by Nora Roberts
“There was a rumor.” Sexy dress, heels, fuck-me perfume, Willa mused, and narrowed her eyes. “Who’s the present for?”
“I’m dropping in on Nate.” Tess swirled on her coat. “I hope he has some wassail handy.”
“Should have figured it,” Willa muttered. “You’re going to break your neck getting to the rig in those ice picks.”
“I’ve got excellent balance.” With a careless wave, Tess glided out. “Don’t wait up. Sis.”
“Yeah. Good balance,” Willa repeated, watching as Tess made her way gracefully to the rig. “I hope Nate’s got good balance.”
She turned away, walked into the living room, and stretched out on the sofa. After one long look at the tall, elaborately decorated tree framed in the front window, she buried her face in the leather.
Christmas had always been a miserable time of year for her. Her mother had died in December. Not that she remembered, but she knew it, and it had always put a cloud over the holidays. Bess had tried, God knew, to make up for it with decorations and cookies, with silly presents and carols. But there had never been family gathered around the piano, or family huddled under the tree opening gifts on Christmas morning.
She and Adam had exchanged theirs on Christmas Eve, always. After her father was rip-roaring drunk and snoring in his bed.
There had been presents under the tree with her name on them. Bess had seen to that, and for years had put Jack’s name on them. But when Willa had turned sixteen, she’d stopped opening those. They were a lie after all, and after a couple of further attempts, Bess had given up the pretense.
Christmas morning had meant hangovers and bad temper, and on the one occasion she’d been brave enough to complain, a stinging backhand.
She’d stopped looking forward to the holidays a long time ago.
And now she was tired, so damn tired. The winter had come so soon, and so brutally. They’d lost more cows than she’d expected, and Wood was worried they hadn’t gotten the winter wheat in soon enough. The market price per head had dipped—not enough for panic, but enough for worry.
And she found herself waiting, every day waiting, to find something, or someone, slaughtered on her doorstep again.
No one to talk to, she thought. So she kept her worries to herself. She didn’t want Lily and Tess terrified every minute of the day, but neither could she relax and ignore it. She made certain that either she or Adam or Ham kept an eye on both of them when they were out of the house.
Now Tess was gone, driving off, and Willa hadn’t had the energy or the wisdom to stop her.
Call Nate, she told herself. Get up and call Nate to tell him she’s coming. He’ll look out for her. But she didn’t move, just couldn’t seem to swing her legs down and sit up. To sit up and face that brightly, pitifully cheerful tree with the pretty presents under it.
“If you’re going to sleep, you should go to bed.”
She heard Ben’s voice, resigned herself to it. “I’m not sleeping. I’m just resting a minute. Go away.”
“I don’t know; when I come over here you don’t tell me to leave again.” So he sat down, settling in the middle of the sofa. “You’re wearing yourself out, Will.” Reaching down, he turned her face away from the back of the sofa. The tears on it made him drop his hand as if she’d burned him. “You’re crying.”
“I am not.” Humiliated, she pressed her face into leather again. “I’m just tired. That’s all.” Then her voice hitched, broke, and disgraced her. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I’m tired.”
“Come here, darling.” Though he had little experience with weeping females, he figured he could handle this one. As easily as if she’d been a child, he lifted her up, cradled her on his lap. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m just . . . Everything,” she managed, and let her head rest on his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not crying.”
“Okay.” Deciding they were both better off pretending she wasn’t, he gathered her closer. “Let’s just sit here awhile anyway. You’re a comfortable armful for a bony woman.”
“I hate Christmas.”
“No, you don’t.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “You’re just worn out. You know what you should do, Will? You and your sisters should take a few days off and go to one of those fancy spas. Get yourself pampered and pummeled, take mud baths.”
She snorted, felt better. “Yeah, right. Me and the girls swapping gossip in the mud. That’s my style, all right.”
“Better yet, you could go with me. We could get a room with one of those big bubble tubs, a heart-shaped bed with a mirror over it. That way you can see what’s going on when we make love. You’ll learn faster that way.”
It had a certain decadent, dizzying appeal, but she shrugged. “I’m not in any hurry.”
“I’m getting to be in one,” he muttered, then tilted her head back. “Haven’t done this in a while.” And closed his mouth over hers.
She didn’t pretend to resist or protest, not when it was exactly what she needed. The warmth, the steady hand, the skilled mouth. Instead, she slid her arms around his neck, turned into him, and let all those worries and doubts and bad memories fade away.
Here was comfort and, regardless of anything, someone who would listen, and perhaps even care. She sank into that, into the wanting of that as much as the wanting of him.
He felt the need he’d kept carefully reined strain at its tether. The unexpected sweetness of her, the surprising and arousing pliancy, the little licks of heat that hinted of passion simmering beneath innocence.
The combination came close to snapping that straining tether.
So it was he who drew back, she who protested. Struggling to temper instinct with sense, he shifted her again, settled her head once more in the curve of his shoulder. “Let’s just sit here awhile.”
She felt his heart beat, fast, under her hand. Heard her own pound in her head. “You get me stirred up. I don’t know why it’s you who gets me stirred up, Ben. I just can’t figure it.”
“Well, I feel heaps better now.” He sighed once, then rested his head against hers. “This isn’t so bad.”
“No, I guess it isn’t.” So she sat in his lap while her feelings settled again. She watched the twinkle of the lights on the tree, and the fall of light snow, just a whisper of white, through the window beyond. “Tess went over to Nate’s,” she said at length.
He heard the tone, knew her well enough to interpret it. “You’re worried about that?”
“Nate can handle himself. Probably.” She made a restless movement, then gave up and let her eyes drift closed.
“It’s Tess you’re worried about.”
“Maybe. Some. Yes. Nothing’s happened for weeks now, but . . .” She exhaled. “I can’t watch her every minute of the day and night.”
“No, you can’t.”
“She thinks she knows all the answers. Miss Big City Girl with her self-defense courses and her snappy clothes. Shit. She’s as lost out here as a mouse in a roomful of hungry she-cats. What if the rig breaks down, or she runs off the road?” She drew a deep breath and said what was most on her mind. “What if whoever killed Pickles is still around, watching?”
“Like you said, nothing’s happened in weeks. Odds are he’s long gone.”
“If you believe that, why are you here most every day, using every lame excuse in the book to drop by?”
“They aren’t so lame,” he muttered, then shrugged. “There’s you.” He didn’t bother to scowl when she snorted. “There is you,” he repeated. “And there’s the ranch. And yeah, I think about it.” He tilted her head up again and kissed her hard and quick. “Tell you what, I’ll just ride by Nate’s and make sure she got there.”
“Nobody’s asking you to check up on my problems.”
“Nope, nobody is.” He lifted her, set her aside, then rose. “One day you might just ask me for something, Willa. You might just break down and ask. Meanwhile I’ll do
things my own way. Go on to bed,” he told her. “You need a decent night’s sleep. I’ll see to your sister.”
She frowned after him as he walked out, and wondered what he was waiting for her to ask.
T ESS GOT THERE. SHE CONSIDERED IT A FINE ADVENTURE to drive through the light snowfall in the deep country dark. She had the radio turned up to blast, and by some minor miracle she found a station that played downright rock. She wailed along with Rod Stewart as she approached the lights of Nate’s ranch.
Tidy as a Currier and Ives painting, she decided. The well-plowed dirt road with its fresh sprinkle of white, the neat outbuildings and rectangles of fence, the rising shadows of trees.
Her headlights must have stirred the horses, as three trotted out of the barn and into the corral to watch her drive by.
Pretty as a painting themselves, she thought, with their flowing tails and dancing hooves. One of them loped over to the fence, luring her into slowing down to study its trim lines and glossy color.
She drove on, taking the gentle curve in the road that led to the main house. It, too, was pretty and neat. Unpretentious, she decided, a boxy two stories with a generous covered porch, white shutters against dark wood, double chimneys with smoke pumping into the snowy sky. Simple, she mused, hold the pretenses and fancywork. Just like the man who lived there.
She was smiling as she gathered up her bag, the gift, and climbed out of the rig. And managed, barely, to hold back the scream when she spotted the wildcat.
She took three stumbling steps back, rapped up hard against the rig. The cat’s eyes stared into hers. It was dead, stone cold dead and draped over the hitching rail. But it gave her a very bad moment.
The fangs and claws were lethally sharp and told her exactly what would happen to a woman careless enough to stumble onto a live one. It hadn’t been mutilated, and the lack of blood settled her thundering heart. It was simply draped, like a rug, she thought in wonder, over the rail. With a shudder, she gave it a wide berth and climbed the steps to the front door.
What kind of people, she wondered, draped the carcass of a wildcat over their front entrance? With a nervous laugh, she looked down at the gift in her hand. Then read Keats?
Jesus, what a country.
Even as she lifted her hand to knock, the door opened. In the mood she was in, Tess was pleased she didn’t add a shriek to her jolt.
The short, dark woman studied her solemnly. She was nearly as wide as she was tall, wrapped now in a thick black coat and many scarves. Her black hair was bundled under yet another scarf, but Tess could see it was salted with gray.
“Señorita,” she said in a gorgeous, fluid voice. “May I help you?”
The liquid, sexy voice coming out of the tiny, wrinkled face fascinated Tess, and she immediately started casting character. Her smile spread and brightened. “Hello, I’m Tess Mercy.”
“Yes, Señorita Mercy.” At the Mercy name, the woman opened the door wider, stepping back in invitation.
“I’d like to see Nate, if he’s free.”
“He’s in his office. Just down the hall. I will show you.”
“You’re on your way out.” And Tess didn’t want her arrival announced. “I can find it. Señora . . . ?”
“Cruz.” She blinked a moment at Tess’s offered hand, then took it in a brisk grip. “Mister Nate will be pleased to see you.”
Will he? Tess thought, but she continued to smile. “I have a little gift for him,” she said, and held up the brightly wrapped book. “A surprise.”
“That is very generous. It is the third door on the left.” The ghost of a smile around the woman’s mouth told Tess that the underlying reason for her visit was all too obvious. At least to another female. “Good night, Señorita Mercy.”
“Good night, Señora Cruz.” And Tess chuckled to herself as the door closed between them and she was left alone in the quiet hall.
Bright geometric-patterned rugs over dark wood floors, clever pen-and-ink sketches on ivory-toned walls. Lovely dried-flower arrangements in brass urns—that would be the señora’s touch, Tess assumed as she wandered.
A fire was burning nicely in the living room, simmering in a stone hearth beneath a stone mantel on which stood pewter candlesticks and a collection of intriguing paperweights. The furniture was wide and deeply cushioned and masculine. Dark colors to contrast with light walls and the bright rugs.
An interesting mix, Tess decided. Simple, male, yet pleasing to the eye.
She caught the low strains of a Mozart concerto as she walked closer to the open office door.
And there he was, all gangling and sexy and Jimmy Stewart-ish in a high-backed leather chair behind a big oak desk. The desk lamp slanted light over his hands as he made notations on a yellow legal pad. His brow was knotted, his tie loose, his hair, all that thick gold of it, mussed. From his own hands, she noted, as he raked his fingers through it.
Well, well, she thought, just feel my heart go pitty-pat. Amused at herself, she watched him another minute, pleased to be able to study him when he was working and unaware of her.
The room was filled with books, and a single mug of coffee sat at his elbow while the lovely music murmured in the background.
Nate, she decided, giving her hair a brief stroke, you’re a goner.
“Well, good evening, Lawyer Torrence.” Well aware that she was posed in the doorway, she smiled slowly as his head jerked up, as his eyes cleared of business, then surprise, and focused.
“Well, hello, Miz Mercy.” Tension whipped into him as he saw her there, snow still lightly dusted over her hair and the shoulders of her coat. That tension increased when he saw the secret female smile on her lips, but he leaned back in his chair like a man perfectly at ease. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“I hope so. And I hope I’m not interrupting something vitally important.”
“Not vital.” The notes he’d been taking had already gone completely out of his mind.
“Señora Cruz let me in.” She started toward the desk, thinking of the wildcat. She would take a page from the feline book and toy with her prey before moving in for the kill. “Your housekeeper.”
“My keeper.” He was quite simply baffled. Should he get up, offer her a drink, stay where he was? Why the hell was she looking at him as though she was already licking the remains of him from her lips? “Maria and her husband, Miguel, keep things running around here. Is this a social visit, Tess, or do you need a lawyer?”
“Social, for the moment. Completely social.” She slipped off her coat and watched his eyes flicker. Yes, she concluded, the dress was definitely a success. “To be honest, I needed to get out of the house.” She draped her coat over the back of a chair, then eased a hip onto the corner of his desk, letting the skirt slide sneakily up her thigh. “A little cabin fever.”
“It happens.” He hadn’t forgotten her legs, but it had been a while since he’d seen them in anything but jeans or thick wool pants. Displayed in sheer hose to well above the knee, they made his mouth go dry. “Can I get you a drink?”
“That would be lovely.” She crossed her legs, slowly. Another sneaky slide. “What have you got?”
“Ah . . .” He couldn’t remember, and felt like an idiot.
Better and better, she decided, and slithered off the desk. “I’ll just see for myself, shall I?” She walked to the decanters on a cabinet across the room and chose vermouth. “Would you like one?”
“Sure, thanks.” He nudged the coffee aside. Caffeine sure as hell wasn’t going to get him through this. “I haven’t been able to get over for a couple of days. How are things?”
“Quiet.” She poured two glasses, brought them to the desk. After handing Nate his, she slipped onto the desk again, on his side. “Though festive.” She leaned down, just a bit, tapped her glass to his. “Happy holidays. In fact . . .” She took a small sip. “That’s one of the reasons I came by.” Reaching over, she picked up the package she’d put on the desk. “Merry Christmas, Nate
.”
“You got me a present?” He narrowed his eyes at the package, expecting a slam.
“Just a little one. You’ve been a good friend, and counselor.” She smiled over the last word. “Do you want to open it now, or wait till Christmas morning?” She touched her tongue to her top lip, and all the blood drained out of his brain into his lap. “I can come back.”
“I’m a sucker for presents,” he told her, and ripped the paper off. When he saw the book he teetered between being faintly embarrassed and gently moved. “I’m a sucker for Keats, too,” he murmured.
“So I hear. I thought when you read it, you might think of me.”
He lifted his eyes to hers. “I manage to think of you without visual aids.”
“Do you?” She inched closer, leaning down so that she could take hold of his loosened tie. “And what do you think?”
“I think, at the moment, you’re trying to seduce me.”
“You’re so quick, so smart.” She laughed and slid into his lap. “And so right.” One quick tug on the tie and she had his mouth on hers.
Like the house, like the man, the hunger was simple and without pretense. His hands closed over her breasts, the warm, full weight of them. And when she shifted to straddle him, his hands moved around to cup her bottom.
She had already tossed his tie aside and was working on his shirt before he’d taken the first breath.
“If I’d had to go another week without your hands on me, I’d have screamed.” She fastened her teeth low on his neck. “I’d rather scream with them on me.”
He still hadn’t managed to breathe, but his hands were busy enough, pushing that short, snug skirt of the dress up her hips, finding the delight of firm bare skin over the lacy tops of stockings. “We can’t—here.” He went back to her breasts, unable to decide where he needed to touch first. “Upstairs,” he managed as he savaged her mouth. “I’ll take you upstairs.”