Harlequin Special Edition October 2015, Box Set 1 of 2

by Christine Rimmer

  She blinked. “To the ranch, to meet your mom? I... Yes, I think I’d like that.”

  And then, without any warning whatsoever, she all but threw herself toward him, wrapping her arms around his waist and nuzzling her head against his shoulder. Pure contentedness settled deep in his gut, rooted itself there and started to grow. Logan didn’t think or question or hesitate. He just reacted and pulled Anna in close for a proper hug.

  The soft whisper of her hair floated against his jaw, adding to the sense of all being right with the world. His world, at least. Whether he’d feel the same tomorrow or the next day or four months down the line remained unknown, but for now, he was about as happy as a guy could be.

  So he went with the happiness and kissed her—lightly, sweetly—on her mouth. Her lips were warm and soft and tasted like hot chocolate and...peppermint.

  Instantaneously, an image tried to surface in his mind’s eye—brought on by the peppermint—of some long-ago moment shared with his father. He shook it off—now was not the time to be thinking of Denny—and focused on Anna. Just Anna.

  “If Lola can spare you at the coffeehouse,” he said, making no move to separate them, “I thought we’d wait to leave until Wednesday afternoon, since you have your doctor’s appointment that morning, and stay until a day or two after Christmas. What do you think?”

  “Um... I’m not sure.” Stepping out of the embrace, she rolled her bottom lip into her mouth. “It isn’t my job that’s the problem, I don’t think. Lola can fill in my absence easily enough, and she won’t say no. But we’ve made plans for Christmas since I thought you wouldn’t be around, and...well, I hate leaving her alone for the holidays.”

  Ouch. How had he not considered Anna’s aunt? “Easily solved. She can go with us, sweetheart. We have plenty of room, and my family will welcome her. No doubt about that.”

  “Lola won’t leave the Beanery during our busy season,” she said with a small shake of her head. “I’ll talk to her, see what she says about me being gone, but... I can’t promise anything, Logan. I’m the only family she has here, and it’s my first year back.”

  An awkward silence drifted into the room, making Logan wonder if Anna’s response to his invitation was as honest, as valid, as it seemed. Could it be that she had used her aunt as a handy excuse to hide her dismay at the possibility of being stuck with him for Christmas?

  Improbable, he supposed, seeing how Anna tended to lay her cards on the table quite regularly and with remarkable ease, but the thought—the potential, no matter how slight—chewed his insides to dust. He disliked these thoughts and their effect in equal measure.

  “Of course. If we can make this work, then that’s great,” he said in a relaxed, doesn’t-bother-me-regardless-of-what-happens tone. “If not, that’s also fine. My...ah...mother will get over her disappointment, and you two will eventually meet.”

  “Thank you for understanding. I don’t want to hurt Lola’s feelings,” Anna said softly. “I’d like to go, if I can. I think it would be nice to spend the holidays with you and your family.”

  She returned her attention to her cookies, sliding one cutout after another off the sheet onto a cooling rack. And Logan felt like a heel. For doubting the veracity of her words, or the intention behind those words, even for a millisecond.

  Coming up behind her, he placed his hands on her hips and rested his jaw on the top of her head. Breathed in the fresh, clean scent of her hair and said, “It’s always beautiful at the ranch, but this time of year is my favorite. Life is slower, for one thing, and the layers of snow covering the land create this thick blanket of silence. It’s...serene and, to me, almost reverent.”

  “Oh.” Anna leaned backward, trusting him to hold her weight. “That does sound lovely, Logan. I’d like to experience that for myself. If not now...maybe soon?”

  “We can do that, and...well, I’d like to show you where I grew up,” he said quietly, feeling out the words as he spoke them, “how I grew up. And our daughter will spend a considerable amount of time there, as she grows, climbing the same trees, and...maybe she’ll even learn to ride a horse there.”

  And he liked those ideas, too. A lot. But he found he liked them better when he imagined Anna there, with him and their daughter, experiencing these moments together.

  “Hard to visualize, isn’t it?” she asked. “That this big ol’ stomach is hiding a baby who will someday be a little girl who will ride horses and climb trees.”

  “Not as hard as you might expect,” he said. “I can see it, clear enough.”

  They stood that way, with her leaning her full weight against him and his jaw on the top of her head, for several minutes of absolute harmony. Another type of reverence stole in, warming Logan through and through. Along with all the other crazy, unexpected, confusing emotions this woman ignited, she also brought him...peace. And wasn’t that something?

  Finally, Anna pulled herself free, saying, “These cookies aren’t going to finish baking themselves, despite how much I wish they would. And I still have to frost them tonight, which could take a couple of hours.” Twisting around, she gave him a coaxing grin. “Unless I can talk you into helping? What do you say, Logan? Feel like frosting a bunch of cookies with me?”

  “I guess that depends. Do you want them to look nice when they’re done?”

  “That would be preferable.” Her lips twitched in near laughter. “I plan on handing them out as gifts...to my aunt, Gavin and Haley, the rest of the Fosters and a few of my favorite regulars at the Beanery. Oh, and I was going to send several dozen to you and your family.”

  “You were, huh? That’s sweet. Everyone will love them, I’m sure.” A true enough statement, without doubt, but he didn’t have the heart to confess that his mother and grandmother had already completed their own baking blitz. Cookies were not in scarce supply. “Well, here’s the thing. I’ll help if you want, but I can’t promise anything more than presentable results.”

  Barely, if that. He’d been excused from cookie-frosting duty a couple of decades ago, with a great amount of relief on his mother’s and grandmother’s parts.

  “I want your help,” she said simply. “It will seem more festive with the two of us, and I’m sure you’re exaggerating your shortcomings. I mean, who can’t frost cookies?”

  Ha. If she only knew. “Then sure, Anna. Whatever you need.”

  “I’m so glad you said that.” Suddenly, her smile took on a definite devilish gleam. “As I have a few other ideas that fit perfectly into that specialty of yours.”

  “Ah...what specialty would that be?”

  “Why, fulfilling my needs, of course,” she said lightly, darting her gaze away from his. And damn if he didn’t want to see her eyes, to ascertain if only amusement existed or if something else lurked. Heat or desire or longing or, preferably, an intoxicating blend of all three. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait and see if there’s any frosting left over.”

  “Wait a sec,” he said, trying to catch up. “Frosting? What does that have to do with—” Oh. She couldn’t mean... Could she?

  “Yes, frosting. Might get a bit messy, though.” Now she glanced his way, and a hot kick of lust balled in his stomach. Hard and fast and unrelenting. She had that look. The same look she had the day he’d found her in his bed. “Tell me, do you mind a little mess, Logan?”

  Her innuendo was clear enough, even if he didn’t know the specifics. And he’d be a fool—an absolute fool—to put up any objections. Not that he had any. “Nope, sweetheart. Can’t say that I do.” Though he was interested in discovering precisely what she had in mind. “That being said, I am curious. What are you thinking we’ll do with any leftover frosting?”

  “Oh, I’d hate to disappoint you by telling you now,” she said with a cute little wink. “Look around the kitchen. I baked dozens and dozens of cookies. Decorating all of them w
ill require a ton of frosting, and I’m out of confectioner’s sugar, so I can’t make more. We might use every drop of frosting I have...and even if we don’t, why ruin the surprise?”

  Yeah, well, surprises were all well and good in the proper scheme of things, but when it came time to frost those cookies, Logan used his allotment sparingly. Very, very sparingly. So yes, his diligence assured that they had plenty left over, and yes, Anna was right.

  They certainly did make quite the mess.

  Chapter Eight

  Closing her eyes, Anna tipped her face to the gently falling snow and, as she’d done as a child, stuck out her tongue to catch a mouthful of icy snowflakes. It was Christmas Eve morning, and she and Logan had been at the Bur Oak Ranch—named, she imagined, for the numerous bur oak trees dotting the land—since late yesterday afternoon.

  They’d driven onto the property just before sunset, and she’d glimpsed an old-fashioned wooden swing on the sprawling red-shingled house’s wraparound porch. And she had the thought that it would be nice to sit and swing and think about nothing at all.

  Waking up in an empty bed with no sign of where Logan might have gone, and finding the main floor empty—save for a trio of snoring border collies stretched in front of the fireplace—had inspired her to take advantage of the peace and slip outside.

  She was still surprised she was even here, in the place Logan called home. Leaving her aunt alone for the holidays hadn’t felt right. But Lola had insisted, stating that Anna shouldn’t put off meeting Logan’s family any longer, and had sworn she’d be just fine. After eliciting a promise that they’d celebrate Christmas upon her return, Anna finally relented.

  So. Here she was, sitting in the cold morning air, catching snowflakes on her tongue and feeling as if she’d somehow wandered into a mystical winter wonderland.

  Yesterday, between her nervous anticipation at meeting Logan’s family and her near-crippling exhaustion, she hadn’t really looked at the details of the ranch. Now, after a good night’s sleep and without the anxiety-inducing presence of Logan’s mother, grandmother or stern grandfather, she was able to relax enough to take in her surroundings.

  A group of buildings—maybe fifty to sixty feet away—faced the main residence in a half circle, and behind them stood several more structures. Most were, she assumed, housing for the cattle, horses and the herding dogs that weren’t lucky enough to sleep in front of a roaring fire. The other structures were likely storage for machinery, tools, equipment, feed and...well, whatever else a ranch required to function. Then directly next to the rear group of buildings were medium to large plots of land squared in by fences, resembling a neat if oversize checkerboard.

  In the opposite direction existed a variety of snow-covered trees—pine, bur oak and others she didn’t recognize—and a long, winding creek that bent and wiggled its form around the land’s natural slopes and ridges, before cutting a path between a thick cluster of pines and disappearing from view. And extending along the other side of the family house was a seemingly endless expanse of wide-open land that, at the moment, was coated in a heavy layer of snow.

  Yet, as much as Anna could see, she knew it was only a small slice of the entire pie and there was more wide-open land, more creeks and buildings and neat, fenced-in squares well outside her vantage point. In addition to the bunkhouses, there were a handful of residences—as in, actual, complete houses—where the rest of Logan’s ranch-working family lived.

  Then, beyond that, there was even more.

  On their way in yesterday, Logan had explained that the ranch encompassed just over four thousand acres of mostly contiguous deeded land, and that he was in the process of finalizing a crop share lease for the section of unconnected property his family owned, which came in just shy of five hundred acres. He’d also told her that in addition to raising and selling cattle, they grew hay and corn.

  So yes, it was a lot to absorb. Even for a woman born and raised in Colorado, a state that was home to many a ranch, and then went on to spend several years in the everything-here-is-big state of Texas. But she did not grow up on a ranch, and in Austin, she’d lived and worked and spent almost all of her free time in the city’s art, music and culinary district.

  She wished she better understood Logan’s role here, though, and the innate connection he seemed to have with this land. Of course, in order for that to happen, he’d have to open up and let her into his head. They were easier with one another again, due in no small part to their physical relationship. So maybe, by the end of their visit, he’d start talking more.

  As well, she was interested in his childhood, in the type of boy he’d been before growing into the man she knew. In her mind’s eye, Anna pictured a boy version of Logan tossing a ball with his granddad, playing hide-and-seek with his cousins and building snowmen with his mom.

  Laughter gathered in Anna’s chest, which she released with a soft snort. Yeah, he probably had done all of those things, but based on Logan’s laser-focus method of living and his mule-headed character, she guessed he also caused his mother, grandmother and granddad more than his fair share of grief. Not to mention plenty of sleepless nights for those same adults.

  Standing since the coldness of the swing had, by now, soaked clear through, she shielded the glare of the morning sun with her hand and stared up to the second floor of the house, where the lower half of the roof jutted out at a narrow and precarious angle right in front of Logan’s bedroom. And she couldn’t stop herself from wondering now about the teenage Logan.

  Had he ever crawled out of his window, onto that sloping ledge, and jumped straight to the ground with the certainty that no harm would come to pass, in an effort to meet a group of his buddies or even a girl he was soft on? She thought he probably had, at least once.

  It was something she would have done, but not for those purposes. Anytime Anna had sneaked out of her house, her goal had been the simple one of escape. Solitude. Oh, she never went farther than the back of their yard, where she’d sit and look at the stars...and talk to her mom. In whispers, usually with tears, her yearning for Ruby so deep and strong she literally ached with the loss.

  Sometimes, though, she’d be angry. So angry with her mom for dying, for leaving her and her sisters alone to deal with the fallout, with the unapproachable and unloving man their father had become, that she’d say awful, awful things into the night air.

  After the anger, after the horrible words, her little girl’s heart would break all over again, and she’d return to her whispers and her tears. Her incredible feeling of loss.

  Anna sighed and pushed the memories down deep, where they belonged. Those days were far behind her, thank goodness, and she was no longer that sad, lost little girl. Hadn’t been for years. But it was a heavy, somber thought. Too heavy and too somber for Christmas Eve, especially when surrounded by such beauty, serenity...and yes, Logan’s word, reverence.

  Logan. She hadn’t yet come to terms with the startling realization that she was already halfway through the process of falling in love. Yeah, right. Whom did she think she was fooling? She’d zipped right on by the halfway mark and was now closing in on three-quarters.

  Didn’t matter, she supposed, how far gone she was or how far she had yet to go. The facts were the facts, and while she had zero plans of wearing her heart on her sleeve, she also refused to tuck away her feelings as if they were shameful. They weren’t.

  And she wouldn’t waste a second of their time together by playing a game of pretend. If she felt like laughing, she’d go ahead and laugh. If she felt like crying, she’d cry until she ran out of tears. And if she wanted to smear buttercream frosting on various parts of Logan’s rock-hard body, and he was willing to let her do so...well, then why wouldn’t she?

  She couldn’t deny that pain might lurk in the distance, waiting to gobble her whole, but if fortune were to look down upon her kindly, she
might just find enormous joy at the other end. When faced with those two possibilities, joy won out. Every time.

  As if in total agreement with this perspective, a resounding series of lightning-fast kicks vibrated inside Anna’s belly. And she laughed—because that was what she wanted to do—good and loud. “Okay, my little angel,” she murmured, “let’s go find some breakfast.”

  Logan was probably searching for her by now, and she guessed she’d find Carla and Rosalie—Logan’s slight, frail-looking grandmother—in the kitchen. While both women had greeted her with restraint, they had also kindly welcomed her into their home. As the evening wore on, the women continued to eye her in unabashed curiosity but kept their questions to themselves. And Zeke, Logan’s grandfather, hadn’t said much of anything.

  It made for an awkward evening, but Anna understood. She was, after all, a newcomer. And since Logan had told his family the entire truth regarding their marriage, they knew she was a temporary newcomer, at that. So, she’d respected the distance and chose to ignore the quiet curiosity. But maybe today, supposing everyone loosened their reserve some, she’d ask Carla or Rosalie about Logan’s childhood: antics he pulled, funny things he said, the name of the first girl he was ever sweet on. Anything and everything they were willing to share, she wanted to hear.

  Maybe they’d even pull out their photo albums. She’d love to see a baby picture of Logan so she’d know if their daughter resembled him when she was born.

  Walking slowly, Anna rounded the curving corner of the porch and was heading toward the back door when Logan stepped outside. His eyes found hers and he smiled.

  “There you are,” he said, leaning his tall, strong, oh-so-masculine form against the side of the house. “I woke up early and went to get a little work done before the day started, and when I went in search of you, found that you had escaped. I...well, I was worried.”

  “Nothing to worry about, as you can see.” She wasn’t surprised to hear he’d decided to work on Christmas Eve. She also wasn’t surprised that he’d worried about her. Both traits fit. “I wanted some time alone, is all, to scope out the area and relax. I...I’m glad I’m here, Logan.”