Christmas in Destiny

by Toni Blake

  Grampy cast Shane a slightly more cautious look this time. “What’s that?”

  “He suggested you show up to the party at Miss Ellie’s in your sleigh.” She smiled. “I think it’s perfect! The kids will see Santa pull up in his bright red sleigh, just like they’ve always heard about! We’ll just tell them the reindeer are resting and that the horse takes their place sometime.” She winked—and despite himself, Shane thought it was cute as hell.

  “Why, that’s plumb genius,” Edna said. “Ain’t it, Willie?”

  Grampy Hoskins moved his gaze among the three of them, and admitted, “It’s perty dang good. Perty dang good indeed.” Then he pointed at Shane. “You got a good head on your shoulders, son.”

  And now it was Shane who winked. “Then maybe you oughta listen to my other suggestions, too.”

  “What’s he talkin’ about?” Edna asked.

  And Grampy was quick to say, “Nothin’ in particular—he just has a bunch o’ ideas on how I oughta . . . run things, that’s all.” Then he gave Shane another pointed look. “Which I’m considerin’.” Though it felt more like he was saying, Shut the hell up.

  Shane just arched an eyebrow smugly in his direction.

  “Speakin’ o’ the sleigh,” Grampy said then, “what say we hook it up and then you take Candice here out for a ride. Little celebration for all your hard work today.”

  Shane slanted him a glance, thinking maybe he wasn’t the only one trying to fix somebody up here. And the fact was—Shane was tired. It was long since past dark and he’d put in a morning of cleanup at the church before all this tree business this afternoon. But it still didn’t sound like a bad idea to him, all things considered.

  Especially when Candy said, “I’ve never ridden in your sleigh before.”

  “Say it ain’t so!” Grampy exclaimed. “Well, then, by all means, that settles it. We’re hitchin’ up Charley and sendin’ you two out for a ride on the ridge.”

  Candice thought she probably should have refused. Probably should have pointed out that it was late and that she should take Shane home, or maybe even just ask Edna to drop him off since the Mercantile was more on her way than it was on Candice’s.

  And yet she hadn’t.

  Even despite the heat she’d felt moving between them earlier.

  Maybe because of the heat she’d felt moving between them.

  More than heat—it had bordered on fire.

  And it had been a long time since Candice had been stupid enough to play with fire.

  Now she was out in the dark in a red sleigh with Shane—her scary-in-more-than-one-way stranger—and the night was cold but she still felt plenty warm inside.

  A plaid blanket lay across their laps, and Edna had insisted on fixing up a thermos of hot chocolate, which for some reason had made Shane laugh.

  Their takeoff had felt a little rocky and Charley hadn’t been totally cooperative, but the ride had since grown smoother. The moon shone down on a fresh blanket of white, lighting their way now that the earlier snowfall had stopped after dropping a new inch or so atop what was already there.

  “Have you driven a lot of sleighs?” she asked, curious.

  “Just this one,” he said, eyes on the task. “Grampy insisted on teaching me.”

  They made a little small talk then, about the day, about Grampy’s gratitude, about Edna’s baking, about this afternoon’s snow and being thankful the damaged roofs in town were covered—the church’s now officially undergoing its temporary repair. And after just a short moment of comfortable silence between them, Shane said, “What about sleigh rides?”

  She looked at him, confused. “What about them?”

  “At the party,” Shane said. “After Grampy shows up in his Santa suit, somebody—more experienced at this than me—could give people sleigh rides.”

  And Candice couldn’t help smiling. “I love that idea!” she said. She was already planning ice-skating, and adding sleigh rides would be another quaint winter activity. She tilted her head and had to admit, even if she almost didn’t want to, “Grampy was right—you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

  And a handsome one, too. But she kept that part to herself. And wondered a little more about him. What made him tick? What were his secrets? What had his life been like in Montana? What was this job in Miami he was headed for but never talked about?

  Yet she supposed all her questions mostly boiled down to wondering one core thing: Underneath it all, was Shane Dalton naughty or nice?

  Far back on Grampy’s ridge, Shane pulled up on the reins, bringing horse and sleigh to a halt. And as Candice took in the stillness of the night now that they’d gone still, too, she said to Shane, “Listen to that.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” he told her.

  “That’s what I mean. Pure silence.” Winter brought silence. In the summer, even if you were out in the country like this, there were sounds. Crickets in the grass, a breeze wafting through leaves on trees, the distant bark of a dog or moo of a cow or call of a bird. But snow cover like this seemed to wrap a still silence around the landscape that nothing else ever did or ever could.

  “It’s quiet like this in Montana sometimes,” he told her. “Wide-open spaces. Not much filling them.”

  “There was a time when this kind of silence would make me feel . . . lonely,” she confessed—wondering why on earth she was sharing something so personal and which perhaps left her more . . . vulnerable in front of him.

  “And now?” he asked.

  She cast him a quick sideways glance, but then raised her gaze back to the moon above. “Now I think it’s . . . nice. Well, nice when you have someone to share it with anyway,” she added on a soft laugh.

  At which point she realized with some horror that she’d sounded . . . almost romantic. Like she thought they were on a date. So, blinking nervously a few times, she busied herself with pouring the hot chocolate into the cups Edna had sent along.

  As she passed him one, she thought—as always—how cold his hands must be. And when she saw him warming them around the cup, she said without forethought, “Give me one of your hands.”

  His look was questioning, a little surprised—maybe even intrigued. But he slowly withdrew one from the cup and held it out to her.

  She took it between her own hands, between the red mittens she wore, and said, “To warm it up.”

  And despite herself, she liked how it felt, even through the mittens, to touch him that way, to hold his hand in hers. Enough that she realized she might have just unwittingly started something here, something that made her lower her eyes and blink once, twice more.

  “What about the other one?” he asked, his voice holding just a hint of flirtation.

  She said, “If you put your cup down, I’ll warm them both up.”

  He did, and she held one of his hands in each of hers. And it made her feel warmer too, somehow, despite the temperatures.

  “It’s almost like you don’t hate me anymore,” he teased her.

  Though it made her feel bad. She’d been pretty rotten to him, she supposed, even after the night of the snowstorm. And she’d had her reasons, of course, but he couldn’t know that and they weren’t his fault. “I never . . . hated you,” she tried to explain. “I just thought . . .”

  “Thought what?”

  She blinked. And was honest. “That you . . . seemed like trouble.”

  He responded by freeing his fingers from her mittened grip, changing the connection so that he held her hands in his now. And he leaned closer, something a little wicked in his gaze as he said, “You got that part right then, Candy.”

  She pulled in her breath.

  “Because the truth is, I’m more trouble than you can handle.”

  And then he kissed her.

  Eleven

  “Want me to kiss her, huh?”

  George Bailey, It’s a Wonderful Life

  His mouth came down firm and hot on hers. For a man who’d been out in the cold a lon
g while, everything about him felt like solid heat right now and the touch of his lips on hers flooded her body with warmth.

  She felt awkward at first, kissing him back—it had been so long since she’d been kissed. But the unbidden pull she’d suffered toward him since they’d met was strong enough to quickly override that, quickly make her forget to think about the act of kissing and just kiss. Just be kissed. Once she stopped thinking and simply let herself feel, her mouth moved against and melded to his effortlessly, instinctually, as the kiss moved all through her.

  Her heart beat harder and she almost couldn’t believe she was letting this happen—letting herself succumb to a guy who’d just confirmed her fears about him.

  And yet it felt too good to stop. And hadn’t she been slowly lowering her guard anyway? Not because she had suddenly decided he was a good guy but . . . because it was time. To quit hiding. To quit running. Because Tessa was right and life was short, and here was a hot, sexy man who seemed equally drawn to her for some reason, and maybe she should just try to put her worries aside. At least for this one moment.

  At some point, his hands left hers, one sliding up under her parka to her hip, the other looping around her shoulder, pulling her closer. One of her own hands rose unplanned to his chest between the open zipper of his coat, and even through her mitten and his shirt, she could feel the very maleness of him. That stark masculinity that had emanated from him since the very first moment they’d met, she now got to touch.

  One kiss turned into another, and another—and what had started out feeling hot, urgent, over the course of a few minutes relaxed into something still firm but slower, sweeter. Kisses that were more comfortable, like their mouths had gotten to know each other.

  Candice’s heart still beat madly in her chest, from the thrill of it, the mere energy of connecting with a man this way after so long, but it had become easier now and she kissed him without thought.

  When it ended and he pulled back, his eyes were filled with . . . perhaps it was mischief. Or . . . the satisfaction of knowing they’d both liked what had just happened and that there wasn’t a thing in the world she could say to convince him otherwise.

  The silence made her feel awkward again, urged her to fill the void. “Well—that was unexpected.” It came out sounding nervous—ugh. And she felt herself blinking.

  His reply, however, didn’t sound nervous at all. More challenging, in fact. “Was it?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Her heart continued to pound.

  So he kept going. “Because seems to me like this has been coming for a while.” He even had the nerve to arch one brow and add, “You weren’t really afraid of me—were you, Candy? You were just afraid of this.” He wagged a finger back and forth between them.

  And she didn’t like it—not at all—that he was suggesting she feared passion, or kissing, or whatever he was referring to exactly. But she supposed it was, all too sadly, the truth.

  Still, she said, “It’s like I told you—you seemed . . . like someone to be wary of.” She hated that she kept saying that, though, kept accusing him of that. And mostly, she didn’t want to hear him tell her again that she was right—because she didn’t want to be right. So she rushed ahead to something else. “And you called me Candy again, by the way.”

  “Well, we’re done with Grampy’s tree,” he told her with a sly wink. “You don’t have anything else to hold over me.”

  “I could quit keeping your hands warm.” What are you doing? Flirting with him? Now?

  “You already quit.”

  “I didn’t quit—you moved them.”

  “To better places.”

  Something in the words warmed her all over again. Even if she was still pretty warm already from making out with him. She just shrugged. “Your choice, your fault.”

  And he laughed. Then grabbed her mittened hands in both of his. “All right, Candice. I kinda like having my hands kept warm, so I’m taking you up on it again. Even if Candy suits you more.” He stopped, met her gaze, his eyes twinkling blue even in the wintry moonlight. “I just think of you that way now. In my head.”

  “You think of me?” The words came out before she could stop them, too soft, too girlish.

  But if he noticed, it didn’t show. “Yep.”

  She cast him a sideways glance. “A lot?”

  “Pretty damn much if you want to know the truth.”

  She sucked in her breath. Excited by that. And still a little uneasy. About him. All of it. “I do want to know the truth.”

  “The truth is that I’d like to do more than kiss you.”

  He’d just said it. That plain. Like it was nothing.

  “But you’re trouble?” she asked. Maybe she was hoping he’d answer differently this time, tell her what she wanted to hear.

  Instead, though, he only said, “Been on Santa’s naughty list my whole life.” And ended with another wink.

  And somehow the confirmation sobered her. Reminded her. Of practical life matters. “Trouble is the last thing I need.”

  “And yet here you are sitting right beside it.”

  Yep, here she was. Feeling ripped down the middle, torn between desire and what seemed to her a healthy, sensible trepidation. The sheer masculinity he gave off emanated down through his hands and up into her, into her very core, almost irresistibly. Almost.

  She let go of his hands.

  Looked back ahead, out into the clear, snow-covered night.

  “This has been nice, but we should probably get back to Grampy and Edna.”

  To her surprise, his expression held almost a sense of amusement. Maybe because it was another confession—even if a silent one this time—that he was just too much for her to handle, like he’d said. “Okay, Candy Cane,” he told her.

  At hearing the name, she darted a reprimanding look in his direction.

  But he defended himself. “Hey, you aren’t keeping my hands warm anymore. All bets are off.”

  “I guess they are,” she murmured.

  And the whole ride back, she wondered if . . . she’d blown something, some chance she should have taken.

  Tessa would think so. And maybe she’d even be right. And yet . . . a girl had to protect herself, didn’t she? A girl had to protect her heart. And the rest of herself, too.

  As they returned to the house, things felt more normal—they made normal conversation, Shane explaining he was going to park the sleigh back in the yard as a decoration again, and that he’d help Grampy unhitch the horse and get it put away.

  “Put away a lot of horses, have you?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  “Only this one,” he said. “Grampy—”

  “Insisted,” she finished for him. And they shared a light smile.

  Goodbyes and more thank yous were said. Edna had brought several tins of holiday snacks along and insisted Shane take the rest of the peppermint bark. “Since I know you’re partial to it,” she added.

  The drive back to town held more conversation. Candice worked to keep it going, in fact, because it felt so much less awkward that way. And the longer Shane was here, the more topics there were, in fact, to discuss. He was a part of things now.

  They talked more about the repairs happening in town. They talked more about the party. It was almost easy—same as it had gotten with him over the last couple of days.

  Except for when she remembered that they’d made out for a few minutes a little while ago and that she still felt his touch on her lips . . . and her hands . . . and her hips.

  As they approached the Mercantile on the quiet Destiny thoroughfare not far from town square, empty on a cold winter’s night, he said, “Thanks for the help today.” He sounded sincere, serious.

  “You’re welcome, and I was happy to,” she replied. “It was . . . a good thing to do.”

  And as she pulled into the drive that led to the parking area in back and brought the car to a halt, he looked over at her in the dim light from surrounding build
ings and said, “You want to come in with me, Candy Cane?”

  Oh boy. She hadn’t seen that coming. Not at all.

  And her body—her body wanted her to. It veritably hummed with longing.

  But the rest of her . . . couldn’t.

  She shook her head, blinked once quickly, didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Oh—no, I can’t.”

  He gave a short nod, expression softening. “Okay. Just thought I’d ask, just in case—and . . . I get it. This was just . . . a few kisses. And warm hands for a few minutes. But they were nice ones, Candy Cane. Goodnight.”

  And as he got out of the car and walked around it, away from her, starting toward the stairs that led up to the rooms above the store—Candice was inexplicably struck with the unexpected urge to stop him. From walking away. Entirely. She lowered her window.

  He heard it and looked back.

  “Would you like to go with me to the snowcat contest Thursday night at Creekside Park?”

  He squinted, appearing utterly perplexed. “The what cat contest?”

  “Snowcat.”

  “What the hell’s a snowcat?”

  “A cat made of snow.” Wasn’t that obvious? But when he just looked at her, still clearly confused, she explained, “It’s become a thing here over the last few years. Sometimes people make snowcats instead of snowmen. So my friend, Amy—you’ve probably met her, she’s Logan’s wife—has organized it as a new holiday event.”

  “That’s kind of wacky,” he said, expression back to being amused again. “If I come, do I have to build one?”

  She shook her head. “No. It can be a spectator sport. We can just walk around and drink hot chocolate.”

  He laughed. “Hot chocolate—of course.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “What’s so funny about hot chocolate?”

  “Nothing,” he claimed, still grinning slightly. Then he took a few steps back toward the car, approaching the window, and lowered his chin to meet her eyes. “Are you asking me on a date, Candy?”

  She was honest. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Another blink she hoped he didn’t see.