A woman tugged on Spence’s arm and he shot her that flirty Thomas smile before turning his focus back to Carrie. “I have to handle this.”
It seemed handling women was a Thomas male specialty all of a sudden.
Austin steered the handsy woman with the low-cut sweater to a display of six-foot Douglas firs and snuck away. He’d hear her throaty giggle in his sleep. He could appreciate women of all sizes and types but this one freaked him out. So did the way she looked twenty years old from a distance and at least fifty close up.
Then there was the ass tap. He could have done without that. He didn’t exactly run from her now, but he did double-time his retreat just in case those fingernails came out again.
The one woman he wouldn’t mind touching his ass stood near the office shed. He wondered if Carrie realized she tapped her foot hard enough to create a divot in the frozen ground. Two seconds ago she’d been smiling and laughing with Spence. Now she had that unfocused look that meant she was thinking. Austin knew it probably also meant he’d done something wrong.
No need to pretend not to see her since he’d traveled to D.C. to find her. She knew the score and hard-to-get wasn’t his thing. That was a woman trick. A smart man let himself get caught. He waved as he walked but dropped his hand when she didn’t return the greeting.
Oh, boy.
Despite yesterday’s big kiss, he kept the greeting professional. “Are you looking for a tree?”
“I better since you’ll be sold out soon.”
He glanced at the mound of trees stacked around the lot. “How do you figure that?”
“You have nonstop interest around here.”
“Apparently the residents of D.C. like nice trees.” He didn’t even know what they were talking about anymore. She seemed a bit on edge for a discussion about future firewood.
“Like her?” Carrie’s attention focused over his shoulder.
He turned and saw the handsy customer standing at the edge of the tree display and staring him down. “I’m not sure she’s here for a tree.”
Carrie shot him a men-are-so-dumb look. “Gee, really?”
That flat tone usually meant he’d done something stupid and male and he had about ten minutes to figure it out before she went all Medusa on him. “Why do I think I’m in trouble?”
“She gave you her number.” Carrie nodded at his closed hand.
He opened it, palm up, and showed her the paper ball inside. “It’s for the sales receipt.”
The excuse was lame but no way was he going down for this. He hadn’t done anything wrong except separate from the woman without shoving her away and hurting her, which hadn’t been that easy since she all but wrapped her legs around him.
Carrie fingered the ball of paper but didn’t say anything. He flipped her hand over and dropped the paper in her palm. To keep her from giving it back, he wrapped her fingers around it. “You can’t possibly believe I’m interested in anyone else.”
Yesterday’s kiss burned through him. Holding Carrie broke through his control and had him wanting more. He’d used Mitch’s emergency key last night after the lot closed to get in her apartment building but stopped short of knocking on her door. He could hear Spence’s voice in his head and realized just showing up might actually cross the line to stalking. Austin wanted to be invited in this time. Into her apartment, her life and her bed. That required the right balance of pushing and letting her lead.
Here he was figuring out his timing and the perfect touch and she thought he was making the moves on someone else. Man, for a smart woman she didn’t always look at the clues and come to the obvious conclusion.
“Is this the plan?” The wind whipped up, taking Carrie’s hair. She tucked it behind her ear before he could do it for her.
He wasn’t sure how to answer or even what the question was, so he went with his usual response to rough conversations. “Excuse me?”
“Do you want to make me jealous?”
A breath held in his chest, scraping his insides raw. “Are you saying I still can?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She spun around, sliding as she went and marched away from him.
“Wait up.” He’d about reached his end with her running. There had to be another way for her to deal with her issues. “Man, you get all prickly then run faster than any woman I’ve ever met.”
“Good thing you’re so popular. You can find another woman in no time.” She started out shouting but lowered her voice when he pulled even with her.
He stopped her with a hand on her elbow. “To be clear, I’ve never flirted to make you jealous. Ever. I’m not dead. I can appreciate a pretty woman, and I might look now and then, but my hands don’t wander, and you know that. Blame my dad for the example if you want, but fidelity is a big thing with me.”
“We’re not dating.” The words stayed sharp but her voice lacked punch.
Still, they slashed through him with the brutal rip of a knife. “I disagree.”
“You can see anyone you want.”
Permission. That was just great. “I only want you.”
“I don’t…are you…?” She nibbled on her bottom lip. “You’re saying you haven’t seen anyone else in six months?”
“Right.”
Her eyes widened and he knew why. He didn’t exactly lack in the sex-drive department. Nothing about their time together had been tame or G-rated. He hated being without her and had slept with her every chance he got, sex and actual sleep, over the years.
She shook her head. “I never asked you to refrain.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you?”
Her wide eyes told him she didn’t know. She frustrated the crap out of him. “Because I’m not an animal.”
She sighed as her head fell to the side. “I’m serious, Austin.”
In the past he would have evaded the conversation, made a joke and moved on. Seeing Carrie now, every inch of her aware and engaged in his words, he didn’t hide. “My mother has been gone for fifteen years and I’ve never seen my dad date another woman. When I started having sex and realized how good it was, I couldn’t believe Dad was denying himself. I figured he had to be sneaking out and meeting someone.”
A small smile played on Carrie’s lips. “Was he?”
“Not that I could tell. I once asked him why he didn’t move on and he told me he was a married man.”
Carrie’s eyes bulged at that one. “But your mom left.”
Austin lifted Carrie’s hand and brought it to his lips. “That changed who she was, not the promises he made. In his mind, he had an obligation to be a faithful married man.”
Carrie brushed her palm over Austin’s cheek. “You’re a healthy male with needs and smile that attracts women from miles around. I don’t expect you to deny yourself.”
“You really want me sleeping with other women?” Her body bucked as if he’d hit her. The flinch gave him hope. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. The idea of you with anyone else makes me crazed.”
“I haven’t…I mean, I’m not.” She cleared her throat. “Not yet.”
Relief plowed through him hard enough to knock him on his love-struck ass. Somehow, he kept his body upright and his voice even. “Mitch said you were dating.”
“He was probably trying to make you nuts.”
Austin tugged her even closer. “It worked.”
“You should get back to work.” She whispered the words just inches from his mouth.
The ground shifted. Not in a shattering earthquake type of way. This amounted to a tiny tremor, but Austin felt the subtle move all around him. The conversation provided an opening, a way in and back to her. Now he had to figure out how to use it without scaring the crap out of her.
“Why don’t you go get changed and come back and look for a tree for real this time.” He’d use Christmas or anything else he could think of to win her over and keep her close.
With a small kiss on his chin, she stepped out of his hold.
“For both our sakes I better go home and stay there.”
“Are you sure?” When she nodded he took a risk and asked the question playing in his mind. “Will you come back another time?”
She hesitated until he wiggled his eyebrows at her and she laughed. “Okay, fine.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow, and I’ll bring you guys dinner.”
He held a hand to his chest. “You know the way to a man’s heart. Wait, you’re not cooking are you?”
“Funny. And I’m taking care of your stomach. You’re on your own with your heart.”
He watched her walk away and thought about how wrong she was.
Chapter Five
This time Carrie came to the lot prepared for the cold weather and a duo of hungry men. She wore jeans and boots and her warmest scarf, the maroon one her mother had made for Christmas last year.
You could take a girl out of West Virginia but that didn’t mean she’d lose her mind and forget how to dress for snow.
As usual, the lot buzzed with endless activity, most of it female. Both Spence and Austin worked the crowd, showing off trees and tying the precious purchases to the roofs of cars. They collected money as if it didn’t matter, keeping all the focus on the clients.
Their dad had taught them that trick. She’d seen him do it a million times. Focus on the person in front of him as if there was no one else in the world.
Good thing she’d brought the thermos because this could be a long wait. She opened the shed door and heard the low rumble of voices. Not just voices, the familiar sound of football play-by-play.
“Leave it to Austin to find a rebroadcast of the West Virginia game on the radio.”
Shaking her head, she set the bag of plastic containers down on the makeshift office’s desk, along with the coffee and soup. She’d almost made it back out when Austin stepped inside, bringing a gust of frigid air with him.
“Only a true fan would have the repeat game on when he can’t be in the room to listen to it.” She leaned over and fiddled with the knob on the side.
“Hey, what are you doing there?”
“Turning it off?”
His eyes grew wide in mock horror. “Rebroadcast or not, touching that dial would be a criminal offense.”
“I’ll settle for turning it down.” And she did before he could yell about it. “Go Mountaineers.”
“Could use more enthusiasm since they lose this one to Pittsburgh, but better.” He blew on his gloved hands. “It’s going to snow.”
“You could always tell.”
“Not sure if it’s my innate ability to read the signs or the fact it started coming down a second ago.”
She leaned in and glanced out the big window that overlooked the lot. “Ah, brilliant.”
White flecks filled the near-black sky and landed on the tree branches. She inhaled and even through the walls could pick out the refreshing scent of pine, the same smell she associated with Holloway and hayrides and hours of racing around outside once the school cancellation announcement came across the crawl on the bottom of the television screen.
If she closed her eyes she could blink her way back to the wooded acres surrounding Austin’s house and relive the last winter she spent there. The nights so deadly quiet except for the soft rustle of branches and slick click of icy snow as it fell and piled in feet-high stacks.
Austin slid a thigh onto the desk and studied her. “What are you thinking about?”
“Why?”
“You’re smiling.”
The memory filled her with the same comfort as a cozy blanket on a cold night. “Trudging through the snow until I could barely lift my leg and was so tired I almost fell over. Impromptu snowball fights and the rumbling sound of the snow blower.”
“You’re kind of making me hot.”
She coughed out a laugh and kept going until she doubled over and her stomach ached. When she opened her eyes again, he was at her side with that soft expression of amusement on his sexy mouth.
He slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her body tight to his. “You okay there?”
“You make me smile.”
His hand tightened on her arm. “Good to know.”
“Everything about you tempts me.”
“Then I’ll stay quiet to keep from messing this moment up.”
She turned in his arms, settling in and resting her palms against his chest. “You know this isn’t about you or my feelings for you, right? It’s never been a matter of being unsure about those.”
He just stared at her.
She rested her forehead against his. “You can talk, you know.”
A long breath escaped his chest and blew across her cheek. She could feel every last inch of him tense under her fingertips.
“Gotta be honest. The break-up feels like it’s about me. I’m the one you left. That you keep leaving.”
The sadness in those blue eyes zapped her strength and left her weak and shaking. She searched for the right words to shift the blame back to her where it belonged.
Fancy explanations and big psychology words filled her brain. She pushed it all out and went with the simple truth. “I don’t want to be my mother.”
His eyes narrowed but his hands kept up their soothing brush against her back. “I don’t get it.”
“Mitch and I have known for a few years that we’re the reason she stayed in West Virginia, with my dad. In the family.”
“I still don’t—”
Carrie pressed a finger against Austin’s lips. “She wanted out. Still wants out.”
“Maybe you’re being hard on her? She may not be perfect but she’s a hell of a mom. Always there for you no matter what.”
With Austin’s fractured family background, having a mom who managed to hang around and stuck it out likely seemed damn near perfect. His life made her explanation even harder. “She’s there in body only.”
Austin, always so sure with his words, stumbled and stammered until he finally got a sentence out. “She can cook a meal for fifty people without blinking. She came to every event for you and Mitch, and stayed up for the end of every date when I brought you home like she was a member of the kissing police or something.”
“Baking and sewing, yeah, she taught herself all of it because her mother told her that’s what good wives did.” And Carrie’s mother had refused to pass on any of the kitchen wisdom. Whether on purpose or not wasn’t clear, but the list of supposed wifely virtues skipped right over Carrie.
Austin put a hand under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “I’m lost.”
She fought to bring back the memory she’d worked so hard to trample and erase. “She wanted to be a journalist. To see the world. The job at that dinky penny saver is as close as she got to roaming in search of stories that mattered to her.”
“You’re making a leap from your mother’s college major and current hobby to a life of dissatisfaction.”
Carrie wished that were true. She’d give anything for Austin to be right…but he wasn’t. “I lived it. Saw how desperation and disappointment could eat away at a person until there was nothing left. No dreams or hope.”
The way her mom sat at one end of the dinner table and stared down to the other end with eyes filled with anger. A misplaced comment about how there was nothing left for her or a harsh joke about how Carrie’s father ruined everything. Jokes her father never joined in.
Her parents didn’t have an easy give-and-take or even a steady comfort. They laughed and smiled, but never while in the same room together. The separate beds and separate bedrooms amounted to more than a hint about their coexistence. They tolerated each other and nothing else.
“Did she tell you all of this?” Austin asked in a low voice as his thumb traced the outline of Carrie’s lower lip.
“She never planned to get married. She got pregnant. Mitch’s birth certificate gave that part and his real birthday away. The diary we found in the attic when we
cleaned it out for her to make a sewing room told us the rest.” The words were burned on her brain until they blurred in front of her.
“Damn.”
“She settled on a life she didn’t want and has spent forever being bitter about it.”
“Have you asked her about the diary and what it means?” The doubt in his words came through. He all but shouted his denial.
“I don’t have to. I can see it in everything she does. She gave up her dreams and regrets her choices.”
Austin’s hands fell from her sides. “And we’re not just talking about her right now.”
Carrie’s heart thundered. She was surprised it didn’t pound right out of her chest. “No.”
“You’re afraid the same thing will happen to you.”
All the pressure and all those fears bubbled up to the surface. “I can’t look back twenty years from now and hate myself, and you, for not at least trying the life I’ve always wanted.”
Everything boiled down to those simple statements. Imagining a life where she hated Austin and their kids for all they stole from her? She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t risk it.
“Hey.” Spence stuck his head in the door. The red nose and cheeks either meant he’d reached ice-cube level or the fury inside him spiked his temperature.
From his severe frown, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Do you need something?”
“Sorry to break up the lovefest, but we have about a thousand people out here wanting trees.” Spence focused all of his intensity on Austin. “I think I spied a bus of gawking women waiting for a sighting of you, so let’s go.”
Austin didn’t look at his brother. “I need a second.”
Spence stepped inside and closed the door behind him, trapping them all in the small space. “You’re not getting me here, little brother. If you don’t get out here I am going to kill you. Probably with one of our Christmas trees.”
That time Austin broke eye contact with Carrie and turned to Spence. “We’ll be right out.”
“You’ll go now while I take two seconds to warm up.”
Before Austin blew up, she put a hand on his forearm and nodded. “We’re okay. Go.”
It's Not Christmas Without You (The Holloway Series) Page 4