A Blazing Little Christmas

by Jacquie D’Alessandro

  “So you’re going to sell these for a tidy sum and use the proceeds for more practical housing.” Her boot collided with a stone and he reached to steady her.

  He’d been doing that a lot this weekend. But then, she had reason to be unsteady in his presence after five years of fiercely mixed emotions. She blinked hard to process this new facet of him that she never knew existed. God, she hadn’t known him at all.

  The more she got to know him, the more she cared about him, wanted to be with him. That warmth of feeling would make it impossible to sprint out of his bed at dawn on Sunday. He deserved better, even if he didn’t want her for keeps.

  “Actually, Roland encouraged me to develop a hotel property like the Timberline Lodge, something that would continue to generate income for years.” He released her waist now that she had her footing. “The lodge is just over this hill. Sorry if the trek has been a little long.”

  “That’s okay.” She fought to find her bearings, wondering why he’d show her his project in the dark and not, say, tomorrow morning. “The cabins are beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” He helped her up the start of the incline, making sure her boots found traction. “You said some nice things about the materials around your cabin so I thought I’d show you these in case you were…I don’t know…creatively inspired.”

  She stopped, her treads sliding a few inches.

  “You want to recruit me for your project?” Did she understand him correctly?

  She should be flattered that he wanted to work with her. It was a great opportunity to contribute to a community that needed a boost and could draw attention to her fabric business.

  Furthermore, it would be fun. But she couldn’t help but wonder if that had been an ulterior motive for inviting her up here after all this time. He’d never felt compelled to contact her while he’d been overseas or during the year he’d been back in the States.

  The implications of his simple invitation…his assurances that he hadn’t invited her up here to renew a hot relationship…it all made sense now.

  “Only if it’s something that would be a good fit for your business.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, guiding her up the slope in spite of her sluggish feet. “I actually found your contact information on the Web site for The Attic while researching companies that specialized in design for historic properties.”

  The revelation pricked her heart with a powerful sting. He hadn’t even been searching for her. He’d been trying to find a company to decorate his damn cabins.

  All the fun she’d had today—the skating, the snowshoeing, an exhilarating run down the Olympic bobsled track—seemed tainted somehow. He’d told her from the moment he picked her up Friday that he hadn’t been trying to get her into bed. But damn it, she’d been convinced he wanted to see her for more personal reasons.

  She struggled to speak, to move forward. To pretend this news didn’t cut her to the quick.

  Yeah, he remembered her all right. Just not the way she’d wanted and dared to dream.

  “One of my first jobs was decorating the historic home that belongs to my mother.” Not that her mother had paid her. But at least Loralei had always been up-front about her motives. “Most of my business is selling antique linens that work well in historic properties, but I do some original designs as well.”

  “It blew my mind that some people think it’s cool to use a two-hundred-year-old tablecloth.” Jared grinned over at her in the moonlight. “Sorta makes you think twice about what you throw away if someone might pay five times the value for it in another generation or two.”

  They cleared the rise of the hill and she could see the lodge in the distance and her cabin only a hundred yards away. White lights shone in the windows of all the cottages, giving the place a festive glow she didn’t feel.

  On the plus side, however, was her realization that she didn’t need to feel guilty about her seduce-and-run scheme.

  Trouble was, she didn’t know that she had the heart for it anymore.

  * * *

  Jared couldn’t wait to get back to the lodge to propose his plan for a future together. He’d thought about her every second of his quick trip back to his place to retrieve some clothes for dinner tonight. He had nothing with him since he hadn’t planned to spend the night before with her. He’d told her as much when they got back to her cabin and she’d assured him she was looking forward to trying out the hot tub while he was gone.

  Now, speeding back to the inn, he was tortured by visions of her in the hot tub, slippery wet. He’d wanted to join her. Hell, he’d been dying to. But he figured a quick time-out to get enough clothes to take her out tonight would help him get his head on straight before he asked her to consider making a bigger commitment to a possible future.

  He’d wanted to romance her yesterday, but she’d made it clear she had seduction on her mind. Since they had spent five freaking years apart he could hardly argue the point. Then today, he’d started off strong between showing her every fun thing Lake Placid had to offer. He wanted to ask her to consider life in the North Country over dinner tonight and he figured he needed as much ammunition as he could muster. He’d taken her to see the project he was building earlier so that his plans for the future would seem more concrete.

  But something had gone very wrong out on the construction site. Whether she didn’t like the cabins or her woman’s intuition sensed he was working his way up to asking her for a commitment, he didn’t know. He did know that she’d pulled back afterward and that had him worried. She’d bolted into the bathroom as soon as they’d returned to the cabin, promising him she would be ready for dinner by the time he returned.

  Should he have stuck around and tried to figure out what was wrong? He could have asked her right then to think about sticking around Lake Placid long enough to see snow on a regular basis. But he wanted to do things right this time after the way he’d left her five years ago.

  Now, driving back through the village lit up with white lights and busy with last-minute holiday shoppers, he struggled to see the road ahead of him and not visions of Heather’s slippery, wet body in a tub full of bubbles. But he couldn’t even dream about joining her when he needed to figure out what was going through her head now.

  He definitely needed some discipline when it came to her. There was no way he’d let himself set foot in that tub until he’d figured out what was wrong and told her he couldn’t spend another Christmas apart….

  * * *

  The alarm clock turned on the radio at five-fifteen, waking him up to holiday tunes a hell of a lot more optimistic than he felt.

  He stared at Heather spooned against him, her big bed a decadent antique in an otherwise barren apartment. She’d only been out of college for a couple of years, but she had said she was working full-time and putting all her funds into building a business rather than making her apartment into a real home.

  Not that Jared had noticed much of anything about her place besides the fact that she was in it. He was halfway in love with her by midnight on Saturday, but he told himself that his emotions were keyed-up because he was about to leave life as he knew it for at least a year.

  Shutting off the alarm, he sat up in bed, wanting to wake her to see her gorgeous blue eyes on him one more time before he had to report in. His chest tightened with regret that he’d met her too late. If only they’d crossed paths sooner.

  Angry with himself for this swell of emotion he didn’t understand, he stuffed it all down and packed up his things. He needed to leave enough time to go back to base and dress. Pack. Hell, he needed to hurry.

  He’d spent every last possible second with this woman who had blazed into his life Friday night like a comet. And he knew whether he woke her or not, the impression she’d made would be singed into his memories for the rest of his life.

  His watch alarm blared an electronic beep, a backup he’d set to be sure he got his ass out the door in time today. Scrambling to shut it off, he glanced back at the bed to see
if she’d stirred. She hadn’t. Maybe a kiss goodbye wasn’t meant to be.

  He found all his clothes and dressed. There was nothing keeping him here because he’d made sure not to give her any information to get in touch with him while he was gone. It was better that way, he knew. Jared’s brother had been overseas for eight months and Jessie had missed the birth of a daughter by a girlfriend he’d rushed to marry on his last leave.

  With Jessie’s crumbling personal life as a cautionary tale, Jared planned to leave well enough alone with Heather. He wouldn’t make his brother’s mistakes or foist off that kind of loneliness on Heather, no matter that his first instinct was to ask her to write to him. See him again when he came home.

  If he came home.

  No. This was the right decision. He sat beside her on the bed and stroked her silky hair where it spilled over on her bare shoulder. She gripped the pillow beside her head, fingers flexing in the down as she sighed in her sleep.

  She slept hard and she played hard. He’d learned that much about her in the past thirty hours. He didn’t always meet a lot of women because he tended to be more quiet and intense than the easygoing types who could lay on the charm and score every night. That didn’t bother Jared, necessarily, but he appreciated Heather for seeing his interest and seeking him out. Damn but she turned him on.

  She rolled to her back, her breasts lifting high over the top of the sheet for one breath-catching moment.

  And just like that his brain tripped into imaginative high gear, thinking how easy it would be to slip under the covers right now and wake her up as he slid inside her. But they were out of time.

  He bent to kiss her forehead in the darkened room, knowing damn well some lucky bastard would probably snap her up while he was gone. And while he wouldn’t try to hold her back from moving forward with her life, that didn’t change the fact that he would be leaving a piece of himself in Savannah, Georgia.

  * * *

  He drove back to the main building at the Timberline Lodge, knowing damn well what he had to do. He’d started off the weekend thinking he had to test if Heather could be the missing piece of the puzzle that made his life feel so empty these past few Christmases. He’d tried telling himself it was the war, the posttrauma of war, the stress of getting acclimated to life outside the military, but now he couldn’t pretend it was anything other than the loss of a woman he’d fallen in love with in the course of one hot weekend.

  His cell phone rang as he pulled into the long driveway that wound through the woods to the lodge. The ID showed the inn, so he picked up expecting Heather.

  “Hello?”

  “Jared, I’m so glad I found you.”

  Helen Krause’s voice on the other end of the phone surprised him. She seemed to be whispering on the other end of the line while a piano banged out “Jingle Bell Rock” somewhere in the background.

  “What’s up?” He hoped she didn’t need him to fix anything. He’d made sure he wasn’t on call for flying this weekend while Heather was in town, but he’d done a fair amount of work for the Krauses over the past year.

  “It’s Heather.” The two words commanded his full attention.

  “What about her?” He speeded up his pace on the winding road.

  “Roland just saw her pulling a suitcase up the path behind the lodge.” She hesitated while the piano in the background ended the tune with a flourish and a round of clapping ensued, probably a special entertainment in the dining room.

  “A suitcase?” He repeated the word blankly, wondering if there could be any reasonable explanation for her toting around her weekend bag.

  “We don’t mean to pry, dear, but we had a good feeling about her when the two of you checked in yesterday and we wanted to make sure—”

  “You did the right thing and I’m going to build you that whole damn new kitchen you want for the inn to thank you.” He didn’t take the turnoff road down to the separate cabins but stayed on the main road to take him directly to the lodge. “I think I see her, Mrs. K.”

  Up ahead, he spotted a dark green coat and blue knit hat in the blaze of white lights decorating the front of the inn. Heather sat on her small rolling suitcase a few feet from the curb as if waiting for a ride.

  “Don’t you let her leave, Jared,” Mrs. Krause counseled while a small group of voices broke out into carols in the background.

  “Not a chance.” He disconnected the call, determination firing through him as he rounded a corner past some lighted Christmas trees.

  Heather stood, apparently spotting his truck barreling toward the inn. He didn’t bother to park in the lot, pulling up beside her and turning off the engine. He shoved open the door and walked around the vehicle, facing her.

  Heart in his throat, he knew what her packed bag signified. That didn’t mean he

  had to accept it. He wouldn’t accept it, because walking away from her last time had cost him more than even he had realized until recently.

  No way would he make that same mistake twice. Clearing his throat, he nodded toward the suitcase.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Chapter 7

  “I can’t do this.” Heather hated being such a Scrooge on Christmas when the sounds of carols from inside the inn drifted out into the courtyard. The whole place looked like a winter wonderland, more warm and welcoming than any holiday card she’d ever seen with the wreaths and bows adorning window after window and a wealth of tall pines covered in miniature lights around the parking lot.

  “That’s excellent news.” Jared spoke softly, his gentle tone at odds with the dark emotions in his eyes, his big warrior’s body tense. “Because I wouldn’t let you do this even if you wanted to.”

  He grabbed her suitcase off the curb and faced her while she tried to gauge his mood.

  “Do you want to talk in the lodge or back down at the cabin?” he prodded when she said nothing.

  “Neither.” She shook her head, hoping her cab wouldn’t arrive too soon since she at least wanted to give him an explanation—more than they’d given each other the last time they’d parted company. “What I mean is, I can’t stay here pretending that everything is all fun and frivolity between us when I had every intention of walking away from you tomorrow morning before you even woke up.”

  The plan had turned sour on her somewhere during their time together and she wouldn’t sit across from him and smile over dinner while she plotted her exit.

  He hadn’t worn a hat and snowflakes fell on his dark hair, the lacy crystals doing nothing to soften the hard edges of him as his jaw tightened.

  “You came here for revenge.” He shook his head as if disappointed. “But then you decided you’d had enough fun with that plot, so you thought you’d bail out even earlier than planned?”

  She swallowed her regrets enough to call up some indignation.

  “Since your motive in inviting me up here wasn’t exactly all hearts and flowers, I didn’t think you’d mind. Or did you hope that I would be so thrilled at the prospect of new business that I wouldn’t care you had an ulterior motive? Did it occur to you that I might not want to do business with a man who once walked away from me so easily?”

  “You think I asked you up here for a business proposition?” He sounded genuinely surprised. Thunking her suitcase back on the curb, he stalked toward her, his dark eyes narrowing.

  In spite of everything, her heart sped its pace, her body slow to get the message that Jared wasn’t the man for her.

  “I have good reason since you made it a special point to drag me into the middle of the woods to pitch your project.” She’d been taken advantage of by her family enough times to recognize a maneuver when she saw one. Heather had been taught the art of the wheedle from a master, and next to Loralei, Jared was a novice.

  “You’re right.” He confirmed her worst fears as easily as he’d trotted out of her bed to travel halfway across the globe.

  God, she’d been a fool to come here.

  And still her body co
ntradicted her, straining against her will to be near him.

  “I was trying to give you a pitch.” He closed the distance between them, his hands settling on her shoulders. “And I did a piss-poor job of it if you came away thinking I wanted your help decorating the cabins for—well, just for the sake of a business relationship.”

  She tried to follow that reasoning and couldn’t, but then she knew that having his hands on her had a track record of making her brain disconnect.

  “Heather, I asked you up here because I wanted to show you what my life is about these days and who I am now that I’m not bound to the military.”

  Inside the windows looking out onto the courtyard, Heather noticed Mrs. Krause peering out at them, her bright Santa sweater a flash of color that was hard to miss. She hurried away again, leaving Heather to puzzle through what Jared was saying.

  “And I respect what you’re doing, but I can’t do business with you when—”

  “Heather, I don’t care if you never want to work with me professionally.” He said it in that no-games tone she remembered from a long-ago conversation when she had first been captivated by him and an approach to life so different from what she was used to.

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t.” He brushed a dusting of snow off her collar and tipped her chin up, the leather of his gloves smoothing along her jaw. “I just wanted you to see that you would at least have some potential work income to tide you over if you ever wanted to consider moving up here to be with me.”

  She blinked. Attempted to process that.

  “Are you asking—”

  Her cell phone rang in her jacket pocket, spearing through her thoughts and interrupting them.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered, reaching into her overcoat to retrieve it. “I turned it on after I called a cab and—”

  Jared pulled the phone gently from her hands and pressed the button to answer it.

  “Heather can’t talk right now. She’s in the middle of the most important moment of my life.” He thumbed the off button along with the power switch, never taking his eyes off her.