Rich Rancher for Christmas

by Sarah M. Anderson

  But CJ wasn’t interested in Zeb’s version of revenge. Beaumonts weren’t to be trusted, so he had walked away.

  He remembered something now. Zeb had given a press conference where he’d talked about the brewery being back in Beaumont hands. Natalie had covered it. In fact, she had been the one to get the final piece of information out of Zeb that no one else had—that there was a third bastard out there somewhere.

  She was nothing if not tenacious.

  “What will you do, now that you know?” He would have to face whatever was coming head-on—but he didn’t want this to be a runaway train that plowed him down.

  “My ratings are slipping. My job is on the line and I don’t know how to do anything else,” she told him in a small voice. “I told my producer I would find you and if I don’t, he’ll pull me off the air.” He could feel her curling into a ball, getting smaller. He drank the rest of his cocoa, set his cup to the side and wrapped both arms around her. “I don’t know what I am if I’m not Natalie Baker.”

  He lifted her up and settled her onto his lap. He shouldn’t want to comfort her because she was going to ruin everything. No, that wasn’t right. She was going to change everything and that was a different thing entirely.

  But, as he ran his hand up and down her back, he wondered if maybe it wasn’t time for a change.

  “I still don’t want to be your headline. I’m not some celebrity you can package and resell. This is my life. I’m Bell and Pat Wesley’s son.”

  “You’re a good man, CJ.” Which was no kind of answer. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on and CJ thought maybe he didn’t really need an answer. Not right now.

  “I think you’re a good woman, too. When you’re not trying so hard to be someone else.”

  They sat there for a long time. CJ’s eyes grew heavy as the fire mesmerized him and the warmth of her body sank deep into his bones.

  Just as he was about to slip off to sleep, he thought he heard her whisper, “No, I’m not.”

  Seven

  “Natalie.”

  Natalie moaned, burrowing deeper into the warmth that surrounded her. Was it bright out? It seemed bright. She squeezed her eyes closed even tighter. She didn’t want to wake up.

  “Natalie,” the voice repeated again. This time, she was aware that the voice was low and very close to her ear.

  CJ. That was his voice. And those arms around her waist? Those were CJ’s arms. He was warm and comfortable and safe and she didn’t ever want to get up.

  Wait a minute. CJ’s arms were around her? And that warm, solid chest she was nestling against—that was CJ’s chest?

  Oh, hell. What had she done? She tried to think. Had they had sex? She couldn’t recall. And that seemed a shame because if she were going to have sex with CJ, she wanted to remember it.

  Something stroked over her forehead. “Why are you frowning?” And then something else touched her right where she undoubtedly had a divot. Something warm but wet.

  His lips.

  Oh, hell.

  “I hate to wake you, but we need to get up,” he said gently, his lips moving against her skin.

  Without moving, she tried to take stock. Her cheek was pressed against a sweater and her hand was resting on the same. Slowly, she wiggled her toes—her socks were still on. Were they fully clothed?

  She bit the bullet. “Is there any way to make this not awkward?”

  “Why would this be awkward?”

  At that, she cracked open an eye and stared up at him. He leaned back enough that he could look at her—but there was very little space between them. She realized her head was resting on his arm and his hand was stroking her hair. “Last night, we...”

  “Yes?”

  Her cheeks began to heat. “What did we do?”

  This close, that half smile was even more dangerous because all she would have to do to taste it would be to tilt his head down and press her lips against his. “We had cocoa in front of the fire. I might have been a little heavy with the peppermint schnapps, because we fell asleep.”

  Now she had both eyes open. She could see the distinctive flecks of green and brown in his. At a distance, they were hazel. But this close? She could see the two different parts that made one whole. “And that’s it?”

  It was his turn to wrinkle his brow. “Yeah.”

  She couldn’t believe it. This had to be a first. Any other time she had been incapacitated and alone with a man, she’d woken up in various states of undress and she never could remember if she’d said yes or no. It hadn’t mattered anyway. When she woke up with a man’s arms around her and the taste of him in her mouth, it’d always been proof that someone had wanted her and that was the most important thing. More important than the hollow feeling she always had as she pulled on her clothes and did the walk of shame.

  CJ was out-and-out frowning at her now. “I think you hang out with the wrong kind of people.” That was all he said about it, but it was enough. He understood what she hadn’t said.

  She couldn’t look at him and see confusion and maybe a little bit of anger. So she buried her face against his chest. “Do we have to get up?”

  “Only if you want heat and hot water,” he teased. “It’s going to be a beautiful day. We could actually leave the living room.”

  She took the change of topic and ran with it. “Even the kitchen, too?”

  He chuckled. The sound came straight out of his chest and surrounded her. “You crazy dreamer, you. Come on,” he said more insistently. “I have big plans for you today and tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.” With that, he leaned down and gave her a firm kiss on the forehead. But before she could kiss him back he forcibly sat her upright and all but rolled her off the couch. “Get moving!”

  He was just too damn decent. It wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t normal, she thought as she splashed cold water on her face in the bathroom. Anyone else would have pressed their advantage. She’d already come on to him once. She liked him. He was gorgeous as sin—but not a sinner. If he started kissing her, she wouldn’t have stopped him, regardless of how tipsy she might or might not have been.

  But it also seemed as if maybe he liked her, too. He hadn’t at first—that much had been obvious. But the longer they were trapped in this house together, the more relaxed he became. The more comfortable he became, the more he touched her—but not in a pushy way. She remembered the feeling of his arm around her shoulders as they stared out at the moonlit snowscape and how easy it had been curling up next to him and sipping the spiked hot chocolate on the couch. It had been warm and comfortable and safe. She hadn’t had to be someone else to keep his interest.

  And now he had big plans for her, and tomorrow night if they could make it to town on a snowmobile, he was going to be Santa for some sort of town party.

  Did she want to stay for this party? Because originally, he’d wanted someone to pick her up in town and take her far, far away. She wouldn’t get her car until the road was clear and she had no idea when that was going to happen.

  But who was going to come get her? Steve, her producer? Kevin? He would rather see her freeze to death so he could have her time slot. She doubted that a car service would come this far north to fetch her.

  The fact was, she had nowhere to go and no one waiting for her. The second fact was that the sooner she went back to Denver, back to her sleek apartment with black furniture and white walls and white carpeting—and not a single Christmas decoration in sight—the sooner she would be faced with another Christmas alone. She’d have to psych herself up to make her annual call to her father to wish him a merry Christmas and hope against hope that this time, he’d do the same.

  And the sooner she would have to face Steve and make some sort of decision about the third lost Beaumont bastard.

  Could she really do that to CJ? Could she drag him kicking and screaming into the public eye and subject him to the same sort of trolling that she dealt with every day? He didn’t deserve it and he didn’t want it. He w
as too good of a man to throw to the wolves because he wouldn’t defend himself. He was too damn polite to survive in her world. She knew it and she thought he knew it, too.

  She couldn’t hide out here forever, though—tempting as the idea was. She had obligations and sooner or later, she was going to have to decide.

  Was CJ her story? Or was he something else?

  Later, she decided. She would choose later.

  By the time she got out of the bathroom, CJ had grown three whole sizes. He was wearing a full-body snowsuit thing with a hood that made him look like a tan Abominable Snowman. “Good heavens. I suppose that crime against fashion is warm?”

  He laughed. “You’re more than welcome to brave the snow in that cute little coat of yours.” He held out another snowsuit.

  With an exaggerated sigh, she took it from him. “After you went to all that trouble to keep me from freezing to death once, I’d hate to undo your hard work.” The suit weighed a ton in her arms. “Good heavens,” she repeated, lugging the whole thing over to the couch.

  “It’s about sixteen degrees outside. I don’t want you to freeze,” he said. “Then I’d have to warm you up again.”

  Her head shot up. It wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it. The low timbre to his voice made her feel things in places hidden by far more than a snowsuit.

  “I didn’t think there was any hot water left,” she said carefully.

  “There are other ways to warm a body up.”

  Heat flooded her as she stared up at him. He shouldn’t be that sexy—not in that hideous snowsuit. But the way he looked at her, like he wanted to unwrap her for Christmas...

  She let her gaze drift over his body—the body that had been in her arms just a few short minutes ago. “Like how?”

  Because maybe she wanted to be unwrapped. Maybe she wanted him to peel every single one of the seven thousand layers of clothing off and lay her out in front of that fire. The only thing that was missing was a tree dripping in lights—but she could be his present and he could be hers. Outside of the white-elephant exchange at work every year, she hadn’t had a present to unwrap in...well, in a very long time.

  The muscle in his jaw twitched. “Shoveling snow will keep you plenty warm.”

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat and focused on shoving her legs into the massive snowsuit. “Is that what we’re doing?”

  “For starters. The snowmobile can go up to forty miles an hour. That’s a wind chill you don’t mess around with.”

  He held out something that looked like a stocking cap, but when Natalie took it, she felt neoprene instead. “I didn’t realize we were going to be robbing banks today,” she joked as she yanked it down over her hair.

  “With a face like yours, you could get away with robbing banks.” As he said it, CJ stepped into her. He tucked a few loose strands under the mask and tugged it down until it was in the right position. “No one would think someone as beautiful as you would be capable of it. They’d be falling all over themselves to give you money.”

  It didn’t seem possible, but he was entirely serious. His gaze was fastened on hers as his fingers stroked over the few inches of exposed skin on her cheeks. Then he was pulling the hood of the snowsuit over her ski mask and wrapping a scarf around the whole thing. “There,” he said with satisfaction as he stepped back to look at her. “You probably can’t put your arms down.”

  Natalie gave it a try and discovered she could—but only a little. She was beginning to sweat. She could safely say she had never had on this many layers before and she had lived almost her entire life in Denver. She wanted to go outside and see how weatherproof she was, but at the same time, she couldn’t quite pull herself away from CJ’s gaze.

  “Is there something wrong?” It was hard not to feel insecure about her looks when there was only a third of her face showing. No doubt, she looked lumpy and bumpy and the exact opposite of glamorous.

  The way CJ was looking at her, though... There was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday and she didn’t think it was solely due to the sunlight flooding the big house. “Nope,” he said, turning away and pulling his own ski mask over his head. “Let’s go see how bad it is.”

  It was pretty bad. They had to go out the front door because there was a five-foot-tall drift blocking the kitchen door. Even then, they still had to shovel their way off of the porch. Walking through this much snow was, hands down, the most intense cardio workout Natalie had ever had. It was like slogging through mud, only colder. If she hadn’t had CJ by her side, she might’ve panicked because how the hell was she ever going to leave? Even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave, she would have to go home at one point or another. But her car was nothing but a lump in the snow and the cold was so biting she could feel it slipping under the neoprene face mask.

  She could be out here until spring. And the thing was, she had no idea if that thought terrified her or not.

  She didn’t have time to figure it out, either, because all of a sudden, a snowball hit her in the arm. She whipped her head around to see CJ in the process of patting another ball of snow into a sphere.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she yelled, dropping her shovel and scooping up snow. She launched it at him before she even got it into a ball. It hit him in the chest and disintegrated with a pfft.

  “Hey,” he hollered—but he was laughing.

  They lobbed snowballs at each other—Natalie missed more often than not, but CJ had a good arm. Of course he did. He’d probably been having snowball fights and playing catch in the backyard with his dad for years. She hadn’t. She never even had a house with a yard. There was something so sweet about a snowball fight—sweeter still, that CJ went to great efforts not to hit her in the face.

  She was having fun. Honest-to-goodness fun. It was such a foreign concept she almost didn’t recognize it. Laughing, they made their way back to the side of the house, where CJ called a truce.

  The generator was housed in a small shed less than five feet from the back door. For a moment, Natalie felt guilty. If he hadn’t had to drag her woefully unprepared behind into his house and keep her from freezing to death, he would’ve been able to get the generator started already. But once the storm had hit, there was no getting out here.

  “Can you work on digging out the back door while I get into the shed?” CJ asked cautiously, as if he didn’t believe she knew how to move snow from one place to another.

  “Sure.” The air bit at her lungs and her nose was probably going to be permanently red after this, but beyond that, she was plenty warm. She had to trudge back and grab her shovel from where she had dropped it during the snowball fight. Then she got to work.

  She did spinning classes and Zumba and she ran—but nothing prepared her for shoveling five feet of snow. It was an intensive, full-body workout because the snow was a little wet. Which was good for snowballs, but made for heavy shoveling. Finally, she got the door cleared and then began working on meeting up where CJ had dug out the shed. He’d already disappeared inside of it and in a few minutes, she heard a whirring sound.

  She knew she should be thrilled that the power was back on. She could use a hot shower like nobody’s business. But that also meant that, if she and CJ didn’t have to stay in front of the fireplace for warmth, they could sleep in separate bedrooms. They wouldn’t have a good excuse to sit in front of the fire and lean against each other and drink spiked cocoa. They could go back to being more like themselves.

  The thought saddened her. But then she remembered that he had promised her Christmas movies once they got their chores done today.

  CJ emerged from the little shed and whistled in approval. “Great job. You ready to get to the barn? I need to feed my horses. They’re probably starved. Then we can get the snowmobile out.”

  Natalie nodded and they began trudging the hundred feet to the barn. The barn was cold, but not freezing. CJ showed her where the grain was and told her how many scoops to put in each bucket. Th
e horses pawed at the doors and CJ spoke to them in low, steady voices.

  “It’s going to be a while, boys,” he told them as he carried hay and filled water buckets. He didn’t even make fun of her when she jumped as one horse sniffed at her. “You ever been around horses before?”

  “No—I suppose that’s obvious. I really am just a city girl.”

  He could’ve made her feel stupid for not knowing what to do—but he didn’t. Instead, he gave her a reassuring grin and said, “You’re doing a great job.” And again, that was one of those things that could’ve been a load of bull—but coming from him, seemed one hundred percent sincere.

  They worked in the barn for almost an hour. CJ had six different horses and he spent time with each one of them. He clearly cared for his animals, which just confirmed that this was who he was as a person. He wasn’t acting all nice to her just because he wanted something from her. He simply was this nice.

  Again, guilt pinched her. Because if she made him her story to save her job, all this would change for him.

  She tried to tell herself that it wouldn’t last forever, him being a hot news item. Sure, he might be in for a long winter, but sooner or later, something would happen and CJ would no longer be the focus of the public’s attention. Perhaps someone would know something about Daniel Lee and there was always the upcoming birth of Zeb Richards’s baby to look forward to. Or one of the younger legitimate Beaumonts could do something crazy. Something would happen, she told herself, and CJ would fade away from the public’s awareness. Her ratings would be secure and her show would be safe.

  And after that...

  “Ready?” CJ asked. At some point, he had pushed his hood and ski mask down. Even bundled up like a snowman, he was too handsome.

  “Yes.” She had to be.

  At the far end of the barn was a bigger door and next to that, a room where three different snowmobiles sat. It took some work, but CJ got the biggest one out of the barn and up onto the top of the snow. It was unfortunate that he was wearing just as many layers as she was because she would’ve loved to have seen all those muscles in action.