When the tree toppled, Dag bent over, picked it up with one hand and held it in the air as if it were a trophy. “Another brother and a Christmas tree for Shannon Duffy all in one day!” he shouted in victory.
“Let’s just get the tree home where there’s heat!” Shannon said in response, pretending that Dag didn’t generate that for her all on his own.
The remainder of the afternoon went into building a stand for the tree, after which Shannon and Dag joined everyone else at the loft where Hadley had made a dinner of beef stew.
And as much as Shannon enjoyed having so many people around her and being included in the large extended family, tonight she was eager to get away from them all, to get back to the apartment.
Only to put up her Christmas tree, she told herself. It wasn’t merely another evening alone with Dag that had her antsy.
Except that visions of Christmas decorations weren’t dancing through her head.
Regardless of how much she denied it, it was still Dag who was firmly on her mind….
“That’s what you were doing in town—buying lights and tinsel and ornaments for my tree? I thought I was just using whatever Logan and Chase had left over,” Shannon said when she and Dag finally got to the apartment Thursday evening and Dag brought in two sacks full of Christmas decorations that he’d purchased that morning.
“It isn’t much. But while you and Chase were talking to Ian Kincaid, I got the bug to go pick up a few things. This stuff will all get used somewhere again next year, so what’s the harm?”
There wasn’t any harm. In fact it was another nice thing he’d done for her. Another nice, thoughtful thing.
“Let me at least pay for them,” she offered.
“Nah. This close to the big day everything was on closeout. Consider it part of your Christmas gift.”
“Part of my Christmas gift? You got me a Christmas gift?” Shannon couldn’t resist saying.
Dag grinned. “Santa brings everybody a Christmas gift,” he answered with a wink as he hunkered down to make a fire before they got started.
Try to keep a lid on it, Shannon warned herself when her eyes followed him to the hearth, devouring the sight of him much the way she had that afternoon.
But she wasn’t sure she could.
After cutting down the tree and making the stand for it, they’d gone their separate ways to get ready for the evening. For Shannon that had meant a shower and shampoo to get the sawdust off her.
It had also meant some special attention to curling her hair into loose waves around her face, into applying fresh makeup and into opting for her tightest jeans and a teal-green turtleneck that also conformed to her curves. A turtleneck sweater that she’d buttoned up all the way to her chin but that stopped at the exact spot the jean’s waistband began so that if she raised her arms the slightest bit, she flashed a hint of skin—unless she wore a tank top underneath it, which she usually did. Except tonight…
Dag had showered, as well. He’d also changed into clean jeans that were low on his hips. And tonight, rather than wearing one of the thermal T-shirts underneath a second shirt, Dag had on the thermal T-shirt alone—a white crewnecked thermal knit that fit like a second skin and left no question that his V-shaped torso was all lean muscle and sinew.
And the fact that he had the long sleeves pushed to his elbows and she could see his forearms? Who would ever believe that one look at those forearms could send a tiny tingle along the surface of her own skin? But it did.
He’d also shaved again before dinner, and combed his hair, and he smelled of that cologne that she attributed to him and him alone. And altogether Shannon knew it was not going to be easy to keep a lid on anything when it came to Dag.
Once the fire was made they went to work on the tree, using an end table to elevate it. All the while they did the job, Dag sang in a surprisingly good voice, making Shannon laugh because his own made-up versions of the old favorite Christmas carols were sometimes a little raunchy and always irreverent.
And when the tree was finished he brought out a bottle of wine he’d also gotten in town that morning, opened it and poured them each a glass.
Then he turned off all the lights so the apartment was illuminated only by the fire’s glow and the tiny twinkling white lights on the tree.
They’d taken off their wet shoes when they’d come in and they sat together in the center of the sofa again, only tonight they were slumped down, both pairs of stockinged feet on the coffee table, heads resting on the back of the couch—to sip wine and look at their handiwork.
“Sooo…I’ve been wondering about something,” Dag said then.
“What?”
“Well, you’ve mentioned wanting a bigger life a couple of times, but it occurred to me that I’m not quite sure what exactly makes up your idea of that. Is it traveling around the world in a hot air balloon? Climbing Mount Everest? Wiping out illiteracy for all time?”
Shannon laughed. “Traveling, yes—but not necessarily around the whole world, just the parts I’d like to see with my own eyes. And definitely not in a hot air balloon, a plane would be just fine. And forget Mount Everest, Montana is cold enough for me. Sure, I’d like to wipe out illiteracy for all time, but I’m happy sending one kindergarten class a year on to first grade with the basics. It isn’t as if I have grandiose visions.”
“What, then?”
“I guess I mean bigger as in broader—not isolated, with more options, more choices for everything. I don’t want to always be the person looking at other people’s pictures and hearing other people’s stories, I want pictures of my own to show, stories of my own to tell. I don’t dream of being the first woman to walk on Mars, but I want to be having experiences, not just watching them on TV.”
“You want more freedom than your parents had, more than you had, since you had to take care of them. Up until very recently, your life was bound to theirs.”
Shannon hadn’t thought of herself as bound to her parents’ life, but now that Dag put it into that perspective, she knew she had been.
“You’re right,” she said. “And in a lot of ways, to me, I guess having a bigger life means the kind of freedom most people have and take for granted. It doesn’t necessarily have to be full of fanfare, it just has to be…I don’t know, life not lived in a cocoon.”
“Like the cocoon of a small town.”
“A small town does seem cocoonlike,” she agreed.
And she knew that appealed to Dag. But for some reason, tonight, highlighting where they differed seemed depressing. Thinking beyond what they had right then, alone together, talking, enjoying the wine and the fire and the tree, brought her down. So she changed the subject. “Now, what I’ve been wondering about is if you really did date a circus performer….”
Dag laughed out loud, heartily, happily, with that barrel-chested laugh he had. And just the sound of it made her smile and chased away any doldrums that had threatened.
“You’re wondering if I really dated a circus performer because of my safety-net-tightrope-walker crack last night?” he clarified. “As a matter of fact, I did date a circus performer, and she was a tightrope walker. And a contortionist.”
“Oh, dear…” Shannon said, thinking that that was a lot to compete with. If she were competing… “Isn’t that every man’s dream?” she asked. “Being with a contortionist?”
“I don’t know about every man’s dream, but I know it got me some high-fives in the locker room. I just didn’t admit that I never got her into bed.”
“That’s not an image I want to think about,” Shannon confessed, laughing herself. Then she persisted with what she’d actually been curious about. “But what about serious relationships other than the last one that got you battered—have you had any?”
“Serious? Two, I guess. If serious means thinking and talking about marriage but not actually getting to the engaged phase.”
“But close to it?”
“Both times were after a long while of dating�
�one for a year, the other for almost two—when the women I was involved with decided that was enough of the dating—”
“They proposed to you?”
“Proposed? No, it was more like ultimatums—marry me or we’re done.”
“So you were done?”
Dag shrugged. “I didn’t have marrying kinds of feelings for them. I was sorry about it, sorry to have the relationships end because I liked both Steph and Trish and I enjoyed my time with them. But that’s just the way it was—when I tried to picture myself with them forever, I couldn’t do it. What about you? Anybody before the Rumson?”
“Two for me, too. But mine were both proposals.”
“Really…” he said, raising his eyebrows at her. “And assuming you said no both of those times, too, the Rumson made it three guys you turned down? Are you allergic to marriage?”
“No. The first one was my high school sweetheart—he didn’t have plans to go to college, he’d already gone through a mechanics training program and was going to work repairing cars as soon as we graduated. He wanted to get married then, too, thought having an apartment over a garage—like our apartment over the shoe repair shop—was the perfect setup and that was his goal—”
“Minus your parents’ poor health, he was inviting you to have the same life you had.”
“Except without the feelings my parents had for each other—I liked Trip, but that was as far as it went. And I wanted to go to college, and he didn’t want me to do that, so there was no way I was marrying him.”
“And the second guy?”
“I dated him in college. Lou. His family owns a factory that manufactures and sells some sort of cog that almost every piece of machinery uses. When he finished college he was set to be trained to take over for his father to run things—”
“Another bigwig?”
“Not on the level of the Rumsons, but Lou’s family is definitely well-off, so yes, I guess you could say he was another bigwig-in-the-making at least.”
“Offering another bigger life.”
“In Texas.”
“But your family needed you in Billings so you said no?” Dag guessed.
“My family needed me in Billings and I also didn’t have strong enough feelings for Lou to marry him—same as you and the contortionist.”
“The contortionist wasn’t one of my two other serious relationships. I told you that didn’t go anywhere.”
Shannon merely smiled. She’d just been giving him a hard time.
She finished her wine then and did a sit-up to put her glass on the coffee table before settling comfortably back alongside Dag again.
He did the same thing but when he sat back he turned slightly to his side so he could look at her. He also stretched an arm along the sofa behind her head.
“So let me see if I have this straight. Three proposals—two of them offering bigger lives—but what made you turn them all down was—”
“The same thing that made you turn down the two women you dated for long periods of time but didn’t want to make a commitment to—the way I felt about them. Or, actually, the way I didn’t feel about them. There was nothing really wrong with any of them. But with every one of them, if I went a week or two without seeing them, I was okay with it.”
And yet with Dag she didn’t seem to be okay with even a few hours without seeing him or talking to him…
She couldn’t let that mean anything, she told herself.
“And the bottom line,” Dag summarized, “is that bigger life or not—in any form—you won’t accept less than what your folks had together.”
Shannon shrugged. “My parents truly, truly loved each other. And as sappy as it may sound, after seeing that, after witnessing with my own two eyes that that kind of love does exist, it’s something I have to hold out for.”
Dag nodded his understanding but Shannon had the impression that there was something he wanted to say yet wasn’t.
“What?” she asked. “You don’t believe that kind of love exists?”
“I’m just wondering…”
“About?”
“Well, we can’t count the high school kid because he wasn’t offering the feelings or a bigger life. But with the other two guys you haven’t had much trouble turning down the bigger life because the feelings weren’t there. What happens if the feelings come without the bigger life?”
How had they gotten back on this subject she hadn’t wanted to talk about?
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you’re kind of harshing my buzz—”
Dag laughed again. “That’s not what I had in mind!”
“I know. But here we are, with the Christmas tree and the fire and the wine and—”
“Maybe you’d rather hear more about the contortionist,” he said, obviously getting the message. “Shall I tell you how she once got me out of a speeding ticket by dislocating her toes and telling the cop I was rushing her to the hospital because she’d broken her foot?”
“Oh, no! Stop!” Shannon said in horror, closing her eyes as if to block out the vision.
When she opened them again it was to Dag studying her and smiling a small, secret smile. Then he said, “What does it mean if I hate not seeing you for even a few hours?” he asked then, echoing her own thought of moments earlier.
“That you’re really, really bored and need a hobby?”
He shook his handsome head as if he’d considered that, but then he said, “Nope, I don’t think so….”
She knew that her own craving to be with him didn’t come out of boredom, either, but she was afraid to think about what it might mean that every minute she was away from him was spent wishing she wasn’t.
Then he came nearer and kissed her. And she recognized one of the reasons she craved being with him—because for the second time, the moment their lips met she felt an overwhelming sense of well-being, of euphoria, of just plain gladness that still didn’t dampen the sheer excitement that kissing him flooded her with.
Shannon raised a hand to the side of his chiseled face as she answered his kiss, parting her lips, kissing him in return, welcoming his tongue when it came.
He was braced on his side, on one elbow, but with that hand he took hers where it rested on the sofa cushion, holding it while he wrapped his other arm around her and turned her more toward him.
And while Shannon knew it was probably not wise, her knee bent and her leg drifted over his.
That definitely lit a match to the kiss—mouths opened wider and tongues played with more fervor, more daring and audacity.
Shannon’s hand went from the side of Dag’s face along the unyielding column of his neck to his shoulder, to his chest, encased in the waffly weave of that thermal shirt.
Had his nipple grown slightly hard at her touch? The idea made her smile inside. And it made her own nipples tighten into much more adept little knots in memory of his hands on them last night. His mouth…
And if her own mouth opened a bit wider beneath his at just that thought? If her tongue met his more boldly? If a new hunger erupted in that kiss? She couldn’t help it.
Not that Dag seemed to mind—he gave as good as he got in the joust they were toying at, and then he did her one better still, and brought his hand from her back to the side of her waist where it took nothing to find his way under that short sweater to bare skin.
His hand was warm, slightly calloused, so, so strong. He did a light massage of her side, racking her with memories of what he could do to more sensitive parts of her. Parts of her that were straining against her bra, her sweater, pining for his attention.
She demonstrated, pressing her fingers into his pectoral, releasing only to press again, inspiring a throaty chuckle from him.
Then his tongue changed to playful, instigating a little cat and mouse before he ended that kiss altogether and said, “I can’t go home in the state I was in last night.”
Her own unmet yearnings of the previous evening had been all she’d thought about. She hadn’t
considered what condition he might have been left in.
But now here they were again, and the choice was clear-cut—either they stopped before this went any further, or they didn’t stop at all….
And stopping the previous evening had been bad enough.
Shannon kissed him again, a long, lingering, sensuous-but-not-sexy kiss, while her mind spun.
Before, she’d been worried and unsettled by the primal, out-of-control side he’d unveiled in her. The side that she could feel fighting to be unleashed again.
Before, she’d found willpower in reminding herself that they wanted different things.
But tonight…
Tonight she couldn’t find the inclination to summon any kind of control.
Tonight she just kept kissing him and thinking that this wasn’t her entire future or her whole life. That it wasn’t his entire future or his whole life, either. That this was just now. One night. Christmastime. With a man who made her feel things she’d never felt before. Things she didn’t want to leave behind without exploring them all…
“Maybe you just shouldn’t go home…” she whispered in a moment’s pause between kissing him and having him kiss her back—but with some reserve. A reserve that remained even as she felt his lips stretch into a smile.
Then his head reared away from that kiss altogether and he peered down into her eyes. “Are you sure about that?” he asked skeptically in a low, husky voice.
“I am,” she confirmed, rubbing her foot against his calf.
Dag continued to study her, to read her expression as if real assurance could only be there.
And maybe he found what he was looking for, because after a moment he smiled a small smile and said, “And Rumson—you’re sure you’re done with him? It’s over? Finished? History for you?”
The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride Page 15
