by Debra Webb
“This isn’t your fault, Molly. You did your job. And you did it well.”
Molly thanked Victoria and placed the receiver back in its cradle. She plopped down on the sofa and sat, her head in her hands.
She had been so excited about this assignment. Her first chance to prove herself.
Was Victoria right? Had she done well?
The mission was accomplished. Molly supposed that she had done her job to the best of her ability.
She should be ecstatic.
Somehow she wasn’t.
She felt empty. Lost.
Like a traitor.
No point sitting here feeling sorry for herself.
She got to her feet, dragged to the table where her cell phone lay and put through a call to her youngest brother. He was happy to hear from her. Of course, she should come home for Christmas, he insisted.
With that out of the way, she packed.
It didn’t take long. She had traveled light. Like always.
She looked at the wasted bottle of champagne one last time and left the room.
The door closed behind her, the thud echoing in the empty corridor.
Alone again.
Funny, being alone hadn’t bothered her at all until she’d met Jason Fewell.
Now she was pretty much obsessed with the idea.
She wouldn’t be alone for long. Her brothers would all congregate at the family home. The next to the oldest lived in the house they’d grown up in. There would be a massive Christmas tree. Lots of amazing food, since his wife was an awesome cook.
They would reminisce about their childhoods. Have a few glasses of wine in front of the roaring fire.
Christmas would come and go and she would be off to Chicago.
To her little apartment.
The place where she’d thought she was happy.
11:50 a.m.
JASON OPENED THE DOOR and stared into the eyes of the man he considered a father.
Alonzo Harris swaggered into the room without a word.
Jason closed the door behind him. He didn’t know why the man insisted on flying up here the day before Christmas.
It wasn’t as though anything he was going to say would make a difference.
Jason would still be furious with him.
The concierge at the Snow Valley Lodge had found him a cabin last night in another village, after calling in a number of markers. Then he’d had Jason’s bags sent over.
“You have some kind of nerve, young man,” Harris announced, launching his counterattack before Jason so much as said a word.
Jason turned to him. “Look who’s talking. You set me up. Hired a babysitter. What were you thinking?” That’s what that damned reporter had called Molly, and he’d been right.
“I was thinking about keeping you safe,” Harris growled. “Or don’t you care about that anymore?”
Jason didn’t want to hear this. He held up his hands. “I’ve said all I have to say. I understand your motive and as much as I appreciate your concern, this better not happen again.”
Harris looked properly chastised. The big bear of a man loved the members of his team as if they were his own kids. “It worked, didn’t it? You said as much yourself.”
Jason turned away. Stared at the fire. “Yeah. It worked.”
Molly had lied to him at every turn. She had grown up just a few miles from here. She’d been climbing these mountains since she was a kid.
She had coaxed him up that mountain. Made him forget all about the fear.
But he couldn’t get past the lies. Even after they’d kissed, she still hadn’t told him the truth.
“That doesn’t make it right,” he argued, not about to let Harris have the final say on the matter. “This was wrong on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin.”
Harris lowered into a chair. “I’m going to tell you the truth, Jason.”
Jason didn’t look at him. He was still too ticked off.
“You sit down here and listen to me,” Harris ordered. “I know you’re madder than blazes. But you’re going to hear me out.”
Jason turned to face him, but he wasn’t sitting down.
“We’ve all been worried about you for the past three years. We watched you go through the pain of losing Cynthia and the agony of coming to terms with your responsibility. It’s been hard as hell on every member of this team. You know that.”
Jason couldn’t deny his words. His team was his family. They cared about him. As much as any family. The NASCAR ties might not be blood, but they were every bit as strong.
“When you announced you were coming here to climb that mountain, we were all scared to death.” Harris shook his head. “We couldn’t let you take that kind of risk alone. But you refused our help. I had to find a way around that hard head of yours. And by Job I found it.”
Jason shook his head. “You didn’t have to do it this way.”
“Son, it’s like when you take that final lap around the track. You sort of feel bad at the idea that you’re out in front because your closest competition hit the wall, but when you win, it’s a win all the same. However you got past that checkered flag. It’s a win.”
“But…” Jason braced his hands on the mantel. Stared into those dancing flames. “I thought I had met someone who understood me for me.”
“I see.”
Did he? “This was about more than climbing that mountain, Harris. It was about bonding. Something I haven’t been able to do in three years.”
“You liked that feisty gal, did you?”
A smile haunted Jason’s lips. “I did…I do.”
“She’s a pretty thing, rightly enough,” Harris noted. “A real go-getter, I hear.”
She definitely got Jason.
“Until I found out how easily she could lie.” The anger lit inside him. He’d been struggling with it since that damned reporter outted Molly.
“She wasn’t meaning to lie to you, Jason. She was just doing her job. The job I hired her to do.”
“That makes it so much better.” He turned to his team manager and friend. “She was paid to keep me company.”
Harris folded his arms over his chest and eyed Jason a moment. “Did she lie to you about anything other than why she was here and where she worked?”
Jason shook his head. “According to what you told me, the rest of her story was fact. Who knows?”
“Then she only stretched the truth where she had to, not where it counted. Not where it was real.”
What kind of answer was that? “And just how am I supposed to know what parts are real?”
Harris smiled. “Oh, I think you know exactly what part’s real.” He pushed to his feet. “You study on it awhile. Take your time. It’ll come to you. I’m heading back to Texas. Too damned cold here.”
The big guy gave Jason a hug before leaving. He never failed to squeeze the air out of Jason’s lungs.
Jason sat down before the fire and did as his mentor had instructed. He studied his memories of the time he and Molly had shared. The way she smiled. The sound of her laughter. Sweet, genuine.
The way her nose turned up just slightly. The sprinkling of freckles that cascaded over the bridge of her nose. The taste of her lips.
His chest tightened, but not with the tension of a coming panic attack. With the desire to taste her lips. To hold her hand.
To know all of her.
Maybe Harris was right. Maybe Molly had been completely truthful with him on all the things that mattered. Like trusting his instincts on the mountain when he’d long ago thought his instincts were unreliable.
Right now his instincts were urging him to find her.
To tell her the truth.
CHAPTER NINE
7:00 p.m.
MOLLY COULDN’T EAT another bite. She sat on the sofa with her niece and groaned. “Your mama is too good in the kitchen.”
“That’s what Daddy says.”
Molly hugged her niece. She didn’t know why s
he’d hesitated about coming here. With family was the place to be at Christmas.
The snow, the fire, the food…and family. Family was what really mattered in life.
Jason Fewell had a life. A busy one with a demanding career. He likely didn’t have time for anything else.
He was probably on his way back to Texas. The idea made her breath catch.
Unless she got a glimpse of him on the news, she doubted she would be seeing him again.
She wished she could feel that he would at least have pleasant thoughts about her as he looked back on their time together.
The idea that he might have bitter feelings toward her was nearly more than she could bear.
But there was nothing she could do.
He’d made up his mind and walked out.
In a couple of days she would go back to Chicago, and this whole trip would be filed away along with her expense report.
Robert, the next to the oldest, stuck his head in the door. “Mol, you have company.”
“What?” She couldn’t have company. No one knew she was here.
“Get the door, Mol,” someone else shouted.
“Fine.” She scooted up from the couch, much as she abhorred the idea of doing so, and slogged to the front of the house.
She frowned when she realized the visitor had been left on the stoop. “Great manners,” she called back to her brother.
Molly opened the door and Jason was standing there, like a mirage in the falling snow. But he was real. She reached out and touched him. Couldn’t help herself.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I came to apologize.”
It was freezing outside. Where was her brain? “Come in.”
He stepped across the threshold, and she closed the door.
Her heart had already taken off. He looked good. She was so glad to see him.
But she couldn’t get her hopes up.
He was here because he had something to say. An apology. He was too much of a gentleman to leave the hard feelings to fester.
He shouldered out of his parka and gloves. She took the parka, shoved the gloves into the pockets. When she’d hung his coat in the closet, she faced him.
“Why did you really come here?” He could have apologized on the phone.
“Because I didn’t want to make another mistake.”
Now she was even more confused. “What mistake?”
“Three years ago, I let Cynthia talk me into going along with things I shouldn’t have agreed to. She’s dead, and maybe I’m to blame to some degree. I should have said no. But I didn’t.”
Wow. He had come a long way. “I’m glad to hear you’re focusing on the you in this equation.”
“Actually—” he stepped closer “—I’m completely focused on you.”
Joy kicked her heart into overdrive. “Why would you be focused on me?” She had to hear him say the words.
“Because you gave me back my courage.”
Her hopes fell. Not the words she’d wanted to hear.
“But more than anything, you gave me a little glimpse of you. It wasn’t enough. I want to know everything about you. I want to know you, inside and out.”
Now he was talking. She tiptoed, put her arms around his neck. “Does this mean we’re going to take the time—time being the key word—to get to know each other better? See where this goes?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
Then he let his lips explain the rest. They captured hers. He kissed her long and deep.
Jason Fewell really was a winner.
He’d definitely won her heart.
