Good things do come in small packages in the latest book in Lilian Darcy’s new miniseries, The Cherry Sisters!

Independent Lee knew she had a cushy life in Aspen. A great job as a ski instructor, a luxury home (well, the caretaker’s apartment, but it was right on the slopes). And a new fling with new coworker Mac Wheeler. He was handsome, athletic, sexy—the après-ski had just gotten a whole lot better!

Only it was never meant to get serious. She’s pregnant. Mac’s baby, conceived at Christmas. Overnight, her plans change: she’s moving back East to work at the family hotel with her sisters. But the real shock is…Mac has followed her. Yes, 1,700 miles, determined to be…what? Angry? Sure. Daddy? Guess so. Husband…? Who knew…

He hadn’t been in touch.

He might be packing up to move back to Idaho. He would surely have heard about the job at Barrier Mountain by now. What had they ever had together that could make her believe in this kind of a future? Flowers and a veil and the promise of undying love… No. They hadn’t been heading in that direction at all. They’d said nothing to each other about anything like that.

“But we never actually ended it,” he repeated now.

“No, we didn’t.”

“And if you hadn’t gotten pregnant, what would have happened? Were you planning to end it, before that happened?”

“Not at that point, I—”

“Not at that point?”

“We met at a bar in a resort town, Mac. In that situation, you’re not looking for something long-term, and you kind of assume the other person isn’t, either.”

“Right.” After a moment, he added quietly, “Are you really that cynical and hard-edged? You were that ready to dump the whole thing the moment it threatened to go deeper?”

“No! I was…really enjoying it, if you want the truth. Every bit of it.”

Scaring myself a little bit, wondering once or twice if I was being played.

The Cherry Sisters: Three sisters return to their childhood home in the mountains—and find the love of a lifetime!

Dear Reader,

Would you describe yourself as the outdoorsy type? Or are you someone who much prefers to tuck yourself cosily away indoors during the cold of winter?

Like my heroine in this story, I’m a mix of both. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing like fresh air and beautiful views and a good hike or swim or ski. There’s also nothing like that delicious feeling of coming back to a warm house and something good to eat after a bracing few hours in the open.

Lee has her life set up exactly the way she wants in this area. She’s a ski instructor in Colorado by day, with a very nice arrangement as live-in caretaker for an eleven-million-dollar mansion that occupies much of her free time but gives her access to an open fire, a Jacuzzi and seven bathrooms.

Yet when the story opens, she’s not in Colorado—she’s back home in upstate New York, staring down a very angry Mac Wheeler, who has followed her halfway across the country to say his piece. What has happened to throw both of these characters so far beyond their comfort zone?

Well, you’ve probably guessed the answer to this from the book’s title. More important, however, how did it happen, and what are they going to do about it?

I hope you enjoy Lee and Mac’s tumultuous relationship, and their equally tumultuous journey.

Lilian Darcy

The Baby Made at Christmas

Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LILIAN DARCY has written nearly eighty books for Mills & Boon. Happily married with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at PO Box 532, Jamison PO, Macquarie ACT 2614, Australia, or email her at lilian@liliandarcy . com.

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

Upstate New York, March

“I am so angry with you, Lee.” Mac stood there at the bottom of the porch steps, against a backdrop of blooming crocuses in bright yellow and purple, while the still-bare trees gleamed with a coating of ice against a perfect late-March blue sky.

His hair was getting a little long, and he must have combed it back with his fingers because it lay in untidy, slightly wavy strands along the top of his head and down the back of his neck. A glint of sunlight caught his cheekbones, and the shadow above them made his dark eyes seem even darker. His shoulders looked strong and square under his shirt, and he stood with his feet planted on the ground as if ready for a fight with a grizzly bear. He was so gorgeous it almost hurt to look at him.

He hadn’t told Lee he was coming, and he’d driven here, he hadn’t flown. His familiar dark blue pickup was parked right there, still muddy and speckled with splashes of Colorado mountain road salt even after a journey of two thousand miles.

It spooked Lee that he’d driven all this way without a word of warning. Rattled the cage of her catlike independence, and made her very wary about his reasons. There was a statement in what he’d done. He’d ambushed her deliberately, and she didn’t know whether to be angry right back, or fall into his arms, or some third alternative that for the moment she couldn’t bring to mind.

It was never meant to get serious....

It was ten in the morning and Lee was still wearing her thick, fluffy, blue robe, wrapped in it for comfort as much as for warmth, because she’d felt disgustingly sick to her stomach since first rolling over in the glorious coziness of her bed at seven.

Her hair hung down around her face in a mess, and she could see it in the corner of her vision, like ropes of caramel taffy. Her mouth still tasted too strongly of mint toothpaste, and of the sweet grapes she’d eaten to mask the mint. When she’d come down to answer the knocking at the office door, she’d expected a delivery of clean linen or liquor supplies or bulk groceries, all of which were due sometime over the next couple of weeks.

Spruce Bay Resort was currently closed, in preparation for the coming spring and summer seasons. It was Monday, but the landscaping crew wasn’t here today, thank goodness. Mom and Dad were on the way back to their new home in South Carolina, her sister Daisy and new husband, Tucker, had left for their honeymoon after Saturday’s small wedding, and her other sister, Mary Jane, the eldest, had gone away yesterday afternoon for three days of indulgence at a spa in Vermont.

“You’d better come inside,” Lee said. Mac was wearing jeans and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled, comfortable for driving, but not warm enough in the open air chill.

“So angry!” he repeated. “Do you not understand that?”

She forced herself to speak calmly, trying to hose down the mood as best she could. “Well, yes, I do, but we did talk about it. It’s not as if I hid anything, or lied to you.”

“You talked. I was too stunned to react. I had things to think about, too, remember? And by the time I reacted, you’d just...gone.”

Because we never once said it was serious, so why should that change now?

“Want some coffee?” she asked.

“That’s what you have to offer?”

“It’s a start, isn’t it?” It had been a start for them, before. “We obviously need to talk. About why you’re here. And how long you’re staying. And it’s cold. So you should come inside, and we should have coffee. We both like coffee.”

“You drive me crazy.”

“I know.”

“You are nothing like my sister.”

“I know that, too.”

“Or my mother.”

“So you tell me.”

“Or any woman I’ve ever known.” She was like a cat, he’d told her the day after they’d met, and since then she’d embraced the idea. She was good with being a cat. The independence, the pleasing herself, the appreciation for comfort and warmth, but quite a taste for curiosity and adventure, as well.

“Isn’t that what you like about me?” She ventured a grin, but he wasn’t to be softened so easily.

Because it is serious.

“I don’t know if I like anything about you right now, Lee Cherry,” Mac said. He stepped onto the porch, crossed it in two strides, pushed past her as she pressed her back against the open door. Then he turned around. “What is this? The office? Why are we in here?”

“Yes, it’s the office. But there are stairs in back, up to the apartment.”

“You’re living above the resort office? On your own?” He was looming over her, seeming like too much big, strong, healthy beautiful man for the rather dark and confined space.

He was glaring at her with those dark eyes of his, but then they flicked down. To her lips. Which were suddenly hot and dry. The impenetrable gaze flicked back up before she could even swallow. It almost felt as if he’d kissed her, even though his mouth hadn’t come anywhere near hers. She loved the way he kissed.

“With my sister, Mary Jane, at the moment,” she answered him, incredibly annoyed to discover that her voice wasn’t quite steady. “Except that she’s away.”

They had talked. She hadn’t just run out on him. She’d presented him with the whole situation, her decisions and her plan, assuming he’d feel the same way she did, and he had.

He had! He hadn’t given her any kind of argument, hadn’t said a word about wanting to stay together.

“It’s bigger than it looks,” she went on, knowing she was giving unnecessary detail about the Cherry family apartment. “It’s a real home, Mac, not just ‘living above the office.’” She wanted to fill the space with talk, instead of this hyperawareness of his body...of his whole presence. His anger. His attitude. The creeping possibility that she might be in the wrong. “Four bedrooms, kitchen, living room, two bathrooms, above this lower level, which has the office and three storerooms and the double garage. We all lived here, growing up.”

“That’s your parents and your two sisters, running the resort. And you’re the eldest?”

“Middle.”

See? How could it have been serious, if you don’t even know where I fit in my family?

He ignored her correction. “So coffee is upstairs?”

“Yes.” She turned and led the way, relieved that he was the one focusing on mundane detail now.

He followed her. If he’d brought any bags, he’d left them in the pickup. He had his hands free as he came up the stairs behind her, and she remembered all the times he’d followed her up flights of stairs in Colorado and cupped a hand on her butt or wrapped his arms around her and stopped them both in their tracks.

Turned her around.

Kissed her.

More.

It was good to see him. It made her feel like crying, and she didn’t want that, not at all. She’d steeled herself to never see him again, to cut off clean from the very nice fling thing they’d had, because wasn’t it better that way? She didn’t want something that turned messy or ugly or complicated. She didn’t want something that dragged itself out for all the wrong reasons.

Better the clean break.

But now he was here, and her body said she was happy about it, despite everything.

They weren’t talking. Upstairs, he followed her into the kitchen and she did a wobbly job of getting out coffee and milk and operating the state-of-the-art espresso machine she’d brought with her from Colorado, all of it in a silence he didn’t attempt to break. She was aware of his presence with every fiber of her being. The machine began to bubble and hiss, the only thing in the room making any noise.

She turned away from it and there he was, and if the office had seemed too small for his powerful form, the kitchen was even worse. He leaned his hard, jeans-clad butt against the edge of the sink and folded his muscled arms like a nightclub bouncer, and in Colorado she would have gone right up to him and hung off him until he kissed her.

Which would have taken about half a second, and would have been great.

And then one thing would have led to another, because that was what their entire relationship had been about.

Don’t you remember that, Mac?

If he didn’t, she could remind him.

She should remind him.

Because the fact that their relationship had mainly been based on sex was important.

She’d closed the space between them before the plan was even a plan. It really wasn’t conscious or deliberate, it just happened, habit more than anything—the habit of wanting him, and of glorying in the delicious confidence that he wanted her and that they fit together in all the best ways. She slid her fingers past those folded arms, slid and sneaked and burrowed until the arms loosened and dropped, letting her reach all the way around his back.

She didn’t go for his mouth, just stood there with her hips pressed against his hardening groin, and looked up at him, looked into the gorgeous, familiar pools of dark that were his eyes. It was quite simple, the way it had always been. They wanted each other and enjoyed each other, and there was nothing wrong with that. There was this electric thing...feeling, need, recognition...between their two bodies.

They just connected.

They just liked it.

He swore, or groaned, or something. He was still angry, despite the stirring she could feel in his body. She could see it in his eyes and the set of his mouth. He pulled her closer, so that her breasts grazed against him, then pressed hard. She was wearing only the robe, and it was working loose, the tie at the waist slipping its granny knot and the gap between the fluffy blue lapels widening more and more.

He looked down and saw her cleavage, apparently as if it was something new. The sight seemed to make him pause, and she looked down, too. Yes, okay, they were bigger, and they’d been a pretty decent size to begin with. He liked them. He’d lavished them with endless attention in the past.

She looked up into his face and reached to cup his jaw lightly with her hand. This was one of the things she liked, knowing how much he wanted her, and playing to it, making him wait or jumping right in, varying their mood together, teasing him terribly, sometimes, and loving it when he teased her back just as much.

She stretched up and planted a soft, questing kiss on that angry mouth. It didn’t soften. She kept going, pressing against his stubborn lips, darting out her tongue, deliberately softening and opening, tilting her head, touching his jaw with feathery fingertips.

Still that mouth didn’t soften, but at least it kissed back. Oh, boy, did it kiss back! A rough, angry sort of kiss that came with hard arms around her and muscles tense with frustration and need. She guessed a kiss like this was trying to tell her something, but she didn’t buy it...even though she liked it, a lot.

You want a kiss, Lee, you’ll get a kiss, he seemed to be saying. You’ll get my hands on your butt and my tongue in your mouth and the taste and smell of me, and, yes, it’s damned good and we both know it.

He hadn’t shaved since he left Colorado, it felt like. The three-day growth of beard rasped at her skin as his mouth moved against hers, and of course it felt good. It felt fantastic. He smelled good, too—a mix of car freshener and salted nuts and snow. She put her whole heart into kissing him, threading her fingers through his hair, tilted her face to one side, letting her tongue sweep his mouth deeper and deeper, tangling with his. Any minute now, she’d start undressing him, and he’d get rid of her robe in about four seconds—it was already wide-open, and the belt was on the floor—and this would end the way it always did.

But no.

He kept on punishing her with his body, and she couldn’t get her hands down to start unfastening his shirt. Still, that didn’t matter for now. He pulled her naked hips against the soft rasp of his jeans and tightened his arm muscles until their strength almost hurt, and as far as she was concerned, all he was doing was proving her point, not his.

Admit it, Mac....

Admit what?

“No, Lee, hell!” he growled suddenly. “I won’t do this.” He removed the rough mouth with a last rasp of unshaved jaw across her cheek, grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from its sneaky caress of his face, then bracketed her hips and pushed.

He took the two front sections of her robe and lapped them across each other, his knuckles bumping her breasts. For a fraction of a second she thought he was going to let those knuckles soften and slow, brush them over her darkened nipples, push the robe open again and cup her, but no. Maybe that was just her hungry imagination, or maybe he’d simply taken hold of his willpower and changed his mind.

He bent and picked up the belt of the robe, passed it behind her, then knotted it in front, tight. “We’ve never had angry sex before, and now’s not the time to start.”

She stepped back. “Doesn’t have to be angry.” He looked so good, her heart was pounding, confusing her.

How happy am I that he’s here? Too happy. Scary happy. Don’t like it.

“Does when I am,” he said.

“So what’s going to get you to stop being angry?” She took a breath. “And what’s going to get you to leave?”

So I feel safe again. Safe from my heart.

The breath went out of him at this, a big whoosh of it, as if she’d punched him in the gut. He pivoted away from her and leaned on the bench. He looked very, very tired, suddenly, and she wondered how long the two thousand miles of driving had taken him. Nonstop it would have to be at least thirty hours. More. Two days, or three? Had he driven at night, or stopped at a motel?

“You want me to leave?” he growled.

She lifted her chin. “If you’re angry, yes. If we can’t talk, because all that happens is accusations flying back and forth, then yes, it’s best if you leave. Don’t you think?”

“I’m not leaving.”

“So you want us to talk things through?”

“What I want—” He stopped.

She waited.

“I’ve had some time to think, now. You didn’t give me that before.”

“You never asked for it, or showed the slightest indication that you needed it.”

“Because I was in shock. I was... This is huge, all of it. You don’t know—you can’t know... You were four or five days ahead of me with what was happening, and it was completely unfair of you to expect me to catch up right away. Maybe I didn’t say the right things, but I don’t think you did, either.” His eyes blazed darkly.

“I tried.”

“So did I.”

They glared at each other and he pulled at the collar of his shirt as if it was uncomfortable. His hair feathered against the blue fabric, and before she’d even thought about what she was doing, she reached up and tidied it for him so that it sat in neat waves, overlapping his collar by a good two inches. She loved his hair. She loved that he’d forgotten to fight her off, when really she had no right to touch him like this.

“So tell me about your thinking,” she said.

He took a big breath. “I want us to try and make a go of this, Lee.”

She didn’t even know what that meant. Make a go of what? Having sex? Hadn’t they done that already? Wasn’t that the whole problem?

They’d been far too stunningly successful at the whole point of having sex, and now her idea about what to do next didn’t remotely mesh with his. “What do you mean?” she said eventually. Pathetically.

“I’m moving east. Correction, I have moved.”

“You’ve—”

“Brought everything. Wasn’t much I really needed. I’ll unpack after we’ve had that coffee.”

“Unpack?”

He turned to her again. His mood had—how could you describe it?—changed color, or something. The black obsidian of anger held a gleam of wicked white light. He almost smiled, but not quite. “Didn’t you say this place had four bedrooms?”

Chapter Two

Three months earlier, Colorado

Maybe I should have gone home for Christmas.

The Narman family was in residence at their luxurious Aspen vacation home, which meant that caretaker Lee didn’t have the run of the house as she always did when they weren’t here. They were generous with this. “Of course you must use the whole place. That’s exactly what we want. For it to look lived in.”

She tried to be generous in return, going above and beyond what they expected of her, airing the huge rooms out whenever she could, and keeping everything scrupulously clean, preparing the house with fresh flowers and freshly made beds and handpicked groceries when they were due to arrive.

It was a cushy arrangement that she had at this place, with its ski-in ski-out access to the Aspen Highlands slopes, and she didn’t want it to change. The family usually stayed here only a few weeks a year.

This time, they were spending the full ten days from before Christmas until after New Year’s, and they’d brought a large party of family and guests, so that even in the cozy little janitor’s apartment on the lowest level of the house, which Lee retreated to when the family was around, she could hear the noise of partying and children, and the frequent heavy clump of boots in the ski room overhead.

She tried to ignore it. It was only six in the evening, so things probably weren’t going to quieten down anytime soon. The floorboards were thumping, there was yelling and laughter and music, doors banging, kids crying, the occasional shriek, the sound of water whooshing through the pipes that ran through the ceiling above her head.

Forget her book; she couldn’t concentrate on the story. Try some TV. She switched it on, but couldn’t find anything that really appealed. How about something to eat? She had deli pasta and sauce in the refrigerator, and had been thinking about a long soak in the tub, followed by the meal, a glass of wine, read her book while she ate.... So cozy and quiet.

“It’s not going to work,” she said out loud. Living on your own, you did tend to talk to yourself, sometimes. Nothing wrong with that.

But maybe there was something a little wrong with how disappointed she was about the disruption to her quiet, cozy evening.

Maybe I should have gone home, she thought again.

It was just under four weeks since Tucker had called. Tucker, her ex-fiancé, who was now engaged to her baby sister. He’d more or less asked Lee’s permission to be in love with Daisy, and while Lee appreciated the gesture and had not the remotest desire to still be engaged to Tucker herself, let alone married to him—it was more than ten years since they’d called it off, after all—there was a tiny part of her that felt...odd about it. Daisy and Tucker were getting married in March.

A seriously tiny part, just to be clear.

Most of the time, Lee felt completely happy about the whole thing. And if she tried to project what would have happened if she and Tucker had gone through with the wedding...couple of school-age kids by now, not seeing each other that much because the demands of Tucker’s landscaping business wouldn’t have meshed very well with her own career in mountain sports...

Well, she couldn’t picture it at all.

It scared her that she’d come so close to making such a huge mistake.

In other words, yes, she was really happy for them.

All the same, it had seemed like a good idea not to go east for Christmas this year. She would go for the wedding. Must get that organized soon....

So it was Christmas Eve, and she was on her own. Yes, she had her little tree in the window, with several prettily wrapped gifts beneath. Yes, she was eating baked ham with friends on Christmas night. But still...

She was thirty-three years old. She lived alone and liked it maybe too much. Was it just possible she was getting into a rut?

“Okay, you win,” she said to the Narman hordes overhead. “I’m going out.”

She substituted a quick shower for the long tub soak, dived into a pair of slinky black pants and a sparkly Christmas top she’d planned for tomorrow night, sketched on a little makeup, put in some bright, dangly Christmas-themed earrings, grabbed a big black winter coat and her heeled black faux-fur boots, and went out into the snow to make the easy half mile walk to her favorite Aspen hangout, the Waterstreet Bar.

Nobody was there.

Well, it was crowded, but they were tourists, not locals. No ski instructors, no mountain management people or hospitality staff, none of the year-rounders she saw all the time during the quieter summer months. Where was everyone?

The thought itched in the back of her head that if the Narmans hadn’t been having a noisy party tonight, she would have sat all cozy at home the whole evening and never realized that her Christmas Eve was too solitary, that everyone else, friends and casual acquaintances, had other plans tonight.

She went up to the bar and ordered a light beer and a bowl of spicy wings with sour cream, and when the guy behind the bar offered her one of those buzzer thingies that started hopping around on the table and flashing red lights when your order was ready, she shook her head and said, “Nah, I’ll wait for it here, thanks.”

He looked vaguely familiar, one of the seasonal staff who she’d maybe seen on the slopes, maybe even taught to ski. If they got chatting, she could just stay and eat her wings and drink her beer right here at the bar.

But he was too busy, she soon saw, and he was only about twenty-two. For chatting purposes, he was all about the nineteen-year-old snow bunnies or rich women looking for a short-term good time, with no interest in a hardworking local woman in her thirties who was more athletic than feminine, more striking than pretty.

For the first time in a long while, Lee was suddenly conscious of the nearly eleven-year-old burn scarring on her neck and jaw. She didn’t often wear neck-baring clothes, but the Christmas top had been pretty and silly, and she hadn’t been able to resist.

The friends she was going to join for dinner tomorrow had seen her scars before, so that was no big deal. They were faded now. Her skin was pale and sort of melty-looking from just above her left jawline to just below her collarbone and out to her shoulder. She’d gotten splashed with hot oil in the kitchen of the restaurant at Spruce Bay when she was around the same age as this barman here, and had spent some time in hospital, dealing with pain and infection and skin grafts.

Old news.

Irrelevant, for a woman who spent most of her time in ski jackets or collared hiking shirts.

It unsettled her to be thinking about it as if it mattered, because it didn’t. It really didn’t. She liked this top. It was fun. If anyone noticed the scarring, and disapproved of her showing it, that was their problem, not hers.

She sat up straighter and wiggled her head a little so that she could feel the tickle of the spangly red-gold-and-green Christmas trees dangling from her ears. The youthful barman delivered her beer and she drawled, “Thanks,” and dismissed him from her mind.

“Nice earrings,” someone said, close by.

She turned to find an unfamiliar male in a black T-shirt seated on the bar stool beside her. “Oh. Thanks.”

He was grinning at her. “If you’re wondering how much they caught the light just now, the answer is a lot. I still have spots before my eyes.”

“You got me,” she said, grinning back. “I did it on purpose. Love dazzling people till they can’t see.”

“No point in wearing Christmas trees if nobody notices, right?”

“Right.”

The twenty-two-year-old thumped two bowls of wings down on the bar, one in front of Lee and one in front of the earring admirer, then reached back to the serving window again and brought out two matching bowls of sour cream. “Snap,” said the stranger.

“It’s an astonishing coincidence,” she agreed in a drawl, since the bar menu at this place had only about three items on it. If you wanted anything more sophisticated than wings, nachos or fries, you had to go through into the section where the tables and booths had actual placemats.

“Not everyone goes for the sour cream,” he pointed out. “Right there, that cuts our odds of a match down to about six to one. And when you add in the beer...”

She hadn’t noticed the beer until now, but, yes, she discovered, they were drinking the same brand, a local Colorado microbrew. That was the biggest coincidence yet, given that Waterstreet proudly offered something like fifty-six different kinds.

And speaking of coincidences, he might not be familiar, but his red ski jacket was. It hung over the low back of the bar stool, exactly the same as the one she had at home, with its resort and designer logos. “You work here,” she said, feeling a ridiculous wash of relief that at last here was a comrade-at-arms, a fellow instructor, roughly her own age.

“Since three days ago, yes.” He had the jacket, but at some point he’d changed from ski pants and boots into jeans and running shoes, new looking and chunky.

“Me, too,” she told him. “Ski school. But seven years, not three days.”

“So I’ve come to the right bar.”

It was a statement, not a question, and she didn’t quite follow the logic. “Depends what bar you were looking for.”

“I meant, if you’ve lived here seven years and you’ve chosen this bar, it can’t be a pure tourist trap.”

“Oh, right, sorry, yeah. Waterstreet isn’t upmarket enough for a lot of visitors.”

“I like it. Nice crowd.”

But he wasn’t looking at the crowd. He was looking at her.

Something kicked between them. Something Lee hadn’t felt in a long time but recognized anyhow. It shocked her that it was this fast and strong and instinctive, and her first reaction was to seek a way to pull back, mentally skidding on her heels in panic and getting nowhere, like a character in a cartoon.

She asked carefully, “You’re new and no one is showing you around?” Because he was clearly here on his own.

“I had a late finish today. Someone in the group had a fall and lost confidence at the top of the mountain, and it took me forty-five minutes to get her down. Someone else...Everard—”

“He’s a nice guy,” she interjected. She worked with him on junior squad coaching.

“He is. He took the rest of my class back down the mountain for me, but by the time I arrived, everyone but him had gone for the day. He’s married, wanted to get home. My nervous lady wanted to take me for a drink—we both needed it—but her choice of bar wasn’t mine. After she, uh, left, I came looking for somewhere I liked better.”

“And you found it.”

“And I found it.”

The thing kicked again, and robbed Lee of speech. Imagination? She didn’t think so. He didn’t seem in a hurry to fill the sudden silence. Well, it was filled already, just not with words. He took a pull on his beer and looked at her over the top of the foam, his eyes very dark in contrast to the frothy white.

Am I really going to do this?

It was too fast. She never did anything like this. She hadn’t dated anyone in three years, and that had lasted only a couple of months. Before that... What, another two years? Was it really possible she’d had only two boyfriends in five years? Two pretty lame, tame boyfriends, and lame, tame relationships that hadn’t ever looked to be going anywhere, and hadn’t been all that successful even as short-term flings.

This one, though...

Really? You’re deciding this soon?

For a start, she knew nothing about him.

Or else she knew too much. She could list his likely qualities, just by knowing what he did for a living, and that he was new in town, and that he was on his own in a bar at seven in the evening on Christmas Eve. Was a fling with a bachelor ski instructor really what she wanted?

Why not?

“She, uh, left?” Lee mimicked part of his last statement.

He shrugged and gave an apologetic kind of smile. “She was interested in a longer evening. I wasn’t.”

“Are you usually?”

He said very firmly, “She was nice. Pretty. But no, not with clients.”

A handful of words, and they’d covered an awful lot of ground. Lee had learned that he could have slept with an attractive and willing woman tonight, and that he’d turned her down because on principle he didn’t get involved with clients.

If he did make a habit of such a thing, she decided, he could probably have had a different bed partner every night. He was pretty good-looking. Yet it seemed he wasn’t just about getting women into bed, and was polite enough to go for a drink when a client needed or wanted it, despite his lack of secondary motivation. He’d apparently charmed the pants off this particular one, since she hadn’t been ready to let the evening go.

“You?” he added. His voice had dropped in both pitch and volume, and it drew her in, tightened the circle of deepening intimacy around them.

She shook her head. She didn’t date clients, either. That kind of thing could get so messy. And she’d never dated another instructor. That particular form of mess might be even worse.

So why am I thinking about it? I don’t even know his name.

“It’s Mac, by the way,” he said, having apparently read her mind. “Mac Wheeler.”

“Lee Cherry.”

“I’ve seen your name on the notice board in the ski school office. We must have been at the morning meetings together, the past couple of days, but I don’t remember seeing you.”

“It’s a big ski school.”

“I’m still finding my feet. New town. Back instructing. I haven’t done it for a while.”

“Oh, you haven’t?”

“I’d moved over into the administration side, at a resort that will remain nameless for the moment.”

“Ah.”

She wasn’t exactly asking for an explanation, but he gave her one anyhow. “Didn’t see eye to eye with the boss on a certain personal issue. Flung down the gauntlet at the wrong moment. Not that I regret it. It was the only choice.”

“Flung down the gauntlet? This is the way you talk?” When you talk, which at first we weren’t, and which I have a feeling we might not be doing for all that much longer...

“I’ve been reading a really long fantasy series. The vocabulary is starting to stick. I quit, if you prefer it simple, and there was nothing more for me in Sn— I’ll tell you where when we know each other better.”

“Right, when,” she replied mildly, in a drawl, because she didn’t want his assumptions to get too out of hand.

Even though his assumptions are correct...

He gave a slow smile, and said in a tone of meek apology, “If?” There was nothing remotely meek or apologetic about him.

They lasted three hours in the bar, which was pretty impressive, she considered. It was clear where this was going to end, but they weren’t in a hurry to get there. They shared another bowl of wings, with fries, and each had another beer before they both switched to soda. He called it pop, which told both of them that they weren’t from the same part of the country.

He was from Idaho, it turned out. “Coeur d’Alene. My mom’s a teacher, my dad works for the city. I have a sister there, too, married with two kids.”

Lee supplied her own basic biography. Mom, Dad and two sisters. Opposite side of the country, but strong similarities all the same. Both of them were mountain-born, growing up in resort towns where dramatic vistas of lakes and mountains were a major part of the attraction. Both of them had started skiing as kids and then turned to it as a career, although Mac had fairly quickly moved into the management side, and had a degree in the field.

“Can I ask about your skin?” he said at one point. “Do you mind?”

“Of course I don’t mind. It was a kitchen accident,” she answered. “Big splash of hot oil. Eleven years ago, nearly.”

“Right.” He nodded. “I thought it looked like a burn. Must have hurt.”

“They gave me nice drugs.”

He laughed, and they were done talking about her scars, so check off another item on the biography list.

But who was she kidding? Maybe they covered those kinds of things, but it was all the stuff going on underneath the conversation that really counted. The way his shoulder brushed against her when he reached for his drink, and the way she leaned into the contact instead of away from it. The smiles, lazy and slow, making her feel like the cat that got the cream.

The noise of the bar faded into the background. In fact, the noisier it became, the more they seemed enclosed in their own little cocoon, having to lean even closer to hear each other speak. They were comfortable with one another, instantly familiar.

He was the one to say it, finally, muttering just inches from her mouth, “So shall we get out of here?”

“Let’s.”

“Where?” he asked, as they threaded their way between the crowded tables. He was behind her, not touching her to claim possession the way some men did. She liked that he could keep his hands to himself, in his jacket pockets, and didn’t feel the need to signal the kind of look-what-I’ve-got message that she’d seen played out in this very bar by countless couples.

Once in the snowy dark, she suggested, “My place?” and he nodded.

“Has to be better than mine. Haven’t had a chance to find anything decent, yet. I’m sleeping on a friend’s couch.”

“Boy, you really did come here in a hurry.”

He shook his head, looking angry. “I don’t handle unjustified accusations well.”

“No?”

“Boss thought I was coming on to his wife. I wasn’t.”

“Did she think you were?”

“No. And she told him he was wrong, but that was after he’d tried to punch me, so as far as I was concerned, it was too late. He drinks too much. He’s a disaster. He wasn’t going to let it go. He would have been watching me every moment from then on. He was on a hair trigger about it.” Mac shook his head again. “Better for all three of us if I took myself out of the equation.”

“But it’s mucked up your life, somewhat.”

“My life will get back on track.” He sounded very confident, and she believed him. He was the kind of man who exuded a quiet certainty about his own identity and strength.

Maybe that’s why...

Why she was inviting a near-stranger back to her apartment. Why she had no doubts about it at all. Why she wanted him in the first place.

They walked, the soles of their boots crunching on ice and gritty road. He took note of the direction they were going, and said, “You must be in a pretty nice part of town.”

And just at that moment they came around a bend and there was the Narmans’ place, all lit up, looking like the eleven-million-dollar property that it was. He stopped short. “This?”

“Yes, but—”

He was looking at her, appalled, as if she’d grown three heads. “I thought you were an instructor.”

“I am. I live here, but it’s not mine. Lordy, no! I wouldn’t even want a place like this. I’m the janitor, part-time.”

“The janitor.”

“Caretaker. House sitter. Housekeeper. Person who calls repairmen. Jill-of-all-trades. I have a tiny apartment under the floor, where I am intimately acquainted with the flow of water in the pipes, as you soon will be, also.” She gave him a jaunty grin, because, really, the pipes weren’t that bad.

He burst out laughing. “You are my kind of woman, Lee.”

Chapter Three

Upstairs, the Narmans’ party was still in full swing.

Lee and Mac crept around the side of the house to her little side entrance, where the snow she’d had to dig out from the steps three days ago made gleaming blue-white walls on either side. Nobody saw them. All the drapes were open, but nobody was looking out into the dark. They were all too busy spilling drinks on the floor and filling the trash cans with empty bottles.

“Will you have to clear up after that lot?” Mac asked as he waited for her to get out her key.

“Not personally, but I’ll have to organize the cleaners first thing in the morning. This is not a planned event, unfortunately.”

“Will you be able to get anyone? It’ll be Christmas Day.”

“I have some good arrangements in place with local companies. Cleaners, caterers, repairmen, suppliers. They know the drill, and the Narmans pay well. I told them the family was bringing in a big group and they might be needed at short notice. It only happens a couple of times a year.” She turned the key in the lock and he followed her in, and reality hit.

She was here, in her own private space, with a man she hadn’t even known when she’d left her cozy nest four hours ago. She had a moment of utter panic, and didn’t know where to begin. Offer him—? Tell him—? Touch him and—?

She turned, on the point of giving a babbled apology.

You’ll have to go. I don’t do this. I really don’t.

But then she saw him standing there, hands deep in the pockets of that familiar red ski jacket, and she felt a rush of calm—if calm could come in a rush. He wasn’t lunging for her. He wasn’t leering with intent. He was simply taking a quiet look around. At her bookshelves. At her neat kitchen, where the expensive espresso coffee machine was her only visible indulgence.

“I can see why you live here on your own,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of room for two.”

“It suits me. I’m on the slopes all day. Nice to have a warm rabbit burrow to come home to.”

“I guess. You don’t get lonely?”

“No, I like it. You?”

“Mostly in the past I’ve shared with a couple of guys. Ones who aren’t total pigs, but who also don’t have to vacuum the windowsills twice a day. Don’t know what I’ll do for accommodation here.”

“Those guys exist? Really?”

He laughed, then looked at her open bedroom door, through which he could see the double bed, covered in its indulgent piles of bright silk pillows and thick, puffy comforter. She hated sleeping in a warm room, and always turned the heating way down at night, but loved to snuggle under cozy covers.

Maybe not tonight. Tonight the comforter might have to go, and they would need the air warm....

He stopped looking at her apartment and looked at her instead. “Nice coffee machine.”

“Makes nice coffee.”

“Want to make some now?” he suggested.

“Sure. Want to help?”

She liked that he was as nervous as she was, that he wanted to ease into this, take some time. When she went into the kitchen, he came after her. “So what’s my job?”

“Choosing mugs. Top shelf, there. Or on the hooks.”

“You don’t trust me with the technical part?”

“It’s a one-person job.” Which she did with her back to him, while she heard him clinking the mugs.

“You have too many mugs for a kitchen this size, I would have thought,” he said.

“I like nice ones.” Pretty mugs, cute mugs, silly mugs, clever mugs. She knew she had too many. At least sixty, which was why she needed a whole shelf, and half a wall covered in hooks. Turning, she found he’d chosen two from a set she especially loved.

“These are great,” he said. “Book covers.”

“Penguin Classics paperbacks, the original cover designs. Don’t you love buying on the internet?”

“Why these?” In his hand, he rotated the purple-and-white of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. On the counter sat a green-and-white Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library.

“I have others. Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations. And there are heaps in the series that I don’t have.”

“So you don’t need to read the books, you just buy the mugs.”

“No, I’ve read the books. I only bought the ones I’d read.”

“Is that a rule? You can’t drink from the mug unless you’ve read the book.”

She grinned. “Yep.” It wasn’t really a rule, as such, but it was a nice idea. “I’m very, very strict with my guests on that.”

“I’d better pick a different mug, then,” he said. “Hope I’m not out of luck. Really don’t want to have to drink from...” He examined a few more, ones that didn’t have book covers on them. “...a basket of kittens, or something with a china frog inside it, while you’re being all intellectual with Virginia Woolf. Aha, okay, good.” He’d found George Orwell’s 1984, in orange and white.

It ended the conversation, and the coffee wasn’t quite ready yet. Upstairs, somebody changed the music and the thumping acquired a different rhythm, just as loud, possibly Coldplay. Lee and Mac faced each other, waiting. He stepped closer. Very close. Well, it was a tiny kitchen. He reached out and touched the scarring on her shoulder. “We didn’t quite finish about your skin. Does it bother you if it’s touched?”

“Not anymore. It used to.”

He nodded, hand still resting lightly there. She waited for more, but apparently there wasn’t any. She liked that he’d said something, rather than pretending there weren’t any issues. And she liked that he’d kept it short and practical, both here and back at the bar, with no meaningless gushes of sympathy.

“This is good,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

He didn’t spell out what this was, but she thought she knew. The way they were talking, the ease in being close to each other. The way they could both handle the occasional silence. The fact that he’d found a mug he was permitted to drink from because he’d read the book—even though they’d both made up that rule on the spot.

“Mmm, it is,” she answered.

Something vibrated in the air between them and she stepped into it. They were so close now that their thighs were touching, and if she hadn’t arched her back a little, she would have been leaning against his chest.

She wanted to lean against his chest, but for people who’d only met four hours ago, they were taking this pretty slow. She didn’t want to rush a kiss or a close embrace. He touched her mouth with the pad of his thumb, then bent lower and tasted her, just the tiniest brush of a kiss on her mouth. “Nice,” he said softly. “We’re going to make this so nice.”

She liked that he’d chosen such a plain, simple word. He wasn’t promising to rock her world, baby. As a thank-you for his down-to-earth ego, she kissed him back. Longer this time. Sweeter. Then she broke away, just as he had done, so that they could assess what had happened up to this point.

He grinned, and it looked like relief, and she felt it, too.

Whew! So far, not a disaster. Let’s cautiously keep going and see if we can make it stay that way. Or even get better.

“Coffee’s ready,” she said.

“Better pour it, then.” He slid Virginia Woolf and George Orwell closer. Lee preheated the cups with hot water, steamed the milk, started the flow of rich, dark liquid through the spigot and into each mug.

And then they didn’t sit down. They just stood there in the kitchen, drinking the coffee with their backsides pressed against the edge of the counter and an arm around each other. “It’s really good coffee,” he said.

“I know. I have to ration myself. This’ll keep me awake half the night, drinking it so late.”

“Which is good, in my opinion. Kind of like the idea of you awake.”

“It does tend to enhance the experience.”

A little later, when the coffee was nearly gone, he told her, “You have foam on your top lip.”

“Oh.” She reached up and brushed it off.

“You know you weren’t supposed to do that, right? I was supposed to kiss it off.”

“In fact, I didn’t really have foam there at all.”

“No, you did. But you took care of it. Sadly.”

“You don’t need an excuse to kiss me, do you?”

“Valid point.” He put down his empty mug, took hers and put that down, also, peeled himself away from the edge of the counter and folded her in his arms.

They must have kissed for...oh, hours. They kissed until she was boneless, until her vision blurred, until she was practically a puddle on the floor, soft all over, throbbing.

She’d never known such kissing. So warm and strong and lazy. So hot and deep and luscious and perfect. So much an experience with her whole body. He made it totally clear that he was in no rush, and neither was she. Maybe no one had invented anything beyond kissing. Maybe kissing was the whole point, the be-all and end-all, the pinnacle.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

Finally, he took his mouth away long enough to say lazily, “Think they’ve quietened down, upstairs.”

She listened, beyond the slow thump of her heart and the giddiness in her brain. The music was turned off. There was no more laughing and yelling. She could hear a couple sets of footsteps going back and forth, and the occasional sound of a low-pitched voice. “I thought they might go on later than this. What’s the time?” She heard the creakiness in her own voice.

Mac peered over her shoulder at the microwave clock. “Midnight. Well, twenty after.” He sounded creaky, too. Rusty, as if too much kissing had clamped up their vocal cords.

She groped for rational thought. “I guess it’s Christmas tomorrow. There are some kids visiting who are still Santa age. Parents probably wanted to get the gifts under the tree, before they’re awakened at the crack of dawn. I noticed they’d corralled off the room with the big tree, and weren’t using it for the party. They’re saving that for their gift opening, tomorrow.”

“It’s Christmas today,” he corrected.

“After midnight. You’re right.”

“So...Merry Everything!” He smiled at her.

“Merry what?”

“Christmas itself is not the top thing in my mind, right now. So I’m leaving it open. Hoping there’s some merry other stuff about to happen pretty soon.”

“Well, Merry Everything back at you, then.”

“Pretty merry so far.” He pressed his cheek against hers, then turned his head a little so that he was kissing her again. “You have the best mouth....” he whispered. “The best body.”

“You’re not bad, either,” she whispered back.

“So that’s how we’re going to play it? I tell you you’re the best, and you tell me I’m not bad?”

“It’s not a competition,” she said lightly.

“And yet I really like to win.” His breath heated her ear.

“So do I.”

“I’m taking your top off....”

“Not if I take it off first.”

“You do like to win. But you won’t win this.” He peeled the red-and-green Christmas garment upward in one swift movement, taking her by surprise. When he ran his hands deliberately over the generous curves of her already acutely sensitized breasts on the way, she gasped and forgot about fighting back. How could anything feel this good?

He reached around to the back of her bra and turned his slight clumsiness with the hooks into a caress, thumbing the knobs of her spine with silky touches. The hooks stayed stubborn. “I am going to win the bra!” Lee said, because she knew the quirks of this one and had beaten them before.

Seconds later, the straps slid down her shoulders and her breasts fell into his waiting hands. “Mmm, so good,” he said. He cupped and stroked her, then bent to taste, and electric need ran instantly to her core.

There was something hugely erotic about being topless while he was still fully dressed, and they explored that for a long time, until finally she grew impatient and dealt with his black T-shirt almost as swiftly as he’d dealt with her red-and-green. His bare chest was silky and hot when she pressed her swollen breasts against him, and she couldn’t stifle the moan that surfaced from deep within her.

“Bed?” he said.

“Yes.”

They went through to it, stripping jeans and underwear and shoes on the way. There was no light on in the room, but it spilled through from the table lamps in her small living area in a soft shaft of gold. She liked the light, liked its softness, too. They could see each other, but not too clearly. They could see enough to discover that they were both smiling, not enough to see if the smiles faltered.

Because, you know, this couldn’t help but feel a little scary.

“Now...” he murmured, and she stepped into the heat of his body space once more.

He cupped her backside, tracing its curve down to her thighs, his touch light and slow, and she closed her eyes and stood motionless for several long moments, giving herself completely to the male scent of his skin, mingled with coffee and spice and beer, giving herself to the touch of her naked body against his, the sound of his breathing, the warm press of his mouth on her neck and shoulder and the slopes of her breasts.

It was beautiful. That was the only way to describe it. Funny and heartfelt and beautiful. The way they fell onto the bed together, the way he propped himself on his elbows above her and showed her just how ready he was for this.

“Tell me what you want,” he said softly.

“Nothing too fancy,” she replied, trying to tease.

He took her seriously. “No?” He whispered kisses at the corners of her mouth as he spoke. “Not?”

“Why? You?”

What do you like, Mac?

“Not that fancy, either. Gotta leave room for improvement.”

“We can start out pretty strong, even with nothing fancy.”

“We can.”

They grinned at each other in the low light. People called it “vanilla sex,” and didn’t mean that in a good way, but vanilla was a pretty popular flavor, after all. The feel of his weight poised over her, the hard heat of his body cradled in her opened thighs, the way she could hold him, wrap her arms all the way around and feel the strong, muscular cage of his chest. It was all so good, and it didn’t need to be inventive.

They didn’t need props or role play or gymnastics. Not tonight, anyhow. Not this first time.

Because she knew instinctively that it was going to be the first, not the only, and he seemed to know it, too.

He rolled her so that she was on top, and she arched upward to let him find her breasts again, with his hands and his mouth. He lavished them with hungry attention, cupping and stroking, covering her hardened nipples with his hot mouth. He lavished her with attention everywhere, in places she’d never thought of before. The creases between her arms and her body, the small of her back.

When he entered her, she was slick and swollen and ready, and the feel of him sliding against her had her whimpering and crying out so fast. It came out of nowhere. It came out of all those minutes and minutes of kissing.

But then he pulled back and swore, and it went away. “What did we forget?”

She understood, and swore, too. “I have some...”

“Good, because I don’t.”

“...as long as they’re not expired.”

“Hope they’re not.” He added after a moment, “And yet I’m sort of glad there’s a chance they might be.”

“Huh?” She was trying to reach for her bedside table drawer, but he wasn’t letting her. He was pulling her back against him, trying to pillow her head against his shoulder. “You’re glad they might be past their use-by date?”

“Yes, because I’m glad you... Well...” He hesitated, sounding gruff. “Hope you don’t mind this, maybe it sounds too old-fashioned. I’m glad it doesn’t happen like this for you all that often, I mean. Is that okay to say?”

“Of course, if it’s the truth.”

“We’re all about plain sex and honesty?”

“Sounds good so far.”

“Does,” he agreed, still gruff.

“So is it okay for me to say I’m glad you don’t carry them in your jacket wherever you go?”

“Haven’t needed any for...probably six months.” He thought a moment. “No, longer.”

“Good to know.” They lay there for a moment. “Although this whole discussion does seem like it might have killed the mood.”

“Not letting anything kill the mood,” he said.

“No?”

“I mean it! Find those suckers!”

She did. They were right in the bottom of her messy drawer, and they hadn’t expired. There was still a whole week left on the clock.

“See?” he said when she told him.

“See what?”

“See how this was meant to happen?”

“Why, yes, now that you mention it, I do....”

So it didn’t kill the mood, it simply changed it, and somehow they went from all that incredibly serious kissing in the kitchen, into a pillow fight kind of feeling. Getting the sheets and comforter into a tangle, pushing half the pillows onto the floor, laughing and chasing each other all over the bed until they were both breathless.

Until once again he was poised on top of her, looking down into her face with those dark eyes, his erection safely sheathed this time. She looked up at him, stroked the wave of thick dark brown hair away from his forehead, traced the lines of his parted lips with her fingertips and watched as he lowered himself and slid in, came back to the rhythm and push that had brought her so close so fast, before.

They never looked away. She hadn’t known that it could be so intense, watching each other. Or so intimate. She gripped his back, wrapped her legs around him, as if their locked-together gaze was a taut thread that would break if she didn’t hold on to him as hard as she could. In his face she could read the building of his release, and even at that moment they didn’t break eye contact.

He pressed his lips tight together, closed his eyes for a fraction of a second—dark lashes sweeping down, then up—and the wave of his climax broke against her body while she panted for breath, then cried out and moaned against the sudden crush of his mouth on hers.

Neither of them spoke for a long while after they were still. She lay there with his body still flung over hers, her limbs encircling him, his softening heat still filling her. After a little while, he eased aside as if he could tell the moment he began to feel too heavy on her.

He touched her lightly and almost methodically, as if to check that everything was still there and whole, cupping each breast in turn, making patterns with his touch along her sides, down to her hips, running the flat of his hand over her stomach, resting his palm against the mound that felt so swollen and sensitized.

“Four seasons in one day, weren’t we, do you think?” he said softly. “Like the weather in the mountains.”

“We were, a bit,” she agreed. “Which season is this?” She stretched and wriggled against him.

“Summer,” he answered at once. “Warm and sleepy and happy. Sun on our skin.”

“Mmm, I like summer. And winter.”

“I like them all.”

“Me, too. I like the point when it changes. First snowfall. First hint of fall. That tiny shift, but really the whole earth is turning.”

“Yes, when you feel something new in the air, and you know it’s just the start.” Was he still talking about the seasons? She wasn’t sure if she was.

Deliberately, she brought it back to concrete detail, instead of words that could have two meanings. “Love the snowmelt swelling the creeks and rivers.”

“Love a hard frost turning the leaves in one night.”

“And hiking through those deep drifts of gold and brown, when the air smells all peaty and fresh.”

“You’re a real outdoorsy gal.”

“I am.”

“Like that. Like my women athletic.”

They talked, not saying anything very much, until they fell asleep.

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