She swallowed, wanting, for some reason, to squirm in her chair. Her eyes flicked up to his, afraid of what she’d see there. But a smile hovered around his mouth, and his eyes twinkled. Maybe there was something a little deeper and a little hotter in the brown depths, but his turned-up lips helped her establish her equilibrium and caused her lips to turn up in response.
She opened her mouth, expecting him to pop the pie in and be done with it. But his eyes had tracked down, and he seemed to be staring at her lips. Whatever small heat had been in his eyes had erupted into something much bigger, and her chest flamed in response.
It scared her.
She shoved back away from the table, her chair scraping on the floor with a loud screeching sound that she barely heard.
“Never mind. I’ve changed my mind,” she said, her voice breathless. She tried to cover it with busy hands as she gathered her stuff up and slid down to the seat beside her. “I don’t want to get chocolate sauce on this.” She wasn’t fooling anyone, including Mack and herself, but he didn’t call her on it, and when she finally settled in her new chair and shot him a glance, he had his head down and was staring at his plate of pie like it was a toddler standing at the edge of a fire ring.
He ate the pie without saying anything more, scraping up every bit of the chocolate sauce, and he helped her after taking his plate to the sink, but the easy camaraderie that had been between them from almost the beginning had disappeared.
She wished it would come back, but she wasn’t sure how to get it. And maybe they were safer without it.
THE NEXT MORNING, MACK went out early to put more decorations up with the bucket truck, and Angela stayed in with the girls, feeding them breakfast then taking them to her friend Cora’s house where Angela had promised to bake cookies.
Cora had several young children, one of whom the girls had already met in Sunday School, and they played happily together after they got tired “helping” bake cookies.
Lark, Clay’s sister, was also there, and while Angela knew her some from church and other activities, this was the first time she’d spent any amount of time with her.
“I don’t understand how you have all these recipes in your head, and they all turn out perfectly.” Cora bent over the oven, taking out a tray of snickerdoodles, while Lark squeezed blue icing out on the sugar cookies and Angela rolled out more dough.
“I’ve gone to a lot of cookie swaps in my time. Plus that was a ministry of our church every year. Fruit baskets and cookie trays. There’s usually not a dearth of people to eat the cookies, but some years I baked a lot of cookies by myself.”
“I never realized how much the pastor’s family gets stuck with sometimes.” Lark spoke without looking up from her cookie.
“That’s true for a lot of church members, I think. But there’s lots of benefits that the pastor’s family takes for granted, too.” Angela checked out the cookies she’d already done and decided she needed more angels.
“You’re great at baking cookies, and you’re great with kids.” Cora tilted her head as her spatula hovered over the cookie tray. “Are you going to tell us why you’re driving around with Mack’s nieces?” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“Stop.” Angela laughed. Then she sobered. “Mack knows way too much about me to be interested in me that way.”
“But?” Lark prompted. She did turn her head that time with a grin that made her look a lot younger than she acted.
“No ‘buts.’” Angela didn’t really want to get into the whole story. “He’s just boarding at the same house in town that I am, and he’s helping me with the Christmas festival, and I’m helping him with his nieces. That’s all there is to it.” Except for that little misfire last night when he almost fed her pie and her reaction had scared her. He’d been cool to her early this morning when they’d made the arrangements with the girls. She hadn’t been her usual relaxed self, either.
“I see. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Lark didn’t look up, but Angela could see her smirk.
“So, I don’t want to pry...” Cora stopped with the spatula in the air, holding a cookie. “Never mind. I am totally prying. What in the world are you talking about? This thing that Mack knows and would keep him from wanting to be with you?”
Angela focused on angling her cookie cutter to get the most cookies out of the dough she’d rolled out.
“I just wasn’t a very nice person at times. I was pretty conniving and used people. Clay and Boone specifically.” She blew out a breath. “I would have broken Clay and Reina up if I could have.” She could blame it on her parents, and maybe some of it was their fault, but she needed to take responsibility for her own actions.
“Oh.” Cora was quiet for a few minutes as she worked to get the rest of the cookies off the tray.
The kids yelled and laughed from the other room off the kitchen. Angela thought maybe that was the end of it, but Cora spoke again.
“Have you talked to him about it?”
“No!” She broke a wing off the angel she was picking up to put on the tray. “Crap. Excuse the Baptist swearing.”
“Why not?”
“First of all, the subject hasn’t come up, and secondly, I don’t want it to!”
“But you’re a different person now than you were then, right?”
“Yes.” Most definitely.
“Then he’ll either understand and you’ll be good, or he won’t and you’ll know that you need to move on.”
“I’m not stuck on him.”
“Really?” Lark’s smile was evident in her voice. “Your voice gets soft when you talk about him.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I noticed that too,” Cora said, waving the spatula around. Angela felt like she needed to duck.
“No. I’m truly not interested. I mean, there might be a little attraction on my part, but I’m not interested in a cowboy. I want someone a little more sophisticated. We’ll sit by the fire in the evening and talk about books and ideas and, I don’t know, sophisticated stuff. I don’t want a rancher who’s going to drag me outside and make me help him castrate his cows.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” Lark straightened, the piping in one hand and the other held in the air. “Cows don’t get castrated.”
“Right. I knew that.” Bulls. Bulls got castrated. She waved her own hands around. “See? I’m not a farm girl, and I don’t want to be. Even if Mack could get past the things I’ve done, he and I are just too different.”
“Sometimes your differences enhance your relationship,” Cora said, sounding wise.
“Opposites attract,” Lark said.
“They attract, sure. But it doesn’t always end well.” Angela was confident on this point. “I spent enough time watching my dad counsel couples who were attracted but didn’t have enough things in common to keep them together. It’s the shared goals and dreams and interests that keep a marriage strong and growing.”
“It’s hard work and determination that keeps a marriage together.” Cora pursed her lips. “You can make a marriage work with anyone, as long as you’re both determined to stick it out.”
Angela’s lips flattened, and she looked away. Cora was right. But so was she.
“I’d be foolish to choose someone that I knew was going to be doing things that I don’t want to do. Sure. You’re right. If we’re both determined, it could work. But why make it harder than it has to be?”
“Maybe because the man’s worth it?” Lark asked softly. She didn’t have a smile lighting up her face. In fact, she looked a little sad.
Angela knew she was young. She’d also guess that Lark was deeply in love with a man who didn’t love her back.
“Abner has only good things to say about Mack,” Cora offered. “A good man is hard to find, and Abner would say Mack’s a good man.”
“Fine. I’ll talk to him if the subject ever comes up. But I can almost guarantee he’s not going to overlook what I’ve done.”
“You two are o
pposites in a lot of ways, but I think you’d make a good team,” Lark said, her head bent back over another cookie.
Cora nodded. “Maybe it won’t work out. But I wouldn’t close yourself off to the possibility just because he’s not the kind of man you’d dreamed about. A lot of times what we want versus what we really need are two different things, but it’s hard for us to see that.”
The kids came out, and they started talking about preschool and kindergarten and dropped the subject of Mack and opposites attracting, but Angela was still thinking about it when she went to bed that night.
Chapter 6
Two days later, Angela worked the breakfast and lunch shift so she could have the afternoon off.
Mack took off early too, and they took the girls and drove into Rockerton, doing their shopping before dark then heading to the small amusement park on the south side of town. They drove through an amazing display of lights before parking to walk along the path through the park where there were more lights along with hot chocolate, caroling, and the largest toy train display Mack had ever seen.
The girls were enraptured, and they stood for a while, Angela holding Ashleigh and Mack holding Holly.
They hadn’t talked much, and their small amount of conversation had been stilted and uncomfortable since whatever had happened between them that last evening with the pie.
Maybe it was the magic of the evening or the wonder of the girls, but the awkwardness between them eventually faded away.
Honestly, Mack wasn’t sure what had happened with the pie. Whether he’d offended her, or scared her, or what. Maybe he should have asked.
But maybe he didn’t want to know.
He couldn’t be attracted to Angela. Or, more likely, yes, he could. He just knew she might likely be using him. After all, he knew she needed someone to help her with her festival. He’d already volunteered, and she’d been spending a lot of time with his nieces, so he felt like he owed her, but maybe she wanted to make sure he was still in if his sister showed up.
He didn’t know, and he was tired of thinking about it. Anytime he was with her, he had a good time. Why couldn’t that be all that mattered?
Probably because, ever since the pie episode, he’d gone from enjoying her company to wanting to kiss her.
Not smart, mister.
A couple with small children pushed in beside Angela, and she shifted closer to him. He had a little space on his other side, but he didn’t move, enjoying her pumpkin and spice scent, loving looking down on her shiny blond hair that came out from under her warm beanie and fell smoothly over her coat and down her shoulders.
The temptation to touch it, to slide his fingers over it and see if it was as soft as it looked, was strong and took him completely by surprise. He tightened his hold on Holly but didn’t shift away.
“This is amazing. I could stand here and watch this for a really long time. How do they coordinate the trains so they don’t hit each other?” Angela’s face lifted up to his, her eyes bright, her cheeks rosy from the cold.
“I have no idea.” He could take a few guesses, but his mind wasn’t really thinking as he looked down at her. His eyes shifted to her lips, and it took him more seconds than he wanted to admit before he could tear his gaze away and look out over the trains. His breath felt shaky, and his heart raced like he’d been running.
He couldn’t feel like this with Angela. He knew that. His brain, at least, knew that. Apparently there were other parts of him that hadn’t gotten that memo.
Someone bumped him in the back, and he shifted into Angela. “Sorry,” he murmured.
His hand, without taking direction from his brain, came up and landed on her back. He realized at that moment they probably looked like every other couple with children standing and looking at the trains. Like a couple. Like they were a couple.
His eyes went back to Angela, where they wanted to be, and he stared at the top of her head, wondering. Could he trust her? Could he let this be more?
Although, after her reaction with the pie, he was fairly certain she was fighting just as hard as he was. Or maybe she was pretending.
Maybe he should have a talk with Clay.
Or maybe he should just talk with the lady herself.
Holly lay her head down on his shoulder. He chuckled. “I think I’ve got a tired one.”
Angela looked up with a smile. “Me too.”
“Maybe some hot chocolate on the way back?”
“I’d love that. I can handle the cold, but the wind blows through you.”
“Hot chocolate will help.” He didn’t move his hand from the small of her back as they turned and started down the path.
Several couples walked toward them, holding hands, but most of the people they passed were parents with their children.
“Don’t you just love the look of wonder and awe on their faces?” Angela asked softly.
She hadn’t seemed to mind that his hand was still on her back. In fact, if he were judging, she was walking a little closer to him than she had been. He’d take it.
They stopped and bought hot chocolate, sipping it as they walked back through the curtains of lights, listening to the carols that played softly in the distance, and laughing at the snowflakes as they fluttered down around them.
“This isn’t supposed to amount to anything, is it?” Angela asked as yet another one landed on her nose.
He brushed the melted water off her nose with a finger, not allowing it to linger on her skin like he wanted to. “I don’t think so. An inch or two. Enough to make the roads slick if they haven’t treated them. We’ll be fine on the interstate, and Sweet Water isn’t that far off it.”
His confidence seemed to relax her, and she softened into him even more.
Little warning bells were going off in his head, but he ignored them. He’d get to the bottom of everything eventually, but there was no reason why he couldn’t enjoy tonight.
They moseyed back to his pickup, throwing their cups in the garbage as they passed it. Holly was asleep on his shoulder, and Ashleigh wasn’t far from it, either.
They managed to get the kids in and buckled without waking them too much, and he pulled out, heading for home.
“Need to stop anywhere else?”
“No. Thank you.”
He made the turn that would lead them to the bypass and interstate.
The snow was falling, but it wasn’t blowing too much, and it only made it feel cozier in the cab of the truck. He hadn’t grown up with much snow, but he’d spent tens of thousands of hours driving all kinds of equipment in all kinds of conditions, and he wasn’t scared. Actually, with the new feelings that were tugging at his heart, he was looking forward to spending the next two hours with Angela beside him.
She took a deep breath. It scared him a little because it seemed like she was gathering her nerve up for something. “I know you know about Clay and I.”
It wasn’t what he expected, and his heart stopped short.
She still loved Clay. Of course. Clay was pretty much perfect. He could see how no one else could compare. Maybe Clay hadn’t exactly been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but his childhood was a fairy tale compared to Mack’s. Seriously, he had a sister who was chasing some dude around France and dumped her kids on her parents, who lived in a retirement community, and her brother, who didn’t even own a house.
Plus, his past wouldn’t exactly be acceptable to a Sunday School girl like Angela. He didn’t come to her squeaky clean like Preacher had.
“Are you going to say something?”
His hands tightened on the wheel. Suddenly the hours that he was going to be stuck in the vehicle with her seemed like long years stretching interminably out in front of him. “What do you want me to say?” he asked, in a voice that wasn’t exactly welcoming of a response.
He didn’t scare her, though, and he admired that about her, even as he wished he’d intimidated her into silence.
“Tell me that you know what I’m tal
king about. That you want to hear my side. That you’re open to the idea that I might have changed. Or not. Just...something.” She waved her hand in the air, then stared out her window into the darkness.
“You’re still in love with Clay.” There. He said it.
He almost turned the radio on to drown out the silence that seemed to ring around them. Anything would be better than him sitting here practically admitting he was jealous of his old boss.
“What?”
He wasn’t going to say it again. He stared in stony silence out the windshield, his heart a lump of coal in his chest.
It took her a few minutes to realize he wasn’t going to repeat himself.
She took a breath, like she was finally going to talk, but before she could say anything, headlights coming from the opposite direction seemed to careen through the median strip between them and head straight for them.
In normal conditions, Mack would never jerk the wheel when the roads were snow-covered and slick, but he had no choice to avoid a head-on collision.
The back of his pickup fishtailed, while the other vehicle swerved past. Beside him, Angela gasped but didn’t scream.
The temptation to let up on the throttle and slam on the brakes was strong, but years of experience dictated the opposite. He pressed the accelerator down and jerked the wheel in the opposite direction as the back end of the pickup slid to the other side. It took twice more before the wheels gripped and the truck straightened.
“You won’t believe this,” he said in the silence of the cab, “but that car went right back across the median, never stopped, and is back on that side of the road, taillights almost out of sight.” And the girls were still asleep.
Angela let out a shaky breath. “I can’t believe that. But I also can’t believe that you somehow managed to avoid a head-on crash. How?”
He shook his head, appreciative of her admiration. “Just instinct.”
“Some instincts.”
“If you think about how many hours I’ve spent driving, it’s sure to be something that’s ingrained eventually.”
“If you say so.”
Cowboys Don't Stand Under the Mistletoe (Sweet Water Ranch Western Cowboy Romance Book 10) Page 5
