Jennifer Greene - Her Holiday Secret

He didn’t try deepening the kiss. Didn’t want to. But he kept thinking there had to be a catch. He kept waiting for the goofy, crazy feeling of a soul connection to disappear, for some common sense to give him a whack upside the head. Only it didn’t. And she responded with the same wary, winsome, tremulous honesty, as if her sanity had been ransomed by that hushed, soft kiss the same as his had.

He got around to lifting his head. Eventually. She got around to opening her eyes. Eventually. They stared at each other like such a couple of shell-shocked teenagers that he had to smile. Eventually.

“I didn’t come here expecting that,” he said.

“I never thought you did.”

“I just came to make sure you were okay. That’s the truth.”

“I believe you, Andy.”

“Seems to me, chemistry that strong pops up out of nowhere—it’s nothing you can trust, just asking for trouble.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Uh-huh.” He zipped up his jacket, grinned at her. “You can count on it. I’ll be back.”

Three

Maggie whisked the dinner plates into the dishwasher and sponged down the counters, but her gaze kept darting to the kitchen window. Predictably by the first of December, the sun had long fallen even this early in the evening. After two days of howling winds and incessant snow, the drifts swirled and curled in mystical shapes that looked like glazed icing in the moonlight. But her driveway was cleared—and empty, except for her sister’s car. Andy wasn’t due for another hour, so there was no reason on earth for her to start looking for him this early.

She grabbed a dish towel to wipe her hands, half amused, half exasperated to realize how nervous she was. Men never made her nervous. Offhand, she couldn’t think of much in life that had ever intimidated her...outside of the strange, unsettling nightmares prowling her sleep since the accident. But that problem had nothing to do with Andy.

She didn’t normally volunteer a house tour to strangers—much less expose her disastrously messy sleeping loft to a man’s eyes. At the time...well, she hadn’t known he was going to kiss her. Didn’t know that kiss was going to knock her for six. But something had been kindling and simmering the two times she’d been around him. And the mistakes Maggie had made with men in the past all had the same roots.

Most guys claimed to be comfortable around a strong woman, but they really weren’t. Someone looking for a vulnerable, traditional sweetie just wasn’t going to find it in her. She’d been self-reliant and independent too long. These days, if there was even the tiniest hint of potential kindling, Maggie just believed in being frankly blunt about who she was. What you see is what you get. No faking it. Being nice just got in the way—if a guy was going to be scared off by her independence or messiness or anything else, better to know it and move on before either of them had a pile of hurtful emotions invested.

But Andy hadn’t been scared off. At least not by anything she’d shown him so far. And for Maggie, that was downright rattling. Men always had some sweet, macho protective thing to say about a woman alone living in such a remote location. They fretted about her safety.

Safety was a relative term, Maggie mused. Trussed and blindfolded, she could capably cope with a dead furnace in a blizzard or a wounded moose wandering in her backyard. Piece of cake. Danger never had been a common word in her vocabulary—until meeting Andy, anyway. It struck her ironic humor buttons that something in those dark, sexy eyes made her feel distinctly unsafe.

And that was new and rattling, too.

“Maggie, for Pete’s sake, I told you I’d do the dishes. I was only gone for a minute! I didn’t mean to leave you with all the work.”

Maggie whirled around when her sister Joanna emerged from the bathroom. “No big deal. The two of us didn’t use enough dishes to take me more than two shakes.”

“But you made the dinner. And I really meant to help—”

“So you can help next time.” Although that would never happen, Maggie suspected. Growing up, the sisters had bickered like cats and dogs over stuff like this. Joanna was infamous for making the virtuous offer, but somehow always managed to be out of sight when it came time to do the dishes or the chore. But that was then, and this was now. “I made a fresh pot of tea—raspberry mint. You want a cup?”

“Maybe a short one. But I don’t want to rush you on time. When’s the sheriff picking you up?”

“Not until seven. And I keep telling you, it’s no big thing. Andy just offered to take me car shopping.” Maggie set a sturdy mug in front of her sister, feeling her heart catch just looking at Joanna’s face.

Any nerves about meeting Andy were backbumered. She was so worried about her sister that she could hardly think. Steve had died more than a year ago. God knew the two had been inseparably in love, but Maggie felt at an increasing loss for how to help Joanna move past her grief.

Her sister was five years older than she, and in Maggie’s view, the real beauty in the family. Now, though, Joanna’s long blond hair was lanky, her elegant features drawn, the huge almond-shaped green eyes deeply shadowed. Her slim white hands trembled even holding the mug of tea.

Maggie had always been the strong cookie of the pair. From the time her brother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, she’d naturally stepped in. Long before Steve died, she’d had her sister over for dinner once a week, took her nephews all the time, stopped by the house whenever she could. But Steve had been gone a year now, and Joanna seemed more fragile instead of less. Increasingly everything seemed to throw her sister, from finances to leaky faucets to snowstorms. Joanna paced the floor at night, worrying about her two sons. She didn’t sleep right, didn’t eat right, didn’t take care of herself.

Maggie could fix the stupid leaky faucets and sneakily pad Joanna’s bank account, but she didn’t know how to fix her sister. The two may have fought ferociously growing up, but they’d also always been hopeless gigglers. Lately it was tougher than climbing a mountain to win a smile out of Joanna.

“Hey, did I tell you how great Colin’s been to me? I don’t know how many times he’s been over since the accident. Shoveled my walk without asking, stacked my wood. What’s wrong with him?” Maggie teased.

“He always worshiped the ground you walked on. And you’re terrific with both boys. I can’t seem to get either one of them to talk to me...” Joanna spilled a little tea. “I don’t seem to be doing anything right lately.”

Maggie hustled for a cloth to wipe up the spill. “Listen, you goose, you’re doing fine. Quit being so hard on yourself. Do you remember either of us talking to Mom or Dad when we were teenagers? There’s just this stage where it’s hard to talk to a parent. But I do think you should get out more.”

“Mags, I’m not ready to date anyone.”

“So don’t date. But you could take up skiing, or aerobics... you love cards, maybe you could find a euchre club. There’s a dozen things you could do to get out, meet people again—”

“You’ve got ten times more courage than I do, Maggie. I’m just not good with charging into things the way you do. Speaking of which...do you know this guy you’re going out with tonight?”

“Andy? Nope. But being the sheriff, I think it’s a fairly safe bet he isn’t a serial killer on the sly. And how well do you have to know someone to spend a couple hours car shopping with them?” Maggie asked wryly.

“I still don’t know why you just didn’t ask me. I’d have taken you. Or you could have borrowed my car. You do so much for me all the time, Mags, and you never let me return the favor—”