The Christmas Challenge

by Sinclair Jayne

He’d only wanted to hold her. And that had led to him kissing her, but now he wanted, no needed, craved more. Without thinking his hands cupped her breasts and the feel of her peaked nipples, so hard against his thumb, was an aphrodisiac that nearly sent him to his knees in supplication.

  “Laird,” she moved against him restlessly, her hands equally hungry to explore him.

  “I won’t,” he said. “I promise. I just… I just need to touch you like this right now.”

  Forever.

  He pushed back the thought. He had to stay in control. Hard to do when she was cupping his balls through his jeans and the way she stroked him with her expert fingers made his head feel like it was going to explode off his neck. He’d never wanted to bury himself so hard and so deep in any woman before. Usually he liked to take things slow, explore. Tucker filled his head with visions of taking her against the wall while a kid slept down the hall.

  “Okay,” he gulped in a deep breath that was steeped in her heady fragrance and did nothing to chill his raging desire. “Okay.”

  And then he touched the edges of the thin, black stretchy lace of her bra, and his mouth watered for a taste and his hands ached to caress her.

  “You are deadly to self-control, Tucker McTavish.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair and tried to suck in more air, but her scent pervaded his lungs and crawled through his blood making him hunger for her more.

  “Control is overrated,” she said as her hands went once again to the buttons on his jeans.

  “I want to taste you,” she said, sliding down his body to crouch before him, her back hard against the wall.

  The visual and her words nearly snatched his last tenuous grip on his self-control.

  “Christmas Eve day, right?” he gasped like it was a prayer.

  She’d promised herself she wouldn’t start anything with him or anything until after she’d seen her sister’s Christmas Eve morning wedding go off without a hitch. He’d agreed. Frustration made him rough. He caught her hands and yanked her up against him and kissed her hard, pinning both of her hands in his high above her head.

  “Am I your prisoner?” she breathed against his mouth.

  “Yes, and I’m hauling your gorgeous ass downstairs where I will not think of all the things I want to do to your beautiful body. And then I’ll probably soak in an ice cold shower for about a month.”

  She laughed and then kissed his mouth, sweetly this time, but she lingered, and her tongue traced the hard line of his lips, and then she licked along his jaw.

  “I love you like this,” she said. “All passionate and animalistic and raw, but you’re all shaved and smoothed. The contrast is so hot, plus I love the way you wear your jeans, but I will have that beautiful visual of how you look and move in a suit forever.”

  “I’ll wear it for you again so you can take it off if you want.”

  “I want.” She traced the line of the chain around his neck and then followed it down to the V in his shirt before it disappeared. “Tonight when we were dancing I felt like you were mine.”

  He held out his arms from his body, trying to find a light mood when he felt dark and primitive inside and his body was still yelling at him to take her and worry about the consequences later.

  He took a step back, not quite trusting himself. His desire felt alive.

  “All yours,” he said.

  That much was true.

  She looked at him, her eyes searching. He didn’t know what she saw. He saw a future he wanted but had no idea how to have.

  “How about I make us some coffee?” she said in the biggest anticlimax ever. “And Laird, there’s always the snow to cool down.”

  “Right.”

  Christ, he needed to lie in the snow during a blizzard to cool off.

  Laird sat on the top of the stairs and watched her walk down to the kitchen. Damn that girl had the moves, which so did not help him settle. Symbolic view. Looking down. The girl walking away. Laird hadn’t found the answers he needed, and now he didn’t even know what he wanted to ask. He did know that he was tired of feeling like he’d failed. Failed as a son. Failed his adoptive mother by being so angry because of the truth she’d kept from him. Failed as a man because he hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who could stick with one woman, provide a stable home, and be a good father. Failed as a brother because he hadn’t known he’d had a twin and hadn’t grieved their loss if they had died so many years ago. And now he’d failed as a friend because he’d practically mauled Tucker on the stairs when she’d clearly set a goal for herself to focus on her sister’s wedding, focus on reconnecting with her twin and helping her to transition out of their childhood ranch and reboot their bull- and horse-breeding business on a much smaller scale on a borrowed ranch.

  And he kept trying to make it about him.

  Wanting her. Needing her. Loving her.

  When she needed to be separate.

  He needed to walk away.

  It was what he did best.

  Only now, when he should go, he wanted to stay.

  She made the coffee. Brought it to him and they sat side by side on the stairs. Neither of them spoke for some time.

  “Are you sad about the ranch being sold?” he asked. The question probably sounded stupid, but something in the way Tucker was being so practical—taking many truckloads of household items to the local charity, tagging furniture for storage or to bring, she was clear headed and organized whereas Tanner seemed to hide in the barn—made him wonder.

  “Or a little relieved?”

  “I think I am a little glad,” Tucker finally said. “It was such a burden. The history. The ranch defined us. Kept us here. At least moving to Colt’s ranch it can still be a family ranch but starting over. And it’s good for Colt because he wasn’t happy in Marietta. His stepfather, whom he actually thought was his uncle because the guy was so bitter all the time and didn’t want to claim Colt as a son, was a difficult man and very harsh. He, too, was an alcoholic.”

  Tucker laid her head on his shoulder.

  “Colt blew out of town after his last day of school and never came back until the bachelor auction.

  “His uncle or step father left him the ranch as a way of making amends. Peace when he was dying. Colt didn’t want it, but Talon and Parker had lived there for a year, helping out Mr. Meizner when he was sick and dying, and it just made sense for all three of them to stay.”

  Tucker sipped her coffee and leaned against Laird. It was strange how sitting on a set of narrow wooden stairs could be an intimate experience, but it was.

  “Now that Colt and Luke know they are brothers, they can build up the ranch together with Talon and Tanner. They can raise their children there. Make a new history that’s not as sad as ours. My mom left when Tanner and I were eleven. No warning. Just gone one day, and our dad refused to talk about it. He took all her things, all the pictures and burned them in the burn pile. Told us that we’d do the cooking and gardening now. That was it. All he said.”

  He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. He couldn’t imagine leaving a child. From the moment he’d heard he and Nina had made a child he’d wanted it, wanted to love and nurture and build a life with his child.

  “Lot of sorrow in our house,” Tucker said after a long while.

  “And joy.”

  “And joy.” She tucked one hand under his shirt as if needing the warmth of his skin. “And they will make new memories and joy on the new ranch even though Tanner feels like she’s starting back at the beginning but she’ll be freer because it will be hers. She took over after our dad’s accident, and as he got a bit better, they argued a lot. He fought her on changes. The ranch hands were caught in the middle, but Tanner knows what she’s doing. The business was doing better than it ever had. If Daddy hadn’t secretly refinanced and then gambled away that money, she probably would have been able to pay off at least one of the balloon payments.”

  Her fingers plucked nervously at the chain he wore around hi
s neck. One finger traced the circle of the ring. She tugged it out of the neckline of his shirt.

  “This is so pretty, Laird,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s unusual.” She traced the round green-blue fused glass centerpiece of the ring. “I didn’t get to see it up close before. Is it fused glass? It has so many colors. It’s like looking at the Earth from space.”

  He looked at it in her hand. Wondered what it would look like on her finger. Beautiful. Just like Tucker. Inside and out. She was so brave. A fierce spirit, and he’d been hiding in the shadows of the candles he’d lit to light his way home.

  “What language is it inscribed in?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered carelessly.

  “Aren’t you curious? I mean it could be a clue to find your birth mom.”

  He stilled. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Tucker to the rescue.”

  He turned so he could lean over her.

  “You laugh, but you have rescued me, Tucker. In so many ways.” He leaned in to kiss her, but her fingers tangled in is hair and held tight.

  “I’m so afraid I’m going to hurt you, Laird, and I don’t want to.”

  “Life is about joy and pain, Tucker. I’ve had a lot of joy. Mountains I’ve climbed, beaches where I’ve surfed, rivers I’ve kayaked and rafted. So much beauty and joy and adventure, but no people who’ve brought me joy until you.”

  “I’ve never brought anyone joy before,” she whispered.

  He kissed her lips lightly but pulled back, not wanting this to be about desire or sex or anything than two hearts, two souls, meeting.

  “I came here feeling so broken. I couldn’t even articulate what I was feeling. I’d avoided feelings. Avoided connecting with people other than superficially.”

  Laird could see through one of the windows in the house’s entry, the snow starting to fall again, and he pulled Tucker even closer to him on the stairs, savoring her warmth and their closeness. Tonight it was enough.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the days counted down to Christmas, Tucker and Tanner along with the help of Luke and Kane convinced Bruce McTavish to enter a rehab facility in Bozeman. Initially they’d planned for him to enter after the holiday, but he’d wanted to go before, which had made Tucker mad and Tanner go silent. He’d miss his daughter’s wedding, but he seemed to have checked out on the family anyway, retreating into moody silences, and, Tucker imagined, he didn’t want to see the ranch be emptied out. In her opinion he should have to sit on a lawn chair in the snow and watch them pile everything around him and light a match.

  Like he’d done to their memories of their mother.

  “What was it you used to always say to us, Dad?” Tucker yelled through his bedroom door one night. “‘You break it you buy it. You make a mess you clean it up.’ Well, you’ve broken a lot of things including Tanner’s heart and you’ve made one hell of a mess.”

  No answer.

  And Tucker stopped trying to talk to him.

  Instead she spent most of her time alternating between packing up the ranch house and decorating the house for Christmas like their historic ranch house was a department store window on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Laird had become her partner in crime, helping her find serving china and holiday decorations in the attic, decorating the house and front yard for Christmas and also pitching in endlessly to help her decorate the small barn where the double wedding would be held. The service would be simple, the guest list small. Colt’s friends who’d tricked him into being one of the bachelors were all attending, as were their wives and fiancées since they’d be home visiting their families for the holidays. His football coach and wife Hellen were coming as well as Luke’s mother, along with Kane and a few of his rodeo friends, and the ranch hands and their families, but they’d deliberately wanted to focus on their small family and on saying goodbye to the ranch. Tanner had chosen to not invite many locals, which broke Tucker’s heart, but she shut up about it.

  Tanner was practical. She didn’t want the cost or hassle of a big wedding when they were moving out in a week. Tucker also thought Tanner feared people in town were pitying them. They probably were. She pitied herself and her sister.

  “Just letting you know,” she’d told Tanner one evening from on top of a tall ladder as she hung white and gold paper lanterns among the strung up golden lights in the barn after Tanner had questioned all the extra work Tucker was taking on. “This is your one wedding and we’re going small at your request, but I am throwing you and Luke the most over-the-top baby shower when the time comes.”

  Tanner looked up at her. “I’d like that, Tucker.”

  Tanner had walked away from her more slowly than she had done all month. Tucker felt a glimmer of hope that someday, someday soon, she and Tanner would be good again. Not broken, just cracked.

  *

  Samara Wilder arrived a few days before Christmas with Kane. Tucker loved Samara Wilder. She was beautiful and elegant and spitting mad that Bruce McTavish had sold his ranch. There was also the strong possibility that her estranged father, Sam Wilder might sell his ranch, which outraged Samara even more. “He has three grandsons. Maybe more. I had a half-brother. Sam’s first wife left him and took the baby and never came back so I never met him, but he might have adult children. My boys should be running the Whispering Wind Ranch not trying to squeeze themselves onto a ranch half the size that’s not even theirs by blood. Blood,” she repeated. “He was always about blood. Blood’s blood he used to always say. I’d like to slit his throat and watch him drown in it.”

  “I love her,” Tucker whispered to Laird after that bitter statement.

  “It’s mean,” Samara ranted on another occasion. “He has no spirit. No soul. He’s soulless.”

  “He’s not even using the ranch much,” Samara would occasionally burst into speech as she helped Tucker decorate the barn. “I heard Tanner’s hands have been helping that old man with the bulls, helping him to downsize. He is a ghost of a man on a ghost of a ranch.”

  Later Samara wandered into the kitchen where Laird and Parker were making Christmas cookies and also looking through wedding cake recipes. Tucker had joined them, exhausted and overwhelmed by all of the junk that had accumulated on the ranch over the years. Tucker had separated out a few chests that looked like they contained something that might be of historical significance, but other than that, she just wanted to have it magically disappear. Laird had been helping her to separate things that they needed and had been moving them over to one of Colt’s barns to store until Tanner and Luke could build another house on Colt’s property. Now they had his trailer parked there, and it was under cover of a large, slanted, three-sided enclosure to protect it from some of the worst of the winter weather.

  Tucker had argued that Tanner and Luke might want to find their own land, but Tanner and Luke had decided they wanted to share the property with Colt and Talon. “It’s a good piece of grazing property,” Tanner had said. “Good access to water. Too small for what I eventually want because Meizner kept selling off parcels, but with Samara’s legal help we are going to try to repurchase some of the original land as we get the resources. Kane wants to buy in eventually too.”

  Tanner had smiled. “It will be good to have family around for all of us. All the brothers getting to know each other. Good for Parker too.”

  Tanner hadn’t said anything about Tucker joining them. Tucker was hurt, but she was beginning to see how her cavalier attitude over the years, flitting in on rare occasions to Marietta to see her sister, had taken its toll. Tanner wasn’t trying to be mean. She just didn’t think Tucker was going to stay around.

  And was she?

  Tucker smiled as she saw Laird and Parker sampling the cookie frosting. Parker’s lips were green from the holly shaped cookies. Samara was smiling at the two of them, the first time Tucker had seen her softer side, but once Colt adopted Parker and married Talon, Parker would technically be her grandson, even though Colt and her relationship
was still stiff and cautious.

  “I’m beginning to think we should just have a bonfire and burn what’s left,” Tucker said looking outside to the piles she’d made. Keep. Sell. Donate. Burn.

  “I have a match,” Samara said.

  Turned out she wasn’t joking. Later Tucker and Tanner, who had taken a break to help Parker make colored popcorn to string to decorate the tree so he’d have sort of a normal Christmas while all the grown-ups around him worked around the clock, watched a pile of things that she and Tanner had argued over—she insisting they trash or donate and Tanner telling her to box in all up—burn in a clearing Samara had made.

  “Welcome to my life,” Luke had kissed his almost wife’s horrified face. “Never a dull moment when my mom’s involved.”

  Tucker made a few more piles for Samara when Tanner was over at Colt and Talon’s supervising the moving of animals into a pasture that now had a barn where the cows, all of them pregnant, even the two Tucker had helped with, could shelter if needed.

  “Go for it,” she told Tanner’s almost mother-in-law and the two of them watched the flame, which helped extinguish some of Tucker’s anger that her twin was so anguished and exhausted in the days before her wedding.

  “Let’s do s’mores,” Tucker had said.

  And they did. Parker’s chocolate-covered face grinned up at her as papers and boxes of whatever flamed to ash. Most of the ranch hands took a break, and even Tanner returned and had a treat as she watched McTavish history burn.

  “Hate to think of the chemicals we may have unleashed.” Laird kissed her upturned face, his eyes lingering on the small jeweled stud in her nose.

  “Happier times are ahead,” she said.

  Late in the evenings despite her busy days, Tucker and Laird would drive out to Miracle Lake. Sometimes they just sat in his Jeep listening to music and talking. But often they would put on their skates and take to the ice.

  “I remember the first time I saw you,” Laird commented. “I had put all the candles on the ice, and I was concentrating so hard on what I wanted to ask and then I looked up, and there you were, your hair streaming behind you, your face serene with a touch of sadness and you moved so beautifully like a breeze and I thought…”