His Christmas Gift, page 7
Even though neither of them had expressed interest in water, Jenna poured three glasses anyway and took a deep breath before returning to the living room. Lacey was stabbing at her food as though it had done her wrong, while Sawyer’s bowl sat untouched on the coffee table.
“…we need to show we can handle this level of traffic or people just won’t bother coming out here next year,” Sawyer was saying. “No one wants to wait twenty minutes to be served when they can just grab a tree in town.”
“I know all this, Sawyer.”
“So you’ll stay in the barn tomorrow and make sure things are going smoothly?”
“I’ll keep an eye on things, but Margie and her daughter have got it covered and I’m more use helping people on the yard and baling trees.”
“If Henry’s brother is helping out, he can man the back lot and Henry can work the yard. I want you keeping an eye on customer service in the barn.”
“How about you let me handle it my way?” Lacey said.
“Because I know my way works. I’ve been doing this for more than ten years,” Sawyer said.
Lacey stood and dumped her empty bowl on the coffee table. “I don’t know what pain meds they’ve got you on, or if you need more of them, but I really hope you’re not going to be like this for however long it takes your leg to get better.”
She started to leave the room.
“Don’t walk out on me when I can’t follow you, Lacey,” Sawyer said.
Lacey spun to face him, her face flushed and contorted with anger. “Then don’t talk to me like I’m subnormal.”
“Why can’t you just damn well listen for once in your life?” The words exploded out of Sawyer with a force that made Jenna blink.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lacey asked dangerously.
“You’re fucking hopeless when you get an idea in your head. Just like with that asshole. I warned you against him, but you ignored me and look where we are now.”
Sawyer’s words echoed in the space, whipcrack sharp and cutting. Jenna saw Lacey flinch, saw the color leach from her face. Without saying a word, Lacey turned on her heel and left the room. The sound of the front door slamming echoed throughout the house.
“Fuck.” The single word was more an exhalation than an utterance as Sawyer dropped his head back onto the couch. He rubbed his closed eyes, the picture of worry and exhaustion.
Feeling every inch the intruder, Jenna collected her half-finished meal along with Lacey’s empty bowl and exited to the kitchen.
So much for enjoying a window into someone else’s family life. She dumped the remains of her meal, then rinsed both bowls and put them in the dishwasher. There was leftover stew in the pot and she rummaged around until she found an empty plastic container, filling it with stew and putting it in the fridge. When she gauged Lacey had had enough time to calm down, she stepped back into the living room to grab her coat, carefully avoiding glancing toward the couch. She was about go in search of Lacey when she spotted the other woman’s coat on the hook by the door. Lacey had been so upset she’d gone outside without.
Snagging it, Jenna stepped outside.
Chapter Five
‡
Since Lacey’s driver’s license had lapsed while she was in prison and she hadn’t renewed it to Jenna’s knowledge, she guessed Lacey would be somewhere nearby. Her hunch was proved correct when she spotted a figure moving amongst the cut trees in the yard.
Hands thrust deep in her coat pockets, Jenna made her way down the stairs and walked slowly across to join the other woman, giving Lacey plenty of time to note her approach. Silently, she offered Lacey her coat, and Lacey took it with a wry twist of her mouth.
“Thanks.” She pulled it on, zipping it with fingers that were blue with cold. “I guess you must be feeling pretty happy you took me up on that offer to sleep over.”
“True. I could be home watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island on cable,” Jenna said lightly.
Lacey almost smiled. “I’m really sorry you had to hear all that.”
“Don’t apologize. You and Sawyer have had some big stuff happening. The pressure has to go somewhere.”
Lacey’s shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug that conveyed exactly how confused and angry she felt. Jenna glanced toward the oil barrels in front of the barn in the hope that one of them might still be giving off some heat, but no telltale glow showed through the holes punched in their sides.
“You want to walk, try and stay warm?” she suggested instead.
Lacey fell in beside her as Jenna moved deeper into the yard, following the gravel path that wound amongst the trees. At night, with only the dim, distant lights from the house and barn behind them, it was like walking through a miniature forest.
“How’s the train going?” she asked, aware that Lacey had been pouring her spare time into helping restore an old steam locomotive in the national park nearby.
“She’s coming along well. We might even make the deadline.”
“She?”
“We gave her a name. Lucinda.”
“How did you know it was a she and not a he?”
“Trains are always girls.”
“Really? Is that a thing?” Jenna asked, genuinely curious.
Lacey’s teeth flashed white in the darkness. “No. But it could be true.”
Jenna laughed softly. For a minute or so the only sound was their crunch of snow and gravel beneath their feet as they wended their way amongst the trees.
“He’s right, you know. He did warn me,” Lacey said. “He told me Dave was a loser, and I wouldn’t listen to him because I thought I knew better. I thought I could see who Dave really was, and that our relationship meant something because we kept coming back to each other every time we broke up.”
Jenna waited until she was sure Lacey had finished speaking before responding.
“It’s easy to have twenty-twenty hindsight.”
Lacey kicked at the ground. “You know what I hate the most? That Sawyer thinks so little of me he doesn’t even trust me to run the farm for an afternoon. He thinks I’m that much of a screw up.”
Hurt vibrated beneath Lacey’s words.
“Is that what you got out of what he said to you back there?” Jenna asked, very aware that she was treading on dangerous, sensitive ground but unable to bite her tongue.
“You heard him.”
“I did, but I didn’t get ‘you’re a screw up’ out of it. I got lots of ‘it sucks that I’m your big brother and I couldn’t stop this bad thing from happening’, as well as some ‘I hate what this has done to you’. But I didn’t get any ‘you’re a big, fat loser’. Not even a little bit.”
Lacey stopped walking and turned to face her. “It feels like it was there, under the surface.”
Jenna nodded slowly. “Are you sure that’s not you thinking that, not Sawyer?”
Lacey ducked her head, obscuring her face as a lock of her heavy brown hair fell forward. “Maybe.”
“How long are you going to punish yourself for trusting someone you had every right to believe in?” Jenna asked gently.
“So, I should just let myself off the hook for being criminally stupid?” Lacey asked.
“Sure. Why not? Where’s punishing yourself going to get you? It’s not like you haven’t learned from your mistake, and it’s not like you haven’t suffered the highest punishment possible for a bad judgment call. You’ve more than paid your dues, Lacy.”
Lacey let her head drop back, her breath visible in the cold night air as she stared at the stars twinkling overhead. “Sometimes I dream that I have my old life back,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I dream that I can still drive trains, and Sawyer and I are equals instead of me being the perpetual lame duck.”
“Do you really think he sees you that way?”
“Sawyer has been protecting and guiding me from the day I was born.”
“Okay, so what’s changed?”
Lacey looked at her, a confused wrinkle between her eyebrows. Then she smiled faintly and lifted one shoulder in an almost-shrug. “Nothing, I guess.”
“I barely know the guy, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to ever stand back when someone he cares about is wading through crap. That doesn’t mean he thinks any less of you, though, Lacey. It just means that he cares. From where I’m sitting, that’s not a bad thing.”
Lacey tilted her head to the side, considering. “You’re probably right. Maybe I need to just stop being such a freaking sensitive petal about everything. It’s just…hard, trying to pick up the threads of my life again. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to do things, and I have to relearn them from scratch.”
“There’s a reason a lot of longer term prisoners reoffend within weeks of release,” Jenna said. “You can get used to anything.”
“That’s a terrifying thought. I don’t want to be broken by prison, by what Dave did to me. But sometimes I think that maybe I’m just too messed up now to be normal.”
“You were never normal, who are you kidding?” Jenna said. “A female train driver? Come on. You’ve been a statistical outlier all your life. Embrace it. Work it, baby. Use the past three years as a goad, if you need it – a reminder of what’s important – but don’t let it hold you back, from anything.”
Lacey nodded as though she was taking Jenna’s words to heart. Aware of the cold seeping into her boots, Jenna glanced over her shoulder toward the cabin. “What are the chances you’re ready to go inside and have a cup of cocoa or something?” Jenna asked.
Lacey laughed. “You’re freezing your best bits off, aren’t you, city girl?”
“That sound you heard a couple of minutes ago might have been my ass dropping off.”
“You go in. I want to make a phone call, but I won’t be long.”
Briefly, Jenna wondered who Lacey needed the privacy of a cold, deserted yard to call, but she tamped down her curiosity. More than anyone she knew, Lacey deserved her privacy.
She made her way back to the cabin, pausing to make sure she’d scraped the worst of the gravel and snow from her boots before entering. The living room was empty and she guessed Sawyer had gone to bed. He’d stoked the fire before he left, though, and she shed her jacket and went to stand in front of the flames, warming first her hands and then her backside.
Her back still ached from standing all day, and when she swallowed there was a distinct tickle in her throat. She grimaced. She really, really hoped she wasn’t coming down with a cold, because that would make getting up early to drive back to Billings tomorrow morning an even more horrible prospect than it already was. She’d been feeling a bit tired all week, though – maybe she’d been fighting something off and it was finally getting the better of her.
Well, she was just going to have to suck it up. She was here to talk about Lacey’s case with her and finesse her strategy, and she wasn’t about to let a bit of achiness and a sore throat get in the way. Tugging down the hem on her sweater, she headed for her room to collect her notes on Lacey’s case.
But first, she needed to use the bathroom.
Lacey had shown her where it was earlier, explaining they had it to themselves since Sawyer used the bathroom attached to the master suite. The door was shut, but Jenna figured the coast was clear since Lacey was still out in the yard. Her mind already leaping ahead to the documents in her overnight bag, she twisted the handle.
The sight that met her eyes made her take an instinctive step backward – Sawyer sitting on the side of the tub, his chest bare, his jeans bunched around his knees, a deeply frustrated expression on his face. Her shocked gaze swept over his broad chest and flat belly before skittering away when she reached the dark grey of his stretch-knit boxer-briefs.
“I’m so sorry. Lacey said you use the bathroom in the master suite, and she’s outside, so I figured I didn’t need to knock,” she said. Heat flooded her face as she tried to find somewhere to look that wasn’t formed of hard muscle and olive-tinted skin.
“There’s was more room to maneuver in here,” Sawyer said.
“Of course. Good idea. I’ll leave you to it.” She started pulling the door shut, hot all over with embarrassment.
“Wait. Could you ask Lacey if she’ll come lend me a hand?” The frustration beneath his request was more than evident, and for the first time she noticed the garbage bag and roll of sticky tape on the vanity.
Clearly, he wanted to have a shower, and, equally clearly, that was proving difficult, given his impaired mobility.
“Sure. Absolutely.” Jenna shut the door and closed her eyes, equal parts mortified and blown away.
Because Sawyer had an amazing body. The best body she’d seen in real life, in fact. She fanned a hand in front of her face as she remembered the firm, muscular roundness of his pec muscles. As for the sexy little trail of hair that ran down the center of his flat belly and disappeared beneath his boxer-briefs…She didn’t even have words to describe how delicious that was.
A stupid grin curled her mouth before she reminded herself that Sawyer was waiting for her to send Lacey in to help him. Her step brisk, she walked to the front door and stepped out onto the porch. There was no sign of Lacey in the immediate vicinity, and she cupped her hands and called.
“Lacey. Hello?”
Her voice disappeared into the darkness. The cold biting at her, Jenna glanced over her shoulder toward the house, very aware that Sawyer was waiting. The way she saw it, she had two options – go in search of Lacey, or offer herself to Sawyer as a replacement.
Jenna cupped her hands again. “Lacey? Are you out there?”
Silence was her answer.
Well, damn.
She waited another minute before trying a third time just in case Lacey was taking a while to walk back to the cabin or the wind had been in the wrong direction the first two times.
When there was still no sign of Lacey, she reluctantly reentered the house and made her way to the bathroom. Feeling ridiculously nervous, she rapped lightly on the door.
“Sawyer? It’s me, Jenna. Lacey’s out in the yard somewhere. But if you need help undressing or whatever, I could, you know, lend a hand.”
She cringed at the tentative diffidence in her own voice. She was a grown woman, for Pete’s sake. She should be able to offer some practical help to someone in need without it being a big deal.
There was a long silence before he responded. “Thanks, but I’ll manage.”
Jenna’s first response was relief that she’d just sidestepped what seemed destined to be a deeply uncomfortable situation. Then she remembered the way his jeans had been bunched up around his knees and the deeply frustrated look on his face and her conscience got the better of her.
“It looked like you were kind of stuck,” she said through the door.
“I’ll manage.” Sawyer said, his voice firm. Then, belatedly, “Thank you.”
Jenna remembered the way he’d insisted on wheeling himself out of the hospital. He was never going to admit he needed help from her; it had probably killed him to unbend enough to ask for his sister’s help.
“Brace yourself, I’m coming in,” she said.
She opened the door to find an unhappy-looking Sawyer still sitting on the edge of the tub. He’d managed to shift his bunched up jeans down past his knees but was clearly still struggling.
“All right. What are we doing here? Wrapping the splint up so you can have a shower?” she asked in her best no-nonsense, just-here-to-help tone.
She knelt in front of him and reached for the waistband of his jeans, trying not to reveal how aware she was off the hard male body in front of her.
“I’ve got this,” Sawyer said, his hands closing over hers.
“You are going to have a long and very smelly convalescence if you don’t let people help you when you need it, you know,” she said.
She tugged on his jeans, but he didn’t let go, his hands warm and firm around hers. She forced herself to look directly into his eyes. Now that she was up close, she saw he had little starbursts of lighter brown around his pupils, and that his lashes were thicker and longer than hers.
“Are we seriously going to play tug of war with your jeans?” she asked.
For a moment she thought he was going to keep fighting her, then his shoulders dropped a fraction and his grip loosened and she knew he’d conceded the battle.
“You know I’d win if I wanted to, right?” he said at the same time that he let her go.
“Absolutely. But you’d also miss out on a shower,” she pointed out.
His left leg was swathed in the bandages that held his splint in place, but his right leg was gloriously bare and she tried not to stare as she pulled his jeans the rest of the way off. His thigh was powerfully muscled, his calf superbly sculpted. Even his foot was nicely-shaped, his arches high and strong, his toes straight.
Averting her eyes, she folded his jeans and set them aside, trying not to notice how warm the fabric was from being against his skin.
“Okay. How are we going to do this?” she asked brightly, turning her attention to the garbage bag and tape on the vanity.
“You help me get the bag on, I’ll tape it,” Sawyer said.
“Excellent plan,” Jenna said, because she simply couldn’t imagine herself passing the roll of tape around his upper thigh. Not without breaking into a sweat, anyway.
She unfolded the black plastic bag and tried to separate the opening edges from one another, frowning as the bag resisted her efforts.
“Stupid static electricity,” she said, mindful that Sawyer was watching her every move.
“Here,” he said, and for the second time in as many minutes his hands covered hers.
This time she was the one who relinquished her grip, allowing him to take the bag from her. She was too self-conscious to risk looking into his face again, so she kept her gaze on his fingers as he deftly pinched the thin plastic and separated the layers.
