A Weaver Christmas Gift

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Everything inside her tightened.

  She nodded, even though he hadn’t looked back at her, so had no way of seeing it. “Yes.” The word sounded as strangled as it felt.

  He looked over his shoulder at her then.

  “Yes,” she repeated. More clearly. More certainly.

  His eyes narrowed, black lashes nearly obscuring the thin gleam of gray.

  Then he turned and led the way.

  Feeling more uncertain than she’d ever felt in her life, Jane followed him up the staircase. When he reached the top, he flipped on another light, illuminating the second-floor hallway and the open doors leading off it. Bedrooms, she could see as she passed them.

  He went into the last one straight ahead at the end of the hall.

  There was a raw spot on the inside of her cheek from the way she kept chewing at it and she made herself stop as she entered his bedroom. Despite the dim illumination from the hallway light, she could see the bed was king-size. Unmade.

  Unlike the mess he’d left unattended downstairs, neither of these facts surprised her.

  “Why do you want such a big house when it’s just you?”

  “I don’t want to talk, Janie,” he said wearily.

  She swallowed down the words that kept rising nervously inside her.

  He didn’t bother taking off his clothes, just yanked off his boots before throwing himself down on top of the mattress. “Do you need to take out your contacts or anything?”

  Her palms felt sweaty. She swiped them down the seat of her jeans as she shook her head. “They’re extended wear.” Just because she didn’t usually sleep with them in didn’t mean she couldn’t.

  He bunched one of the pillows under his neck. Then he held out his arm. “Come here.”

  She felt like a virgin all over again.

  Tugging nervously at the bottom of her sweater, she toed off her tennis shoes before sitting cautiously on the side of the bed.

  “Relax,” he muttered, tugging her unceremoniously down beside him. “I just want to sleep.”

  She made some sound that was unintelligible even to herself and turned onto her side. He dropped his arm over her waist, flattening his palm against her belly, and pulled her against him.

  She exhaled slowly.

  “Feels weird, doesn’t it?”

  She swallowed. “Yes.”

  “You want to leave?”

  Her eyes burned again. “No,” she whispered.

  His chest rose and fell against her back as he sighed. “You’d be better off if you did.”

  She stared hard at the rectangle of light shining through his bedroom door from the hallway. “Why?”

  He was silent so long she wasn’t sure he’d answer. “Because I’m never gonna be able to be the man who fits your plan.”

  “Plans change,” she whispered. Feelings changed. Hopes. Dreams. All were subject to change, able to turn on a dime simply because of one particular man.

  Then he sighed again. “Not all plans,” he said quietly.

  The gold rectangle of light blurred around the edges. She blinked and a tear leaked out. “Sex is the easy part, isn’t it?”

  “It’s everything else that’s hard,” he finished.

  She sniffed.

  “Are you crying?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “Yeah. Me either,” he murmured. Then he kissed the top of her head. “Go to sleep, Janie. Morning’ll be here soon enough.”

  * * *

  And it was.

  The sun was shining through the unadorned windows right onto her face when Jane woke.

  She knew immediately that she was alone in the bed. She stretched and turned onto her back, studying Casey’s room in the fresh light of day.

  He had a cluster of frames holding pictures of his sisters and their families on top of the old-fashioned dresser across from the bed. An untidy stack of thick books sat on the floor beneath the three windows that lined one wall. Next to them was a baseball bat, a pair of snow skis and a wicker hamper overflowing with wildly colored shirts and blue jeans.

  Feeling stiff, she rolled off the bed, then spotted the alarm clock sitting on the nightstand. Horrified at the time, she bolted from the room, only to run back in, sliding a little in her socks, to stuff her feet into her tennis shoes. “Casey?” She called his name loudly as she thumped down the staircase, but there was no answer.

  She hadn’t really expected one.

  The house felt empty.

  She might have fallen asleep in his arms, but waking in them was obviously more than he was willing to allow.

  And, honestly, it was probably more than she could handle.

  She went into the kitchen, yanked open his refrigerator and took a few gulps straight from the very same orange juice container he’d drunk from hours earlier. She quickly replaced it and turned to go.

  She had just enough time to drive home and change before she needed to open up Colbys again.

  But her gaze landed on the broom. The broken glass.

  It wasn’t the mess that bothered her anywhere near as much as the mystery of what had caused it. Or why he’d left it to sit there for all this time.

  She abandoned the plan to go home and instead found the dustpan in the cupboard where the broom had been and finished the job of sweeping up the debris. She muscled the tall wooden bookcase back into an upright position and inched it back and forth until it was situated flat against the wall. She couldn’t do anything about their broken glass, but she arranged the picture frames back on one of the shelves anyway and stacked the books on another.

  His choice of reading material was eclectic. Everything from World War I histories to the latest suspense bestsellers to essays on world politics, with a whole bunch of computer textbooks in between.

  When she had everything picked up from the floor, she dusted her hands together and turned to go.

  But the sight of the violin sitting on the table made her hesitate.

  She carefully picked it up, holding it in both hands as she studied the broken neck. What she knew about violins would fit on the head of a pin. But maybe it could be fixed.

  Maybe that was why he still had it.

  But even as she considered that, she dismissed it. If Casey had wanted it fixed, it would already be done.

  Instead, along with the upended bookcase, he’d kept it here like some sort of...reminder. Of what, she had no clue.

  She turned the instrument over, studying the back of the warm-looking glossy wood. Hayley’s grandmother was still staying with Hayley and had mentioned a familiarity with violins. If nothing else, maybe Vivian would have some advice. She scrounged around his drawers until she found a pen and wrote out a note on a paper towel. Then she tacked it to the front of the refrigerator with the bottle-opener magnet she’d found in the same messy drawer where she’d found the pen.

  Having whittled away the limited time she had to drive home, she darted back up the stairs into the bathroom attached to his bedroom. She raced through a shower so fast the water never had a chance to get more than lukewarm and washed with soap that smelled like him. Then she ran his minty toothpaste around her teeth with the tip of her finger. She used his deodorant and dragged his short black comb through her hair, which she twisted into a braid that she fastened off with a yank of dental floss. She’d find something more suitable in her office desk once she got to Colbys.

  Then, feeling as if she were committing some sort of crime, she opened his closet door in hopes of finding some sort of presentable shirt she could wear. The choices were thin, not surprising considering the quantity of empty hangers and the size of the pile of shirts overflowing his hamper. She took down a familiar red shirt with blindingly neon fish romping across the front and replaced her turtleneck s
hirt with it. She rolled up the too-long cuffs and tied the too-long hem around her waist. Then she poked through his dresser drawers until she found a clean pair of underwear.

  The boxer briefs were pale gray and made her feel a little unsteady when she pulled them on. They were loose, but they were better than going commando to the pool tournament. And mercifully, they didn’t show through her white jeans. She yanked on her sweater and went back downstairs. She retrieved the wounded violin and let herself out the front door.

  His truck was gone from the driveway. At least it was proof that he hadn’t been hiding somewhere inside the house, waiting for her to leave. Given that fact, it wasn’t much of a stretch to guess he’d probably gone into Cee-Vid while she’d slept.

  She set the violin on the seat beside her and drove the short distance to Colbys, where people were already congregating in front of the entrance to the grill and around the pool tables in the parking lot. She could smell bacon in the air and knew that her restaurant, at least, had gotten off to a timely start that morning.

  Unlike its owner.

  Swallowing her discomfort, she pinned a cheerful smile on her face as if it were just another day in the life and sailed past the small crowd at the door. She unlocked it and slipped inside the bar, scurrying around like a madwoman, flipping on lights as she went.

  “You’re late,” Jerry said from the archway to the restaurant. “You’re never late.”

  She barely gave him a glance. “Guess there’s a first for everything. You set for the day? Need anything?”

  He gave her an odd look. “Everything’s running on schedule. ’Cept for you.”

  She ignored that and hustled past him into the storeroom, where she pulled off her sweater and grabbed a black apron to tie around her waist, the better to disguise the fact that she was wearing yesterday’s jeans. Then she retrieved the register tills from the safe and headed back out front.

  Jerry was still standing in the archway.

  “Don’t you have some cooking to do?” she asked pointedly.

  He didn’t budge. “You all right?”

  Other than feeling stupidly weepy every time someone showed unexpected compassion?

  She slid the first till into a register and pushed it closed. “I’m fine.” When he still didn’t move, she sighed and looked at him. “Jerry. I am fine. It was just kind of a crazy day yesterday.”

  He finally made a face. “I’ll say. Never personally known any female who had two men literally fighting over her.”

  “Jerry—”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m going, I’m going. But you might want t’ think about finding some different clothes unless you want everyone coming in here seeing your little walk o’ shame.”

  She flushed and jammed the second till into place. So much for Casey’s red shirt. “Go do what I’m paying you for,” she grumbled, and was glad when he finally left the archway.

  As soon as he was gone, she picked up the phone and called Hayley, asking her to bring her some clean clothes.

  Thankfully, her very intelligent, learned counselor friend didn’t question why she needed them.

  She just brought them.

  And when her eyebrows shot up upon seeing the garish oversize shirt that Jane was wearing, she didn’t offer any comments except a toothy, delighted grin.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You need to tell her.”

  Casey was sitting in his office while Axel closed the door to Control, where Casey could no longer enter. There was no point pretending he didn’t know who his cousin meant. No point in pretending he didn’t know what it was he needed to tell her.

  Whether or not he’d been suspended from Hollins-Winword, he knew that Axel had just spent the past three hours running a lead into the ground on McGregor, who’d reportedly been spotted in Havana. It was the first sign in nearly two months that the agent might still be alive.

  And Casey, through no one’s fault but his own, had been barred from doing anything about it.

  “We don’t tell outsiders about Hollins-Winword,” Casey retorted. His cousin, of all people, was on intimate terms with that inviolate rule. Axel had told Tara before they were married that he wasn’t just the horse breeder most people thought he was only because her life had been in danger.

  And now Ax was giving him an arid look. “Jane’s not exactly an outsider. If she were, you’d have had a one-, two-, maybe three-night stand with her and moved on like you always used to after you got rid of that twit Caitlyn.”

  That “twit” had gotten rid of Casey the same way Jane would if she learned about his sterility.

  “No.” He pulled open his office door and they walked back into the open-plan area where Cee-Vid’s legitimate gaming business was conducted. It was Saturday and the place was deserted.

  They reached the front entrance of the building and went out into the cold morning sunshine that made a mockery of Casey’s dark thoughts. The doors snicked closed behind them, automatically locking.

  “Your life would be a lot easier if you’d just admit you are in love with her,” Ax said as they headed for their trucks, parked side by side in the big parking lot.

  “I’m not—” He bit off the denial and shook his head. His cousin was trying to get under his skin—something at which he’d always excelled. “You’re letting those backflips you do every time Tara smiles at you mess with your head.”

  Ax laughed silently. “You’d be happy doing backflips for your woman, too, if you’d stop fighting it. I’ve been where you are, man. Suspension’s a hard thing to swallow. You’ll suck it up, same as the rest of us have had to do, resolve the problem and move on.”

  “And if it can’t be resolved?”

  Axel eyed him over the top of his truck. “We’re going to find McGregor,” he said. “We’ll find him alive. Or we’ll find him dead. Either way, we’ll find him.”

  The mystery surrounding the missing field agent still plagued Casey. But he’d meant the situation with Janie.

  “Unless he turned.”

  Axel’s lips compressed. Casey knew his cousin didn’t want to think McGregor had gone bad either. “We’ll still find him,” he said evenly. Then he deliberately lightened his tone. “It’s the beginning of the holiday season. The whole family’s gonna be together later for the tree lighting. Try to enjoy it. Might be good for you.” Then he got in his truck and drove off. He was heading out to the place he shared with Tara and their two boys to pick them up and bring them back to town for the day’s festivities.

  Casey got in his own truck more slowly.

  Waking up beside Jane—even clothed the way they’d been—wasn’t like anything Casey’d ever experienced. And leaving her there, snoring softly with her hands tucked under her cheek like an innocent child, had been harder than he wanted to admit.

  But if he hadn’t left her there, hadn’t sought sanctuary at Cee-Vid—even though that particular sanctuary was a shadow of what it should have been—staying until she’d wakened would have been even harder.

  He might have slept soundly through what had been left of the night for the first time in months, but that didn’t mean he was able to look in the mirror without seeing the reflection of a coward staring back at him.

  And he hated a coward just as much as he hated a cheater.

  He knew she’d be at Colbys by now. In the throng of her pool tournament contestants and more paying customers than she knew what to do with.

  There was no reason he needed to show his face. Playing in the tournament was an excuse to be near her and he was tired of pretending otherwise.

  Maybe he was just plain tired of pretending.

  So he drove out of the parking lot and headed downtown.

  There was even more of a crowd than there had been the day before. He was
forced to park several blocks away, and even that spot wasn’t entirely legal, if any of Max’s minions decided to go write up parking tickets.

  When he reached Colbys, he threaded through the crowd spilling over from the parking lot into the street. Colbys was an institution around Weaver. It had started out as just a bar long before he was born. Then somewhere along the line, the grill had been added. But never, not once, had it been as successful as Jane had made it.

  He had no right to feel pride over that, but he did.

  He managed to wedge himself through the doorway and spotted her right off. Wearing black jeans and a white sweater, perched on top of the ladder, updating the pool scores. While he’d been cooling his heels at Cee-Vid, the field had been whittled down to four contenders, including his own father.

  For the first time that day, he felt an actual smile on his face.

  Jane didn’t notice him as she backed down the ladder and laughed at something someone said.

  “You going to play human roadblock or move and let a person get inside?”

  At the familiar, laughing voice, he pulled his attention away from Jane’s smiling face and looked back to see his sister J.D. Her green eyes were sparkling. He dutifully moved aside and gave her a hug. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

  “Kids are all out at the big house—” which was how she referred to the main house at the Double-C ranch “—and Jake’ll be along soon. He dropped me off out front so he could find a parking place. Can you believe this turnout? Guess that’s one thing good to come out of the snow being so late this year.” Her hair was up in a ponytail, the same as Jane’s was, but J.D.’s was nearly white-blond and short in comparison to the long, waving golden tail Janie sported.

  His sister slid her arm companionably through Casey’s. “Haven’t seen you in a while. You haven’t been to many Sunday dinners lately.”

  The family—whoever was available, including aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents—always got together on Sunday afternoons for dinner. They rotated locations, but there was always some sort of weekly get-together.