And then she was being gently tucked into her freezing cold car and he was standing in the open door, blocking the wind and the snow. “I want you to follow me over the mountain. I can use the plow on the front of my truck to get us through any tricky spots. I’m guessing I’ll be heading in to the station for the rest of the night, but I’ll make sure you get home safely. If it gets too bad, we’ll park your SUV and I’ll get you home.”
Clara could have told him she’d happily let him get her wherever he desired. Right here on the freezing cold front seat of her SUV was sounding pretty good at the moment. He was big, he’d keep her warm.
His smile faded. “Are you uncomfortable driving in this? Why don’t we leave your vehicle here, then, and—”
Clara sadly let the last tingling moments of her twinkling little fairytale moment sparkle out. “No, no, I’m fine. I’ve driven in this my whole adult life and certainly in a lot worse. I have four-wheel drive, so with your plow, we’ll be fine.” She shivered as the cold really started to seep in past the layers of her clothing. “Thank you, Will. For . . . everything.”
Then he leaned in, cupped her cheek, and kissed her. Gentle, teasing, sweet . . . with just a promise of carnal. She sighed when he lifted his head.
“I can’t believe I waited ten years to do that. I’m such an idiot.” He stroked her cheek, then lifted a snowflake from the edge of her hood and licked it off his fingertip. “Yep. You’re way better. Drive safe.”
Don’t go. “You, too.” She’d meant about the safe driving, but was thinking about snowflakes versus the taste of pure, unadulterated Will Mason. Will won that contest without even trying.
He closed the door, brushing the snow off the window and knocking it off where it had piled up on the side view mirror. Then he stood there, wearing little more than a few layers of sweatshirt, gear bag slung over his back, not even shivering. He made a circular motion with his finger, making her realize she was just sitting there, dazed, staring at him. But, honestly, would anyone blame her?
She managed to stab the key in the ignition on the third try, and sighed when the engine started right up. Relief, she told herself. It was a sigh of relief. She smiled at him through the rapidly fogging window and he saluted before jogging off across the lot toward an oversized diesel pickup with a big plow strapped to the front.
Dear Lord, even his truck made her think about sex. She rolled her eyes at herself and followed him out of the lot.
Clara followed him over the mountain out of Riverside and up the next one into Pine Mountain proper. It had taken far too long, giving her way too much time to overthink pretty much every minute of her evening with him. Should she invite him in? He’d said he’d probably be going on to the fire station in Bealetown, but should she at least ask, so he’d offer some other kind of plan to see her again? Or should she just take tonight as a few hours of unexpected joy and quit while she was ahead?
She knew she should put off thinking about starting up anything until after finishing her cookie column commitment . . . and figuring out how to parlay that into a job that would carry her into the new year and beyond. But that didn’t stop her from visualizing every possible scenario on how the night might end. It was a miracle she hadn’t gone off the road into a snowdrift multiple times. Oh . . . multiple, multiple times.
Once they got into town, he pulled over and motioned her up alongside him. She rolled down her window as did he.
“I have to get going,” he called out, having to pretty much yell to be heard over the loud thrum of his engine and the now howling wind. “Big pileup at the top of the mountain between here and Bealetown. Looks like the streets here in town aren’t too bad. Can you make it okay to your place?”
She nodded. “I’m just around the corner, on Oak. I’ll be fine. Thanks for getting me home safe.” And thanks for making me feel desirable and feminine, even a little bit sexy. And thanks for kissing me like . . . Well, like she’d always wanted to be kissed. Like she mattered. But she didn’t know how to say any of that, or even if she should. She didn’t know what to say, to prolong the moment, to prolong . . . everything.
“Get inside. Stay warm.” He grinned, then started to put his window up.
“Okay, I will.” Disappointment washed through her in a heavy wave, so much so, she knew it was better that it had ended before anything had really begun. She hit the button to put her window up. At least this time she knew she wouldn’t get dumped in some new public display of humiliation. Can’t get dumped when you’ve never officially been picked up.
A sudden rapping on her window made her jump and let out a little scream. She jerked her head and saw Will standing next to her car. Heart pounding in her throat, she quickly groped for the button to put the window down. “Is everything okay?” she asked, looking up at him as he ducked down, his hood back up over his head. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s just . . . it’s going to be a long night.” With her window all the way down now and snow swirling into her car, he pushed his hood off and ducked his head inside. His hands were still warm when he cupped her face. “And I miss you already. Crazy, right?”
She could only shake her head.
He kissed her again, only there was nothing teasing and tender about this one. It was hot, commanding . . . definitely laying claim.
They were both huffing out clouds of crystalline air when he finally lifted his head. “How the hell did I not do this ten years ago?” He shook his head, sounding truly mystified.
This time he captured a snowflake and pressed it on her lips.
And then he was gone.
Chapter 4
“Oh no! No, no, no. This can’t be happening.” Clara watched in horror as her kitchen curtains caught fire anyway. “This is so much worse than the toaster oven.” She’d inadvertently caught her oven mitt on fire when trying to fish out the cookies now burning on the bottom of her oven, and had flung the flaming mitt into the sink. Or had meant to. Only she’d flung with a bit more force, perhaps, than absolutely necessary—but her hand was on fire, or almost on fire, so could you blame her?—and it hit the curtains instead. Which went right up in flames. “Crap, crap, crap.” She hadn’t gotten the fire extinguisher replaced or refilled or whatever it was one did with them after using them, following the toaster oven incident. So she wasn’t sure what, exactly, to do.
She tried to remember the feed-a-fire/starve-a-fire rules from when she’d been a Girl Scout but that had been way too long ago and she was too freaked out at the moment to really think clearly anyway. “Water. Water has to kill fire, right?” She couldn’t get to the sink because it was directly under the burning curtains and sparks were flying. She didn’t think the spray bottle she used to mist her plants would be particularly practical, so she started flinging open cupboards, looking for something—“Ah ha!” She grabbed her grandmother’s big stock pot and raced down the hall to the guest bathroom, only the pot was too deep to fit under the faucet in the small sink. So she raced upstairs to the full bathroom on the second floor and filled it in the tub, sloshing water all the way back down again as she hurried back before the cupboards caught on—“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
The cupboard next to the curtains was already glowing embers. She flung the pot of water at it anyway. As it turns out, flinging water out of a big pot straight at something, really doesn’t work all that well. Most of it landed at her feet. “Hose. I need a hose.” She dashed back down the hall to the front door, thinking she’d just drag the damn garden hose down the hall. Only she opened the door to about a foot of fresh snow that had drifted onto her porch overnight . . . which was now in her foyer. Frozen. The damn hose would be frozen. “Of course it would.”
She grabbed the foyer throw rug off the floor and raced back up the stairs and got it wet in the tub—God, that made it heavy—and dragged it back downstairs, thinking she’d just beat at the flames with it. Only it was so damn heavy she couldn’t really lift it all that well, mu
ch less wield it effectively, and ended up almost swinging herself right back out of the kitchen.
She had to call the fire department, she knew that, but she couldn’t just stand there and watch her grandmother’s cottage burn to the ground while she waited for them to show up. She dropped the sodden rug and looked around for her phone. Panic gave way to tears, which she blinked furiously away as she tried to punch in 911 in the thickening smoke.
Which was how Will found her. Coughing, crying, with soot streaking her face and her sweatpants, her T-shirt and bunny slippers soaked from the stock pot and the wet rug. So much for the end of the mortification section of her relationship attempts.
“Are you okay?” he asked, or rather demanded, turning her to face him.
She coughed in his face, then made a rather inelegant snorting sound as she tried to get air in past her now stuffed up nose. So she nodded, when really, she was anything but okay.
He didn’t bother asking her anything else, and a second later she was once again airborne, clinging to him with arms around his neck as he carried her outdoors through drifts of snow, to the front seat of his still-running truck. Only it wasn’t nearly as romantic as the last time.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
She nodded, unable to do anything else, feeling beyond pathetic and stupid. And she hadn’t even had the chance to call her insurance guy.
Will dragged a gear bag from the half bench seat behind the driver’s seat and tossed it next to her. “There’s a sweatshirt, sweatpants, jacket. Get them out. Take off the wet stuff. Put them on.” Then he grabbed a huge, real-sized fire extinguisher and a spare tank from behind the same seat and took off back toward the open door of the house.
Clara followed directions, chattering now in her wet clothes, despite the heater blasting in the cab of the running truck. She didn’t even bother looking around first to see if anyone who happened to be out shoveling was paying attention, just numbly dragged her wet clothes off and pulled on Will’s dry and wonderfully soft sweats, then his jacket, too, not even caring that they swam on her. She dug around, found socks, and put those on, too, then pulled on a second pair. The whole time all she could think about was that she was going to lose the only thing that meant anything to her, the only thing of value she had. And not simply monetary value, but sentimental, emotional, lifelong value.
Clara had mostly grown up in the tiny two-bedroom bungalow, at least all the lifetime she could remember anyway, and cherished her only remaining connection to family. It had been paid off long before it came into Clara’s possession, which was the only thing that had made following her journalism dream, such as it was, even possible. As long as she had the house, and her grandmother’s now-aging SUV, she could afford to make next to nothing as a Pine Mountain columnist while working toward her actual journalistic goals.
“Oh, God,” she whispered against the hands she’d fisted in the sleeves of Will’s sweatshirt and pressed against her mouth. “What have I done? I’m so sorry, Grammy Jo.” She started to shake in earnest, the combination of damp skin and shock too much to will away.
She dazedly wondered why she wasn’t hearing the sirens. Where were the fire trucks? They should be here by now. Will couldn’t fight that blaze alone. She even put a shaky hand on the door handle, though what she thought she was going to do to help, she had no idea.
And then he was back. All big and rugged and soot streaked and frowning. One thing was for sure, he looked a hell of a lot sexier post-fire combat than she did. He opened the door and shoved both spent tanks behind the seat, then climbed in and shut the door against the cold.
“I—I dialed 911,” she said, teeth chattering so hard she added a few one’s on the end. “Wh-where are they?”
“I radioed in, told them to hold off. I got it. It’s out. Fire marshal is coming, though, so we’ll need to wait for him, answer questions for his report.”
“It’s . . . out? Really?”
Will’s expression softened and he reached out and cupped a warm, sooty palm to her cheek. “Yes, really. I know it was scary and seemed larger than life. Fire is like that. But compared to how bad it could have been—”
“I’m not g-going to l-lose the house?”
“I’m not going to lie, it’s going to take some work, but no, it’s not a loss. Not even close. No major structural damage that I could see. But your kitchen is—”
“Toaster oven’d.”
He lifted his soot-caked brows. “Well, toast, anyway. I’m afraid so.”
She nodded, trying to take in the good news, but she was still struggling to assimilate that she’d come so close to burning her house down. Sure, she’d made jokes about the fire department being on her speed dial after the toaster oven thing, but all that had done was leave a huge scorch mark on her counter. And, well, it had taken her grass a while to grow back when she’d pitched the thing out the window into the backyard.
Will pushed her hair back, stroked her cheek. “You okay? We should go get you checked out for smoke inhalation. A little pure O2 would help with the shock, too.”
“I’m o—” She paused at his raised eyebrow. “Fine. I’ve been better. But I don’t need . . .” She stopped, dipped her chin when the tears threatened again, closing her throat. Now that the immediate danger was over, it was all just too much to even think about.
“Come here.” Will pulled her across the bench seat, into his lap. He smiled into her eyes, even as he ran his wide palms down her arms and up her back, warming her, soothing her, calming her. “We’re quite the pair here.” He reached up and dabbed a smudge of charcoal off the tip of her nose.
“Yeah,” she said, hearing the watery tone of her words; tears were still brimming at the corners of her eyes. “Carbon is the new black.”
“Or the really, really old black.” He smiled, a look of such affection in his eyes she almost lost it.
She sniffled, then gave up completely when he tucked her against his chest and held her tightly, pressing his soot-streaked cheek to her hair.
To his credit, he just let her cry it out, rubbing her back, pressing soft kisses to the crown of her head. When she’d finally spent herself and was down to inelegant gurgling, he carefully shifted her off his lap and back into her seat, handing her a stash of napkins from the floor console. He leaned across and buckled her in, then pulled his own seatbelt on before backing the truck out of the driveway.
“What about the fire marshal?”
“He’s a friend. I’ll have him come talk to you after he does his preliminary report.”
“I know I’ve looked better, but I really don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“We’re not going to the hospital.”
“Then where—”
“You can’t stay in your house, it’s not safe.”
“I can go to a motel, but I need—”
“You need a kitchen.”
Oh God. Her column. “I—I’ll call my friend Lily. She can probably put me up.” Clara’s mind was still reeling about almost losing her house, and even thinking about her deadline was almost too much at the moment, but she was clearheaded enough to know that Lily was in the throes of trying to win that cookie contest at the resort. The last thing she needed was a displaced houseguest. Much less one who needed to borrow her kitchen.
He glanced over at her. “I have a kitchen.”
Her eyebrows climbed. “Will, that’s—you don’t have to—”
“I have a kitchen. One I rarely use for more than heating up leftovers. I also have a spare room.” He shot her a fast grin. “No men, no sex while you rescue your career. I haven’t forgotten.”
“I—are you sure?” She was so startled by the offer, and the possible solution to one of now several very big problems topping her to-do list, that she couldn’t even deal with the whole possible sexual repercussions of what staying under his roof would do to her. And frankly, being sexually frustrated and in close proximity to the solution to that frustration was the very
least of those big problems.
He idled at the stop sign at the end of her street. “I’m sure. We’ll clean up, talk with the marshal, then come back over later and get whatever you need from the house. Or, better yet, make me a list and I’ll take care of it.”
“Will—”
His smile shifted, and that look, the one that reflected the connection they had, the friendship bond, came into his eyes again. “It’ll be okay. Like you said, we’re grown adults. We should just be able to say what we want, right? I want to help you. I have the space.”
“How was it that you found me when you did?”
“I’ve been up all night helping the crews with some pretty bad road accidents that happened last night and ended up bunking in with the guys at the firehouse here. I was actually heading to your place—they gave me your address, hope that’s okay. They knew I followed you back last night from Riverside. Anyway, I was going to stop by before going back to Bealetown because . . .”
He let the sentence die off. “Because?” she echoed.
“Because I wanted to see you, maybe make sure last night wasn’t some kind of food-deprived, sleep-deprived hallucination.” His smile faltered. “Then I saw the black smoke rolling up. I have to tell you, it definitely gave me my second wind, but if that’s what I’d been looking for, there are a few other far more pleasurable ways to go about it.”
“So . . . that’s not what you were looking for?”
“I just wanted to see you.”
Despite the chaos of the last hour or so, and still being more than a little rattled, Clara could recall, in stunning and very explicit detail, what his kisses had felt like, tasted like, how they had made her feel. “Maybe my coming to your place isn’t such a good idea,” she said, forcing her thoughts to her deadline, and the added burden of dealing with her burned-out kitchen. “The holidays are almost here and I’m sure you don’t need—”
“Parker, I’m not angling for anything. Promise. If you feel you need to make other arrangements, that’s fine, but for right now, let’s start with this plan, okay?”
The Sugar Cookie Sweetheart Swap Page 7