by Erin Wright
He took a deep breath and turned his gaze to the dancing flames in the fireplace. “She was on the verge of leaving Dad again, when she found out she was pregnant. And with twins, to boot! She didn’t know how to care for three children by herself, so she reluctantly stayed, but it was rough. It was always rough. My parents were like oil and water, and are the reason that marriage and I…we’re just never gonna happen. After seeing what a bad one can do to you…well, I just won’t do it. Not for me.
“In 2002, winter came early and just stayed. Usually up here in the mountains, we’ll get an early snowstorm and then things warm up, and that repeats a few times before the snow really sticks for the winter. Not that year. It came and it stayed, and my mom slowly started going stir crazy. I was almost 13 and not the most observant or understanding teenage boy on the face of the planet, so I didn’t get what was happening to her.
“On Christmas Eve, my mom became bound and determined to go get milk. Sure, we were out, but we could’ve survived without it. We would’ve been fine. But there she was, out in the driveway, spinning donuts on the ice, plowing into the snowbank, getting stuck…she was a mess. Dad and I went out to help her, and finally got her heading the right direction. She disappeared down the driveway, her red taillights blazing in the night, and then…”
He stopped for just a moment. Nothing but the crackling of the fireplace broke the silence that settled over the world.
“I’ve never seen her again.”
He turned and looked Bonnie in the eye and she saw the pain, the anger, the confusion, painted on his face. Her heart broke for him, and she put out her hand to stroke his face, her fingers running over the rough stubble on his jaw, and then, her comfort changed to lust in the dancing firelight. His eyes grew hooded with desire and her heart began trying to beat its way out of her chest and slowly, ever so damn slowly, he moved towards her, his eyes questioning – Are you sure? – and her heart answering – Yes, oh please, yes.
His mouth moved over hers, gently at first, and then with more passion as his tongue ran along the seam of her lips. She opened her mouth and let him in and he shoved his hand into her hair, burying it, angling her mouth under his and her heart thrummed in her chest, maybe right out of her chest, and she couldn’t breathe – oh God, she couldn’t breathe—
A soft clearing of the throat came then, and then a little louder, finally registering in her mind and they sprung apart, guilty as two teenagers caught making out under the bleachers by their teacher.
Jennifer was trying – and failing miserably – at hiding her grin. “I think some other people were planning on coming into the living room soon,” she said tactfully. Bonnie’s cheeks were painted a brilliant red and she quickly scooted up and sat on the couch, curling up on the end, smiling maniacally at Jennifer.
“Of course!” she said too loudly, too enthusiastically. Jennifer laughed then, and Luke muttered something about checking in on…and his voice trailed off too quietly to hear exactly what it was that he was checking on, before he hurried out of the room like his ass was on fire.
“So, remind me again – what was it that you were saying about Luke not being your kind of guy?” Jennifer said with a sassy grin as she sat next to Bonnie.
“Well, he wasn’t,” Bonnie mumbled. “He was my Voyeur Cowboy then.”
“‘Voyeur Cowboy’?” Jennifer repeated with a laugh. “That’s an awesome nickname. Have you told Luke that you’d christened him that?”
Bonnie blanched. “No, somehow I left that out of the discussion.”
Just then, Carmelita came into the room, wrapped up in a sweater, looking a little tired but otherwise none worse for the wear.
“Oh!” Jennifer said at her arrival, and jumped to her feet. “I filled the kettle with water but then got sidetracked by Stetson! I thought we could put the kettle over the flames and warm it up to make some tea.”
“What a lovely idea,” Carma said with a tired smile. Jennifer hurried and returned from the kitchen, kettle in hand, and they set to work trying to figure out how to heat the water over the open flame.
“Gosh, I’m glad we don’t have to do this every time we want some warm water!” Jennifer said as they finally settled the kettle into the coals. “I don’t think I could make it as a pioneer. I’m too spoiled.”
Stetson came walking in, all wrapped up in his own sweater and wool socks and said, “But just think how cute you’d be in a bonnet!”
She stuck her tongue out at him and he only laughed.
They settled in beside the fire and Luke finally reappeared, apparently having finally finished his very urgent mission. Somehow, as soon as he walked in, everyone else rearranged themselves and the only open place to sit was right next to Bonnie.
She was going to give them points for effectiveness, but not for subtlety. She’d seen billboards with more subtlety.
Jennifer gathered a tea tray from the kitchen – she seemed so happy to be serving Carmelita for once. Carma protested at one point, but was overruled. It was about time someone took care of her. Jennifer also dug out an old tape player that actually ran on batteries, and put in a tape of old Christmas carols. Bonnie grinned as Silver Bells came warbling out of the speakers, the sound quality just atrocious.
It was perfectly imperfect.
They chatted and laughed and the winds blew and the rafters shuddered and yet, somehow, Bonnie had never felt so safe and warm as she did right then.
She’d thought she would be homesick this Christmas, the first one she’d ever spent away from her family, but she realized as the evening slowly drifted on, that family and love was wherever she wanted it to be.
But as the evening drifted towards night, Carmelita’s blinks slowly became longer and Bonnie nudged Luke, jerking her head towards Carma. He gave her a quizzical look for just a moment and then his eyes went wide with understanding.
“I’m pretty tired,” he said loudly, with a large stretch. “Maybe we should put out those sleeping bags.”
Carmelita’s eyes sprang fully open and she eyed the dusty bags in question dubiously. Bonnie realized that Carma probably wouldn’t be super excited about sleeping on the floor. “If we roll out four sleeping bags, then that’d leave enough room for Carmelita to sleep on the couch,” she volunteered.
They quickly got to work rolling the sleeping bags out, and getting Carmelita settled in on the couch. The fire had died down to just embers, so Stetson stoked the fire, wanting to keep it producing heat for as long as possible. Luke offered to set an alarm on his phone for three in the morning so he could stoke it again, something that Bonnie was both simultaneously impressed that he’d thought of, and happy she didn’t have to do.
Bonnie blew out the candles while Jennifer closed the doors leading into the living room, trapping the heat from the fireplace into the room. Because it was an older farmhouse, each doorway had a door and wasn’t just an open archway. Bonnie was quickly seeing the reasoning behind being able to block off certain rooms in the house as needed. Sure, this home wouldn’t qualify as an “open floor plan” home that all of the real estate agents loved to tout in their ads, but then again, some things were only practical if you had forced air heat.
Which, at the moment, they most assuredly did not have.
The room slowly grew quieter as the whispers of Stetson and Jennifer died off, and Carmelita’s heavy breathing started to fill the air. Bonnie shifted in her sleeping bag, curling up on her side – who thought that sleeping on the floor was a good idea? – when she came face to face with Luke, his eyes trained right on her. They stared at each other and he didn’t blink and she couldn’t breathe and—
“What?” she finally whispered when she couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Just trying to figure out if your hair is brown or red.”
A startled laugh spilled out of her. “What?!” she hissed, trying to keep her voice low so she didn’t wake up the others.
He reached his hand out from underneath his sleeping
bag and lightly touched her hair.
“During the day, it looks dark and I just thought it was brown, but now…in the firelight, it looks sorta red.”
His hand ran softly through her hair, stroking it away from her face, and she shivered, his touch sending electrical sparks through her.
She wanted to say something sassy and fun, like, “Do you pick up all the chicks with lines like that?” but then he ran his thumb over her lower lip, which is when her control completely left her. She opened her mouth just slightly and flicked her tongue against the pad of his thumb. His breath caught and she knew – just knew – that he was having just as hard a time breathing and thinking as she was.
And she couldn’t lie – she wasn’t sure if that made her happy or terrified her.
Because he was a cowboy. Everything about him, from the tips of his boots to the crown of his cowboy hat to his plaid shirts in between – today it was a blue plaid as opposed to his red plaid from yesterday – screamed cowboy.
And she was a city girl.
And just what the hell was she supposed to do with that?
Chapter 10
Luke
As soon as Stetson had suggested that they all sleep in the living room to make it easier to keep them warm, Luke had known he’d be in trouble. Stetson was asking him to spend the night laying next to Bonnie, one of the most beautiful women he’d ever laid eyes on.
Who wore sexy red lace underwear – a sight burned into his brain for the rest of his life – and patiently talked a dog out from underneath the couch and doted on Carmelita like she was her own grandmother and listened when he rambled on about The Christmas and was so damn beautiful, it hurt just to look at her.
Not, of course, that this kept him from looking at her. In fact, he didn’t seem to be able to stop, even when he should.
She’d laid down and faced the other direction when they’d first gotten into their sleeping bags, but somehow, she seemed to sense his gaze on the back of her head as they laid there, and eventually, as the others began to sink into sleep, she’d turned over and caught him staring.
And hell, if he was going to be caught, he might as well keep doing it, right? Why force himself to look away, when the colors in her hair were so fascinating? There were just so many different shades in there.
And then, she’d flicked her tongue against the pad of his thumb and he’d sucked in his breath so hard and so fast, he wasn’t sure he’d ever need to breathe again…
He pulled his hand away and forced himself to close his eyes.
Tightly.
And count to three.
Because he could not, could not, foresee a way of having this evening end the way his dick was currently begging him to end it. Not with Stetson and Jennifer and Carmelita right there, for God’s sakes.
He shifted in his sleeping bag, trying to find a comfortable spot to lay. Suddenly, it seemed damned uncomfortable there on the floor.
Or maybe it was just that certain parts of his anatomy weren’t very happy.
He rolled back towards her and opened up his eyes. Was she still awake?
Yes, yes she was, and now she was the one staring at him.
“So why aren’t you with your family?” he whispered. Because it was something to ask her and because it would get his mind off his dick.
Okay, not really, because that was impossible right now, but perhaps he could just sidetrack it a bit.
“I love Christmas,” she whispered back.
He stared at her, waiting to hear what her explanation was for that seemingly random comment.
She shrugged.
“I love everything about Christmas. The music, the presents, the lights, how happy everyone is, the smell of pine trees – even if I never got a real pine tree for my house, I still love going by Christmas tree lots – the snow…it all just says magic to me. Maybe I’m just slower to grow up than others, I don’t know. But I do know this is my favorite season, my favorite holiday…”
She drew in a deep breath and whispered, “My mom decided that this was the year that she would take my dad and my siblings and my nieces and nephews to Hawaii for Christmas. It was finally going to be the winter where she got to spend it away from the cold and the sleet and the snow. I did not get my love of snow from my mother,” she whispered with a grin.
He grinned back, but inside? He was in shock. Somehow, he’d just assumed that all city girls were like his mom – hating pine trees and mountains and snow. Hating living in the middle of nowhere.
Well, maybe she still doesn’t like small towns.
He ignored that cautioning voice for the moment. For just a minute or two, he could pretend that Bonnie was all that he wanted in a woman.
If just for a minute or two.
“So I told my mom that I didn’t want to go because I love Christmas, and palm trees and piña coladas on the beach just were not Christmassy enough for me.”
She caught her lower lip for just a moment, hesitating, and he knew she was debating how much to tell him. As the fire crackled in the darkness, he held his breath. Would she tell him the truth? Or placate him with a half-truth?
She finally whispered, “But honestly? I couldn’t afford the trip.”
There. That was something she’d been hiding from everyone else in the world, he’d bet his favorite pair of cowboy boots on it, and yet, here she was, telling it to him.
“I have a stupid amount of student loans, you see, and I’ve just started making headway on them. It’ll be years before I have them paid off. My parents just see that I work at this prestigious accounting firm and think that I’m making the big bucks, but I’m not. Not really. Not after I pay for rent and utilities and my student loans and just life, you know?
“But my parents are so damn proud of me and I don’t want to admit the truth to them. I don’t want them to know that I’m really not as successful as they think I am.”
She smiled, a small, painful smile that held no real happiness in it but she was trying to pretend that it did and she did and she was happy and everything was fine…
But it was written all over her face that she most definitely was not fine.
In fact, she seemed a little more miserable than just being a little poor would seem to justify.
“Do you like your job at the prestigious accounting firm?” Luke asked, making a stab at why her face and her smile were so forcibly happy. Why she was trying to pretend as if everything was just fine with her world.
She paused for a second and then shook her head.
“No. I hate it. Like, really, really hate it.
“I’d gone into accounting because I wanted to work with small business owners – help them keep a handle on their finances, fill out their taxes to their best advantage…all of these things that I thought I could do to make a difference in their lives.
“Did you know that small businesses have a failure rate of 50% in the first five years? It’s almost always due to money mismanagement. No one starts a restaurant or an office supply store or becomes a plumber because they want to push paper all day. They start these businesses because they have a passion and want to make it come to life, but pushing paper is part of making that passion happen.
“So bills start to overwhelm and they don’t know how to manage cash flow, and pretty soon, they’re in over their heads.
“I wanted to be that difference in their lives.
“Instead, I’m in my own paper-pushing hell.” She closed her eyes, scrunching them against the pain, against the world, against the reality of it all, and he reached out and stroked her face.
He’d never hated his job – he’d always loved farming and so buying his own farm at age 22 was a dream come true for him. He couldn’t imagine dreading going to work every day, and knowing that he’d gotten into a hell of a lot of debt in order to have that job. That sounded…miserable.
He didn’t know what to say, or how to comfort her, so he just softly stroked her hair and her face relaxed, smoothin
g into happy lines.
And then…full relaxation.
And a little snore.
His hand slowed, and then stopped. Her snore got a little louder. She was competing with Stetson now, and he was on the other side of the room.
And how, dear God above, did she fall asleep so quickly? He squinted at her in the semi-darkness.
Bonnie really seemed to be asleep.
He waved his hand in front of her face. She let out another snore. He grinned to himself, debating whether this was something he ought to tease her about right away, or later.
Choices, choices, choices.
He settled back down and closed his eyes, and somehow, between the popping of the fire and the snores of Stetson and Bonnie, and the heavy breathing of Carmelita, and the even louder snores and grunts of Sticks, Luke also fell asleep.
Chapter 11
Bonnie
She woke with a big yawn and stretch, trying to work the soreness out of her muscles. Why was she so sore? And, she blinked, trying to focus her eyes, why was she in Jennifer’s living room?
It all came back to her – the storm, the electricity, the late-night talk – when Sticks took her movement as an invitation to give her cheek an early morning bath. He panted over her, a happy doggy grin plastered across his face, his doggy breath washing over her in waves.
She coughed, waving her hand in front of her face, trying to push the…questionable-smelling air away, when Luke said groggily, “Sorry. I keep meaning to brush his teeth.”
He sat up, pushing a thatch of hair away from his forehead with a yawn. He looked deliciously sleepy and she began regretting separate sleeping bags.
When he stretched, his muscles popping along his arms and shoulders – only a scant wife beater t-shirt to cover his torso – she began to really, really regret separate sleeping bags.
