A Cold Creek Holiday

by RaeAnne Thayne

  When his silence dragged on, she looked away and he saw annoyed frustration in her eyes. "Oh, right. I'm sorry, I forgot for a moment that you want me to stay away from the girls. I guess it slipped my mind while they were sleeping on the couch with me after you left them in my care."

  His mouth tightened at her dry tone. Okay, he had been guilty of a bit of a double standard, grateful for her presence here with the girls during the storm when it was convenient for him, just hours after he told her he didn't want her spending more time with them.

  He wanted to instinctively protest that he didn't want or need anyone's help, but that would have been a bald-faced lie. The second part, anyway. He might not want it, but he couldn't deny that he needed it, even to himself.

  "What did you have in mind?" he asked warily.

  "I could easily help the girls decorate the tree and put a little Christmas spirit into the house, at least," she said. "It's…sort of my specialty."

  "Decorating Christmas trees?"

  "Decorating in general. I'm a textile designer. Curtains, pillows, furniture upholstery, that sort of thing."

  He blinked at that. Here was yet another example of just how far apart his world was from Ms. Emery Kendall's. The closest he came to designer textiles was buying a bed-in-a-bag set at the Wal-Mart near the base between deployments.

  He could just imagine her reaction to the mess the ranch was in right now. Joanie had been doing basic housekeeping for him here between her minimal guest ranch duties, but since she left, he knew he had let plenty of things slide around the house.

  "We're pretty simple and straightforward around here. We just need a Christmas tree decorated, not some fancy froufrou interior design," he said slowly.

  She smiled a little and he immediately wished she hadn't. She looked far too warm and approachable when she smiled and he needed to remember all those differences between them. "I can do simple. Trust me, Nate."

  He wanted to. The impulse to trust her, to lean on someone else for something, just for a little while, shocked the hell out of him. What was the big deal? She was offering to help put up some Christmas ornaments, not move in and start redecorating the whole place.

  He worried the girls would latch onto her and be hurt when she left. But he supposed if he talked to them and made sure they understood that her presence in their lives was temporary, they could make it through.

  "Fine. Whatever. Even if they haven't been in a hurry to put it up, Tallie and Claire will probably enjoy having a tree."

  "You won't?"

  He shrugged. "I don't do Christmas. Not really. It's been a long time since it meant something more than maybe a little extra chow in the mess hall to me."

  "Do you miss it?" she asked quietly after a long moment. "The army, I mean."

  He thought of the heat and the sand, the exhaustion and the constant, alert tension. He didn't think somebody who spent their time designing curtains would understand how he could miss it every single moment of every single day.

  "This is my life now. The girls and the ranch."

  She tilted her head to look at him and for a long moment, their gazes held. Something simmered between them, something bright, intense. Flames licked at the log in the fire, then consumed it in a shower of sparks.

  He was powerfully drawn to her. If he moved just so, he could find out if that lush mouth was as sweet and delicious as it looked….

  He leaned forward just a few inches, but the instant he realized what he was doing, he jerked back, furious at himself.

  "You should sleep while you can."

  Her blue eyes had darkened, he thought, until they were nearly the color of the Idaho midnight sky, but then she blinked and they seemed to go back to normal. "What about you?" she asked.

  "I will. Eventually. I'd better go bring some more wood up to the house, just to be safe. If the power comes back on, I'll wake you so you can go back to your own cabin."

  And out of my life, where you belong.

  He didn't say the words, of course, though he wanted to. Still, he thought he saw something deep and bruised flare in her eyes as if she understood everything he had left unspoken.

  "Good night, then."

  She wrapped the quilt tighter around her shoulders and returned to the sofa by the fireplace.

  He stood for a long moment in the doorway, watching her settle back in to sleep and fighting the impulse to go after her and apologize.

  He finally slammed his hat onto his head and headed back into the storm. He had nothing to apologize for but his thoughts. He couldn't help it if he did think it would be better for all of them if she returned to her East Coast life and left him to deal with his two grieving nieces as he saw fit.

  Still, she had been nice enough to offer her help with decorating the house. He couldn't turn her down, especially since he knew the girls would probably enjoy helping her.

  He fought his way through the blowing snow to the woodpile and loaded his arms with as much as he could carry then trudged back to the house. He could come up with no genuine reason to refuse her help, unfortunately. But that didn't mean he had to pretend to be happy about it.

  * * *

  Emery awoke to the smell of coffee and burnt toast and the sound of giggling girls and machinery rumbling somewhere outside.

  She blinked a few times, struggling to find her bearings. The soaring log walls came into focus and the gray stones of the fireplace and then she spied two little dark-haired girls peeking around the doorway at her.

  Ah. Right. She was at the main ranch house because a storm had wreaked havoc through Cold Creek Canyon.

  Through her sleep-numbed brain, she managed to put together a few salient points. The power must have come back on, unless Nate had the small appliances in the kitchen wired to the generator he had mentioned the night before. Or, she supposed, unless he had made his toast and coffee over an open flame.

  That growl of machinery must be Nate digging them out with the tractor she had seen him using to plow the snow the day after she'd arrived.

  She sat up and scrubbed her hands over her face as relief soaked through her that she wouldn't have to face him yet this morning. She had stayed awake far too long, reliving that moment when heat and hunger had flared in his eyes, when she had been quite certain he wanted to kiss her.

  Sometime later, she had heard him come in. When he had walked into the room to check on the girls, she had fiercely feigned sleep, forcing her breathing to be slow and even, despite the pulse pounding loudly in her ears.

  She drew in a breath now, remembering those long, drawn-out moments he had stood in the doorway before he turned and left the room. Either he had decided to stay up all night or he had found somewhere else moderately warm to sleep. He certainly hadn't used the other sofa. She would have known, since her own sleep had been light, unsettled.

  "Oh, good! You're finally awake," Claire exclaimed now, hurrying into the room.

  "What time is it?" Emery asked in a voice that only croaked a little.

  "Almost seven," Tallie reported. "We've been up for hours."

  "Hours? Wow. I guess I must have been tired."

  "Uncle Nate said we should let you sleep so we were trying to be super quiet. But we made toast. Do you want some?"

  Few things smelled as sharply awful as burnt toast, but she smiled anyway. "Toast sounds great. I guess the storm stopped."

  Tallie nodded. "It snowed a lot. Uncle Nate said he could barely open the back door for the drifts."

  She could imagine. From her vantage point, all she could see out the wide pitched windows was a world of white.

  "It's a good thing we rode over to the Cold Creek yesterday to take Tanner's homework," Claire said solemnly. "Uncle Nate says the horses could never make it today. He said we'll probably have to stay inside most of the day and with all the snow, it's going to be ice-cold out there."

  "I don't like to be inside," Tallie complained. "It's so boring."

  Without their parents, sh
e imagined the house must seem to echo with silence. Poor little things.

  She stood up and reached behind to readjust her ponytail, which she could only guess looked pretty bedraggled right about now. "Well, I can promise, you won't be bored today. You'll only wish you could find a quiet moment. Girls, we've got work to do."

  They gave her matching looks of suspicion out of charmingly similar features. "What kind of work?" Claire asked.

  Emery smiled at them both, marveling that the prospect of doing the very thing she had tried to avoid this year—wallowing in a little Christmas spirit—should lift her mood so effectively.

  For a fleeting moment, she thought of her mother and how she had so enjoyed Christmas. Their house in Warrenton had always exploded with lights and ornaments and holiday cheer. She wouldn't have wanted Emery to firmly close the door on the holidays this year out of her grief and sorrow. Her mother would have been the first one to help these lonely little girls.

  "You'll see," Emery said. "I think you're going to need a little more than toast for breakfast. What do you say to pancakes?"

  "I say de-lish," Tallie said with that adorable grin of hers.

  "Yum," Claire said. "I've been thinking I should learn how to make pancakes. Uncle Nate tries, but his are all squishy and gross."

  She smiled. "Give me a few minutes to freshen up a bit and then we'll eat. And then, my dears, we go to work."

  Chapter Five

  Thirty minutes later, she was frying a package of lean bacon she'd found in the refrigerator and overseeing Claire at the griddle while Tallie colored at the kitchen island.

  "Now see, when the batter starts to bubble on the top, that's when you know they're ready to be turned."

  "That must be where Uncle Nate goes wrong," Claire said, her brow furrowed. "I wonder if he knows the batter is supposed to bubble."

  "I'll be sure to mention it to him if I get the chance," Emery said, unable to completely hide her smile.

  "Here he comes," Tallie proclaimed. "You can tell him now."

  Sure enough, a moment later, she heard boots thudding on the back steps and a moment later, the mudroom door off the kitchen opened.

  Her stupid, reckless heart caught in her chest as she remembered those intense few moments the night before, the flare of heat in his dark eyes when she had been quite certain he wanted to kiss her.

  "Hey, Uncle Nate!" Tallie called. "Emery knows why your pancakes never taste very good."

  She flushed as he walked into the kitchen, stomping snow off his boots.

  "Does she?" he asked slowly.

  "She says the pancakes have to bubble first before you flip them. I think these are just about ready," Claire said, then she tucked her bottom lip between her teeth and shoved the spatula under one of the pancakes with all the solemn intensity of someone trying to extract explosives from a landmine.

  "Remember, flipping is all in the wrist," Emery said.

  Claire nodded and turned the entire batch just right, except for one that landed half on another.

  "I messed up," she said with a disappointed frown.

  "Just one," Emery said with a warm smile. "That's no big deal. Nobody can turn every pancake perfectly. You did great. They're going to taste delicious."

  "Did you see that, Uncle Nate?" Claire exclaimed.

  "I sure did." He hung his coat on the hook by the door. "I hope you've got a couple to spare for me. Running that tractor works up a real appetite."

  "You can have as many as you want," Claire promised him. A moment later, she flipped a tall stack onto a plate for him and handed it over to her uncle.

  "Wow. Delicious. I only came in to fill up my coffee, but this all just smells as good as it looks."

  "Would you like some bacon?" Emery asked. His dark gaze slid to hers and suddenly all the heat that had seethed between them in the quiet stillness of the night burned through her once more.

  "Bacon would be good, if you've got some to spare."

  Doing her best to ignore her ridiculous reaction to him, she put several strips on a plate for him and set it at his elbow as he pulled up a chair beside Tallie at the table.

  For the next few moments, she listened to their interaction. He complimented Claire on the pancakes so effusively that the girl had a warm, rosy glow of pride. Between mouthfuls of pancakes and bacon, he also admired Tallie's drawings, making a special point of telling her specifics he liked about her picture, like the way the pine branches of the Christmas tree she drew looked all feathery and real.

  He loved them. It was obvious in every word he said to them. How difficult this all must be for him. She had heard that note of longing in his voice when she asked him the night before if he missed the life he had given up for them.

  Though they would probably always grieve for their parents, the girls were extraordinarily fortunate that Nate would give up his career, his life, to return to Pine Gulch and raise them.

  She didn't want to feel this softening toward him, this flutter of tender feelings, so she forced her voice to be brisk. "How much snow did the storm leave?" she asked.

  He cast a quick glance at her then turned his attention back to his plate. "Hard to say, exactly, because of the wind. I'm guessing maybe eighteen inches, but we've got drifts four feet high in places. It's going to take most of the day to clear them out. Hope you weren't in a hurry to head down the canyon. I doubt the county will be getting to Cold Creek Canyon Road until tonight at the earliest."

  She was trapped here with them. Or at least at the ranch. Since the power was back on, she could return to her cabin and spend the day in isolation, trying to finish her sketches for the Spencer Hotels project.

  "We're not going anywhere anyway," she answered. "Not for a while, at least. The girls and I have plans."

  "Except you haven't told us what they are yet," Tallie complained.

  "I'm sure you'll find out soon enough," Nate said with a sidelong smile to Emery that made her ridiculous heart kick up a notch.

  "I hope it's something fun," Tallie said, trying to wheedle a little more information out of them.

  "As soon as you're finished eating, why don't you to go change out of your pajamas into some clothes you can work in," Emery suggested.

  "I'm done," Tallie jumped up and headed for the door.

  "Me, too." Her sister quickly joined her and Emery could hear them racing each other up the stairway.

  Too late, she realized her suggestion for them to change would leave her alone with Nate.

  After a few more moments of eating in an uncomfortable silence, he pushed his plate away, finished off his coffee, then rose.

  "I don't know how long I'll be out there. After I get us cleared out, I've got to see what I can do about fixing the hay shed. The wind took out a big section of the roof."

  "Can you repair it by yourself?"

  "I'll have to figure something out until I can get somebody out here to do the job right." He cleared his throat. "I hope it's okay if I leave the girls with you. I usually don't like to be gone from the house too long, but I don't have much choice. It's too cold for them out there."

  "We've got plenty to keep us busy," she assured him. "Don't worry. We'll be fine."

  He met her gaze again and she could swear she felt her heart knock against the walls of her chest. Ridiculous. She really had to reel in this insane reaction to him.

  "Thanks. For breakfast and for…everything."

  "You're welcome." She forced a smile, hoping it looked more genuine than it felt.

  He studied her for a moment then slid away from the chair, reaching for his cowboy hat just as the girls hurried back.

  "That was the quickest change on record," he said with a mock look of astonishment. "You two are like a couple of firefighters heading out on a call."

  Claire rolled her eyes at him, but Tallie giggled.

  "Are you going back in the cold?" the younger girl asked.

  "Yeah. I've still got a lot of digging ahead of me. You girls do what
Ms. Kendall says, okay?"

  They gave him hugs as he bundled up.

  "Be careful on the tractor," Tallie told him, her voice solemn. "Drew Wheeler's dad died in a tractor wreck."

  "I'll be careful, I promise." He kissed her nose, wrapped his scarf around his neck and headed out into the cold again.

  The kitchen was curiously empty without his presence. Both girls looked a little forlorn, but Emery summoned another smile.

  "Let's clean up these dishes, then get to work."

  "Your pancake recipe is very good," Claire said, her voice solemn. "Thank you for showing me how to make them. From now on, I won't forget about the air bubbles."

  This serious child needed to laugh a little more often, Emery thought. The truly tragic thing was, she saw entirely too much of herself in Claire, a child so eager to please the remaining grown-ups in her life that she became an adult far too early.

  Emery made a vow that she would do her best to see the girl enjoyed herself while they decorated the Christmas tree.

  "Now will you tell us what we're going to do?" Tallie begged.

  She hugged the girl's shoulders. "Get ready. The three of us are going to make some magic."

  * * *

  The storm kept Nate away from the ranch house most of the day.

  After all the ranch access routes were plowed out and he had spent a couple hours doing a credible, if somewhat makeshift, job covering the exposed hay until the weather wasn't so cold and he could repair the roof properly, he headed down the canyon with the tractor to see if any of their neighbors needed digging out.

  On the way, he passed Seth Dalton out on a tractor, as well, working on the driveway of Guillermo and Viviana Cruz, the Daltons' nearest neighbors. He lifted a hand in greeting to the man before he continued on his way.

  He really wanted to despise all the Dalton boys, on principle if nothing else. He had certainly hated their father. Half of Pine Gulch did, though few of them had as personal a reason as Nate.

  As far as Nate was concerned, Hank Dalton had been a genuine son of a bitch. He had lied and stolen and basically manipulated his way into owning half of Cold Creek Canyon. He had respected no boundaries.