by Alison Kent
“If you want to pack up your things, I can drive you home.”
She followed the direction of his gaze, saw the road had been cleared, the snow graded into banks on either side. “Santa stopped by?”
His laughter echoed as did the grating creaks of the barn door opening. He led Ranger inside. Brenna followed.
“Bud Travers. As soon as a storm blows itself out, mine is the first road he clears.”
“On Christmas Day?”
“Upset stomachs, food poisoning. Happens every year.”
She thought about that. “If folks are counting on you to be here, how can you drive me home?”
Tending to Ranger’s needs, he finally shrugged as if making a decision he wasn’t sure was the right one. “There’s a doc in Asheville who handles emergencies and cases I can’t. My patients know him. I’ll put a sign at the end of the drive. I can spare the day.”
“What about my car?”
“I’ll have Bud tow it up here. Leave me your number. He can let you know how bad the damage is.”
She could wait for her car. Stay here until she knew whether or not it was a total loss. And that would accomplish what? Give her another day or two in Dillon’s bed? Time she’d set aside to pack up her life in Raleigh?
She’d made a commitment. She had obligations. She couldn’t just up and change her mind. Who did that? She doubted Gran ever had, or her folks.
He was right. It was time to go home.
As homeless as she felt, it was time.
Chapter Twelve
Dillon was starting to wonder if he’d ever catch up on his sleep. Since Brenna had plowed into the snowbank, he’d lost way too many hours thinking about her, worrying about her, wondering about a life with her. And yes, making love.
Being awake for the latter was the best loss of shut-eye he’d had in years. The best loss ever, if he was honest. Yeah, he’d dated during his days as an ER doc, and he’d hooked up a few times with female soldiers in need of the same intimate comfort.
But Brenna, for whatever reason, was the first woman ever to have him thinking beyond the next time he could get her into bed. And that surprised him. Since his service, he’d done no more than exist a day at a time. He doubted he had it in him to promise forever, and that’s what she deserved.
She lay beside him now, in her bed in her Raleigh condo, on her side but facing away, her shoulders moving ever so slightly each time she inhaled. More than anything, he longed to fold himself around her, but resisted the urge so as not to wake her.
As long as she stayed sleeping, he wouldn’t have to get up and get dressed and make the drive back to the mountain without her. He wouldn’t have to think about never seeing her again, though that was the only thought he had and his throat burned with it, his chest a crushing weight he couldn’t budge.
“I can hear you thinking,” she said, her voice, already raspy, even more so with sleep.
He rolled toward her, bent his knees to fit behind hers, draped an arm over her waist and tucked his hand between her breasts. He was going to miss this. Miss her.
God, he was going to miss her, he admitted, fighting to swallow how much. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.” She held his arm tight against her, wound her legs between his. “I just fake it better than you do.”
“You’re still talking about sleep, right?”
Laughing softly, she turned toward him, plucked at the hair on his chest. “None of last night was faked. Trust me. You…make things happen.”
His ego wasn’t the only thing swelling at that. “That’s good to know.”
“Please. Like you didn’t know it already.”
“A man can never hear the truth enough.”
In the soft light of dawn filtering into her room, he saw her expression go from happy to sad. “All truths? Even the one about me not wanting you to leave? Wishing you could stay with me here until it’s time for me to leave for Africa?”
That one he could do without. The thought of coming to terms with those eight thousand miles was already giving him hell. But his leaving Raleigh—and soon—wasn’t an option. Ranger would be fine until he got back, but he’d skipped rounds yesterday, and sign or no sign, he had folks who’d be waiting, who he hadn’t let know he’d be away.
Folks who counted on him. Folks he couldn’t let down.
But if Brenna said the word… “I need to get back to the mountain.”
She sent a searching look over his face, her eyes soft and damp. “It’s like I’ve known you forever. Like I’m leaving behind my best friend. I’m already having a hard time leaving Gran, but now there’s you.”
He reached over, brushed her hair from her forehead, said nothing but, “Shh.”
But that had her shaking her head, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes with the motion. She brought up her hand to cup his face, ran a thumb along his cheekbone, pressed her lips together, but still they quivered.
That quiver killed him. It goddamn killed him. “Brenna, sweetheart. Please don’t cry.”
“How am I going to leave you?” she asked, her voice cracking on the whisper. “How am I going to know you’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” He reached for her wrist, turned her hand to kiss her palm, tasted the salt of tears he wasn’t aware he’d let go. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m going to make sure Gran looks after you,” she said, moving her hand to his neck, his shoulder, caressing him until they both shivered and her nipples pebbled against his chest.
“She already does,” he said, his lower body going hard. “We just pretend I’m the one checking on her.”
“I’m glad.” She rubbed her thigh against him where his erection prodded her, drawing a scratching, primal groan from his throat. “It’ll be easier, knowing you two have each other.”
“For you, maybe.” Nothing would make this easier for him. She couldn’t know what she’d given him in the short time they’d had, and to lose her so soon… He wasn’t losing her. He couldn’t think that way. Time healed all wounds, right? So far he hadn’t found the old adage to be particularly true, but just maybe…
“It won’t be that bad. You’ll see.” Her hand drifted down between their bodies, her thumb stroking his sensitive skin where it pulled tight. “Time will fly, and who knows. This time next year—”
“This time next year you’d better be in my bed.” He growled out the words, believing nothing she was saying, not about time or how bad or easy things would or wouldn’t be. Believing only in the connection he’d found with her and his body’s need for hers.
He rolled over her, sheathed himself with a condom from her bedside table and didn’t even let himself draw a full breath until he was buried deep. She hooked her heels against his lower back, shifted her hips to take him farther inside.
And then he began to move, slow measured strokes she met with synced rhythmic thrusts, keeping him close, keeping him safe. Keeping him balanced and certain. He didn’t want to have all that taken away, and he told her with the movements he made, the steady rise of heat between them, the labored heartbeats they shared.
Her fingers walked up his spine, threaded into his hair, learned the curve of his ear and the ridges of his brow and the crooked slant of his nose. She kissed him as she touched him, her tongue slipping past his lips to find his, the noises she made—oofs and ohs and grunted sighs—like air puffed into his mouth.
Nothing in his life had prepared him for this…this respite, this escape. It bewildered him that she knew how to give him what he didn’t have the words to request. And then words didn’t matter. She rose up into him, heart to heart, hips to hips, crying out as she came apart. He came with her, the force of his feelings tearing into him, ripping him open.
Exhausted, he collapsed, his head next to hers on her pillow as he inhaled the scents of her hair and her skin. Long after they’d returned to reality, he remained inside her. It was the only reality he wanted to know.
***
Brenna swore the series of flights from Malawi to the States hadn’t taken as long as the drive up Gran’s mountain. Or maybe it was the delay in having to settle things in Raleigh making this last leg of her trip drag on. Since accepting her future had been set in motion when she’d plowed into that snowbank last Christmas, all she’d wanted to do was leave her old life behind for the new one she couldn’t wait to start.
The to-do list between here and there had been way too long. The first thing she’d done after her December 22nd arrival in North Carolina was pick up the truck a nurse she’d worked with at Duke Raleigh had found her. That out of the way, she’d visited the storage unit where she’d kept the few things she hadn’t been ready to part with, and loaded the pickup’s bed with only those she couldn’t live without.
She’d arranged for the rest to be donated. She’d closed out her bank accounts, changed her mail-forwarding orders from the London charity’s address to Gran’s. She’d had a long gossipy lunch with the girlfriends who’d had her back for years, promising to look them up when she was next in the city. And that was that. The end of the past. She’d hit the road for the four hour drive to her future.
The last year had been both the best of Brenna’s life and the worst. She’d done so much good where good was needed, but oh, she’d missed Dillon and Gran. Gran she’d talked to every time she could get to a phone, and during their conversations had learned things about Dillon his letters didn’t say. Things they couldn’t say. Things Gran had noticed, tiny bits and pieces of his old self emerging as the damage he’d sustained as a warrior had healed.
Brenna had thought about calling him, too, but since writing him the first time on the long flight from DC to Ethiopia, their exchanges had all been by hand. She’d added paragraphs almost every night to the letters she’d penned on yellow legal pads, routing her tomes through the charity’s headquarters rather than relying on the local post.
Dillon’s letters had been similarly patched together, though never as rambling as hers. He’d reported on weeks’ worth of life on the mountain at a time, but said very little about himself, and that was okay. He didn’t have to open a vein and bleed. She was really good at reading between the lines.
The words he’d chosen, the change in the tone of his notes, they told her everything she needed to know. She could almost hear his laughter, imagined him smiling as the pen scratched over the page. And when put together with Gran’s observations, Brenna knew her year away had been worth it.
Navigating the uphill length of his snowy drive, she wondered if he remembered what he’d said their last morning together. His words had stayed with her since. And when leaving her grandmother’s this morning, after their reunion over lasagna last night, she’d told Gran to expect her back with a guest for dinner. Just not to expect them too soon.
His cabin came into view just then, and she saw him stop halfway up his front steps and turn at the sound of her truck. He held what looked like a patient file in his hand, one he’d been studying intently, head down and black Stetson pulled low. He wore the sheepskin coat she remembered, and the boots, jeans and snap-front shirt she’d pictured him in often, and her entire midsection fluttered as if tickled by butterfly wings.
Heart pounding, she pulled to a stop, parked, cut the engine. He watched her silently, somberly, and she wiped her palms on her thighs before climbing from the cab.
“Hi,” she said, her hand close to her chest as she waved.
After an interminably long pause, he said, “You’re quite a ways from home.”
“Not really.” She shoved her keys in her pocket, slammed the truck door.
He faced her, frowning. “Last I knew you were living eight thousand miles away.”
“Yeah, well.” A shrug. “You know how the mail service has been.”
“Things have changed, you’re saying.”
“They have, yes. I’m actually looking for work.”
“Work?”
She swallowed. Swallowed again. “You wouldn’t know of anyone who could use a nurse, would you?”
He looked at her. Hard. Eyes glittering. “That mean you’re done in Malawi?”
“All done,” she said, trembling at the reaction of her body to his gaze. Oh, it was going to be hard to wait.
“What about Raleigh?”
She shook her head. “I gave up my place when I left. I’m going to stay with Gran until I can get settled on the mountain.”
He looked over her and into the forest, let that sink in. “You’re moving to the mountain?”
“I am,” she said, and nodded.
“That’s good to hear.”
So was that. She walked toward him, shivering, shaking, teeth nearly chattering as she walked up the steps. “You know what today is, don’t you?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s Christmas.” He pressed his lips together, narrowed his eyes.
Yeah, it was, but it was so much more. She held out her hand, her fingers unsteady, her future overflowing her palm until her heart ached with it. Please, please let this go well.
Nodding, her gaze holding his, she said the words she’d practiced for the last twelve months. “It’s also this time next year.”
For several seconds, he remained still, an anchor dug in deep, and then he reached for her, pulled her to him, tucking their hands to his chest that rose and fell at the same pace as hers. He was warm and solid and her everything, and she blinked away her tears before they ruined the moment, hoping, wishing, waiting…
The hard line of his mouth cracked slowly, breaking into a wicked dimpled grin. Then he dragged her with him through the front door, kicking it shut behind them.
About the Author
A born reader, it wasn’t until Alison reached thirty that she knew she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Not long after, she accepted an offer issued by the senior editor of Harlequin Temptation live on the “Isn’t It Romantic?” episode of CBS’s 48 Hours. The resulting book, Call Me, was a Romantic Times finalist for Best First Series Book.
Alison’s Harlequin Blaze title, A Long, Hard Ride, part of Harlequin’s 60th Anniversary celebration, was nominated for an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, as was Striptease from her Harlequin Blaze gIRL-gEAR series. No Limits, her Smithson Group book nine, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine as a Red-Hot Read, and The Beach Alibi, book four, was a National Quill Awards nominee.
In addition to more than forty works of fiction, Alison is also the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance and a partner in DreamForge Media as a website designer. If there’s a better career than romance writing to be had, she doesn’t want to know about it, as penning lusty tales from her backyard is the best way she’s found to convince her pack of rescue dogs they have her full attention.
A Rare Gift
Jaci Burton
A Rare Gift
Jaci Burton
With a disastrous marriage behind him, Wyatt Kent has no interest in getting involved with any woman, let alone his ex-wife’s younger sister. But when Calliope Andrews hires him to build an addition onto her day care center, Wyatt can’t help but notice she’s a desirable woman, as warm and funny as his ex was cold and aloof.
Calliope fell hard for Wyatt the first time he walked through the door of her family’s home, and can’t believe her sister let him get away. He’s still the star of all her fantasies, and she’s determined to prove to him she’s nothing like his manipulative ex. Wyatt may be all business, but Calliope sees the way he looks at her when he’s supposed to be working…
It’s not long before Wyatt and Calliope are keeping each other warm on cold December nights. But it’s going to take a Christmas miracle for Wyatt to put his trust in love a second time.
28,000 words
Dedication
For Charlie. I love you.
Chapter One
Wyatt Kent stood outside Small Hands Day Care Center, debating whether or not he could actually go
inside.
He was no coward, but it wasn’t often he was faced with something like this.
He was about to give a bid on a construction job for his ex-wife’s younger sister.
How he’d gotten stuck with this he didn’t know. That was what he got for not paying attention in meetings. He’d been bulldozed by his two brothers along with Tori, Kent Construction’s oh-so-efficient but manipulative office manager.
“No big deal, Wyatt.”
“Calliope Andrews is nothing like your ex-wife, Cassandra.”
“No one else can do the project, Wyatt. It’s either you or the job doesn’t get done.”
Might as well suck it up and get this over with. The wood-frame house was painted shocking blue and blinding white. The sign out in the front yard was plastered with a bunch of multicolored handprints.
So it was cute. The house needed a new coat of paint. Probably would need a new roof within the next year or two, too. But that wasn’t his problem. He stood at the end of the walkway and watched the endless parade of parents driving up to the side of the house. The side door opened, parents dashed in to retrieve kids, then the car drove through to the back alley and the next car pulled up.
Wyatt went up to the front door and rang the bell, then waited for someone to answer. And waited. And waited. He tried the door, figuring he’d let himself in, but it was locked.
Great.
He went around to the side and was halted by a tall, thick woman with short cropped black hair and likely more muscles than he had. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and looked more like a wrestler than a day care worker.