Christmas in Shelter Bay

by JoAnn Ross

  Even more so now that she’d seen Cole Douchett. Damn, even with that too-short Marine haircut, he was better looking than ever. He was not really conventionally handsome. Not like Brad, who, especially when he wore his tweed jackets with their leather elbow patches, brought to mind a hot college literature professor.

  Cole looked every bit the warrior he was. His face was all harsh, chiseled lines that cast deep shadows on his sexily stubbled cheeks and his full, firm mouth that for an unsettling moment she’d wanted to feel on hers. Back when she’d first been swamped by a tsunami of hormones in her teens, she’d fantasized about licking that delicious cleft in his chiseled chin.

  How pitiful was it that her knee-jerk attraction to him was every bit as strong as it had been when she was fifteen?

  His heavily hooded, intense eyes were the color of the dark chocolate truffles she was regrettably too fond of, which partly explained the ten extra pounds she kept vowing to lose. They’d once been warm and, although more serious than his younger brothers’, friendly. Not today.

  It wasn’t that he’d been particularly unfriendly. Or cold. In fact, if she were to be perfectly honest, she’d been the one to put the chilliness in their conversation. Nor could she describe those watchful brown eyes as remote.

  At least not when they’d skimmed over her body. Although she’d fallen in love with the outfit when she’d first seen it in the window of the Dancing Deer Two boutique, Cole’s appraising gaze had her thinking that she probably looked like a snowwoman some tagger had spray-painted pink.

  She’d spent too many years wishing for Cole Douchett to look at her as if she were a female, and not a kid sister, not to recognize the fleeting flash of male interest. An attraction he’d immediately tamped down. She’d noticed the sexual conjecture was quickly replaced by another emotion that, as nervous as she’d been, she’d hadn’t exactly been able to recognize.

  “Lonely,” she said suddenly as she climbed up the bleachers toward the top row. That’s what had been in his heavily hooded eyes. Cole Douchett was lonely.

  “What?” Brad, who was following behind, asked.

  “Nothing.” She waved off her inadvertent comment. “I was merely thinking out loud.”

  And even if she was right about what she’d seen in Cole’s dark eyes, there wasn’t any reason to feel sorry for him. Not only did he have his family to celebrate the holidays with, most of Shelter Bay’s single women, and undoubtedly a few married ones, would jump at the chance to spend time with the hottie Marine.

  “About going to Hawaii?” Brad frowned at the idea. “Because, as your friend, Kelli, I feel obliged to point out that spending the holidays all by yourself in a hotel room thousands of miles away would probably be very lonely.”

  “Probably.” Though, now that she’d run into Cole, she was going to go online the minute she got home. “Then again, I feel as if I really need a break.”

  “Why don’t we go together?”

  “Together?”

  Brad Archer was the least impulsive man she’d ever met in her life. Which was a good thing in his profession, she’d decided. But all his charts and diagrams and PowerPoint slide shows, along with his tendency to plan everything down to the last detail, could get brain-numbingly tedious.

  Which had her mind wandering toward Cole again. Of the three Douchett brothers, he’d always been the least impulsive. Not stodgy, certainly. But steady. Dependable. Steadfastness seemed an admirable trait for a Marine.

  Then again, surely war wasn’t at all predictable. So he couldn’t be anything as rigid as Brad.

  Not that she was comparing the two men.

  Merely making an observation.

  “I’m sorry.” As she squeezed in sardine tight next to him to fit into one of the two open spaces left on the green steel bench, she realized Brad had been speaking to her. “My mind was wandering. To the play.” Liar.

  “I was suggesting that Hawaii at Christmas sounds like an enjoyable way to experience a different culture.”

  His initial undergraduate major, Kelli knew, had been archaeology. But while volunteering on a dig in the Mexican Yucatán between his freshman and sophomore years, he’d belatedly discovered that he disliked heat, insects, and mud, not to mention the deplorable lack of running water or room service. As soon as he returned to the States, he’d gone through drop/add and switched to education.

  “I wonder if people decorate palm trees there,” he mused.

  “Some probably do.” Spotting Cole’s grandmother and mother waving to her from a few rows down, she waved back. “And Hawaii has Norfolk Island pines, which are really pretty, though they’re not actually pines but conifers. Even so, they get a lot of trees shipped in from the mainland. The Carpenter farm has been sending them to the islands since before I was born.”

  “I’ll bet that makes them expensive.”

  “Well, they’re not inexpensive.” Not that all that many profits ended up in her family’s coffers by the time you factored in filing myriad government paperwork involved in ensuring the trees were disease free, along with the cost of shipping and distribution once they arrived in the Aloha State. “But a lot of people must figure it’s worth it. And it’s not exactly as if they could grow their own Noble firs.”

  “They could buy artificial.”

  “Don’t suggest that to any member of my family,” she warned as she watched Cole walk down the pier.

  His shoulders, beneath the navy blue parka, were as wide as an ax handle, his back straight enough to get him on one of those posters in the Marine recruiting office on Main Street. He’d begun to shoot up in middle school, yet despite the muscle he’d put on over the intervening years, he somehow managed to move like a cat. A lion, she decided. King of the jungle.

  His father and grandfather, who were no slouches themselves in the looks department, were already standing on the deck of the boat.

  “It was merely an economic observation,” Brad said.

  “I’m not sure economics enter into the equation all that much when people are Christmas tree shopping. Plus, real trees just smell like Christmas. And fake ones end up being tossed out every five years or so, winding up in landfills while a real tree can be recycled into mulch.

  “We’ve also been dropping trees into Rainbow Lake after the season. They become a good habitat for fish to lay their eggs in. And after Hurricane Katrina, we began shipping tree mulch to Louisiana to help rebuild coastlines.”

  “I didn’t realize that.”

  “Well, now you know. It’s not all tinsel and lights.” Realizing that had come out uncharacteristically sharp, she forced a smile. “I’m sorry if I sounded snappish. I guess you can take the girl from the Christmas tree farm, but you can’t entirely take the farm from the girl.”

  “Makes sense to me. You’re right to be proud of your family business.” He put his arm around her shoulders as the sun set into the water and the darkness gathered around them. “I could go online right now, from my phone, and see about booking tickets,” he suggested.

  She liked Brad. He was a nice guy and was wonderful with kids. Which would have made him a great catch in many women’s eyes. But whatever relationship they had, it definitely wasn’t to the point where she wanted to take a vacation with him. Especially since she had the feeling, from the way he’d behaved so oddly possessive when talking to Cole, that Brad was far more serious about her than she was about him.

  He was a friend. A wonderful principal to work with. He’d undoubtedly make a terrific husband and father. Unfortunately, although she’d honestly tried, she just never felt any zing when she was with him.

  While just seeing Cole again could set off sparks. All this time she had assured herself that no more sparks could fly up from embers that she’d firmly tamped down, especially after last year’s debacle.

  She’d been so wrong about that.

 
; “Let’s just watch the parade,” she said. “We can talk about it afterward. Or tomorrow.”

  Although she had no intention of going to Hawaii with Brad, she truly liked him and didn’t want to turn him down here, in front of so many people—many of whom were likely already eavesdropping on their conversation. One sure thing about Shelter Bay was that everyone knew everyone’s business.

  “Works for me,” he said agreeably.

  And somehow his affability only made her even more certain that the time had come to break things off. On the one hand, she didn’t want a man who’d take away her independence by telling her what to do. But she also knew, having had to learn to be assertive growing up with three older brothers, that if she were to ever get serious and settle down with Brad, she’d undoubtedly walk all over him.

  Which he’d come to hate her for.

  Nearly as much as she’d hate herself.

  The harbormaster blasted three sharp sounds on his air horn. A moment later, all the boats that had chugged out into the water turned on their lights, revealing a dazzling display of decorations as varied as the boats’ owners. Among them were the more expected Christmas trees, Santa’s sleigh, snowmen, reindeer, along with angels and a manger. Going with a more local angle, one featured a blue whale followed by its baby, another a huge goose, outlined in blue wearing a red scarf, looking as if it were flying off the stern of a sailboat outlined in white.

  All were bright and wonderful in their own way, but the fishing boat that immediately drew Kelli’s gaze was Bon Temps, with a giant red Dungeness crab opening and closing its claws.

  Everyone around her was having a grand time. And why shouldn’t they? It was Christmas, after all. Which had always been her favorite time of year. Or at least it had been at one time. But something had changed for her this year. Try as she might, once the decorations had started going up all over town, she hadn’t been able to get last year’s encounter with Cole out of her mind.

  She’d always been easygoing—some would even say perky—Kelli. But despite realizing that Cole thought of her more along the lines of a cheerful puppy who was always trailing after him, she’d steadfastly believed that once she grew up, once he opened those Hershey brown eyes and realized that the freckle-faced girl with hair that always frizzed when it rained had matured into the woman he’d been waiting for all his life, everything would change.

  Which had been why, for that one heart-stealing moment when he’d taken the jewelry box out of his parka pocket, although they’d never so much as kissed on the lips, she’d just known that he’d bought it for her.

  She’d been so wrong.

  And worse yet, the intended recipient of that pear-shaped diamond just happened to be her high school nemesis. The woman anyone with even a halfway working brain could see was totally wrong for him.

  Unfortunately, although he might be a big bad Marine who could—according to the local press coverage regaling the act of heroism that had won him a medal for bravery—catch bullets in his teeth and spit them right back at the terrorists, that entire Christmas Cole had been home on leave, he’d acted as dumb as Dudley Do-Right, her family’s ancient basset hound.

  “He’s a Marine on leave, honey.” Matt had defended his lifelong best friend when she’d complained about the way Marcia Wayburn, whom Cole had dated off and on his senior year of high school, had him wrapped around her acrylic French-manicured finger. And that wasn’t all that was fake. Kelli knew that for a fact, because Marcia had bragged all over school that her high school graduation present from her doting daddy had been a boob job. “Makes sense that he’d be thinking with his little head instead of his big one.”

  He’d flashed a grin that showed Cole wasn’t alone. Which wasn’t something Kelli had wanted to think about. At all.

  “Guys who know they’re going back to war are looking only for no-strings sex.” He’d told her what she’d already figured out for herself. “And despite you always putting him up on a pedestal, Cole’s still just a regular guy.” He’d ruffled her hair the same way he had when she was six. “He’s just reliving old high school days. He’ll get over her.”

  Since her brothers had never lied to her, Kelli had believed him. Until the Christmas tree lighting when he’d flashed that diamond and informed her that he planned to give it to a girl named after that snobby, know-it-all Brady Bunch big sister, who, to Kelli’s mind, was the most annoying character ever on television.

  She’d never lost her temper. Ever. Until that night. Although much of what she’d shouted at him was a blank, she could remember throwing the pretty white jewelry box at his chest, where it bounced off and landed on the ground.

  Which would’ve been bad enough. But before Cole could retrieve it, Ken Curtis’s yellow Lab puppy snatched it up, slipped her collar, and had a dandy run around and around the tree, chased by seemingly every male in Shelter Bay before Cole finally caught her with a running dive that sent them both smashing into the tree. Fortunately, since her father and brothers had secured it well, the tree hadn’t toppled over, where it could have crushed nearly the entire town who’d gathered for the annual holiday lighting.

  But it had created a scandal that kept Shelter Bay talking well past the New Year. And if that debacle weren’t bad enough, Cole and Marcia’s breakup a mere four months later had only added grist to the gossip mill. Even now she cringed thinking about it.

  Although Cole had been in Afghanistan at the time—thus avoiding all the talk—Kelli knew that he would’ve hated having all that attention on him. Especially since he’d always been the Boy Scout of the Douchett family.

  Since her uncharacteristic behavior had created the scandal, Kelli was honestly surprised he’d spoken to her at all today.

  Unfortunately, while their friendship might have gone up in flames on the pyre of his male cluelessness and her disappointment and jealousy, the one thing that hadn’t changed was that Cole was still hot.

  Make that two things.

  Because, dammit, her raging crush on him was still alive and well.

  And that was ridiculous. She was twenty-five years old. An adult. A professional, an honors graduate whom parents trusted five days a week with their precious children.

  Crushes were for silly young girls who cut photos of Justin Bieber from Popstar! magazine and Twilight fans who wept copious tears in darkened theaters as Bella chose Edward over a brokenhearted Jacob, causing him to run off into the woods to live as a lone wolf.

  How pathetic was it that just seeing him today, just hearing that deep, husky voice that she’d imagined too many times in her fantasies saying her name, had her remembering how knee-weakening the right kind of heat in the right places could be?

  She’d already had her heart broken once by Cole Douchett.

  She would not, Kelli vowed, make that same mistake twice.

  5

  Kelli couldn’t believe it. With all the flights between Oregon and Hawaii, there wasn’t a single seat on any plane flying out of Portland for her? Not even in first class—not that she could afford such luxury on her teacher’s salary. Was no one staying on the mainland for Christmas?

  If she were willing to go after the holidays, as long as she would settle for a middle seat in the very back of the plane, she could buy a ticket for an inflated last-minute price.

  But by then she wouldn’t need to escape because Cole would be gone from Shelter Bay.

  Which was what she wanted.

  So, why, she asked herself a few hours later, did the sight of him walking into the cafeteria, familiar pink bakery box in hand, cause her heart to hitch.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” she said.

  “I ran into your mother this morning at the market,” he told her. “She said that you couldn’t get tickets to Hawaii.”

  “That was fast, even for this town. Since I struck out only last night.”

 
He tilted his head. Frowned. “She wasn’t gossiping, Kelli. I just asked her how things were going and it came up.”

  Had they been talking about her? Her mother had always liked Cole, who’d spent as much time at the Carpenter house as he had his own home.

  “So, anyway,” he said, “I brought you this.” He held out the box, wrapped with white ribbon with Take the Cake written on the top in white raised script.

  “You brought me a cupcake?” She could have easily been addicted to the shop’s cupcakes if she weren’t strict about how often she allowed herself to visit.

  “I was walking by and the aroma wafting from the place drew me in. I was planning to get a box for the family when I saw this tropical one in the case. The bakery’s owner bills it as tasting like a piña colada.”

  “It does.” Which was what had gotten her thinking about Hawaii in the first place.

  “After sampling one myself, solely in the interest of making certain she wasn’t engaging in false advertising, I decided she had nailed it. So, I brought you Hawaii in a cupcake.”

  Kelli couldn’t quite repress the giddy sense of pleasure that he’d been thinking of her. And had bought her something he knew she’d enjoy. Somehow it was better than a pirate’s trove of jewels.

  “Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

  “Don’t go giving me too much credit, Kels,” he said. “There was more than a little selfishness involved.”

  “Oh?” She opened the box and breathed in the scent of rum, coconut, and pineapple. A bright yellow and white paper umbrella had been inserted in the middle of the toasted coconut frosting. Hawaii in a cupcake.

  “I was hoping it’d get you to smile at me again. Like old times.” He flashed a grin, the one that was such a surprising contrast to his rugged, almost harshly hewn looks. The one she’d never been able to resist.

  Oh no. Kelli felt the moisture stinging at the back of her eyes and lowered her lids, fighting to control her tangled, complex emotions. Then finally she lifted her gaze to his steady, watchful one and gave him the smile he’d been waiting for.