He didn't argue, only shrugged and climbed out of the SUV to unlock the cabin closest to the river.
She carried as many bags as she could inside and found this cabin very similar to hers. Hers was a little bigger, but they had the same layout, with one main living area and a separate bedroom and bathroom.
The main difference was in the color and tone of the decor. Her cabin was decorated in mountain chic, with deep reds and blues, while this had a slightly more feminine feeling, with tans and sage and a few lavender accents thrown in.
His sister had a natural flair for decorating, she thought. Both places were warm and restful. She thought again what a shame it would be if Nate decided to close the guest ranch after his sister and her husband had worked so lovingly to create these cozy havens for their guests.
He turned on the electric fireplace and by her second trip inside with more bags, the cabin had warmed considerably.
"I think that's everything," she said when he started to head out to the vehicle again.
He nodded and closed the door to keep out the icy air.
Even though they had just driven thirty miles together in the relatively small space of his SUV, somehow being alone together in the cabin had a different sort of intimacy. She pushed away that insistent awareness. Yes, he was dark and gorgeous and masculine. But he was also off-limits, she reminded herself.
Emery swallowed hard as she carried the last bags into the small bedroom and began sorting their purchases into two piles.
He joined her and the room seemed to shrink until the only things she could focus on were Nate and the big queen bed with the antique brass bedstead.
"When do you intend to wrap everything?" she asked, hoping he didn't notice the way her fingers trembled a little as she sorted.
"I want to get everything out of the way. I was thinking maybe tonight after the girls are asleep."
"Do you need help?"
The moment the words were out, she wanted to drag them back, especially when he raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"An unusual offer for someone trying to avoid Christmas this year."
She couldn't rescind the offer now, as much as she might want to. "I just don't want you to make a mess of all my hard work picking the perfect gifts by shoving them into any old bag. Presentation is half of what makes a good gift."
He snorted. "Maybe for your country club set. But the girls are eleven and eight. Hate to break it to you, but they're going to rip off whatever wrapping paper you put around them in about two-point-six seconds."
She laughed ruefully. "Well, for those two-point-six seconds, presentation is important."
He was silent for a long moment. When she looked up from the sweaters she was sorting, she found him studying her with an odd, intent look in his eyes. "You really need to do that more often, Em."
"Do what?"
"Laugh. It makes you breathtaking."
Before she could catch a single thought through her shock at his words, he brushed his thumb at the corner of her still-uplifted mouth. Her smile slid away and she froze at his touch and the glittery shower of sparks cascading through her.
Her gaze held with his for a long moment and she saw something dark and sultry kindle in his eyes. He leaned forward slightly, his lids half-lowered, but he didn't move those final few inches to press his mouth to hers.
He was leaving the decision to her, she thought, and somehow the discovery made it that much easier to arch across that small space between them and slide into his kiss.
The room was chilly, but his mouth was warm, focused. She wrapped her arms around his neck, vaguely aware she was still holding one of the little angel necklaces she had picked out for the girls.
Their kiss a few nights earlier had been raw and intense, shocking mostly because it had been so unexpected. But they had been building toward this one all day as they had shopped and walked and talked, sharing a meal and confidences and their private pain. It seemed inevitable, somehow, this coming together, like the first fledgling crocuses poking through the snow after a long, hard winter.
Everywhere she touched was solid, hard muscle and she wanted to sink into him.
"You taste like raspberry lemonade," he murmured against her mouth. "Sweet and tart and delicious."
His low words rasped across her skin and she decided she would drink no other beverage for the rest of her life. He deepened the kiss and she tightened her arms around his neck, lost in the wild torrent of sensation.
As they kissed and tasted for long, drugging moments, somehow they shrugged out of their coats, though she had no real awareness of it. A moment later, she could feel his hand at her waist and then the sizzling warmth of his fingers on her bare skin under her sweater.
She wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her life, this man with the bedroom eyes and the hard strength.
Their purchases covered just about every inch of the bed, but she didn't care. She wanted to sweep all her carefully sorted piles onto the floor and drag him down. But just as she started to reach behind her with some vague intent of making space for them, the sudden whine of airbrakes in the distance cut through the cold afternoon air.
At the sound, he dragged his mouth away and stared at her, his pupils expanded so that his entire irises looked black and dangerous.
Reality crashed down, harsh and unforgiving. She had completely lost control. Another few moments and she would have lost every ounce of good sense.
What on earth was she thinking? This wasn't her. She didn't have torrid affairs with men she had barely met and would probably never see again a week from now.
She drew in a sharp breath and eased away from him, fumbling to straighten her clothes that had become so disordered in their embrace.
"That must be the school bus." Her voice sounded thready and aroused and she quickly cleared her throat. "I can finish up here and hide everything back under the bed. You had better go meet the girls or they'll be suspicious."
He raked a hand through his hair, looking just as stunned and disoriented as she felt. "Emery…"
"Go. They'll be looking for you."
After a long moment, he picked his coat off the floor and yanked it on, shoved on his Stetson she must have tipped off somehow, then walked out into the cold, leaving a yawning sort of silence behind him.
With mechanical movements, not daring to take a moment to even think about what had nearly happened between them, Emery quickly finished sorting the gifts and shoved them all under the bed with the others, then turned off the heat and closed the door behind her, making sure it locked securely.
When she finally reached her own cabin, she shut the door and sagged on to the sofa as everything inside her still seemed to tremble and sigh. She could still taste him, still feel that leashed strength under her fingertips.
This heat between them was crazy. Incendiary and fierce and completely out of control. She wasn't used to losing control like that. She liked things to be tidy, orderly. Or at least she always thought she did.
She thought of the chaos of her workspace when she was in the middle of a project. That was the only area of her life where she allowed disarray, since she had learned along the way that she did her most creative work when she just let herself be free and unencumbered by the expectations she always felt pressing down on her.
Maybe that was part of Nate's appeal. He didn't seem to expect her to be perfect.
She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, where her heart still raced. She had to put a stop to this. If she didn't, she was suddenly afraid she would end up leaving Pine Gulch more messed up than when she had arrived.
* * *
The girls tag-teamed him about the neighborhood party the minute they bounded up the driveway from the bus stop.
Tallie hit him up first. "Uncle Nate, have you decided if we're going to the party at the McRavens'? It's tomorrow! We have to decide, 'cause we're supposed to MVP or something."
"RSVP," Claire corrected with a
"you big dork" tone to her voice. "It's when you tell someone whether you're going to their party so they know if they have enough food for everyone and nobody goes hungry. So are we going?"
"Can we, Uncle Nate? Can we? Huh?" Tallie dropped her backpack in the foyer and threw her arms around him for emphasis. "It will be super fun. Tanner says they're having Christmas carols and games and Santa Claus might even come. We have to go. Please say yes."
"We don't have to go," he muttered.
"But we want to. We really, really want to!" Claire exclaimed, with far more enthusiasm than she usually showed toward anything.
He gave an inward groan, not at all in the mood to tangle with them over this, especially after he was still reeling from the sheer stunning impact of Emery's kiss.
"I still haven't decided," he said firmly. "We can talk about it again after dinner. Meantime, why don't you show me what homework you brought home, then we can all get on to our chores."
Something about his firm tone must have gotten through to them. Or to Claire, anyway. When Tallie would have continued nagging and fretting at him like a puppy working a treat out of a rubber chew toy, Claire elbowed her in the ribs and muttered something in her ear he couldn't hear. Tallie gave a long-suffering sigh, but to his vast relief, she let the discussion drop—for a while, anyway.
She quickly picked it up again after they all came in from finishing their chores in the barn—and after he had made a quick, clandestine stop at Emery's cabin while the girls were busy to drop off the clothing she had asked for.
While he was warming up dinner, one of the prepared freezer meals he purchased from a company in Idaho Falls, Tallie started in.
"We should really let the McRavens know if we're coming to the party," she tried again from the kitchen table where she was supposed to be working on her homework. "Otherwise they might be mad."
"I'm sure they won't be mad."
"But what if they run out of food? Drew says Mrs. McRaven is the best cook. I don't want to miss the food."
"She is a great cook." Claire set aside her history worksheet. "Everybody always buys her cookies and cupcakes first when we have bake sales at school."
"And we can take our swimming suits and everything," Tallie reminded him for about the hundredth time. "On the bus this morning, Kip said they have a brand-new slide that curls around and goes into the deep end. It's gonna be so awesome. Don't you think we should call and tell them if we're coming?"
After about fifteen minutes of their pestering, Nate ground his back teeth, suddenly sick of anything to do with the word party.
What the hell had happened to his life? Five months ago he had been leading patrols, taking on bad guys, serving his country. Now he spent his days worrying whether the girls were drinking enough milk, whether they finished their math homework, if he had remembered to add the damn fabric softener to the load of whites in the washing machine.
Kissing his guests until he couldn't think straight.
"Look, I said I would think about it," he snapped in a harsh tone he didn't think he'd ever used with them before. "Let it go, both of you, or I'll say no just to shut you both up. Why do you have to hound me and hound me about everything?"
Tallie blinked in surprise and a little bit of fear, he was chagrined to see. She set down her fork beside her half-eaten casserole.
Her chin wobbled a little, but she didn't cry, which made him feel even worse. "I'm not hungry anymore," she said after five more minutes of tense silence.
"Me, neither," Claire looked down at the tablecloth and not anywhere close to his direction. "May we be excused?"
"Yeah," he said shortly. It was their night to wash dishes, but he decided not to push the matter, even though every child behavior specialist would probably tell him he should do exactly that. He'd already been told by Principal Dalton and others that he should do what he could to keep a regular, consistent schedule so the girls could begin to restore a little order and stability in their world.
They scraped their chairs away and he felt about three inches tall when they hurried from the kitchen without another word.
He sat there alone and doggedly finished his casserole even though he wasn't at all hungry, either, then stood and scraped their dishes, wishing Emery were there to talk him through this. She would know how to smooth this over, what he could say to make things right again.
The fact that he found himself wanting to turn to her made him nervous all over again about the impact she was having in their lives.
He sighed as he loaded the last dish in the dishwasher, added detergent and closed the door.
He really needed a housekeeper. With Joanie gone, the house was falling apart and he just didn't have the time to take care of everything and run the ranch, as well. That was right at the top of his list after the holidays.
But first he was going to have to go to the damn party, to smile and make conversation and basically put on a huge show that he was happy to be there.
It was just a party. He wasn't facing interrogation by an enemy combatant. He could be polite for a few hours. Other neighbors would be there besides the Daltons so he wouldn't have to sit and socialize with just them. For that matter, he could probably avoid the lot of them for most of the night.
Through the doorway, he caught sight of the Christmas tree Emery and the girls had decorated. None of them had turned on the lights at dusk so he hurried in and flipped the switch. After a moment of watching the colors reflected in the glass, he felt a little better. He remembered that happiness he had seen in Emery's eyes earlier when she had been talking about making the quilts. This was the season of joy, of hope, and he was acting like the world's biggest Scrooge.
He sighed and headed up the stairs, wondering if the crow he had to eat would taste any better than the casserole he had forced himself to swallow.
He found both girls on Claire's bed listening to her CD player with a headphone splitter.
They both gave him disgruntled looks when he opened the door and guilt poked at him. He sat on the edge of the bed, wondering if this would ever feel more natural.
"Look, guys, I warned you I would be lousy at the whole parenting thing. I don't know what the he—heck I'm doing. I've been straight with you about that. But that's no excuse for me to be mean. I'm sorry about earlier. I don't really want to go to the neighborhood party and I've been trying to come up with some excuse not to go."
They both opened their mouths and he could see arguments brewing in their eyes, but he shook his head to cut them off. "But since this is something you both want to do and since we're a family now and need to work together and compromise when we have to, I'll play nice and somehow make it through."
They both squealed and Tallie threw herself into his arms. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's gonna be so fun. You'll see."
Right. He couldn't wait. But at least the girls were talking to him again, so he supposed he could survive.
"Okay, a few more minutes and then it's time for bed. I might not have figured much out about being a parent, but I do know you both need sleep on a school night."
They groaned, but didn't argue with him, much to his relief, since he had an entire cabin full of Christmas presents to wrap.
Chapter Ten
A smart woman ought to be wise enough to stay away from things she knew perfectly well weren't good for her. Things like strawberry cheesecake brownies and sappy movies when she was in a sentimental mood and half-off sales at her favorite designer shoe store.
And gorgeous army Rangers with big, dark eyes and wide shoulders and those impossibly long eyelashes.
Emery sighed, her gaze fixed on the glow coming from the windows of the last cabin in the row. The light had been on for the past half hour and she had stood here that entire time, gazing out the window and trying not to picture the scene.
He had to be wrapping presents for his nieces, ungainly thumbs and all. The idea of him sitting inside there surrounded by ribbons and tape and girly s
tuff gave her a funny little ache in her chest.
For the past eighteen hundred seconds, she had been debating the wisdom of walking the distance between them. Yes, she had offered to help him. But then he had kissed her instead of answering.
Didn't that rather negate her offer?
Spending time with Nate in a small, enclosed space would be about as smart as walking barefoot across the thin, crackly ice of Cold Creek, especially after the heat they had shared in that very same cabin just a few hours before.
But she had offered. And he did need help. She still firmly believed that all those lovely things they bought for the girls would lose some of their magic without proper wrapping and Nate himself had admitted he tended to be all thumbs.
Who was she kidding? Emery released a heavy sigh. He was right, the girls would rip the wrappings off in two seconds. The real truth was, she couldn't seem to stay away from him. Despite all her well-reasoned arguments all afternoon and evening to herself against putting herself in closer to proximity to him, she wanted urgently to walk through the snow to that cabin to spend just a few more moments in his company.
All the more reason she should stay exactly where she was. She didn't come to Pine Gulch with any intention of finding herself entangled with anyone here. Not Nate or the girls, or even the Daltons.
Yet here she was, entangled whether she wanted to be or not.
She already cared for Claire and Tallie and she was wildly attracted to Nate.
What was the big deal if she was attracted to him? He obviously wasn't any more eager than she was to explore this heat between them. He had barely even looked at her a few hours earlier when he dropped off three boxes of clothing he had smuggled out of the house while the girls were busy with chores.
He had been taciturn to the point of rudeness when he told her she shouldn't feel obligated to follow through on her suggestion about the quilts, that he was only dropping off the clothing because she had asked for it. If she didn't want to go to all that trouble, she didn't have to, he assured her.
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