His soft and lilting voice startled Cady. “Wow, Caleb is amazing,” she whispered.
Miles grinned back at her. “Yeah, he is. I’m afraid the talent stopped with him though, the rest of us can’t carry a tune in a bucket— well, except for Sarah. She loves singing in the church choir, and I guess that’s where my brother got his pipes from.”
Caleb’s rendition of Silent Night set against a backdrop of magical twinkling tree lights and the snowy scene all around them was breathtaking. When he reached the second verse, the crowd joined in and their voices drifted across the fields, filling the night with magic.
After Silent Night, Miles’ brother worked his way through some of the traditional church carols before changing things up and singing some popular classics.
Eventually, Caleb put up his hands and the crowd clapped for him. “I’m done. If you want any more, then someone else needs to take the lead. My throat’s dry. Now, where’s the beer?”
By then the crowd’s interest in singing had waned and they turned to chatting, drinking the mulled wine, and eating the cookies and other snacks people had brought.
Miles took Cady by the hand and they crept around the ranch house and back to her room. “Won’t they miss us?”
He bent and kissed her. “Maybe. But I’m done. I just want to lie with you in my arms.”
They climbed the stairs up to her room and closed the door on the chattering that drifted around from the front of the house.
Miles undressed Cady slowly, kissing her as he removed each piece of fabric from their bodies. When they were both naked, he led her to the bed and climbed inside. Cady curled into his arms and he pulled her close. Already her body was exhausted, but with his warmth wrapped around her, her eyelids drooped and her breathing slowed.
Just as she teetered on the brink of sleep, Miles kissed her temple, and whispered, “Love you.”
Cady held her breath, hardly believing what she heard, and with a smile on her face she drifted off to sleep.
15
Miles
December 26th
Miles? Miles, are you fucking in there?” Caleb thumped on Cady’s door again, and Miles knifed up in the bed.
Cady was out cold still, her hair spread across the pillow and flopped all over her face. She’d kicked the covers around and one shapely leg and half her ass peeped out.
Miles paused and rubbed his chin as a horny thought crept into his head and his dick swelled in agreement with the little fantasy he had in mind, but Caleb thumped on the door again.
“Miles, you have ten seconds to answer me or I’m coming in there.”
“Fuck. Give me one minute.”
Cady moaned and opened an eye, frowning as she acknowledged the pounding on the door. Then her brain kicked into gear and she grabbed the covers and wrapped it around her. “Is that Caleb?”
Miles kissed her and scrambled out of bed, he grinned at her as she raised an eyebrow at his erection. “Just stay there, I’ll get rid of him.”
“What are you going to say?”
He laughed. “Guess there is not much I can say. He knows I’m in your bed, so the fucking cat is out the bag.”
“Sorry.” Cady looked down at her hands and in that instant Miles found he didn’t care about his brother knowing.
“Hey, come here and kiss me.” She scooted across the bed and he squeezed her against his chest as he planted a wet hot kiss on her mouth. “I’m not. Just give me five minutes and I’ll be back.” He yanked on his jeans and sighed as Caleb banged again.
Miles could have seriously decked his brother, and as he flung open the door, it was his intention to tell Caleb just that—except, when he stepped outside, the expression on Caleb’s face sent panic through his chest.
“What’s the matter?”
Caleb had his t-shirt on back to front and inside out, his long hair corralled by a hastily pulled on beanie and his normally tan skin was ashen as he shivered on the stairs. “It’s Mom, you gotta come, she just collapsed. Jules is with her.”
“What the fuck? You called an ambulance?”
“Yeah, it’s on its way but you know how far out we are…”
“Get the truck, I’ll drive her.”
Caleb stood there looking lost. “She’ll be okay, won’t she?’
“The truck Caleb, go get it and pull it up to the front of the house. I’ll be thirty seconds, let me find my shoes.”
Miles stumbled back into the room, his heart going ninety miles an hour. Cady must have heard Caleb because she was already out of bed and dressed. She handed him his shoes and held out his tee. “Go, I’ll head to the kitchen and do breakfast for the guests.”
Miles looked at the clock by the bed. “Shit, I didn’t even think of that.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it, just get Sarah to the hospital.”
When Miles arrived at the house, the place was in an uproar. Jules leaned over Sarah on the kitchen floor, her mom’s face as gray as the snow-laden skies, and Jules hand clutched Sarah’s as she spoke to her.
“Is it a heart attack?”
“I-I don’t know, Miles. She was chatting to me one minute, and the next she was on the floor. I couldn’t get to her fast enough. She hit her head as she went down, and I can’t seem to wake her up.”
Miles knelt beside his stepmom and ran a glance up and down her. There were no obvious signs of injury except a red mark on her cheek. Jules had placed a pillow under her head and shifted her into the recovery position. “Is it safe to move her?”
“I ran through some checks, I think so.”
“I need more than that, honey. It’s your decision. Do we wait for the ambulance or shall I put her in my truck and take her.”
A sob alerted him to Harriet who was sitting on a kitchen chair, her hand over her mouth. Nolan, wearing pjs, stood a couple of feet away, his arm around Olivia.
“The truck, yes. E.T.A on the ambulance is an hour and forty minutes, I think it will be better to take her.” Jules decided.
She moved out of the way as Miles lifted Sarah in his arms. The woman wasn’t large, but the angle was all wrong and he stumbled as he tried to get to his feet. Nolan was there in an instant, and between the two of them, they carried her out to Miles’ waiting truck.
“Jules, get in the back with her, you’re the only one of us with medical experience.”
“I’ll get my truck and follow you with the others.” Caleb’s color was starting to come back into his face, but he still looked shocked. Miles turned to Nolan who was still hovering but looked the calmest out of all his siblings. “Will you drive? Caleb doesn’t look like he can.”
“Yeah, sure. What about the guests?”
“It’s okay, I’ll do breakfast and hold down the fort.” Cady said, and it was then that Miles realized she’d been hovering on the periphery of his vision.
“I’ll stay and help her, the rest of you go and be with Sarah.” Olivia volunteered.
The drive to the hospital was the longest forty-five minutes of his life, and it was probably the only time Miles had ever hated the fact that the ranch was so far outside of Fountain. By the time they reached the hospital, Sarah had come around and was arguing with Juliet about sitting up.
Miles paced the waiting room while Juliet and Sarah disappeared into the bowels of the hospital surrounded by a flurry of nurses and a lot of complaining from Sarah. About ten minutes later, Nolan arrived with Harriet still weeping and Caleb gnawing his fingernails down to the quick.
“Any news?” Nolan asked.
“Not yet. She was conscious when we got here, and was giving us an earful about wasting the doctor’s time. She said it was just a ‘turn,’ whatever the fuck that means.”
“She’s done this before?”
“Not that I know of. Caleb, did you see what happened?”
Caleb shook his head. “I just came running when I heard Jules yell.”
It was almost an hour later when Juliet came through the doubl
e doors into the waiting room and they all leaped to their feet.
“Is she okay?” Caleb hadn’t sat still for the entire time they were waiting, and he practically tackled her as soon as she appeared.
“Hypotension.”
“What?”
“Low blood pressure.”
Caleb breathed out slowly. “Okay, well that’s not serious, right?”
“It is if she keeps passing out.”
Harriet immediately burst into tears again. They had come and gone for the entire time they were there.
Miles put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her tight. “Hey, she’s in the right place, they’ll find out what caused it.”
“Hypotension is not dangerous on its own, but the doctors want to know what caused the sudden drop in blood pressure so they are running some tests.”
“Tests? What sort of tests?” Nolan quizzed her.
“ECG, and some blood tests to rule out diabetes, thyroid, that sort of thing. Hey, Harry, relax. She is fine. It could just be something as simple as she didn’t eat before she began working on the breakfast stuff. Fainting in itself doesn’t necessarily mean anything sinister. Anyway, you can all see for yourselves in a few minutes. Once they finish drawing more blood, they’ll let you in to see her.”
Sarah was sitting up in bed eating a granola bar and sipping water when they went in. She had a big bruise on the side of her face.
“Jeez, Sarah, what did you do?” Miles sat on the bed next to her, studying the purple patches.
“Apparently, I hit one of the kitchen stools on the way down.”
Miles grinned at her. “You scared the crap out of us!”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “Kinda frightened myself, too.”
“But you feel okay now, Mom?” Caleb sat down on the other side of her.
“Yeah, good as I can be.” Sarah looked around all her children in the room and narrowed her eyes. “Who’s doing breakfast?”
“Don’t worry about that. Cady and Olivia did it all.” Miles fished out his phone and showed Sarah a picture that Cady sent him earlier of all the guests digging into a full breakfast feast. “See, it all went smoothly. Cady cooked and Olivia served, and there were no hiccups.”
Sarah scrutinized the picture and once she was satisfied that everything looked to her high standard, she handed the phone back.
It was almost two in the afternoon by the time Miles arrived back at the ranch with Caleb and Nolan. They’d left the keys to Caleb’s truck with Harriet and Jules. Miles was worried about the horses, as no one had time to feed them when they fled to the hospital.
When they arrived at the ranch, Cady and Olivia were not around. Miles didn’t have time to go look for Cady in her room, so he set off to the stables with Caleb behind him, leaving Nolan to find a couple of guests that had a late checkout and needed a ride to the airport.
When he walked into the stables, he found Cady and Olivia with pitchforks in their hands clearing out one of the stalls. He stuck his head over another stall and found that one already done. In fact, so were most of the others in the stable block.
Cady laid down her fork and came to him. “How is she?”
“Good. They don’t think it’s anything too serious but they are running some tests to see if anything caused the drop in blood pressure. What’s all this?”
Cady looked disheveled. She was still wearing the clothes she’d pulled on in a hurry this morning, and bits of straw were haphazardly stuck in her hair and sweater. There was manure up her jeans, and the smudge across her cheek might also have been the same.
“We thought we’d better tackle the stable chores. I was worried about the horses. Um, I followed the chart in the feed room, and Olivia and I measured all the food out carefully. We’ve pretty much done all the stables, just that big horse you were riding the other day is left to do, but um, he wasn’t very friendly when we went over there so we thought we’d leave him until last.” She looked warily over at his father’s stallion which had its head over the stall door and was puffing out his nostrils.
“I’ll get that.” Caleb relieved Olivia of her pitchfork, and laughed at her unkempt appearance.
“Thanks for doing this, you two are life savers.” Miles wanted to hug Cady and Olivia for their initiative.
“It was all Cady.” Olivia tugged pieces of straw from her hair. “I didn’t have a clue about any of this.”
Miles pulled Cady into his arms and grinned down at her. “You worked all this out for yourself?”
“Not exactly. I mean, your tack room has all those lists up, so I guessed which ones were more important and we did those first. We still haven’t looked at the tack or…”
He silenced her with a kiss, and didn’t even care if anyone saw him. “I’d forgotten they were up there. We use them in the summer when we bring in extra help for our busy periods. “
“Hey you oaf, back the fuck up.” Caleb shoved the stallion out of the way of the stable door and when he finally got it open, he led the horse out of the stall and tied him to a ring outside the stable. He looked up just as Miles went in for his second kiss. “Jeez, get a fucking room.”
Miles shot his brother a look. “You know, that is a damn good idea. Thanks, Caleb. I’ll leave you to finish up here.” He took hold of Cady’s hand and tugged her toward the entrance.
“What? Huh, sure, but you’ll owe me one.” Caleb feigned outrage at his brother shirking his responsibilities.
Miles stopped at the barn door and he winked at Cady. “No, I think I owe Cady one. Tell me, honey, do you take payment-in-kind?”
Her eyes widened and she struggled to keep a smile at bay. “It depends what type of ‘kind’ you had in mind.”
“Specifically? Fucks.”
She took his hand. “Then that will do nicely, sir.”
Miles all but ran with her back to the ranch and, without thinking much about it, he dragged her through the kitchen and down the passageway to his room. He shut the door behind him, and as soon as it was closed, he tugged her sweater over her head. “You shouldn’t say stuff like that.”
“Like what?”
“You called me sir.” He reached for her jeans and undid the button and slid down the zipper. “Now I am thinking all sorts of naughty thoughts.”
She pulled a piece of straw out of her bra and laughed. “Well, you might need to keep a hold on those, I smell of horse, and…” she looked down at the stains on her jeans and wrinkled her nose. “Huh, shit.”
“Yes, you do. But you forget, I’m a country boy. A bit of manure never bothered me. Besides, I like the smell of horses.” He helped her out of her jeans. “But if you insist, I’m more than happy to take a shower with you.”
Leading her through to his bathroom, Miles mused on this rollercoaster kind of day he was having, but as the hot water streamed over their bodies, all the stresses and strains vanished from his head. It wasn’t exactly what he’d planned for their last day together, but there were worse things than showering with a beautiful woman, and he planned on making up for the lost hours in the best way possible.
* * *
A couple of hours later, they were sitting in his bed, Miles leaning against the headboard and Cady nestled between his legs with her back against his chest. Despite spending what was left of the afternoon absorbed in each other, he was feeling melancholic. The sun had started to set, and he was dreading what the morning would bring. Saying goodbye to Cady was going to be the hardest thing he ever did.
“Hey, penny for those thoughts?” Cady reached up and put her hand to his face.
He caught her hand and kissed the knuckles. “I can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow.”
Her eyes misted over a little. “I know. The days have gone by so fast.”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
She pulled away from him, and slung her legs over the side of the bed. For the first time, Cady seemed hesitant and she shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t have a c
lue, Miles. I-I’m very fond of you—”
“But? I sense a big fucking but.”
She shrugged again. “But…”
“See, I knew it was coming.”
“Please, Miles, don’t make this hard.”
“Is this us breaking up?”
Cady frowned as she reached for her clothes, pulling her sweater over her head as if she was suddenly uncomfortable being naked in front of him. “What do you want?”
He wanted her. He wanted for some miraculous event to put them in the same state. Screw that, if that was going to happen, he needed her to be in the same town. Hell, here—specifically, right here in his damn room for the rest of his life. It was four days. Four fucking glorious days and he didn’t want to ever give her up.
But wanting doesn’t beget receiving, and the reality was Cady had a fucking life far away from him, and he wouldn’t make her choose his over hers. Deep down, he knew that had been part of the problem with Clarissa. If they’d settled in Denver like she wanted, or if he’d taken her to some other big city, perhaps she’d have been happy and they’d still be together—though in his heart Miles knew that wouldn’t have worked either because securing her happiness would have only lead to his ultimate misery.
“Can we still talk?” Fuck, he was a needy bastard.
“I’d like that.” She smiled at him and he tried to return it, he really did, but the thought of this being the end was too damn real.
Voices trickled through from the kitchen, and Miles was glad for the interruption. “That sounds like the others are back from the hospital. Let’s go see how Sarah is and get some food.”
“I should change first. My clothes are filthy from the stable. Do you have another way out of here?”
He climbed out of bed and took her in his arms. “For what it’s worth, I love you, Cady.”
A tear slid down her cheek. “I love you, too, Miles.”
Before he started to cry right along with her, he pointed to the French doors that led out onto his deck. “If you go out that way, you can slip around the house to your room.”
Miles' Christmas Roundup (Holiday Hunks Book 2) Page 12
