“It’s important to feed the babies when they’re in the belly,” she told him, and then began to talk about how her son was working until the day before Christmas so she was watching his children and how her daughters were helping them make a gingerbread house, but he wasn’t really listening. Cass had wandered back in, holding a sweater in her hands, and had a fierce frown on her face. At least, he thought it was a sweater. She picked a dryer sheet off of it and then held it out to him in disbelief.
It was the black sweater she’d worn when he’d pulled her out of the car, except now it was the size of a doll’s sweater. Uh-oh. He was guessing that “laundry” was probably on the list of skills that Cass wasn’t great at. He did his best not to laugh, but a chuckle still came out.
Cass bit her lip and snort-giggled, too, shaking her head at the sweater. She bent down to Jim’s side and held it up to him, as if it might fit the heeler instead of her. And that made him laugh all over again.
“Uh-oh, sounds like I’m interrupting,” Maria told him, her tone all gleefulness. “I’ll let you go, mijo. I just wanted to check on you. If there’s anything you need or if you have questions, you call me, all right? I’m not there, but I know where everything is, including the condoms.”
He felt his face go bright red. The words choked out of him. “Uh . . .”
“Main bathroom, under the sink, behind the extra rolls of toilet paper. I’m not saying, I’m just saying. Now, I have to go. I think my poor mija’s going to throw up again. Merry Christmas, and I’ll call you soon!”
“You too,” he said blankly, still a little shocked by the turn that the conversation took. “I, uh, I’ve got to cake the cows. Talk soon.” His ears felt like they were burning as he hung up the phone. Did Maria and Doc really think he was going to sleep with Cass just because they were trapped up here together?
Damn, he really wasn’t going to hear the end of it when the others returned.
Cass gave him a curious look as she stood up. “Everything okay?”
“That was just Maria, the housekeeper. She runs things around here and wanted to check on me. Doc told her you were here.”
Her eyes widened. “I hope I’m not going to get you in trouble.”
“Not at all. Anyone that’s driven these roads knows what they’re like in winter.” He nodded at the sweater. “Problem with the dryer?”
She grimaced and held it up to her body, and he mentally congratulated himself on changing the subject so easily. “I think I should have read the tag. It says ‘dry clean only.’ I hope you don’t mind if I wear your shirt for a little longer. Unless I can wear something of Maria’s? Or we can get my bag from the car?”
He shook his head at her. “Like I said earlier, it’s still too hard on the horses in this weather. We’ll go in a few days when the sun comes out and things start to melt. Until then, you’re welcome to wear my stuff.”
“I’m sorry to be such a bother.” She chewed on her lip. “Do you really feed the cows cake?”
“What?”
“You said you have to cake the cows. Like . . . birthday cake?”
A laugh snorted out of him. “Not exactly. We call it cake but it’s more like feed pellets. They’re these big chunks of hard food that have additional protein and vitamins, since they eat hay most of the time. In the cold you have to feed the cattle more. Digesting helps keep them warm.”
“I didn’t know that,” she admitted, and sounded impressed. “I had this mental image of you feeding cows slices of cake and I figured that couldn’t be right.”
“Nope. But that’s why I’ve got to go out and feed them so much during this weather. Normally they range out in the further fields, but since it’s just me, we’ve got to keep them all close nearby so I can make sure they’re fed.”
“And you also have to babysit me. I’m sorry I’m such a bother.” Cass wrapped her arms around her torso and gave him a worried look. “Can I help out? I’d like to.”
He shook his head. The call with Maria—and now this—just reminded him that work on the ranch didn’t stop, even when the schedule was a bit thrown off. “No. Doc said you need to take it easy. He’d kill me if he found out I was putting you to work on the ranch.”
“He doesn’t have to know,” she told him brightly. “Please. I won’t be in the way.”
Eli shook his head again. “Sorry. I’ll be back later. Just take a nap or something.”
She sighed heavily, and he tried not to let that affect him. He couldn’t entertain her and keep on everything that needed to be done at the ranch. The sooner she came to realize that, the better.
CHAPTER TEN
Having a head injury was incredibly boring, Cass decided.
She napped. Again. Of course she did. There was nothing to do but nap. Oh sure, she cleaned up the kitchen and flipped through recipe books to see what she could make. She washed the shirt she borrowed. She made Eli’s bed. And she napped again. Every so often, she’d go to the windows and look outside at the endless white snow. There were cattle up on the hill, and she’d see Eli on horseback, riding around them, or driving a tractor-looking thing that dragged hay behind it. She’d see the other dogs racing around with him, while she and Frannie sat inside and were bored to death. The dog seemed equally miserable, hovering near the doorway and whining whenever she’d see Eli in the window.
Me too, girl, she thought absently. Not that she wanted to be out in the snow. She just wanted to be doing something.
She couldn’t read, so the cookbooks didn’t stay out for long. Couldn’t watch TV. She just mostly stared out at the snow coating the trees and wondered why Eli wasn’t decorating for Christmas.
Maybe she could do that for him. Maybe she could make this place as welcoming and Christmassy as she wanted, as a way of saying thank you to him for saving her.
Then maybe, with something to do, she wouldn’t be here slowly dying of inactivity. Here lies Cass, she thought dramatically. The endless boredom did what the snow couldn’t. She turned to Frannie and told her, “Feel free to say something at any time.”
Frannie didn’t, of course.
The sun went down, and Cass heated up some of the chili she found in the fridge, and left it warm for when Eli returned. He’d been gone all day, and while she understood it, it didn’t make it easier for her. What did she normally do when she was bored? she wondered. Crossword puzzles? Phone games? Facebook? Sewing?
She doubted it was something with her hands. Her cooking skills hadn’t seemed up to par, so it was probably more like Facebook. Still, even as she gazed out the now-dark window onto the moonlit snow, it seemed like a frivolous way to spend time. Eli was out there killing himself from sunup to sundown and she wanted to help.
If she had something to do, maybe she wouldn’t worry so much about the gaps in her memory. All she could think about right now was if someone else was out there wondering if she was okay. If they were worried sick.
If she had a boyfriend and he looked anything like Eli. What if she was dating someone that was awful and, when she got her memory back, she compared him to Eli? How could anyone possibly measure up after she’d been rescued by the world’s most handsome cowboy?
As if he could hear her thoughts, Eli came in from the mudroom, and she blushed, getting to her feet. “Hi,” she told him breathlessly, running her fingers through her hair. Then she stopped herself, because lord, this wasn’t a date. He was coming home after a long day of work. He didn’t have time for her.
But he nodded politely and rubbed the back of one hand across his brow. His cowboy hat was gone and she could see that his hair was sweaty despite the deep blanket of snow outside. “I need to shower before I’m fit company.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she blurted out.
He paused, and she could have sworn he turned as red as she was.
“I mean, like, ar
ound the house. Or, um, with the cows. Not in the shower. I’m sure you can do that just fine.” Ugh, why wouldn’t her face shut up?
“You don’t need to do anything but rest,” he reassured her, and then disappeared into his room. Her room. The room they were sharing . . . one at a time anyhow. He’d be getting naked and stepping into the shower right about now and she wondered if he was that tanned all over and—
Stop it, she chided herself. He rescued you just to be nice! It’s clear you’re nothing but a bother.
Maybe she was obsessing over Eli because she didn’t have anything else to do. That had to be it.
All right. She officially needed to keep herself busy or she was going to go stir-crazy. She thought about doing more cooking, but she’d wasted so much food earlier with her botched pancakes that she worried about ruining more. She paced through the house, looking for ideas. There was a rag rug by the front door, and she wondered if she knew how to make one of those. Probably not, she decided as she gazed down at it. It looked rather crafty, and it didn’t seem like it’d be something she was good at. She moved around the living room, putting another log into the woodstove, before pausing by the laundry room again.
Not because she wanted to do laundry—she could, of course, if there was more laundry to do—but because all those boxes of Christmas ornaments were there.
Decorating was something she could do that wouldn’t tax her physically, and wouldn’t be a strain on her brain. It’d be fun, and after all, it was almost Christmas. They could use a bit of Christmas spirit around here. It was strange to see no decorations and the endless sea of snow outside. It didn’t make sense. She had the white Christmas part. Now she needed the rest of it.
A tree.
Garlands.
Wreaths. Ornaments. Snowman cookies. Christmas carols. Holly.
Mistletoe, her traitor brain whispered, and she mentally steered away from that thought. Eggnog, if she could find a recipe for eggnog.
Well, maybe not eggnog. But surely they could still celebrate Christmas a little.
Eli emerged from his room a few minutes later, his wet hair newly slicked back and combed. He wore a plain white T-shirt over jeans, and droplets of water sprinkled his shoulders as he padded into the kitchen. “You hungry?”
She stared at his behind as he walked past. Just dressed like that, he looked good enough to eat.
Good lord, what was wrong with her? Had the knock on the head set her libido on fire? Did she have a savior complex? Or was it because Eli was just that handsome? She studied his backside, trying to be unbiased about it. As butts went, it was a nice one. Small and taut and with just enough of a muscular bubble to fill out his jeans—
“Cass?”
“Hm?” She blinked and got to her feet.
“Hungry?” He turned and glanced over at her.
“I already ate. There’s chili warming on the stove. I hope that’s okay.”
“Totally fine.” He shoveled a huge amount into a bowl and then loped over to the table, sitting down.
She sat across from him and folded her hands. “Can I help you on the ranch?”
“No,” he said between mouthfuls.
“Then can I decorate for Christmas?”
Eli paused midbite and gazed at her for a long moment. She mentally panicked, wondering if she’d touched a nerve. Was there a reason why he didn’t celebrate Christmas? Something about the holiday he didn’t like? Or was it against his religion?
“Why?” he finally asked.
Why? Why did anyone want to celebrate the season? “Because we’re here and it’s Christmas? Because it’ll give me something to do? Because you won’t let me go outside to help you with the farm?”
“Ranch,” he said between bites. “It’s a ranch, not a farm. And if you want to put some holiday crap up around this place, I won’t stop you.”
Well, that was a win . . . theoretically. She smiled brightly at him. “Thank you. So where do we get a tree?”
He swallowed and looked up from his bowl. “Tree?”
“Christmas tree? You don’t know what a Christmas tree is?”
“I know what a tree is.” He scowled at her. “Just seems like a lot of hassle. Can’t you just decorate the tables or something?” He waved his spoon at the kitchen.
“No. That’s not how it works.”
He looked at her like she’d just grown a second head. Maybe he just expected her to cave to whatever he said, since she was his guest. But she was also bored and cranky, and her head hurt. If she was going to be here until the snow melted—which looked like a while, if the windows were any sort of indication—she needed something to do, damn it.
And decorating for Christmas without a tree was . . . silly.
“Did you just say no?”
“I did just say no.” She gave a little grin, because he looked so incredulous. Was he never contradicted, this hard-edged, handsome cowboy? If so, it just made her want to push back against what he said all the more. Just for fun. Just to alleviate her boredom.
Just because it pricked at him, and she was curious about him.
Eli took another slow bite of his chili, as if thinking—or trying to figure her out. He swallowed and she started to grow impatient as he took another mouthful. Was he going to ignore her, then? That might be worse than having nothing to do at all. Nothing to do and no conversation seemed like hell.
But eventually he looked up from his bowl and met her eyes. “If you want to help out, you can get eggs from the chickens every morning and feed them.”
Cass wasn’t sure if she was excited or disappointed in his answer. It was something to do, at least, but it also didn’t sound like something that would take much time. And he didn’t answer her about the decorating. “So no tree?”
He leaned back and sighed. “If you’re determined to redecorate the place just to take it all back down again in a couple weeks, fine. I’ll take you out when your head’s better and we’ll get you a tree, all right?”
She’d won! Well, not that it was a contest, but she felt like she’d won some sort of prize. Excitement bubbled through her and she bit her lip. Without realizing what she was doing, she reached across the table to squeeze his hand with excitement.
That small touch made everything in the world stop for a moment. Skin-on-skin contact was . . . different than just coexisting in the same space together. It changed things, because even though she pulled away immediately, she couldn’t stop thinking about how warm his hand was under hers, or how rough with calluses it was. How firm and strong.
And how just that small touch made her entire body prickle with awareness of him.
It was clear that he was caught off guard, too. He grew still and just stared at her with those intense gray eyes of his.
“When your head’s better,” he repeated, and then got up and took his bowl to the sink, and the moment was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eli lay on the couch the next morning, his hand under his head, staring up at the ceiling in the quiet moments before dawn. There was no rooster crow yet, so it wasn’t quite time to get up and start the day. Didn’t mean he could sleep, though. He was too busy with his head full of clutter, and most of that clutter was centered on the woman down the hall, sleeping in his bed. In his shirt.
It was hard not to have thoughts about her. Hard not to think about her soft skin brushing against his.
Everything was hard, and in completely inappropriate ways.
She was a guest, though. Injured. Helpless. Couldn’t remember much about herself. He had no business thinking those kinds of things about her. Thinking about if her breasts had pink tips or if the skin in the valley between them was as soft as the rest of her . . .
Completely inappropriate. But Eli’s mind kept straying back to it no matter what he did.
He needed to get
over it. She wasn’t a woman for him to moon after. She needed to feel safe and secure here, and if he flung himself at her, she’d be terrified. Also, he didn’t want her to think she had to “repay” him for her rescue. The thought made him sick. He had to be very careful with this situation. He tried to put himself in her shoes and vowed that, whatever happened, he wasn’t going to do anything to make her feel uncomfortable.
No matter how pretty he might think she was, especially when she moved. Yesterday, he’d found himself fascinated by the simple act of her tucking her dark hair behind one ear. Funny how such a small thing could set his imagination on fire like that.
He’d never been like this around women before. He’d seen plenty of pretty ones and had gone out on dates with several, but there was something about Cass that drew him. She was lovely, sure. But she was also strong and determined despite her vulnerability and the odd situation she was in. He’d expected her to cry and mope about her problems and her injuries, and instead she was restless and bored and trying to help out. She didn’t like being idle, and that was something he admired.
Sure, she was terrible in everything she tried to help with, but the attempts counted for a lot in his book.
Of course, her big blue eyes and vulnerability didn’t help things. But he told himself that the appeal wasn’t that she was vulnerable—it was that she was strong and determined despite it. He’d give her something to do, and then he’d do his best to keep his distance from her so he didn’t make her nervous.
A woman alone on a mountain with a strange man would be anxious no matter what he did, so he had to play this delicately and, above all, treat her with respect.
Respect, he reminded his aching cock, and adjusted himself surreptitiously under the blankets. Lying on the sofa in the living room was definitely not an appropriate place to get hard at the thought of the woman sleeping in his bed. He doubted there was an appropriate place, but it sure wasn’t here, not when she could walk out at any moment.
All I Want for Christmas Is a Cowboy Page 7