A Cold Creek Christmas Story

by RaeAnne Thayne

  * * *

  Flynn gazed at the three children, certain he was witnessing a miracle.

  This was really his daughter, looking bright and animated and...happy.

  This was the daughter he remembered, this girl who found humor in the silliest things, who was curious about the world around her and loved talking with people. He’d feared she was gone forever, stolen by a troubled man who had taken so much else from her.

  Seeing her sitting at a table in the St. Nicholas Lodge, laughing with Celeste and her niece and nephew, he wanted to hug all three of the children. Even more, he wanted to kiss Celeste right on that delicious-looking mouth of hers that had haunted his dreams for days.

  Her smiling gaze met his and a wave of tenderness washed over him. She had done this. He didn’t know how. She had seen a sad, wounded girl and had worked some kind of Sparkle magic on her to coax out the sweet and loving girl Olivia used to be.

  Her smile slid away and he realized he was staring. He drew in a deep breath and forced himself to look away.

  His gaze landed on a piece of paper with what looked like a complicated drawing. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

  She looked embarrassed. “I’m so not an artist, Hope is. I’m just trying to work up a sketch I can show Rafe. I’m trying to figure out how to build wings on the side of the stage so the children have somewhere to wait offstage. There’s no time to sew curtains. I just need some sort of screen to hide them from view.

  He studied her sketch, then took the paper from her and made a few quick changes. “That shouldn’t be hard,” he said. “You just have to build a frame out of two-by-fours and then use something lightweight like particle board for your screen. If it’s hinged and connected there, it should be solid and also portable enough that you can store it somewhere when you’re not using it.”

  She studied the drawing. “Wow. That’s genius! You know, I think that just might work. Can you just write down what supplies you think it might need? Rafe will be back from Jackson Hole shortly, and I can put him to work on it if he has time.”

  He glanced at the stage, then at his daughter, still smiling as she played cards with the other two children. Though he knew he would probably regret it—and he certainly had plenty of things still to take care of at Charlotte’s house—he spoke quickly before he could change his mind.

  “If you’ve got some tools I can use and the two-by-fours, I can probably get the frame for it done in no time.”

  She stared at him, green eyes wide behind those sexy glasses she wore. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged. “I started out in carpentry. It’s kind of what I do. This shouldn’t be hard at all—as long as Olivia doesn’t mind hanging around a little longer.”

  “Yay!” Louisa exclaimed. “She can come to the house and decorate the sugar cookies we made last night with Aunt Celeste while our mom was Christmas shopping.”

  Olivia looked suitably intrigued. “I’ve never decorated sugar cookies.”

  “Never?” Celeste exclaimed. She looked surprised enough that Flynn felt a pinch of guilt. Apparently this was another area where he had failed his daughter.

  Olivia shook her head. “Is it hard?”

  “No way,” Louisa answered. “It’s easy and super, super fun. You can decorate the cookies any way you want. There’s no right or wrong. You can use sparkly sugar or M&M’s or frosting or whatever you want.”

  “The best part is, when you mess it up, you get to eat your mistakes,” Barrett added. “Nobody even cares. I mess up a lot.”

  Olivia snickered and Flynn had a feeling she would be messing up plenty, too. What was it with all these Christmas traditions that filled kids with more sugar when they least needed another reason to be excited?

  He had struck out miserably when it came to Christmas traditions this year. At least they had the little Christmas tree at his grandmother’s house for decoration, but that was about it.

  Olivia had insisted she hoped Santa Claus wouldn’t come that year, but he had disregarded her wishes and bought several things online for her. A few other presents would be waiting back in California, sort of a delayed holiday, simply because the new bike her physical therapist suggested was too big for the journey here in his SUV.

  Next year would be different, he told himself. By this time next year they would be established in a routine back in California. They could hang stockings and put up a tree of their own and decorate all the sugar cookies she wanted, even if he had to order ready-made plain cookies from his favorite bakery.

  The idea of returning to a routine after the stress of the past few months should have been appealing. Instead, it left him remarkably unenthused.

  “May I go, Dad? I really, really, really want to decorate cookies.”

  He was torn between his desire to keep her close and his deep relief that she was so obviously enjoying the company of other children. She would enjoy the cookie decorating far more than she would enjoy sitting around and watching him work a band saw.

  “Are you sure your aunt won’t mind one more?” he asked Celeste.

  “Are you kidding? Mary loves a crowd. The more the merrier, as far as she’s concerned.” She smiled a little. “And look at it this way. You’ll probably come out of the whole thing with cookies to take home.”

  “Well, in that case, how can I say no? A guy always needs a few more cookies.”

  “Yay! I can go,” Olivia told the other children as if they hadn’t been right there to hear her father’s decision.

  “Put the cards away first and then get your coats on. Then you can walk up to the house.”

  “You’re not coming?” Olivia asked.

  “I’ll be up later,” she answered with a smile. “But first I have to finish painting some of the scenery.”

  The children cleaned up the cards and returned them to a little tin box, then put on their coats, hats and mittens. As soon as they were on their way, Celeste turned to him with a grateful smile. She looked so fresh and lovely that for a crazy moment, he wished they were alone in the lodge with that big crackling fire.

  Instead, an older woman was setting out prepackaged snacks in what looked like a concessions area and another one was arranging things on a shelf in a gift store. Outside the windows, he could see families beginning to queue up to buy tickets.

  “Is there somewhere I can get going on this? A workshop or something?”

  “Oh.” She looked flustered suddenly and he wondered if something in his expression revealed the fierce attraction simmering through him. “Yes. There’s a building behind back where Rafe keeps his tools. That’s where I’ve been painting the scenery, too. I’ll show you.”

  She led the way through the lodge to a back door. They walked through the pale winter sunshine to a modern-looking barn a short distance away.

  In a pasture adjacent to the barn, he saw several more reindeer as well as some draft horses.

  “This is where we keep the reindeer at night during the holiday season,” she explained. “There’s Sparkle. Do you see him?”

  As far as he could tell all the reindeer looked the same, but he would take her word for it. “Is he feeling better?”

  “Much. Apparently he only wanted a few days off.”

  “Olivia will be happy to hear that.”

  “He’ll need his strength. This afternoon and evening will be crazy busy.”

  “For the reindeer, too?” he asked, fascinated by the whole idea of an entire operation devoted only to celebrating the holidays.

  “Yes. Hope will probably hook them up to the sleigh for photo ops and short rides. The draft horses, of course, will be taking people on sleigh rides around the ranch, which is a highlight of the season. You should take Olivia. She would love it. It’s really fun riding through the cold, starry night all bundled up
in blankets.”

  It did sound appealing—especially if he and Celeste were alone under those blankets...

  He jerked his brain back to the business at hand. He really needed to stop this.

  “We’re only open a few more nights,” she said. “But if you want to take her, let me know and I’ll arrange it.”

  As much as he thought Olivia would enjoy the sleigh ride, he wasn’t at all certain that spending more time at The Christmas Ranch with Celeste and her appealing family would be good for either of them.

  “We’ll see,” he said, unwilling to commit to anything. “Shall we get to it?”

  “Right. Of course.”

  She led him into a well-lit, modern building with stalls along one wall. The rest seemed to be taken up with storage and work space.

  She led him to an open area set up with a band saw, a reciprocating saw, a router and various other power tools, as well as a stack of two-by-fours and sheets of plywood.

  “You might not need to have Rafe run to the lumber yard. You might have everything here.”

  “Great.”

  She pointed to another area of the barn where other large pieces of plywood had been painted with snowflakes. “I need to finish just a few things on the scenery, so I’ll be on hand if you need help with anything.”

  The best help she could offer would be to stay out of his way. She was entirely too tempting to his peace of mind, but he couldn’t figure out a way to say that without sounding like an idiot, so he just decided to focus on the job at hand.

  “Do you mind if I turn on some music?” she asked.

  “That’s fine,” he answered. Her place, her music.

  It wasn’t Christmas music, he was happy to hear. Instead, she found some classic-rock station and soon The Eagles were harmonizing through the barn from a speaker system in the work area.

  She returned to her side of the area and started opening paint cans and gathering brushes, humming along to the music. Though he knew he needed to get started, he couldn’t seem to look away.

  He liked watching her. She seemed to throw herself into everything she did, whether that was directing a ragtag group of children in a Christmas show, telling stories to a bunch of energetic school kids or writing a charming story about a brave reindeer.

  He was fascinated with everything about her.

  He had to get over it, he told himself sternly. He needed to help build her set, finish clearing out his grandmother’s house and then go back to his normal life in California.

  He turned his attention to the pile of lumber and found the boards he would need. Then he spent a moment familiarizing himself with another man’s work space and the tools available to him. Rafe Santiago kept a clean, well-organized shop. He would give him that.

  The moment he cut the first board, he felt more centered than he had in a long time. He was very good at building things. It gave him great satisfaction to take raw materials and turn them into something useful, whether that was a piece of furniture or a children’s hospital.

  For nearly an hour, they worked together in a comfortable silence broken only by the sounds of tools and the music. He made good progress by doing his best to pretend she wasn’t there, that this growing attraction simmering through him would burn itself out when it no longer had the fuel of her presence to sustain it.

  The barn was warmer than he would have expected, especially with the air compressor going to power the tools, and soon he was down to his T-shirt. Before she started painting, she had taken off the sweater she wore, but it wasn’t until he took a break and looked up from connecting two boards that he saw the message on it: Wake up Smarter. Sleep With a Librarian.

  For an instant his mind went completely blank as all the blood left his head at the image. Unfortunately, his finger twitched on the trigger of the unfamiliar nail gun, which was far more reactive than any of the guns he was used to.

  He felt a sharp biting pain as the nail impaled the webbing between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand to the board. He swore and ripped out the nail, mortified at his stupidity.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d had an accident with a nail gun or a power tool—in his line of work, nobody made it through without nicks and bruises and a few stitches here or there, especially starting out—but it was completely embarrassing. He hadn’t made that kind of rookie mistake in years. Apparently, she wasn’t very good for his concentration.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Nothing. It’s fine.” It was, really. The nail hadn’t gone through anything but skin.

  “You’re bleeding. Let me see.”

  “It’s just a poke. Hazard of the job.”

  “I think Rafe keeps a first-aid kit somewhere in here.” She started rifling through cabinets until she found one.

  “I don’t need anything. It’s almost stopped bleeding.”

  It still burned like hell, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  “I’ll feel better if you let me at least clean it up.”

  “Really, not necessary.”

  She ignored him and stepped closer, bringing that delicious springtime scent with her that made him think of sunlit mornings and new life.

  “Hold out your hand.”

  Since he was pretty certain she wouldn’t let up until he cooperated, he knew he had no choice but to comply. Feeling stupid, he thrust out his arm. She took his injured hand in both of hers and dabbed at it with a wipe she’d found inside the kit.

  “It’s not bad,” she murmured. “I don’t think you’re going to need stitches.”

  He did his best to keep his gaze fiercely away from that soft T-shirt that had caused the trouble in the first place—and the curves beneath it.

  The gentle touch of her fingers on his skin made him want to close his eyes and lean into her. It had been so long since he’d known that kind of aching sweetness.

  She smiled a little. “Do you remember that time I fell on my bike in front of your grandmother’s house?”

  “Yes.” His voice sounded a little ragged around the edges, but he had to hope she didn’t notice.

  “You were so sweet to me,” she said with soft expression as she applied antiseptic cream to the tiny puncture wound. “I couldn’t even manage to string two words together around you, but you just kept up a steady stream of conversation to make me feel more comfortable until my aunt Mary could come pick me up. I was so mortified, but you made it feel less horrible.”

  He swallowed. He’d done that? He didn’t have much memory of it, only of a quiet girl with big eyes and long dark hair.

  “Why would you be mortified? It was an accident.”

  She snorted a little. “Right. I ran into your grandmother’s mailbox because I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. It was all your fault for mowing the lawn without your shirt on.”

  He stared down at her. “That’s why you crashed?”

  She looked up and he saw shadows of remembered embarrassment there. “In my defense, I was thirteen years old, you were a much older boy and I already had a huge crush on you. It’s a wonder I could say a word.”

  “Is that right?” he asked softly. Her fingers felt so good on his skin, her luscious mouth was right there and he wanted nothing but to find a soft spot of hay somewhere for the two of them to collapse into.

  “Yes,” she murmured, and he saw answering awareness in her eyes. “And then you made it so much worse by being so kind, cleaning me up, calling my aunt, then fixing my bike for me. What shy, awkward bookworm alive could have resisted that, when the cutest boy she’d ever met in real life was so sweet to her?”

  He didn’t want to be sweet right now. At her words, hunger growled to life inside him, and he knew he would have to appease it somehow.

  Just a kiss, he told himself.
A simple taste and then they both could move on.

  He lowered his mouth and felt her hands tremble when his lips brushed hers.

  She tasted just as delicious as he would have imagined, sweet and warm and luscious, like nibbling at a perfectly ripe strawberry.

  She froze for just a moment, long enough for him to wonder if he’d made a terrible error in judgment, and then her mouth softened and she kissed him back with a breathy sigh, as if she had been waiting for this since that day half a lifetime ago.

  Her hands fluttered against his chest for just a moment, then wrapped around his neck, and he pulled her closer, delighting in her soft curves and the aching tenderness of the kiss.

  Chapter Ten

  Life could take the strangest turns sometimes.

  If someone had told her a week ago that she would be standing in The Christmas Ranch barn on a Saturday afternoon kissing Flynn Delaney, she would have advised them to see somebody about their delusions.

  Here they were, though, with her hands tangled in his hair and his arms wrapped around her and his mouth doing intoxicating things to her.

  She wanted the moment to go on forever, this sultry, honeyed magic.

  Nothing in her limited experience compared to this. She’d had a couple of boyfriends in college, nothing serious and nothing that had lasted more than a month or two—and absolutely nothing that prepared her for the sheer sensual assault of kissing Flynn.

  She made a little sound in her throat and he deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding along hers as his arms tightened around her. Sensation rippled through her, and she could only be grateful when he pushed her against the nearest cabinet, his mouth hot and demanding.

  She couldn’t seem to think about anything other than kissing him, touching him, finding some way to be closer to him. She wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck, wanting this moment to go on forever.

  They kissed for a long time there with the scents of sawdust and hay swirling around them. Even as she lost herself in the kiss, some tiny corner of her brain was trying to catalog every emotion and sensation, storing it up so she could relive it after he was gone. The taste of him, of coffee and mint and sexy male, the silky softness of his hair, the delicious rasp of his whiskers against her skin, his big, warm hands slipping beneath the back of her T-shirt to slide against her bare skin...