by Sandra Hill
“I didn’t think you noticed.”
“I noticed. Believe me, I noticed!”
She wasn’t sure she could have found the strength to get off him if he hadn’t slid his hands out from under her sweater, then, with a groan, pushed her away. For an instant she worried that she’d hurt him, but one glance at those dangerous green eyes told her it wasn’t his old injuries that were bothering him right now.
Feeling just a little smug, she held out her hand and hauled him to his feet.
“Damn,” he groaned. “Remind me to avoid soft leather couches for a little while longer. Unless,” he added with a wicked grin, pulling her close against him, “we don’t bother sitting up.”
They made sure the fire screen was properly set in front of the dying fire, but didn’t bother turning off the lights on the tree. The combined glow was just enough to show them their way back.
It also gave them a brief glimpse of a tiny little figure in a long nightgown disappearing around a corner and up the stairs to the second floor.
“Wasn’t that Dr. Maggie?” Stan demanded, stopping dead in the middle of the hallway.
“I think so.” Dana tugged him back into motion. “The Colonel’s room is upstairs, you know.”
“Well, damn!” said Stan, chuckling. He pulled her close against him. His arm was strong and warm around her shoulders, his body hard against her side. “Looks like we’re the slowpokes, here. Guess we’ll have to do something about that, now, won’t we?”
He swung her around for a quick, hot kiss, then dragged her down the hall, straight to his door.
At the sight of his mattress on the floor in front of the fire, Dana stopped dead. Though it had obviously been neatly made up at one time, the sheets were now tumbled and tossed. The heavy old quilts were half on, half off the bed. Two of the four pillows lay on the floor. The two that were left had been pounded into shapeless lumps.
“That’s why I didn’t hear a sound from your room! I thought you’d fallen asleep!”
He laughed and shot the deadbolt on the hall door. “Not on your life. The sound of you tossing and turning in that damned creaking bed just about drove me mad.”
“Did it?” she murmured, and felt a rush of confidence flood through her.
“Don’t look so smug,” he said, ripping his sweatshirt off over his head. “You weren’t having any better time of it.”
“I was in hell,” she admitted, “and madder than hops that you’d fallen asleep so easily.”
“Good.” He opened a leather dop kit on the stand by the abandoned bed and pulled out a shiny strip of little foil packets. His body gleamed golden in the firelight. His grin was pure wolf. “It’s only fair that you suffered some, too.”
“I suffered. Believe me, I suffered!” She eyed the foil strip with misgivings. “Are you always this well prepared?”
The wolf grin widened. “I wasn’t prepared at all, but the manager at Big-Mart was nice enough to turn one of the registers on when I asked.”
She could feel her eyes go wide and round with horror. “Did anyone see you buy those?”
“Only Maudeen,” he assured her, flinging the strip down beside the bed.
“Maudeen?” It came out more as a squeak than a question.
“And Dr. Meg.”
“Dr. Meg, too?”
He nodded, then casually tossed another couple of logs on the fire and set the screen back in place. “And Morey and Slick and—”
“They all saw you buy those . . . things?”
“And not one of ’em said a word,” he assured her, grabbing her hands and pulling her to him. “They know I’m crazy about you.”
“They do? You are?”
“Absolutely nuts,” he murmured against her mouth, and kissed her.
She wasn’t quite sure how they made it down onto the mattress— Stan’s awkwardness from his injured leg and hip was compounded by the fact that they were wrapped around each other like leeches— but by the time she dragged the wayward pillows back onto the bed and he arranged the quilts so they didn’t get tangled in the folds, they were both stark naked and breathing hard.
“God, you are so beautiful,” he murmured, holding her away from him. His eyes glittered with a hunger that set her blood burning. His hands slid up her arms under her hair. The mingled touch of rough, warm, male skin and familiar silk roused her nipples to a peak and started a throbbing in her belly that made her muscles squeeze.
“And you.” She touched his injured shoulder, ran her fingers over the puckered scars that criss-crossed his skin. The firelight gilded his uninjured right side and cast his left into shadows.
She didn’t need to see the damage to know it was there. Neither did he.
His grip on her tightened. “You realize I can’t make love to you the way I’d like, that you’ll have to do a lot of the work?”
She laughed and bent to kiss him, forcing him down onto the mattress. “Who says I would have let you do all the work, anyway?”
Whatever he might have answered was swallowed in his groan of pleasure as she trailed her hand down his chest, over and around his nipple, then across his belly and down to his groin. At her touch, his engorged penis twitched.
“I figure . . . we . . . can work . . . out . . . a compromise,” he gasped. He shuddered as her hold on him tightened.
Excitement filled her. She had dreamed of this so many times, alone in her bed in her house in the trees. She’d fantasized about making love to him and having him make love to her, about how he would touch her, there, and she would kiss him, here, and how their bodies would fit together. But never once had she dared dream of such power. It had never occurred to her that he could want her so much, or be so helpless beneath his body’s craving for her.
No, not just his body’s need, she realized, and felt her heart stop. This wasn’t just sex—not for him, and not for her. Despite her inexperience she could see it in his face, feel it in his touch. He hadn’t yet admitted it, not even to himself, but there really was something between them. Something strange and wild and wonderful. Something fat with promise for the future.
She wished, suddenly, that she hadn’t left her wishing ribbon on the floor by the tree, then dismissed the thought. She’d retrieve the bow tomorrow. For now . . .
She reached for the strip of foil on the floor beside the bed.
They laughed, fumbling to tear off a packet, getting in each others’ way. The laughter was sweet and often choked off by kisses and groans and their involuntary cries of pleasure.
And then she was above him, straddling him as he guided her down. Their joining was swift and sure and utterly right. She gasped at the shock of it, arched away, then down and into his hands. Her hands were braced on the either side of his shoulders, his hands wrapped around her waist, helping her balance, pulling her back.
She rode him, then, rode him until her body seized in a fierce, galvanic climax that wrenched a strangled scream from her throat and a strangled laugh from his. His own climax hit him a few seconds later. The laughter turned to a groan as he arched into her, thrusting hard and straight and true, the beautiful, damaged body suddenly rigid with the strength of his release.
As it turned out, they didn’t use all the packets in that strip, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SAM
Thursday morning, one day ’til Christmas Eve.
“No! Absolutely not!”
“That’s what you said when I asked you to—”
“Don’t you dare bring that up again, you louse. And stop smiling at me. You’re not coaxing me into one more thing, and that’s final.”
“Please, Reba, just try it. For me.”
Famous last words! “Hah! You’re crazy if you think I’m going to sled down a mountain in a wheel-less wheelbarrow.”
Sam had kicked off the single front wheel and the two back braces of his deep wheelbarrow and was trying to talk her into his own version of a lost-your-mind O
lympic luge event . . . the one that resembled bobsledding, but was ten times more dangerous. The only difference was that she would be the point man in this extreme sport fiasco.
“Aaah, c’mon, baby. It’ll be fun. Besides, there’s no way to shovel our way down to the lodge with that crust of ice that’s formed over a good two feet of snow. Not that I have a shovel.”
“I repeat, I am not sledding down a mountain in a wheel-less wheelbarrow. Sam, I don’t even like roller coasters. I’m afraid of heights. Scary movies are not my cup of tea. I am not a thrill seeker and never have been. Mother Teresa is my idea of a hero, not Evil Knievel.”
“I know what you’re thinking now. Just stop it.” Sam raised a forefinger warningly at her. “You are not going to start the we-are-just-too-different-to-make-it-work crap.”
“Well, we are different, Sam.”
“Compromise . . . we can learn to compromise,” he said, a note of desperation in his voice. “You could probably learn to love things I do, like . . . oh, let’s say . . . skydiving.”
She made a snorting sound that equated to, “In your dreams!”
He ignored her snort. “And in return, I could . . . I could . . . ,” he stammered for the right answer.
“Yes?”
His face brightened. “I could learn to love Oprah.”
They both laughed at the absurdity of both extremes.
He decided to try a different tact. “Don’t you trust me?”
Oh, that was a low blow. And Sam knew it.
Just then, his cell phone rang. Not for the first time, either. Betty had called several times to alert them to road conditions and the prognosis for them being able to leave for Maine anytime today; it was still up in the air. A worried George kept tabs on them, too. And JD had called to inform them of an unexpected visit from the cops late last night. Stan was oddly silent . . . well, not so odd, she supposed, considering the surreptitious looks he and Dana had been exchanging over dinner last night.
“Hey, buddy!” Sam said into the phone. “How’s it going? Really? Well, did you do what I told you to? And it worked? Great! Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Sam turned his face away from her as he spoke, and his side of the conversation was rather terse, as if he didn’t want her to know who was on the other end.
At first, her female shackles went up. A woman . . . could he be talking to a woman? No, he’d used the term buddy. She didn’t think he would call a girlfriend buddy. Oh, geez, where did the idea of a girlfriend come from? After the night she’d just spent with Sam, how could she be so insecure?
“Who was that?” she blurted out the minute Sam clicked off the phone.
Sam shuffled about and made great work of tucking the phone into a leather pouch which he attached to his belt. Finally, he admitted. “Richie.”
“What? What did you say?”
He cursed under his breath, and his face flushed. He was embarrassed for some reason. “If you must know, that was Richie . . . the kid from the Littleton shelter. I gave him my cell number . . . in case he ever had a problem. And he . . . uh . . . had a problem.”
Tears stung her eyes and she put the fingertips of one hand to her mouth to stifle a sob of emotion. The big-hearted louse! “Oh, Sam,” was all she could say.
“Don’t go getting all soppy over this. It’s not like I’m adopting the kid or anything. I just didn’t want him to think there were no lifelines out there when things got rough.”
She walked up to him, looped her arms around his neck and gave him a quick kiss. “Sam, I’m not surprised at all that you would do such a thing. But I’m moved.” She put a hand over her heart and patted it for emphasis. “Deeply moved.”
“Yeah?” he said, looping his own arms around her waist and tugging her closer, belly to belly. “How moved?”
She laughed, not un-moved by the inviting twinkle in his eye. “We’re not going back to bed . . . especially with all those chocolate stains on the sheets. And I don’t care what you say, I’m not jingle belling again. As for the handcuffs—”
“Tsk-tsk, sweetheart. That’s not what I meant. I was hoping you were moved in another direction.” He was kissing her ear as he spoke . . . in fact, he was doing lots of stuff to her ear . . . sinfully tormenting type stuff that he knew darn well turned her melty and unable to resist any outrageous thing he suggested.
“Like?” Fool that she was for punishment, she was arching her neck to give him better access to her ear.
He chuckled softly. “Wheelbarrow sledding.”
“Well, would you look at that!” Colonel Morgan was standing at the window of the lodge, staring up at the steep, snow covered path that led to the cabins. “Unbelievable!”
All the seniors who’d been sitting about the fires dropped their sewing and craft materials and rushed forward to see what Bob was referring to.
“Is it an avalanche?”
“Betcha it’s a bunch of snowplows. Betty knows this guy from Bangor.”
“Maybe it’s geese. I saw a flock of geese fly over this morning.”
“I hope it’s not more snow. We’ll never make it to George’s wedding if it snows again.”
“If the Colonel’s tryin’ to trick us into going outside for more calisthenics, I’m gonna scream.”
Once they all arrived with a skidding halt, there was a communal gasp.
Stan took Dana’s hand and dragged her over to the window to see what all the commotion was about. It didn’t take much to excite this group. It was probably just a “super keen” icicle, or something equally non-exciting. “Super keen!” was a favorite expression of the Colonel’s. God knows what Marine Corps he’d served in. Stan had known lots of Marines over the years and not one of them would be caught dead saying, “Super keen!”
But it wasn’t an icicle, super keen or otherwise.
As one, fifteen sets of jaws dropped open with amazement.
“Holy Smoke!” Stan said. Even he wouldn’t have expected this.
Slick and Reba were barreling down the wide mountain path in what appeared to be a wheel-less wheelbarrow, of all things. The closer they got, they could hear Slick whooping with glee, and Reba screaming with terror.
The twins, Taylor and Tyler, were jumping up and down, squealing with glee. For sure, they would be cajoling Slick into giving them rides on his improvised sled. In fact, the seniors were grabbing their jackets and hats and gloves. Stan wouldn’t be surprised if some of them wanted a test run, too.
Dana giggled at the spectacle before them as they stepped out on to the wide porch. Slick was sitting flat on his ass in the snow, where Reba had pushed him, once they’d disengaged themselves from the overturned “sled.” A royally pissed Reba was standing over him, hands on hips, giving him a tongue lashing that would blister the stripes off a referee’s uniform.
“You told me it would be fun.”
“It was fun.”
“It was not fun. It was insanity. It was the kind of wild thing imbeciles do, before they smash what little brains they have to smithereens.”
“Are you saying I’m an imbecile?” Slick was clearly amused and not taking Reba seriously enough. That became evident when he tried to stand and she shoved him back down.
“I’m not done with you yet, buster.”
“You’re not?” Slick lifted his eyebrows with exaggerated innocence.
“Uh-oh,” Stan said.
“What?” Dana asked him.
“I recognize the look on Slick’s face. Reba’s about to get her comeuppance.”
“Comeuppance? Is that a Maine word?”
He cuffed her playfully on the chin for her teasing. “Shhh! Watch Slick in action.”
And sure as sin, Slick stretched out one leg, hooked Reba’s right ankle, and in one fluid move had her on the ground, flat on her back. Then the two of them were rolling over and over down the rest of the hill. It was hard to tell which one was on top, and by then they were both laughing and kissing and having a jolly ol’ time. Stan wished he could have been th
ere in that same situation . . . with Dana, of course. He was in sore need of a jolly ol’ time . . . minus the roughhousing.
Dana squeezed his forearm, as if in understanding.
On the other hand, who needed wet snow? He had Dana, and a roaring fire in the fireplace, and a beautiful tree, and what was turning into the best Christmas of his life.
As the seniors started to straggle back in, Dr. Meg was heard to comment to Dr. Maggie, “I predict another wedding besides George’s.”
Dr. Maggie nodded. “Probably before spring.”
Stan grinned at that prospect. Sam Merrick, the first of The Three Musketeers to bite the dust. He couldn’t wait to razz him about it. Maybe he’d sing the Queen song, “Another one bites the dust. Another one bites the dust . . . ”
But then Dr. Meg levelled her direct gaze on him, even as she addressed her sister. “Yes, indeed. In fact, sister, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were two weddings.”
Stan felt his face turn hot. Beside him, Dana was shaking with suppressed laughter at his discomfort. He would take care of her later.
Maudeen must have overheard the whole thing because she provided the zinger. “Why stop at two? I’m predicting a triple-header. Anyone seen that JD since last night?”
With perfect timing, Slick walked up, Reba in tow under his arm. He was beaming like a bloody Christmas star. And she was staring at him as if he’d just invented something wonderful, like chocolate . . . or sex.
Everyone exchanged knowing glances, and burst out laughing.
Sam was outside, behaving like a wild kid who’d never outgrown the need for childhood thrills. Reba was inside, behaving like a responsible adult, having just cleaned up from the midday brunch. She wasn’t making any judgment calls about Sam—in fact, it warmed her heart to see him so openly exuberant—but she wasn’t even a tiny bit envious of the scream-ridden events taking place before her eyes. She and Sam were so different.
Smiling, she stood at the window of the lodge, watching. A cup of hot cocoa was cradled in her hands. You’d think she would have been sick of chocolate after the previous night, but apparently it had only whetted her appetite. Sam had handed her the beverage before heading outdoors, accompanied by a wicked wink and a whispered promise . . . also wicked.