He focused on me, and when he did, I sucked my lips between my teeth.
“You crazy?” he asked.
I shook my head, let my lips go, and stated, “It’s snowing.”
“It is, woman, but you don’t know me.”
“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked.
“Fuck no,” he answered inflexibly.
Well, that was good.
“It’s also Christmas Eve,” I noted.
He made no reply to that.
“And, I, well…have enough food for two. Though, I have mostly romantic movies to watch but all the other DVDs haven’t been checked out and there might be something you’ll wanna watch.”
He said nothing.
“Or you can be by yourself,” I offered. “Stay in your room and brood or sleep off the road. You just can’t build bombs in it or plan government takeovers.”
His brows moved up slightly. “Government takeovers?”
“I’m being funny,” I explained.
He didn’t confirm or deny he agreed that I was funny. He just kept staring at me.
I straightened my shoulders, held his gaze, and stated, “You’re welcome. It’s Christmas and I’m alone. It’ll be nice to have someone around, even someone I don’t know. And it’ll be nice to do something nice for someone on Christmas, like give a weary traveler somewhere to lay his head and food to fill his belly.”
This particular weary traveler’s head tilted a bit to the side and his gaze on me was sharp, even if it was void, when he asked, “You think you’re livin’ one of those romantic movies?”
“I absolutely, one hundred percent know for a fact that I am not living one of those romantic movies,” I answered immediately and resolutely. I then went on to point out, “I’m alone on Christmas, Priest. How romantic is that?”
His face changed, I swear, it changed, as in, it went soft for a heartbeat before he said quietly, “Pie.”
Not a fun memory.
But…whatever.
I drew up a hand and waved it in front of my face in a “pshaw” gesture.
“I was being nice. You’re immune to nice. I won’t try that again but, just saying, the caveat is that it’s Christmas and you can’t not be nice on Christmas so you’re gonna have to suck it up and accept nice. Even if it’s me setting a sandwich by the door of your room while you stay in it, badass brooding.”
“I don’t brood,” he stated and I looked to his shoulder before muttering an openly disbelieving, “Right.”
That was when he asked, “What’s for dinner?” and my eyes shot to his, something bubbling inside me at his words, words that meant he was staying. It was something dangerous. Something I knew I should not feel. Something I immediately denied I was feeling.
“I already had dinner,” I told him. “But I was about to break out the chocolate-covered almonds. And the tin of macadamia nuts. And it was time to arrange the Christmas cookies for easy reach. I have five varieties. And I could throw together some of my cream cheese corn dip and rip open a bag of tortilla chips.”
“Jesus,” he murmured but I wasn’t done so I spoke over him.
“Or I could make the cheesy, green chile, black bean dip I had planned for luncheon-esque time tomorrow. It’s heated. Or I could whip up some parmesan sausage balls. Or those garlic, sausage and cheese things in the wonton wrappers, though that takes some prep and baking. I could also unfreeze some of the beef stew I made last week.” My eyes drifted away. “But that’ll take time seeing as I’ll have to make fresh dumplings so it’ll have to simmer awhile.”
“Woman,” he called and I looked to him. “No stew. Your green chile shit can stay on tomorrow’s menu. Nothing with sausage in it ’cause I’m hungry and I don’t wanna wait for anything to cook or bake. But all the rest would not go wanting.”
I smiled at him, that something inside me bubbling stronger. So strong, I had to clutch on to the denial so it wouldn’t burst inside me like a geyser.
“Go grab your stuff,” I ordered and kept bossing. “Then take off your coat. Make yourself at home.” I started to dash to the kitchen and stopped, turning back. “Your room is the first on the left at the top of the stairs. You could pick the other one but that one’s your best bet. It’s less girlie. Though, warning, the ex-owners of this house had a psychotic affinity to chintz and flowers so it’s only slightly less girlie.” I resumed my dash, stopped, and again turned back. “Bathroom is across the hall from that. I have my own bathroom, FYI.”
Then I resumed my dash, finishing it by skidding to a halt on the kitchen floor on my thick, woolen socks, wondering where my dip warmer thingie was.
And since I was in the kitchen, and before that had been babbling and not paying attention, I didn’t see John Priest watch me through the whole thing, unmoving. I also didn’t see him stay that way after I disappeared from the foyer.
And last, I didn’t see his big hands ball into tight fists and his strong jaw go hard before he turned to the door.
* * * * *
Early the next morning, I sat on my side porch, jeans on, pink thermal with its tiny blue and green flowers on under a western style jean shirt with pearl snap buttons, fluffy wool scarf wrapped around my neck, my feet encased in very thick wool socks up on the top railing. I had a dusky blue knit cap pulled down over my hair and my fingerless, fuzzy woolen gloves were wrapped around a huge cup of steaming coffee.
I stared at the landscape, the trees surrounding my cabin, evergreens tufted in snow, leafless aspens gilded with it. To the left, the river was running over its red rock, beginning to twinkle in the rising sun. To the right through the trees, my winding lane leading to the cabins one way, the street the other.
We’d had a dump of snow. I needed to get the little tractor with the blade out and clear the lane and parking lot in case any of my patrons wanted to take a Christmas day jaunt.
But I sat there, deciding to do it later. No one in their right mind left their house early on Christmas morning.
On that thought, I heard the door open behind me and I twisted in my chair, keeping my feet where they were, and watched John Priest walk out.
He, too, was wearing thick woolen socks but his were a marled gray and black, whereas mine were a light mint green.
He was also wearing faded jeans, a white thermal under a padded, navy blue flannel shirt, the navy blue somehow making his tawny eyes turn an appealing amber.
He had thick stubble.
It was hot.
And last, his hair was a mess like he hadn’t even run his hand through it to tame it after rolling out of bed.
That was hotter.
He was holding a heavy, toffee-colored earthenware mug of my coffee in his meaty fist.
I felt the pull of his magnificence, instantly denied that pull, and smiled at him.
He just looked at me then he looked to the chair beside me, a chair no one had sat in except Dick Grant, and Grant hadn’t sat in it often. Then he made his way there.
I looked away as he sat down but I couldn’t miss his feet going up on the top railing, two feet from mine.
My legs were bent. His long legs were straight and he crossed them at the ankles.
Sitting beside him in silence, something settled in me. Something just as good and right as I knew it was bad and wrong.
I tried to ignore it.
It was hard to ignore.
I managed it, brought the cup of coffee to my lips, and said softly into it, “Merry Christmas, Priest.”
He surprised me by replying in a gentle rumble, “Merry Christmas, Cassidy.”
He said my name.
He knew it and he said it.
I smiled into my coffee before I took a sip.
* * * * *
I hit the off button on the remote and turned to Priest.
“Well?” I asked.
“It sucked,” he answered.
I felt my eyes grow round. “Sucked? Sucked? Love Actually doesn’t suck!” I got up to a forearm in the
couch and my gaze on him turned to a glare. “It’s perfect Christmas viewing. It has Christmas and it has romance and it has Alan Rickman. Anything with Alan Rickman does…not…suck.”
Priest’s expression remained the same. “That does.”
I rolled my eyes on my, “You’re impossible.”
He gave a slight shrug indicating he didn’t give a flying anything what I thought he was.
I wasn’t offended. That was Priest.
“Right. This time, you pick,” I stated, tossing the remote on my coffee table. Then I looked back to him. “Or do you want me to start making dinner?”
His brows drew together a centimeter before he reminded me, “We had that green chile bean dip during the last movie.”
“So?” I asked.
“So, you stopped stuffing that shit in your face an hour ago.”
This was very true. In fact, I had to stop myself from licking the bowl clean and only did that because the bowl was heated and I might burn my tongue.
“It’s Christmas, Priest. It’s a moral imperative to eat constantly and copiously, maintaining a food stupor in order to lapse into the ultimate stupor, that being a food coma after dinner. This lasts exactly one point five hours whereupon you wake up and eat Christmas dessert.”
“How about you eat another fifteen cookies while I take some time to make a hole in my gut to fit dinner while we watch another movie?” he suggested.
My eyes dropped to the opened tins of cookies littering the coffee table, cookies I noted he had not touched (not one), while I muttered, “Works for me.”
“Jesus,” he muttered back.
I looked again to him. “Go. Movie. Pick.”
He heaved himself out of my armchair and walked to my shelves that held my library of DVDs.
“It doesn’t have to be romantic,” I offered.
“Thank fuck,” he murmured and I grinned.
He stood, hands planted on narrow hips, and studied the shelves. This took a while. Long enough for me to get impatient.
“How about Thor?”
He looked over his shoulder at me and communicated nonverbally that Thor was most definitely out.
Apparently, badasses didn’t watch superhero movies.
So noted.
He looked back to the shelves.
“How about Red?” I suggested. “It has Bruce Willis in it. You have to like Bruce Willis. Everyone likes Bruce Willis, especially badasses. And it’s awesome. And funny. And it has Morgan Freeman and Morgan Freeman makes everything better. And Karl Urban, who isn’t hard to watch. Not that you’d think that. But it’d work for me.”
He reached out a hand and pulled out a DVD case. I saw it was Red. Thus I grinned again.
He went to the player and as he ejected the last movie, he asked, “Things good with your family?”
I figured he asked this because we’d been doing the breakfast dishes when my family called.
He had then absented himself. The call lasted an hour and a half. A call that, during, John Priest had taken it upon himself to go to the big shed that held a bunch of crap, including my little tractor, and cleared the snow from my lane and the parking area.
Part of the time he did it, I watched from the side porch, listening to my family, happy and together and celebrating and trying to pull me into that feeling long distance, and I did it with that something I was denying I was feeling bubbling up inside me.
It was a super-awesome thing for him to do. Giving me time with my family. Giving me a break from the constant work.
When he got back, I thanked him.
His reply was, “Chile dip.”
I took this to mean badasses weren’t good with gratitude.
I’d noted that too.
“Things are good with the fams,” I assured him as he put Love Actually in its case and tossed it on the TV stand.
It was then he surprised me by asking another question, this one more personal than the first.
“Why aren’t you there?”
“My cabins are rented.”
He finished shoving Red in the player, turned, and leveled his eyes on me.
“Why aren’t you there?”
I sighed.
Then I explained. “I have an SUV to buy.”
His head cocked to the side. “What?”
“I have an SUV to buy,” I repeated. “And I’m saving to pay my dad back for giving me money to make a go of this place. I’m doing that with interest so it’s taking some time. And I’m buying my SUV with cash because I don’t want to finance it. The cabins are filling up and I almost always have several of them rented, but it’s not like it’s steady and I haven’t been here long enough, and the cabins haven’t been renting steadily enough to assess how the rentals are going in order to get a sense of what kind of the income I’ll have. So I’m being cautious. And I need the money.”
He moved to his chair, no longer looking at me, and folded his frame into it.
What he didn’t do was reply.
I reached to the remote.
That was when he spoke again.
“Why didn’t they come here?”
“Home is closer and Mom and Dad have a huge house.”
I felt his gaze so I looked to him.
“You got eleven cabins,” he pointed out.
“Home is home, Priest, and my sister just had their first grandchild. My mom and dad live on the ranch in Oklahoma where my dad grew up, his dad grew up, me and my brother and sister grew up. With Lacey having her first baby, the ranch was where this Christmas had to be.”
“Have you met her kid?” he asked.
I shook my head.
He looked to the blank TV.
I took that as a sign it was time to fire up the movie, so I did that.
We were ten minutes in before Priest said quietly, “Nothin’ more important than family.”
His words made me catch my breath, mostly because he was right. I should have taken the financial hit, closed Glacier Lily, and taken a few days to drive down and spend Christmas with my family, meet my nephew, get to know my soon-to-be sister-in-law better, commune with my beloved uncle.
I really should have.
I also caught my breath because those words came from him and they were surprising, seeing as he was here with me, a stranger to him like he was to me.
Which meant he either didn’t have any family or he knew just how true those words were because he lost his somewhere along the way. Neither option, by the by, sat very well with me.
But bottom line, I couldn’t deny that deep inside I liked it that he felt that way.
It was my turn not to reply and I didn’t.
I just reached to a cookie tin, settled in, and watched the movie.
* * * * *
“So, badasses drink hot cocoa,” I remarked.
“Yup,” John Priest confirmed.
I grinned into the steam coming from my cup and snuggled deeper into the blanket I’d wrapped around me prior to sitting in my Adirondack chair on my side porch, Priest beside me.
I had my eyes trained through the trees to the glimmering Christmas lights fighting through the dark to give a subdued but nevertheless merry feel to Priest and I sitting in the cold and snow, drinking cocoa late at night after tons of movies, good food, a dinner that Priest tucked into—his first bite of duck making his face change momentarily, showing me he liked it, making me like giving that to him more than was healthy.
Now Christmas was almost over and it wasn’t a good day. It was an excellent day. He wasn’t talkative company. He wasn’t warm. He wasn’t affectionate. He hadn’t even smiled.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t good company. That didn’t mean in his own unique way he didn’t communicate without words or even looks that he appreciated being there. My company. My food. My goofiness. Just being somewhere nice with a decent person on a holiday. It meant something to him and he communicated that to me.
And I knew that because there we sat, in comfortabl
e silence broken only by me occasionally saying something stupid just because I had the feeling he enjoyed me being a dork. So much it put the comfort in comfortable for him.
I listened to the river flow, allowed the stillness of the night to shroud me, warm in my blanket with hot cocoa in my belly, and definitely warm in the companionship of the man at my side.
I sighed quietly and relaxed deeper into the beautiful tranquility.
“We don’t change.”
That came from Priest and it came quiet. Not ugly. Not icy. Not mean.
But firm.
And the bubbling inside me stopped gurgling.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“’Preciate the kindness,” he went on.
“Good,” I said softly.
“You’re a good woman, Cassidy.”
I closed my eyes, opened them, and murmured, “Thanks.”
“But we don’t change.”
“Got it.”
He said no more.
I licked my lips and took a sip of cocoa.
The night was no less still. The view no less beautiful. But the tranquility was gone.
I sipped my cocoa and got to the bottom of the cup, doing it making a decision.
So he was scary. So he was badass. So he was closed off in a way that he’d made clear more than once he was never going to open.
I didn’t care.
I had this one shot, the only one I knew I’d ever get, so I was going to take it.
He would give nothing, this I knew.
I didn’t care about that either.
I was going to do what I had to do.
No.
I was going to take what I needed and give what I wanted.
Therefore, I said, “Gonna call it a night,” as I unwrapped myself and got to my feet.
I threw the blanket over my arm and made to move between our chairs as Priest remained silent.
I stopped by his chair and I looked down at him gazing at the trees.
“I know you don’t wanna hear this,” I started quietly. “I know you don’t do friendly. But I don’t care. It’s still Christmas and I still get to give friendly and you’re gonna take it.”