Читать книгу His For Christmas - Michelle Douglas, Cara Colter - Страница 12

“THIS IS YOUR HAMMER?” he asked. Nate tried not to laugh. Good grief. She was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. She had gone from the toy tapping tool that had looked more like an instrument her first graders would use in a percussion band, to this, a 23-ounce Blue Max framing hammer with a curved handle. It looked like a hatchet.

“What’s wrong with it?” Morgan asked.

“Nothing.”

“It was very expensive.”

“I’m sure it was. I’ll bet that tree stand was, too.”

“Don’t take that ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’ tone with me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered her schoolmarm tone of voice.

But she wasn’t fooled. Not even a little bit. “You think my new hammer is funny. I can tell.”

It probably wasn’t a good thing that she was getting so good at reading him.

“No, no, it’s not funny.” Despite saying that a snort of laughter escaped him. And then another. Then he couldn’t resist. “When are you building a house?”

“A house?” she asked, flabbergasted.

And he dissolved into laughter. He had not laughed, it seemed, for a very long time. Oh, little chuckles had been taking him by surprise here and there. But it had not been like this. A from the belly, caught in the moment, delight-filled roar of genuine laughter.

It felt good to laugh again. Maybe too good. It almost made him forget he had other worries tonight, like Ace and her new little pal, who could at this moment be gooping on makeup, or eating popcorn in front of an unblocked Playboy channel.

“A big hammer is called a framing hammer. It’s used for framing a house.”

“I’m sure it can be used for other things.”

“Yeah. If you can lift it. And swing it. Have you seen house framers? They have wrists nearly as big as your thighs.”

Shoot. Was she going to guess he’d been looking at her thighs? Maybe not, because she suddenly seemed distracted by his wrists. She licked her lips. He decided it might be best to avoid mentioning body parts from now on.

Or looking at them. For a prim little schoolteacher, she had lips that practically begged to be kissed, full and plump.

He wasn’t going to be held responsible for what happened next if she licked them again.

“You don’t buy a hammer you can barely heft,” he said, a little more sharply than he intended. His sharpness had nothing to do with her hammer choice, not that she ever had to know.

She reacted to the tone, which was so much better than lip-licking. Rather than looking educated, she looked annoyed. Annoyance was good!

“I like that hammer,” she said stubbornly.

“Really?” he challenged her. “What do you like about it?”

She hesitated. She looked at the hammer. She looked at him. She looked at her toes. And the fallen Christmas tree. It was written all over her that she wanted to lie, and that she was incapable of it.

“The color,” she finally admitted, giving him a look that dared him to laugh. It was a look designed to intimidate six-year-old boys and it was effective, too.

Or would have been effective if she hadn’t started laughing first. He liked it that she could laugh at herself, and then they were both laughing. Laughing with her, for the second time in just a few minutes, was a worse temptation than sneaking peeks at how those prisonissue sweatpants hugged her thighs.

Because it invited him back toward the Light. Nate was aware he was walking way too close to the fire.

He reined himself in. “I’ll just put up the coat hangers now,” he said. To himself he added that he would put up the coat hangers—that was what he had come here to do—and go. Immediately.

“Show me how to do it,” she said, setting down the cocoa she had brought in. “Next time I need something done, you might not be here.”

Not might not, he corrected her silently. Won’t. A week ago, he would have said it out loud…Why not now? Because, despite his vow to stay away, he kept coming back to her, magnet to steel.

Because there was something about her that was funny and sweet and even a hard man such as himself could not bring himself to hurt her by tossing out carelessly cruel words.

“Come on then,” he said gruffly. “I’ll show you.”

It was a surrender. Because putting up a few coat hangers should have been the simplest thing in the world. It should have taken five minutes.

Instead, because of his surrender, half an hour later the reclaimed barn board was finally up. His hand had brushed her hand half a dozen times. Their shoulders had touched. He was aware of her lips and her thighs and her shoulders and her scent.

He was amazed he’d managed to get that board level, the coat hooks spaced out evenly.

Morgan was glowing as if she’d designed a rocket that could go to Mars as she surveyed their handiwork.

“It looks so good.”

“Except for the additional hole,” he pointed out wryly. She had put the huge hammer through the drywall when she had missed the nail he was trying to teach her to drive.

He had supplies to fix it, since he’d come prepared to fix her previous holes in the wall. He taped the hole, stirred the drywall mud and began to patch.

“I want you to promise you’ll return the hammer.” Then, he heard himself promising that if she did, he’d help her pick out one that was better for all-around household use and repairs.

Even though he knew darn well Harvey could help her. Harvey had been handling the hardware department at Finnegan’s since time began. Nate could even go in and warn him to offer her a little advice on her purchases, before he actually let her buy them.

Whether she wanted it or not.

But she probably wouldn’t, and for some reason he thought she might listen to him a little more than she would listen to Harvey.

Thought that meant something.

She was coming to trust him.

Oh, Nate, he told himself, cut this off, short and sweet. Wouldn’t that be best for both of them?

“The cocoa’s gone cold,” she said, oblivious to his inner war. She took a little sip and wrinkled her nose in the cutest way. A little sliver of foam clung to the fullness of her lip. “I’ll go make some more. Let’s take a break.”

Which meant she thought he was staying, and somehow, probably because of the damn foam on her lip, he could feel short-and-sweet going right out the window.

Well, Nate rationalized, he couldn’t very well leave her with her Christmas tree sprawled across the floor, with a stand that was never going to stand up, could he?

Yes.

But he’d said he’d fix it.

He trailed her to the kitchen and watched her make cocoa. Since she was going to the effort, he’d drink that. Then he was leaving, tree or no tree. He had a kid he hired to help him sometimes, he’d send him over tomorrow. He could look after having it fixed without fixing it himself. But then would it be done right?

Her kitchen, like her living room, made him aware of some as yet unnamed lack in himself.

Everything was tidy, there was not a single crumb on the counter, no spills making smoke come off the burners as she heated the milk. She reached for a spice and the spices were in a stainless-steel container that turned, not lined up on top of the stove. The oven mitts weren’t stained and didn’t have holes burned in them.

He could feel that horrible longing welling up in him.

Leave, he told himself. Instead of leaving as completely as he would have liked, he left the kitchen and went and worked on the stand. So it would be done right.

By the time she came back in, he had the stand modified to actually hold up a tree, and had the tree standing back up.

“This is a foolishly large tree,” he told her.

She smiled, mistaking it for a compliment. “Isn’t it?”

He sighed. “Where do you want it?”

“I should put the lights on while it’s on the ground,” she told him. “Come have your cocoa before it cools this time. I’ll worry about the tree later.”

But somehow, he knew now he’d be putting the lights on it for her, too. It was too pathetic to think of her trying to put them on with the tree lying on the floor, creative as that solution might be to her vertical challenges.

It occurred to him, she was proving a hard woman to get away from. And that with every second he stayed it was going to get harder, not easier.

Okay. The lights. That was absolutely it. Then he was leaving.

He went and sat beside her on the couch as she handed him cocoa. He took a sip. It was not powdered hot chocolate out of a tin, like he made for Ace on occasion. It was some kind of ambrosia. There was cinnamon mixed with the chocolate.

Morgan McGuire had witch-green eyes. She was probably casting a spell on him.

“So, do you and Ace have family to spend the holidays with?” she asked.

He wished he would have stuck with the lights. That was definitely a “getting to know you” kind of question.

“We alternate years. Last year we were with my parents, who live in Florida now, so this year we’re with Cindy’s side of the family, Ace’s aunt Molly and uncle Keith. They have a little place outside of town. We’ll go out there after the production on Christmas Eve and spend the night.”

He didn’t say his own house was too painful a place to be on Christmas Eve. He did not think he could be there without hearing the knock on the door, opening it expecting to see Cindy so loaded down she couldn’t open the door.

By then, Cindy had been gone so long he suspected she was coming home with a little more than reindeer poop.

“How about you?” he asked, mostly to avoid the way his thoughts were going, to deflect any more questions about his plans for Christmas.

Which were basically get through it.

She was the kind of woman you could just spill your guts to. If you were that kind of guy.

Which he wasn’t.

“Oh.” She suddenly looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure yet.”

“You won’t go home?” he asked, suddenly aware it wasn’t all about him, detecting something in her that was guarded. Or maybe even a little sad.

“No,” she said bravely. “With The Christmas Angel on Christmas Eve I decided to just stay here.”

Again, focused intently on her now, he heard something else. And for whatever reason, he probed it.

“Your family will be disappointed not to have you, won’t they?”

She shrugged with elaborate casualness. “I think my mom is having a midlife crises. After twenty-three years of working in an insurance office, she chucked everything, packed a backpack and went to Thailand. She told me she’ll be on a beach in Phuket on Christmas day.”

“And what about your dad?”

“He and my mom split when I was eleven. He’s remarried and has a young family. I’m never quite sure where I fit into all that.” And then she added ruefully, “Neither is he.”

Nate didn’t know what to say.

His family might have been rough around the edges, but not knowing where you fit into the arrangement? He had been alternating where he spent Christmas since he had married Cindy and his mother still cried when it wasn’t her year to have him and Ace.

The idea of your own family not wanting you was foreign to him. He felt so shocked and saddened by it, he had to fight back an urge to scoop her up and take her on his lap and rock her, like the lonely child he heard in her voice.

“It’s actually been good,” she rushed on bravely. “I’m doing all these things for the first time by myself. Before my mom decided to be a world traveler, she always did Christmas. And she was elaborate about it. Theme trees. New recipes for stuffing. Winning the block decorating party. Christmas was always completely done for me. In fact, God forbid you should touch anything. Then it might not look perfect. So, I don’t know how to do anything, but I’m happy to learn. You don’t want to go through life not knowing how to do things like that. For yourself.”

She was not a very good liar. She was not happy to learn. But he went along with her.

“No,” he said soothingly, without an ounce of conviction, “you don’t.”

“Of course, I probably won’t cook a turkey,” she said. “For myself. That would be silly.”

“You aren’t going to be alone on Christmas.” He wasn’t quite sure why he said it like that. As if he knew she wasn’t going to be alone at Christmas. When he didn’t. At all.

She was silent. Too silent.

He shot her a look. Her face was scrunched up, and not in the cute way it had been when the chocolate had gone cold.

“Are you going to cry?” he asked with soft desperation.

“I certainly hope not.”

“Me, too.”

He fought again that impulse, to pick her up and lift her onto his lap, to pull her head against his shoulder and hold her tight.

Instead, and it was bad enough, he reached out and took her hand in his, and held it. It was a small gesture. Tiny against the magnitude of her pain.

Nothing, really.

And yet something huge at the same time. She clung to his hand as if he had tossed her a life preserver.

That should have been enough to make him let go. But it wasn’t. He was leaving his hand there as long as she needed to hold it.

Nate understood instantly that something had shifted in him. He had come out of the cave of his pain just enough to reach out to someone else.

A shaft of light pierced the darkness he had lived in.

And he saw the truth: all evening the dark place had called him to come back. And he almost had obeyed that call.

There was something comforting and familiar about that place of pain where he had been. Save for Ace, it made few demands on him. He did not have to feel anything, he did not have to truly engage with life. It certainly did not ask him to grow or to give.

But now, now that that shaft of light had pierced him, he was not sure he could go back to living in darkness. He was not sure at all.

Morgan took a deep shuddering breath.

“Let’s put up the lights on the tree,” he suggested. If there was one thing personal pain had taught him, it was that sitting around contemplating it was no way to make it go away. Action was the remedy.

“Okay,” she said, her voice wobbly with the tears she had not shed. She let go of his hand abruptly and leaped to her feet. “I guess that means I have to find the star.”

Nate noted that everything she owned was brand-new, and there was a sadness in that in itself.

His childhood might have been poor, but both sides of his family had given him Christmas relics that went on his tree every year. He was pretty sure his lights, the color cracked off them in spots, predated his birth by several years. He had antique ornaments that his grandmother had carried across the ocean with her, acorn ornaments that Cindy had made when she was Ace’s age.

Morgan’s lack of anything old in her Christmas decoration boxes made him acutely aware of how bad her first Christmas alone could be.

And it was that awareness—of her aloneness, of how close to tears she had been—that made him tease her.

About the size of her tree, and the rather large size of the striped sock she put on the mantel for herself, about her selection of treetop star, a gaudy creation of pink-and-green neon lights.

He teased her until she was breathless with laughter, until the last remnants of sadness had left her face, and the sparkle in her eyes was not from tears. He was heartened when she began teasing him back.

Together, they put up the lights, ornaments way too scanty for such a big tree, tons of tinsel that she demanded, in her schoolteacher voice, get added to the tree a single strand at a time.

By the time they were done, it was close to midnight.

She insisted on making more hot chocolate. She turned off all the other lights in her house, and they sat on her purple couch in darkness made happy by the glow of the Christmas tree lights.

Nate had not realized how on guard he was against life, until now, when his guard came down.

He felt as relaxed as he had felt in years. And

exhausted. Keeping a guard up that high was hard work he realized, it required constant vigilance.

And that was the last thing he thought.

He was still sitting up, but Nate Hathoway had gone to sleep on her couch, Morgan noted. Another woman might have thought it wasn’t a very exciting end to what had turned out to be a wonderful evening.

But, staring at him mesmerized, Morgan thought it was perfect.

Sometime during the night—around the time she had made that announcement about spending Christmas alone, intended to solidify in her own mind and his her independence, but somehow turning pathetically maudlin instead—he had let go of some finely held tension in him.

Now, she loved watching him sleep. She could study him to her heart’s content without the embarrassment of him knowing.

And so she indulged in the guilty pleasure of just looking at him: the crumple of dark hair against his collar, the lashes so thick they could have been inkencrusted, and cast soft shadows that contrasted the hard angles of his face, cheekbones, nose, chin.

His jaw was relaxed. And he didn’t snore.

Sighing with the oddest contentment, she got up, finally, moved the hot chocolate from where he had set it on the ottoman and unplugged the Christmas lights. She fetched a blanket.

Her intention was to toss it lightly over him and tuck it around him.

But his head was tilted at an odd angle, so she gently leaned over and put pressure on his shoulder. He sighed, leaned, and she tucked a pillow behind his head.

Better, except that she felt reluctant to remove her hand from his shoulder.

He reached up and took her wrist, yanked gently. “Lie down beside me.”

She knew he was sleeping, or in that groggy state between being asleep and being awake where he didn’t really even know who she was or what he was asking.

His guard had come way down tonight. Now he was in a really vulnerable state, admitting something he would probably not normally admit.

He did not want to be alone.

Just like her.

She knew she should disengage his fingers one by one from her wrist and tiptoe off to her own room. Probably he would wake sometime in the night, be embarrassed to find himself asleep on her couch and disappear.

So she knew what she should do. But it seemed all her life had been about shoulds. The one time she’d rebelled and not put her own life on hold because she should defer to her fiancé’s more lucrative career it had ended rather badly.

So, maybe she’d become even more attached to shoulds than before.

For all its talk of the joy of freedom, wasn’t Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman just another book of shoulds? It was a desperate need for an instruction manual to guide her through life, to make the rules for her. Hadn’t the book just provided another excuse not to rely on herself, not to risk following her instincts, not to risk taking control of her own life?

This was the truth: there was no instruction manual for life.

No one was going to grade her on what she did next. It was possible no one even cared. Her mother was in Thailand. Her father had long ago replaced his first family.

So why not do what she truly wanted? Why not do what would give her a moment’s pleasure, even if that pleasure was stolen?

She didn’t have to stay tucked into Nate’s side. She could just see what it felt like, enjoy it for a few minutes and then go to bed.

With a sigh of pure surrender, Morgan sat on the edge of the couch, leaned tentatively into him. He was so solid it was like leaning against a stone, except the stone was deliciously sun-warmed.

He let go of her wrist, but his arm, freed, circled her waist and pulled her deep into his long leanness. For a moment, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

What was she going to say if he woke up suddenly and completely?

She held her breath, waiting, but he didn’t wake up. If anything his breathing deepened, touched the sensitive skin of her ear, felt on her neck exactly as she had always known it would, heated, as textured as silk.

She willed herself to relax, and as she did, she noticed her awareness of him deepening. Her own heart seemed to rise and fall with his each breath. He was not all hard lines as she had first thought. No, he radiated warmth, and his skin, taut over muscle, bone, sinew, had the faintest seductive give to it.

There, she told herself, she had felt it. She could get up and go to her own bed now, satisfied that she had followed her own instincts.

Except it was harder than she could have imagined to get up, to leave the warmth and strength of him, to walk to her lonely room and her cold bed.

It was harder than she could have ever imagined to walk away from what was unfolding inside of her. A brand-new experience. A very physical feeling of connection. Closeness. Awareness.

A physical experience that had a mental component…

For as she snuggled more deeply into him, Morgan felt the moment begin to shine as if it had a life of its own.

Her mind struggled to put a label on the level of sensation she was experiencing. And then it succeeded.

Bliss.

Morgan fell asleep in the circle of his arms. And woke in the morning to winter sunshine pouring through her windows.

For a moment, she felt it again, bliss.

But then she realized why she had awoken. It was because he was awake. Oh, God. Why hadn’t she just enjoyed the sensation for a moment and then gone to bed as she had originally planned?

It would have saved them both the terrible embarrassment of this situation.

Now it felt horribly awkward. He hadn’t even been fully awake—maybe not even partially awake—when his hand had encircled her wrist and he had asked her to lie down with him.

What was he going to say now?

What the hell do you think you’re doing?

Morgan could feel her whole body stiffening, bracing itself for his rejection.

Instead, his fingertips brushed her cheek.

“Hey,” he said softly, something of discovery in his voice, “you have a print on your cheek again.”

He didn’t kiss it this time, though, just put her away from him, got to his feet and stretched.

The rumpled T-shirt lifted as he stretched his arms over his head, showing her the taut washboard of his stomach.

Her gaze drifted upward to his face. He was smiling. He didn’t seem to find the situation awkward or embarrassing at all.

“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, “I guess now I know what’s so great about sleepovers.”

He was not sorry. It occurred to her that he hadn’t been asleep at all when he’d invited her to cuddle with him. It hadn’t been an accident. Or a case of groggy mistaken identity.

“Is my hair standing straight up?” she asked him.

He cocked his head. “No. More sideways.”

That’s what wasn’t so great about sleepovers. And what now? Did she offer him breakfast? Did she show him the door?

He had his cell phone out of his pocket, scrolling through it. “No calls from Ace,” he said with relief.

It was the mark of what kind of man he was that Morgan had not even known he had a cell phone until that moment.

Karl’s had been more than a cell phone: it could practically start his car on command, and she realized now that Karl’s cell phone had been like a third party in their relationship.

And that it would never be like that with Nate Hathoway.

“But I think I better go get her. Saturday is our day. She’s pretty fussy about that.”

“Okay.” Was she being dismissed? That made her feel so bereft she couldn’t even tease him about not going shopping this time.

“You want to spend our day with us?”

Her mouth fell open.

“I promised Ace a sleigh ride.”

A sleigh ride?

She had to say no. Look at how she had just spilled the beans to him last night about her whole life history! Look how she had reacted when she thought she was not going to be included in his plans for the day!

Bereft.

No, throwing out the rule book did not mean leaving herself wide-open to hurt. And to get involved with this man had the potential to make her redefine hurt.

On the other hand, a sleigh ride?

Morgan nearly sighed out loud. It was the kind of family outing her childhood dreams had been full of. Despite her mother creating a picture of a perfect Christmas, there had never been the connection of a perfect Christmas. Christmas activities had involved entertaining, not playing.

Morgan had dreamed of tobogganing and skating and sleigh rides. She had dreamed it in such perfect detail that she could picture it already, with startling clarity. The three of them—her, Nate, Ace—nestled in a sleek red sleigh, their legs covered in a soft, plaid blanket.

He would be holding the reins of a spirited white stallion. The horse would snort, throw up clouds of snow with each prancing footfall. The air would be full of diamond ice crystals and the sound of bells.

There was an old-fashioned romance about his invitation that was irresistible.

“I’d love to join you and Ace on a sleigh ride,” Morgan said.

Even though it was against her better judgment, this thing was unfurling inside her, like a flag. More than happiness. More than excitement. More than anticipation.

This time it was familiar to her, so Morgan identified it much more quickly.

“Happy,” Nate said.

She preened that he had recognized her mood so quickly.

“That’s Ace’s pony’s name. It’s kind of like when people name a Great Dane Tiny. He’s not that great with a sleigh.”

Okay, so he hadn’t recognized her mood. And the white steed was out. Still, gliding across snow-covered fields was gliding across snow-covered fields.

“I’ll come back for you in an hour or so,” he promised.

And he was gone, which was good, because she had been gravely tempted to lean forward, close her eyes and offer her lips as a form of goodbye.

“You’re dreaming,” she warned herself as she heard his vehicle roar to life outside.

In fact, it would have been too easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that her coat hangers were hung and her Christmas tree was up. Except lights winked from the branches, and the star, that age-old symbol of hope, shone bright from the very top of that tree, a pinnacle she could not have reached without a ladder.

It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream, except that when Morgan looked in the mirror, her hair was standing up sideways and her cheek held the perfect imprint of his shirt.