hank’s beloved personal belongings, including the rifle his father had bought him for his sixteenth birthday.
“It didn’t seem to make much sense to drive,” Keegan said. He opened the bag and withdrew a chilled bottle of wine—chardonnay—which he handed her. “To say thanks,” he explained. “And to get better acquainted, I guess. We’re neighbors.”
“Neighbors? I don’t understand, where do you…?” she asked, but a sense of dread told her she already knew the answer.
“I bought Cyrus Johnson’s old place a few weeks ago. Signed the papers and picked up the keys on the tenth and Bryan and I moved in just last week.”
Chapter Four
TRAVIS WATCHED AS Ronni’s face drained of color.
“Ick!” the little girl, Amy, said, staring up at him with round, horrified eyes. “It’s creepy there!”
“Creepy?” Travis smothered a smile because the imp was so vehement in her appraisal of his new home.
“Shh!” Ronni sent her daughter a glance meant to hold the girl’s tongue, but it didn’t work. The precocious kid had to get in her two cents’ worth.
“It’s scary. Gots bugs and snakes and—”
“Amy! Please.” Forcing a tentative smile, Ronni shook her head as Amy rambled on.
“Probably ghosts, too.”
Some of Travis’s doubts about hiking over here disappeared. He’d argued with himself long and hard about visiting the intriguing woman who had helped save his boy, and in the end rational thought had lost to curiosity and a desire to get to know more about her. No woman had interested him, really interested him, in a long, long while. “Ghosts?” he repeated, raising his eyebrows. “At my house?”
Wide-eyed Amy nodded with the heartfelt conviction of the young. “Lots of ’em!”
Keegan winked at her. “Haven’t seen any yet.”
“So you bought the old Johnson place,” Ronni said, and he imagined a note of discouragement in her voice.
Amy made a big production of rolling her eyes. “You’ll see,” she predicted.
“There are no ghosts!” Ronni said as she set the bottle of wine on a side table in the cozy little house.
“It doesn’t matter if the house is haunted or not,” Travis said as he stuffed his gloves into his jacket pocket. “Even if there was a battalion of ghosts and goblins, Bryan’s in such a black mood these days, he’s probably scared them off.” Frowning to himself, he unzipped his jacket.
“Mommy said no one would buy the old lodge ’cause it was too ’spensive.”
Ronni let out a little gasp, then in an effort to change the subject, said, “Why don’t you tell me how you found me since I don’t remember giving out my address to anyone?”
He felt a grin tug at the corners of his mouth. “That required all of my detective skills, I’m afraid. It took hours, and I finally was forced to take drastic measures. I had to look you up in the telephone directory.”
Chuckling, she tightened the belt of her robe around her slim waist. “Sometimes I think this town’s too small.” She was nervous and he didn’t blame her. Aside from having to deal with the little girl, she had to make small talk with a virtual stranger who had trudged through the snow and appeared on her doorstep. Walking over here tonight was a mistake, a half-baked idea that had entered his head and wouldn’t be dislodged, no matter how hard he’d tried to talk himself out of it. From the moment he’d seen her leave the clinic, he’d hoped to meet her again. And he wasn’t the kind of man to sit idly by while time slipped away. He was and always had been a man of action.
“I think I should apologize for my daughter,” she said as Amy played with some ornaments on the tree and yawned loudly.
“Why?”
She gazed fondly at the little girl. “Sometimes Amy is a little forward, if you didn’t notice.”
“She’s just a kid,” he observed. “Remember, I’ve got a teenage son.” He offered her a knowing smile. “Believe me, it only gets worse.”
“Great!” she said sarcastically. “And I was hoping with maturity, things would improve.”
“Not for a long, long time.” He eyed her speculatively. Her hair, piled onto her head, was damp and curling around her face, her skin flushed as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. The thought of her naked body caused a tightening deep in his gut and he shifted his gaze away from her face and the wicked turn of his mind. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t do too much apologizing for that one.” He motioned toward Amy. “I’d rather meet a kid who wasn’t afraid to talk to adults, to ask questions, to speak his or her mind. It’s the quiet ones I wonder about.”
The little girl yawned again and Ronni took her cue.
“Just let me put her to bed and we can have a glass of wine or, if you’d prefer, hot strawberry lemonade—Amy’s favorite.”
“I’m not tired,” Amy complained, her heavy-lidded eyes belying her words.
“You never are. Come on, I’ll read you a quick story.”
“No night-night.” Amy started to scramble away, but Veronica scooped her up and carried her, protesting loudly, up the stairs. He heard voices, Ronni’s calm and even, the little girl’s louder and more insistent as he removed his boots and jacket. His conscience pricked at him because he knew he was disturbing their nighttime ritual that Ronni, dressed in the soft bathrobe, was ready to settle in for the evening rather than entertain. But he hadn’t been able to keep himself away, especially when he’d learned they were neighbors.
Within minutes, she was hurrying down the stairs, but she’d taken the time to replace her robe with a sweater and pair of black jeans. “You didn’t have to change,” he said, feeling even more like an intruder.
“No problem. I was just being lazy because I took my shower so early. Come on, I’ll get a couple of glasses and w
e’ll have a drink by the fire.” With a fleeting smile, she padded barefoot into the kitchen area where she searched in a drawer and muttered to herself. “I know it’s in here somewhere. Ah—Voilà! I’ve captured the elusive beast!” With a flourish, she held up the corkscrew. Dark eyes assessed him and her full mouth curved into an easy, heart-stopping smile. “Half the battle is won. You can do the honors while I find glasses.” She tossed him the corkscrew.
As he uncorked the bottle, he wondered if this is what his subconscious had planned when he’d stopped by the little deli down the road and bought the wine.
“I guess I should explain about my daughter’s comments earlier,” Ronni said as he worked the cork free. “Amy and I walked over to the lake last summer and Amy didn’t think much of the lodge. She let her imagination run away with her.”
“The house does need a lot of work.”
“Mmm, but it’s beautiful over there. I remember when the Johnsons lived there. My dad was the caretaker for a while.” Was there a touch of regret in her voice? She stood on tiptoe while trying to reach the wineglasses gathering dust on an upper shelf. “We lived in the cottage on the south side of the lake. It’s still there, but in worse shape than the main house.”
“Here, I’ll get those.” He was close enough to smell the scent of soap clinging to her and noticed the way her sweater hugged her breasts as she reached her hands over her head to pluck the glasses from the shelf. Clearing his throat, he handed her two glasses, which she rinsed quickly in the sink and then dried with a clean cloth.
“I, um, haven’t used these in a while.” A trace of wistfulness crossed her features and he caught her coffee brown gaze in his. Quickly glancing away, she poured the wine, then touched the rim of her glass to his. “To new neighbors?” she asked.
He nodded. “And no more skiing accidents.”
Memories: A Husband to RememberNew Year's Daddy (Hqn) Page 28
