by Billi Jean
Would she want that?
He believed so. For her, out here alone, by herself and so shut off from everyone, having him here, of all people, had to be hard, but it could be good too. He could show her that, couldn’t he?
She shifted and sighed in her sleep and he yawned, the last few days of nonstop action catching up with him.
Maybe he would have to go slow, tell her again what he was thinking. Maybe that would ease her pain, knowing he wasn’t going to leave her. The warmth of her slender body and the peace and quiet settled over him. Gradually he eased down the couch and let himself relax. He was snowed in, which meant whatever Sonya was up to, she was just as stuck. And whoever she worked for was just as caught. They all had to wait for a power stronger than themselves, it seemed—the weather. Slowly he sank deeper in the comfortable couch, letting his exhaustion and Kris’ warmth ease him.
* * * *
“Robert?”
Robert woke with a start, stared at Kristen’s confused face and shook his head. “Sorry. Sorry, I fell asleep I guess.”
“What are you—?”
“I brought you something to eat,” he said, cutting her off but also stopping her from getting up with a hand on her leg. By the look of the light outside, they’d both slept for a good solid six hours or so.
“Here,” he said, reaching over at the same time to quickly set the tray of food on her lap.
She gave it a quick glance, but shook her head at him. “I’m not hungry.”
“Well, cooking isn’t my best skill, but I can fix things, and I’m good at other things too.”
“Other things?” she repeated, like he’d said something foreign. She tucked her dark hair behind her ear and watched him warily.
“Yeah,” he said pulling his courage out to go on to say, “Other things. Once you let me romance you, I can show you.”
Her face turned rosy at his teasing but she tried to brush it off. He saw the way she glanced at him and he was certain she focused on his lips more than his eyes. He licked them and she watched then her delicate pink tongue flicked over her gorgeous lips. He fought the urge to lean in and kiss her. He held off on that, not wanting to push this too far, too fast. Instead, he gestured to the window. “We slept a while, huh?”
She blinked again and turned her attention to the light coming through the window. “Oh,” she said, looking startled that she’d spoken, then scooted her feet free and sat up. “We did. I need to go out and shovel again.”
He glanced at the bottle of Jack and stood up before she could. “The snow can wait. Try the sandwich, it’s good for you, but this”—he picked up the bottle—“this won’t solve much, darling.”
She grimaced and nodded. “I know but it eases it,” she said softly, surprising him.
“Eases what, Kris, the loss of someone you should never have had taken from you?” He held up the picture and shook his head. “She was as beautiful as you. You should never have had to live through this, and I shouldn’t have let you do it alone.” She stayed silent, and he couldn’t look at her while he spoke but he didn’t sidestep the issue either. “The alcohol won’t do anything but kill you. Is that why you’re drinking it?”
“What?” she whispered. “No, of course not. If I wanted to kill myself, Robert, I could do that without drinking whisky, but you know that right?” she demanded.
“Yeah, you could, but you’re drinking enough to get alcohol poisoning, did you know that?” he demanded right back.
She snorted and shoved the tray of food off her lap. “Look, I don’t need a lecture and I don’t need you to cook for me—”
“I wanted to cook for you, and you should eat it. You’re thinner. You’ve been up here how long? Doing what? Drinking and not eating?”
The look of pure feminine ire should have slowed his tongue, but the picture, the pain in her eyes, the tears, it all pissed him off. He wanted to make her see that she had to go on living but he couldn’t do that since he hadn’t ever started himself.
Before she could speak or get up, he knelt down and shook his head again. Maybe he’d shake some sense into it.
“I’m sorry, hell, what do I know of living?” he asked, holding her hands in his. “We have this moment, this chance we may never have again. We can live in it, soak it up and hope for more, and if we aren’t given that we can always have those moments to remember. Or we can slowly shut down and not live, not know what it’s like to love or be loved, or laugh and make others happy. We can do these things because we are alive, Kris, we’re not dead. We can’t keep hiding from that, and we can’t keep on like this, can we?”
He forced himself to stop and wait for her to speak again.
She stared at him for several minutes with a painful expression then finally shook her head. “No, we can’t,” she said in a small voice. “I just don’t know how to stop.”
His heart clenched at her words. He tightened his hands on hers and leaned closer. “Neither do I, but I want to start. I want to start by romancing you, making you happy if I can, so maybe you’ll show us both how to live.”
He reached for her face and wiped away a tear that had made it past her control. She didn’t stop him, but she didn’t speak either. She examined him closely, as if she could somehow see something only she understood.
“We just have to try, Kris. Just try,” he murmured and swallowed past a dry throat. She hadn’t shot him down, and she wasn’t crying any more tears. “I have to go shower, I never did get there, but you stay here and I’ll bring you something else to eat, if you don’t like this. Just think on it, okay? And I’ll bring you some coffee too, to sober up, huh?” he asked, patting her legs.
“I’m sober,” she muttered but didn’t get up. He took that as a good sign. Maybe she would try, maybe she’d let him try.
“For how long?” he pushed.
She lowered her delicate eyebrows in a pretty impressive frown at his question.
“I’m sober, okay? I don’t need to drink. I just do because I want to. Because”—she faltered and her gaze landed on her daughter—“it makes it go away, some of the pain,” she whispered.
“I can do that,” he promised. “I can help, Kris.”
When she looked up startled, he modified that boast a bit.
”If you let me, I can try to help, Kris. And make you another sandwich if you want,” he added again. “If you don’t like—”
She made a face like he’d asked her to eat raw worms. “I like BLTs, it’s not that. Thank you, I am just—”
“Eat it, then,” he told her, standing up with a smile he finally felt. He waved at the cabin, impressed all over again with her. “This place is beautiful, but it needs some fixing up, I’m good at that. Let me do that and you cook, then.”
At her hesitant nod, he smiled. “Come on, I know you’re a better cook, but at least admit I’m a better carpenter.”
She gave him a twisted smile, still not happy, he could tell. “Your sandwich looks fine, Robert. But I’m not like the cabin. I can’t be fixed—”
“Shhh, now. Give a man some credit. Eat, I’ll believe you only if you eat it.”
She nodded slightly, but he didn’t buy it for a minute. “And you don’t need to drink so much, either. I’ll keep you company, okay?” he said.
Her frown grew but she sighed. “I don’t need to drink.”
“Good,” he agreed, heading for the door. He’d not cleaned up properly from cooking and he’d not showered, too worried about her to take too long to see her again. “I’ll go shower, then see what I can do. Oh, and you won’t mind that I poured all your other bottles out, will ya?” he called over his shoulder.
He heard her groan and Rowdy woofed but he didn’t hear her yelling at him or cursing.
Maybe he had got through to her. Just maybe, he thought, his hope rising in his chest like a hot air balloon, he could help her. And once he helped her, maybe she’d help him.
What am I doing?
Kristen hid outside, s
hovelling more snow just to make sure the path was cleared—it was clean enough that she saw the grass—and she had absolutely no chance of being tempted into joining Robert in his shower.
Not that he’d asked her, but because he wanted to romance her.
Romance her. The thought gave her the willies. What did he think he was doing? She should have told him no. Better, you should have asked him why he wanted to bother, since yesterday he said he couldn’t get off this mountain fast enough.
And he’d actually poured out her alcohol then the sneaky man had lined the bottles up on the counter to show her he’d done it.
Grrr! This was her place, she told herself, shovelling another heavy load of snow over the huge hill she’d created by the barn while her back protested. Her head hurt, too.
But there was no getting away from the fact that what he’d said had resonated deep inside her heart. She wasn’t living, and if she understood his words, neither was he. Had he ever?
The thought made her sadness grow, but under it she felt something else swell up as well. Hope. Could she help him? How? You can’t even help yourself.
She’d wanted to help herself into his shower, into seeing Robert’s hand shifting the velvety smooth skin up and down his beautiful erection in long, powerful strokes under the spray of water while all his muscles dripped with moisture and flexed with each movement he made.
For the hundredth time since she’d come out to cool off, her panties flooded with anticipation. She’d even shaved her legs and contemplated going bare elsewhere. Did he like a woman bare? She’d thought about it in the shower but ended up cleaning up the little triangle she always kept over her mound. She’d never gone bare and wasn’t sure how to go about it without leaving razor burn anyway.
Not that it matters!
“Here, you look cold.”
She screamed at the sound of Robert’s voice in her ear and dropped the shovel. She turned too fast and slipped on the icy ground and went down. Robert hauled her up before she’d even landed, but hot cocoa splashed on her, him and down the front of their winter gear. He dropped his arm from around her waist and brushed at her Carhart with his bare hand, shaking his head silently. She was so shocked she stood there, unsure if his volatile temper had kicked in or not. Why hadn’t she asked him what to do if this rage hit? Oh, because you’ve been too busy ogling him. The sound of him laughing softly registered past the embarrassing drum of her heart and, in relief, she stopped his efforts.
“Come on,” she said, tugging his hand to get him moving to the barn. She unzipped her jacket, shrugged it off and smiled up at him.
“So I take it you startle very easily. I’ll remember that,” he said with one of those half grins that made her crazy heartbeat slow then speed up. He was so handsome, so classically perfect with the strong jaw, narrow nose and symmetrical dark eyebrows, that even with the scars and adjustments to his nose and the lighter left eye, she suddenly wondered what he’d seen in her all these years. “Won’t you be cold?”
He made her warm, she wanted to say, but he took that moment to unzip his own jacket revealing one of her brother’s plaid button-ups and a pair of borrowed jeans. He still looked good enough to eat. Her brother was big—like a linebacker big and obviously not packed with the muscles Robert possessed, either.
“Why me?” she asked, barely managing a whisper.
He zeroed in on her face with such a suddenness she wanted to take the intimate words back. Instead she waited, for the first time in too long, waiting bravely for something she wanted. The horses stomped nearby but all other sounds were missing, cloaked in the snow storm and the quiet that always came with heavy snowfall. She took her stocking cap and gloves off, trying hard not to take her eyes off his face.
“If you have to ask me that, my job is going to be a damn sight harder than I thought, darling,” he said finally with such a tender quality to his voice she felt the familiar rush of tears to her throat.
She fought them this time and managed to tame them to the point where she could respond, but before she could, he reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Why you?” he murmured. Without meeting her eyes, he stepped closer, making her tip her head to meet his eyes. “Because no one else could ever come close to you, Kris.”
She shook her head and watched the way his eyes flared, like she’d challenged him to proving that or something equally alarming. “I’m nothing special, Robert. Maybe the grass is greener, you know? Maybe you and I were attracted because we knew we couldn’t be together.”
He laughed at one of the ideas that had kept her up nights like she’d told him something so hilarious he couldn’t believe it. “Not a chance of that, Kris. I’m not a little boy, I’m a man and I know what I want when I see it.”
Was it that simple? Is that why she’d never been able to forget him, because no one else was Robert McNeil? No one had ever drawn her like he had. His quiet way of talking, how he hung back and didn’t draw attention to himself in a crowd—well, no more than his looks already earned. Everything about him drew her.
It was more, though. Sometimes she’d known he was near because she’d felt his stare before she’d ever spotted him in a crowd. With him, she knew there was so much more than he presented to the world. It was as if he held himself in check—the man behind the military—private from the rest of the world, except her. For her, all she had to do was reach out and take what he offered to expose the brilliance of who Robert McNeil really was.
Can I take this chance?
He still watched her, stood there, waiting for her, not impatient—oh, he’d not been impatient in the cabin either when he’d rifled through her cabinets, made her a sandwich—a BLT—her favourite and poured out every bottle of alcohol she owned. Maybe he wanted you sober and healthy, was that so bad?
She swallowed past the anxiety that thought caused and tried to remember this new life was supposed to be her being brave and not taking any nonsense from anyone.
“And what do you want with your life?”
“Right now?” he asked, pulling her into his arms so suddenly she couldn’t stop him and realised when he did, she never would. He was so hard, but warm and the way he held on made it okay to just hang on tight. The burning in her nose and throat ached the longer he simply hugged her, not saying a word. “I want to hold you. Just hold you,” he murmured.
Chapter Ten
The heat of Robert’s body warmed Kristen slowly. He didn’t kiss her or try to stroke her into the passion of last night. But in many ways it was better. This, his embrace, explained better than words why they fit. It proved to her, to her deepest fears that this, the way he brought her up tight to his chest, was why she’d never been able to forget him. Somehow she’d known he’d hold her like this, calmly, patiently with more care than anyone she’d ever had in her life. Her parents included.
Rowdy barked. The sound startled her. Robert steadied her shoulders and shifted his eyes over her features then pinned his gaze on her lips for a long moment—long enough for her to grow uncomfortably warm.
“So jumpy, darling why is that?”
She couldn’t think of a thing to say so she reached up and touched the stubble along his jaw, caressing his face because she couldn’t resist.
“You didn’t shave.”
“I couldn’t find anything other than some girly razor.”
He caught her hand with a smile and kissed her fingers, but his attention was fixed on her lips. As his gaze intensified, she fought the overwhelming urge to lick her lips. Right when she would have, he bent his head and met her eyes as he brought his head down closer to hers.
“Oh,” she breathed.
“Do you even know what it does to me when you look at me like that, Kris?” He dropped her hand and pulled her body flush with his with a grip around her waist. “It’s like I can’t breathe,” he whispered. He paused with his lips so close she could feel the heat of them, building her anticipation to an impossible d
egree. “I’m going to kiss you again, Kristen.”
Instead of doing that, he waited, for what she didn’t know, but she couldn’t stand the anticipation and took a chance on Robert McNeil.
She leaned in and kissed him first. She had to tiptoe to do it, and wrap her arms around his neck to keep her lips locked in place, but she did it.
The reward of his husky groan and the way he tightened his hands on her lower back made the move worth it. Warmth blossomed along every inch of her body. He was so much taller, bigger and warmer than her, she fell against him fully, thrilled by the taste of him. With a smile, she pulled back far enough to meet his eyes.
“You had coffee,” she murmured.
“Yeah, I did,” he said, but she barely let him speak before she kissed him again. She couldn’t seem to stop. A fire built to a degree that had her aching. She pulled his head down closer to hers and ran her tongue along his with a silent demand for more than a kiss.
He gave her more, much more. He lifted her by his possessive grip on her butt and turned her, immediately backing her against the barn wall while he drove his hungry tongue past her lips to explore her mouth with that attention to every detail she’d experienced with him before. Only this time he was standing and fully, completely aware. And in charge.
It wasn’t enough. She wiggled closer to him and her temperature soared at the hard rise of his erection. With a soft moan she couldn’t hold in, she reached down to slip her hand past his waistband to stroke him. He groaned so loudly an answering flood of moisture pooled between her thighs making her slick and ready from just the sound of him. He was huge in her hand, so warm and hard but silky smooth, she couldn’t touch him enough.
“Yeah, Kristen, burn for me. Let me see you,” he urged, tearing at her top without missing a beat with his kiss. She didn’t care. She wasn’t cold and Robert was so hot, his shaft so amazing she could barely wait to see him again, to taste him, too. She knew he’d warm her.