by Alison Kent
Carrie’s eyes bulged at that one. “But your mom left.”
Austin lifted Carrie’s hand and brought it to his lips. “That changed who she was, not the promises he made. In his mind, he had an obligation to be a faithful married man.”
Carrie brushed her palm over Austin’s cheek. “You’re a healthy male with needs and smile that attracts women from miles around. I don’t expect you to deny yourself.”
“You really want me sleeping with other women?” Her body bucked as if he’d hit her. The flinch gave him hope. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. The idea of you with anyone else makes me crazed.”
“I haven’t…I mean, I’m not.” She cleared her throat. “Not yet.”
Relief plowed through him hard enough to knock him on his love-struck ass. Somehow, he kept his body upright and his voice even. “Mitch said you were dating.”
“He was probably trying to make you nuts.”
Austin tugged her even closer. “It worked.”
“You should get back to work.” She whispered the words just inches from his mouth.
The ground shifted. Not in a shattering earthquake type of way. This amounted to a tiny tremor, but Austin felt the subtle move all around him. The conversation provided an opening, a way in and back to her. Now he had to figure out how to use it without scaring the crap out of her.
“Why don’t you go get changed and come back and look for a tree for real this time.” He’d use Christmas or anything else he could think of to win her over and keep her close.
With a small kiss on his chin, she stepped out of his hold. “For both our sakes I better go home and stay there.”
“Are you sure?” When she nodded he took a risk and asked the question playing in his mind. “Will you come back another time?”
She hesitated until he wiggled his eyebrows at her and she laughed. “Okay, fine.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow, and I’ll bring you guys dinner.”
He held a hand to his chest. “You know the way to a man’s heart. Wait, you’re not cooking are you?”
“Funny. And I’m taking care of your stomach. You’re on your own with your heart.”
He watched her walk away and thought about how wrong she was.
Chapter Five
This time Carrie came to the lot prepared for the cold weather and a duo of hungry men. She wore jeans and boots and her warmest scarf, the maroon one her mother had made for Christmas last year.
You could take a girl out of West Virginia but that didn’t mean she’d lose her mind and forget how to dress for snow.
As usual, the lot buzzed with endless activity, most of it female. Both Spence and Austin worked the crowd, showing off trees and tying the precious purchases to the roofs of cars. They collected money as if it didn’t matter, keeping all the focus on the clients.
Their dad had taught them that trick. She’d seen him do it a million times. Focus on the person in front of him as if there was no one else in the world.
Good thing she’d brought the thermos because this could be a long wait. She opened the shed door and heard the low rumble of voices. Not just voices, the familiar sound of football play-by-play.
“Leave it to Austin to find a rebroadcast of the West Virginia game on the radio.”
Shaking her head, she set the bag of plastic containers down on the makeshift office’s desk, along with the coffee and soup. She’d almost made it back out when Austin stepped inside, bringing a gust of frigid air with him.
“Only a true fan would have the repeat game on when he can’t be in the room to listen to it.” She leaned over and fiddled with the knob on the side.
“Hey, what are you doing there?”
“Turning it off?”
His eyes grew wide in mock horror. “Rebroadcast or not, touching that dial would be a criminal offense.”
“I’ll settle for turning it down.” And she did before he could yell about it. “Go Mountaineers.”
“Could use more enthusiasm since they lose this one to Pittsburgh, but better.” He blew on his gloved hands. “It’s going to snow.”
“You could always tell.”
“Not sure if it’s my innate ability to read the signs or the fact it started coming down a second ago.”
She leaned in and glanced out the big window that overlooked the lot. “Ah, brilliant.”
White flecks filled the near-black sky and landed on the tree branches. She inhaled and even through the walls could pick out the refreshing scent of pine, the same smell she associated with Holloway and hayrides and hours of racing around outside once the school cancellation announcement came across the crawl on the bottom of the television screen.
If she closed her eyes she could blink her way back to the wooded acres surrounding Austin’s house and relive the last winter she spent there. The nights so deadly quiet except for the soft rustle of branches and slick click of icy snow as it fell and piled in feet-high stacks.
Austin slid a thigh onto the desk and studied her. “What are you thinking about?”
“Why?”
“You’re smiling.”
The memory filled her with the same comfort as a cozy blanket on a cold night. “Trudging through the snow until I could barely lift my leg and was so tired I almost fell over. Impromptu snowball fights and the rumbling sound of the snow blower.”
“You’re kind of making me hot.”
She coughed out a laugh and kept going until she doubled over and her stomach ached. When she opened her eyes again, he was at her side with that soft expression of amusement on his sexy mouth.
He slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her body tight to his. “You okay there?”
“You make me smile.”
His hand tightened on her arm. “Good to know.”
“Everything about you tempts me.”
“Then I’ll stay quiet to keep from messing this moment up.”
She turned in his arms, settling in and resting her palms against his chest. “You know this isn’t about you or my feelings for you, right? It’s never been a matter of being unsure about those.”
He just stared at her.
She rested her forehead against his. “You can talk, you know.”
A long breath escaped his chest and blew across her cheek. She could feel every last inch of him tense under her fingertips.
“Gotta be honest. The break-up feels like it’s about me. I’m the one you left. That you keep leaving.”
The sadness in those blue eyes zapped her strength and left her weak and shaking. She searched for the right words to shift the blame back to her where it belonged.
Fancy explanations and big psychology words filled her brain. She pushed it all out and went with the simple truth. “I don’t want to be my mother.”
His eyes narrowed but his hands kept up their soothing brush against her back. “I don’t get it.”
“Mitch and I have known for a few years that we’re the reason she stayed in West Virginia, with my dad. In the family.”
“I still don’t—”
Carrie pressed a finger against Austin’s lips. “She wanted out. Still wants out.”
“Maybe you’re being hard on her? She may not be perfect but she’s a hell of a mom. Always there for you no matter what.”
With Austin’s fractured family background, having a mom who managed to hang around and stuck it out likely seemed damn near perfect. His life made her explanation even harder. “She’s there in body only.”
Austin, always so sure with his words, stumbled and stammered until he finally got a sentence out. “She can cook a meal for fifty people without blinking. She came to every event for you and Mitch, and stayed up for the end of every date when I brought you home like she was a member of the kissing police or something.”
“Baking and sewing, yeah, she taught herself all of it because her mother told her that’s what good wives did.” And Carrie’s mother had refused to p
ass on any of the kitchen wisdom. Whether on purpose or not wasn’t clear, but the list of supposed wifely virtues skipped right over Carrie.
Austin put a hand under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “I’m lost.”
She fought to bring back the memory she’d worked so hard to trample and erase. “She wanted to be a journalist. To see the world. The job at that dinky penny saver is as close as she got to roaming in search of stories that mattered to her.”
“You’re making a leap from your mother’s college major and current hobby to a life of dissatisfaction.”
Carrie wished that were true. She’d give anything for Austin to be right…but he wasn’t. “I lived it. Saw how desperation and disappointment could eat away at a person until there was nothing left. No dreams or hope.”
The way her mom sat at one end of the dinner table and stared down to the other end with eyes filled with anger. A misplaced comment about how there was nothing left for her or a harsh joke about how Carrie’s father ruined everything. Jokes her father never joined in.
Her parents didn’t have an easy give-and-take or even a steady comfort. They laughed and smiled, but never while in the same room together. The separate beds and separate bedrooms amounted to more than a hint about their coexistence. They tolerated each other and nothing else.
“Did she tell you all of this?” Austin asked in a low voice as his thumb traced the outline of Carrie’s lower lip.
“She never planned to get married. She got pregnant. Mitch’s birth certificate gave that part and his real birthday away. The diary we found in the attic when we cleaned it out for her to make a sewing room told us the rest.” The words were burned on her brain until they blurred in front of her.
“Damn.”
“She settled on a life she didn’t want and has spent forever being bitter about it.”
“Have you asked her about the diary and what it means?” The doubt in his words came through. He all but shouted his denial.
“I don’t have to. I can see it in everything she does. She gave up her dreams and regrets her choices.”
Austin’s hands fell from her sides. “And we’re not just talking about her right now.”
Carrie’s heart thundered. She was surprised it didn’t pound right out of her chest. “No.”
“You’re afraid the same thing will happen to you.”
All the pressure and all those fears bubbled up to the surface. “I can’t look back twenty years from now and hate myself, and you, for not at least trying the life I’ve always wanted.”
Everything boiled down to those simple statements. Imagining a life where she hated Austin and their kids for all they stole from her? She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t risk it.
“Hey.” Spence stuck his head in the door. The red nose and cheeks either meant he’d reached ice-cube level or the fury inside him spiked his temperature.
From his severe frown, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Do you need something?”
“Sorry to break up the lovefest, but we have about a thousand people out here wanting trees.” Spence focused all of his intensity on Austin. “I think I spied a bus of gawking women waiting for a sighting of you, so let’s go.”
Austin didn’t look at his brother. “I need a second.”
Spence stepped inside and closed the door behind him, trapping them all in the small space. “You’re not getting me here, little brother. If you don’t get out here I am going to kill you. Probably with one of our Christmas trees.”
That time Austin broke eye contact with Carrie and turned to Spence. “We’ll be right out.”
“You’ll go now while I take two seconds to warm up.”
Before Austin blew up, she put a hand on his forearm and nodded. “We’re okay. Go.”
He grumbled something about wishing he was an only child and stomped out of the shed. He slammed the door on his way. As if they needed another sign of his anger.
“Grumpy, isn’t he?” Spence smiled as he dug into the bag she brought.
Amazing how all that outrage disappeared as soon as Spence found the food and Austin got pushed into the cold. Carrie shook her head in reluctant respect over Spence’s calculating plan. “That outrage thing was fake?”
“The threat and forcing him out of here? Yeah.” Spence held up the thermos and shook it. “Soup?”
“Chicken noodle.”
“Homemade?”
“Only if you want to be poisoned.”
“Still a fine chef, I see.”
She refused to spend one second feeling guilty. Finding pre-prepared dinners in the upscale grocery stores in town was not a hardship. “I can order with the best of them.”
Spence poured a cup and then blew on it. It took another few seconds for him to stop eyeing up the food and look at her again. “What?”
“Your brother is not happy with you.”
Spence’s eyebrow lifted. “Are we sure I’m the problem?”
“He didn’t threaten to kill me.”
“Actually, I did the threatening, but if you’re worried you go out there and help him.”
Realizing she wasn’t going to win this argument, or any Thomas argument for that matter, she pulled her gloves back on and headed for the door. She stopped right before she opened it. “May I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Where are you two staying while you’re in D.C.?”
“Spent one night in a total dive off New York Avenue and are lucky to still be alive. The rats had claimed the shower, so we went without.” Closing his eyes, he took a long and savoring drink of the soup. “Now we’re staying in the basement of a guy Austin knows from the Forest Service. He’s in the middle of a divorce and needs the cash.”
Sounded like more money Austin couldn’t afford to spend. “It’s an odd arrangement for grown men.”
“Austin will do anything for you.” Spence toasted her with the thermos cup. “Even if it means sharing a ratty old sofa bed with me. Way I look at it, you both owe me.”
Chapter Six
Austin watched Carrie walk around the lot the next evening. The lights danced against her hair as she studied the branches and dodged the icy patches in the grass.
Unlike some other ladies looking at trees, Carrie wore her sturdy West Virginia weather gear and had her hands tucked into her jacket pockets. She had the unapproachable and uninterested thing down, but he knew the warmth blooming under all those layers. The blank expression didn’t fool him.
“This is the fifth day in a row she’s been here. I guess you are irresistible.” Spence looked Austin up and down then scoffed. “You hide it well.”
“She must not be sold on my charm either since she’s still fighting me so hard.”
“Did I miss something? Because when I walked in on you guys yesterday in the trailer you were all over each other.”
What Austin wouldn’t give to be over her, under her, next to her. He’d take any part of her at this point. Any sign that he had a shot and wasn’t wasting his time. “Hardly.”
“More action than I’m getting.”
Austin wasn’t touching that. He had more important things to worry about than his brother’s temporarily derailed sex life. “She’s afraid she’s going to end up like her mother, resenting her life because she didn’t go out and see the world.”
“Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately.”
“So, she’s picking the world over you. Interesting.” Spence covered his laugh with a fake cough.
“Happy you’re amused.”
“It’s all a bit New Age for my taste. City folks tend to make easy things difficult. I’m convinced they like the stress.”
Austin agreed. Tiptoeing around Carrie’s moods took a lot of energy. He found the whole game they were playing a nuisance, but a supportive boyfriend kept that kind of thing to himself if he ever wanted sex again. And he did.
“She just needs to experience some of what’s out here then she can
come home,” he said.
“Do you know how condescending that sounds?”
“I’m telling the truth.”
Spence shook his head. “I see an idiotic plan in your future.”
“She’s seeing the world now. It’s just a matter of her realizing D.C. is not that much different from home and giving in.”
Austin replayed the comment in his head right after he said it. Even he had to admit the words sounded stupid all strung together like that. He’d all but been chest-pounding. Not his finest moment to be sure.
“Have you looked around?” Spence pointed around the lot, twice stopped on a blonde hovering near the office steps.
“What?”
“The woman.” Spence adjusted his aim. “Not that one. I mean Carrie.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not just about the traffic and the tall buildings. This place is different. I’m betting that museum she works in is a step up from the crappy tourist gallery she worked at in Harper’s Ferry.”
All good points. Since he didn’t have a good response, Austin decided to ignore them.
Spence shook his head. “You’re still clueless.”
“I agree.” Carrie snuck up on them and shouldered her way between them.
Austin almost launched into a half apology, half explanation until he saw the smile on her face. Whatever she overheard hadn’t ticked her off. Got lucky for once. “You don’t even know what Spence is talking about.”
She handed her coffee cup to Spence after he stared at it without blinking for what felt like a half hour. Folding her hands in front of her, she smiled. “I heard the word clueless and assumed he meant you.”
Austin made a face and pretended to be offended, even though they all had enough experience with each other to know it would take a hell of a lot more than that. “That’s harsh.”
Spence took a sip then closed his eyes in a look of appreciation seldom reserved for caffeine. “I think she’s reading you about right.”
As far as Austin was concerned there was one person too many in this discussion. He pointed at the one who needed to leave. “Spence, go away.”