Not that they had come anywhere close to a bargaining table.
“Hey,” he said, forcing a smile, “a bed to myself is fine by me. In fact, my ankle and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Good. I left you the room at the top of the stairs so you wouldn’t have far to go once you got up there.”
“While you were upstairs, did you try your cell phone again?”
“No service,” she said shortly.
“No satellite, either.” In disgust, he picked up the remote from the couch and tossed it onto the coffee table. The clatter sounded loud in the quiet room. “How Michael can stand it up here, I don’t know.”
“I’m sure he feels he’s away from the world.”
“Exactly my point. I’d be climbing the walls. I am climbing the walls.”
“If you’re looking for something to keep you busy, you can take care of the fire for me again. I’m heading upstairs.”
He nodded. “I can do that. And in the morning, I’ll find a way to get us off this mountain.”
“Looking for a win-win, even with Mother Nature?” Shaking her head, she left the room.
As he watched her climb the stairs again, he felt an overwhelming urge to go with her. To be with her. Not something that was going to happen.
One, because wasn’t sure he could make it up the stairs without falling on his face.
And two, because he knew darned well what that headshake of hers had meant. She didn’t appreciate the fact that his mind was geared to go to work whenever a problem cropped up. Clients paid him thousands of dollars for the kind of advice he’d given to Lyssa free of charge. But she didn’t like any solution he offered when it came to her.
Definitely not a great show of faith in him.
Shoving aside the drape behind the couch, he stared out the window. He saw nothing but his own face reflected back at him. It didn’t look like the face of a man who had answers.
He didn’t like knowing thoughts of Lyssa had reduced him to this.
Damn it, he was a professional problem-solver. Tomorrow morning, no matter what Lyssa thought about him or what Mother Nature had in store, he was going to find a way out of here.
…
Always an early riser, Lyssa was up with the sun the next morning. All night, she’d tossed and turned and, as a result, she didn’t so much wake up as force herself to sit up and face the day.
And the kids.
And Nick.
She would bet none of them—herself included—would be in the happiest of moods. The situation was upsetting to all three of the kids and impossible for her and Nick.
More than once last night, she had gone to the window and stood looking down toward the front porch where the light she had left burning spilled its golden glow across the snow. Every time she checked, the drifts had crept higher. No matter what Nick said about finding a way off the mountain, it seemed almost certain that being snowbound at the lodge would be their reality—at least for the next couple of days.
Keeping the kids occupied didn’t concern her. What worried her was what she would do about Nick. And how she would handle her own reactions to being with him again.
Long after she’d left him in the living room last night, she had heard him making his slow way up the stairs. It had taken every ounce of self-restraint she had to keep from going out there to help him.
He had slept in the room next to hers, with just one thin wall between them. But a lot more separated them than plasterboard and paint. With their backgrounds and their lives and their beliefs so far apart from each other…forget being from different planets. They didn’t even live in the same solar system.
A knock on her bedroom door startled her from her thoughts.
“Miss Lyssa?” Tommy called.
“Just a minute.” As she swung her feet to the floor, she ran a hand through her hair, now tangled from her restless night. Not sure if she would have to check in on Tommy, she had gone to bed dressed in her borrowed sweater. She had shed Amber’s pants and left them on the chair beside the bed. Quickly, she pulled them on.
She didn’t want to think about what Nick had worn—or not worn—during the night.
Tommy knocked on the door again.
“Come in,” she called, yanking her sweater down around her hips.
The door opened. Tommy entered at a trot, picked up speed as he crossed the room, and jumped up to land on the foot of the king-size bed. “I’m hungry,” he announced. His cheeks still bore the creases from his bedclothes, and his hair looked as tangled as hers felt. “I woke up hours and hours and hours ago, and my tummy’s making rumbly noises.”
Lyssa looked at the bedside alarm clock and saw with relief that it was only seven thirty. This early, Tommy couldn’t possibly be starved quite yet.
“I told him he had to wait until you came downstairs,” Mollie said from the doorway, “but he wouldn’t listen.” She walked sedately into the room and sat on the corner of the bed opposite Tommy.
“Don’t wanna listen,” he said. “Miss Lyssa, I’m hungry.”
“You should have had more chicken wings last night,” Brent said. He stood leaning against the doorjamb and rubbing his eyes, looking about Tommy’s age. Then he grinned sheepishly. “But I ate a lot of those wings, and I’m hungry, too.”
Lyssa laughed. “I think you polished off all of them, Brent.”
He chuckled and ducked his head.
The movement reminded her of the scene with Mollie and Nick the night before. Brent’s shy reaction came from teenaged embarrassment at being singled out. Mollie’s response to Nick said plainly that the little girl had developed what could be her first crush.
Lyssa had felt the same about Nick the first time she had seen him, just before he’d gone up to get into his Santa suit in this very lodge the year before. With one glance, she had fallen hard for his dark hair and even darker eyes, for his strong jaw and wide shoulders, and for his tall, solid frame.
Solid and dependable. That’s what she had thought of him by the end of that day. After only a few dates, she believed she had finally found someone she wanted to be with forever.
Instead, their relationship had lasted about as long as a snowfall on a summer day.
She surfaced from her memories to find all three kids staring at her, their expressions hopeful.
“All right,” she said. “Everyone out of the room. I’ll meet you downstairs in a couple minutes, and we’ll see what we can pull together for breakfast.”
Tommy obligingly slid from the edge of the bed. “No chicken, please,” he said.
She laughed. “No chicken,” she assured him.
As soon as they left, she took a quick trip to the adjoining bathroom to wash her face and hands. The rich, scented lather of the soap and the soft, luxurious hand towel made her give thanks for Amber’s attention to detail. In the medicine cabinet above the sink, she found a tube of minty toothpaste and several unwrapped toothbrushes, which only made her appreciate her little sister more.
She had begun what she suspected would be an unsuccessful attempt to fluff her hair into place when a door on the opposite side of the room opened. A door she assumed had led to a linen closet.
Not even close. Not unless Nick had somehow taken a wrong turn during the night.
He stood reflected in the wide mirror above the sink. His unbuttoned shirt looked rumpled, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. A night’s growth of beard stubbled his chin and jaw. His hair looked even more uncontrolled than hers, but on him it looked oh-so-touchable and unbelievably sexy.
All three observations hit her at once, freezing her in mid-fluff. In the mirror, his gaze dropped to her midsection, where the sweater rose high above the pants she hadn’t yet buttoned. He stood staring, as if he couldn’t look away. Even in the mirror, even from this distance, she would swear she saw his eyes darken with pleasure. An answering shiver ran through her.
They stood unmoving for moments—minutes?—until, swallowin
g hard, she came to her senses and dropped her trembling hands to her sides.
When she turned to face him, his gaze traveled slowly upward, eventually meeting hers. “Good morning,” he said.
“So far, so good,” she agreed, hating that her voice sounded shaky, too. She cleared her throat. “But it would have been nice of you to announce your entrance before you barged in.”
“I didn’t know you were here,” he protested. “After I heard the kids’ voices and then all the footsteps pounding down the stairs, I figured you were with them.”
“Wrong.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” His gaze drifted downward.
Almost without thinking, she resettled her sweater over her hips.
“Don’t worry, you already had everything covered. Darn it.” His mouth curved in a slow smile that made her heart forget a few beats. “You still look good first thing in the morning, Lyssa.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, still? We’ve never spent the night together.”
“Yes, we did. Once. Did you forget all about it already?”
Oh, right. That night… How could she have forgotten? “Maybe I don’t want to remember. It wasn’t one of our most memorable dates. Don’t you recall?” She’d tried for archness, but her voice cracked in irritation on the final word. “And I wouldn’t classify that evening as doing anything together. I fell asleep on your couch while you stayed in your office making international calls all night.”
“Business never sleeps.”
“Evidently,” she snapped, biting back what she really wanted to say. They would have a long enough day ahead of them without her spending most of it engaged in battle with him. A battle she couldn’t win, anyway. Nick would never understand her perspective.
“Speaking of sleep,” he said, probably wanting to get away from the touchier subject as quickly as she did, “did you have a good night?”
“Fine, thank you.” Not in a million years would she admit the truth. Especially the part that involved her fantasy of going to him in the next room during her long, lonely, not good night.
She pushed away the memory of her small shiver of pleasure at finding him watching her from the doorway. Her body had reacted before her sleep-deprived brain could respond. Now, she felt nothing but irritation. His sudden politeness grated on her nerves. Or maybe her stress level was shooting up from seeing the picture he made. He stood with one hip resting against the doorjamb, his arms crossed carelessly over his bare chest. His eyes looked heavy-lidded, bed-ready, and even sexier than his tousled hair.
Heat flooded her cheeks. Get a grip, girl. And get your mind on something else. “How is your ankle?” she managed.
“Surprisingly, not bad. Guess that aspirin you gave me did the trick.”
She waved a hand at the medicine cabinet. “Well, if you need more, help yourself. I’d better see what the kids are up to.” Quickly, she glanced at herself in the mirrored cabinet door. Sure enough, her cheeks were flaming.
Worse, above her own reflection, she caught an image of Nick’s. He was staring at her with one brow raised and his mouth twisted in a half-smile, as if wanting to let her know he understood exactly what had brought on her furious blush.
Chapter Seven
Her cheeks still warm from her flush, Lyssa fled downstairs and into the kitchen, the one place she could feel sure Nick wouldn’t follow. But to her dismay, as she stood inspecting the contents of the refrigerator, he ambled into the room.
He walked much better than he had the day before, and she felt glad for his sake that his ankle seemed to be recovering quickly. But she didn’t at all like seeing him settle onto a stool at the breakfast bar as if he had no intention of moving again.
“The kids are in the living room. You might be more comfortable in a chair in there,” she suggested.
“I’m fine right here.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and set it on the counter, then began turning it over again and again on the flat surface. Click-pause-click-pause-click…
She took a nearly full casserole from the refrigerator and set it on the counter.
When she stripped off the foil covering, he leaned over to inspect the contents, then murmured appreciatively. “Quiche Lorraine, isn’t it? Gotta hand it to Amber, she knows how to set out a great buffet.”
Click-pause-click-pause-click…
“This was more for the adults than the kids, I think,” she said. “I wonder if I could get away with calling it Scrambled Eggs and Bacon?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“They might not eat it otherwise.”
“Call it by its real name,” he advised. “Let the kids live a little, spread their wings—the way I tried to convince you to do.”
“Not that again, Nick, please.”
Click-pause-click-pause-click…
She turned back to the refrigerator and deliberately took her time looking through it, rearranging items on shelves, peeling back foil to check out other casseroles. Anything to avoid getting into a conversation she didn’t want to have with Nick.
As one of the oldest Barnett siblings, she had always felt pressured to set a good example. In high school, she had been proud to take her first job as a clerk at Holidaze and even more proud to work her way up to manager. But then a former friend accused her of being afraid of success, afraid of taking a risk, and the woman’s claims had left her confidence shaken. When Nick learned about her job, he had encouraged her to think bigger, to spread her wings. His advice had only revived both her worries that her position at the gift shop wasn’t important enough and her guilt about not aiming for higher goals.
A few months ago, she had let the matter drop rather than get into an argument with him. But with the distance of time, she felt able to push the issue while keeping her temper in check. Abruptly, she turned back to face him. “Managing a gift shop is a worthy job.”
“It is,” he replied. “It’s also the type of position that leads people to settle into a rut.”
“Well, thanks a lot,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“There’s never anything wrong with moving on to something bigger and better.”
The way you did with me?
She rested her hands on the counter and leaned forward, looking directly into his eyes. He stared back. Those unblinking eyes, like two deep pools reflecting moonlight on their dark surface, pulled her in, distracting her from her thoughts. She shook her head to break the spell. “This is a small town, Nick. There is nothing bigger or better.”
“That’s why I encouraged you to look outside Snowflake Valley.”
“And that would mean moving to a big city where—to hear you tell it—finding top-level jobs I qualify for would be as easy as pulling presents from Santa’s pack.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself, Lyssa. You’ve got lots of options. And you deserve the best of everything.”
Confusion raced through her. In the few hours she had spent with him here, she had discovered how much she still cared about him. But how could she give a darn, after the way he had dismissed her feelings? How could he not care about her and yet compliment her the way he had just done?
He reached out and covered her hand with his. Now desire raced through her, warring with her confused thoughts. Warmth from his palm spread through her fingers, and some traitorous part of her wished he would take both her hands and pull her closer. That he would lean in and take her lips with his.
She stepped back, tugging her hand free. “I’ve already told you, your options won’t work for me. They would mean leaving my family and my home and everything that makes me happy.” That ought to put him in his place.
She grabbed the casserole dish and took it to the oven to heat. With her back to him, she began taking plates and cups from the cupboard near the sink.
She could almost feel his gaze on her, but he said nothing, and she had nothing left to say.
From behind her came the familiar click-pause-click-pause-click…
<
br /> Irritated, she slapped a handful of napkins onto the counter beside the plates.
His options didn’t work, but worse than that, they seemed to show he thought there was something wrong with her for not wanting the best of everything. As he had phrased it months ago, all the world has to offer.
Couldn’t he see she had all that right here?
Click-pause-click-pause…
The intermittent rattling noise made her suck in a breath. She would not respond to it. She just would not.
Click-pause-click-pause-click.
She spun to face him. “You’re very attached to that thing, aren’t you?” He laughed, which irritated her even more. Of course, he had continued playing with his phone deliberately to get a reaction from her.
“‘Attached’ is the right word,” he agreed. “This phone is like a lifeline for me. I couldn’t run my business without it.”
Everything with him revolved around business. It was why they would always stay worlds apart. “Maybe you should try cutting the cord sometime.”
“Why? You’re telling me you don’t rely on a phone or a computer or both at work, at least once in a while? What do you do, send up smoke signals?”
“Nick, there’s more to life than the challenges of business.” She had tried to tell him that before.
“Yes, there are all the good things being successful can bring.”
She shook her head. “That’s success on your terms, on how much money a deal will make. And that’s still about business. I’m talking about life in general. Like my small-town life here in the valley. And yes, my small-town values. Like believing in home and family. Caring about others. Making homemade gifts. Creating Christmas traditions. All things that money can’t always buy.” She still hadn’t forgotten how close she had come to sacrificing those values while she’d been caught up in their whirlwind romance. Their one-sided whirlwind romance. “This conversation is pointless. We’ll never see eye to eye.”
“We won’t if you keep turning your back on me, that’s for sure.”
Snowbound with Mr. Wrong (Snowflake Valley) Page 7