The 48 Hour Hookup (Chase Brothers)

by Sarah Ballance

“Nothing.” Maybe that was his problem.

  She stood on her tiptoes, straining to peer around the center island. “Maybe you should give him something.”

  He shot her a wry look. “I’m not sure you understand how breaking and entering works. Generally, it shouldn’t be rewarded.”

  She frowned and crossed her arms across her chest. “Well, it’s cold outside, and he’s obviously hungry.”

  Was she kidding? “He’s a bandit.”

  Her face lit. “We should call him Bandit!”

  He could have stared at her all day, all that light dancing in her eyes. But even he had standards, and naming a raccoon Bandit fell beneath them. “Um, no. That has to be the most overused raccoon name in the history of raccoon names.”

  “Fine. You name him.”

  Liam almost rolled his eyes. Almost. Because he was standing in a kitchen with an armload of frozen food while a raccoon with a lopsided mask chattered at him like they were old friends. Or like Liam was about to have his face shredded. “Stanley.”

  “Stanley?” That pretty little mouth of hers twisted comically. “You can’t name a raccoon Stanley.”

  “I think I can.” He handed her the cold stuff. “Any food in the cabinets?” He shot a glance along the bank of ’70s-era orangey-glazed knotty pine, seeing nothing through closed doors. He wasn’t sure why he’d even looked.

  Her nose scrunched. “I think I remember a banana in one, if he didn’t take it last time. I’ve been putting everything there to keep it away from mice. Not that I’ve seen any.”

  With a pointed look at Stanley, he said, “Thank goodness there aren’t any mice.” He went to the cabinet, found the aforementioned banana, and went to the service porch, leaving the fruit on the sill of the open window.

  When he returned, he found Claire peering around the island. Stanley stared back at her. “Making friends?”

  “He’s cute. And his mask is crooked.”

  “I told you I was observant.”

  “I got that,” she muttered. He let it go. She was speaking to him, and he hadn’t talked himself into an apology for what was an innocuous, if loaded, statement. They were in a good place, he and Claire. It was as good a time as any to escape to the attic. He helped her carry the food to the front room and hesitated in a moment of fascination while she tended to what looked like a cauldron. There had been two of them—one on each side of the firebox—but he’d assumed they were decorative.

  “Anything else I can do?” he asked.

  “No. Have fun in the attic.”

  He hesitated, giving a long look to the dead fire. “Need a hand with that?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “My lighter is dead, and we’re not dire enough to tackle those roads before the plow hits them.”

  He glanced around the room. “We’re going to need to put something in there that will catch easily.” Assuming they got a flame out of thin air. He hadn’t quite figured that part out yet. “What about a piece of the blanket?”

  “Absolutely not. My grandmother made those quilts.”

  Figured. His gaze landed on the leather recliner.

  “No way,” she said.

  His brow lifted. “Did your grandma raise the cow, too?”

  She shook her head, pairing the gesture with the kind of glare that would shut a man down in a heartbeat. “You can’t buy those chairs anymore. They belong together.”

  “What if I promise to leave the leather intact?”

  She nodded, albeit slowly and with what looked to be suspicion. “Now I’m curious.”

  He picked up his knife from the hearth and turned the chair to its side. When he found a seam, he eased his knife between the stitching.

  “That’s. Not. Intact.”

  “The seam can be re-stitched,” he assured her. “I’ll pay for it myself.” Once he’d opened it enough to fit his hand, he eased inside and felt for the batting. When he got his fingers around it, he tugged. It didn’t move. Dammit. With her narrowed eyes boring into him, he popped a few more stitches until he had a clear view through the pocket he made, then started pulling the stuffing out of the chair.

  “You’re dead to me,” she said.

  “Did you not lay a tree on my truck?” He handed her a pile of chair innards. If she was going to look at him like that, she could put them in the fire.

  “The truck didn’t have any historical significance,” she said. “It was brand new.”

  “Which is kind of my point,” he shot back. He didn’t know why she had to be so damned angelic there in the light that reflected off the snow and beamed through the windows. Blue-eyed and blonde, she was textbook gorgeous, but there was more than that drawing him in. He just wished he knew what, so he could combat it some kind of way.

  But at this point, he couldn’t even fight fire with fire.

  There wasn’t any.

  “Is there any dry wood anywhere? This bagful won’t last long if we get a fire going.”

  “I was just going to check the service porch and the shed. The wind blew the snow in every direction, so I’m not sure anything was safe, but I should be able to at least find some sticks.”

  “Can I try your lighter? Maybe it’ll surprise us.”

  She handed it to him, then zipped her jacket and pulled on gloves and a knit hat. “If you take apart any more of my furniture, be gentle.”

  “I’m always gentle.”

  “What a disappointment,” she said as she slammed the door shut against a gust of wind.

  He stared at the closed door for a long time before remembering he was supposed to light a fire. Shaking his head, he turned and knelt in front of the hearth. The remains of the fire were a dull gray, not much ember to them. He’d camped a few dozen times, but he’d gone into that prepared with waterproof, windproof matches and kindling.

  He tried the lighter. Barely a spark, but maybe enough. He took a piece of the batting from the chair and held it over the lighter, then tried it again. The lighter sparked, but the fire didn’t happen.

  After a few minutes, Claire returned and stood watching him.

  “I don’t suppose you have a condom?” she asked.

  Caught completely off guard, he couldn’t even look at her. “You want to have sex? Now?” It wasn’t like he’d turn her down, but where the hell had that come from?

  “No,” she said quickly. “I mean, that’s not what it’s for.”

  Not sure whether or not he should be flattered, he looked to see her blushing. Or maybe that had been the wind, not that there’d been any. Wordlessly, he reached into his pocket and extracted his wallet, then a condom, which he handed to her. Despite her quick and emphatically negative reaction to having sex, he was suddenly grateful Sawyer had thrown a small box in Liam’s backpack “for the road.” If sex did become a thing, he’d hate to think he’d used his only one for…whatever the hell she was doing.

  “Is there any more batting?” she asked.

  “I’m on it.” Actually, he was curious what she wanted with a condom, but he could pick up a handful of batting and wonder about that at the same time.

  She glanced at the whitish ball of fluff. “It’ll work better if it’s black, so rub it in the ashes.”

  “Do I want to know why?”

  “You’ll see in just a few minutes,” she assured him.

  Outside, soot-stained batting in his hand, condom in hers, she tore into the packet and unrolled the condom and held it under a rivulet of water draining from the roof. “It’s warming up,” she said. “That bodes well. Plus, it’s late afternoon, so the sun is high.”

  “What are you doing?” he finally asked.

  “It works like a magnifying glass.”

  He watched as he found a rock the size of a dinner plate and moved it to a sunny spot. Then she put the fire starter on the rock and positioned the water-filled condom so the sun pierced through it and hit a concentrated spot on the batting. The material was already warm from the embers. About fifteen minutes later, smoke be
gan to tendril.

  “Want to come blow on this?” she asked him.

  He eyed her, then the condom. “That’s probably the most creative way I’ve ever been propositioned,” he said, but he did as she asked. Too bad the damage had been done. He was absolutely thinking about her blowing something else entirely, and seeing her holding a condom in both hands did nothing to waylay that thought.

  He cupped his hands around the batting and blew gently. Ridiculously, he was still stuck on the idea of sex. He was grateful when, five minutes later, the smoke finally kicked into flame. She left the condom on the ground and carried the rock in the lodge while he protected it from the wind, and together they slid the batting into the firebox. The fire billowed.

  “There was a stack of pallets in the shed we can burn,” she said.

  “Keep this going. I’ll go grab those.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He went back outside, retrieved the condom, and set it just inside the door in case they needed it again, then jogged to the shed. He found a hammer and quickly broke apart a few pallets, then dragged the pieces back to the lodge.

  “I had no idea it was possible to start a fire with a condom,” he said. “Where did you learn that trick?”

  She shrugged. “I overheard a conversation between a group of guys trying to start a bonfire on the beach. Someone came up with a lighter, so they never got around to trying it, and they sounded like they were joking around, but the science behind it made sense, so it was worth a shot. I didn’t know it would actually work.”

  Like an idiot who hadn’t gotten the memo about them not having sex, he said, “They do tend to add heat to certain situations.”

  Her eyes widened.

  He was an idiot. He had to stop thinking about her. Especially now that there was fire, and he had work to do elsewhere.

  And also a sexy distraction who would absolutely never be a part of his real life.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been in the attic, inspecting the duct work, when her voice startled him.

  “How bad is it?”

  He jumped at the sound and ended up falling over a stack of boxes, spilling a couple of them. He hadn’t heard her come up. He knelt and started cleaning up the mess as he spoke. “The ductwork looks like it was replaced within the last few years. Most people just clean that out with a system upgrade, so even if the entire furnace had been replaced, I’d expect this to be older. I don’t know why you were given a high estimate on this part. This is basic maintenance at best.” He glanced up. “There are other ways to make it…more…efficient.” He frowned. He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

  She walked over to him, or not so much him as the box he’d been refilling, and knelt on the floor next to him. “Oh my gosh.”

  “What? I didn’t break anything.” She hadn’t glanced his way since joining him on the floor, so he wasn’t even sure she remembered he was there.

  “The stockings.”

  He glanced at the side of the box. It had kitchen scrawled on the side. The contents had been…decidedly un-kitcheny. In fact, he wasn’t sure what the contents were. She’d said stockings, but all he saw was a pile of dingy red material. And now actual tears were falling.

  He peered at the folded stack of fabric.

  “I thought these had been thrown out,” she said, her voice a bit wobbly.

  He watched as she lifted each one in turn. Christmas stockings. He saw that now. One by one she unfolded them. Edith. Davis. Eddie. Claire, the names read. “Eddie was my uncle,” she said. “My mom’s brother. Edith and Davis are my parents.”

  He did a mental double take when the name clicked. “Davis Henley was your father?” The man had driven race cars for a living. He had been pushing fifty and still racing at the time of his death. Liam didn’t follow the sport, but he knew of Davis Henley. Everyone did.

  She stared, finally out of her daze. “How did you put that together?”

  “You told me upon my arrival that your last name was Henley.”

  “I forgot about that,” she admitted. “Stevens was my mother’s maiden name, so I use it professionally. Needless to say, I didn’t want to advertise who I was out there. I wanted to get by on my own merit, not on my father’s fame. And when I came back here, I wanted to leave that whole professional identity behind.” She picked up his stocking. “Ironic he died going speed limit in a school zone, isn’t it?”

  “They were together, weren’t they?” He remembered hearing about the accident at the time of her parents’ deaths. He was surprised all that hadn’t been dragged up alongside the runaway bride nonsense.

  “Yep. Gone in an instant because a guy in a truck couldn’t be bothered to slow down. I guess I should be grateful for that. That they didn’t feel anything, I mean, but all those weekend races my heart was in my throat, and he was killed going twenty-five-miles an hour.” She took a shaky breath. “And these…I thought these were gone.”

  “Do you want to bring them downstairs?” he asked gently.

  “They used to hang on either side of the mantle. Two on each far edge so we didn’t have to worry about the fire. And there were real boughs all over the place, and they were tied with wide ribbons in silver and gold.” She paused, tracing the letters on the stocking that bore her name. “I remember the year I turned sixteen, I was shopping with my mom and saw this ring that just took my breath. It was simple, really. Just two twisted bands of silver, almost like a rope, but just beautiful. I begged for it, and my mom said no.”

  She smiled and wiped a tear from her eye. “Christmas morning, she asked me if I got everything I wanted. Of course I said yes, having no idea she’d put the ring in my stocking. She just put it in there by itself, without the box, hoping I’d be more surprised without that telltale clue, but there was a gap in the stitching in the toe she hadn’t noticed, and I guess the ring fell through. We spent hours looking but never found it. It probably rolled right into the fire.”

  Liam didn’t care much about jewelry, but damned if he didn’t ache for that ring.

  “The stockings and the live boughs and the decorations, they were so beautiful. And the tree…” She wiped her eyes with a shaking hand.

  “We’ll get your tree up tonight,” he said. It felt like such an empty gesture. It couldn’t possibly give back what she’d lost.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, a bit shakily. “I don’t know why I’m so emotional. It’s been so long. You think I’d be over it by now.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “You don’t get over loving someone, or missing them when they’re gone.”

  “I know. After all these years.” She pushed away from him a bit abruptly, leaving him blinking while she drew to her feet. “I need to go check on the stew.”

  “What about the stockings?”

  “They’re a mess,” she said. “Just leave them.”

  She walked quickly across the attic, her boots echoing against the hardwood floor. He waited until her footsteps faded, then pulled out his phone and took pictures of the stockings. They weren’t in terrible shape, but a few chewed spots indicated rodents may have gotten to them. The stitching had come loose in places, and they were dirty. After he finished taking pictures, he folded the stockings back into the box and circled the attic until he found a signal. Then he sent the pictures to his mom with a text.

  Think you can fix these?

  He didn’t doubt for a second that she could. He’d have to get Claire to take him into town so he could overnight them to the city. And then send them back, because he needed his distance. He needed it five minutes ago, because she’d hit him right in the feels talking about her parents and family Christmases and things that had nothing to do with the duct work or the job or staying professional. To that end, he was better off leaving the stockings in the attic, just like she wanted, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Once he had the thought that he could give her back a small part of what she missed, he knew it was something
he had to do.

  Just like finishing the job and leaving.

  Screw the bet. He didn’t need to see her again. He needed to get away from mixed emotions and wanting what he couldn’t have and feeling what he shouldn’t.

  He needed to get the hell away from her.

  Yesterday.

  Chapter Ten

  By the time he and Claire had finished sweeping the snow off the tree, it was late afternoon. Liam was surprised to see a plow had actually cleared the road to the lodge. Claire had a perfectly intact four-wheel drive truck that would have easily handled the fresh snow—maybe even better than the packed ice that was left after the plow went through—but a layer of ice had melted from the snow and made driving dangerous.

  The plow driver had stopped in to make sure she was okay, and she’d offered him a bowl of stew. They’d sat there chatting over it like old friends, and when he left, it was with a full thermos of coffee, with Claire standing on the porch waving like they were all in one of those schmaltzy movies.

  Meanwhile, Liam was left staring down a truck-crushing spruce that needed to somehow go through the front door. He sincerely hoped in that twenty-four hours since the tree had hit the ground—or, rather, his hood—that any creatures that might have been living in it had taken a hike. He hadn’t noticed any while brushing off snow, but that didn’t mean anything. Stanley sure hadn’t bothered to hit the bricks.

  “What are you thinking?” Claire asked. She stood beside him, the expression on her face reflecting none of his concern over getting that thing through the door.

  “That you’re probably going to want to cut ten feet off the bottom to get it in the lodge. And for future reference, I don’t think you’re supposed to ask men what they’re thinking. It’s never the touchy-feely stuff like women want it to be.”

  “Clearly not. Your thoughts are murderous.”

  He gave her a blank look. “Are you not the one who cut down this tree?”

  “Yeah,” she shot back with impassioned defiance. “But I’m not asking to dismember it.”

  He had a feeling that blank look of his hadn’t gone anywhere. “Okay, you’re going to have to help me pull. And I can’t guarantee there won’t be a loss of life or limb, considering the size of these bottom branches.” They were the size of entire trees, some of them, and he had no idea how Claire expected Liam to finagle them sideways through the front door of the lodge.