The Maverick's Midnight Proposal

by Brenda Harlen

  Chapter Eleven

  Given a choice, Luke would choose to muck out stalls rather than battle crowds of holiday shoppers any day of the week. But since he’d decided to stay in Rust Creek Falls for Christmas—now less than a week away—he didn’t really have that option.

  Thankfully, he had Eva to keep him company and guide him through the labyrinth of stores. And though she’d insisted that they hit the road early in order to be at the mall in Kalispell when it opened on Wednesday, she had two large coffees and a bag of bear claws ready to go when he picked her up at the doughnut shop.

  Fueled up on sugar and caffeine, they’d tackled his list with purpose and determination. A few hours later, when their arms were already weighed down with too many bags, he accepted yet another along with a cheery “Merry Christmas” from the sales clerk and fell into step behind Eva as they exited the store.

  “That’s it,” she said as they carefully merged with the crowd of shoppers stampeding down the corridor.

  “What’s it?”

  “You’re finished,” she told him. “Your list is done.”

  “I am? It is?”

  She held up the list of names he’d written out and showed him the check marks she’d put beside each name as he’d purchased gifts.

  “That’s great,” he said, and meant it. “Now we can tackle your list. You’ve done a lot of looking but you haven’t bought anything.”

  “That’s because I’m finished my Christmas shopping,” she told him.

  “You’re finished already?”

  “Christmas is in five days,” she pointed out. “I would guess that most of the people here are finishing up, not just getting started.”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone to buy presents for—and celebrate the holidays with—and I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the task.”

  “I think you came up with some really great ideas,” she said encouragingly.

  “Well, from what I’ve learned about the triplets, I suspect they’ll be just as happy with the boxes as whatever is inside them.”

  “That’s probably true,” she acknowledged. “But I still think the toddler sports center was a good choice.”

  “And the box is big enough that Henry, Jared and Katie will all fit inside.”

  She laughed, easily picturing the scene he described. “It’s a good thing you already took it out to your truck, or we wouldn’t have been able to carry all of these other bags.”

  “Did I overdo it?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so. But now you have to wrap them.”

  “I never thought about that,” he admitted.

  “Which means that you need to get paper and tape and bows.”

  “Or I could take my gifts to that wrapping station at the center of the mall,” he suggested as an alternative.

  She shook her head. “That’s not very personal—and it will cost you a fortune.”

  “But it will save me hours of wrangling with paper and tape and bows. Unless...” He deliberately left the rest of the thought unspoken.

  “You’re right—you don’t know how to be subtle,” Eva noted dryly. “But yes, I’ll help with your wrapping.”

  * * *

  Before Luke was willing to tackle that project, however, he told Eva that he needed food. So they picked up pizza and wings on their way back to his sister’s house because as much as she appreciated his offer to buy dinner anywhere she wanted to go, what she really wanted was just to sit down and put her feet up for a while.

  When the pizza box was empty and the wings were decimated to the bone, he cleared away the remnants of their dinner while Eva set up a wrapping station on Bella’s enormous dining room table.

  “I said I would help you with the wrapping—not that I would do it all,” she pointed out to Luke a few hours later as he sat across from her, watching.

  “Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m too dazzled by your skill to concentrate on my task.”

  “Wrapping presents is hardly a skill. Besides, the only thing I asked you to do was measure and cut the paper.”

  “And I even screwed that up,” he muttered.

  She nodded and, unable to resist teasing him a little, remarked, “Impulsive penetration.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There’s no need to apologize,” she said soothingly. “It’s a common rookie mistake.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Are we still talking about gift wrapping?”

  She chuckled. “Yes, we’re talking about gift wrapping—and the fact that you kept rushing to cut the paper without ensuring that it fit around the box.”

  “And that’s...impulsive penetration?”

  “Of course,” she said with feigned innocence. “What did you think I was talking about?”

  “I didn’t want to imagine,” he said dryly. “And now I’ve been demoted to bows.”

  “Bows and tags,” she said, handing him the last box so that he could add those final touches. “Those tasks seem more in line with your experience.”

  “Where did you acquire your obviously vast experience?” he wondered aloud.

  “Years of practice, including Presents for Patriots at the community center every Christmas.”

  “What’s Presents for Patriots?” he asked.

  “I keep forgetting that you’ve been gone for almost a dozen years,” she admitted, loading up an armful of presents to add to the growing pile already under the Christmas tree in the family room. “It’s a gift drive for our troops that started in Thunder Canyon and was adopted by Rust Creek Falls a few years back. Local individuals and businesses donate the presents and a few weeks before Christmas, volunteers gather at the community center to wrap them.”

  “And somehow, even with all the other demands on your time, you manage to participate in that, too.”

  “It’s a good cause,” she said.

  “No doubt,” he agreed, as he arranged the wrapped packages beneath the tree. “But that doesn’t add more hours to your day.”

  She shrugged. “Well, sleep is mostly overrated.”

  “You’re an amazing woman, Eva Rose Armstrong.”

  “I’m not really.”

  He touched a finger to her lips, silencing her protest. “You are,” he insisted. “Amazing...and irresistible.”

  Then his finger dropped away and his mouth covered hers.

  His kiss was amazing and irresistible.

  Not that Eva made any attempt to resist. Why would she when this was exactly what she wanted? He was exactly what she wanted.

  And, finally, it seemed as if she was what he wanted, too.

  Her lips parted willingly for him, and their tongues began to dance together in a sensual rhythm that made her heart pound and her knees tremble.

  “Do you want to know the real reason that I offered to help wrap your presents?” she asked when he eased his lips from hers.

  “Because you never say no when someone asks a favor?” he teased.

  “Because I know you still have mixed feelings about being in Rust Creek Falls for Christmas and I wanted to help make some new and happy memories for you.”

  “Since we’re sharing confessions, I have to admit that spending time with you has already made this holiday better than the last dozen.”

  The simple sincerity of his words filled her heart with joy and hope.

  “Let’s make it even better,” she suggested, pulling his mouth down to hers again.

  He didn’t resist. The heat that had been simmering between them since the beginning had intensified over the past week. That heat spread through her veins now, so hot and fierce she melted against him.

  As their tongues tangled together, his hands stroked leisurely up her back, the
n slowly down again. She shivered against him, an action that caused her already hardened nipples to brush the solid wall of his chest. A groan rumbled low in his throat as he clamped an arm behind her back and hauled her tight against him.

  The unmistakable evidence of his arousal against her belly increased her own, and she rubbed wantonly against him. She had no interest in pretending that she didn’t want to get naked with Luke. Right now she had no interest in anything but tearing his clothes off.

  But when she reached for the top button of his shirt, he caught her wrists in his hands and held them. “As much as I want you, Eva, this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my time in Rust Creek Falls is limited,” he reminded her gently.

  “I know, and two weeks are already gone, so why are we wasting the time we have left?”

  “You’d really be okay with a short-term relationship?”

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice,” she admitted. “But if that’s all you’re willing to give me—”

  “It’s all I can give you.”

  “Then it’s better than nothing.”

  He looked as if he was tempted to take what she was offering, but then he shook his head. “There’s still so much you don’t know about me, that if you did know, would make you understand why getting involved with me is a bad idea.”

  “So tell me.”

  * * *

  For a lot of years, Luke had tried to not even think about what happened the night his parents were killed. He’d certainly never talked about it. That was, until a few days earlier when he’d finally confided in Danny—only to discover that his brother had never blamed Luke but had, instead, put the whole responsibility on his own shoulders.

  It had been a little easier after that to tell it to Bella, who cried with her arms around him. Her tears were of grief, for everything they’d all lost, and somehow offered him a measure of healing he’d never expected. Then he’d told it again to Jamie, who’d reacted with considerably less affection but absolutely no judgment.

  Now he needed to tell Eva. Before they took their relationship to the next level, she had a right to know the truth about who he was. She needed the whole truth in order to decide if she really wanted to be with him.

  “It’s not a story with a happy ending,” he warned.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  So he did.

  He led her to the sofa and sat beside her, then told her the whole sordid story of what happened the night his parents were killed—how he’d been drinking at an out-of-town bar with his friends and his brothers, because Bailey would never be served in Rust Creek Falls where everyone knew that he wasn’t yet twenty-one. He’d been having a great time, dancing with some of the pretty girls in the bar that night and simply loving life.

  “How old were you?” Eva asked.

  “Twenty-one,” he admitted. “Bailey was twenty, Danny only eighteen.”

  “You’ve been beating yourself up for almost twelve years over a mistake that you made when you were twenty-one?”

  “That mistake changed everything.”

  “Maybe you exercised poor judgment that night,” she acknowledged. “But you’re not responsible for what happened to your parents.”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I was drunk, so a lot of my memories of that night are hazy—but only up until the part where a county sheriff came into the bar and told us about the accident.” He dropped his head into his hands. “The funeral was—” he paused, searching for a word that could somehow sum up the gut-wrenching experience of standing shoulder to shoulder with his brothers and sisters to say a final goodbye to their parents. No word was adequate so he settled on “—awful.”

  Truthfully, he didn’t remember much about the funeral, except that his tie had been knotted too tight at his throat, and his heart had felt like a lead weight in his chest. He didn’t hear anything the minister said, because the words were drowned out by the echo of my fault, my fault, my fault over and over again inside Luke’s head.

  “After the funeral, we all went back to my grandparents’ place. Matthew and Agnes Baldwin were my mom’s parents—and they weren’t happy about having the responsibility of even their youngest grandchildren thrust upon them, after making it clear that me and Bailey and Danny couldn’t stay with them.”

  “That’s when you left Rust Creek Falls,” she realized.

  He nodded. “We told ourselves that we were doing what was best for our younger siblings, believing that the grandparents would be able to handle four kids more easily than seven. But the truth was, I was grateful for the excuse to get away—from my own grief and guilt.”

  Eva touched a hand to his arm in a wordless gesture of support. He glanced at her, saw that her beautiful blue eyes shimmered with tears. But there was no judgment in her gaze, only sympathy and compassion—neither of which he deserved.

  “We headed south and ended up in Wyoming, where we got hired on as ranch hands. We stuck together for a while...then we didn’t.

  “Danny and Bailey were all I had left of my family, but I let them go, too...because I felt like I deserved to lose everything and everyone who mattered to me.”

  * * *

  Listening to the anguish in his tone, seeing the devastation in his eyes, nearly broke Eva’s heart. But concerned that he might misinterpret her tears, she determinedly held them in check.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Luke,” she told him, her tone sympathetic but firm. “And maybe that chapter of your life didn’t have a happy ending, but it’s not the end of your story. There are a lot more chapters still to be written. You get to decide on the ending you want.”

  “I’ve never had a serious relationship with a woman,” he confided. “Anytime someone starts to get too close, I back away.”

  “You’ve lost a lot of people that you cared about,” she acknowledged. “It’s understandable that you’d be wary about falling in love.”

  “Maybe I’m not just wary. Maybe I’m not capable of loving anyone.”

  She didn’t believe that. She wouldn’t believe it. Luke had suffered more loss than any one person should ever have to, but she was confident that his return to Rust Creek Falls was the beginning of his healing. His family’s support and understanding were only one key to the process. Another key was finding a woman that he could trust enough to open up his heart to love again, and she believed that she was that woman. Because she was already in love with him.

  Of course, it was far too early to tell him that, so she decided to show him instead. She lifted her arms to his shoulders and rose on her toes to press her lips to his. “What time do you expect your sister and brother-in-law to be home?”

  “They’re gone until Friday,” he admitted. “Hudson flew Bella to New York City to go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center.”

  “That’s a long way to go to strap on a pair of skates.”

  “There was also something about shopping on Fifth Avenue and taking in a Broadway show. He’s pulling out all the stops for their first Christmas as husband and wife.”

  “She’s a lucky girl.”

  “Yes, she is,” he agreed. “Now.”

  She lifted her hands to his face. He had that look in his eye, the one that told her he was still haunted by events from the past. She didn’t want him thinking about the past. She wanted him in the here and now, with her.

  She brushed her lips against his again. “What do you say we get lucky, too?”

  Any lingering sadness in his eyes was pushed aside by heat. “I’m realizing now that I got luckier than I ever imagined the day I walked into Daisy’s for a cup of coffee.”

  “Large. Black. To go.” She recited the first words he’d said to her that day.

  His lips curved, but the smile didn’t quite edge the
worry from his eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

  She responded by lifting her sweater over her head and tossing it aside, then reached back to unzip her skirt so that it puddled at her feet, leaving her standing before him in only a white lace bra, bikini panties and stay-up stockings.

  He swallowed. “I don’t think we’re going to make it upstairs to my bed,” he warned. “Not this time.”

  She smiled, pleased by his response and satisfied that he was no longer fighting what they both wanted. “I don’t want to go upstairs. I want you here. Now.”

  He yanked a blanket off the back of the sofa and spread it out on the floor. Then he reached for a remote on the mantel, pressed a couple of buttons and flames flickered to life in the hearth.

  “Nice,” she said approvingly.

  “Very nice,” he agreed, his eyes never leaving her body.

  The heat in his gaze warmed her all over, but she stepped closer to the fire, closer to Luke. She splayed her hands on his chest and, even through the thick flannel of his shirt, she felt his heart beating, strong and steady, beneath her palms.

  “You’re a little overdressed,” she told him.

  This time, when she reached for his button, he made no move to stop her. Her fingers worked quickly, and she parted the fabric and pushed it over his shoulders, eager to put her hands on his bare skin—only to discover that he was wearing a long-sleeved thermal shirt beneath the flannel.

  “It’s winter in Montana,” he explained, but he tugged the shirt over his head and tossed it aside. She hummed her approval as she slid her hands over his bare torso, her fingers tracing the ridges and ripples of his muscles, her nails scraping lightly over his skin.

  He took her mouth in another hot, hungry kiss as she reached for the buckle of his belt, eager to help him discard the rest of his clothing. When he was completely and gloriously naked, he peeled the last scraps of lace from her body before easing her down onto the blanket and stretching out over her.

  “You smell like a sugar cookie,” he murmured as his lips moved over her jaw and down her throat, the stubble on his jaw scraping erotically against her skin. “And you taste even sweeter.”