The Gift-Wrapped Groom

by M. J. Rodgers

  “Because I can’t see a giant like CMC getting as big a foothold in this valley as they have over this past year and then giving up just because I, and maybe a few others, refuse to sell.”

  “You think they might use other methods to try to coerce you?”

  “Last year, they bought out our local bank and took over my loan on the store and my land and house. When a large Family Tree ornament shipment got lost—one larger than the Crisalli family, that had taken me five months to complete—I found myself in some serious financial difficulties. I failed to make my mortgage payment the next month. The CMC bank dumped an enormous penalty on me, and I was in jeopardy of losing both my home and store to them.”

  “But you did not.”

  “I managed to get the money. I’ve made my mortgage payments on time ever since. But I keep feeling that grasping hand of theirs, just waiting for me to find myself in another financial crisis.”

  “Is that likely to happen?”

  “Shouldn’t. I have a reserve now to cover any temporary setback. And I’ve learned to insure my ornaments when I mail them.”

  “The large shipment you lost...was it ever found?”

  “When I say lost, what I really mean is that they were destroyed. The local mail truck was making its run over the mountains when one of its tires blew. The spare was missing. The driver had to hitch a ride back into the village to have the tire repaired. By the time he got back out to the truck, wild animals had broken into the back of it and torn open the boxes. My ornaments were some of the things destroyed.”

  “What wild animals?”

  “Bears looking for food, I suppose. Until the fire devastated their bakery a couple of months ago, Babs and Edward Renner shipped her baked wonders around the country. Every crumb of her cranberry cakes and gingerbread men also disappeared from the back of that mail truck. Which is understandable. They’re wonderful, nothing like anything you’ve ever tasted. They’d tempt anybody and anything.”

  “But not your ornaments. They are wood.”

  “I was perplexed as to why the boxes had been torn open and the ornaments gnawed on, too, except maybe there is something in the paint or celluloid protection coat that the bears were attracted to.”

  A logging truck loomed around the bend just then—huge, foreboding, rattling. It spun squeaking past them like a hearse, corpses of large, freshly cut spruce and lodgepole pine hanging off its flat back.

  Mistletoe whimpered and sat on his front paws, reacting to the noise of the thing. Nicholas and Noel grew quiet. Nicholas gazed out the passenger window. He was picturing her beautiful ornaments being scattered in the snow, gnawed on. He knew bears. He could not picture them doing this.

  Noel negotiated the next turn. “The slash is just a couple more miles.”

  “We will stop now, Noel. There, up ahead. That break in the trees.”

  She slowed, but her tone was clearly perplexed. “We’re still quite a ways from the slash.”

  “We do not need to go to the slash. A larch has fallen. See there, through the trees. Its wood will fill the truck.”

  Noel tried to follow his pointing finger, but gave up and pulled off into the next available clearing a few hundred feet ahead.

  Unlike the two or three inches on the valley floor, the snow in these mountains was half a foot deep. Mistletoe nearly disappeared in it, but he happily and gamely leapt along beside them. Nicholas led the way to the fallen tree, a giant with a twenty-four-inch diameter, sticking out of the soft white nest of snow. It had survived at least a century, finally lying gently to rest on the forest floor the season before.

  They stood gazing at it in a moment of reverent silence.

  “I’m glad its death was a natural one,” Noel said finally.

  Nicholas nodded, the image still fresh in his mind of the healthy robust trees that had lain in back of the logging truck. He took his leather gloves out of his pocket and shoved his hands inside.

  “We will need to dig it out of the snow before it can be cut properly. I will get the shovels.”

  They worked side by side to divest the fallen giant of its shroud of snow. Then Nicholas took over alone, wielding the chain saw with ease and precision.

  Noel sat on a fallen log, drank some of the hot coffee from the thermos, ate a cold chicken breast and watched. He removed his jacket after twenty minutes. After five more minutes, his wool shirt came off.

  And that was when Noel discovered that her husband didn’t wear an undershirt.

  He put the chain saw down and picked up the ax. She watched in awe as he reached up to maximize the stroke, his forward motion rooted in his feet, released through his legs, balanced and controlled by his hips—the power flowing with raw animal ease through those magnificent, muscular bare arms and chest to finally strike the log.

  It split—cleanly, perfectly—in two.

  Again and again she watched this symphony of motion, so awesomely precise, so full of power. She had never known that watching a man cut logs with an ax could be such a sensuous experience. But then she reminded herself that she had never watched Nicholas Baranov do it before. The sudden warmth flowing through Noel’s body had absolutely nothing to do with the hot coffee she had just sipped, and she knew it.

  She got quickly to her feet and busied herself collecting the pieces of wood that he had cut. She trudged with an armful back to the truck, then came back for more. After following her on one round-trip, Mistletoe took off barking after an enormous white rabbit, which was already safely scurrying down a hole.

  Once the fallen larch had been turned into firewood, Nicholas helped Noel load the logs. By the time the daylight had begun to fade, the back of the Dodge was full. Noel stood with Nicholas next to it, and handed him the thermos for a drink of lukewarm coffee.

  “I have left the branches,” Nicholas said, after removing his gloves to down the last of the coffee. “Most of the nutrients are within them and they will replenish the forest floor.”

  “Where did you learn so much about trees?”

  “One grows up knowing about many things where I come from.”

  “Where was this?”

  “A small village in a valley bowing at the feet of the Ural Mountains, much as your Midwater valley bows at the feet of these great mountains. Very beautiful. Very remote. No electricity. No indoor plumbing. Probably not even today.”

  “You left to get your education?”

  “My parents taught me to read when I was small. When I was older, I traveled many miles to school each day with other village children. Some did not want to go. But I enjoyed learning. Each new book was another world my mind could walk. Because I did well, I was sent on to Moscow for advanced studies.”

  “And those who did not do well?”

  “They still live in the small village and tend the livestock and cut the wood when winter comes.”

  He did not say the words sadly, or nostalgically, but Noel still felt a certain wistfulness in the softening of his tone as he gazed out at the snow-covered forest.

  This big bear of a man seemed absolutely at home here in the wilderness. She tried to picture him in a modern nuclear facility, expecting to find such an image incongruous. But the sophisticated image of his tuxedo-clad body flashed into her mind, and she knew he would fit into those surroundings, too.

  He turned those eyes of his to her and she looked away. “There’s more chicken left if you want it.”

  “No. I have had enough. It is time to wash off.”

  “Wash off?”

  “We cannot get into your truck this way.”

  Noel took a quick look down at her clothes. Now that he mentioned it, she could see there wasn’t an inch of her boots, her blue jeans or her sweater—she had finally shed her coat—that wasn’t absolutely, totally filthy.

  She shook her head in dismay. “Normally, I just pick up and carry the wood debris from the slash. I’ve never been so covered with wood dust before.”

  Noel looked up into his
face. It was nearly black with wood dust. Dirt, and even tiny pieces of wood, matted his hair. She could hardly make out his stone-chiseled features. Her eyes dropped to his chest. Well, there were still some parts of him that were decidedly recognizable. Even through the blackness of the dirt, the incredible bulk and power were unmistakable. Unthinkingly, her fingers strayed into the curly folds of his raven chest hair to pick out a twig that was lodged there. Her fingertips instantly felt hot and tingly.

  She swallowed and drew her hand quickly away, suddenly far too aware of how close they stood, how the heat from his skin steamed in the cold air, how he smelled of freshly cut wood and mellow bark.

  She stepped back and spoke hurriedly, trying to fill her mind and senses with more than him. “We’re just going to have to hope we can get the dirt out of the Dodge’s front seats later. We have to go get that Christmas tree now.”

  He stepped forward. “Some things can wait. Some things cannot.”

  Before Noel had time to understand what he intended, Nicholas’s strong arms surrounded her and lifted her. The next thing she knew, she was tumbling with him in the snow, down the gentle slope of the forest floor, rolling faster and faster with his arms securely around her.

  Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around his solid male strength as the world spun by in a flickering, maddening, scary streak. Her heart pounded. The breath roared through her lungs. An incredible sense of exhilaration filled her every screaming cell.

  Then, suddenly, they stopped. She raised her head, full of surprise and wonder as she sucked in a breath. But he wasn’t finished. He rolled them purposely once more and shoved her face firmly into the snow.

  She lifted her face, sputtering, finding herself lying sprawled over him, spitting mad.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He picked up some more snow with his hand, rubbed her face and then brushed her hair with it, a grin lifting his lips. “Having a wash. A snow wash. Good. Yes?”

  Noel writhed and spat new snow out of her mouth.

  “A snow wash, huh? Why you sneaky, underhand...Russian!”

  She reached out her hand for a good chunk of snow and then smashed it none too gently into the grinning mouth beneath her. She was reaching for yet another when he grabbed her again, spun her onto her back and landed on top of her, stretching her hands over her head and pinning them there with one of his.

  He spat out snow, his eyes laughing black diamonds.

  “So, you wish to help me wash. You may make good Russian wife yet. But first you must let your sneaky, underhand, Russian husband finish washing you.”

  He picked up a hunk of snow. Noel flinched, expecting another face wash. He smiled as he noted the flinch, then began to run the snow briskly over her dirt-caked, sweatered arms that he had pinned above her.

  Noel laughed, squirming and kicking beneath his bulk as each light sweep sent new waves of a ticklish sensation through her. She exploded into another squeal of laughter as he leaned down to snow scrub the wood dust and dirt off her jean-clad legs. A reflex kick of her knee missed his chin by a millimeter.

  “You are making this most difficult,” he complained in his gruff, bearlike voice.

  She tried to regain a semblance of control in the small respite he gave her from the snow wash. “I can’t help it. I’m ticklish. Very ticklish.”

  “Ticklish is a mental thing. It comes from a hysterical fear of what is going to happen. I will cure you of this ticklish.”

  “Hysterical, nothing. I’ll have you know I was born with ultrasensitive nerves, bones, that sort of thing.”

  “There is no such sort-of-thing as these ultra sensitive nerves or bones. Here, I will show you. If you truly do not want to be ticklish anymore. Do you?”

  “Well, of course, if I could stop being ticklish, I’d be delighted—”

  “Good. We proceed. It is a simple step-by-step process. Step one. You watch what I do. See. I take a handful of snow. Are you ticklish yet?”

  “Well, no, of course not. You’re not touching me with it yet.”

  “We go on to step two. I take the handful of snow and set it on your knee. Plop. It is there. And you are not ticklish.”

  Noel pursed her lips stubbornly. “Only because you’re not moving it over my ticklish spots yet.”

  “You have no ticklish spots. It is struggle with you. Always struggle. You must not fill your mind with wanting to be ticklish.”

  “I’m not filling—”

  “Good, then we go on to step three. I will move the handful of snow. One inch. To there. Now. It is done. See? You are not ticklish.”

  Noel spoke through even tighter lips. “You moved it very slowly.”

  “I think you want to be ticklish.”

  Noel’s eyes, as well as her lips, formed tight slits. “All right. I don’t want to be ticklish. I’m not ticklish. And I never will be again. Move the damn snow.”

  He did, announcing every inch of forward movement down to her boot, methodically brushing away the dirt as he went. And then went on to the other leg.

  Gradually, warmth began to creep into Noel’s calves and knees as his firm, strong hands brushed the snow over them. By the time he worked his way up to her thighs, more than warmth engulfed her. The large hand holding hers in place above her head transferred its heat through her body in exciting waves. Noel had no desire to giggle at all. But other desires had begun to make themselves known.

  When he reached the toe of her second boot, he looked up rather triumphantly. “No tickle. See? Now I will wash the rest of you.”

  Right about then it sounded like a great idea to Noel. He moved up to her neck. Her skin had grown hot with the exertion of the wood hauling, the struggling against him and then the not struggling against him. The coolness of the snow felt good against its heat. He seemed intent, scrupulously businesslike as he rubbed the snow so sensuously inside the open collar of her shirt, sending tingles through her chest that rushed to bring her nipples erect.

  He paused to get a handful of fresh snow before moving to her sweater-covered shoulders. He was lying partially on top of her now, securing her legs with the single pressure of one enormous leg of his own. She was intimately conscious of the solid weight and male heat of him.

  Noel’s heart began to beat very fast as his hand progressed over her collarbone, then down her sides, sweeping the dirt from her clothes and the heat to her skin.

  She knew these were dangerous feelings she was having for this dangerous man. But they were also delicious feelings, too and she was too curious about what could or would happen next under their warm onslaught to try to control them.

  She watched his face for any sign of what this proximity was doing to him, to see if touching her was having the same effect on him as it was her—or if it was having any effect at all. His stone expression seemed particularly fixed, his eyes totally concentrated on his “work.”

  But as his hand swung around to her waist, the quick, efficient strokes that had marked his earlier progress slowed. Noel held her breath as his snow-covered fingers spread to a stop just beneath the swell of her right breast. Her heart was racing so fast and hard beneath those fingers, she was certain he had to feel its beat in his hand.

  Slowly, his eyes rose to hers. She looked into the furnace of their black glow—so deep, remote, mysterious, hot. She could barely breathe.

  At that moment, she didn’t know whether she was more afraid of him touching her or not touching her. But expectation—full of all the exciting possibilities of his touch—set every nerve in her body tingling. She could barely wait.

  But she would have to. Because he didn’t touch her.

  Before she could blink even once, the hand near her breast quickly retreated. His other hand holding hers in place above her head removed itself a split second later. So, too, did the warmth of his leg that had lain so firmly over hers.

  He was up and gone with a flash, without a word, trudging briskly up the snowbank tow
ard the truck. Leaving her lying in the snow with only the incredible lingering heat from his hands ricocheting through her trembling body.

  Well, he’d certainly cured her of being ticklish. Damn him. Now all she had to do was find the cure for the cure. She’d always known her curiosity would get her in trouble one day. But she never knew how much trouble until now.

  * * *

  “YOU ARE DRIVING very fast.”

  The road had narrowed and was now just a tunnel between the headlights of the old Dodge, dwarfed by the growing snowdrifts closing in on either side.

  Noel slammed the stick shift into second, letting up on the clutch, correctly using the lower gear to slow her speed before swinging the wheel into a sharp left turn on the winding mountain road.

  “The snow isn’t melting anymore. Even with stud tires, this old road could become impassable soon if the snow keeps sticking. I don’t really relish the idea of getting stuck up here. I’m trying to get down to a lower elevation as quickly as I can. I told you trying to do this all in one afternoon is impossible.”

  “We would not be getting back after dark if you had not insisted on stopping at the tree farm and then taken so long to pick out that ugly, stubby pine. Even its growers said it was ugly. Plus which, it cannot be burned.”

  “It’s not ugly. It’s a beautiful Christmas tree. My Christmas tree. And, I told you, it’s meant to be decorated, not burned.”

  Nicholas shook his head and growled. “What benefit is there in spending so much time to grow a tree that is just to be thrown away? This is totally incomprehensible to an intelligent mind.”

  “And that, Dr. Baranov, is an opinion I wish you’d keep to yourself. Growing Christmas trees is Amy and Lee Wachsmith’s livelihood and joy. How could you have said what you did to them?”

  Nicholas folded his arms across his chest. “They asked me what I thought of their Christmas tree farm. I simply told them it was a foolish waste of time and wood. This is the truth.”

  “As though only you know what is and isn’t truth!”

  Nicholas clearly heard her anger. Still, she was not nearly as angry as he. Because he was not angry at Noel, the Wachsmiths or the ugly, silly Christmas tree that Noel had wasted so much time choosing.