Then, with his dry hand, he took her chin and tilted her face toward him. Carefully, he wiped the flour from her cheek. All the while, she stared up at him, her eyes still as big as saucers, and the moment he touched her, her pupils dilated and her breath shallowed.
Already, he wasn't sure whose heart he heard beating – his or hers.
Absently, he twisted off the water, and said, "I need to talk to you."
She nodded. "Okay."
"I was thinking about the Christmas party. That night when you and I—"
"I never told anyone if that's what you're worried about. It'll be our secret." Her cheeks burned, and she started to pull away from him, but he took another step toward her. It was incredible, after all these years of resisting to finally be so close.
To feel her breath against his skin when she spoke.
"No, it’s not about that. It’s just that I wanted to tell you I was wrong." He stared into the sheer blueness of her eyes. If she took even one step closer, he'd be able to feel her breasts move as she breathed.
"What do you mean?" Her words were a whisper.
"I was wrong to keep that night a secret. To...keep you away."
"But I thought—"
"It was stupid to ignore how beautiful you are. And smart. And funny.” He paused, watching the memory register in her face. Then, he went on, “Ever since that night, I haven't been able to be in the same room with you without thinking about how good, how right, it felt to have you in my arms."
"But you said Jake—"
"Is a grown man. You were right. And it was never really about him, anyway. The bottom line is that living without you isn't good enough for me anymore. It's not right. Caroline, it took me so long to realize it, but I'm in love with you and I hope you can forgive me for everything I've done."
"There's nothing to forgive," she whispered, but then she took a step back. "I just need a minute here." She dropped into one of the seats at the tiny round table, her hand clasped to her chest.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She nodded. "I'm fine. I just...It feels like I've spent my whole life waiting for you to say that, but I never thought you really would. I never thought you loved me the way I..."
"The way you what?" He stepped toward her again, grabbing her by both arms and pulling her up against him.
"The way I love you," she finished, and once he heard the words, he couldn't stop himself.
He cupped her chin again and drew her to him, catching her lips in what felt like the most long-awaited kiss of his life. At once it was soft and sweet, but also deeply passionate. Like all the years they'd been waiting were tied up in a single moment.
He couldn't say how long they stood there, their tongues roving over one another, pushing and pulling, wanting and needing, but all too soon he heard a pronounced cough behind him.
They halted their kiss, but he'd be damned if he'd let her go just yet. Instead, he held her close and glanced toward the doorframe where Jake stood, grinning, with Bobbi at his side.
"Someone is going to have to tell Mom and Dad," he said, and then he turned on his heel and walked away.
As it turned out, breaking the news to Mr. and Mrs. Marley was the least daunting part of his day. They both took him in their arms in turn, kissed his cheek, and joked about how they knew it would only be a matter of time until they'd truly become a family by love and law.
Caroline cut in, complaining that they'd scare him away, but for the life of him he couldn't think of a time when he'd been more relaxed, happy, or whole. Jake, too, seemed more than a little pleased with the situation, and as the night went on, Eric only felt more and more foolish for putting off his decision.
Over dinner, they drank and laughed, no one more than Jake and Bobbi, who seemed to make short work of catching up. When it came time to exchange gifts, Eric looked down at the little bag in his lap with renewed hope.
For Jake, he handed over a small, leather-bound planner.
"For whatever you plan to do now," Eric explained and Jake grinned back at him.
For Mrs. Marley, a CD of Christmas songs to learn for the next year's party.
For Mr. Marley, a headset with a microphone.
"What's this for?" he said when he’d pulled it from its makeshift, plastic bag wrapping.
"I thought it would be nice for you to record the story of how you and Mrs. Marley fell in love. That way, we'll have it for every Christmas to come."
Mrs. Marley grinned, her eyes slightly misty as she stared down at the package in her husband’s lap. "How thoughtful."
"Looks like the only one left is Caroline." Jake waggled his eyebrows at his sister and she rolled her eyes.
For a moment, Eric did nothing. He only sat there; staring at the holly now perched in her curls, the light pink glow on the apples of her cheeks. He could have looked at her forever.
"I'm not sure if you'll like it," Eric said at last.
She smiled. "No way to know until we find out."
He handed her the bag, and then she pulled out a headset identical to her father's. She glanced up at him, her eyebrows furrowed.
"You don't have to use it just yet, but I thought it might be nice to record the way we fell in love, too. To continue the tradition."
In that moment, it felt as though his heart had forgotten how to beat. And then, all at once, it thrummed on harder and faster than ever before.
A silent tear slid down Caroline's cheek, and then she bounded toward him, landing in his lap so hard that she nearly knocked the breath out of him.
But when she kissed him? That was when the world well and truly stopped. He closed his eyes, forgetting about the people and the place. Because in that moment, there was only him and Caroline – and the promise of all their Christmases to come.
The End
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Allison Gatta is an avid writer of steamy contemporary romance, an obsessive viewer of bad television, and an occasional player of overly-complex board games. In her free time, she thinks up fun, new characters and argues with her family over sci-fi trivia. She is a firm believer that Voldemort would vanquish Darth Vader in a duel.
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1
Erich Harlan idled the Ford F-250 at the curb, aware San Antonio Airport Security was eyeing him. Where the hell was Aubrey? She’d always been stubborn, sure, but to keep him waiting when he knew her plane from Houston had landed half an hour ago was something she’d never done. Maybe he should park and go in to look for her. Maybe she’d missed her flight.
He’d balked when his boss, Adam Cavanaugh, tasked him to collect Aubrey from the airport. He hadn’t been alone with her—a conscious decision on both sides—since she left the H
ill Country ranch at eighteen. In her brief visits home since, she had been eager to get back to the city, which made him wonder why she was coming out two weeks ahead of Christmas.
And how he was going to keep his distance from the boss’s daughter, his first love.
In his rearview mirror, he saw the security cops confer, then start toward his truck. Just then, Aubrey Cavanaugh pushed through the glass door, wearing shades and a leather jacket, looking like ten miles of bad road.
She tossed her bag into the bed of the truck, yanked open the door and heaved herself in. Even across the cab, the alcohol fumes burned his eyes. Well, he guessed he knew what had delayed her.
“My folks still on their California RV trip?” she asked, her words carefully enunciated, not slurred.
“They turned around when they heard you were coming home, but they won’t be back for a few days. They were all the way up by Eureka.” He let his voice trail off, hoping she’d pick up on it and tell him why she was home so long. The drinking led him to his own conclusions—a break-up, maybe? His brain immediately formed an image of another man making her cry, making her hurt, and a swell of protectiveness rose in him. Funny thing was, Aubrey had never been one who needed to be protected. But something in her had changed, made her vulnerable, and that tugged at him.
She buckled herself in, then slumped against the door. “Aren’t you the foreman now? How did you get roped into coming to get me?”
“I needed to pick up some supplies.” He gestured to the truck bed, loaded with feed and a few spools of barbed wire, a task that had taken too long when his mind had been wrapped up with thoughts of her.
“Great. Now I’m just another sack of feed.” She turned to look out the windshield, arms wrapped tightly around herself.
“I’d say more like the barbed wire,” he countered, and she whipped her head around to look at him, her expression unreadable behind the shades.
“How’s Houston? How’s the cop life?” he asked as he pulled out of the airport and onto the frontage road.
He never expected she’d become a cop—she’d been pretty spoiled growing up as an only child, a daughter of a prominent rancher—but he’d thought on her previous visits that it had suited her. She’d always had a sharp mind, and now she was a detective on the Houston PD. He forgot which division. Vice, he thought.
The furrow between her brow deepened. “Just peachy.”
She was usually a lot more chatty, but to be honest, he’d never seen her drunk. Drunk on him, maybe, drunk on lust, back when she’d lived at the ranch and he’d been a diversion, the cowboy who’d popped her cherry and so much more. Maybe she was thinking about that, which was ridiculous because it had been a dozen years since she moved to the big city, and on the rare occasions she’d come home to visit, she’d pretended that nothing had been between them.
Still, he couldn’t look at her without seeing her naked, though damn, now she was too thin.
“Did you get anything to eat? Want to stop somewhere?”
“I thought maybe we could stop at Barney’s on the way.”
He frowned. Barney’s bar might have chips, but not food. He’d seen his favorite chain restaurant on the way into town. “Why don’t we stop there?” He pointed to a billboard advertising it.
She shrugged, and he signaled to exit the highway.
Once they were seated in a booth near the bar, beneath a flat-screen TV playing a sports channel, she ordered a margarita first thing, didn’t speak much until she got it, then drained it and ordered another one. This one she drank slower, but she didn’t seem interested in conversation, just traced the patterns in the tiles on the table.
Erich was no conversational wizard himself, but he didn’t care to eat with a sulky companion. “Going to help out with the Cascade Christmas Festival this year? I know your mom was hoping you would.”
Aubrey made a face. “I’m not feeling much like socializing.”
He chuckled. “Then you came at the wrong time of year.” The town of Cascade loved nothing better than a party, and took every advantage to do so. Christmas was their very favorite time to celebrate.
She said nothing.
“What’s going on, Aubrey? Why’d you come home for Christmas two full weeks early?”
She took a long drink and finally met his gaze—just as the waitress arrived with their food. She picked at her meal—no wonder she was so thin—but he couldn’t help devouring his. She didn’t answer his question, which meant she had a reason, but wasn’t going to share, and he didn’t bring it up again.
“Want me to box that up for you?” the waitress asked Aubrey, who shook her head and opened her mouth to order another drink.
“Can we get a couple coffees to go?” Erich interjected.
The waitress nodded and headed off.
Moments later they were in the truck, Aubrey as far away from him as possible.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her once they were on the road to the ranch. But when he looked over, she was asleep.
Aubrey walked into her parents’ empty mission style house in a fog. Fog was good—it blurred everything: pain, fear, helplessness, guilt. And it buffered her against the jostle of emotions at being home. She hadn’t had a bad childhood, but as the only child, there’d been expectations she didn’t want to live up to. Being back here brought back that smothering feeling along with other, happier memories. The fog kept the edges blurred.
Just as well her parents were gone—Aubrey wasn’t up to facing them just yet, having to rehash everything, because they’d want to know. They should know, since she’d come running home with her tail between her legs seeking—well, she didn’t know what she was seeking, actually. Peace wasn’t something she often felt in Cascade, despite the quiet, the open land, the distance from neighbors. Distance?
Safety?
Right now she’d settle for oblivion. She went into the sun room where the dry bar was, snagged a couple of bottles from the cabinet and headed up to her old room. With any luck, she’d pass out, and when she woke up, she’d have some defenses back in place.
Sad she felt she needed them when she came home, but her parents hadn’t been in favor of her decision to become a cop, had been even less supportive when she moved to Houston. She didn’t know what they wanted—okay, she did. They wanted her to live out here in the middle of nowhere, be a rancher’s wife. Well, she’d already been a rancher’s daughter and discovered small town life wasn’t for her. Her mother had adjusted, falling in love with Adam when she was a successful lawyer in San Antonio, and was now a pillar of Cascade society, but that wasn’t the life for Aubrey. She liked having restaurants within ten minutes instead of half an hour away or more. She liked the bustle, the noise.
And she’d loved her job until a few days ago.
She battled back the images that assaulted her, the smell of blood and trash and death. As she walked into the bedroom that hadn’t changed since she left home twelve years ago, still decorated in what her mother called “shabby chic” and she called “nothing like her,” she wondered if she would ever love her job again.
Knowing Aubrey was home and not seeing her was odd. Sure, she’d been home on break in the past, but those had mostly been whirlwind trips. Usually she was out and about, hanging with her parents, but so far she’d been rattling around in that old house all by herself. The few times Erich did see her wander out on the patio, she had a tumbler in her hand. He needed to get her out of there, though he wasn’t sure just what being together would change. He knew what he’d want to change, but Aubrey had always gone her own way.
Finally he had a break in mending fences on Thursday morning. He saddled two horses, his roan and Mrs. Cavanaugh’s bay mare, the daughter of the mare Aubrey used to ride, and headed for the house. He looped the reins over the post in front, the post Mrs. Cavanaugh wanted removed but Mr. Cavanaugh insisted on keeping, since they were a working ranch. Erich strode to the door and banged the wrought-iron knocke
r against the oak door. Silence on the other side, so he banged again. And again.
Finally the door swung open and Aubrey glared at him. He realized it was the first time he’d seen her eyes since she’d arrived. What he saw there made him take a step back, almost wish he hadn’t taken the initiative to come for her. They were shadowed, reddened and haunted.
“You need some fresh air,” he said. “Let’s go for a ride.” He gestured at the waiting horses.
“The last thing I need is to go for a ride,” she muttered, hunkering in the shadow of the house, her hand on the door.
Quickly he moved forward, blocking her intent. Her eyes widened as she looked up at him. Too late he realized he might have frightened her, but no, Aubrey wasn’t afraid of anything.
“You need to quit feeling sorry for yourself and come for a ride. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to change.” She was wearing city shoes, not good for horseback riding. “And dress warm.”
He’d never had to talk her into going for a ride before. She’d always been eager—because the rides had meant getting away from the house, finding privacy and getting naked. He shifted as his body reacted to the memory of laying her down on a blanket, filling her, letting her flip him onto his back and ride him.
She folded her arms stubbornly beneath her breasts. “That’s not who I am anymore.”
“I’m not taking you out to get laid,” he growled.
He couldn’t decipher the look on her face, but it kind of looked like he’d punched her in the stomach. He blew out a sigh. “Aubrey, just get changed. You need to get out of the house.” And away from the liquor he could smell on her breath. Damn, it was early for that. The pain she was trying to mask had to be pretty bad. Not a man, he was pretty sure. The Aubrey he knew wouldn’t let herself get that worked up over a man.
Home for the Holidays: A Contemporary Romance Anthology Page 17