Kathleen O'Brien - Mistletoe Man

And again, and again. Lindsay was mesmerized, watching as those powerful arms swung up and down, the head of the ax winking in and out of the pale light that filtered through the cracks in the boarded walls of the shed.

It was obviously strenuous work. Though his breath condensed in the frigid air, and snowflakes blown in through the open door dusted the curls on his head, still Daniel was damp from his exertions. Sweat beaded along the gold-ribboned muscles of his forearms and ran in rivulets along the column of his throat. Lindsay shivered, her senses confused by the startling discordance of moist heat against this chilling cold.

Shutting her eyes, she gripped the doorknob, awash with a sense of her own inadequacy. She was a city girl, a Southerner by birth who had never spent a winter north of Phoenix, where she and Christy now lived. She found it disturbing in some primitive way, this display of brute force aligned against nature. And somehow humbling. Never before had she appreciated what was required to create the firewood that crackled so merrily in her Christmas hearth. Now she saw that each log must be wrenched, unwilling, from the massive forest that covered this mountainside.

“How’s Robert?”

She opened her eyes, and when her focus returned she saw that Daniel had set down his ax and was standing, his foot propped on the pedestal and his arms folded over his knee, looking at her. Though he still gleamed with sweat, he wasn’t even breathing heavily. He was, she thought, no stranger to hard work in spite of his immaculately groomed business persona.

“He’s okay,” she said. “Still groggy, though. They’re giving him a lot of pain pills, I think.”

Daniel wiped his brow, then raked his fingers through his hair. When he brought his hand down, his fingertips were damp with melted snow. “Did you tell him about the blizzard?”

She nodded, reluctant to discuss that part of her conversation. Robert had been horrified to hear that Lindsay was trapped on the mountain with Daniel McKinley. He had berated himself so unmercifully for putting her in that predicament that Lindsay had been almost unable to calm him down. Only her promise that she’d be extremely careful had helped at all. So promise she had, though she wasn’t sure exactly what Robert wanted her to be careful of.

Could he have been jealous, worried that she might find herself attracted to Daniel? Well, if that was it, Robert had nothing to worry about. She hadn’t ever been interested in domineering, macho types. And Daniel McKinley looked just as arrogant here, splitting logs in his shirtsleeves, as he ever had in his business suit. She looked at the logs that had fallen so easily under his ax, and she swallowed hard. Maybe more so.

“That looks exhausting,” she said, hoping to change the subject before he asked more about her conversation with Robert. “Can I help?”

He raised his brows, obviously surprised. “Thanks, but it’s under control,” he said. “We were already stocked up, but I thought we’d better have some extra logs lying around in case we lose electricity. Heating three bedrooms will really eat up the wood.”

Three bedrooms. She was the problem, then, the reason that he was laboring out here in the bitter cold. “I’m sorry to be an extra burden—” she began, but he broke in impatiently.

“You’re not to blame for the blizzard.” He picked up the ax and drove it into the pedestal, as if that were its natural storage spot. “You’re just as much a victim of the weather as we are.”

“I know, but…” But what? She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t say what was really on her mind, that she couldn’t imagine how she was going to get through the next twenty-four hours. All this idle time cooped up with a man with whom the only thing she had in common was a short, disastrous past acquaintance and a mutual distrust. All this artificial intimacy with this intensely male autocrat who didn’t even like her.

She wished Roc would come back from making up the guest room. Or, better yet, she wished she had something to do. Yes, that was the answer. She needed to contribute somehow so that she wouldn’t feel so helpless and dependent.

“How about if I make some dinner?” She cast a quick glance behind her into the large, intelligently arranged kitchen, and her mood lightened at the thought of puttering about in here. It had been ages since she’d had such a luxurious setting—and so much free time—in which to indulge her favorite hobby. The kitchen in her apartment at home was neat and clean, but tiny. And she was always in a flurry, bolting in the door after work and trying to throw something simple together while helping Christy with her algebra.

She turned back to Daniel, but to her dismay he was shaking his head. “Roc will do it,” he said, casually dashing her hopes while he rolled his sleeves down and buttoned them around his wrists. “He’s stocked the pantry for the winter, and he has menus lined up from now until Easter. Believe me, there’s no need for you to worry about the food.”

“But I love to cook,” she said, stepping back to allow Daniel to enter the kitchen. His sleeve brushed her hand as he passed by, and the cotton was cold and damp, raising goose bumps up the length of her forearm. She backed away further. “Maybe Roc would let me help him, at least.”

Daniel bent over the kitchen sink, splashing water on his face, then rubbed it with the nearest kitchen towel. “No,” he said again. “There’s no need for you to worry. Roc should have your room ready by now. Would you like to go upstairs, maybe have a shower and a nap? We usually have dinner about seven, if that suits you. Roc could call you then.”

“A nap?” She couldn’t believe her ears. “It’s only three o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. McKinley—I mean, Daniel.” She smiled, just a little, to soften the intensity of her instinctive outburst. “I haven’t had a nap in the afternoon since I was in kindergarten.”

He looked slightly displeased, and she suddenly wondered uncomfortably whether he’d been trying to get rid of her. Maybe she was being rude—maybe snowbound etiquette demanded that she withdraw obediently to her assigned quarters and at least pretend to sleep for the next four hours.

“There must be things you’d like to do.” His impersonal gaze roamed over her hair, her face, her hands, and she flushed, thinking what a mess she must look. He probably was accustomed to women who were far more concerned with their grooming than they were with cooking dinner. She lifted her chin, meeting his critical survey with just a touch of defiance. She wasn’t an ornamental, trophy female. She was a working woman, and she wasn’t a bit ashamed of it. Still, she tucked her short, unpolished nails behind her back.

“You’re not an employee here, you know,” he said curtly. “You’re a guest.”

Yes, she thought, but an unwanted guest. A guest who had been invited only by the storm. But she didn’t say it, knowing it would sound ungrateful. And she was grateful, of course. Though she would have preferred to be stranded almost anywhere else on earth, she knew how lucky she was not to be out there in that helicopter with that crazy pilot at the controls.

“Still,” she said, “there must be things to do during an emergency like this. I’d like to help.”

“For God’s sake, say yes, man, before the lady decides you’re some kind of chauvinist pig.” Roc appeared in the doorway, and Lindsay, though grateful for his arrival, wondered whether the caretaker knew a labyrinth of secret passages that accounted for these dramatic manifestations.

He ambled into the kitchen, his black garb strikingly dark against the gleaming white tile. “Daniel really isn’t a chauvinist, Miss Lindsay, though I know he’s been talking like a chowderhead. He hires plenty of women at the office, even has a couple of female vice presidents, believe it or not.”