by Taryn Quinn
She turned with a mug between her gloved fingers.
Snow still covered every surface, but it had been plowed aside by the guys on my crew. The snowbanks were as tall as the dumpster shrouded in a tarp. We’d given the guys the rest of the week off for Christmas since there wasn’t any reason to rush anymore.
I parked and climbed out to meet her as Butch leaped down to get to her mistress.
Tish trudged up the slope with a bright smile on her face. I reached out for her hand, helping her up the last bit that had turned to ice.
Damn, I didn’t get to enjoy her mega-watt smile that much. Though I had to admit, she did it a lot more since Caleb’s wedding.
Her full-on killer smile made my chest tight.
She crouched to give B a scratch then shielded her eyes against the blazing sun. “What did you do to your truck?”
I pulled her in close, then turned toward the truck. “Well, since you have to sacrifice your beloved Hallmark movies for the next few days, I figured I’d bring one to you.”
She huffed out a laugh. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
I stroked my hand down her ponytail. “Couldn’t sleep last night.”
“I tried not to wake you.”
I kissed her temple. “I can tell when you’re not next to me. Especially since your bed is made for midgets.”
“Shut up. It’s a perfectly respectable queen-sized bed.”
“I’m not a respectable man.”
She snickered then lifted onto her toes to kiss my cheek. “There is that. I love the truck.” She scooped up B and rushed to the door. “Oh my God, a tree too?”
Her eyes sparkled as she circled the back of the truck. Her delighted husky laugh made every hour of setting this up worth it.
She opened the tailgate and hoisted herself in. “There’s a freaking train!”
I went around to the side of the truck and peered in. The tabletop tree was small and probably wouldn’t make it past the ride to her dad’s house, but it had the intended effect. I’d nailed the crisscrossed wooden base of the tree to an apple cart I’d snagged from Happy Acres, then jury rigged the whole damn thing to a piece of plywood.
I’d found a kids’ toy train set at one of the big box stores—where I’d also snagged the tree and some cheap ornaments. Well, all but one ornament. The one that had given me the whole idea.
“Is this what you were doing when you said you needed to go to the store?” She was crouched in front of the tree, touching the star lights and smoky red balls that reminded me of her hair.
“Maybe.”
“It’s utterly ridiculous.” She looked up at me, her eyes wet. “I love it.”
I sniffled a little. Seeing her happy was going to take me out. The difference between the woman I’d met a few months ago and this smiling one seemed huge.
Baby glow?
Maybe some from me?
Right then, I didn’t care.
“Check out the ornament near the top.”
Her gaze skimmed the gaudy garland that I’d clumsily wrapped around each branch. My damn bear paws weren’t made for tiny things. Though that would be changing soon.
She tugged off her glove and cupped the crystal couple. “Our First Christmas,” she said with a little hitch in her voice. Then she flicked it off the branch and tucked it in her pocket. “I don’t want it to get ruined on the drive.”
Then she hopped down and launched herself into my arms. I caught her against me and was surprised at the heat in her kiss. She wrapped her legs around my waist and nearly knocked us both into the snowbank.
Staggering, I laughed and spun her around, Butch yipping and jumping around my ankles.
“I can’t believe you did this.”
“Someday you’ll figure out that I’d do anything for you, Ruby.”
She buried her face in my neck. “I’m starting to believe that.”
I wrapped my arms around her tighter. Good thing I was a patient man. Well, not generally, but I was learning to be.
Keeping things light, I set her down. “Wait until you see inside.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I opened the passenger side door, and Butch bounced inside with the springs that seemed to be in her damn feet. After exploring from the wheel well to the bench seat, she turned to face us, her tongue lolling out.
“Oh, wait.” I opened the glove box and took out the pint-sized red jacket I’d gotten for B. I came out with a pair of antlers and handed them to Tish.
She gave me a bland look. “I’m not wearing those.”
“C’mon.” I found the little switch on the top of the headband and tiny twinkle lights blinked.
“Not in this lifetime.”
I shrugged and put them on. “I’ll go get your bags.”
“They’re on the porch.”
“On it.” I clomped my way to the porch, then hurriedly made sure the door was locked. When I got back to the truck, she was fussing with the lights all over the interior of the truck.
I opened my door. “What are you doing?”
She snorted. “You can’t drive with those.”
“Watch me.” I slid inside and the antlers bent forward. Not exactly a lot of headspace for my giant self. “Okay, so maybe not.”
She plucked the antlers off my head and threw them in the back. Butch attacked them with glee and curled herself in the curve of the headband.
“This is insane. How many… Never mind.” She saw the banded battery packs I’d tucked into the front corner of the dash. “That’s a lot.”
I shrugged. “Made you smile.”
“Might not make you smile when it’s dark and all you see are the interior lights.”
“Don’t get all pragmatic on me, woman.”
She giggled and leaned in to kiss me again. “I wouldn’t dare.”
A few minutes later, we were all packed and heading for Buffalo. It wasn’t going to be a long trip, but as usual, weather wasn’t on our side. I was almost certain our route was following the storm. It wasn’t going to be a bad one, just would slow down our progress.
“We can wait to go after Christmas.”
“No. I know you want to see Cohen. And your dad.”
She slipped her feet out of her boots and tucked one under her butt. My Amazon liked to pretzel herself whenever she did manage to sit her ass down. Today’s socks were all the Marvel hero logos. From what I could tell, they were knee socks.
That shouldn’t be hot. And yet, as usual, when it came to Ruby, everything seemed abnormally attractive.
She reached in the backseat to give B a scratch. “I do. We should probably do the whole doctor thing before we tell my family.”
My stomach went leaden. “If you want to wait, we can.”
“I don’t want to.” She reached over to cover my hand on my thigh. “I want to tell them. I just don’t know how all of this is going to go.”
“Are you going to tell Cohen everything?”
“I don’t know. Part of me thinks I should, but then I don’t want to hurt him any more than he’s already hurting.”
I wanted to ask if she would be telling me everything, but I could tell she was too lost in her own thoughts.
On the trip there, we killed time with our favorite murder podcast.
About half an hour outside of her dad’s place, the conditions had turned white-out dangerous. I was white-knuckling it every mile. Normally, I’d be a helluva lot calmer.
I’d spent three-quarters of my life on the road. This was nothing compared to a few of the blizzards and hurricanes I’d been through.
This time, I had far more precious cargo.
When my rear tires slipped for a third time, I swore. A sign for a truck stop made the decision for me. I flicked on my blinker. “I think we should pull over and wait this out a bit.”
She nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“Sorry. Can I get the time and date of that one?”
“Ass.” But the tips of h
er fingers were bone-white as she held onto the dash. B had climbed into her lap after a bathroom break and stayed there ever since.
A line of cars had the same idea, including half a dozen tractor trailers. I eased behind a Bronco and put it in park. An army of plows were making short work of the rapidly falling snow, but as soon as they cleared it, more was there waiting.
The sun had been missing for the last hour, leaving the sky an eerie iridescent orange full of snow. It wasn’t even noon, but it looked more like dusk.
She flipped open the cooler on the floor and found B’s little bottle-bowl contraption. She squeezed out some water and offered some to my shaking dog.
“Shh. It’s okay.”
I couldn’t help smiling at her as she crooned to the dog.
She looked up. “What are you smiling at?”
“Not maternal, huh?”
“Shut up.” She tucked the bottle away then cuddled B. “Dogs are easy.”
“I’m onto you, Miss Burns.” I unclipped my belt, then hers and dragged her and my dog over. I stretched out my legs on the bench seat until she had no choice but to lay on me.
“This is not comfy.”
“Sure it is.” I lifted her hips until she straddled my legs with one of hers. “There we go. Why don’t you try and take a little nap? Not much else we can do here.”
She laid her head against my chest as B curled up in the small space between us and settled down.
Having both my girls in my arms wasn’t a bad thing. I smoothed my hand down her hair. She’d taken off the hat during the drive, and the cinnamon scent of her hair filled the cab of the truck.
“Did you grow up in Buffalo?”
She played with the button on my shirt. “We moved there after my mom left. So, yeah, most of my life.”
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head and let her talk if she wanted to.
“My dad needed help from his family. Three boys and me—yeah, we were a bit of a handful as you could imagine.”
I smiled against her hair. “Bet you were a handful.”
She tucked her cheek against her hand on my chest. “I’m wondering if the universe is going to give me a hellspawn in retribution, let’s put it that way.”
I tugged her ponytail. “Well, there is red hair involved.”
She rested her chin on her hand and grinned up at me. “Did you know your family at all?”
I shook my head. “My mom dumped me on my grandmother when I was a baby.” I slid my hand under the hem of her sweatshirt to make little circles on her lower back. “She was thrilled as you can imagine.” I looked out the windshield. Snow was piling up, and the windows fogged. “She died, and I got gone.”
Ruby stared at me. “Died? You didn’t tell me that.”
“It didn’t really matter. She fed me because she had to. I hustled enough to buy clothes, and thankfully, school was tolerable. After she died, I escaped before CPS found me and put me in the system.” I cupped her cheek. “I’m a survivor, Ruby. Just like you.” I hated the sadness in her dark eyes. “Our kid will never think I don’t want him or her.”
She leaned into me, her kiss soft and caramel-flavored from her candy. Butch decided she wanted in on the action and climbed up to give us both a tongue bath.
Tish laughed and pushed the dog away enough to get her arms around my neck. She wrapped herself around me tightly and my chest eased.
I didn’t talk about my past because I would rather forget what happened. It wasn’t horrible, just a series of lonely stops. At the time, I hadn’t thought so, but I always moved on before someone else could.
I tightened my hold on her, and we stayed like that for a good long while.
Finally, she scrunched back down to rest her head on my chest. “You know, we aren’t that much different. I had my brothers, but Ezra took off as soon as humanly possible. Rhett and I were the closest in age, but he was always dreaming up ways to get out of Buffalo too.”
“And Cohen?” I didn’t want to ask. Part of me wanted to know all the details, but another part of me didn’t want to hear about it. To know she’d loved so hard that the scars had lasted years.
She laughed softly. “Our daredevil. He was always looking for a high. Not the kind in a bottle or pill or whatever, but his drug of choice was always adrenaline. One time, he actually broke his arm—like full bone sticking out of his damn skin broken.” She trailed her fingers down my arm to catch my hand and laced our fingers. “He got up off the track and was so damn excited about the jump. Of course then he got a look at his arm and passed out in the middle of the dirt trail.”
“So, you held that over his head for…”
She snorted. “Forever.”
“Shocking.”
“But then there was a field trip for school. He was seventeen when he got his first glimpse of a firehouse. Then bikes and motorcycles seemed tame compared to fighting fires.”
“A new high.”
She toyed with my fingers, her thumb drifting across the calluses on my palm. My breath backed up in my lungs. I was forever touching her, but this was the first time she’d relaxed enough to do the same. Well, when it didn’t have something to do with sex. She was plenty touchy then.
But this was different, and my chest ached at her words and touch.
“Yep, you got it. He went from a volunteer firefighter to part of the main crew in Buffalo. But even that wasn’t enough. He entered the California program and went through training to be a jumper.”
“And met Jimmy,” I murmured.
“Yeah. At first, he was just another dumb boy in my house for the holidays. I was too interested in the garage. If it had an engine, I could pull it apart and put it back together. It was the only way me and my dad knew how to communicate.”
“Sounds pretty amazing to me.”
“It was. I loved the puzzle of it. I started working on the custom jobs my dad didn’t have the patience for. Then people began asking for me. Fast forward a bit, and I was the one who was traveling all over. I had a knack. Even when I’d butt up against the boys’ club, they eventually had to let me in.”
I chuckled. “Because you were better than them.”
“Damn straight. Then I started learning about fabricators. The ins and outs of them, their pros and cons. Nothing could do exactly what I wanted. So, I came up with one on my own. I was so excited about it, I went home and told my family.”
My gut twisted as she tensed in my arms. “It was early summer. We tended to hang out as a family in those few weeks before fire season. Jimmy and Co would land exhausted from their brutal training programs. They loved it, of course. They played just as hard as they worked.” She relaxed and smiled against my neck. “They drank me under the table. There was always a little something between me and Jimmy, but it was weird with Co. So, we never did any more than flirt until that summer.”
I swallowed against the acid streaming up from my gut. “And you hooked up.”
“Yeah. It was fun. He was always fun. And I was high on the deal I had going with this manufacturer out of Georgia. They believed in my drawings. I didn’t have capital then, so I was looking to hook up with a company. It wasn’t even a good deal now that I look back on it. But at the time, I was too stupid to know any better.”
“You’re far from stupid.”
“Yeah, now. Then I was just cocky. I knew I was good, knew I had a good product. And I should have gotten a lawyer. Should have paid more attention to my paperwork. Then there was Jimmy. I babbled all my details to him. I was trying to impress him. I wanted to dazzle him with my awesomeness.”
I didn’t know what to say just then. Ruby had always been so put together. I couldn’t imagine her starstruck by anyone. And maybe that was why it hurt so much to hear her talk about him.
“He said he’d help me with the paperwork. I didn’t need to waste my money on a lawyer taking my money.” She huffed out a bitter laugh. “I should have been looking closer to home with where my money was goin
g.” She sat up. “I was dumb enough to trust him. He was my brother’s best friend. He fucking snowed me. Put both our names on the paperwork and when the check came in, it went to him in California. He was gone. And so was my money.”
“What the fuck. You couldn’t fight it?” I sat up with her, outrage bellowing through the car.
She leaned over and kissed me. “No lawyer, remember? And with both our names on the paperwork, he could cash the check. It wasn’t like we had a partnership.”
“You could have fought it.”
“I could have. But then I’d have to drag my whole family into it. Drag Cohen—”
“And you don’t think he’d choose you over this piece of shit?”
“It didn’t matter. I was so mad at myself for being so stupid. For getting taken in. I thought I deserved it.”
“Fuck that.” Rage left me seeing red, and it wasn’t my Ruby’s hair this time.
She launched herself at me. “I love that you’re so offended for me, Thor.” She pressed her forehead to mine. “I love the way you see me.”
I dragged her back onto my lap until she straddled me. Butch yipped at all the activity and leaped into the back to put herself back into her bed with a huff.
Ruby laughed as she threaded her fingers into my hair. “I love that you are here for me, expecting nothing.”
My throat tightened. “I’ll always be here for you.”
“I thought I loved Jimmy. But now I know it wasn’t love. It doesn’t come close to how I feel about you.” She covered her belly with her hand. “Or how I feel about this crazy thing we’re doing together. I mean, a baby? It’s just insane. But I want it. I want you both so much.”
I cupped the back of her neck and covered her mouth. The kiss was wildfire-hot, and we were both breathless when we pulled apart. “You can’t get rid of me, you know.”
“Forever seems like a really good word when it comes to you and me.”
“Forever?” I gripped her ass, dragging her harder against me.
“Yep. You’re stuck with me.”
The bleat of a truck horn had us both jumping. While we’d been talking, the snow had let up. I hit the windshield wipers and laughed at the line of brake lights merging back onto the highway. “Well, I guess forever includes talking to your dad about all of this.”