Same Time, Next Christmas (The Bravos 0f Valentine Bay Book 3)

by Christine Rimmer

  “Okay, now I want to kick his snotty little rich-guy ass.”

  “Thank you. Anyway, James asks his parents to leave. They go. At this point, I’m reeling. I demand an explanation—and James just blurts out the truth he never bothered to share with me before. He says yes, there’s a little boy. That in the year between graduation and when he showed up in Portland, he’d gotten back with his childhood sweetheart and she’d had his baby. He says he hates that maybe his parents are right. Monica—his baby mama—really does need him and so does his son. He says he’s sorry, but he can’t marry me and he’s leaving for Monterey right away.”

  “Sabra.”

  She glared across the coffee table at him to keep from getting weepy over her terrible life choices. “What?”

  “This all happened a week ago?”

  “James went back to Monterey exactly one week ago today, yes.”

  Matthias took the pillow out from under his leg, plopped it on the coffee table and scooted around so he could rest his leg on it again. Then he patted the space beside him. “Come here.”

  “Why?”

  He only patted the empty cushion some more.

  “Fine.” She got up and sat next to him.

  And he hooked his giant arm around her and pulled her close. “Lean on me. It’s not going to kill you.”

  She let her head drop to his enormous shoulder, breathed in his minty, manly evergreen scent—and felt comforted. “Thanks.”

  His breath brushed the crown of her head. He might even have pressed a kiss there, though she couldn’t be sure. “Continue.”

  “What else is there to say? I gave him back his ring and he packed a suitcase and left. I told myself to look on the bright side. I had three weeks off work for the honeymoon that wasn’t happening, time off from the daily grind to pull it together, find a new place and sublet the apartment I can’t afford to keep by myself.”

  “Plus, you’d dodged a major bullet not marrying a cheating, dumb-ass rich kid from Monterey.”

  “Yay, me.” It felt good to be held by him. She snuggled in a little closer. When she tipped her head back to glance up at him, he bent close and touched his nose to hers, causing a sweet little shiver to radiate out from that small point of contact.

  “You okay?” he asked, blue eyes narrowed with concern.

  “I am,” she replied, resting her head on his shoulder. “I threw some clothes in a bag and went to the farm, where my dad was still wandering around like a ghost of himself. But at least he hugged me and said he loved me and he was glad I hadn’t married the wrong man. He wanted me to come with him for Christmas with my mom’s side of the family, but I wasn’t up for it. After Dad left, it got really lonely at the farm, so I started back to Portland—and the rest, you know.”

  “Luckily for me, you ended up here in time to save my sorry ass from my own hopeless pigheadedness.”

  “You’re welcome.” She eased free of his hold to bring a knee up on the sofa cushion and turn toward him. “And at least I’ve learned something from the disaster that was James.”

  “What’s that?”

  “For the next five years, minimum, the only relationships I’m having are the casual kind.”

  He scratched his chin, pretending to think deeply about what she’d just said. “I don’t know, Sabra. Isn’t that what you promised yourself after things went south with Stan? You seem to be kind of a sucker for a marriage proposal.”

  She was tempted to fake outrage. But really, why bother? He was absolutely right on both counts. “Yeah, I do have that teensy problem of being monogamous to the core.” A sad little laugh escaped her. “It’s bred in the bone with me, I guess.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “My parents fell in love when they were kids—and their dedication to each other? Absolute. I just want what they had, but so far it’s not happening.” Matthias was watching her with a kind of musing expression. And she felt...bold. And maybe a little bit giddy. She took it further. “I’m probably never trying love again. And I’m incapable of having casual sex with men I don’t know. That means I’m doomed to spend my life only having sex with myself—and I know, I know. TMI in a big way.” Matthias chuckled. It was a rough sound, that chuckle. And very attractive. She felt strangely proud every time she made him laugh. “And now that I’ve totally overshared the story of my pitiful love life, you sure you don’t want to do a little sharing, too?”

  He grunted. “Do I look like the sharing type to you?”

  She didn’t back down. “Yeah. You do. Talk to me about the things you said in your sleep the other night.”

  He went straight to tough-guy denial. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The name Nelson doesn’t even ring a bell?”

  “Who?” he sneered—but in a teasing kind of way that seemed to give her permission to keep pushing.

  Sabra pushed. “So...you don’t want to talk about Mark or Finn, either, or the woman you mentioned. Christy, I think her name was...”

  He squinted at her, as though he was trying to see inside her head. “You really want to hear this crap?”

  “I’m sure it’s not crap. And yes, I really do.”

  “All right, then.” And just like that, he gave it up. “Christy was my high school sweetheart. We were still together after a couple of years of community college. I was messing up all over the place back then, drinking, exploring the effects of a number of recreational drugs and playing video games instead of taking care of business. My issues had issues, I guess you could say. But at least I knew Christy was the love of my life.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  He snorted derisively. “Wait for the rest of it. At twenty, after squeaking through my sophomore year with a C-minus average, my older brother Daniel gave me a good talking-to—a few blows were thrown. But he did get through to me. I decided to enlist, to serve my country and get my act together.

  “Before I left for boot camp, I proposed and Christy said yes. We agreed to a two-year engagement so that she could finish college before the wedding. A year later, while I was overseas, she Dear Johned me via email and then married the guy she’d been cheating on me with.”

  “Oh, dear God, Matthias. That’s bad.”

  “What happened with Christy was by no means the worst of it.” His eyes were flat now, far away.

  She felt terrible for him and almost let him off the hook. But he fascinated her. She wanted to know his story, to understand what had shaped the man he was now.

  “Nelson and Mark were good men,” he continued in a monotone. “We served together in the Middle East. They didn’t make it home. I got discharged due to injury. I was a mess. There were surgeries and lots of therapy—both kinds, physical and for my screwed-up head. Finn was my brother.”

  “Was?” she asked in a small voice, stunned by this litany of tragedy.

  “It’s possible he’s still alive. He disappeared when he was only eight. That was my fault. I was six years older and I was supposed to be watching him. We still have investigators looking for him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, aching for him and for those he’d lost. “I really don’t know what to say...”

  “Don’t worry about it. Can we talk about something else now, you think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  And just like that, he shook it off and teased her, “I guess, with you being incapable of casual sex, I don’t have to wonder if you took advantage of me that first night when I was at my weakest.”

  She followed his lead and teased him right back. “Don’t look so hopeful.”

  “Damn. It was only a dream, then?”

  “All right, I admit it.” She fluttered her eyelashes madly. “For you, I have made a monogamy exception. You loved it—actually, it was good for both of us.”

  “I kind of figured it would
be.” He said that with way more sincerity than the joking moment called for.

  And all of a sudden, the warm, candlelit cabin was charged with a whole new kind of heat.

  Okay, yeah. The guy was super hot in his big, buff, ex-military kind of way. Plus, they’d forged a sort of instant intimacy, two strangers alone in the middle of the woods.

  But getting into anything really intimate with him would be a bad idea. After all, she’d just gotten messed over by her second fiancé.

  Having sex with Matthias would only be asking for trouble.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Or would it be wonderful? Passionate and sweet and magical. And right.

  Chemistry-wise, he really did it for her—at least, as far as she could tell without even having kissed him yet.

  Why should she run from that, from the possibility of that? Maybe they could have something beautiful.

  Something for right now. Just between the two of them.

  Maybe, for the first time, she, Sabra Bond, could actually have a fling. That would be progress for someone like her.

  They stared at each other in the flickering candlelight.

  Was he just possibly thinking the same thing she was?

  * * *

  Sex.

  Matt was definitely thinking about sex. About how much he wanted it. With the woman sitting next to him. “Sabra.”

  Her big eyes got bigger. “Um, yeah?”

  “Whatever I say now is just going to sound like so much bull—”

  She whipped up a hand. “No. No, it’s not. I get you, Matthias. I do. I think, you and me, we’re on the same page about this whole relationship thing. It hasn’t even been a full week since I almost married a man who’d failed to tell me he had a child. I’m not ready for anything serious, not in the least. I need about a decade to figure myself out first.”

  “Yeah. I get that.” He gave it to her straight out. “I’m not ready, either.”

  “But I, well, I have been thinking about it,” she confessed. “About the two of us, here, alone. Like strangers. And yet somehow, at the same time, not strangers at all.”

  Were they moving too far, too fast? Yeah, probably.

  He tried to lighten things up a little. “It’s all the excitement and glamour, right? I mean, I know we’re having a wild old time here, playing board games, sitting out on the porch watching the snow melt.”

  She laughed. He really liked her laugh, all husky and musical at once. But then she answered with complete sincerity. “I’m having the best time. I really am.”

  And what could he do but reply honestly, in kind? “Me, too.” He wanted to kiss her. What man wouldn’t? And as their hours together drifted by, it kept getting harder to remember why kissing her wouldn’t be wise.

  She got up and went back to her chair. He wanted to reach out, catch her hand, beg her to stay there on the sofa beside him. But he had no right to do any such thing.

  She settled in across the coffee table, gathering her knees up against her chest, resting her pretty chin on them. “I have a proposition for you.”

  His heart rate picked up. “Hit me with it.”

  “What if we both agreed that this, right now, in this cabin at Christmas, just you and me—this is it? This is all. When it’s over and we go our separate ways, that’s the last we’ll ever see of each other.”

  He felt regret, that it was going nowhere between the two of them—regret and relief in equal measure. A man needed to be realistic about what he was capable of. And what he wasn’t. As for Sabra, well, she’d just gotten free of one romantic mess. A new one was the last thing she needed. “You’re saying we won’t be exchanging numbers?”

  “That’s right. No details about how to get in touch later. And no looking each other up on social media, no trying to track each other down.”

  “We say goodbye and walk away.”

  “Yes.” She sat a little straighter in the chair. “What do you think?”

  He stuck out his hand across the coffee table. She shifted, tucking her legs to the side, leaning forward in the chair and then reaching out to meet him.

  “Deal,” he said as he wrapped his fingers around hers.

  Chapter Five

  The second Matt released her hand, the power popped back on.

  The lights flickered, and then steadied. The tree came alive, blazing bright.

  “You think it’ll go out again?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Hell if I know.” He shifted his bad leg back onto the sofa, stretching it out as before.

  They sat there, waiting, for a good count of twenty. When the lights stayed on, she bent forward to blow out the candle between them.

  “Leave it for a little while, just in case,” he suggested.

  “Sure.” She gazed across the coffee table at him—and started backing off the plan. “I, well, I just realized...” Her cheeks were bright red. She was absolutely adorable.

  “Realized what?” he asked, keeping his expression serious, though inside he was grinning. Yeah, he wanted to do her ten ways to Sunday.

  But if it never happened, he would still have so much—the memory of her smile, the clever bite of her sharp words. The way she only got calmer when things got scary. And how, even after he’d introduced himself by threatening her with a rifle, she’d stepped right up to do what needed doing, not only patching him up, but also taking good care of him while he was out of it.

  No matter how it all turned out, this was a Christmas he wouldn’t forget. Even if he never so much as kissed her, he felt a definite connection to her and he was one of those guys who didn’t make connections easily.

  She did some throat clearing. “It just occurred to me...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t have condoms. I’m going to take a wild guess and say you don’t, either.”

  Wrong. Last summer he’d let Jerry Davidson, a lifelong friend, fellow game warden and self-styled player, use the cabin as a romantic getaway. Jerry had left a box of them upstairs.

  “Are you getting cold feet?” he asked gently.

  She scowled. “Matthias, just tell me. Do you have condoms or not?”

  “I do, yeah. Upstairs in the dresser, top drawer on the right.”

  She blinked. “Oh. Well, okay, then—and what about your leg?”

  He gave a shrug. “It could cramp my style a little, I have to admit.”

  “Do you want, um, to back out, then?”

  He grinned. She did that to him, made him grin. Made him see the world as a better place. Made him feel comfortable in his own skin, somehow. “Not a chance.”

  She answered his grin with one of her own. “Then you’re only saying that we should be careful, take it slow?”

  “Yeah. Slow. Slow is good.” He gestured at his stretched-out leg. “Slow also happens to be just about all I can manage at this point.”

  She leaned in a little closer. “You think you could make it up the stairs?”

  “Baby, I know I could.”

  Her grin turned to a soft little smile. “Slowly, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  All of a sudden, she was a ball of nervous energy. She shot out of the chair. “How about some hot chocolate?”

  “Sounds good.” He started to get up.

  “No. You stay right there. I’ll get it.” And she bolted for the kitchen area, where she began rattling pans. He considered following her over there for no other reason than that he liked being near her—plus, he wanted to be sure she wasn’t suddenly freaking out over the plans they’d just made.

  But maybe she needed a few minutes to herself. Maybe she was going to tell him that, on second thought, getting into bed with him was a bad idea.

  Well, if she’d changed her mind, she would say so. No need to go looking for disappointment. If
it was coming, it would find him soon enough.

  He picked up his phone and got the music started again, choosing slower songs this time, Christmas ballads and easy-listening jazz.

  When she returned with two mugs, she set one in front of her chair and then edged around the coffee table to put his down where he could reach it comfortably. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” Before she could retreat to the other side of the table, he caught her arm in an easily breakable grip.

  Her eyes widened and her mouth looked so soft and full. He couldn’t wait to kiss her. “I gave you marshmallows,” she said softly, like it was their secret that no one else could know.

  “I love marshmallows.”

  “Excellent,” she replied in a breathless whisper.

  He exerted a gentle pressure on her arm, pulling her down a little closer, so he could smell the clean sweetness of her skin, feel the warmth of her, imagine the beauty hidden under his baggy sweatshirt and track pants.

  She didn’t resist him, though she gulped hard and her breathing had grown erratic. Another quivery little smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

  One more tug was all it took. Those soft lips touched his. She sighed. The sound flowed through him. It was a happy sort of sound, warm.

  Welcoming, even.

  He smiled against her lips, letting go of her arm as he claimed her mouth, being careful to give her every opportunity to pull away or call a halt.

  She did neither.

  And he went on kissing her, keeping it light and tentative at first, brushing his lips across hers. He caught her pillowy lower lip between his teeth, biting down just enough to make her give him a little moan as he eased his fingers up over the slim curve of her shoulder.

  Taking hold of her thick braid, he wrapped it around his hand, a rope of silk. She hummed into his mouth, her lips softening, giving to him, letting him in to explore the smooth, wet surfaces beyond her parted lips.

  “Sabra,” he whispered.

  She murmured his name, “Matthias,” in return.

  He liked that, the way she always used his full name. Other people rarely did.

  Slowly, he let the wrapped braid uncoil. That freed his hand to slip under it and clasp her nape. Her skin was warm satin, so smooth against his roughened palm. He ran his thumb and forefinger down the sides of her neck, relishing the feel of her. The fine hairs at her nape brushed at him, tickling a little in a way that both aroused him and made him smile.