Читать книгу The Baby Made at Christmas - Lilian Darcy, Lilian Darcy - Страница 11

Chapter Four

That was day one.

Christmas took over most of day two.

Lee awoke early in the morning to hear Mac calling his family in Idaho, standing in her kitchen and keeping his voice down. “C’mon, sis, I knew you’d be up with the kids,” she heard him say.

Upstairs, the Narmans and their guests were up with the kids, too, and she knew she needed to touch base with them right away, to see what they wanted for cleaning and catering over the next few days. She called the cleaning company first, to confirm availability, using the boss’s home number, and booked them in tentatively for eight this morning. It was only six-thirty now, but the cleaner was happy to hear from her. He could charge a mint for working on Christmas morning.

Lee jumped in the shower for a two-minute scrub and then dressed quickly. Mac was still on the phone. “Doing my second job,” she mouthed at him, pointing up at the ceiling. He nodded.

The Narmans were very happy about the cleaners coming at eight. Most of the party was still in bed, just two sets of bleary-looking parents in pajamas and robes up and about, watching their impatient, early rising kids dive into the contents of several bulging stockings.

“Catering, no, not for today,” they told her. “You filled the refrigerator with everything we needed for last night—thanks so much. And for Christmas dinner we’re eating out.”

They talked through a few more details—they wanted a four-course spread for twenty people catered for later in the week, and someone had broken the glass shower door in one of the bathrooms, so could she arrange to get that replaced? Then Lee did a quick collection of bottles and cans and empty pizza boxes, and took out four bags of trash.

She was taking the final bulging bag to the little wooden trash hut that kept out bears and raccoons when Mr. Narman, Sr., found her and presented her with a list of eight more “little details” that needed her attention. More shopping, another repair job, reservations at various restaurants to make on their behalf and several more items.

“Is it always like this when they’re around?” Mac asked, when she told him she would probably be tied up most of the day, and then there was her dinner with friends to go to. She’d made coffee, and pointed to the cereal packets and the toaster and the bread.

“Pretty much. But they’re polite about it, and it’s such a good arrangement for me. Very cozy when they’re not around and I get to go upstairs.”

“Oh, you get to use the house?”

“Yep.” She grinned. “Laze in front of the open fire and drink champagne in the Jacuzzi.” She kicked off her boots and stretched her neck and shoulders in preparation for diving into all those phone calls.

“You were a cat in your previous life, I can tell.”

“Oh, you can?”

“The way you stretched and purred when you said that. The way you’re just slightly trying to get rid of me because I’m crowding your space.”

“Trying to—?”

Maybe I am.

He was grinning at her, leaning on an elbow in the kitchen doorway, with their breakfast dishes—two mugs, two plates—sitting in the sink behind him. The accusation hadn’t been made in anger. “It’s okay,” he said. “I have stuff I need to do, too.”

“I’m really not... I’m not pushing you out the door.” She felt a little panicky that he’d read her so clearly, and that she’d given the wrong impression about last night.

“It’s okay.” It must be, because he was still grinning.

“It was...” She scrambled for the right words. So she was a cat. Did he like cats? “I loved it. I loved the whole night. Sleeping beside you. And then you were still here in the morning, and that was lovely, too. It really was.”

“It’s okay,” he repeated patiently.

“I want to see you again,” she blurted out, and then bit her lip, because maybe she’d overstated her case, maybe his recognition that she was ready for some alone time had made her too honest about how much she’d liked last night.

Damn!

Or not.

He was smiling. Again. “So do I. Soon. We can make a plan now, if you want. Or if you don’t know when you’ll next revert from feline to human form, we can leave it and make a plan later.”

“Now. We can make a plan now. I’m only a cat some of the time.”

“Aha, is that a confession?” He stepped toward her and swung her easily into his arms, lacing his fingers in the small of her back and rocking her from side to side. It was as if they were dancing. “I knew it! I knew you were a cat.”

“Do you, um, like them?”

“Like what?”

“Cats.”

“What’s not to like?” he said softly. “They feel good to touch.” He ran his hand down the side seam of her jeans. “And if you treat them right, they purr for you.” He brushed the skin behind her ears and under her jaw, and so help her, she almost did purr! Her eyes wanted to close, and she wanted to rub against him and coil up and stay there. And she’d most definitely purred last night. But there were things to do and places to be....

He was still speaking. She opened her eyes again and found him looking at her. “And their eyes go big when something exciting happens.”

“Yours, too,” she whispered. Big and so dark.

“And they’re such phenomenal athletes, so fit and sinuous, the way they move. They know how to use their bodies so well. I’ve always loved that in a...cat.”

He was speaking of her, not cats at all, but all she could think of was him. She could imagine him, suddenly, out on a powder run, making effortless, snaking tracks through pristine snow with his shoulders squared to the slope and his strong legs pumping like pistons or springs.

“Let’s ski together,” she blurted out. “Could that be part of the plan? For next time?”

“And sometimes they’re just plain hilarious.”

“Wh—?”

“I’m seducing you, Lee, and you want to hit the slopes.”

“No, I...”

Shoot, how did I miss that? Of course he’s seducing me!

“We have time,” he insisted.

“Do we?”

“If we’re fast. And not fancy.” He added slyly, “I’ll set my watch.”

She laughed. “How long?”

“Ten minutes. Fifteen, by the time our shoes are back on.”

“You’re serious.”

“I totally am.”

So they were fast and not fancy, stripping and laughing and falling on the bed, and taking every shortcut they could think of....

Oh, it was so good. So short, but so hot and good. She knew they would both be laughing about it, thinking back. Laughing about the fact that you could make it into a race and still get it right.

The timer on his watch started bleeping just as he was reaching for his socks. “Damn! We didn’t make it as far as the shoes!” he said.

“Near enough,” she suggested.

“Near enough is not good enough. We’ll have to go for a rematch on this one.”

“On the fast thing?”

“Why, didn’t you like that?”

“I did,” she said.

With a look of lascivious reminiscence, he drawled at her, “Yeah, you did.”

* * *

Oh, she did, she liked it! Mac enjoyed the memories in this area whenever they wandered through his mind that day—and it was often.

He didn’t see any point in pretending about this kind of thing. He felt what he felt, and he let it show. He never made promises he didn’t intend to keep. Most of the time, this meant not making any promises at all. Better safe than sorry. She seemed to be the same, the kind of woman who played it straight, who wasn’t about games or emotional blackmail or saying one thing when she meant the opposite.

He hadn’t come to Aspen with the idea of hooking up with someone right away, and was a little surprised, to be honest, that it had happened like this.

Well, huh. So he had a woman in his bed, and it seemed to be working.

Nice.

All the same, from the word go, he kept a good lookout for danger signs and deal breakers, because even the most apparently casual fling could have a sting in the tail if you weren’t careful....

* * *

Lee didn’t mention Mac to her friends at Christmas dinner that night, but then she saw him every day for a week. He found a small apartment down valley, about twenty minutes’ drive, but told her, “You’re not seeing it until I have it fixed up a little,” so they always came back to her place. He downloaded and read A Room of One’s Own, on his eReader, “Purely so I can drink from more of your mugs.” She told him he was an idiot, and it became a running joke between them.

The Narmans left the day after New Year’s, which gave Lee a full schedule of instructing all day and then cleaning the house out until past eleven o’clock that night, with more still to do the next day. It was only when the Narmans were in residence that she called in the team of cleaners, who could be in and out in an hour. When the family wasn’t around, she did the work herself, because then it didn’t matter if it took her a day or two, and she could make sure it was done absolutely right.

But there was no time for Mac.

Two days later, when she’d closed the doors of all the spare bedrooms, replenished supplies and sent several things off to the dry cleaners, she grabbed a private moment with him at the ski school office and told him, “Guess what? We can have the house today.”

“The whole house?”

“Well, I usually just stick to one bedroom and bathroom, but, yep, they’re not due back until three days at the end of January.”

“Will we be able to find each other in that place?” He gave her a big grin. “Should we text our whereabouts whenever we move rooms?”

“We could get one of those Swiss alpenhorns that are about eight feet long.”

“Or walkie-talkies.”

“Or a 1970s intercom system.”

Another instructor overheard them. “Oh, wow, my house used to have one of those! My parents tortured us with it.” He gave a chuckle and shook his head. “We had Muzak piped into every room.” He moved on, out of earshot.

“Lucky we weren’t talking about various other possible subjects,” Mac muttered in Lee’s ear.

“I’m ready to talk about them tonight,” she muttered back.

“When?”

“Whenever.”

Having the whole house turned them both into kids in a candy store. Mac went shopping and came back with champagne, smoked salmon, caviar and anything else that had caught his eye and said luxury. Lee filled the Jacuzzi and lit the fire. They closed the drapes, which the Narmans always seemed to prefer open, even though the curtains moved back and forth at the touch of an electronic button.

“Can we have music?” Mac asked.

“Go for it.”

He strode into the side room where there was a huge bank of audio equipment, and put on a rock compilation CD. “They really don’t mind you doing this?” he said when he came back into the kitchen.

“They ask for it specifically. They hate if the place looks dark and unattended. The lights in my little cubbyhole don’t show from the street, or from the slopes.”

“How did you get this gig, anyhow?”

“I taught some of them to ski, they started asking for me for private lessons every time they came, and it went from there. The girl I was sharing with down valley got a boyfriend and wanted him to move in. There wasn’t room for three of us. Mr. Narman was looking for a live-in janitor. The timing was right, and it’s worked out really well. I’ve been doing it several years now.”

“It definitely has worked well. I think this caviar plan of mine is going to work out pretty well, too.” He thumped the side of the jar lid on a wooden cutting board to break the seal, and twisted it open. “My only question is whether we eat in the Jacuzzi or by the fire.”

“From experience, I can tell you that eating in the Jacuzzi isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Things end up floating and getting on your skin, and caviar is not my favorite flavor in a moisturizer.” She pulled a chilled bottle out of the shopping bag. “Champagne in the Jacuzzi, on the other hand...”

So they drank champagne there, using the very nice plastic picnic champagne flutes the Narmans kept for the purpose.

“They’re pretty fussy about the possibility of broken glass,” Lee explained. She lay back in the foaming water, letting the jets bounce her gently and keep her afloat.

Mac did the same on the opposite side of the vast tub. “I can see why they like you. You keep to their rules even when they’re not here.”

“They’re nice people, despite being a touch over-the-top.”

“Why are you all the way over there, by the way?”

“Because I had to pour the champagne, and it’s sitting right behind me.”

“But now you’ve poured the champagne, and the distance is a problem.”

“What, you think we need the alpenhorn to communicate?”

“I just want you here.” He moved forward a little and held out his arm, and she went to him, sliding against him all slick and slippery with the foam, and he wrapped an arm around her bare, foamy wet butt to keep her in place, and it felt so sexy and good. “You’re so beautiful, Lee....”

“Me?” People didn’t say that about her. They said she had a strong face, a melodic voice, an athlete’s body, great hair. They said she was striking, or pretty—which was a real stretch, because she knew her face was way too strong for pretty.

“You’re beautiful,” he repeated. “Your eyes. Can’t decide if they’re blue or green. Your smile. So much life. The way you laugh is beautiful. Your mouth, all lush. The way you threw your head around with those earrings, first time I saw you.”

“Yeah?” She floated against him, pressed nose to nose and stole some kisses.

“That did it for me. I saw you, the way your hair bounced, dark gold and a little messy, and you had this look on your face.”

“And we talked as if we already knew each other.”

“It felt like we did. And now we really do.” He hiked her hips against his so she could feel what she was doing to him.

“We really do....” she whispered.

What happened next was fairly predictable.

What happened next had been happening a lot.

Still new.

Different every time.

Amazing every time.

That night, he stayed over, but he didn’t always. As the days went by, they both seemed to know when it was time for a little extra space. Mac needed to set up his new apartment. Lee had some heavy days of coaching junior racers, ahead of a competition tour to Europe that they were taking in February.

“February?” Mac said when she told him. “When in February?”

“We leave on the third.”

“The third, and you’re only just telling me?”

“I wasn’t not telling you. People are talking about it. I thought you might have heard.”

“Hmm. Well, I hadn’t.”

“Sorry.”

“No biggie. You’re telling me now. So you’ll be away how long?”

“Three weeks.”

“That long?”

“It’s a new thing we’re trying this season. Handpicked group, a little younger than usual.”

“Hope you have some parents going.”

“We do. I’m not organizing that side of it.”