by Helen Lacey
She took a couple of steps and sat on the padded trunk at the end of the bed. “I had it redecorated after Gordon died. I painted the walls and hung new curtains and picked an outrageously girly bedspread. I guess I was happy in my misery, you know. And then one day you walked through that gate at the airport and smiled at me...and I knew I wasn’t as happy in my misery as I’d made out.”
Scott’s chest tightened. He loved this woman so much. “And now?”
“Now I want...I want to take the life we could have together. The life you offered me.”
He took an unsteady step toward her, wanting to fold her in his arms and hold her close. But they needed to talk first, and he needed to be sure. “I have to know something, Evie. Tonight you said you loved me....” Scott swallowed the emotion clutching at his throat. “Was that really about me?” he asked.
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean that sometimes in extreme situations, when a person is pumped on adrenaline and he thinks someone he loves is in danger, the mind can make him think something even if it’s not real.” He came beside her and sat on the trunk. “Your son was in danger and this feeling you have could just be a kind of misplaced gratitude.”
He hated saying it, hated thinking it. But he had to know. Scott had seen it before—he’d seen the victims of accidents cling to their rescuer as if they were a lifeline. If she was only feeling appreciation and relief then he wanted her to tell him so.
And if it’s only gratitude, will I take it? Will it be enough?
“Of course I’m grateful,” she said, and his heart thumped inside his chest. “How could I not be?” She grabbed his hand and lifted his knuckles to her mouth, kissing him softly. “You saved my son’s life. You saved all those boys tonight.”
“It’s my job, Evie,” he said quietly, feeling the meaning in the words more than he’d ever felt them before. “Whether I do it in L.A., or here...it’s what I do.”
She clutched his hand tightly and Scott felt the connection through to his blood. “I know. I’ve always known. Tonight I realized something...and I don’t just mean because of the fire and saving those kids. I was here with your sister and Fiona and they said something to me that made me realize that perhaps I was wrong to imagine you’d be the kind of man who’d do something risky without thinking of the consequences.”
“Not intentionally, no.”
“And that’s really all I can ask of you,” she said softly. “I thought that I wanted you to stop being a firefighter and do something without risks.”
Scott’s heart settled behind his ribs. “There are no guarantees, Evie.”
“I know that, too,” she said. “I know what you do can be dangerous and there’s no way you can ever be sure you won’t get hurt...or worse. But I don’t need guarantees, Scott.”
“You did,” he reminded her.
“I was scared,” she admitted. “Scared that I’d lose you, I guess. Scared that I’d have to raise another child alone.” She touched his face. “But tonight, I didn’t see a man who took chances. I saw a man who was completely in control the whole time, who knew my son was in that building and still did what he had to do. Someone who kept people safe. And that...and that made me feel safe.”
Scott grabbed her hands and held them against his chest. “I’ll always keep you safe, Evie. You and Trevor and...” He looked at her slightly swollen belly. “And our baby. I’d protect you all with my life.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I know you would. And I love you with all my heart.”
He kissed her softly and let emotion rise between them. She grabbed on to his shoulders and clung to him, kissing him back so hotly, so lovingly, Scott knew he’d never feel as connected to another soul as he did to this incredible woman who’d given him her heart and love.
“Just one thing,” he said in between kisses. “I realized something myself tonight—I’ve been hanging on to this idea that I couldn’t have both—that it needed to be the job, or a life with someone. But I knew when I was going into that building that I wasn’t like Mike. I was like myself and I can do both, Evie. If you ever feel differently about this—if you’re ever worried or want me to stop and find another type of job to do, promise me you’ll tell me.”
“I will,” she said. “But you know what, I fell in love with you exactly as you are, exactly who you are. Young, gorgeous, fearless.” She grinned. “That’s what I thought that first day and I still think it now.”
“So you’re over your worries about the age difference?”
Evie pushed herself against him and smiled. “Ha—I figure I’ll just be thought of as the luckiest woman on the planet.” She touched his cheek. “Anyway, you wait until you’ve had months of night feeding and changing diapers—you’ll have aged ten years by the time this baby is a toddler.”
“I can’t wait,” he said honestly.
And it was true. The thought of raising a child with Evie filled him with such an overwhelming feeling of joy he could feel the power of it over his skin, through his blood, in the deep recess of his soul.
“We have to pick out names,” she suggested. “I was thinking William for a boy.”
Scott nodded. “I like that. It’s a good, strong-sounding name.”
“And Rebecca for a girl.” She kissed him again, lightly along his jaw, and whispered against his ear. “Rebecca Jones.”
Scott pulled back slightly. “Jones?”
Evie smiled. “Mmm,” she breathed against his skin.
“But you turned me—”
“I’m an idiot,” she said, and slipped to the floor in front of him. She perched herself between his knees. “Would you mind if I asked you instead?”
Mind? He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The woman he loved, the woman carrying his child was about to ask him the most important question in the world. Scott shook his head. “Not at all.”
She took a deep breath, grabbed his hands and held them against her breasts. “Scott, would you marry me?”
“Absolutely.” He kissed her, thinking it was the best moment of his life. “I love you, Evie.”
“And I love you. Always. Forever.” She ran her hands over his shoulders and across his chest, plucking at the smudgy marks on the fabric. “You’re a mess,” she said as she wiped her fingertips along his cheek. “So how about that spa bath I promised you a while back?”
Scott looked toward the beckoning ensuite bathroom. “Lead the way.”
She smiled and stood, taking his hands. “How about we go together?”
Now that was definitely the best moment in his life.
Epilogue
Evie loved Christmas. Especially this year. The big tree in the living room sparkled with colored lights and dozens of glass ornaments and there were so many gifts underneath she couldn’t stop grinning when she imagined the room come morning and how all that wrapping paper would be strewn across the floor.
“I do think this year the tree is the best it’s ever looked.”
Evie turned as Flora Manning came into the room. “Yes,” Evie agreed. “It’s all those extra lights.”
Flora raised a silvery brow. “That’s not it,” she said, and fiddled with a stray green frond. “It’s you.”
“Me?”
“You’re happy,” Flora explained. “Happier than I’ve ever seen. That’s why this big tree looks so special.”
Evie smiled. She was happy. She had everything she’d ever asked for and more—a wonderful son, an adorable baby and a husband she loved with all her heart. The tree was a bonus. And as it was their first Christmas as a complete family, Evie could barely contain her excitement. They would open some gifts tonight with her mother-in-law and the Manning sisters and tomorrow her parents were coming over to share the morning festivities with them. Later they would all go to Noah and Callie’s for a family celebration.
This time of year would always be special to her. She’d fallen in love with Scott during Christmas twelve months earlier and those
memories were etched deep within her heart. They’d shared gifts around the tree and kissed beneath the mistletoe and this year would be the same. Only now, Scott was her husband and the tree and the plastic mistletoe had more meaning for her than ever before.
Once Flora left the room to find her sister, Evie spent a little more time trimming the tree and rearranging the gifts. She’d prepared her usual punch and fruit cake and had a tray of savories warming in the oven for later. A soft and familiar sound caught her attention and she turned around.
Her husband framed the doorway, holding their precious bundle in his arms.
“She’s supposed to be asleep,” Evie said gently, and walked across the room. Scott held their three-month-old daughter, Rebecca, against his shoulder as she pumped her chubby legs excitedly. Evie touched the baby’s soft hair. “She’ll be relentless tomorrow if she doesn’t sleep tonight.”
Scott smiled and kissed his daughter’s head. “She was awake in her crib, talking to herself. I think she said Dada again.”
Evie’s brows slanted upward. “You know she’s too young to speak, right?”
“Not my kid,” he said proudly, and cradled her head with his hand. “She’s advanced for her age.”
Evie knew there was little point insisting otherwise. “Yes, darling, of course she is.”
Scott grinned. “And she loves the Christmas tree lights,” he said, and waited while Evie flicked the switch and the tree illuminated in a kaleidoscope of flickering color. Rebecca’s blue eyes widened and she gurgled delightfully. “See?” Scott said, and smiled.
Evie watched her daughter and husband together and a surge of love rushed through her blood. He was such an incredible father to both the baby and Trevor. They’d been married for six months, and each day had been an incredible joy. Scott had joined the Bellandale Fire and Rescue Department and had settled easily into his new job.
Trevor loped through the doorway, looking very grown up at sixteen. “Are we opening presents?” he asked, and grabbed some cake.
“Soon,” Evie promised as the Manning sisters came through the door. “Once everyone is settled.”
Scott winked at her. They’d bought Trevor a fancy racing bike to go with his newfound interest in fitness and sports. The gift was hidden in the one vacant downstairs bedroom, and both she and Scott excused themselves at the same time so they could bring it into the living room.
“I’ll take the baby,” Eleanor insisted as she floated into the room wearing one of her signature silk caftans. Scott’s mother had become a regular visitor to Crystal Point over the past year. One day, Evie was sure, it would become a permanent move. Especially if they continued to add to their brood. She loved the idea of having another child in a year or so.
As Scott placed Rebecca in his mother’s arms, Amelia and Flora starting laughing.
“Look, mistletoe!”
Evie tilted her neck backward. Sure enough, the greenery was hanging from the door frame above. She looked at Scott and smiled, thinking how it was such a perfect moment. “Have you been decorating again?”
He chuckled and drew her against his solid body. “Who? Me?” he said, and kissed her under the mistletoe before he reached up and twirled the leaves with his fingertips. “You know, I owe a lot to this little piece of plastic.”
“You do?”
“Sure. You might say it’s the reason we’re here. Got you to kiss me, didn’t it?”
Evie laughed delightfully. “Or got you to kiss me?”
He looked into her eyes. “It got us both here—and that’s all that matters.”
She nodded and smiled. It was, for sure, the best Christmas ever.
* * * *
Don’t miss Helen Lacey’s next book,
HIS-AND-HERS FAMILY
On sale January 2013
wherever Harlequin books are sold!
* * * *
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Chapter One
It happened too quickly for him to even think about it.
One minute, in a moment of exasperated desperation—because he hadn’t yet bought a gift for Caroline’s birthday—Cody found himself walking into the refurbished antique store that had, up until a few months ago, been called The Tattered Saddle.
The next minute, he was hurrying across the room and managed—just in time—to catch the young woman who was tumbling off a ladder.
Before he knew it, his arms were filled with the soft curves of the same young woman.
She smelled of lavender and vanilla, nudging forth a sliver of a memory he couldn’t quite catch hold of.
That was the way Cody remembered it when he later looked back on the way his life had taken a dramatic turn toward the better that fateful morning.
When he’d initially walked by the store’s show window, Cody had automatically looked in. The shop appeared to be in a state of semi-chaos, but it still looked a great deal more promising than when that crazy old coot Jasper Fowler ran it.
Cody vaguely recalled hearing that the man hadn’t really been interested in making any sort of a go of the shop. The whole place had actually just been a front for a money-laundering enterprise. At any rate, the antique shop had been shut down and boarded up in January, relegated to collecting even more dust than it had displayed when its doors had been open to the public.
What had caught his eye was the notice Under new ownership in the window and the store’s name—The Tattered Saddle—had been crossed out. But at the moment, there was no new name to take its place. He had wondered if that was an oversight or a ploy to draw curious customers into the shop.
Well, if it was under new ownership, maybe that meant that there was new old merchandise to choose from. And that, in turn, might enable him to find something for his sister here. As he recalled, Caroline was into old things. Things that other people thought of as junk and wanted to discard, his sister saw potential and promise in.
At least it was worth a shot, Cody told himself. He had tried the doorknob and found that it gave under his hand. Turning it, he had walked in.
Glancing around, his eyes were instantly drawn to the tall, willowy figure on the other side of the room. She was wearing a long, denim-colored skirt and her shirt was more or less the same color. The young woman was precariously perched on the top step of a ladder that appeared to be none too steady.
What actually caught his attention was not that she looked like an accident waiting to happen as she stretched her taut frame out, trying to reach something that was on a higher shelf, but that with her long, straight brown hair hanging loose about her back and shoulders, for just an instant, she reminded him of Renee.
A feeling of déjà vu seized him and for a moment, his breath caught in his throat.
Balancing herself on tiptoes, Catherine Clifton, the former Tattered Saddle’s determined new owner, automatically turned around when she heard the little bell over the front door ring. She hadn’t anticipated any customers coming in until the store’s grand reopening. That wasn’t for a couple more days at the very least. Most likely a couple of weeks. And only if she could come up with a new name for the place.
“We’re not open for business yet,” Catherine called out.
The next thing out of her mouth was an involuntary shriek because she’d lo
st her footing on the ladder and both she and the ladder were heading for a collision with the wooden floor.
The ladder landed with a clatter.
Catherine, fortunately, did not.
She was saved from what could have been a very bruising fate by the very person she’d just politely banished from the premises.
Landing in the cowboy’s strong, capable arms knocked the air out of her and, along with it, anything else she might have said at that moment.
Which was just as well because she would have hated coming across like some blithering idiot. But right now, not a single coherent thought completed itself in her head. It was filled with just scattered words and a myriad of sensations.
Hot sensations.
Everything had faded into the background and Catherine was instantly and acutely aware of the man whose arms she’d landed in. The broad-shouldered, green-eyed, sandy-haired cowboy held her as if she weighed no more than a small child. The muscles on his bare arms didn’t even appear to be straining.
A tingling sensation danced through Catherine’s entire body, which was stubbornly heating up despite all of her attempts to bank the sensation—and her reaction to the man—down.
Her valiant efforts to the contrary, for just a moment, it felt as if time had stood still, freezing this moment as it simultaneously bathed her in a heretofore never experienced, all but debilitating, feeling of desire. For two cents proper, using the excuse that this rugged-looking cowboy had saved her, she would have kissed him. With feeling.
Catherine could absolutely visualize herself kissing him.
The fact that he was a complete stranger was neither here nor there as far as she was concerned. Desire, she discovered at that moment, didn’t have to make sense. It could thrive very well without even so much as a lick of sense to it.
And for no particular reason at all, it occurred to her that this man looked like the real deal. A cowboy. A real vintage cowboy.
