by Jessie Evans
Besides, he didn’t want to worry. He wanted to enjoy another perfect day with the woman he was falling for so hard and fast it would give a normal man whiplash. But thankfully, Colton wasn’t a normal man, he was a man accustomed to flying F-18s and shuttling through the air at the speed of sound. By comparison, falling for the girl next door, a person he’d loved in one way or another since she was a little girl, wasn’t such a fast thing.
It was just a good thing. A wonderful thing and Colton couldn’t ever remember being happier to walk into his parents’ home with a woman on his arm. The house smelled like turkey, sweet potato casserole, and homemade pies, the Christmas tree was glittering in the corner by the fireplace, his father, cousin, and brothers were crouched around the coffee table in the living room playing a loud game of poker, while his mom blasted carols loud enough to drown out the shouts and cursing.
As he and Phoebe closed the front door behind them, his father looked up and lifted a hand in greeting. “Phoebe! Welcome, sweetheart. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Brody,” Phoebe said, returning his wave. “Merry Christmas to you too, Tucker. Good to see you Seth, Blake.”
His cousin Seth grinned and welcomed Phoebe to the madhouse, while Blake and Tucker waved and murmured their own welcomes before turning back to their cards, clearly too distracted by a losing streak to be on their best manners. But the annual Christmas Eve Day poker game was an epic and very serious event that would involve bragging rights for months to come. Not to mention a giant jar of pennies, the biggest pot they played for all year.
“Just like I remember it.” Phoebe beamed up at him as he took her coat and hung it on one of the dozens of hooks nailed into the redwood wall inside the door. “It even smells the same.”
“It’s good to have you here for Christmas again,” Colt said. “Mom is so happy you’re back in town.”
“Colt is that you?” His mama peeked out the door to the kitchen, her flushed cheeks stretching in a wide smile when she spotted Phoebe. Tossing the dish towel in her hands onto the counter, Sarah hurried across the large, open living room with her arms outstretched. “Phoebe! Oh my goodness, get over here darling and let me give you a hug. I’m so glad to see you.”
“Me too, Mrs. Brody.” Phoebe sank into his mother’s hug with a grin. “I’m sorry I didn’t come by sooner. I’ve been so busy trying to get the shop ready to reopen; the days have been flying by.”
“No need to apologize. I should apologize for missing the race yesterday. I heard it was the most exciting one in years.” His mom pulled away, her brows knitting as she reached for Colt. “Come here you big thing. I need to get as many hugs from you as I can get. I’m stocking up for when there’s a shortage.”
“I’ve always got hugs for you, Mom,” Colt said, hugging her tight. “Especially if you made apple cheddar crumble pie.”
She humphed. “Made two—one for today and one for you to take home.” Sarah patted him on the back and motioned for him and Phoebe to follow her into the kitchen. “Now you two come on in and help me get a quick lunch organized. Your brothers are useless and Daisy’s upstairs with the kids rounding up old clothes for the snowman competition.”
Phoebe bounced on her toes before skipping along beside him toward the kitchen. “Oh, I can’t wait! I was dreaming about my snowman last night. He’s going to be amazing.”
“I thought we were going to be a team this year,” Colt said.
“We can be,” Phoebe said. “As long as you’re willing to go along with my artistic vision.”
Colt grunted. “Willing to be bossed around is more like it.”
“Takes one to know one.” She shot him a look that left no doubt in his mind that she was thinking about the bossing around he’d done last night, when she’d been spread out on the floor in front of him looking so damned sexy he’d been pretty sure he was going to lose his mind from wanting her.
He grinned in response, unable to resist laying a hand at the small of her back, though he knew it was best to keep public displays of affection to a minimum in front of his family unless he wanted to be cornered for twenty questions before dinner. He’d already been through the ringer with Tucker and Daisy—who had given him hell yesterday about keeping the letter a secret from Phoebe for a few more days. He could do without any more familial interference.
He would tell Phoebe when the time was right. This was his relationship and his decision and he didn’t want to do anything to ruin her first holiday back in Lover’s Leap. He wanted today to be perfect for her, filled with all the wonderful things she remembered about a Brody Christmas and a few happy surprises, once he had the chance to sneak away and get them ready.
“Colt, you get out the sandwich bread and plates and napkins,” Sarah said, making it clear he wouldn’t be sneaking off anywhere anytime soon. Colt had always been his mom’s kitchen helper—a side effect of being too little to go help the big boys chop and tote firewood when he was kid—and some things never changed, even if he was now bigger than Blake and taller than Dylan.
“Phoebe, if you want to grab the condiments out of the little fridge, I’ll head out to the garage and get the sandwich meat and cheese from the big fridge.” Sarah paused by the door to the garage, turning back to Colt with a serious look. “I think sandwiches and that veggie tray I’ve got on the table should be enough to hold everyone over until dinner time, don’t you, honey?”
“It’s more than enough, Mom,” he said, gathering three types of bread from the pantry. “And you know Dad will end up making popcorn when the kids come back inside after building snowmen.”
His mom smiled, but he didn’t miss the flash of sadness in her eyes. “I remember when you were the kid coming back inside. Time is going by too fast. It seems like we just got you home and now…” She didn’t finish the sentence before she bustled out the door, but she didn’t have to.
He knew she was referring to his return to the marines and had the sneaking suspicion that Daisy might have gone back on her promise to keep her mouth shut. He made a mental note to corner his sister and convince her to stop stirring up unnecessary trouble and then focused on the job at hand.
It was what he was good at and by the time he’d helped Seth’s boys and their friends make sandwiches and joined Phoebe at the card table set up in the living room to handle overflow seating, he had forgotten the strained moment in the kitchen.
He and Phoebe ate their ham and cheese while catching up with Blake, who had taken over running the ranch four years ago when his last tour of duty in the Middle East was over. They talked cattle prices and construction schedules for the cabins Blake was installing at the rear of the property—hoping to take some business off the hands of the ranch retreat up the road—and then helped clean up the mess and get the kids dressed for playing outside.
Since Dylan and his son were out of town this year, it was only Seth’s two boys and their two friends competing in the children’s snowman contest, but the adults did their part to fill the yard with snow people, the way they had when they were young. Daisy made a snow mermaid, Tucker and Seth teamed up to make an enormous snow ogre, and Colt and Phoebe made a three-headed monster snowman with half a dozen stick arms protruding from its sides and five noses.
“Why does it have five noses if it only has three heads?” Twelve-year-old East, Seth’s oldest, cast a judgmental look at Colt and Phoebe’s creation.
“Because it looked funnier that way,” Colt said, throwing his arm around Phoebe’s shoulders as they surveyed their masterpiece.
“Yep,” Phoebe agreed. “Five noses is funny. Six would have been too much.”
“Absolutely.” Colt nodded soberly. “Six would have taken things too far.”
East scrunched up his nose, as if undecided whether or not to take them seriously, but finally grinned. “You two are weird.”
“Definitely,” Phoebe agreed. “But he’s weirder.”
“You’re out of your mind Page.” Colt laughe
d, knuckling her hair until she squirmed free. “You’re the weirdest person I’ve ever met. And that includes a guy I knew who collected his ex-girlfriends’ toenail clippings.”
“Ew.” Phoebe giggled as she shoved his shoulder. “You’re making that up.”
He grinned. “I am not. And he had a huge collection. With a guy that weird, girlfriends became ex-girlfriends pretty fast.”
“He’s lying,” East said, laughing. “No guy that gross would ever have a girlfriend in the first place.”
“I take offense to that, East,” Colt said, leaning down to scoop up a handful of snow and packing it between his gloved hands. “You know what happened to the last person who called me a liar?”
“What?” East’s eyes glittered as he backed away, clearly understanding that the snowball Colt was forming was no idle threat.
“He got hit with a snowball in the butt,” Colt said, drawing his arm back. East turned to run but only made it a few steps before Colt’s snowball connected solidly with his jean-clad bottom.
Colt barely had time to thrust his arms up into the air in victory when a second snowball came flying in from behind Phoebe, hitting him right in the face. Phoebe spun around to reveal Seth busy packing another snowball and Tucker taking cover behind the ogre as he patted together his own supply of ammunition.
After that, things quickly degenerated into chaos.
At first Tucker, Seth, East, and the other kids were all teamed up against Colt and Phoebe. They held their own at first, thanks to Phoebe’s super-fast snowball forming skills and Colt’s killer right arm. But finally numbers won out over skill and technique and Phoebe ended up taking five snowballs to the back of the head and neck in rapid succession.
After that Logan, Seth’s youngest, and his best friend came over to Phoebe and Colt’s side, where they spent most of their time defending Phoebe from attack like eight-year-old knights in soggy winter coats and mittens. Colt had never been prouder to be Logan’s godfather. He saved his biggest snowballs for his little cousin, plopping them into Logan’s hands and then picking the boy up and running across the space between the two shelters so Logan could toss the giant snow bomb right at his dad and older brother.
They returned from their third such mission to find Phoebe sneaking away toward the house, clearly having had enough of this year’s epic snow battle.
“You headed in?” Colt asked, ducking behind the snow monster for shelter.
“I have snow in uncomfortable places,” Phoebe said with a laugh. “I’m going to go warm up with the rest of the ladies in the kitchen and get the gossip.”
“We’ll be in before too long,” Colt said. “Save me some of the peppermint hot chocolate.”
“Me too!” Logan squirmed off his lap to dive back into the snow and scrape together another giant missile.
“Will do,” she said with a salute and fond look at Logan that made Colt think about what kind of mom she might be. He’d never wondered that about a woman he was dating before. But he wondered now, and he knew without a doubt that Phoebe would be the sweetest, funniest, best mom a kid could ever ask for.
That increasingly familiar warm, achy feeling flooded through him, but it didn’t throw him as much as it had even a day ago. It was becoming something he recognized. It was the Phoebe feeling, the way he felt when he was with her or wishing that he were. Now, it just made him smile as he watched her tromp through the snow toward the house, walking funny because she had snow down her pants.
He turned back to the fight in time to avoid a sneak attack from Tucker and sacrificed one of the snow monster’s heads in order to make sure his big brother got it good. The battle waged on for another twenty minutes before the younger boys started to get whiny and Seth called for a ceasefire. While Seth and Tucker herded the boys toward the garage to strip off as much of their wet clothes as possible before entering the house, Colt swung by the Jeep to grab the present he’d hidden under his seat and headed for the barn to check on Phoebe’s surprise.
As promised, Tucker had left several sprigs of mistletoe and the spare key to Colt’s cabin on a table near the last stall. All Colt had to do was hang the mistletoe, tie the key onto the ribbon on Phoebe’s present—a box filled with twenty pairs of lace panties—and the stage was set.
After, he stood back, admiring the simplicity of it. He’d never gone out of his way to introduce romance into a relationship, but he thought this was a pretty good first attempt. He knew Phoebe would get a laugh out of his gift and he hoped she would understand that the key to his house meant more than an invitation to come stay over whenever she wanted. It was an invitation into his life, where he wanted her to feel at home.
Hell, he wanted her to feel more than at home. He wanted her to consider something more permanent than seeing where things go. Time and circumstance were pushing him to make big decisions faster than he was usually comfortable with, but Phoebe was worth it.
Now he could only hope she felt the same way come the day after Christmas when he planned to spill the beans and ask her to help him figure out what came next.
As he made his way through the trampled yard toward the house, fresh snow began to fall and thunder rumbled gently in the distance. Thunder snow was an odd occurrence, but usually happened about once or twice every winter, and usually spelled ugly driving conditions. It made Colt wonder if he and Phoebe should head out right after dinner instead of sticking around for caroling. As much as he loved his family, he didn’t want to be stuck staying over at his parents’ house tonight. He wanted Phoebe all to himself, and no one around to hear the sounds she made when they were making love.
Making love. The phrase always seemed cheesy before, but now it was simply…accurate.
The thought made him smile as he pushed into the kitchen, stopping to knock the snow off of his boots on the mat by the door. But instead of interrupting the chaos of post-snowball fight cocoa making, he stepped into a tense silence.
Across the room, Daisy sat beside his mother at the kitchen table, while his father stared out the back window into the field behind the house.
“What’s up?” Colt asked, taking off his sock cap and shaking it out onto the rug. “Is everything okay?”
“No, everything isn’t okay,” Daisy said, rubbing at her temple. “Phoebe’s gone.”
Colt froze. “What?”
“She’s gone,” Daisy repeated. “And we don’t know where she went and we can’t call her because she left her cell here. She said she was going to take a walk, but that was thirty minutes ago and now it’s starting to storm and I’m afraid she’s so upset that she’ll wander too far and get lost in it.”
Colt shook his head. “Why is she upset?” One look at his sister’s guilty, but stubbornly self-righteous, expression and he had his answer. “You told her? Daisy you promised you wouldn’t!”
“I didn’t tell her,” Daisy snapped. “I told Mom and Phoebe walked in while Mom was crying and wanted to know what was wrong. Sorry, but I didn’t feel like lying for you anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Colt,” his mom said, wiping at her tear-streaked cheeks. “It’s my fault.”
“It isn’t your fault, Mom. And I wasn’t asking you to lie for me, Daisy,” Colt said, pulling his hat back onto his head. “I was asking you to keep your nose out of my life. It’s my life and Phoebe is my…”
He faltered but didn’t feel like dancing around the subject with Phoebe missing and upset. “Phoebe and I are the ones starting a relationship and I deserved the right to tell her about the letter myself.”
“Yeah, after you led her on for another week,” Daisy said, tears rising in her eyes. “Seriously, it’s disgusting Colt. The way you’re acting makes me ashamed to call you my brother.”
Colt’s jaw clenched, his body fighting to keep words he knew he would regret from finding their way out of his mouth. Finally, after two deep, harsh breaths, he managed to say in a rough, but controlled, voice, “You have no idea what I’m thinking, what I’m f
eeling, or what my plans are, Daisy. Despite what you may think, you don’t know shit about love. If you did, you would know that I’m crazy about Phoebe and I would never hurt her. Never.”
Daisy’s jaw dropped, but Colt didn’t have time to waste appreciating the novelty of seeing his little sister speechless. He turned to Tucker, who was lurking in the doorway to the kitchen, pretending not to be eavesdropping.
“Tucker, you want to take a four-wheeler and check the back field?” Colt asked. “I can take the snowmobile up onto the ridge and see if I can get an idea where she went.”
“Sounds good,” Tucker said. “Take your cell. I’ll call as soon as I see anything.”
“I’ll go with Tucker,” his dad said. “And help keep an eye out for her.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Colt said, grateful for the support. “And don’t worry, Mom. I’ll find Phoebe, make sure everything is okay, and we’ll be back in time for dinner.”
Not bothering with any parting words for Daisy, he headed back out into the snow and started toward the barn, where his dad kept the snowmobile parked beneath the eaves during the winter.
He hurried across the yard, trying not to think about how swiftly the snow was concealing the evidence of their snowball fight or how quickly it would cover Phoebe’s trail if he were lucky enough to find it.
Chapter 19
Phoebe
Phoebe tromped up the trail leading to the ridge, ignoring the progressively insistent snow filtering through the trees to coat her hair in a veil of frigid white.
She was already halfway across the Brodys’ property. If she kept going straight, in about ten miles—not that far and it was still light—she would emerge onto the Newmans’ ranch, where she would be able to ask sweet old Mr. Newman for a ride home. He wouldn’t mind interrupting his Christmas Eve celebration to give a girl he hadn’t seen in almost a decade a ride back to town. He was one of the nicest men in the world.