She had assured him right back that she still wanted to, but he barely even waited around long enough for her response, only said he had to go before the girls spotted him there and became too curious about the boxes.
Emery shifted her gaze from the window to the quilt pieces scattered around every corner of the room.
Heaven knows, she had plenty to do. Even though she had already sketched out both quilts and had started cutting out the pieces, she would be sewing day and night to finish two full-size quilts in three days.
But she could spare a few moments to help him.
She reached for her jacket. She was strong enough to handle any attraction between them. And if she wasn't, he would be.
She would just have to trust him. And if a girl couldn't trust an army Ranger who had just spent the day torturing himself by Christmas shopping for his two orphaned nieces, really, who could she trust?
* * *
He was making this much harder than it had to be.
Nate looked up from his position at the dining table through the doorway into the bedroom at the massive load of gifts still piled on the bed and the much smaller pile of wrapped presents next to him. The contrast between the two and the reality of how much work he still had to do made him want to bang his head against the chinked wall.
He had switched the little stereo in the cabin to a station playing Christmas carols in the hopes that it might help him get more in the mood for the task.
It wasn't working. He just wanted to bag the whole thing and toss the gifts under the tree as-is on Christmas morning.
Neither of the girls believed in Santa Claus anyway. They had told him so quite solemnly at Thanksgiving when they were watching the Macy's parade on TV instead of the football games he would have preferred.
He didn't need to go to all this fuss and bother. What would be the big deal if he just gave them unwrapped gifts in their stockings?
They would still be getting just as much stuff, after all. And it would sure be easier if he didn't have to try to figure out the proper way to wrap a stupid little tube of lip gloss, for hell's sake.
He picked up a little scrap of discarded silvery paper and rolled it around the tube of candy-flavored lipgloss then ripped a piece of tape off the dispenser and plastered down both ends.
It looked like crap, just like the rest of the presents he had wrapped. But the girls had very few bright spots in their lives right now and Christmas was going to suck enough for them. Maybe the extra time they had to spend unwrapping gifts would help distract them from the gaping void where their parents should be.
He hated thinking about Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, and dreaded how tough it was probably going to be on the girls not to have Suzi and John there watching them open their presents for the first time in their lives.
The first Christmas without their parents needed to be as close to perfect as he could manage. He only regretted that it had taken him until three days before Christmas to figure that out.
He picked up the next gift, a pair of furry pink boots Emery assured him Tallie would love. He was cutting paper to fit the box and listening to a really strange a cappella rendition of "The Little Drummer Boy" when somebody knocked on the door.
For just a moment, panic spurted through him. Had the girls woken up, seen the lights on down here and come to investigate? He was rather frantically looking around for a blanket he could toss over the jumble of presents when he heard a female voice that was definitely neither of the girls.
"Nate? It's me, Emery."
He probably should be relieved the girls hadn't found him, but he was depressed at the realization that his instant of panic didn't ease in the slightest.
"Yeah. Just a minute," he called, sliding his chair away from the table and hurrying to the door.
He opened it for her and told himself that the little leap in his chest at the sight of her, all rosy-cheeked and delectable, was only a little leftover indigestion from the tense dinner with the girls.
"I saw the light. Need a hand?"
He pulled the door open farther so she could enter the cabin. "I wish I could say no. But the truth is, I could use a million hands. Or at least two that know what they're doing here. I really stink at wrapping presents."
She held up her hands. "This is a little-known secret about me, but I majored in advanced ribbon-curling in college."
He laughed, entirely too drawn to this rare teasing side of her. She hadn't worn a coat for the short walk over, only a sweater and a red-patterned scarf wrapped in some complicated way that managed to look elegantly put-together.
He had turned on the electric fireplace when he came down to the cabin, but somehow the room still seemed considerably warmer when she walked inside and began to untwist her scarf.
He could smell her, that alluring scent of cinnamon and vanilla, and he remembered all-too-vividly the taste and heat of her a few hours earlier in this very place. Her curves pressed against him, the sexy little sounds she made when he nuzzled the slender column of her neck, the delectable softness of the skin just above her waist….
"Where would you like me to start?"
He blinked back to the present to find Emery had draped the scarf on the hook by the door and her attention was fixed on the presents piled everywhere.
He scratched the back of his neck, wrenching his mind from that blasted kiss. "I seem to have more trouble with the small stuff. Socks, earrings. Lip gloss. That sort of thing. If you don't mind taking anything smaller than a loaf of bread, I can handle the bigger gifts."
She smiled and he was struck all over again by how lovely she was and how that smile seemed to fill the entire cabin with warmth.
"A very wise and appropriate division of labor."
She gathered up a handful of smaller gifts and one of the rolls of wrapping paper he had been fortunate enough to find in Suzi's stash of holiday stuff, and found a spot on the sofa where she could use the wide coffee table to spread out wrapping paper.
"Do you worry the girls might wake up?" she asked after she was situated and had started wrapping some socks.
"I thought when you knocked at the door I was busted for sure," he admitted.
"Lucky for you it wasn't the girls."
Funny, he didn't feel very lucky when it was all he could do to keep his hands off her. "They both have my cell phone memorized. I also left one of the two-way ranch radios as a backup." He pointed to the matching radio on the kitchen counter.
"You're prepared. Must be your military training."
He gave a rough laugh. "A dozen years in the army wasn't much preparation, I'm afraid, for a night spent wrapping mostly pink girly-girl presents."
"You're doing fine." She smiled.
"I haven't had much practice at this wrapping thing," he admitted. "I usually had the store gift wrap presents for my dad and Suz and my…mom."
She flashed a quick look of sympathy in his direction and he regretted telling her about his childhood. It wasn't a part of his life he liked to broadcast around and he didn't want her looking at him with pity in her eyes.
He would much rather see softness and warmth and…
He jerked his attention from all the things he knew he shouldn't want. He quickly changed the subject. "What about you? You haven't told me much about your family."
She was quiet for several moments while a jazzy piano version of "My Favorite Things" played softly through the cabin. When she spoke, her tone was casual, but somehow he sensed a great importance behind her words.
"My…father was a corporate attorney and my mother was in public relations. They married after dating in graduate school and I was born not long after."
"And you were an only child, right?"
Again she paused, far longer than the rather benign question warranted. Finally, he looked up from wrapping the pink boots for Claire to find her gazing into the small flames of the electric fireplace.
"Shortly before she died, my mother told me the ma
n I thought all my life was my father really wasn't."
He stared, not knowing what to say. She didn't give him a chance to respond before she continued.
"Apparently, she had a relationship with a married man and I was the result," she went on. "In her family's rather blue blood social circle at that time, illegitimate children still weren't quite acceptable, no matter what the rest of the world might be doing. So when she discovered she was pregnant, her college boyfriend agreed to marry her and raise me as his own. They never said a word in all those years until my mother's deathbed."
Her hands trembled slightly on the wrapping paper and her shoulders were tight and set.
"Whoa," he finally said. "That must have been a shocker."
She gave a ragged-sounding laugh. "You could say that. Apparently, I also have several half-siblings. That's why I didn't quite know how to answer your question. They have no idea about me, at least as far as I know. I'm still trying to figure out if I want to work toward a relationship with them."
He whistled, long and low. "You do play your cards close to your vest, don't you?"
"It's not exactly a story I feel like telling to any stranger passing by. Or to my close friends, for that matter. Actually, you're the only other person who knows I'm not really one of the Kendalls of Kendall Park, daughter of Stephen and Julia Baird Kendall."
He shouldn't feel so flattered that she would confide this part of her life to him. He also shouldn't have the overwhelming urge when he heard that slightly forlorn note in her voice to drop the wrapping paper and tape, fold her into his arms and whisper that everything would be all right.
"You haven't met them?"
She shook her head. "I can't quite figure out how to just show up on someone's doorstep and say, Surprise! I'm your twenty-seven-year-old baby sister."
"That's a tough one."
"The truth is, I'm not sure I'm ready to suddenly parachute into the middle of an instant family."
He couldn't help a little smile at her vivid imagery. "You're right to be cautious. Trust me, that's solid advice coming from someone with experience, literally, at both parachuting and instant families. You don't want to jump into either unless you're a hundred percent sure about the way the wind is blowing, about whether you've got the stomach to make the jump, and about whether you're prepared for what you're going to find on the ground."
"I don't know any of that yet," she admitted as she coiled a ribbon in some elaborate way and adhered it to the package she was wrapping. "I guess that's what scares me most. What am I supposed to do now? I feel like everything I thought I knew about myself has been turned upside down."
"You'll figure it out."
"I hope so." Her voice was small and rather forlorn and his hands tightened on the wrapping paper. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to hold her tight and make all her worries and fears disappear. He wanted to kiss her until that lost look in her eyes began to fade, replaced by the desire he had seen there that afternoon.
He was suddenly afraid this wasn't only about physical attraction. If that was it, why would his insides be jumping around like a grasshopper on a hot July sidewalk?
No, this was more. He genuinely liked this woman. Something about her big blue eyes and her hesitant smile and that indefinable air of loneliness surrounding her reached right in and tugged at his heart.
He was very much afraid these fragile feelings could develop all too easily into something more.
This was tender and gentle and intimate. He wanted to tuck her against him and protect her from anybody else who might want to hurt her.
He didn't want this. God knows, he didn't need one more person to worry about. He couldn't handle the life he had parachuted into. The last thing he needed was to find himself wrapped up like one of these presents in someone else's troubles.
He ought to just shove her out the door into the cold night and assure her that while he appreciated her help, he could handle wrapping the remaining few gifts on his own.
All of his instincts were crying out for him to do just that, but he forced himself to ignore them.
Still, he sliced through the wrapping paper almost savagely. Damn her for blowing into his world at the most inconvenient time, when he could least afford the distraction and when he found himself in a lousy tactical position to protect himself.
* * *
What on earth had she done wrong?
Emery combed through their conversation of the past ten minutes and could think of nothing she might have said or done to turn his features dark and forbidding, to make that muscle in his jaw clench so tightly.
Was he disgusted that she was the result of an illicit affair? Or did he just not want to be dragged into her problems? In a few moments, he had shifted from offering her advice about parachuting to glowering at the girls' Christmas presents as if he wanted to toss the lot of them out into the snow-covered cattle pens.
They worked in a tense silence, those Christmas carols playing softly between them. Finally, when her pile had considerably dwindled and she only had a few items left to wrap, she decided she'd had enough.
She had spent her entire childhood trying to be perfect, studying hard for the best grades, applying to the right colleges, wearing just the right accessories.
Since her mother died, she had spent some serious time rehashing her life, examining the fierce perfectionism that had carried from childhood into her adult years. Now she could see it for what it was: a rather pathetic effort to gain the approval of a man who had been distant and reserved all her life.
She understood everything so much more clearly now. Stephen Kendall had known she wasn't his biological child all along. Her mother had been clear about that. She could only imagine what he must have seen when he looked at her, another man's child. How could he be expected to give her that love and attention she had craved so desperately?
She had even married the son of one of his law partners to please him. Oh, she might have convinced herself she loved Jason when they started dating in college, but in reality she had been so happy to finally have Stephen Kendall's approval that she could have talked herself into anything.
Somehow she had transferred those efforts to please her father into making herself into the perfect wife, never complaining at Jason's late nights or his unexplained absences. He was working hard at the law firm he'd been folded into after he passed the bar, trying to establish himself so they could continue having their European vacations and their late-model cars and their big brick house in an exclusive neighborhood.
In the midst of all that perfection and despite his past history in college, she had stupidly never once suspected that Jason Markeson would turn out to be a cheating son of a bitch.
She was suddenly tired of it. Hadn't she vowed not to be so passive anymore, to reach out and seize what life had to offer?
"I suppose I have two choices," she finally said and her abrupt statement earned her a rather wary look from Nate.
"About what?"
"I can sit here stewing about what I might have said or done to annoy you. Or I can stop wondering and just outright ask you."
He set aside a large package with a lopsided ribbon. "I'm annoyed?"
"You tell me. If you're not angry, what am I missing? Maybe the glower is just some army commando way of expressing undying gratitude for my help."
"I'm not angry," he said, then added almost under his breath, "Not with you, anyway."
She frowned, a little disconcerted. How narcissistic, she suddenly realized, that she would automatically assume she was the cause of his dark mood. He had stressors she couldn't even imagine, trying to run the ranch and raise his nieces and leave behind the military career he enjoyed.
"Who, then? The girls?"
He let out a long, heavy sigh. "Myself, mostly."
"Why?"
He didn't answer at first and when she met his gaze, she found him watching her with that half-closed look again, something in his dark eyes that sizzled th
rough her insides.
"I don't know what to do about this."
"About…what?"
He sighed. "No matter how many times I tell myself I shouldn't want you, that I don't have time for this, that you're far too proper and polished for a guy like me, I can't seem to help myself."
She stared as that sizzle turned into a full-fledged burn. "Nate…"
"I know. It's crazy, isn't it?"
Her mouth was desert-dry suddenly and she had to force herself to take a deep enough breath to ease the sudden ache in her lungs. "Crazy. Right. Just what I was thinking."
He slid his chair back and the sound startled her into a little jump.
"I can't stop thinking about tasting you, putting my hands on you. All afternoon and evening, I've been wondering what might have happened if we hadn't heard the bus out front earlier."
She swallowed again, her insides hot and restless. "We both know what would have happened," she murmured. "We probably would have ended up on that bed over there."
"Which would have been a mistake for both of us."
"Huge mistake," she agreed.
"Enormous. Colossal."
Even as he said the words, he moved inexorably closer to her and her heartbeat accelerated. Without even being fully conscious of it, she rose.
"But just for the record," she said, her voice low, "I can't stop thinking about you…doing those things, either. I thought you should know."
Her last word was swallowed by his groan and then his mouth was on hers and all the heat from earlier roared back over them as if it had just been lurking between them on a low, steady simmer, ready to flare again.
Right. This felt right. All the reasons and arguments didn't matter when she was here with him, in his arms. She didn't need to be perfect with Nate. He didn't expect that from her and she somehow had a feeling he wouldn't be as attracted to her if he didn't see her for what she was, calluses and scars and all.
He lowered her to the sofa, his body all hard muscle over hers, and she savored the strength of him above her. "I can't get the taste of you out of my head," he murmured, his body stretched along hers. "You're there all the time, no matter what I'm doing."
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