His Christmas Gift, page 13
It occurred to her then that despite stripping the bed and packing her things, she didn’t want to go home. Not yet.
Squaring her shoulders, she entered the kitchen. Sawyer was already pouring milk into a saucepan, measuring the volume with an expert eye.
“I was thinking about that snow storm… Maybe I should stay one more night, head home tomorrow once the weather’s settled again.”
He glanced across at her, and she hoped she wasn’t imagining the satisfaction in his eyes.
“Good decision.”
Chapter Nine
‡
Jenna had disappeared to remake her bed when Sawyer’s phone pinged midmorning with a text from his sister, letting him know the groceries he’d ordered were sitting inside the front door. He collected them and stowed the perishables in the fridge, glad to see Lacey had been able to find him the lamb chops and fresh rosemary he’d asked for now that Jenna had changed her mind and decided to stay the night.
As he worked, he couldn’t stop thinking about the things she’d told him. He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen a sadder sight in all his life than Jenna trying not to cry. He’d been powerless to deny the urge to hold her, and once she was in his arms he’d felt the way she vibrated with suppressed grief and sadness. He understood without her telling him that this wasn’t a story she’d confided in many people, and he felt honored she’d trusted him with it.
Being him, though, he wanted to fix things for her. He wanted to somehow twist the world until she had what she needed to make her whole. He recognized the impulse as pointless, given who he and Jenna were to each other, but it was there nonetheless.
He shut the fridge and crutched to the trash can to dump the grocery bags. He caught sight of Lacey outside, talking to a little huddle of staff in front of the barn. He watched as she handed them an envelope each, no doubt containing the cash bonuses they’d discussed by text, as well as what looked like boxes of cookies. She handled herself well, his sister, looking their staff in the eye, shaking hands, giving Margie and her daughter a kiss on the cheek. After a few more words, the huddle broke up as his staff went to their stations.
Not that they would be expecting a busy day – they were down to the last few trees, and it was likely they’d be sold out entirely by nightfall. Since Christmas was just three days away, he figured that counted as good planning on his behalf. Even if he did say so himself.
Without giving himself time to think about it too much, he made his way into the living room and pulled on his jacket and scarf. Then he let himself out and settled onto the old swing, propping his leg on the battered dining chair situated on the porch for just that purpose. As he’d hoped, Lacey glanced his way, stilling when she registered his presence. After a moment’s hesitation, she approached the cabin, dusting stray pine needles off her jeans as she walked.
She opened the conversation by teasing him about his intentions toward Jenna, keeping things light, before she sat beside him on the swing. It all sounded good – vintage Lacey – but there was a heaviness to her that made him furrow his brow.
“And how are things with Officer Wilder?” he asked.
“They’re—” She paused for a moment, and he could almost hear her debating with herself about what to tell him. “They not going well.”
He sat up a little straighter. He’d been determined to bite his tongue, to let Lacey make her own mistakes, but there was no mistaking the unhappiness in his sister’s eyes.
“Do I need to kick his ass? I still have one good leg, you know. And this cast could probably do some damage.”
To his great surprise, Lacey leaned against him the way she used to when she was a kid. He slung his arm around her shoulders, sensing she needed the comfort.
“You’re not so bad, you know,” she said.
“I know.”
She chuckled at his cockiness and rested her head against his shoulder. “How’s Jenna feeling, really?”
“Pretty good. She got some antivirals that cut the grossness short.”
Lacey leaned back to look at him. “You mean I could’ve come home before now?”
“Nah, she’s still contagious. Just not scabby.” He couldn’t resist getting in a little brotherly dig to make up for all her teasing. “Miracle drugs—they make her feel better but still keep you away.”
She made a disgusted noise. “I can’t believe you put your love life over my comfort.”
“I don’t have a love life,” he answered truthfully. He had hope, a meal, and three more Terminator movies to watch, but none of that amounted to a love life. Not yet. “Anyway, I figured you were getting pretty comfortable yourself.”
Lacey sighed and rubbed her temple, looking and sounding infinitely weary “And this is why we shouldn’t go without speaking. Austin and I…” She paused for a long moment until she gave up on finding the right words and simply shook her head. “We aren’t a good idea.”
“You’re so full of bullshit, munchkin.”
She pulled away, causing the swing to rock, jarring his leg.
“Careful there.”
“Sorry. I’m not full of bullshit.”
He wasn’t about to let that one go through to the keeper, stabbing pain in his leg or no stabbing pain.
“You are. Look, I’ll admit I was pissed when I found out about you and Wilder, but I’ve had time to think about it. Even when I didn’t know who you were doing the dirty with, I could tell things were changing for you in here.” He tapped her forehead. “And there.” He pointed at her chest. “I hadn’t seen you happy in a long-ass time. I was a little jealous, to be honest.”
She grabbed his hand, an arrested look on her face. “Really?”
“Maybe. You deserve happiness, you know. Yeah, you trusted the wrong person once, but you paid a stupidly heavy price for it. I’ll be really annoyed if you keep paying that price for no good reason.”
Lacey went quiet, picking bits of lint of her jeans, her expression pensive.
“Do you really think you and forest boy aren’t a good idea?” he prompted quietly. His gut told him his sister was serious about this guy.
“He has to testify against me, Sawyer. What do you think?”
He frowned. “You sure he’s going to do that?”
She tried to pull off a shrug, but couldn’t quite do it. “It’s his job.” Her voice cracked with suppressed emotion.
“Well, then, he’s an idiot, and you’re better off without him.”
Lacey bit her lip, then gave a short, sharp little nod. He had no idea what she was thinking, if his words meant anything to her or not.
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Any time.” He gave her a brotherly pat on the leg. “If you want to come home, you’re always welcome. Just not tonight.”
Lacey’s eyes got wide.
“Finally, he admits it.” She nudged his knee with hers. “I’ll stay at the station house, then. And I’ll crank up the Christmas music really loud, just in case.”
They talked for a few minutes more before Lacey had to go deal with something in the barn. The cold had seeped past his clothes by then, making his injured leg ache, and he grabbed his crutches and went inside.
Jenna was in the living room, doing something at the coffee table, and she glanced across at him as he shut the door.
“Was that Lacey?”
“Yeah.”
“How is she? We haven’t texted for a couple of days.”
He thought about it for a moment before answering. His sister had been down, but she was resilient and smart, and he sensed she had a lot invested in Austin Wilder.
“I think she’s okay,” he said slowly. “At least, I think she’s going to get there.”
He moved closer and saw that the Scrabble board had been moved from last night’s position and was now closer to where Jenna was sitting.
“Studying up while my back was turned, huh?” he asked.
“No. Not at all.”
“So you didn’t even take a peek at my remaining letters?” he asked, sinking into the armchair.
“I don’t cheat. At anything.”
He believed her. “You want to finish the game?” he asked, gesturing toward the board.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Then I believe it’s your move, Ms. Macintosh.”
*
Jenna was expecting Sawyer to resume his seat in the armchair, but he sank onto the couch beside her instead, reaching for the stand holding his tiles and sliding it toward himself. She tried not to show how discombobulated she was by his closeness, affecting a casualness she didn’t feel as she reached for her own stand.
“Are you sure it’s my turn? I thought it was yours,” she said, fiddling with her tiles unnecessarily.
“I’m happy to take it if you want, but I’m pretty sure the last word was frowzy, and that was mine.”
“You’re right, that was yours,” she said.
He shifted a little, pivoting so he could prop his cast on the coffee table, the move pressing his good thigh against hers.
She licked her lips and tried to concentrate on her letters. It was difficult when she could see his thigh out of the corners of her eyes, soft denim contouring the hard muscle.
Aware that time was passing, she leaned forward and set a feeble four letter word on the board. Not her best effort, but she had to do something. Sawyer immediately followed with a word of his own, laying out six of his letters with a confidence that suggested he’d been planning the move for a while.
“Hmmm. Sure you weren’t doing a little studying?” she asked, sliding him a mock-suspicious look.
“I don’t need to cheat.”
He said it with such absolute confidence she huffed out a laugh. “Are you implying that even if I don’t cheat, I need to?”
“Not at all. You’re a formidable player.” He said it with a sly smile lurking about his lips that she guessed was meant to imply he thought the exact opposite.
“You’re a rabble rouser, Gallagher,” she said, recognizing a blatant goad when she saw one.
“Takes one to know one, Little Red.”
His shoulder brushed hers as he leaned forward and across her to gather more tiles. A couple of inches closer, and he would have brushed against her breasts.
The thought sent a rush of heated need washing through her, so powerful she felt a little shaken. She swallowed and was embarrassed to realize it was loud enough to be audible. Sawyer shot her a curious look as he sat back with a fistful of fresh tiles in his hand.
“All right there?”
“Yep.” She belatedly selected new tiles for herself and spent a lot of time arranging them on her shelf.
“Your move,” he reminded her.
“Right. Of course.” She was so distracted, she set down another four letter word, only realizing when it was too late that she could have used an S already on the board to make it a plural.
Sawyer immediately took advantage of her lapse to use the S himself. This time when he reached for fresh tiles, she took advantage of his closeness to draw in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of clean skin and clothes and the faint tang of aftershave. She made a bet with herself that his skin would smell like that, too – warm and spicy and clean…
It was her turn again, and she was mortified to realize her hands were shaking as she lay her word on the board.
God, she wanted this man.
He’d been so kind to her. And he was so hot. Unless she was wildly mistaken, he was attracted to her, too. She didn’t think she was misreading the signals, even though she didn’t exactly have the best track record in that department.
He’d told her she was gorgeous this morning, despite The Pox. And he’d organized for Lacey to bring supplies so he could cook a special meal for her. Then there was the way he looked at her sometimes – like he wanted to consume her, slowly. In the best possible way.
She was almost certain he’d planned a seduction for tonight. Dinner and a movie. The two of them sitting in the dark together.
The thing was, tonight was hours away. They probably wouldn’t have dinner till six or seven. There were two courses, too, from what Sawyer had said. Which meant they wouldn’t be back here on the couch again until eight, maybe later.
Jenna wasn’t sure she could wait that long. She wanted him that much.
She understood now that she’d been drawn to him from the very start. Even when he was surly and incommunicative, she’d been unable to take her eyes off him. Then she’d gotten to know him better, and her undeniable lust had gotten tangled up with admiration and respect and appreciation.
Sawyer Gallagher was the whole package. A hot, sweet, funny, shy, kind man.
And she wanted to get him naked.
She slid a look his way. He was busy rearranging tiles on his shelf. She watched his fingers stroke a tile reflectively before shifting it to another position and a surge of recklessness gripped her. She’d never made a pass at a man in her life, but right now her body was literally throbbing for his. She might be wrong about his fancy dinner tonight. She might have completely the wrong end of the stick, but she was going home tomorrow, and this was probably going to be her last chance to spend this kind of time with him. Tomorrow, she would be Lacey’s lawyer again, and he would be her brother, and they would never have another reason to sit in front of a fire three days before Christmas, isolated by her illness, playing a game of Scrabble that she didn’t give a single toss about.
Feeling a little giddy, she took a deep breath, then cleared her throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
He glanced at her and she almost lost her nerve, but the drumbeat of desire in her belly drove her on.
“You know how you’re making chocolate-whiskey pudding for dinner tonight? That wouldn’t by any chance be because you were hoping to get me into bed, would it?”
Sawyer went very still. Heat rushed up her chest and into her face, but she refused to back down. She’d come too far, there was no turning back.
“Because if you are, I just thought I’d let you know that I don’t need pudding,” she said.
There was a small pause, then his mouth curled at the corners.
Oh, God, he’s going to laugh at me.
She’d got it wrong. She’d misread all the signals. Her one attempt at being sexually bold, and it was about to blow up in her face.
“What would I need?” Sawyer finally said.
She blinked. And then she understood what he was asking, and what it meant, and suddenly her mouth was curling at the corners, too.
“Just you,” she said.
Then she did the second boldest thing she’d ever done in her life – she reached out, caught his face in her hands, and pressed her lips to his.
He tasted like heat and desire, his lips both firm and soft at the same time. She made an approving sound in the back of her throat, unable to help herself, and suddenly Sawyer’s hands were cupping her head, his tongue sliding into her mouth, taking the kiss to the next level.
Need rocketed through her as his tongue stroked hers. She slipped her hands from his face to his shoulders, her fingers curling into hard muscle. He felt amazing – so big and hard. She smoothed her hands down his arms, straining toward him, needing more.
As if he sensed her urgency, Sawyer tucked a couple of fingers into the front of her jeans and dragged her closer, the sudden move making her laugh with shocked delight. Then her breasts hit the firm, hot wall of his chest and all the laughter left her, giving way to pure lust.
“You feel so good,” she murmured before resuming their kiss.
Sawyer’s hands smoothed up and down her back as he invaded her mouth, biting at her lips, sucking on her tongue, each action sending shockwaves of desire through her. She’d been aroused before they’d touched, but now her breasts felt heavy and full, and she could feel her heartbeat pulsing between her thighs. She was so ready for him, all she could think about was having his hand down there, touching her.
Stroking his tongue with hers, she took his left hand and dragged it onto her breast, too turned on to be embarrassed by her own urgency. She needed him to touch her almost more than she needed air. His big hand closed around the curve of her breast, learning the shape of it, then his thumb swept across her nipple and she groaned because – again – it felt so damned good. Everything did with him.
“Jesus, Jenna,” Sawyer muttered.
He stroked her nipple again, bringing it to aching hardness, then he squeezed it gently between thumb and forefinger. She dug her fingers into his arm, deepening their kiss. She wanted more. More of his hardness. More of the taste of him. More of the feel of him pressed against her.
She almost sobbed with relief when he slipped his hand beneath her T-shirt, pushing her bra out of the way to find her nipple. The touch of his work-roughened hands on her sensitized flesh made her squeeze her thighs together.
“Come here,” Sawyer murmured, his hands on her hips, and she clambered eagerly into his lap, straddling him on the couch.
Oh, this was better. The hot, wet heart of her was pressed against the hard ridge of his erection, and now both his hands were under her top, teasing her breasts. Lost in a world of aching, empty need, she ground herself against him, kissing him with everything she had.
She felt the coolness of air at her back, but she was so lost in sensation that it took her a couple of seconds to realize what he was doing – pulling her t-shirt off. The image of her naked body in the bathroom mirror this morning flashed across her mind’s eye and she broke their kiss, her hands instinctively going to the hem of her sweater, holding it down at the front even as he tried to tug it up at the back.
“Wait,” she said.
Sawyer’s espresso brown eyes were hazy with desire as he pulled back to look at her.
“You don’t want me to touch you?”
“God, yes. So much. But there’s this little complication called The Pox, and things aren’t as pretty as they could be under this sweater.” She hated saying it, but she wanted to be at her best for him – she wanted to feel pretty and sexy, not spotty and itchy.
