by Linda Turner
“JAN-EEEEY!”
Surrounded by ancient lodge pines in a place where eagles nested, Janey heard the whisper of the wind through the trees and lifted her head sharply, listening. For a moment she’d have sworn someone was calling her name. But when she held her breath and listened again, the only sound she heard was the sigh of the trees as the breeze swirled through them.
“You’re losing it, Janey,” she muttered to herself. “That’s what happens when you spend half the night crying.”
Shaking her head over her own imaginings, she stomped through the underbrush, creating enough noise to scare off a herd of elk, then had to laugh at her own paranoia. “There’s nobody out here, silly, but you and the animals. Chill out!”
“Janey!”
This time the call was much clearer, and there was no question that she was no longer alone. Shocked, she nearly dropped her chainsaw. “Reilly? Is that you?”
“Keep talking,” he yelled. “I’m coming!”
Her heart in her throat, she heard him crashing through the trees off to her right and called, “Over here. I’m just to the south of a dead pine that points straight up to the sky like a finger.”
Even as she guided him to her, she wondered what the devil she was doing. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to talk to him. Not yet. Not when her emotions were still so shaky and just the sound of his voice made her heart pound crazily in her breast. She needed time to heal her bruised heart, time to let her pride come to her rescue so when she did face him again, he’d never know just how badly he’d hurt her.
But it was too late for that, and all too soon he broke through the underbrush practically right in front of her, and time ran out. She saw in a single, all-encompassing glance that he hadn’t slept any better last night than she had. He looked tired and somehow wonderful at the same time. With a will of their own, her eyes roamed over his broad shoulders, his chiseled jaw, the deep-set dimples that framed his mouth when he smiled hesitantly, and her heart just seemed to turn over. All too easily she remembered the feel of his arms around her and the heat of his mouth on hers.
“Your mother told me where you were,” he said huskily when she couldn’t seem to find her voice. “I hope you don’t mind. I needed to talk to you.”
Why, she wanted to ask, when you didn’t have anything to say last night?
Holding her tongue, she didn’t say a word, but he heard her, nonetheless. “I hurt you last night,” he said gruffly, “and that’s the last thing I meant to do. You surprised me. And please understand,” he added earnestly, “I’m not making excuses. I should have told you immediately that your virginity was not something you had to apologize for or ever make excuses for, because it changed nothing. But my mind went blank, and by the time I realized how much my silence must have hurt you, it was too late.”
His eyes meeting hers unflinchingly, he took a step forward, and although his hand reached out to her, he made no attempt to touch her. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “You said last night that you’re different from other women, and you are. But in the best way possible. Could you please forgive me and let us start over again? I want to be your friend.”
It would have taken a heart of stone to refuse his entreaty, and Janey just couldn’t be that cold. Not when she enjoyed his company as much as he seemed to enjoy hers. Her smile hesitant, she held out her hand. “Apology accepted.”
His eyes locked with hers as his fingers engulfed hers, and for just a second she felt the same spark she had last night when he’d pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Her blood warming under his touch, she couldn’t have said how long they stood that way, hand in hand, not daring to so much as breathe. Then Reilly released her and all she felt was disappointment.
“I was going to ask you to go with me to Colorado Springs to do some Christmas shopping, but your mom said you were up here looking for a Christmas tree,” he said, nodding at the small chainsaw she’d set on the ground beside her. “I never knew anyone who cut their own Christmas tree before.”
“When you live on a ranch with thousands of trees on it, it seems kind of dumb to go buy one,” she said with a grin. “Anyway, you can’t find one as fresh on a lot as you can in the mountains.”
“Hey, you don’t have to convince me. I think it’s great. Do you mind if I stick around and help you?”
He looked so eager that Janey couldn’t have turned him down if she’d wanted to, which she didn’t. Still, she hesitated. They’d cleared the air about her virginity, and he claimed it didn’t change anything between them, but she didn’t see how it couldn’t. Especially after the way he’d kissed her last night. Did he mean that he no longer wanted to kiss her now that he knew she was a virgin?
“I’d love for you to stay and help,” she said honestly, “but there’s something else we need to discuss about last night—”
“If you’re worried that I’m going to grab you again and kiss you,” he said quietly, “you can relax. That’s something we’ll work up to.”
Confused, she frowned. “Work up to? But I thought—”
“What?” he asked with a slight smile when she hesitated. “That I wouldn’t want to kiss you again because you’re a virgin? I told you—that doesn’t change anything. Except next time you’ll know it’s coming.”
Janey knew she shouldn’t have asked, but the word just popped out. “How?”
For an answer he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “One,” he counted huskily. “When we get to ten, I’ll kiss you again the way I did last night—and teach you how to kiss me back.”
Her heart thudding crazily, Janey looked up at him with wide, searching eyes and tried to convince herself that he was just amusing himself. His heart still belonged to his dead wife and probably always would. If she wanted to avoid a lot of heartache in the future, she’d be wise to tell him to keep his kisses to himself.
For a second she almost did. The words were right there on her tongue, but she couldn’t say them. Not when the wonder of last night’s kiss was still so fresh in her mind. Right or wrong she wanted him to kiss her again, to hold her again, to show her for the first time in her life what love songs were really about. And if, in the end, she got hurt, she was willing to bet the heartache would be worth it. Because until he’d come into her life, she hadn’t really been living. Now she was, and she loved it.
“Then if we’re ever going to get to ten, I guess we’ll have to spend a lot of time together,” she said with a shy smile. “So you’ll still stay and help me find a tree?”
For an answer he picked up the chainsaw. “Lead the way. This is your neck of the woods, not mine.”
After that, the morning took on a glow that Janey couldn’t begin to describe. The sun was brighter, the sky bluer, the cold snap of the mountain air crisper. She couldn’t seem to stop smiling, and neither could Reilly. As they traipsed through the woods in companionable silence, she would glance over and find him watching her with a smile on his face that warmed her all the way to her toes. It was wonderful, scary, exhilarating.
They came across a dozen or more trees they could have chosen as a Christmas tree, but for one reason or another they always found a reason to pass them by. Arguing good-naturedly, they concluded that the trees were either too tall or too short or didn’t have strong enough limbs to carry all the decorations the McBrides had collected over a lifetime.
Janey had had the very same discussion with her mother every Christmas for most of her life, but picking out a tree with Reilly was somehow different. He made her laugh…and made her want the day to last forever. It couldn’t, of course, and all too soon they came across a noble fir they couldn’t walk away from. Tall and stately and thick with branches that were just the right size, it was perfect.
Janey took one look at it and knew their search was over. “That’s it,” she said, stopping in her tracks.
Reilly had to agree. It was the kind of tree that belonged on a Christmas card. Holding the chainsaw, he
lifted a masculine brow at her. “Do you want to do the honors or shall I?”
“I’ll cut,” she replied, mischief dancing in her eyes as she took the saw from him. “You get to carry it.”
“No problem,” he said, chuckling. “As long as you point me in the direction of the car. I haven’t got a clue where we are.”
Janey could well understand that. If she hadn’t grown up there and wandered over every inch of the ranch as a child, she would have been turned around, too. After a while all the trees and canyons started to look alike.
“The cars are about a mile due south of here,” she said with a grin. Struck by a sudden thought, she cocked her head and lifted a delicately arched brow at him. “How’d you get up here, anyway? You didn’t—”
“Drive my BMW over that path you call a road?” he finished for her when she looked horrified. “No, thank God. I planned to, once your mother told me where you were, but she was kind enough to offer me her Explorer. Remind me to send her some flowers. I owe her.”
He wasn’t the only one. Janey planned to give her a hug and a kiss herself for sending Reilly after her. “I’ll do that,” she promised. “But first we’ve got to get this baby home.”
It wasn’t easy. The ground was too rocky and the forest too thick with trees for Janey to drive her Jeep farther into the canyon, so they had to carry it out by hand. By the time they huffed and puffed and carried it back to the car, they were both winded—and grinning like idiots.
Exhilarated, Janey fairly danced with glee as they loaded it onto the top of her Jeep and tied it down. “All right! We did it! There were a couple of times there when I thought we were going to have to leave it behind.”
Still trying to catch his breath, Reilly gasped, “Was that before or after we stopped for the tenth time?”
“After,” she laughed. “Are you okay?”
Caught in the warmth of her smile, he couldn’t think of the last time he had been so all right. Tomorrow he would probably be as sore as an old bear with a thorn in its paw, but given the chance, he would have done it all over again in a heartbeat if it meant he could spend this time with Janey.
He’d thought he lost her. After the blunder he’d made last night, he’d thought any chance he had of having a relationship with her was irreparably harmed. He should have known better, he realized now with a sigh of relief. Time and again he’d seen what a kind heart she had. She wasn’t the type to hold a grudge.
Staring down at her, an emotion he couldn’t put a name to squeezing the spot where his heart had once been, he wanted to reach for her, to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, to kiss her the way he had last night and lose himself in the sweetness of her. But he couldn’t. He’d made her a promise, and he had every intention of sticking to it.
That didn’t, however, mean he had to deny himself completely. Giving in to temptation, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Two,” he murmured, and had the satisfaction of watching her brown eyes grow large with surprise.
Her breath catching in her throat, Janey put her hand to her cheek before she could stop herself, and captured the tingling heat of his kiss against her palm. “What was that for?”
“Nothing,” he replied, smiling. “I just wanted to kiss you again. Is that okay?”
She should have said no. Now that she’d had a little time to think about it, she realized that she couldn’t possibly let him continue to kiss her whenever the mood struck him, even if it was only on the cheek. Because ten kisses on the cheek would lead to a very heated one on the mouth, and just thinking about that made her heart turn over in her breast. She was too vulnerable where he was concerned, she told herself, and for her own peace of mind, she needed to slow things down between them before she did something stupid—like start to think that she could make him forget his dead wife.
But even as she recognized the wisdom of that, she looked into his beautiful dark-blue eyes and couldn’t bring herself to lie and say she didn’t want him to kiss her. That was exactly what she wanted and she couldn’t pretend otherwise.
Color singeing her cheeks, she nodded. “I’m just not used to men doing that. No one ever has.”
“Then they were all idiots,” he said simply, and opened her car door for her so they could drive back to the homestead.
He meant it, Janey thought as she carefully turned around and headed back to the house. He really thought all the men who’d never thought to kiss her on the cheek were idiots. Grinning, she smiled all the way home.
“If you’ll hold the door for me, I’ll get this monster inside for you,” Reilly said as they reached the house and he joined her on the drive and began to help her untie the ropes they’d used to secure the tree to the roof of her Jeep. “Where’s your Christmas tree stand? I’ll help you set it up.”
He’d already gone beyond the call of duty by hunting her down in the canyon and helping her carry the tree back to the car. She shouldn’t have taken further advantage of him. But instead of thanking him for his offer and politely sending him on his way as she should have, she said, “Would you like to stay and help me decorate it? Mom and Dan have been stringing popcorn while I was gone and have probably eaten half the popcorn. Mom loves to cook while I put the tree up. We put Christmas music on the stereo and build a fire in the fireplace, then spend the rest of the afternoon trimming the tree.
“You don’t have to stay until we finish, of course,” she added hastily. “That’ll take hours. In fact, if you only want to stay for a little while, that’s okay, too. I’m sure you must have things to do. Oh, I forgot! You were going Christmas shopping in Colorado Springs, weren’t you? Forget I said anything—”
Fascinated by the way she tried to find excuses for him not to stay, Reilly couldn’t help but grin. Did she have any idea just how cute she was? She was so earnest, so flustered, like a teenager asking a boy over to her house for the first time and tripping over every other word because she was afraid he’d say yes only because he somehow felt obligated.
“Hey,” he chuckled, stopping her rambling simply by pressing his fingers gently against her mouth. “Will you stop?”
He’d meant to tease her, to lighten her obvious nervousness with a joke that would ease the tension, but the second his fingers settled against her mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. With no effort whatsoever, he could feel again the softness of her lips under his when he’d kissed her last night.
It’d just been one little kiss, he tried to tell himself as he swallowed a groan. It shouldn’t have been the stuff of fantasies. But even as he tried to shrug off the memory, deep inside his chest, he felt his heart skip a beat. Not that that was anything to worry about, he assured himself quickly. He wasn’t made of stone—he expected his body to react to her. But he knew how to keep his emotions under control. Nothing was going to get out of hand as long as he kept his head, which he had every intention of doing.
Reminding himself to take it slow and easy, he forced himself to drop his hand and grinned crookedly. “I want to stay, Janey.”
“Oh. Well, then…good!” Blushing, she couldn’t quite hide how pleased she was. “Then let’s get started. I’ll get the tree stand.”
Long after Sara had sent Reilly after Janey, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d made a mistake. She should have called Janey on her cell phone first and asked her if she wanted to see him before she’d told him where she was. But reception in Wild Horse Canyon wasn’t always clear, and it had just seemed the right thing to do.
But over two hours had passed since Reilly had left, and there’d been no word from either him or Janey. Worried, Sara wanted to kick herself for interfering. She should have minded her own business.
“She’s okay,” Dan said gruffly, not taking his eyes from the popcorn he was still stringing. “Quit worrying.”
Startled out of her musings, Sara jumped guiltily. “How did you know?”
“I’ve only known you, what? Thirty-five or forty years?” he said dryly. “
I think I know by now when you’re worried about one of the kids.”
“It’s not that I’m worried,” she fibbed. “Well, maybe a little. I just want Janey to be happy—”
Whatever she was going to say next was lost when the front door was suddenly thrown back on its hinges and Reilly struggled inside with the heavy end of a huge Christmas tree. “Merry Christmas, everyone. Where would you like this, Sara?”
“In the corner by the fireplace,” Janey answered for her with a grin from the opposite end of the tree as she trailed in after Reilly. “That’s where we always put it.”
She was practically beaming, the sparkle in her eyes giving her the kind of beauty that had nothing to do with makeup or the cut of her hair. Her heart expanding with love, Sara sighed in relief. “There you two are! I was starting to worry.”
“We had a little trouble getting the tree back to the car,” Janey explained. “It’s huge! But I guess you can see that,” she quipped as they struggled to set it upright on its stand. “Reilly’s going to stay and help us decorate.”
“Good,” Dan retorted, eyeing the huge fir with a skeptical lift of a bushy, gray brow. “We’re going to need more popcorn.”
“I’ll help you with that,” Sara quickly assured him. “We’ll let Sara and Reilly take care of the actual decorating. We’re too old for that, anyway.”
Caught off guard, Dan sputtered, “Old? Who are you calling old? I’m not! And I know you’re—”
Rolling her eyes, Sara sent him a hard look that would have stopped a Mack truck in its tracks. Frowning, Dan scowled right back at her…then suddenly got it. “Oh! Well, yes, of course,” he backpedaled, grinning. “I’m not supposed to be doing much, and Sara’s not as spry as she used to be. Just the other evening she was complaining that she just can’t get around like she once did. Her bones creak, and her energy’s gone by two in the afternoon if she doesn’t take a nap—”
“I’m sure they get the picture, Dan,” she said dryly. “You don’t have to go on.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” he insisted, mischief dancing in his eyes. “They should know what’s down the road for them. After all, none of us is going to get out of here alive. If they live long enough, they’re going to have to deal with liver spots and cataracts and gas—”
