Home for the Holidays

by Leanne Banks

  “Granted.”

  “Besides, mongrels are a recognized breed. I know I can spot one every time.”

  “Yeah, but can you name the ingredients?”

  “We’re not talking recipes here. At least Goldie’s babies probably won’t have the usual genetic flaws from overbreeding.”

  “Granted,” he said once more. “Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be flaw-free.”

  “I know,” she said and sighed. “I’ll think about that tomorrow…or the next day.”

  “Merry Christmas, Scarlet,” he said softly, laughter lacing his baritone drawl.

  His hip was pressing against hers and the weight of his arm was burning a brand across her shoulder. “You know what?” she exclaimed, feeling compelled to break the spell of intimacy. “I’m starving! How much longer do you think we need to stay here?”

  “I’ll check with Highway Patrol, but don’t get your hopes up.” When he eased his arm away, she wanted to snatch it back. “Little Mama needs some time to recuperate, anyway.”

  Feeling the cold again, she wrapped her arms around her body. “It’s Christmas Eve. Back at the house they’re all pigging out on ham and barbecue and mince pie, and I don’t even have a stick of bubble gum.”

  “Whine, whine, whine,” he teased. “I got you in out of the rain, didn’t I?”

  He unfolded his length and stood as she flopped onto her back on the army blanket. From her perspective he looked enormously tall. His damp jeans clung to his body, delineating his masculinity in a way that took her breath away. Tired and hungry she might be; she’d have to have been dead not to notice.

  “Did you have lunch?” she called after him.

  “Chili dog.”

  “I hate you.”

  “No, you don’t.” His smile didn’t help either.

  But the empty feeling inside her wasn’t entirely due to hunger. She’d tasted everything on her plate at breakfast, and had planned to grab something in the food court for lunch. “No, I don’t,” she whispered.

  “Hang in there, I’ve got just the thing.” She watched him walk stiffly toward the truck. Now that the rain had almost stopped there was a faint glimmer of daylight outside, but it was fading fast. She didn’t know how long the batteries in his lantern would last, but she didn’t relish spending the night in a pitch-dark barn that was probably home to more than one variety of rodent.

  On the other hand, with Joe to keep her company…

  “Here you go,” he said, handing her a flat gift-wrapped box. “Mom won’t begrudge you a few pieces once I explain how her Christmas chocolates saved a woman from starvation.”

  “Candy?” Ann Elise sat up and reached for the gaudy box. “Oh, I shouldn’t,” she murmured, ripping off red foil, gold ribbons and the inner cellophane cover. Lifting the top, she stared down at the contents. “Fondants, nougats, almonds, cherries… Oh, my mercy, I don’t know where to start.”

  “Start at the southwest corner and work your way northeast,” he suggested dryly. Crossing his long legs, he lowered himself beside her again and reached for a foil-wrapped morsel. “No more than three at a time, though—then wait for your blood sugar to adjust, okay?”

  “I’m in heaven,” she crooned, biting into a chocolate covered cherry.

  Joe reached over and switched off the lantern. “We might need the batteries more later,” he said. A watery shaft of daylight slanted through the wide, west-facing doorway. Even after the rain ended it would take a while for the water to go down. By contrast, the barn felt warm and cozy. “How long, do you think?” she asked, licking chocolate from her fingertips.

  “How long for what, your blood sugar?”

  “For the water to go down. Oops.”

  “Sloppy,” Joe teased and used his thumb to catch the cherry liqueur that dribbled onto her chin. Earlier, he’d shared his antibacterial liquid soap with her, but the towels had all been used up, so he did the next best thing. He licked it off.

  And then, because her lips were so close to his, and because she was feeling mellow and disassociated from reality, she kissed him. He let her have control for all of ten seconds before he took over.

  It was better than any chocolate. Slow and languorous because they were both exhausted. Sweet and rife with old memories—on her part, at least. His lips eased away, and he murmured something that sounded like, “Not again,” and she rolled into his arms, trapping him on the old army blanket on the pile of ancient hay, in the dark, deserted barn.

  Other than a few near misses and a single relationship that had ended by mutual consent, Ann Elise was inexperienced. She refused to let it stand in her way now. If she let this chance go by she knew she’d spend the rest of her life regretting it.

  This time Joe was in command. He kissed her lips, her temples, her eyes, exploring slowly, as if determined not to leave any part of her face unkissed. By the time he found her mouth again she was all but catatonic, a puddle of throbbing desire.

  “Could you possibly…please…make love to me?” she whispered. Cheeks flaming, she hid her face in his throat, waiting for a response that didn’t come immediately. Tomorrow I’ll move to the Australian Outback and never, ever have to face him again, she thought desperately.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “You want me to beg? All right, I’m begging.”

  Instead of replying, he kissed her again, and this time there was nothing exploratory about it. This time it was purely carnal. He tasted of chocolate, and so did she. He smelled earthy and damp and sexy, with only the faintest medicinal hint of the antibacterial soap. If he’d smelled like old shoes she would have wanted him anyway, because he was Joe. And rational or not, she had always wanted him. Joe and Ann Elise, the two went together like—like grits and gravy.

  Brushing her hair from her face, he kissed her eyelids and then her nose. He kissed each corner of her mouth, and then eased her lips apart once more with his tongue. This time, the chocolate was all used up. This time, it was pure Joe she tasted.

  And that was only the beginning.

  “Might be scratchy,” he said, tugging her damp cashmere sweater over her head. He had spread the wool blanket over the straw pile a few feet away from where Goldie and her litter dozed fitfully.

  For Joe, she’d have lain on a bed of nails. She waited until he’d stripped off his flannel shirt, then reached for him. In the near dark, she could barely see his silhouette, yet every cell in her body recognized the man who had evolved from the boy she’d fallen in love with so long ago.

  He stroked her cheek, then his hand moved down her throat and found her breast. She wasn’t overly endowed—in fact, she barely had enough to cleave, yet she could almost feel her breast swelling to fit his palm. Magic…sheer magic.

  And this time, she wasn’t dreaming.

  “I, um—I have protection, but it’s in the truck.”

  She said, “Hurry,” and held him back. Ann Elise the pragmatist reminded her that they needed to be sensible, but Ann Elise the dreamer of impossible dreams whispered that if he left her now, he might never return. She didn’t have fourteen more years to waste.

  He slipped from her restraining hands and she caught a single glimpse of his naked body silhouetted against a gray-gold sky. I can’t believe what I’m about to do, she thought wildly. Then she wondered why he carried protection in his truck, picturing hurried couplings on a blanket spread hastily over the truck bed before remembering that he’d left his wallet there before wading out into the creek.

  Of course he carried protection. All men did, unless they were celibate or married. Or stupid.

  He was none of the above—which set her to wondering about the women he must have known. Was he was currently involved? Did he have a sweetheart? Lovers in the plural?

  Was this going to be a one-night stand?

  What else could it possibly be?

  She was drowning in second thoughts by the time he came back, but then he knelt beside her again
, and it was too late. It had been too late fourteen years ago, when she’d been a high school graduate and he’d been an overgrown, sexy boy.

  No promises, she thought fleetingly. If this is all I can have, it will still be the best Christmas ever.

  While the dark clouds moved eastward and the sun settled into the west, he made love to her. By the time he braced his hands on either side of her body, leaned over and brushed his lips across hers, back and forth, dragging like damp velvet, she was drowning in need, desperate with a hunger that blocked out all hope of rational thought.

  Her hands stroked his back, moved down to his narrow hips and pressed him closer to where she needed him most. “Please,” she begged.

  “Easy, easy, we’ll get there.” Sweet, patient Joe.

  She didn’t want sweetness and patience, she wanted him! She wanted release from this driving, mindless hunger!

  Curling downward, her fingertips scraped across his nipples. He sucked in a shuddering breath and she felt tension rip through his lean body. Positioned over her, yet still not quite touching her, he radiated heat like a furnace.

  Supporting his weight on one arm, he reached down and found her. “Ah, sweet—I can’t wait much longer,” he groaned.

  “Yes! No—just…please,” she begged. She, who had never begged in her life, was begging a man to make love to her.

  I love you, love you, love you…

  The words echoed silently down the canyons of her mind as he entered her, found the core of her heat, and enflamed her with an escalating, mind-destroying desire that had her crying his name.

  He was incredibly gentle. Sensitive to needs she was hardly aware of having. How could she have imagined such an all-consuming urgency? Without Joe’s deliberate pacing, she would have gone up in flames the instant he touched her. While her inner storm had her clinging and pleading, with the small portion of her mind still capable of rational thought, she realized that he was exerting almost superhuman control.

  He moved slowly, thrusting, lingering, withdrawing, while fire gnawed at her center, blazing up, burning down only to flare up again. The powerful arms that supported his weight trembled. Her hands slipped on his sweat-slick flesh. He tasted her mouth, lowered his face to suckle her breasts, and she knew the instant he went over the edge.

  Straining over her, he rode her wildly, fiercely, the sound of his breath like tearing canvas in the silence around them. She might have screamed—

  She never screamed.

  But then, it had never been like this before.

  He collapsed on her, the full weight of his trembling body echoing the beat of his thudding heart. Still reeling from a pleasure so profound it was almost pain, she held him to her. She could scarcely breathe, but she would have held him forever if Goldie hadn’t chosen that moment to intrude.

  “Something just nudged my foot,” she whispered. “Was it you?”

  “Just a rat, go to sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep with a locomotive lying on top of me.” Keep it light, she warned herself silently. Don’t tell him how you feel, he never bargained for that.

  “You implying I’m heavy?”

  “Well, all that candy…”

  “Mmm, I never realized chocolate was such an aphrodisiac.” He adjusted his weight so that he was mostly lying beside her instead of on top of her. The moment he did, she wanted to drag him back and start all over again.

  “Joe, something just licked my foot,” she whispered.

  His teeth gleamed in the darkness as he grinned at her. “Well now, if you want to play that kind of game, I’m your man. But I think we’re being called on to baby-sit.” He sat up, and reluctantly, so did she.

  Goldie stood, stepped carefully over her nest of squirming babies and left, glancing over her shoulder just once before disappearing into the gloomy dusk. “She trusts us,” Ann Elise said, feeling around for her clothes.

  “Smart dog. You all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right,” she said airily. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “No reason. Just checking.”

  Ann Elise felt around for her sweater. Joe handed her his shirt, and she put on that instead. For the time being, it would do. He found her bra and held it out and she snatched it from him.

  Joe shrugged and reached for his jeans. Back to business as usual, he thought, wondering if he’d just proved himself to be the world’s biggest fool. A single kiss more years ago that he cared to remember had pretty much ruined him for other girls. He’d dated a few, sure, because that’s what boys his age did, hormones being what they were. But even when he’d gone from “dating girls” to “seeing women,” he’d never quite been able to forget the vulnerable girl he’d discovered hiding behind freckles, glasses and a thick layer of shyness disguised as pride.

  His first year out of college he’d drifted into a relationship with a schoolteacher that had nearly led to marriage. Fortunately, Mary had felt something lacking and had broken things off before they could go too far. Later he heard she’d moved east, married a Coast Guardsman and started on a family.

  As for him, he’d been too busy establishing and keeping up with a thriving veterinary practice, not to mention running the ranch and looking after his increasingly dependent parents, to worry about what he might be missing. Only lately had he stopped to wonder if life was passing him by. At twenty-nine, he was still young, but by nature he was probably too set in his ways to settle down with a wife and raise a family, even if he could have found a woman he liked enough who would have him.

  This is a fluke, he warned himself, hanging back to watch Ann Elise lift each pup, check the gender and do a quick examination in the dim light provided by the lantern. She’d be leaving in a few days, going back to her fancy big-city practice and her fancy big-city friends. They might happen to share a profession and a few memories, but that’s all they shared.

  For all he knew, she might not even remember the night of the prom, when a wet-behind-the-ears kid had risked being arrested for driving without a license just to spare a shy upperclassman from being humiliated. He had threatened to beat the tar out of any jerk who even whispered that the whole thing had been a setup, a big joke. That Billy had never intended to show up, even if he hadn’t gotten hauled in for shoplifting.

  Hell of a lot of water had passed over the dam since then.

  And over the highway.

  Chapter 6

  “Five little boys, including the runt—and four big, pretty girls,” Ann Elise announced, examining a limp lump of grayish fur that promised to be wiry. “Oh, look at this darling, already she’s got personality.”

  “With those genes, she’ll need it,” Joe said, amused.

  Reluctantly she restored the whelp to its mother. “All sorely in need of the usual, of course. I suspect Mama’s been on her own for some time now.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Battle scars, worms—no sign of a recent collar, so it’s anyone’s guess about her shots.” Joe was doing his best to sound nonchalant when that was the last thing he felt, seeing her kneeling beside the tarp-full of whelps, bare from the thighs down. Even her feet were sexy—long and narrow, with high arches and small pink toes.

  You’ve lost it, man. “I called Highway Patrol—some of the roads are clear now. Anytime you’re ready to give it a go, we’ll start loading up cargo.”

  For a long time she didn’t answer. She just looked at him in a way that put him immediately on the defensive. “Unless you want to spend the night and try in the morning,” he added lamely.

  “Sure, why not?” Standing, she looked around for her sweater and jeans.

  “What, go or stay?” Great. As if it hadn’t been bad enough before, now he’d had to go and complicate things, squared and in triplicate.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” she muttered.

  Turning away, she managed to wriggle into her bra without taking off his shirt, then she peeled off the shirt, flung it at him and tugged her stained and baggy sweater over her
head. It hadn’t improved over the past few hours. He didn’t know if you could bleach something like that or not, but those mud stains were going to be tough to get out.

  She should have looked like hell. Instead, she looked like one of those leggy fashion models with her skinny, shapeless tunic and her tousled hair.

  Well, hell.

  “Where’re my jeans?” she muttered.

  He pulled on his shirt, still warm from her body—still smelling faintly of whatever fragrance she’d started out the day with, overlaid with nuances of sex and dog.

  She found her jeans and wriggled into them, then jammed her feet into her muddy boots. “Those pups don’t need to be in the back of any truck,” she said, daring him to argue.

  “I’ll make room in the cab.”

  She picked up the lantern and looked around the dark barn for anything they might have left. Ignoring her, he collected the blanket and slung it over his shoulder. Two could play the game of cool.

  Goldie trotted back inside, shook herself and went immediately to her babies, sniffing each one to make sure no one had been fooling around while her back was turned.

  After sending them an accusing look over a matted golden shoulder, she circled and settled down. “Make a place,” Ann Elise said, “then we can start transporting the pups. She might not be happy about it, but she’ll follow.”

  Joe waited until the menagerie was installed in the back of his crew cab, then he said, “I need to make a stop on the way. I think I might know who she belongs to.”

  Sitting stiffly beside him, Ann Elise waited a full minute before answering. “Whoever it is, doesn’t deserve her. I’ll take her with me.”

  “To Dallas? Ten might blow your lease.”

  She lifted her chin, but refused to look at him. “Of course not. Baker’s Acres is large enough.”

  He happened to know that was the name she’d given her uncle’s place when they’d first moved to Mission Creek from Corpus Christi. Not many acres remained, but it was still a lot bigger than a city apartment, unless it happened to open onto a park.