Blake pushed out of the truck, closing his door with enough force to make Liz flinch.
“You don’t have to walk me in,” she insisted as she shifted the leftovers to the floor and swung her legs out the open door.
“All part of the service, ma’am.” He steadied her as she slid to her feet in front of him then started to reach past her for the leftovers.
“Wait, I won’t eat all of that. You should take some.” She started rearranging the contents of both boxes. They dithered over the different items while the snow fell and the door crowded them into the tiny space next to the truck. “Coconut?” she asked.
“Hate the stuff,” he said.
“Good, I love it, so I’ll take yours, but here, you have the mushrooms—”
“Ah to hell with it,” he muttered, stealing the container from her hands and dropping it on the seat as he swung her to face him. “Come out to the ranch tomorrow and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
He kissed her. Pulled her into the wall of his hard body and kissed the hell out of her and she locked her arms around his neck and kissed him back like it was the only kiss they would ever have. They kissed until she didn’t feel the cold, until she sensed by the way he locked his hand on her butt and pressed her into him that he was very aroused behind their layers of clothes. She was. God, he tasted good. They French kissed and breathed heavily and finally came up for air.
Little clouds puffed around them as they panted and stared at each other.
“I don’t know how to get to the ranch,” she said.
He grinned, kind of triumphant, while she mentally shook her head at herself. Just say no, Liz, but for once she didn’t have the sick feeling in her stomach as she searched for the word and couldn’t find it. She felt melty and yearning and like she’d been smiling for so long her face would stay that way.
“I’ll call you in the morning, get your email and send you a map. What are you driving?”
“Stella left me her all-wheel.”
He nodded. “Bring the son of Satan. He gets along really well with Blue.”
She drew back to fold her arms, feeling the cold now that she was away from the press of his body. “You dog sit for Nola?” she asked, feeling really suckered if Nola had conscripted her when there was a perfectly good alternative here in Marietta.
“Ethan does. But he’s away.”
“You’re the reason I’m here,” she accused, poking the thick skin of his coat with a sharp finger. “You could have offered.”
He shrugged. “I’m hopeful that your being here will work out well for both of us.” He winked and drew her toward him, so he could slam the truck door. As he walked her to the door at the side of the garage, his familiarity with the house was obvious.
She fumbled to get the key in the lock in the dark, aware of him looming beside her. If she couldn’t hear the running engine growling around the corner on the drive, she would have dragged him inside with her.
“We’re really just going to ignore everything we said in the truck?” she asked, too shy to look up at him. Kind of afraid they’d kiss again and that’d be that. She’d wake up with him beside her.
“I vote yes,” he said. “You?”
Nola’s dog came scampering to the interior door where he barked like a demon and scratched, killing the mood.
“Coffee,” Liz said. “I’ll come for coffee and because I’m such a scatterbrain that I accidentally left Nola’s prized heirloom Tupperware in your truck.”
“I’ll make sure it’s fresh and hot,” he promised.
She bet he would.
Chapter Three
‡
Liz wondered how long it had taken Blake to get home last night, since it took her well over an hour to negotiate the twists and turns of the main road. He met her at the turn off in a tractor and drove ahead of her down to the house, plowing the drive as he went.
The house wasn’t big or fancy, but it was charming and welcoming with its wood siding and three gables on the upper floor and the covered veranda that encircled the lower. An adorable blue cottage stood off to the right.
“That’s not the original homestead is it?” she asked when he’d parked the tractor and joined her beside Stella’s SUV. “It looks too new.”
“No, that’s Crystal’s ‘spa,’” he said with a sneer of disgust, reminding Liz of all she’d heard about that fiasco.
She wondered if she should tell him she knew he was broke, but Curly barked like mad from the back seat and Blake said with surprise, “You got him into the carrier?”
“It was a nightmare. Look, I cut myself on the catch trapping him inside. Why? Doesn’t Ethan bring him in that?”
Blake chuckled and shook his head as he brought the carrier out onto a flat patch of snow. When he unlatched the screen, Curly shot out in a burst of flowing blond fur and excited barks. He really was the cutest dog ever created, but he acted exactly like the rest of the Flowers: fussy, whiny, expecting to be served and he never, ever picked up after himself.
A giant black lab trotted forward to greet him and they went through the sniff ritual, before breaking off to search the grounds with their noses.
“He won’t run away or get eaten or something?” she asked.
“No, Blue keeps an eye on him. Head in for coffee?” he asked, jerking his head toward the house.
“Actually . . . Can I see the spa? It’s professional curiosity. Crystal called me about a million times when you were building it. Probably did the exact opposite of anything I suggested, but I’ve always wondered how it turned out.”
“Like a monument to men’s stupidity,” he said, starting toward the porch of the main house before pointing at her footwear. “No need to get the shovel. You got new boots.”
She modeled with a cock of her hip. “Like ’em?”
“I like all of it,” he said with an approving skim of his gaze from the knee-high boots, the jeans tucked into the dark brown, insulated leather, then up to her thick white jacket and red scarf.
Oh, chemistry, you drunken cupid, you.
Trying to ignore the way she tingled all over, she tramped through the snow toward the cottage, noting as she got closer that it was in dire need of painting. The windows needed washing, too.
“Key?” she asked as she stomped her feet on the small porch.
He shrugged and looked around. “Who’s robbing me out here? There’s nothing to take anyway. I sold everything I could get a penny for.”
Their breaths clouded as they entered the unheated, four room building. It was mostly empty, but she saw problems immediately in the way Crystal had laid it out. If the entrance of this unit was moved to the side though, and two of the walls opened up, the building had potential. She absently picked up a couple of bent nails and pulled a picture hook off the wall.
“Bad mojo to leave these sorts of things lying around,” she said as she tucked them into her pocket.
“The whole thing is bad mojo.”
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “If you—”
“No,” he said firmly, voice not rising, but it didn’t have to. “I did that once, Liz. Women don’t get to come onto my land and spend my money on pipe dreams.”
She raised her brows, but didn’t take his anger personally. In the back of her mind, she recognized how and why he’d found that tone, particularly when it came to refusing the Flowers any favors.
“I should tell you something,” she said, crossing to collect a ball of scrunched up paper. “You probably won’t like it.”
He folded his arms. “Yes?”
“I know that Crystal pretty much bankrupted you. That you didn’t just lose money on this scheme of hers, but also that you had to buy her out of the ranch, even though none of it belonged to her.”
He didn’t even blink.
She shrugged. “I just thought you should know that I know.”
“The whole damned town knows, Liz. It’s not a secret.”
“Oh.
” Well, she was pretty sure the other stuff was not public knowledge, but she didn’t bring it up.
“Does it bother you that I’m broke?” he asked.
“No.” She tucked her hands into her pockets, admiring the blurry view through the windows of snow blanketing all the way to the bottoms of the surrounding mountains. It was beautiful and peaceful, but there was a desolation to it. Maybe that was inside her as she contemplated his situation. “I’m mad on your behalf. It’s just so like her. Them. Not Stella. She’s halfway sane, just a lover, not a fighter, like me. But the rest of them are so self-involved.”
“I know Dean screwed around on you,” he said flatly.
The statement shouldn’t sting her with humiliation, but it did. Always. Not so much because her husband had cheated, but because she’d been so relieved.
“It was the one favor he did me,” she said, hanging her head, but daring a glance at him in time to note his surprise. “I couldn’t make myself leave, even though I knew I didn’t want to be married to him anymore. So, I cut him off, he strayed, and that gave me the justification for kicking him out. Super passive aggressive, right?”
“If it wasn’t his cheating, why are you so bitter?”
“Because he was so superficial and not there, especially for Petra. I grew up that way myself, with a dad who was more like a photo on the wall that gave you nothing but a hard stare. So, Dean was a bit of a monument to my own stupidity. He was a snob, a complete jerk to my family, and such an ass through the divorce. How is it that a man with seemingly no feelings or conscience can have an ego so tender and sensitive?”
She moved to straighten the blinds on a window so they were level.
“Honestly, I wasn’t bitter when we separated, which I think is the part that hurt him the most. That’s why he turned so spiteful and used Petra to hurt me. That made me livid. His family didn’t understand why I was rejecting him. Stella sure didn’t. It wasn’t like he hit me or anything. Men make mistakes, she said.” Liz sent him a significant look. “What does that tell you?”
Picking up a rock that was probably meant as a doorstop, she moved it from the middle of the room to against the wall.
“I’ve had to suck up his random acts of cruelty every day since. Will have to for the rest of my life where Petra is concerned. It’s tiring, you know?”
“I do know,” he said with a nod. “I do.”
“You do,” she said with a crooked grin, scuffing her feet as she wandered closer to him. “And it’s really nice to talk to someone who doesn’t want to take his side, like some of our old friends and neighbors, or say, I told you so, like my sister does.”
“She knew you weren’t right for each other? Mine did too, but I had to marry Crystal. I wanted Ethan.”
Liz sensed a door of opportunity there, but didn’t get a chance to crack it open. He said, “You never wanted more kids?” distracting her.
“Miscarriage,” she said, taking the old kick in the chest she always felt when she thought about it. “I think I knew then that we were over. It wasn’t that I was relieved. I really wanted that baby, a lot, but when I lost it, I realized that if I had gone to term, I’d have been stuck in my marriage that much longer.” She glanced into the abyss of white outside the window again. “That’s when I started thinking seriously about leaving. He said I was just being hormonal. Like I didn’t have a reason to be depressed. He wasn’t upset that we’d lost a baby. And there was Crystal having a baby with this great guy . . . ”
“You had just lost a baby when you came to the wedding?” He touched her chin, making her show him her shining eyes. “No wonder you looked so sad,” he said with concern.
He had noticed? Dean hadn’t.
Her lips trembled. She tried to firm them, but, after a brief hesitation, he lowered his head to touch his mouth to hers. It was tender and sweet. She closed her eyes, feeling the tears squeeze onto her cheeks.
It wasn’t a pass, it was a make-it-better kiss and it did. He straightened and drew her into him and she let her head fall onto his shoulder, liking the feel of his arms around her.
“Thanks,” she murmured. “I never talk about it.”
He kissed her hair and rubbed her back, not saying anything, just letting her take her time pulling herself back together. Danger, she thought, wondering how they’d come to such a deep level of confidence. He was a very good, kind man, she supposed. She’d known it instinctively the first time she’d met him and now, she knew it for real.
With a shaking breath, she made herself stand on her own or she’d have stayed in his embrace forever.
Finding a brave smile, she asked, “Coffee ready yet?”
“Just have to hit the button.” He opened the door for her.
No problem there, she thought. He knew how to hit all of hers.
*
Blake was aware of tension as they skimmed off their coats and boots in the mudroom. Not all sexual tension either, despite how aware he was of Liz. He liked the neat way she hung her own coat, taking care to straighten a sleeve and set her boots together next to his. Her socks were bright white, her jeans narrow against her slim legs and her butt on the small side, but nicely curved. A perfect fit for his hand.
She was not a big gal, but she was one of those people whose flashing smile and bright manner made you think they were taller than they really were. She removed her scarf and smoothed her hair, glancing self-consciously at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Absolutely nothing. Just enjoying the view.”
Her lips pursed somewhere between reprimand and appreciation. “You’re extremely good at making me feel about thirteen years old. Oh!” she gasped as Curly shot through the cat door behind her.
Blue’s snout came through with a pitiful whine at being left behind, making them both laugh.
Blake brushed by her—actually brushed against her, deliberately, as he opened the back door. They broke apart immediately as Blue’s tail whipped between them.
“On your mat,” he told Blue and went after Curly who was already in the kitchen, sniffing at the treat cupboard. He told Curly the same thing with a stern point.
Curly went, but only stood on the little mat beside Blue’s big one, tail wagging as he waited for his cookie.
“He has his own mat here? And he stays on it? Seriously, Blake!”
“Hey, we got rules in this house. The only reason that dog is such a menace is because Nola lets him do whatever he wants,” he said, fetching the tin. “Remind you of anyone?” he added dryly.
“No kidding,” she muttered.
A few minutes later, he washed his hands and started the coffee, turning to see her looking at photos that had been on the walls of the living area for so long he didn’t even see them anymore. Sometimes he thought about taking them down, but he was no decorator and money. Hell.
He pushed his fists into his pockets, trying not to let it bother him that she knew how dire his circumstances were. It made him critical of his own home, where the sofa back was frayed and the area rug had had the color vacuumed right off it. He kept it all clean, but it was old and worn, exactly the way he felt when he thought too much about his situation.
What he really wondered, however, was whether she knew why he’d paid out Crystal? He’d almost asked her when they’d stood in the cottage, then changed the subject, asking if she’d wanted more kids. He didn’t know why he’d blurted out that question in particular. He’d just been trying to shift the topic, but he’d wound up accidentally stirring up old hurts in her. He felt bad for doing it and bad for her.
“Why did you marry Dean?” he asked.
“Honestly?” She moved to the next collage, studying it intently. “Stella. He was selling mobile phones next to one of our shops. She came in for a pedicure, we got talking, she said, ‘You should meet my brother,’ and here I am. I really did love Stella. Do. And if I’d stopped at just being best friends with her, I wouldn’t have Petra, so . . . ”
“Yeah.” Kids. He was so nuts about Ethan it was indescribable.
“You and your sister don’t look anything alike. Is that some throwback gene to your grandparents or something?” She looked for a snapshot to compare.
“We’re adopted.”
“Oh. Something I didn’t know about you.”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“No. It’s just information. Like if you told me you were allergic to seafood, or make furniture for a living. Is that why there are all these baby photos of her, but none of you?”
“I was four when I came here.” He moved around the sofa to stand next to her, taking in the faded images his mother had put together when he was at school one day. He couldn’t even remember which grade, but they’d been here ever since. “My birth parents were locals. They rolled their car one winter. I was with a sitter. I had grandparents in town, but they were really old. My parents,” he motioned to the photo of the couple, who’d raised him, “had been on the list to adopt for a while. They took me in as a foster situation and about a year later, my grandparents signed the adoption papers.”
“Did you stay in touch with them?”
“Oh yeah. I remember the whole thing really clearly because we had always gone into town to visit my grandparents, but this time they came here. I guess because it was Christmas. I opened my presents and all the adults were sitting there staring at me and my mom explained that I would always live here and they’d be my mother and father now and was that what I wanted? I said, yes, not really grasping the significance of course, but the women started to cry and everyone was hugging me and my mom called me the best Christmas present ever.” He felt himself misting up and swore, trying to turn away.
“Oh, don’t be embarrassed! That’s really nice,” Liz said, touching his arm, earnest as she looked up at him.
“Yeah, and I miss them both. They were really good people and they left me this ranch and I feel like a shit that I might not be able to hang onto it.” It killed him. It really did.
Blame the Mistletoe (Montana Born Christmas Book 1) Page 3
