by Alyse Miller
He smiled, flashing brilliantly white teeth so bright that they rivaled the snow, and spread his hands out wide in front of him. “Surprise babe,” he said in a voice that dripped with a perfect mixture of sincerity and sarcasm. “You really think I’d miss spending Christmas with my girlfriend?”
The emphasis on the word “girlfriend” was blatant, and Roxanne felt Mark go rigid beside her, then watched as he stiffly extended his hand to Hunter. It was one of those automatic gestures that men did, especially the ones that had been raised on old-fashioned manners, as she’d presumed Mark to be based on her limited knowledge of him. Hunter could have been a King Cobra rising up in front of them, and the ranger might still have tried to play nice and get along.
“Mark Foster,” he introduced himself. His voice sounded tight, and he wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t moved when Roxanne had pulled away from him, but he had somehow managed to edge himself just a little bit in front of her, positioning himself between her and the man in the door. Depending on one’s perception, it might have been protectiveness, or possessiveness. It might have even been a little of both.
Hunter let Mark’s hang a heartbeat too long before he accepted it with a gracious smile, the face of the pricey TAG Heuer watch on his wrist flashing under the lights. “Hunter Hollister,” he said formally. “Thank you so much for helping Roxanne get home, Ranger.” He dropped Mark’s hand and turned his gaze to her. “Let’s get you in and cleaned up, babe. Your mother has been brewing a pot of wassail all day and it smells heavenly.” He gave her outfit an appraising look as if noticing it for the first time. When he eyes got to the fluffy parka, his nose crinkled. “What are you wearing? Thank God no one had to see you like this.”
“Oh.” Roxanne blinked rapidly a few times, remembering that she was still wearing the Mark’s sister’s things, and reached up to unzip her borrowed winter parka. “I completely forgot. You’ll want to get this back to Maggie.”
His hand free of Hunter’s, Mark moved to stop her hand with his and stopped just short of touching her. “Don’t worry about it,” he croaked in that still-tight voice. “You might need it. I can pick it up another time.”
Roxanne smiled, and then heard the message hidden inside Mark’s words. “You’re still coming tomorrow for Christmas dinner, right,” she asked, knowing that it was a bad idea to push the invitation but not able to help herself. Things were suddenly moving too fast. She heard the sound of jingle bells in her ears again, but this time they sounded far away and sad.
“Actually,” Mark said, avoiding eye contact but trying to hide it with a smile. “Perhaps it’s not a great idea. It seems like you’ve got a full house already, and I hate to be a bother. The invite was more than enough of a thanks, really.” He looked at her then, and she saw her own disappointment reflected in his eyes.
The nagging pit in Roxanne’s stomach lurched and swallowed what was left of her grinchy heart. She knew rejection when she encountered it, and felt herself go into self-preservation mode. She inhaled briskly and put on a smile so practiced and cool that it made Hunter’s version look amateurish. Spencer would have been proud of the way she pushed one side of her mouth a little higher than the other so that her face morphed instantly from optimistic to unimpressed and righted her posture so that she seemed to grow three inches, all of them ice. It wasn’t just her writing skills that had helped her up the rungs of Vogue—Roxanne knew how to play the game as well as the best. Despite her frustration at his sudden appearance, Roxanne automatically took a step toward Hunter, putting herself between the two men.
Seeing the expression on Roxanne’s face, Mark’s smile faltered. He blinked a few times, and then pulled a business card out of his pocket, and Roxanne plucked it carefully from his fingertips so that the tips of their gloves didn’t even get a chance to touch. She arched her eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“Henry over at Henry Hauls owes me a favor,” Mark explained. “Give him a shout when you’re ready for your car. He’s expecting your call.”
Roxanne swallowed heavily, and forced her voice to remain aloof when it slid between her lips. “Thanks,” was the most she could manage.
Mark nodded absently, and even with his head bowed she could see how his eyebrows furrowed. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but shut it. When he finally looked up, he was wearing his own version of a polished smile, but his voice gave him away. “Have a Merry Christmas, Roxy,” he said, and then with one last sideways glance at Hunter he turned and walked out into the night, toward the Snowcat.
Hunter’s arm snaked around her waist and Roxanne fought the urge to recoil. His touch was stiffer than Mark’s had been, but familiar. “Roxy?” he echoed, the disdain obvious in his voice. “No one calls you Roxy. Who is that guy, anyway—Ranger who?”
“No one,” Roxanne said dismissively. She didn’t want to share the past twenty-four hours with Hunter, and she didn’t want her thoughts to wander away with Mark as she allowed herself to be pulled into the cabin, watching over her should as the no one who had become everything disappeared into the frozen darkness of Christmas Eve.
Chapter 14
Regardless of how perturbed she was by his sudden appearance, Hunter was ever the gracious host as he shepherded Roxanne past her fawning relatives, both of them waving away her family with assurances that they’d be right back with promises of stories about Madrid and Roxanne’s snowbound adventure when they returned. She didn’t need too long, Hunter promised on her behalf in his best showman’s voice, she only needed a few moments to freshen up. He walked behind her with one hand placed tenderly on her lower back and the other steering her by her upper arm. Anyone looking would have thought they were madly in love, but it was all an act they’d perfected after spending years evading paparazzi at fashion shows and haute parties.
It was the choreography of people escaping other people, although Roxanne and Hunter both probably had very different reasons for doing so. Roxanne was not looking forward to the inevitable deluge of questions when she and Hunter were tucked privately away behind closed doors. The last they’d spoken Hunter had suggested that the needed to talk about their relationship. She had been sure that was the end, but his being here—and the delicate way he was handling her—made her second guess herself.
They didn’t speak to each other as they made their way to the back bedroom that had been Roxanne’s when she was a girl and would visit the cabin. Instead, Roxanne pulled her suitcase along behind her and distracted herself by letting her thoughts run through the contents of her luggage, refusing to let her façade falter until she’d cached all remaining thoughts of Mark and decided on what to wear for the remainder of the evening. She’d over-packed, like usual. Mercifully, Hunter was quiet behind her, and didn’t ask any questions she didn’t want to answer. A small Christmas miracle.
When they pushed into the bedroom at the end of the hall, Roxanne was surprised to find that not much had changed about the room in all these years since she’d stopped showing up for family holidays. For the most part, the room still looked exactly as it had a dozen years ago: overwhelming pink, with paper dolls and back issues of Cosmopolitan and other assorted fashion magazines piled high along the cozy window seat that faced out on the western side of the cabin. There were dozens of old sketchbooks, too—the ones she’d drawn her very first designs in. She even spotted her old caboodle, covered in Lisa Frank stickers, beside a fringe-rimmed pink pillow.
Spencer had been right, Roxanne thought. Being here was quaint, but damn if it didn’t feel like home.
Christmas Eve was a semi-formal event in the Hudson household, and from her mental inventory of her luggage Roxanne had mentally selected a holly-red tea-length cocktail dress for the occasion, simple and classy with a bateau neckline, sleek princess seams, and a scooped back. But as her eyes landed on the bed, Roxanne could see that Hunter had something else in mind. Roxanne stared at the dress he’d laid out for her, taken with the feeling that she knew the dress—that she
recognized the stepped neckline, the slight dip under the breast. The flare at the helm.
She stared at the dress and realized that it was hers. It was one of the designs she’d drawn and handed off a copy to Vivian, but it was here. It was real.
Her heart in her throat, Roxanne lifted the luxurious ivy-green velvet from the bed and held it against her body, admiring the rich, shimmery quality of the fabric as it tumbled from her chest to the wooden floor at her feet. It was long but not heavy, with long-sleeves and a wrap waist balanced by a thigh-high slit. She admired the delicate hand stitching, and the slight tapering at the wrists. All of the little details she’d drawn were there in her hands.
“I can’t believe it. It’s my dress. Hunter, it’s…it’s stunning,” she gushed, shifting her focus to Hunter, who had already traded the dark jeans for black slacks and was watching her in the reflection of the room’s dressing mirror as he unbuttoned and peeled off his shirt, exposing his remarkably chiseled physique in the glass. Roxanne held her breath like she did every time when she watched the muscles of his stomach and back bunch and roll in tandem, sucked into the show he was casually performing as he took his time buttoning each of the mother of pearl buttons on a stark white shirt and then shrugged into a tailored knit green cardigan. His reflection rewarded her gaze with a satisfied smile, which could have just as easily been directed at her praise of the dress or of him. It was hard to be sure with Hunter.
He slipped a thin textured charcoal tie under his collar and worked it into an intricate Eldredge knot, then turned to her as he affixed a silver tie clip to complete the look. “A beautiful dress for a beautiful woman,” he said, in a voice so low she could barely hear it. It was not at all what she’d expected him to say and she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him use that tone before. It was so much softer and gentler than his usual voice that for a moment she had to question whether he’d actually spoken at all. He gave her a small smile, and tapped on the face of his watch in the universal signal for her to hurry up and change.
She did, excitedly pulling off the layers of borrowed, snow-crusted clothes, then sliding the fabric up her legs and over her arms. She turned her back to Hunter and he stepped forward, pulling the dress’ hidden zipper up her back in a cool breath of silk against her skin and clasping the single pearl button and the nape of her neck. It fit like a glove, and Roxanne closed her eyes and pulled it a deep breath, held it, and exhaled.
She felt Hunter’s hands land on her shoulders and the soft press as they swiveled her body toward his. When she opened her eyes again she saw both of their reflections in the mirror, and the breath she had been holding released caught in her throat. The dress had been beautiful on paper and striking on the bed, but on her body it was magnificent, clinging and flowing alternatively in all the right places as the color caught the hazel of her eyes and made them fleck like gold. Maybe she really had what it took to be a designer after all. Behind her, Hunter was radiant, and even though she’d seen images of them side by side in more photographs than she could count, the combined effect was really quite astonishing. They truly did make a perfect couple; the kind the camera loved—which went a long way in the world of fashion, regardless of whether it was real or not.
Hunter swept her hair to the side and his eyes met hers in the glass. He smiled. “What do you think?” he asked, his breath as soft on her neck as the velvet was on her skin. “It’s my favorite of your designs so far, and I thought you needed to have it for your very own. I apologize for being so late coming home, but it wasn’t quite ready by the time the shoot was completed, and I thought it was worth it.” His right hand slipped down her arm and landed on her hip, and something about the way he was holding her made her heart skip a beat. It had been a long time she’d seen Hunter—he’d been traveling nearly none stop for months—and even longer since he’d touched her like that. “Was it?”
“You were late coming home,” Roxanne paused to select the right word, “for this dress—for me?”
He seemed satisfied with her answer. “Yes. I stayed so I could bring this home with me, and deliver it personally. I wanted this Christmas to be perfect, and you are perfect, Roxanne.”
“I thought,” she started. It was harder to say than she’d thought it would be. “When we talked a couple of days ago, you said you wanted to talk about our relationship. I thought that meant you want to—”
“What, to break up?” Hunter cut her off with an abrupt laugh as if the idea was preposterous. “I did say that, didn’t I? But I meant to talk about our relationship, to make it better. We’ve been spending too much time apart. Loosing touch. I want to change that.”
He laid a tender kiss in the dip of her shoulder, sending shivers down her skin. “I want to change us.”
Roxanne smiled, and placed her hand over his where it rested on her hip. Hunter’s words were so earnest, and a good dress could do wonders for the spirit. As she considered their reflection in the mirror Roxanne was reminded of how hard she had worked for the life she had earned, and how—despite his flaws—Hunter had been there with her through it nearly every step of the way. Sure, she and Hunter had their problems, but what couple didn’t? Perhaps she’d been too hard on him before. He was doing his best, in his own way. She could feel the effect of the pride she felt as it moved through her body, straightening her posture and sweeping away the sentimentality that had begun to collect in the edges of her thoughts. It had been an interesting past few days, but at the end of it, they were gone—Mark was gone—and Hunter was still here.
She studied her reflection in the mirror and felt more like herself than she had since she’d left New York.
“I want to change us, too,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here, Hunter.”
Chapter 15
Roxanne held Hunter’s arm as they returned to the family room, arranging themselves comfortably on the sofa after dispensing with hugs and kisses all around. Everyone fawned over her dress, but Roxanne waved away the compliments, her cheeks pink with the blush of attention. Hunter, meanwhile, preened for his audience. As he accepted compliments and graciously added his own, Roxanne was relieved he didn’t elaborate on the dress’ origin. She was still soaking it in herself, not to mention trying to adjust to the change of pace. It already seemed like years ago that she’d been riding shotgun in Mark’s Snowcat, trying not to get sucked into his smile and thinking about sweet things like maple pie and mistletoe kisses.
She hadn’t heard the sound of jingle bells since Mark had disappeared into the snow and out of her life.
In the years since she’d seen them, her parents had gotten a little plumper, a little older, and, apparently, a lot happier. Retirement had been good to them, and she had never seen her mother smile so easily or heard her father laugh so hard. Her niece and nephew were even bigger than she’d expected. Rachel was noticeably pregnant with a third bun in the oven, and although she knew the sex of the new babe she wasn’t sharing. Her husband, Ken, was his typical quiet self, the very opposite of his wife, though his hair had started to thin just a little and there were new lines forming around his eyes that said parenthood hadn’t been as easy as Rachel insisted it was.
Amidst them all, Grandma Myrtle sat in her wheelchair, smiling contentedly as she watched her family, the pride she felt sparkling visibly in her eyes. Roxanne had thought that her parent’s insistence of this Christmas as Grandma Myrtle’s last might have been exaggerated—a conveniently timed ploy to pressure her into spending Christmas with her family in the Green Mountain cabin instead of in her loft in the City—but she saw now that it might just be true. Grandma Myrtle has grown frail and fragile, her skin so papery that it was nearly translucent and her hair the brittle texture of spun glass. Her eyes were clouded with cataracts, and her clothing seemed to hang off her shoulders like cloth flung over sticks.
There was a sharp pang in her chest that Roxanne didn’t quite recognize. It felt like sadness tinged with guilt. Grandma Myrtle had been such a big part of
her life when she was growing up, but Roxanne hadn’t even bothered to send a letter in over a year. The last she could remember, she’d send a bouquet of mail-order flowers for Grandma Myrtle’s last birthday. But the office admin had ordered them on her behalf; Roxanne didn’t even know what kind of flowers had been included in the arrangements. Grandma Myrtle had once been Roxanne’s biggest champion—she’d been the one that encouraged her to leave home to pursue her dreams. The one thing Myrtle had insisted upon was for Roxanne to stay happy, and to always, always, trust her heart. Despite her beautiful dress, her handsome boyfriend, and her fancy byline, Roxanne was unsure if she’d lived up to her grandmother’s requirements.
“Did Ranger Foster take good care of you last night, Roxy?” her father was asking.
“What?” Roxanne blinked, snapping out of her guilt reverie and into the present. Hunter reached over and squeezed her hand—not in a reassuring kind of way, but an impatient kind of way. He gave her a strange look she couldn’t quite decipher. “Oh, yes. He was…he was a total gentleman.”
Her father nodded as if he’d assumed as much. “Mark Foster is a good man. One of the best rangers on the Patrol.” He lifted a finger in the air pointedly in the way he did when he wanted to make sure you were listening. “Single-handedly organizes a toy drive for all the kids out in these parts who’s families can’t afford to give them a good Christmas. Collects the gifts, wraps them up, and spends his holiday delivering them out. I expect that’s what he’s up to tonight.”