Caridad Pineiro - Holiday with a Vampire - Christmas Cravings

“I won’t be staying.” He crossed his feet at the ankles and absently rubbed at the back of his right hand.

Tessa moved closer. “What happened to your hand? And your cheek?”

He blew out a breath. “I appreciate your help but I don’t need further assistance.”

“At least you could tell me your name,” she said.

He was quiet for a long moment, then said, “Grayson Stone.”

“I’m Tessa. Tessa Franklin.” She held her hand out toward him and waited patiently for him to take it.

When he finally did, and his skin met hers, Tessa felt a jolt of something she couldn’t identify pass between them. He felt it, too. She saw the flash of surprise in his eyes before he had the chance to disguise it. And somehow, it made her feel better to know that he was no happier about that flash than she was.

Moving farther back from her, he said, “I’ll rest here, then move on tonight.”

“Maybe that would be best after all,” she whispered, still feeling the hum of her skin where he’d touched her. Her body was awakening to sensations she’d blocked for five years. And the raw ache within threatened to bring her to her knees.

She stood up and backed away, as if distance from this mysterious man could make everything she’d felt drain away. It didn’t help. Shaken, she paused at the doorway, stood in the spear of sunlight and looked at him over her shoulder. Even in the shadows, the fire in his eyes burned hot. She felt the heat of him reaching for her and Tessa knew that Grayson Stone was more dangerous than she’d first believed.

Five years ago, she’d vowed to never give a man power over her again.

Up until this moment, she’d never doubted her ability to honor that vow.

Tessa poured coffee into a thermos, gathered up a blanket and her first-aid kit, then carried it all back to the barn. Her one guest, Joe Baston, had spent the night in town, visiting his daughter. Joe hadn’t wanted to put his daughter out—so he’d taken a room at the inn and so she had no one to make breakfast for and nothing to do except care for the man in her barn.

“What are you thinking, Tessa?”

Muttering to herself didn’t really help, but it had become a habit during the last few years. Before coming to Whisper, Wyoming, she hadn’t dared to make friends. Hadn’t even stayed in one spot for longer than two weeks at a stretch. She’d kept moving. Always wary. Always scared, damn it. Until she’d finally awakened one morning to decide that she was through looking at life through her rearview mirror.

So she’d found this place, worked like a dog to fix it up and now she was running her own business. True, it wasn’t much of a business yet, but that would change. All she needed was time.

Her stomach jittered uneasily and Tessa paused long enough to slap one hand to it in a futile attempt to calm herself. “Don’t make this a bigger deal than it is,” she said quietly, glancing at the barn just steps away. “He’s hurt. You’re going to help. Then he’ll leave. End of story. Everything back to normal.”

Except, just what was normal? She ran a B and B with only one guest. She lived on the outskirts of a town where she was still pretty much a stranger. Christmas was a week away and she was more alone than ever. And she hadn’t had sex in five years.

Normal?

By whose standards?

“Sex? Who’s talking about sex?” Taking a breath, she picked up the first-aid kit again and said, “You are, Tessa. And you should just cut it out now, got it?”

But who could blame her? The man in her barn, even injured, oozed sex from every pore. One look into those dark eyes and any woman with a pulse would want to throw herself at him. Tessa was no different—despite having plenty of reasons to know better. Completely disgusted with herself now, she headed for the barn before she could find an excuse not to.

The sun was up and slanting across the yard, glinting on the snow brightly enough to make her squint just to keep her eyes clear. Another storm was due, and judging by the thick clouds surrounding that clear spot where the sun clung stubbornly to the sky, it was going to be a big one.

The air was icy and every breath felt as though she were sucking knives into her lungs. The naked branches of the trees surrounding the house were draped in ice that looked like diamonds, dazzling in the sunlight. From a distance, the sound of a fastmoving creek came to her and Tessa paused again, just to enjoy the place she’d finally decided to call home.

Five long years of belonging nowhere, of owning nothing. Five years of using false names and never trusting a soul. Then one day, Tessa had driven down this lonely stretch of road, spotted this house and recognized home . She hadn’t expected it. Hadn’t really been looking for it. But this spot, this place, had called to her. As if it had been standing vacant, just waiting for her to come home and bring it to life again.

The small miracle was, that as she’d brought the old Victorian back from its slumbers…the house had awakened her, too. It was as if she was finally becoming the woman she’d once been. The woman who danced in the kitchen. The woman who could enjoy a quiet moment in the stillness, just appreciating a beautiful day.

And because she’d found that miracle, she was strong enough to help a man who looked as though he could use one, too.

With that thought firmly in mind, she headed for the barn again. Her boots crunched in the snow and the wind whipped around her, sneaking icy fingers down the collar of the jacket she’d thrown on over her sweater.

She didn’t care though. It felt good to be alive. And if she was a little nervous about the stranger in her barn…it was a natural kind of nervousness. So that was good, too.

She rounded the corner, stepped through the open barn door and stopped. He was gone.

“Mr. Stone?” She took another step and now her boots clacked and echoed against the old wooden planks. “Mr. Stone.”

“Over here.”

Her head whipped to one side and she spotted him, all the way into the corner of the barn; he had his back to the wall and his gaze on her. All around him slivers of sunlight peeked through the roof like golden bars of a cell, holding him in place.

A niggling, ridiculous notion tugged at the back of her mind for a second before she could dismiss it. “Are you all right?”

“Great.” His voice was tight. “Your roof needs fixing.”

“Yeah, but it’s low on the list right now.” She walked toward him with slow steps. Funny, but she felt almost as if she were trying to ease up on a hungry tiger. He had a taut stillness about him that made her think of a predator. And that was almost enough to make her back out of the barn and leave him alone. But if she did that, then she would be surrendering to her own fears and she’d worked too hard to get past that time in her life. To rediscover her own courage and the spirit that had once been so completely crushed.

“Look,” she said, forgetting about the fact that just a few minutes ago she’d wanted him gone, “you don’t have to stay in the barn. I told you, you can come inside. It’s warmer there and the roof doesn’t sprout sunlight every few inches.”

He scraped one hand across his face, then focused his gaze on her. Even in the shadows, she saw the flash of something molten in those dark depths.

“You don’t have to do this.” His voice rumbled out around her, soft, deep, almost hypnotic. “You should go back inside. Don’t come back here.”

“This is my barn,” Tessa reminded him. “Of course I’m coming back here.”

He groaned and let his head fall back against the wall behind him. “You have no sense of self-pres-ervation at all, do you?”