Читать книгу A Very Maverick Christmas - Rachel Lee - Страница 9

Chapter Three

Braden wasted a lot of time over the next couple of weeks wondering about Julie and what her problem was. Since he spent the time doing manual labor around the family spread, the mindless kinds of tasks he needed to do for the most part opened up his mind to wander—and no matter what he did to distract himself, it kept wandering right over to the mysterious blonde.

Pitching hay and stacking bales didn’t exactly require many brain cells. Making sure it would be easy to feed the cattle when the snow got deep, making sure the bales provided windbreaks against the worst weather, took a lot of time but not a lot of thought.

So he was thinking about Julie and telling himself he was a fool. At least Dallas was over on a different section of their pastures, because he would have noticed his woolgathering and given him a hard time about it. Someplace deep inside, he did not want to be teased about his fascination with Julie Smith.

That alone should probably have warned him, he thought almost grimly.

What was it about the woman anyway? She seemed frightened of almost everything, poised on the edge of taking flight...and then she’d relax briefly, and he was sure he saw the real woman peek through. Maybe.

Will the real Julie Smith stand up? he thought with sour amusement. She looked so innocent, so angelic with those big blue eyes, that he couldn’t believe there was anything bad about her. She’d been in town since June, and there sure hadn’t been any unkind whispers about her. If she were a bad sort, he’d have heard something by now.

But even on the rumor mill it was almost as if she were invisible, which was kind of hard to do. People who knew her mentioned her briefly; she did things with the Newcomers Club; she’d made some good friends. Upstanding friends. If they thought there was anything wrong with her, they wouldn’t keep her in their circle.

So whatever was going on had to be something other than that she was a fleeing felon.

He almost laughed at that thought. Yeah, right.

But the urge to protect her remained; the desire to know more about her goaded him. The coffee experience...well, he didn’t know for sure how to characterize that. Maybe she had just had something to do. After all, the meetup had been impromptu, and she could well have had some chores awaiting her.

He slung another bale onto the wall he was building to give the cattle a windbreak, and hoped like hell that Winona Cobbs was wrong about a record-breaking blizzard on its way. The weather reports certainly showed no indication of any big front coming, even as far away as the Pacific Coast. So far it looked as if they were in for a relatively normal December.

He didn’t want to ponder Winona, however. She could be intriguing at times, but mostly he thought of her as a character, part of the charm of the place. For some reason, that brought his thoughts around to another character, Homer Gilmore. The old coot was a little crazy, wandering around and telling everyone he was “The Ghost of Christmas Past.”

Weird, but the weather was going to take a severe turn for the worse eventually, and he couldn’t imagine that Homer could get by relying on charity handouts. Lord only knew where the guy was sleeping. Grunting as he hefted another bale, Braden decided that something needed to be done for the man. Surely there was a warm hidey-hole somewhere in this town where they could shelter him for the winter. If it came to it, Braden would pay for it himself.

It would be heartless to leave the man’s fate to the elements.

His mother’s remark floated back to him, and he suddenly grinned. Parsival, huh? If she had any idea where his thoughts wandered on the subject of Julie Smith, she wouldn’t liken him to a “pure and perfect knight.” Hah!

A laugh escaped him even as Julie rose in his mind’s eye. That wool sheath she had worn to the pageant had draped her gentle curves in a way that drew a man’s thoughts far from the angelic. Her face might bring to mind an angel, but the rest of her called to a man’s demons.

He paused for some coffee from his thermos and wiped his brow. Cold or not, a man could work up a sweat doing this. And apart from sweat, there was the damn prickly hay. It had managed to get inside his jacket, and probably his shirt.

He scratched a bit, letting his mind wander over Julie’s gentle curves. Closing his eyes as he sipped warming coffee, he imagined running his hands over them. Even through that wool sheath they’d be able to set him on fire. Hell, picturing them was enough to put his motor in high gear.

Leaning back against the wall of hay, he gave himself up to the daydream for a few minutes. Julie in his arms. Her lips welcoming his kiss, her soft curves pressed against his hardness. He imagined pulling down the zipper on that dress, reaching inside to feel warm, silky skin.

Damn it! His eyes popped open, and he stopped himself in midfantasy. Just that little bit, and he was ready to bust out of his jeans. Over a woman he hardly knew, one who seemed a damn sight too skittish to be interested in any kind of intimacy. In fact, she seemed to be avoiding it.

Mentally, he stomped down on his male urges as if he was trying to put out a small grass fire. Cool it, he ordered himself.

It might have been easier to call a halt if he hadn’t remembered that tomorrow was the Presents for Patriots event at the Community Church. Holy hell. He was going to see her again, and it suddenly struck him that she might spend the whole time avoiding him.

He drained his coffee, wondering if he should skip the whole evening, then realizing he’d never hear the end of it if he let down the Traub family by failing to appear.

Stuck, he thought. Shaking out his cup, he then screwed it back onto the thermos and hit those bales again with every bit of energy in him.

Work could drive out demons, even if it couldn’t make him forget an angelic face.

* * *

Living a lie didn’t make Julie happy. And while she was mostly engaged in just surviving while she hunted for some evidence of her past, it didn’t make her happy to realize that she was surrounded by a web of deceit of her own making.

Vanessa and Mallory called a couple of times, asking what she was up to, and the lie came too easily to her lips. “Writing,” she said.

Because that was her cover story. She had to explain why she was hanging out here, why she didn’t have a job—mainly because she wasn’t at all sure she could hold much of a job successfully. She’d managed working in retail shops and one antiques store, but the strain had overwhelmed her. All the strangers, her uncertainty about so many basic things, the other employees who asked way too many questions about her...well, she had a little money now, thanks to selling that coin, and that meant she didn’t have to try to pull off the role of a shopgirl while she was here, a huge relief for her. In a town this size, her seeming standoffishness would eventually be noted and commented on.

So she claimed to be working on a novel on the cheap laptop that sat on a wooden table. It explained how she survived, why she didn’t have an ordinary job and why she disappeared sometimes when she felt too troubled.

But it was a lie. She hated the lies so much that she’d even taken a stab at writing something. The problem was, fiction seemed like a way to escape the really important things she needed to deal with, and nonfiction all came down to “My journey as a woman without a memory.” As if.

It didn’t help that her life seemed like a plot ripped out of the pages of a novel, or that her writing was mostly a meandering diary.

So she wasn’t being honest with her new friends, which didn’t make her feel one whit more comfortable. Maybe she should just blurt the truth, tell everyone that she’d been born and given a name only a short time ago. Yeah, they’d probably call her crazy and drop her like a hot potato. Who was going to believe that?

So much had happened in the weeks after she returned to awareness of where she was, things that had made her feel that even professionals suspected she might be lying, and finally just made her feel like a bug under a microscope.

Go forth and build a life sounded easy, but it was hard.

Like coffee with Braden. It should have been so simple, but the evasions began to get to her. You couldn’t have a relationship based on lies, and the truth was too painful.

Pulling on her outdoor gear, she decided to take a walk in the woods. She left her phone behind, even though she knew she should take it in case she had an accident, but she didn’t want another call reminding her about tomorrow, asking how her writing was going, and did she ever intend to come out of her cave.

For the first time she wondered how anyone wrote a book when people were so disrespectful of a writer’s time. But maybe writers learned not to answer the phone, not to go to the door, not to feel guilty for ignoring a friend’s call.

Somehow she doubted it. Her acquaintance with guilt was growing by leaps and bounds. She seemed to be building it constantly and adding to it with every evasion.

Telling herself it was necessary didn’t much help.

They’d tried to convince her that she would be building a new past for herself each day that went by. It sure wasn’t enough of a past to satisfy her. Yes, she could talk lightly about the few jobs she’d held in her wanderings, some of the people she’d met, but there was always that wall she couldn’t surmount.

Dang, she thought, scuffing her toe in the light layer of snow and bringing up some loam from beneath.

Braden. He was another problem. Though she didn’t have a lot of experience she remembered so she could call on it, she was almost certain that he’d looked at her several times with male interest.

Well, she’d looked at him the same way. He drew her, attracted her, made her want to be a normal girl who could just date and get to know a guy. But since there wasn’t much he could get to know about her, she was a fool to even cherish such dreams, and even more of a fool when he hadn’t tried to reach her in over a week.

But she couldn’t help wishing, and Braden made her wish. The warm, roughness of his palm when he shook her hand seemed to have imprinted itself vividly on her memory. She liked just looking at him, which she supposed was utterly silly, and she reacted like a woman to his scent, to his broad shoulders, to the sight of his butt in those snug jeans he wore.

Oh, man, the bug had bit, but it couldn’t go anywhere. Not unless she told him the truth, and she could just imagine the horror that would come to his face. “You don’t know who you are?” The question that most terrified her.

For heaven’s sake, she didn’t even know how old she was. When her birthday was. Who her parents had been. Where she had gone to school. All those simple but important things. Not even whether she was a virgin.

Man. Self-disgust filled her again, even though she knew it wasn’t fair. She’d been seriously injured. She was lucky to be alive.

Except that she had only part of a life.

Tomorrow was going to be another rough day unless she found a way to excuse herself from the big community gift wrapping. But no, she wasn’t going to excuse herself. She had no idea what had drawn her to this town, what had made her feel so compelled to come here, and hiding out wasn’t going to answer the question.

But that compulsion... As she stepped out of the trees and looked up, she saw the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, like the Alps, although how she knew that, she had no idea. They called to her, those mountains in all their majestic height and cragginess. They seemed to be a part of her.

They felt more like home than anything else since her accident. They kept her here.

* * *

The church hall was full of people by the time Julie arrived. So many people, all very busy at sorting through gifts and wrapping them, then labeling them for “A soldier” or “A soldier’s family.” Ages were placed only on toys.

Vanessa grabbed her at once and dragged her to the table where she, Mallory and Lily were busy wrapping things.

“The others will be here later,” Vanessa told her. “Except Jonah, who has a bad cold. Caleb’s finishing some work, and Cecelia and Nick got delayed. I don’t want to know how they got delayed.” Vanessa rolled her eyes suggestively, drawing a laugh from Julie, who then greeted everyone and asked, “If we were going to do toys, why not send them to Toys for Tots?”

“We work with what people give us,” Mallory explained. “Sometimes I think we send enough cologne and aftershave to perfume the entire military.”

Julie laughed and allowed herself to relax. This wasn’t going to be so hard. “So it really gets to the troops? I thought the military was difficult about that, and these are wrapped.” Where that came from, she had no idea.

“It’s all going to nearby bases. No problem there. They know who we are.”

“Ah.”

Lily spoke. “I can’t get the triangle right.”

At once Julie leaned over to her and showed her how to fold the paper at the end of the package. Sometimes it amazed her that she could remember to do things like this without remembering she had ever done them before.

“I like the triangles,” Lily said. “They’re prettier than just sticking lots of tape on.”

“You’re right about that,” Julie agreed.

Lily triumphantly placed the last piece of tape and looked up with sparkling eyes. Then she looked past Julie. “Hi, Braden. Are you and Julie friends now?”

“We’re working on it,” came the answer.

Julie was almost afraid to turn around, but after taking a breath she did, and found him smiling at her.

“Room at this table?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Vanessa, scooting over before Julie could respond, making room for him right beside Julie.

It seemed more than Lily were involved in a little matchmaking, Julie thought. Her cheeks heated.

“Hi,” he said, still smiling.

“Hi,” she managed to answer, then quickly dragged her gaze back to the half-wrapped package in front of her. He looked good enough to eat, and her heart speeded up nervously. He smelled good, too, fresh from a shower, not wearing any aftershave or cologne that she could detect. For some reason she had never found that attractive in a man. At least not in her present incarnation.

He chatted pleasantly with the others who joined the table, appearing comfortable with everyone. She envied him that comfort. Sometimes she wondered if she had ever been someone who had a circle of family and friends that she had known for a long time, a group of people where any reasonable conversation was easy. Small talk certainly didn’t come easily to her now, not at all.

And less so, being crowded against him at the table. Inevitably their arms and shoulders brushed, and sometimes they reached out simultaneously for the tape. Each contact, however minor, seemed to zap her with electricity.

A different kind of electricity than she had felt from Winona Cobbs. This kind made her start wondering what it would be like to have this man’s arms around her, his lips on hers.

She tried to imagine it and wondered if her imaginings had any basis in experience, or if she was just making it up. How would she know? The not knowing was apt to drive her crazy. She ought to be getting used to this discombobulation, but it didn’t seem to be getting any easier, not with a handsome, sexy man standing so close.

“Julie? Julie?” Vanessa’s voice punctured her preoccupation. She snapped her head up.

“I’m sorry. Woolgathering.”

“Nothing new in that,” Vanessa teased. “The tape, please?”

Julie leaned over and passed her the dispenser. Somehow that twist and lean brought her hard up against Braden’s side.

In an instant, everything else vanished. A web of desire cast its spell, making all her worries and wondering seem like a waste of time. All that mattered was that man and what his closeness was doing to her. What she’d like him to do with her.

Mallory excused herself to take Lily to the bathroom. Vanessa went off in search of a cup of coffee. All of a sudden she was alone with Braden, who was busy cutting paper for the next package.

Desperate not to appear like a dummy, and certainly not disinterested when he was filling her thoughts so much, she hunted for something to say. “Does everyone in town help with this?”

“Of course not.” He flashed her a grin. “Some folks are working, some don’t have time, some don’t care, and could you imagine trying to fit all of Rust Creek into this place? Nah, we’ll stay a short while, and you’ll see new faces start to arrive.”

“That makes sense. How did you find time?”

“I worked extra hard the last few days.”

She dared to eye him. “Not with barbed wire, I presume.”

He laughed. “Nope. Hay. And you know what? That’s almost as bad when it finds its way inside your clothes. Prickly and itchy.”

“But no danger of stitches.”

He looked up from the package he was wrapping, and their gazes engaged. Julie felt as if the air had vanished from the room.

“No stitches,” he agreed. Then, “Julie?”

“Jennifer.”

He looked startled, but probably no more than she. Where had that come from? She stared at him without seeing him as her mind once again jumped on the hamster wheel. Jennifer? Somehow that sounded right, better than Julie. My God, was that her real name? But for once, something felt as if it fit.

“Julie?” he repeated. “What’s wrong?”

She shook herself out of the moment, promising herself she could ponder this revelation later. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I used to go by Jennifer. I don’t know how it came about, it just did. I haven’t used it here.” Because she didn’t know it. “I shouldn’t have blurted that.”

“Well, if it’s the name you prefer, I don’t mind using it.” His smile was friendly as he returned to wrapping. “Jennifer it is. I like it. Or can I call you Jenn? I like that, too.”

Only then did it strike her how many people were going to wonder about this name change. How many questions she might have to answer. Oh, God, she needed to stop blurting things like that. Not that there were too many of them so far.

“Oh, just stick with Julie,” she dared to say. “If I go changing my name now, everyone’s going to get confused.”

“I doubt it. It’s your nickname. I think most of your friends would like knowing that.”

“I don’t know. It seems stupid after all this time to come out with that.”

“Let me handle it.”

She was glad to, but wondered why he should even bother. Or why she should let him. God, she’d like to find some backbone and take control of this roller-coaster ride she lived on.

Then she reminded herself that she’d had the gumption to move clear across the country on her search to make a new place for herself in an entirely strange town. That wasn’t cowardly. She only grew skittish when dealing with people who came close, close enough to figure out that something was wrong with her.

Maybe she should stop making such a big deal out of that. Maybe it was high time she let go of all her anxieties, stiffened her shoulders and let the chips fall wherever.

It sounded good. Not so easy to do.

The room was becoming truly crowded with people now, everyone talking and wrapping presents. Exactly the kind of situation that made Julie nervous. She returned greetings pleasantly enough and began to wonder how soon she could gracefully bow out. Wrapping gifts for the troops and their families seemed important, so she forced herself to attend only to the work. Still no Caleb or Nick.

Vanessa returned with coffee in a covered cup, and Mallory and Lily returned only long enough to bid everyone farewell. “Bedtime for the pip-squeak,” Mallory said.

“I am not a pip-squeak,” Lily insisted. “I don’t squeak much.”

Mallory squatted. “No, you don’t. And it was meant to be affectionate, not a bad name.”

Lily frowned. “I don’t like the way it sounds.” Then she looked at Julie-Jennifer and Braden. “You keep making friends,” she said. And an instant later she was skipping toward the coatroom with her aunt in tow.

Vanessa’s cell phone rang, and a frown lowered on her face. “Well, I’m outta here, too,” she said after she disconnected. “There’s a problem at the hotel. See you later.”

“Watching that woman work on the hotel design is purely an experience,” Braden remarked. “She sees things I’d miss.”

“Artistic eye.” Or maybe Jonah needed her. Now she was alone at the table with him, and her discomfort grew. Surely someone else would join them? But they were almost done with the rack of gifts that had been given to them. Nobody, it seemed, had to do that much. Many hands and all that.

“Say,” he said as he reached for the last gift, this one a set of scented soaps. “Why don’t we try the coffee thing again, Jenn? I hate to head home without my latte.”

Considering how she’d fled the last time, she might have said no. But temptation was standing there in a fantastically gorgeous package, and he had just called her Jenn. Hearing that name on his lips warmed some place inside her that hadn’t felt warm in a long time. She couldn’t resist, though some wiser part of her cried that she might be making a big mistake. Blowing her cover. Revealing her inadequacies.

“Sure,” she heard herself say. “I’d like that.” Who was running her mouth now? Julie or Jennifer?

“Good.” He wrapped paper around the last package and asked her to hold it with her finger while he reached for the tape. “I was afraid I’d offended you last time.”

“Me? No!” The thought horrified her. “No, Braden. I just had...something I needed to do.”

He turned his head, and his eyes smiled at her. “I’m glad to know that. I don’t usually send people into headlong flight to get away from me.”

She felt her cheeks burn. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.”

“Which you just proved by agreeing to go out with me again. Hey, lady, it’s my evening out, my day off. I’d enjoy it a lot more with your company.”

A very kind and flattering thing to say, and pleasant heat shot through her. Maybe she was walking on a tightrope, but in this instance, the fall might even be fun.

Twenty minutes later they once again sat in the donut shop. It being Saturday night, it was packed, but they managed to grab one of the few small tables. Once again they both ordered the same things.

“I’ve been talking to Homer Gilmore,” Braden said. “Do you know who he is?”

“I’ve seen him around, but no one seems to know his story.”

“No one does, at least, no one I’ve talked to,” Braden agreed. “I’m working on getting him a place to stay, maybe at the church, before he freezes to death out there.”

Jenn—she really did feel better thinking of herself that way, perhaps another piece of the mystery solved?—shook her head. “He seems sad. I hear he doesn’t even say anything intelligible.”

“That’s part of the problem. He wanders around mumbling unintelligible stuff, and nobody knows what to make of him. He seems harmless. I mean, he’s been hanging around and hasn’t really bothered anybody, unless mumbling crazy things to people is bothersome.”

Jenn felt herself warm to him even more. “It’s kind of you to try to find a place for him to stay.”

“Not really. He deserves at least as much care as any stray, don’t you think?”

Considering she was a stray of sorts herself, she nodded. “Don’t diminish what you’re doing. I don’t see anyone else running around trying to find the guy a home.”

He leaned back as they were served and gave her a crooked smile. “If Winona’s right, I need to get cracking.”

“She’s still predicting that blizzard?”

“Not only that, but every time she gives a prediction, it seems to have grown bigger and worse. Which brings me to a question. Are you going to be okay in that cabin if the power goes out?”

“I was thinking of getting a kerosene heater.”

He shook his head. “Better to use the woodstove. If you want, I’ll check it out for you when we leave here, make sure the chimney is clean.”

“That thing looks like a monster to me.”

He laughed quietly. “It’s not. I’ll make sure it’s safe then show you how to light a fire. Have you got any wood out there?”

“Some, alongside the cabin.”

“I guess you couldn’t tell me how much.”

Surprisingly, she felt herself smile then laugh. “What I know about wood you can put on the head of a pin. There’s a stack. I have no idea how much or how long it would last.”

“A very good reason to take advantage of a willing neighbor. Me.”

Take advantage of him? She hoped he had absolutely no idea the visions that wording brought to her head. “Well,” she said, “if you’re going to do that for me, I ought to stop by the grocery before it closes and pick up what I need to feed you a late meal. Unless you’ve already eaten.”