A Child for Christmas

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Good grief, what was she doing? Thinking? She smoothed her hair back into its fresh ponytail and moistened her lips. “That’s yesterday’s news, Captain.”

  “Paper’s always been a day late in these parts,” he said absently. He folded over the last page and looked up at her, his expression watchful. “Look, Rebecca, I know you heard your son invite me along on your great Christmas-tree hunt, but I’m a big boy. You don’t want me to go along, say so.”

  “I—”

  “I never was one much for the fuss surrounding Christmas,” he added. Then made an impatient sound, scrubbing his hands down his face.

  If he’d recognized the sad pang that swept through her, he’d have been horrified. But his low, gravelly voice, so matter-of-fact, made her want to weep. He’d told her once about his mother’s death on Christmas Eve when he’d been only a few years older than Ryan. “You’re welcome to come with us,” she said huskily.

  Afraid something in her tone alerted him, she held her breath when his eyes narrowed faintly in speculation. But he just nodded after a moment. “Thanks.”

  She felt her smile wobble around the edges, then die completely when Sawyer suddenly stood. He pressed one hand to his side at the abrupt motion and Rebecca bit the inside of her lip, wanting to reach out to steady him, but knowing he wouldn’t appreciate it. Sawyer grabbed up his coat, wrapping those long fingers around the scarred black leather.

  “What time?”

  Her cheeks heated when she had to drag her attention from his hands. “What time for what?”

  “Christmas-tree hunting.”

  “Oh, in a few hours.”

  “I’ll come back then.”

  Now that he was going, her breathing came a little easier. “Are you driving back to the Double-C?”

  He paused, his hand on the doorknob. “I s’pose that would make sense,” he murmured. He opened the door and stepped out into the bright morning. “See you in a while, Bec.”

  He closed the door and Rebecca sank back against the counter. “Rebecca Lee Morehouse, you are out of your tiny little mind.”

  She refused to chase after Captain Sawyer Clay. There was no earthly reason to think that he wasn’t perfectly contented driving back to his family’s ranch. No reason at all.

  The squeak of the door opening made her jump guiltily. Sawyer stood there. “I want to rent one of your motel rooms,” he announced abruptly.

  Rebecca’s jaw loosened. “You must be kidding.”

  His lips tightened. “No, actually, I’m not.”

  “But—but, that’ll defeat the whole point of your coming back to Wyoming!”

  “I came back to regain my memory. The only thing staying at the ranch does is make me more crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy,” Rebecca protested. “You’re suffering—”

  “Dammit, Rebecca, I know exactly what I’m suffering from. I don’t need your professional opinion on it. What I need is some place I can sleep at night, and the ranch ain’t it. Now, are you going to rent me a room, or not?”

  Folding her hands together at her waist, Rebecca reminded herself that she was long over Sawyer Clay. His return was a shock, certainly—one that she’d foolishly, complacently, expected never to happen. And she was supposed to be highly intelligent.

  “Rebecca?”

  Oh, Tom, tell me what to do. She pulled her hands apart, tucking her fingertips into the front pockets of her blue jeans. “Yes.” She forced the word out. “I’ll rent you a room.”

  Chapter Seven

  Later that morning, Rebecca gave serious thought to calling Delaney Vega, and not just for a gossipy chat. But she knew what Delaney would say. The same thing she’d been saying ever since Rebecca had shocked her entire network of associates when she’d made the move to Wyoming—that Rebecca was afraid to step away from the past, and equally afraid of stepping into it.

  So she hovered in the reception area of her office, pretending that she wasn’t peeking out the front windows as Sawyer and his brother, Daniel, unlocked the room at the far end of the building and carried in a duffel bag and a couple boxes of groceries. The far room was the only one with a kitchenette. Rebecca could only be grateful for the facade of distance between that end room, and this end, where she and Ryan dwelled.

  She moistened her dry lips, and breathed deeply, trying desperately to banish the knot with the fluttery edges from her stomach. She should have known better than to come here to Weaver. She should have known better than to come to Wyoming at all. She should have—

  “Mo-om!”

  Rebecca whirled around, her hand pressed to her heart. Ryan stood behind her. She decided to ignore the knowing grin flirting at the corners of his mouth, and focused instead on the bundle of towels and sheets in his arm.

  He looked at her hopefully and she shook her head. “No way, Ry.” She herded him back through the office area to their private quarters.

  He was so full of grumbles and earnest young competence at starting the laundry that she felt an overwhelming urge to hug and kiss him. But he’d let her know in no uncertain terms recently that he preferred to keep the huggy-touchy stuff to a minimum. So she contented herself with ruffling his hair where it fell over the collar of his oversize T-shirt. “You need a haircut.”

  Ryan closed the lid on the washing machine and pulled his hair back in his hand. “Uh-uh. If I get it cut at that barbershop in town, you know old man Murphy’ ll cut it too short. Then my streak’ll show again.”

  “Sweetheart, an inch off that mop wouldn’t hurt a thing.” She knew Ryan was overly sensitive about the narrow streak of stark-white hair that grew at the very nape of his neck. His hair was long enough that unless he specifically lifted it up, the white was completely hidden. But still, there was a limit. “At least agree that we’ll get it cut before the dance.”

  Ryan made a face. But he didn’t disagree. And when the knock came on their kitchen door, he yanked it open. The wide smile that lit his face made the nervous knot return full-force to Rebecca’s belly. Ryan looked at Sawyer with as much delight as he’d looked at the department-store Santa when he’d been three years old.

  “Ry, go on and get your coat and stuff,” she suggested, nudging him out of the open doorway.

  Grinning, he bounded out of the kitchen. Rebecca looked at Sawyer, then just as quickly looked away. She reached around him and pushed closed the door before more frigid air could stream into the warm kitchen. “We’ll, uh, be ready to go in a few minutes.” Her gaze kept sliding back to his hands, those incredibly masculine hands. So she deliberately busied herself with unloading the dishwasher. “I trust the room is satisfactory.”

  She paused in the act of pulling a slender drinking glass out of the dishwasher rack when Sawyer settled one lean hip against the counter right on the other side of the opened dishwasher door. “It’s fine,” he said.

  She pressed her lips together, quickly turning to put the glass and its twin into the cupboard. She reached back for the clean plates.

  “I remember when the rooms here had burnt-orange carpet, avocado-green bedspreads and wagon-wheel lamps.”

  The plate she held slipped out of her hand, right back into its spot in the dishwasher rack where it clattered against the others. She thought for a moment that she would choke against her heart, which seemed to have risen right into her throat. “You...remember what the room looked like?”

  He shifted with a soft creak of cold leather, and cupped his hands over the edge of the counter on either side of him. “Yeah.”

  Rebecca closed her eyes. Oh, please, please, please.

  “Pretty damn weird,” he said. “As soon as I walked into that room, it was like I was looking at two photographs, side by side. The room, looking the way it does now. Navy blue and burgundy. And the other photo of the room the way it used to look. I distinctly remember waking up to that orange and green with one hellacious hangover.”

  She felt dizzy. She closed the dishwasher door and lowered herself care
fully onto one of the kitchen-table chairs. She pushed out the words. “Did you remember anything else?”

  She looked up when he made a rough noise. And looked past her self-preoccupation, her own fear, to see the frustrated disgust on his face.

  He was shaking his head slowly. “Other than chugging one too many beers when I wasn’t even of age? Not one thing.” He looked down toward the floor, and Rebecca was appalled at the wave of emotion that buffeted her. He’d never been one to drink and drive. His eyelashes, unfairly long and thick, cast faint shadows on his hard face, portraying a vulnerability that her intellect knew didn’t exist.

  But her heart—oh, her foolish heart—had its own ideas. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d risen and touched his arm, covered with that battered leather bomber jacket. “It’ll come back to you, Sawyer. Be patient. Give it time.”

  “Patience,” he murmured. “It doesn’t seem to be a particularly strong trait of mine.”

  Rebecca knew for a fact that Sawyer had once exhibited patience like no one she’d ever known. What else could a man possess that would allow him to remain motionless in freezing waters, or endlessly still in rat-infested hovels in order to avoid detection on the countless ops he’d lived through as a SEAL. She also knew that, at heart, Sawyer was a man of action. He was a man who did what needed to be done. And getting it done had been his particular forte.

  The knot in her stomach this time was formed of conscience versus self-protection. The sooner Sawyer remembered everything, the sooner he’d also remember her.

  “Okay, I’m ready. We’re gonna get the hugest tree there, right?”

  Saved by the son. Rebecca snatched her hand away from Sawyer’s arm, and stopped herself just short of rubbing her hand down her thigh to ease the tingles in her palm.

  “As long as the hugest tree is no taller than seven feet,” she agreed. She pasted a smile on her face and looked up at Sawyer, focusing somewhere around his left ear, because that, at least, didn’t set off any impulsive, unwanted sympathies. “We’ll have to drive,” she said, carefully cheerful as she retrieved her coat and led the way out to the garage. “Because I have no desire to drag the hugest Christmas tree all the way back here from the tree lot.”

  “I told you it would fit.”

  Rebecca looked from the beautiful, fragrant tree that cleared her ceiling by a bare six inches, to Sawyer and Ryan, standing on the other side of the tree. They looked back at her with twin “I told you so” expressions. “Yes, Captain, you did tell me. Of course, you had to cut off the bottom set of branches, but that’s a mere detail.”

  Sawyer’s lips twitched. Ryan’s shoulders shook with the giggles he was trying to suppress.

  Rebecca just tossed up her hands and shook her head. “Clean up your mess,” was all she said as she turned back toward the kitchen. She’d started a pan of hot chocolate earlier when they’d come in after two entire hours spent in the cold. They’d quibbled over the qualities of each and every tree in the lot before Sawyer had hustled her and Ryan into her vehicle and driven out to an area on Double-C property where they’d cut their own tree.

  He hadn’t remembered the place, he’d told her when her curiosity had been apparent. It was simply the place where Matthew and Jaimie had found their tree for the big house.

  Despite her misgivings over the outing, Rebecca had to admit that she’d enjoyed herself just as much as her son had. She didn’t know whether to be relieved, or give in to the fear such enjoyment wrought.

  She was just pulling down three mugs when Ryan ran into the kitchen to ask if he could go outside and play with Eric and some other boys who’d come by. She nodded and took down two mugs instead. “But be back here by four o’clock.”

  Ryan rushed out in a bundle of energy and little-boy enthusiasm, leaving the kitchen very, very quiet. Heat collected at the base of her neck and she didn’t need to turn around to know that Sawyer had entered the room. She poured the steaming cocoa into the mugs and dropped a handful of miniature marshmallows on top. She turned toward him, determined to ignore the awareness blossoming inside her.

  A cluster of slender pine needles was caught in the thick silver-tipped hair at his temple, a reminder of the struggle to get the tree through a doorway that hadn’t been designed to accommodate the width of an enormous fir. “You’ve got a tree branch in your hair,” she told him lightly and dashed her hand lightly across his hair, knocking the pine needles free before pushing one of the mugs into his hand.

  He looked down at the steaming drink, at the marshmallows that were melting into sweet little blobs. “Marshmallows.”

  She moistened her lips and stepped past him, out of the kitchen. Idiot, she called herself. She’d unthinkingly fixed the hot chocolate from scratch using the very recipe that Sawyer had introduced to her all those years ago. The recipe his mother had used. Why couldn’t she have just boiled water and emptied some of those prepared cocoa mixes into it?

  “The tree is lovely,” she said, walking over to where it stood in the corner of her living room. “But it really wasn’t necessary to cut one of the trees from your family’s ranch—”

  “My mother fixed cocoa this way.”

  Rebecca nearly choked on her words. She swallowed and schooled her features, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “Oh?”

  Then he looked up at Rebecca, and his expression turned deliberately wry. “At least, I think she did.”

  Oh, she couldn’t take this. This swinging pendulum of emotion. Fear...sympathy. Hate... wanting—No. Don’t go there, Rebecca. She turned back to look at the tree with unseeing eyes. “Well, I hope it tastes all right.” She held her own mug wrapped between her hands, but all desire to drink it had fled. “You’ve seen the results of some of my kitchen adventures.”

  She knew he was approaching her—more from the panic swelling in her chest than from anything else. And pasted a smile on her face. “I’m sorry to put you to all that work and then abandon you, but I do have a patient coming in any minute, now.” It was only a slight exaggeration, but her conscience tormented her anyway. “There’s stuff in the fridge for sandwiches if you’re hungry. Or frozen pizzas, I think, in the freezer. You know boys, always wanting something like that to eat and the least I can do is feed you after all this work on the tree, but I’ve got to go into the office—”

  Sawyer kept himself from staring, barely, at the rapid words spewing from Rebecca’s lips. What had sent her into this tailspin of panic? Because there was no other word to describe the look in her wide eyes; the delicate flare of her nostrils. “Actually, I will grab a sandwich, if you don’t mind,” he said blandly. “Before I head on over to my room. Ham is more appealing than peanut butter.” He pressed his hand to his ribs, not having to entirely conjure up the wince at the aching there. But it was nothing compared to the unfulfilled ache in his lower regions from spending the morning with her.

  Her color drained even more. Not exactly the calming reaction he’d hoped for. She’d set down her mug and had placed her slender palms on his shoulders before he could react.

  “I knew you were taxing yourself with that tree,” she muttered. She tugged at the hem of his shirt and yanked it up, right out of his pants.

  He nearly yelped when her fingers flitted delicately over his rib cage. Instead, he grabbed her probing hand and held it away from himself. “Bec—”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve got to check your—”

  “No.”

  She wiggled her fingers against his hold. “Sawyer, don’t be childish.”

  “Trust me, sweetness, I don’t feel the least bit silly or childish. And if you’re gonna put your hands on me right now, it’s not gonna be because you’re my doctor.”

  Her fingers stopped wiggling. Color stained her cheeks, and her slender throat worked over a nervous swallow. Then she sucked in her lower lip for the barest of moments, and his attention focused fiercely on the moist curve.

  He swallowed an oath. And simply went with the flow.


  He lowered his head and gently caught that moist lip between his teeth. Tasted it with the tip of tongue. Explored the rest of her mouth, absorbed the lingering taste of hot chocolate.

  She spoke his name against his mouth, and he shook his head softly, finally covering her lips fully. She swayed, leaned against him. Her fingers twisted in his shirt and he slipped his hands around her slender hips, gliding beneath the hem of her pretty pink-and-blue top. The thin turtleneck she wore beneath the top clung to her body and his palms swept up her back, feeling every slender muscle tighten at his touch.

  She made a soft sound that went to his head like moonshine and he pulled her tighter against him, not caring anymore about frightening her off with his aroused state, just needing her against him. Needing her soft mouth against his, her taste in his mouth, her scent in his head. Her breasts were full and tight and pushed greedily against his hand when he touched her there. And her long, slender fingers were sliding through his hair, reminding him of that time—

  A searing pain shot through his head, and he yanked back, swearing viciously.

  Rebecca gasped and managed not to stumble. Horrified with herself, she turned Sawyer before he could crash into the tree he’d worked so hard to put up and nudged him instead to a chair. His eyes were so pained they were nearly black, and she wanted to cry when he pressed his palms to his temples so tightly that his knuckles whitened.

  What was wrong with her? She was a physician, for God’s sake.

  She dashed into her office and grabbed her black bag. Then in her living room, she shut off everything inside her but the knowledge and ability to examine a man who didn’t want her to do any such thing.

  “Dammit, Rebecca, it’s a headache,” he finally roared, pushing her away and standing up from the chair. To his credit, he only swayed slightly, and didn’t vomit even though his expression told her he was struggling mightily.