I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Lori Wilde

  “It’s not that I don’t want to dance,” she said. “I’d just like to be consulted first.”

  “Would you have danced if asked?”

  She paused. Would she have? “Yes.”

  “Gabi Preston, would you like to dance?”

  She grinned at him because the look on his face made her feel noticed in a big way. “Yes, Joe Cheek, I would love to dance. Thank you for asking.”

  He slid his arm around her waist to guide her back into the flow of the “Electric Slide.” But the song was ending, and people were already drifting back to their seats, collective smiles on their faces.

  Bummer.

  “Bad timing.” His hand dropped from her waist, and he stepped away, his smile growing wistful, his eyes … oh, these chocolate eyes … burning her with an intensity that stopped her breath.

  “Bad timing,” she mumbled, nodded, stumbled back to her seat, heart pounding so hard she couldn’t hear anything else.

  She stared at her plate, wondering why she felt as if she were floating. Quickly, she turned her head, and saw Joe walking backward toward his table in the far corner, his gaze still on her.

  She hiccupped and thought, Come back. Kiss me. Cure me. Save me.

  But deep down inside she knew she could only save herself.

  “Yo, GoGo.”

  Fingers snapped in front of his face and Joe blinked. “Huh?”

  “Back with us?” Mac asked. “Or are you still across the room with your dance partner?”

  “Be more interesting and I’ll stick with you.”

  “I’m not growing breasts just to keep your attention,” Mac said.

  “I don’t know about that.” Sam reached over and patted Mac’s chest. “Since you’ve married Coco and started getting regular meals, you’ve been working on some awesome man boobs.”

  Mac swatted Sam’s hand away. “What can I say? My woman can cook.”

  “And fix cars better than you,” Dean pointed out.

  “Why do you think I married her?” Mac grinned like he’d found the secret to the universe.

  Joe felt jealous and couldn’t stop his gaze from tacking back to Gabi.

  Dean poked him in the ribs with his elbow. “Go for it.”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Why not?” Mac asked, leaning back so he could see around Sam to where Gabi sat. “I haven’t seen you this worked up over a woman in a long time.”

  “I’m not worked up,” Joe denied.

  All three of the men at the table with him snorted as they looked from Gabi to him and back again.

  Joe squirmed, wishing they’d all stop staring at Gabi. “She’s looking for something.”

  “So help her find it,” Sam prodded.

  “I’m not what she needs.” Joe took a sip from his beer, but had trouble swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat.

  “How do you know?” Mac asked.

  “C’mon,” Joe said. “You know me. I can’t stick with anything. Not for the long term anyway.”

  “Who says it has to be long-term?” Mac asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Gabi is a long-haul kind of woman, and that’s just not me.”

  “You were married to Tatum for a year,” Dean pointed out.

  “My longest relationship to date.” Joe plowed a hand through his hair, shifted restlessly in his chair.

  “That relationship crashed and burned because of Tatum, not you,” Sam said kindly.

  “Yeah, well, it was only a matter of time.” The lump in Joe’s throat grew bigger.

  His brothers exchanged a look, but said nothing. They didn’t have to say anything. Joe knew the truth. He had trouble sticking with anything. School. Jobs. Relationships. As soon as he got bored, he moved on.

  Fact was, even if he wanted long-term commitment, it simply wasn’t in his makeup.

  CHAPTER 7

  Christmas! ’Tis the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial fire of charity in the heart.

  —Washington Irving

  Gabi spent an uneasy first night in the yurt. Fear of letting the fire go out in the fireplace had her waking up every couple of hours, and then thoughts of Joe kept her tossing and turning. In total, she probably got no more than four hours of fitful sleep.

  The sound of a rooster crowing woke her that Saturday morning before dawn, reminding her about Katie’s animals. Joe had said he’d take care of the livestock, but that was just the problem, wasn’t it? He’d be hanging around the yurt, and the way she felt whenever she was near him—hot, lusty, and out of control—was reason enough to keep him at arm’s length. If she could care for the animals herself there would be no reason for him to cross the road.

  Good plan.

  She imagined triumphantly telling Joe that she’d fed the livestock and gathered the eggs and he no longer needed to worry about her. Seriously, how hard could it be?

  Pleased with her plan, she abandoned her coffee cup, bundled up in her jacket, and strode out to prove herself.

  Joe told himself he was going to stop thinking about Gabi. He’d go over there and feed Katie’s animals, and keep the firewood stocked, but he’d try to pick a time when Gabi was out of the house. He got up at five A.M. as he had every morning since taking over the running of his grandfather’s farm—which for a natural night owl like Joe was something of a sacrifice—and went to tend to his animals.

  Stepping out onto the front porch, he breathed in the morning air. The cold burned his nose, but in a satisfying way. He liked farming, at least in the short-term. The routine calmed him. But he knew that same routine would eventually stir his wanderlust. Funny how the thing he needed the most was the very thing that pushed him away from Twilight.

  A light came on in the yurt and the pulse at his throat jumped. Gabi was awake too.

  Big deal. Go about your business.

  Resolutely, he got into his pickup, drove out to the barn to load hay and feed, then took it out to feed the animals in the back pasture. This was the fun part.

  The creatures gathered around him. He scratched the soft wooly head of an alpaca, petted a miniature horse, talked to them all like he was Doctor Dolittle, and felt tension ebb from his muscles.

  He’d hired help for the holiday season, but that was just for the Christmas tree farm. He enjoyed taking care of the animals himself. When he was a kid, during the summers when he was off the Ritalin and couldn’t sit still, his parents would bring him to Gramps’s place to “wear him out” with chores. It worked too.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe that was why Gramps had asked him to take over the farm instead of one of the other grandkids. Because he was the one who’d gotten the most benefit from it?

  At the thought of Gramps, his stomach grew heavy. It killed his soul to think Gramps was at the end of his farming days.

  Normally, Joe was a happy-go-lucky guy and he pushed away dark thoughts, but this morning, his mind went there and he couldn’t seem to switch it off. What if the worst happened, and Gramps passed away? What would happen to the farm? There were so many heirs, there would be no holding on to it. The place would have to be sold.

  A knot formed somewhere between Joe’s belly and his heart, swelled tight.

  No. He refused to borrow trouble. Things would work themselves out. They always did. It was the way he lived his life. In the moment. Enjoying every second as if it were his last. It’s what made him fun to be around. It was also the same trait that had gotten him in trouble as a child.

  Hell, as an adult too.

  He was here now. The air smelled crisp and clean. The animals were brushing up against his leg. The sun was peeping over the horizon. Gramps was improving. It was Christmastime. Absolutely nothing to worry about.

  But as he drove back to the house, he couldn’t shake the feeling that trouble was brewing and there was nothing he could do to avoid it.

  He parked the pickup in front of the house and got out. Bright rays of s
unlight cast a halo of hope over the land and he spied the back of Gabi as she disappeared around the side of the yurt, walking toward the chicken pen with a straw basket looped around the crook of her elbow.

  Joe stood mesmerized for the split second it took his heart to contract. If he were smart he’d march into the house and make a big plate of bacon and eggs for breakfast and let her be. Especially since he was feeling uncharacteristically gloomy.

  But clearly, he was the dumbest man ever to walk the face of the earth, because he pivoted and trotted across the road after her.

  He found her in the chicken pen, wearing fashionably distressed jeans, a light jacket thrown over a UCLA sweatshirt, and pristine gym sneakers. At her delicate feet lay the basket she’d been carrying. She had a startled expression on her face, and the tip of her index finger was captured between her sweet pink lips. Seated on a nesting box in front of her was Katie’s ornery Leghorn, Prissy.

  “She bit me.” Gabi’s voice came in an incredulous warble. “I didn’t know chickens bit.”

  “She pecked you,” Joe said. “Chickens don’t have teeth.”

  “It hurt.” She sucked on her finger.

  Ah man, why did she have to do that? He gulped and put out his hand. “Let me see.”

  She put her hand in his. He lifted her finger to examine it in the early morning light full of dust motes. Sure enough there was an angry red mark on the end of her finger. Katie hadn’t nicknamed the Leghorn Pissy Prissy for nothing. The hen wielded a mean beak.

  Joe smiled gently, savoring the warmth of Gabi’s hand in his. “I told you’d I’d take care of the animals.”

  “I know you did, but it’s not fair.”

  “Why not?”

  “Katie and I not only swapped houses, but we actually swapped lives. Cars, responsibilities, everything. Just like in The Holiday. I do her chores and she does mine.”

  “I’m going to have to watch that movie again. I don’t remember that part. I do remember the part where Cameron Diaz’s character sleeps with the brother of the woman she swapped places with.” Joe cringed. Hell, why had he said that? He was normally pretty smooth with women. And there was nothing smooth about that comment.

  “How’s my finger?” Gabi asked, thankfully overlooking his stumble.

  He wanted to apologize, but didn’t know how to do it without making things worse. Instead, he rubbed her finger with his thumb. Man, but he loved that candy cane art on her fingernails. “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

  Crap! There he went again. He wished he could staple his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

  She yanked her hand away, but her eyes were smiling. She wasn’t offended. “That’s your solution to everything.”

  “Hey, whatever I can do to make the world a happier place.”

  “Honestly, I was more startled than anything. I was just trying to see if the hen had eggs underneath her. Why did she peck me?”

  “Um,” he said pressing his lips together to keep from laughing. She looked so serious. “Because you were mugging her.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense.” She chuckled as her cheeks pinked and she ducked her head.

  Damn. He didn’t want to let go.

  “She doesn’t have any eggs underneath her,” he said.

  Her chin came back up. “So I found out, but how did you know?”

  “Because Katie believes in letting things be as natural as possible. She doesn’t keep artificial lights on her chickens in the winter unless it gets really cold out and she puts the light on for warmth, so they generally don’t lay.”

  “Oh,” Gabi said again. “I didn’t know any of that.”

  He lifted his shoulders. “Why would you?”

  “I feel like a giant dork.”

  “Don’t feel that way,” he said. “I’m sure you know city things us country folk have no knowledge about. Like smog alerts.”

  “How did you figure out that I was from California?” she said.

  He pointed to the front of her UCLA sweatshirt. “Don’t ever take up a career that requires keeping secrets,” he said. “Like a lawyer.”

  A quick bark of laughter shot from her throat.

  “What?” he asked, wanting in on the joke.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Are you a lawyer? No, you told me you didn’t have a job. Wait.” He snapped his fingers. “That school you dropped out of it. Did it happen to be law school?”

  She nodded, an embarrassed expression creeping across her face. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “What happened? Couldn’t tell a good lie?”

  She sighed. “I guess we’re going to talk about this.”

  “No, not if you don’t want to.”

  “I haven’t told anyone besides Katie.”

  “Forget I asked.” He pantomimed zipping his lip, even though curiosity was killing him. “Let’s feed these guys.”

  Joe stepped over to a black metal barrel where the chicken feed was stored and removed the lid. Gabi came up behind him. He could feel the heat from her hot little body. He closed his eyes, willed himself not to get hard.

  “Can I do it?” she asked.

  “Do what?” he croaked.

  “Feed the chickens.”

  Oh that. “Sure.”

  He moved over, and let her come up to the barrel, showed her how much feed to dole out.

  “Now what?” she asked holding the scoopful of feed pellets in her hand.

  “Just toss the feed on the ground,” he said. “They like to hunt and peck for it.”

  Slowly, she shook her wrist from side to side, evenly dispersing pellets onto the dirt floor of the pen. Chickens surrounded them, making happy clucking noises as they scratched around for food.

  Gabi met his eyes, her face beaming. “This is fun.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, wondering why his voice kept coming out so husky.

  There was nothing sexy about feeding chickens on a cold winter morning. Except that with Gabi, it was and he had the strangest feeling that with her anything would be sexy.

  She caught her bottom lip up between her teeth, dropped her gaze and the remaining pellets to the ground.

  It dawned on him that he might be making her nervous standing so close in such a confined space. He moved back without looking where he was going and almost stepped on a black and white Dominecker.

  The startled hen squawked and flew up, flapping her wings against his thigh.

  Gabi squeaked, plastered her palms over her mouth. “Good grief, I’m such a girl.”

  “Hey,” he said. “She startled me too. I almost hollered myself.”

  “No you didn’t. You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  True. Gabi might be skittish, but she was sharp. “You’re just not used to flighty chickens,” he said. “Would you like to hold one?”

  Her eyebrows went up in an expression that was both anxious and interested. “Um … maybe … okay, but not the pecky one.”

  Joe laughed. “I’ll get a buffy.”

  “Buffy?”

  “Buff Orpingtons,” he explained. “They’re sweet-natured, calm, and friendly.”

  “Yes, let’s get a buffy.”

  Joe squatted to pick up one of the heavy-bottomed reddish birds, cupping his hands around both her wings. The hen tilted her head, studying him curiously. “Say hello to Honey.”

  “Hello, Honey.” Gabi put out a tentative hand to stroke the chicken’s feathers.

  Agreeable Honey clucked contentedly.

  “How can you tell this one is Honey?” she asked. “There’s several Buff Orpingtons in the crowd.”

  “By their combs. Every chicken has a different comb.”

  Gabi surveyed the chicken at their feet, her hair falling across her face as she glanced down. “Ooh they do. I never noticed that before.”

  “Honey’s comb flops low, forward and to the left.”

  “It does.�
� Gabi reached over to stroke Honey’s comb.

  The hen jerked her head back, eyed Gabi suspiciously.

  Laughing, Gabi pulled her hand away and pressed it against her chest. “I suppose that would be my reaction if a stranger stroked my comb.”

  “You want to hold her?”

  “Can I?”

  “Sure. Just cup your palms around her wings like I’m doing.” Joe transferred the chicken into her waiting arms.

  “She’s so much warmer and lighter than I expected.” Gabi’s eyes lit with surprise and delight. The woman had an award-winning smile when it reached her eyes.

  “Natural insulation. All those feathers.”

  Gabi swayed back and forth, rocking the chicken between her hands, visibly relaxing. “You probably shouldn’t do that.”

  “Do what?” he asked, unable to bear the suspense.

  “Smile at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you mean it.”

  “I do mean it.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “Why shouldn’t I smile at you like I mean it?”

  “It’s too …” She paused for a really long time, slowly swinging Honey to and fro.

  Unable to bear the suspense, he asked, “What?”

  “Persuasive.”

  “That’s a bad thing?” Knowing full well that women went nuts for his dimple, he widened his grin, letting the dimple dig in deep, pulling out the stops.

  “It’s a dangerous thing and don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “You mean because you think I want to kiss you again?”

  “You do want to kiss me again.”

  “But I’m not going to kiss you again.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because you’re holding a chicken.”

  “Oh that,” Gabi said, and gently set Honey on the ground. “Look, hands free.”

  When she straightened, those gorgeous baby blues of hers zeroed in on him. He felt the punch of excitement deep in the center of his solar plexus. Trouble. He’d known she was trouble the minute he clamped eyes on her.

  But damn if he cared.

  They stared at each other for so long it seemed as if they breathed up all the air in the chicken coop. His body tensed like an overstrung guitar string and his pulse was thumping steadily at his temples and he, the glib guy who could always get the girl, couldn’t think of one witty thing to say.