“Make me breakfast? You cook?” he said lightly, teasingly, trying to lighten the mood between them.
“I like to cook, actually,” she said, trying to meet him halfway. To sound normal, as if nothing had happened. As if they hadn’t almost swallowed each other whole right here in the kitchen where she used to bake Christmas cookies as a girl.
“Yeah?”
“My mother taught me. We always had a garden, fresh foods. Beef and dairy, of course. I sometimes cook dinner at my place, invite all of my friends over.”
“Really?” he said softly, looking at her, the heat burning off, but still evident in his face and in the way he held his body. “And here I thought I was one of your friends.”
That set her back. Ely, a friend?
“Why would you think that?” she asked baldly, and saw the surprise register in his face. She wasn’t known for her subtlety, but that had been rude, even for her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that, that one night aside, we really don’t know each other well. And it wasn’t like you hung around for long after the wedding.”
She sighed, looking outside where the snow whipped against the windows even harder than it had been before, and she shook her head. Her luck he couldn’t just leave now.
“You’re right. But maybe we could fix all that. Let me help, Lydia.”
“Don’t do this, Ely.”
“What?”
“Charm me. Seduce me. Wheedle your way through my defenses. Try to get what you want by working your way into my life somehow. Protect me. Whatever else you have in mind,” she said, turning to the sink to wash her hands. “You can stay tonight, and then you need to go home.”
“That sounds familiar,” he said, a little edge to his voice. “I just want to help with whatever trouble you’re having now. Be a friend. Is that so bad?”
She turned to face him, and he met her eyes.
“Really? That’s all?”
“I won’t lie. I’ve thought about that night a lot since it happened. You...that night we had, it inspired me to really think about my life and what I want out of it.”
She frowned. “How?”
“Well, for one, I think I dodged a bullet with Chloe, though I didn’t know it at the time. And meeting you, seeing how freely you enjoy life, how spontaneous and unfettered you are, it made me wonder why I’m so anxious to always tie myself down. I’ve been tied to something for my entire life—my family, the Marines, Berringer’s. Those things are important to me, but I need some...freedom, I guess. You showed me that.”
She was speechless. Stunned.
“I don’t understand. I thought that you were ashamed of being with me,” she blurted.
He looked clearly taken aback. “Whoa. Hold on a second there. I wasn’t ashamed of anything. Why would you think that?”
“You avoided me like the plague. You barely spoke to me, danced with everyone at Tessa and Jonas’s wedding but me,” she said hotly, then slapped a hand over her mouth, hating that she had let that hurtful bit slip.
Dammit. She was tired, and stretched to her last nerve, otherwise she never would have said that. Too late now.
“Hell, Lydia. I thought that was how you wanted it, for no one to know. I didn’t mean to hurt you. That wasn’t my intention. I guess I overdid it, trying to act like nothing had happened. I was pretty screwed up to start with, and afterward, I felt like a jerk for using Tessa’s best friend to forget my troubles for a night. You deserve better than that. So I kept my distance.”
Lydia pushed a hand through her hair. She’d never made an effort or tried to talk to him about it, either. They’d both made a mess of it.
“It shouldn’t matter—it doesn’t matter—but I just thought you didn’t want anyone to know that the big, brave Marine had gotten down and dirty with the Goth girl. I guess that got to me a little.”
He swore. “I didn’t mean it that way. I never thought that for a moment. I’m so sorry.”
Lydia wasn’t sure how to feel about his confession, but they’d aired it out and now she wanted to move past it.
“So now you’re a free agent? Not looking for the white picket fences anymore?” she asked.
He smiled. “Not anytime soon. I was trying too hard, rushing it. Why get tied down? At least, not in a relationship,” he said, the light in his eyes telling her that getting tied down in other ways was much more likely.
Lydia’s mind was spinning, and she turned to pick up something that had been left on the floor, needing a moment.
So what he had taken from their night together was that he wanted to be free to be with as many women as he felt like, do whatever he wanted, with no strings?
Why did that bother her so much? It was how she’d lived her life for the last twelve years. How she still lived her life.
Maybe it was because she knew he didn’t really mean it. Men like Ely didn’t change their stripes overnight. He believed in commitment, he’d been raised to believe in it, and he wanted it for himself. She’d seen it at the wedding, how he watched his parents with such open affection, and how happy he was for Jonas and Tessa. And because of how wrecked he’d been when he found out his ex had duped him.
It’s how he lived his life. Who he was to his core. He might be taking a little break from that, but ultimately, Ely was a long-term kind of guy.
“So what do you want now, Ely?”
“I want to help,” he said easily. “I know you need someone who can work on this place so you can sell it.”
She turned to look at him sharply. “And how do you know—ah, right, you were following me today.” He would have seen all of her failed attempts to find contractors to hire.
“If you want to unload this place, it needs some fixing up. I can help with that.”
She frowned, crossing her arms in front of her.
“Are you serious?”
“I am. If you want to pay for materials, the labor is free. No strings. And in case anything else happens, I’m close by.”
“That’s all?”
He stepped in closer. “I don’t know. Maybe we could stay open to anything else? No pressure and no expectations. But we’re good together.”
“No strings?”
“Nope.” He shook his head resolutely. “No rules, no commitments—except for being friends,” he said, reaching to push some hair back behind her ear. “That would be nice for when we both have to go back to Philly.”
Lydia chewed her lip, considering. She needed to unload this place, and the house needed work. He was the solution to her problem. It surprised her, really, how much she wanted to agree. And if he meant it, if it was just to help out, to be a friend, then maybe it could work.
“What happens when we go back to Philly?”
He shrugged. “We’ll be friends. We’ll go back to our lives, I guess. See each other when our paths cross.”
“What are you going to tell Tessa?”
“I’ll tell her I found you, you’re fine, and I’m stuck out here in the weather for a few days. The rest is yours to tell. Or not.”
Lydia felt enormous relief that he wasn’t going to tell Tessa about what he knew. If letting him stay here and help would prevent him from revealing her secrets to her friend, and help her get the house in shape, she’d be an idiot not to agree—and Lydia wasn’t an idiot.
It was an enormous temptation, as well, to give in to his other offer, but that could be risky—maybe even more so if he meant it, the no-strings bit. She wasn’t sure anymore if she could do that. Not when it came to Ely, and with her life so upside down.
Maybe, this time, they could find a way to be friends. They had chemistry, sure, but that didn’t mean they had to act on it, right?
“I could use help fixing things up,” she relented. “If you really know what you’re doing.”
Ely nodded, relaxing. “I do. We can talk about it in the morning. So where do you want me to sleep?” he asked, clearly wondering about the other side of his proposition.
Sh
e frowned. “Not with me. I think we could just try being friends. Not that I’m not tempted, but I have so much going on, and—”
He shushed her gently. “No problem. That’s perfectly okay. Whatever you need, Lydia.”
She smiled, not sure if she was relieved or not at his easy acceptance of her rejection. But it was for the best.
“If you don’t mind, maybe I could catch a hot shower and some shut-eye?” he asked, turning away.
Lydia blinked with how quickly they’d gone from fighting to kissing to this casual agreement. Was she fooling herself that she could have him around and maintain her distance? Was he fooling himself? No. He was straighter than an arrow, and she was stronger than that.
“Sure, the shower’s upstairs, straight down the hall on the left. The beds in the other room aren’t made up, so if you want to take the sofa, that’s fine. It’s pretty comfortable. I can make up a room for you tomorrow.”
The idea of him in her shower was filling her mind with lust.
“I can stay in the bunkhouse, if you want,” he offered.
“I’m not sure what the accommodations are like down there anymore. There’s more than enough room here, and if you’re working on the house, it makes sense,” she said easily, as if it would be no problem at all.
“Okay, then, thanks. See you in the morning,” he said casually, as if they were pals, hanging out. Easy-peasy.
When he left, she felt as if she had been picked up and landed down somewhere else, completely disoriented. Had she really gone from not wanting him here to agreeing to let him stay and help her with the house?
It all seemed so reasonable.
She picked up their empty mugs and found herself tracing the edge of the cup he had drunk from, remembering the touch of his lips and his hands. Realizing what she was doing, she put the mug down so quickly she almost broke it, and cursed under her breath.
How did he manage to turn her inside out so easily without seeming like he even suffered a hair out of place? It didn’t matter. They’d talked, kissed, and would part ways this time as...friends.
That still didn’t feel quite right, but it would make things easier when they went back to Philly. She shut off the lights and headed to bed, trying not to listen to the water running in the shower down the hall from her room. Thinking about him naked in her shower, the hot water running over all of those lovely muscles. She pretended not to notice that the door had opened a bit. A gentle invitation?
Tempting as it was, she walked into her room, shutting the door tight. Ely might think he was happy playing things free and easy, but she knew that giving in would only make things more difficult. Right now, that was the last thing she needed.
4
ELY FELT GREAT in spite of his lack of sleep the night before. He’d showered and hit the sofa, but had no expectation of sleep. Not with Lydia in her room upstairs. In her bed.
He couldn’t help but peek into the room she was using—her bags were all over the place—and she’d left the door wide open. Needless to say, the decor here was very different than her bedroom back in Philly, which was part BDSM parlor, part French boudoir.
Here, pretty watercolors hung on the walls by the bed. In her apartment, erotic black-and-whites adorned the walls of the room. The sheets in this warm-toned room were cotton, soft and comforting. There were handmade quilts on the bed.
Back home, Lydia preferred satin. They’d been scarlet red the night he’d been with her.
Needless to say, with those memories and their kiss on his mind, sleep was not going to happen. He hadn’t come here thinking about sleeping with Lydia again—quite the opposite—but after he’d kissed her, he’d hoped she might change her mind. Let him make it up to her for being such a jerk before. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but apparently, he’d done a good enough job of it that she wasn’t interested in a second go-round. That was fine, he told himself, ignoring the mocking chant in the back of his brain that said he was fooling himself.
So he’d spent a couple of hours making a list of things he’d need to start making repairs. The wiring was old but should pass inspection, he thought, but it wouldn’t hurt to replace several sockets and the old fixtures. The bigger jobs would be shoring up the kitchen floor and doing something with the windows. He wasn’t sure if she wanted to replace the windows, or if that could even be done in a timely way, but they could re-caulk and perhaps insulate them better.
He dressed and left early, the rumbling of a motor outside waking him before it was light. Not that there would be much light with the storm still dumping snow by the buckets. Predawn gave way to just a slightly less-dark morning. Smitty, the ranch manager, an older man about sixty or so, was starting up a tractor with a plow attachment outside the larger barn.
“Need an extra pair of hands?”
Smitty looked him in the eye, and nodded. “You that friend of Lydia’s that Kyle mentioned?”
“That would be me,” Ely said, offering a handshake and then going to work alongside the man. “I’ll be around for a few days, and don’t mind helping out.”
“Good to know.”
Ely grabbed a shovel to start clearing the more narrow paths as Smitty plowed the main areas between the house and the barns. Kyle emerged, heading directly to the barn without talking to either of them. He sent a glare in Ely’s direction, and Ely casually saluted back before Kyle disappeared into the barn.
The morning became a bit brighter, and Lydia came out to join them, offering only a grumbling good morning as she walked by. Not so much a morning person, he guessed.
Ely continued to work, enjoying the brisk air, though he wished he had his heavier jacket with him. The effort kept him warm, more or less, but when a wind blew, it cut through his light coat.
A ringing came from his pocket, and he pulled out his phone.
Jonas.
“Hey, brother.”
“Ely. What’s going on? Tessa won’t stop pacing, so I promised I’d call and get a status report.”
“Sorry about that. I was going to call her today, but we got hit by a storm, so we’re in the process of digging out. The white stuff is still coming down.”
“I didn’t call for a weather report,” Jonas said sarcastically, in his usual gruff style. Tessa had done a lot to soften him up, but he was still Jonas. “Are you okay? And Lydia?”
“Yeah. She’s fine, but I might stick around for a while just to make sure. My truck went off the road last night, so I ended up staying at her place.”
“Her place? How does Lydia have a place in Montana?”
Ely gave his brother the skinniest version of the truth that he could. “But I’d rather you didn’t tell Tessa any of that. Lydia wants to tell her herself when she comes home.”
Hopefully, Ely thought uncomfortably.
“I see. So until then, you’re staying with her at this ranch? Just the two of you?”
“It’s not what you think, Jon. And there are ranch hands around, as well.”
“I know how it can be to be stuck in a storm with a beautiful woman,” Jonas said with a chuckle. “Changed my whole life.”
Tess and Jonas had been stuck in a major east coast storm the previous summer, one that caused blackouts up and down the entire seaboard. Jonas had lost his eyesight, and he and Tessa ended up traversing the city in the storm in order to help one of her elderly friends. It had been a tense time, but it was also when they had fallen in love.
Ely needed Jonas to know the same thing did not apply in this case. Even if he and Lydia had agreed to be friends for the time being, it was never going to come to more than that. He had his whole life ahead of him, and he wasn’t going to go jumping into another serious relationship.
“Listen, I’m helping her out with a few things here, especially since I can’t get out anyway, but that’s all there is to it.”
“That’s it? You’re sure?”
“Yeah. That’s it. I did a crappy thing to her back in the fall, and I know it. I wasn�
�t thinking straight then, and I need to make it right, so that’s what I’m doing now.”
That, at least, was the truth.
“Tessa will be disappointed. I think she was still holding out hope you and Lydia would get together.”
“You’d think she’d know Lydia better than that, and I’m not in any rush to get involved in anything, either. If I learned anything back in the fall, it was that I am not ready to be in any kind of committed relationship at this point.”
“Who are you trying to convince, Ely?”
“Bite me, Jonas. And even if you don’t believe me, you know how Lydia is.”
“Yeah, I know. I tried to tell Tessa that, too. Lydia doesn’t do relationships, but she does a lot of other things,” Jonas recited with a chuckle, and Ely froze in place.
“How would you know about that? Did you guys ever—”
“No way. Lydia says that to everyone—it’s her personal motto, but also kind of a joke between friends. Believe me, Lydia’s way too scary for me to think about, uh, well, you know. I love her like a sister, so I’m glad you two are making nice, but no. She and I never went there, not even in my head,” Jonas said with a shudder of sorts.
Ely laughed, partly from relief and partly from his brother’s adamant refusal. He knew Jonas had gotten close to Lydia while he’d been protecting Tessa, but Ely was glad to know it hadn’t been that close.
“Sounds to me like you wouldn’t care for someone else getting to know her that well, though. Make sure you do have your head on straight, Ely.”
“It is, don’t worry. Maybe for the first time in a long time.”
“How was Antigua?”
“Heaven.”
“In other words, completely the opposite of Montana?”
“You got that right,” he said, looking around at the snow. “Tell Tessa everything is okay, and Lydia will be in touch. But in the meantime, not to worry. We’re okay here.”
“Okay,” Jonas agreed. “She’ll want to know more, but I’ll tell her Lydia will talk to her when she gets back.”
Hers for the Holidays Page 5