For the next half hour, they fed the hungry Perseus group. Jason excused himself and went out on the slope with his sister, Katy, who was now seventeen and a beautiful young woman, in Colt’s eyes. She was the spitting image of Laura, except she had her father’s height and stood nearly six feet tall, was medium boned and a super athlete. The twins, Peter and Kelly, now twelve years old, were holding on to the rope tow, their skis on, with their older siblings in front and behind them.
Colt was happy when he and Abbie were finally left alone. Everyone had gobbled up their lunch and flown off to the beckoning slopes. The shouts and laughter of the children was contagious. He saw a lot of the mercs becoming big kids themselves. Taking one of the rough-hewn stools, Colt brought it over to where Abbie had just sat down at the table. Neither of them had eaten yet, and he opened his turkey sandwich. Cups of steaming apple cider sat on the table before them.
“Are you going to ski pretty soon?” Colt asked. He watched her eyes widen—beautiful eyes he could fall into and lose his soul within. Colt knew that with Abbie, he was safe in a way he’d never experienced before with a woman. Her human touch, her ability to work well with both children and adults, was blatantly apparent. But he was a glutton; he wanted her all to himself.
Colt laughed harshly at himself. He couldn’t believe all he was feeling—him, the loner. The guy who had planned to camp out in the condo for the holidays, drink himself into a stupor daily to numb the pain he felt. Somehow, Abbie’s sunny smile, her dancing eyes and that heart that was a wide as the blue skies of Montana made him want to be with her, and with people. She was magical. And he wanted her—in all ways. Did she want him, however? Colt realized as never before that the loss of her husband had damaged her emotionally. She was just emerging from a long, dark tunnel of grief. Was she ready for a relationship?
What the hell could he bring to her? Give to her? A snarly, irritable, PTSD warrior who found it hard to stay in the mainstream of life and society—what a helluva prize catch he would make….
Picking up her cup of apple cider, Abbie sipped it, then smiled as she set it down on the peeled paint of the tabletop. “Me? Ski? Oh, gosh, Colt, I’m all thumbs and left feet! No, I just serve the food, I don’t ski. I’d probably break my neck—or my leg—if I tried.” She saw a smile lurking at the corners of his well-shaped mouth. Her heart pounded briefly as Colt gave her an intimate, smoldering look. She’d seen that same look last night as they’d stood on the front porch of her cabin just before he’d kissed her. Oh, it was a small kiss, Abbie chided herself. But it did big-time things to her, making her heart thud in her breast, her pulse leap wildly and a warm, throbbing heat settle deliciously in her lower body. She felt herself coming alive as a woman. Colt’s one hesitant kiss last night, his lips caressing her cheek, had made her feel as if she were the mythical Persephone leaving the darkness of Hades and emerging back on the surface of the earth, to appreciate all its colors, textures and grandeur once again. Studying him through her lashes, Abbie wondered if he realized that his look was making her heart and body come alive. Did he? Probably not.
His grin widened. “I’m a so-so skier. But let me take you up later. I’ll help you stay upright as we go down the hill, okay?” Colt chastised himself silently. If she skied that badly, he could keep his arms around her, hold her and remain close without anyone thinking anything of it. What a sneaky bastard he was. He didn’t have the guts to just tell her how he felt about her. Colt was too frightened that Abbie would get scared and, like the clouds moving across the hill right now, snuffing out the sunlight, would run from him.
Easing off the stool, Abbie shrugged. “I’m a kid at heart. Sure, I’ll try it.” Her pulse throbbed momentarily as she saw his eyes grow hooded and that smoldering look grow more intense. A thrill moved through her. Abbie found herself feeling joyous in a way she’d never been before. As she puttered about, placing sandwiches wrappers into a plastic trash bag, she tried to sort out the myriad feelings Colt was effortlessly evoking within her. One chaste kiss! Just one, and Abbie felt like a teenager head-over-heels in love!
“You mentioned that your parents are in Florida?” she asked him.
Colt finished off the sandwich and picked up his apple cider. Just watching Abbie move around the shack and tidy it up sent a frisson of longing through him. She was so graceful. He wanted her hands ranging up his body with that same grace. Tearing his mind from that thought, he frowned and answered her question. “Dad’s in a nursing home now. My mother died three years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Abbie hesitated, then put the bag in the garbage can next to the table. There wasn’t much room in the shack and she absorbed Colt’s continued nearness. His brow was furrowed. “Were you going to go and visit your dad over the holidays?”
“No. He has Alzheimer’s pretty bad. He doesn’t recognize me anymore. He doesn’t know where he’s at mentally….” Colt’s mouth flattened. “Usually I’m on a mission this time of year, but I fly in to see him at other times. He has to have twenty-four-hour nursing care.”
Abbie sat down. “I’m so sorry…that must be so hard, Colt, to not have him recognize you, his son.” She saw the damage it had done to him; it was clearly written in his features, even though he tried to avoid her gaze. She saw Colt try to shrug it off, but the anguish remained banked in his averted eyes.
Taking a huge risk, Abbie followed her intuition and said softly, “I understand that you’ve had some pretty awful missions over in the Kosovo-Bosnia region. I’m sure between your dad’s deteriorating condition and the stresses on you over there, you must be exhausted.” Tired all the way to his soul, Abbie guessed. She held her breath, knowing she had to tread lightly because of the PTSD symptoms he’d accrued after those missions. Abbie didn’t know why she was broaching the topic with Colt. It was a subject most men would refuse to speak about, especially with a woman.
Just the tender way Abbie gazed at him made the wall around his heart crack open. He actually felt physical pain and rubbed his chest where his heart lay beneath the sweater he wore. Staring down at the cup of apple cider he held, Colt rasped, “I thought I knew what hell on earth was, Abbie…but I didn’t, not until these past three missions….”
She sat quietly and waited. Why was it so hard for a man to talk out his feelings? Colt’s hard face was ravaged with emotions that were eating him alive. Abbie saw the way he worked his mouth into a brutal line to stop the avalanche she sensed behind it. As he moved the cup slowly around and around in his large, scarred hands, she felt her heart breaking for him. More than anything, Abbie wanted to slide her arms around his slumped shoulders and just hold him. That was what he needed right now: to be held. And she wanted to be the woman who did it.
The silence between them was strained and tenuous. Abbie knew from experience that if she sat quietly and let the pressure mount, then more than likely Colt would begin to talk. When he lifted his head, she saw dampness in his eyes. It tore at her.
“Three missions,” Colt said gruffly. “Three horrible missions with no positive outcome. I’ll tell you something, Abbie, that part of the world is a hellhole. There are no happy endings over there for either side. Not ever.” He shook his head and took a quick gulp of the apple cider. Avoiding her look, he growled, “When I got off this last one…well, I was reeling from it. My partner, Carol, quit. She couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t blame her. It’s rough over there….”
Abbie knew that mercs at Perseus worked in man-woman teams. And she knew from talking with Laura that Carol had been Colt’s partner for a good five years. Abbie understood the camaraderie, the trust and teamwork that developed under dangerous mission conditions, and she was sure he was devastated by losing Carol, too. “And so you were going to hole up here and try to heal?” she murmured gently. When Colt lifted his head again, the dampness in his eyes was gone. He’d shoved all those raw feelings very deep within himself. His hands, however, gripped the paper cup hard.
He snorted. “I
wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Me and Jack Daniels…”
She flinched inwardly. He had been slugging down whiskey to numb what he was feeling. Getting up, Abbie followed her heart. She moved quietly and sat beside Colt, placing her fingers around his larger ones as they gripped the cup. She heard him take in a swift breath of air. His head snapped up. Heart pounding, Abbie sat quietly and looked at him, her hands wrapped around his.
“I understand a little of what you’re feeling, Colt. When Ted died, I felt like someone had thrown me into a dark hole of hell that I didn’t feel I could ever survive.” Her mouth pulled upward slightly at the corners, and her voice was tremulous with feeling. “What helped me get through it were people who loved me—my friends…my family from North Dakota. The people I worked with at the high school were supportive, too. Laura Trayhern, bless her, became my strength. She, more than anyone, understood what I was going through, because of her own traumas, losing Morgan to the drug lords….”
Abbie’s warmth and tenderness sent a hot sheet of longing through Colt. Easing his hands from hers, he placed the paper cup on the table and then picked up her hands again and held them. Drowning in her blue eyes, which were sparkling with unshed tears, he felt his heart rip wide-open from his brutally suppressed feelings. Abbie was so small and slender next to his bulk and masculine strength, yet he sensed with every fiber of his being that she was the stronger one here, not him. He felt as if a huge fist was jamming into his chest, causing very real pain, and he wanted to scream out in anguish.
Abbie watched as his mouth turned hard, his lips thinned. He avoided her eyes and stared down at their hands. She felt him quiver. Colt was wrestling to fight back the overwhelming emotions he’d stuffed away during those missions.
All her life, Abbie had been led by her heart, her passion, and the voice of intuition within her. That voice whispered to her to kiss him…now….
Lifting her hands from his, she slid her fingertips up the rocky ridge of Colt’s jaw and framed his face. Her gesture snapped him out of his suspended state. He lifted his head. His gaze narrowed intently on her, his black pupils dilating. She saw the tears banked in his eyes, and moved closer, till her body grazed his. Closing her eyes, Abbie felt her heart beating like a wild bird suddenly caged. Was she doing the right thing? Would Colt take her efforts the right way? Did he know she wanted to cry for him? To hold him? Lost as she was in the hungry need to make physical contact with him, Abbie knew, somewhere in her spinning mind, that it was right thing, even if she was scared to death.
“Colt…let me help….” she whispered. The line of his mouth softened as she grazed his lips with her own. He groaned, and the sound reverberated through her like the roll of a drum. Feeling bolder, she pressed closer and felt some of his tension dissolve beneath her tender ministrations. Repeatedly, she feathered her mouth across his, begging access, asking silently for him to give her the overwhelming pain he was barely holding at bay.
Then his arms came around her and captured her hard against him. The air rushed out of her lungs as he stood up, dragging her with him, her breasts and hips melding hotly against his own. His mouth opened and his lips crushed hers in a ravenous kiss. Fire erupted through Abbie as his arms wound around her back and he rocked her into his embrace. Automatically, her hands opened, and she found them sliding up around his thick shoulders and neck.
Colt smelled of evergreens and his own unique scent, making her respond to his questing mouth with equal ardor. Running her fingers through his short hair, Abbie moaned a little as his hand ranged down from her shoulder, across her rib cage toward her aching, taut breast. Oh, how she wanted this man! Her heart spun with joy. Her pulse throbbed and her lower body melted against his narrow hips, on fire. She felt his desire for her, and more flames sizzled through her, making her knees go weak with need. Need for Colt.
His mouth was bruising and hungry against hers. Abbie felt him tremble savagely as she allowed him open access, his tongue laving her lower lip. As she pulled him tightly against her, his mouth commanding and needy, Abbie relaxed completely within his powerful embrace. She knew that her surrendering to him had triggered something else within him. Abbie felt it, lost as she was in a swirl of joy, hunger and need. She wanted to take his pain, transmute it in order to release it. Love had a way of doing that—of healing even the worst hemorrhaging wound within a person’s heart and soul.
Willingly she offered herself—all of herself—to Colt in this magical moment outside of time. His skin was sandpapery against her softer flesh, his punctuated breath warm and moist against her face. She moved her lips against his mouth, and in that instant became aware of the taste of salt clinging to the corners. For a moment she was confused, and then she realized it was from Colt’s tears. Tears of pain. Tears of agony. Tears he’d suffered and carried silently for so long by himself.
The salty tears met and mingled beneath their wet, searching mouths. She shifted her hands to his face, framing it as her tongue moved deep within him. Again he trembled, like a bull being shaken by an earthquake. Abbie held him with her womanly strength, guided by her heart, which told her this was healing him, helping him, and helping her, too. Never in all her life had she shared such a kiss with a man. Not ever. Euphoria enveloped her as she felt the last of Colt’s tears ease. Drowsily opening her eyes, she burned beneath his stormy green gaze as he voraciously absorbed her into himself. She was small compared to his power and size. Yet as she caressed his cheek and smiled tremulously up at him, the taste of his tears still on her lips, she understood the healing power of one person’s love and what it could do to unlock another’s armored heart and soul.
Colt stood there, his senses screamingly alive, his lower body aching with a knot of fire and need. Gently, he eased his grip from around Abbie and set her carefully on her feet. He didn’t want to let her go—not yet. Not ever, his heart whispered. There was such a thunderstorm of emotions raging through him right now that he found it impossible to find words to tell her. Hell, he couldn’t even begin to define them himself. Part was rage and frustration over the missions. Another was grief over the people he’d seen die. And just as insistent were the new emotions exploding in his pounding heart—emotions about Abbie. Sweet, soft, strong Abbie. As he gazed wordlessly down into her lustrous eyes, Colt threaded his fingers through the silky, coppery hair that framed her blushing features.
“You’re so sweet, Abbie. You’re like a dream I’ve always had, but was afraid to believe in….”
Chapter 4
December 23—Day 3
Colt had cried—the first tears he’d ever shed over his life-altering missions. In fact, he never cried. The last time he recalled even getting close to it was when his ex-wife had walked out on him. Even more disturbing to him, he realized as he slowly got dressed the next morning, was the fact that he’d cried in Abbie’s arms. It had been unexpected, the last thing on his mind.
He wondered now if she thought he was a wimp. Frowning, he shrugged into his bright red flannel shirt and tucked the tails into his jeans. Outside the picture window of the condo, the sky was a bright blue, the sun sparkling off the tops of the snow-covered evergreens that surrounded the small valley. The storm had passed.
“Yeah…right,” he muttered, picking up his white silk scarf and, out of habit, throwing it around his neck. He’d worn the scarf while flying as a helicopter pilot, as the silk protected his neck from chafing as he rubbernecked around, while looking for the bad guys.
He was meeting Abbie at 9:00 a.m. to help her move her beautiful cattleya orchids, which were all in bloom in her greenhouse, to Laura and Morgan’s home for the upcoming family dinner planned for the third day of Christmas.
Halting in the middle of the room, his leather bomber jacket in hand, he scowled, and his gut clenched. He was feeling such pain, such uncertainty, that he really didn’t want to face Abbie, Colt realized. He was afraid. There, he’d admitted it. Afraid of what she might think of him crying during their heated, b
eautiful, healing kiss there in the shack yesterday. What must she think of him? Did she see him as weak? Probably.
Undecided, Colt slowly shrugged into his bomber jacket and straightened the collar. He’d never cried in front of a woman. Ever. But he had with her. What the hell was going down here? Rubbing his recently shaved jaw, Colt scowled darkly out the window. The world was beautiful here in the middle of winter. He didn’t feel beautiful inside. Not at all.
Ruthlessly examining himself, which was not something Colt did often, he realized he had to get a grip on his escaping feelings when he was around Abbie. He didn’t want to become a blubbering wuss in front of her again. Cringing over that possibility, Colt sensed that was why he was so damned scared and unsure this morning: Abbie just sort of unconsciously catalyzed his feelings—good and bad. He’d never met a woman who could do that. It was like magic, only it was dark magic and he had no interest in having his own private hell of a Pandora’s box spontaneously opened without his permission or knowledge. Hell, he’d been kissing her, and enjoying it like an eagle on wing flying directly into the sun’s warmth. Then, out of nowhere, Colt had felt warmth leaking out of the corners of his closed eyes and drifting down his cheeks to where their mouths clung wetly to one another.
At first, he’d been shocked by the taste of salt between their lips. And when he realized what it was, and where it was coming from, he’d torn his mouth from Abbie’s and taken a step away from her, as if he’d been burned.
He couldn’t bear remembering the hurt look on her face as she’d stood there, her lips wet and parted, her eyes huge with desire and, at the same time, shock over his unexpected action. What else was he to do? Cry some more? Weep his heart out in her slender but strong arms? What if someone had come up to the shack at that time and seen him crying? What would they think? Colt knew something like that would be bound to travel very fast in the tight circle of Perseus families. It was a closed community, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. He didn’t need it getting back to Morgan that he’d been crying like a hurt little boy in Abbie’s arms. If anyone had come up and seen them kissing…well, that was acceptable to Colt. But not being discovered crying.
Romancing the Holidays Bundle 2009 Page 21