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She tried to thrust the thought away as soon as she had it. You could not know that about a complete stranger, even if he was wearing a police uniform. Despite making great strides since arriving in Snow Mountain, she was not sleeping well, and she knew her judgment was not what it once had been.
Naturally, now, she was doing her darnedest to be as perfectly poised and professional as he was, trying to act as though being picked up and carried down the hall by an extraordinarily appealing man was an everyday ho-hum kind of experience for her.
The dog seemed determined for them all to get cozy again. It had squeezed in between the toilet bowl and the sink, and was nuzzling her hand with its warm, damp nose.
“This really isn’t necessary,” she said again, her world is a better place feeling causing her to feel guilty about the secret she was determined to keep from him.
She was amazed that he had not seen the results of last night’s meeting crammed into the dark corner by the bathroom: protest signs, freshly painted.
Lila had found out this morning that it was necessary to have a permit to assemble in Snow Mountain, a ridiculous formality given the tininess of the town, she felt. She had also found out that it took a number of weeks to get a permit, and she needed to draw attention to the fact Town Council had voted to cancel Christmas at Snow Mountain, now.
The unpermitted protest was scheduled for the Thursday before Thanksgiving. The SOS team was nearly delirious with delight over the plan to close down Main Street right in front of the town hall until some funding was reinstated for the Santa’s Workshop display at Bandstand Park.
Her committee was not a bunch of hotheaded rebels, either, not the kind of people one would ordinarily expect at a protest. They were nice people, decent, law-abiding, hardworking people who were willing to stand up for what they believed in.
And they believed in Christmas.
Still, Lila was pretty sure her uncle would kill her if he knew. And this man in front of her? If the world was a better place because of him, it was probably because he would be exceedingly intolerant of schemes that fell even the teensiest bit outside of the law.
She shivered, still taken totally aback by her reaction of such total awareness to Officer Taggert. She, of all people, knew to be distrustful of instant attraction, since she had paid the horrific price of someone’s totally unwanted and unencouraged attraction to her.
She’d been reminded of the consequences of that just a few minutes ago, when she’d once again experienced that horrible startled reflex, a reflex she had assured herself was almost gone—until the door had slammed tonight.
She had known as soon as she’d arrived in
Snow Mountain that her doubts about opening the first storefront for her unexpectedly successful Internet Christmas company had been unfounded. It had been the right decision to pack up her life and move across the country.
Her healing, her return to normal, could begin here, in this sleepy little town nestled among forests and mountains.
Finally she was going to be able to overcome the block that she’d been experiencing ever since she’d been approached, because of the Internet success of her small company, to write How to Have a Perfect Christmas under the pseudonym, Miss L. Toe.
For weeks now, Lila had been experiencing excitement and hope instead of that horrible feeling of flatness, interspersed with anxiety. Except for the sleep problem, she was feeling so much better.
Snow Mountain had so much unrealized potential! It was a magical place, a town off a Christmas card. It was the place that could inspire her to write a great first book, to launch a great storefront for her Internet business.
But no lights? No Christmas display in the town square?
She remembered that display so clearly from the time her family had flown up here from their home in Florida to spend Christmas with her mother’s oldest brother, Uncle Paul, the year she’d turned ten. She still remembered that Christmas more vividly than any other. The magic of snow, and real Christmas trees, the feeling in that small town.
Maybe that’s what had pulled her back to this place when her world had fallen apart.
So, she just wasn’t having Town Council squash her dreams before they even got started! She was giving herself over to creating the perfect Christmas store and the perfect Christmas town and the perfect book on creating the perfect Christmas. It gave her a sense of safety and control over the things that had been snatched from her.
Her arrival in Snow Mountain had returned to her a belief that there were places in the world that were wonderfully old-fashioned, where children still walked to school and played in the streets without their parents hovering, where women never gave a thought to walking alone, where violent things rarely happened.
But then the wrench—Town Council practically canceling Christmas!
Still, despite that challenge to her control over creating the perfect Christmas, Lila was aware of beginning to feel safe again. Tonight was a perfect example: She’d left her door unlocked even after store hours.
Lila was aware that her initial reaction of panic to the unexpected arrival in her shop had faded. It had not faded because she knew the man who had changed her world forever was in jail, but rather illogically because Officer Taggert radiated the strength and calm—the certain forbidding sternness—of a man who could be relied on to protect, to keep the world safe, to uphold standards of decency.
At first, she’d felt anxious that maybe he’d heard a whisper about the planned protest, especially when he seemed so suspicious, probing. Minutes of the meeting, for Pete’s sake.
But it had soon become very apparent to her that, despite his offer to help, Officer Taggert’s heart was not in it at all. He’d been ordered here by her uncle, and had put in an appearance.
Unless he saw the signs on his way out the door, the protest was safe.
She felt the tiniest little shiver of apprehension that she was on the wrong side of the law, but her purpose was so right that she felt justified.
Then it occurred to her that maybe the shiver she was feeling was not apprehension, but a treacherous little stirring of something else, despite the deliberate remoteness of the man who shared the bathroom with her.
Appreciation, primal compared to her rather philosophical thought that the world was a better place because he was in it. It was an almost clinical awareness of a healthy female for a healthy male. It didn’t help that she had felt the strong bands of his arms around her, his easy strength as he had carried her to the bathroom.
He had seemed indifferent to their close proximity. But then again, he’d missed the protest signs, and he didn’t look like a man who missed much, so maybe he’d felt a forbidden little stirring, too. He was a healthy male after all.
Taggert was at least six-one of pure male perfection: sleek muscle, long legs, deep chest, broad, broad shoulders, all accentuated magnificently by the crisp lines of his light blue on navy police uniform.
His face was astounding, chiseled masculine perfection, unconscious strength in the set of his chin, the firmness around his mouth, the lines around his eyes. His eyes, which had initially been shaded by the brim of his hat, were now fully visible since he had removed the hat.
While the rest of him was pure cop, one-hundred- percent intimidating and authoritative presence, his eyes were the softest shade of brown, shot through with threads of pure gold. His eyes did not reflect the remoteness of his demeanor, though there were walls up in them, walls that guarded a mystery…and most likely his heart.
He carried himself with the utter confidence of a man who knew his own strength and capabilities perfectly. No swagger, only pure, unadulterated self-assurance.
Now he was on one knee in front of her, focused on her foot. His hair was short, but incredibly thick and shiny, the rich color of dark chocolate. She was amazed by a renegade desire to feel its silk beneath her fingertips.
His hands were unbelievably sure on her ankle, and she stifled a gasp when he pulled her sock away and held her naked foot in the warm, hard cup of his hand. The shiver of appreciation she’d felt graduated to a betraying tingle of pure awareness. She felt terrified in a much different way than she had felt terrified the last two years of her life when she had become the victim of a stalker. He was a man she had worked with, and whose interest in her had seemed so benign…at first.
“Really,” she managed to croak, “I can look after it.”
“Look, either I’m taking a look at it, or I’m taking you to the hospital. You choose.”
He glanced up, and she noticed just the faintest shadow of whiskers on his clean-shaven face, felt swamped by his closeness, his pure masculine scent.
“Are you all right?” he asked, genuine concern faintly overriding the professionalism in the masculine deepness of his voice. “You aren’t going to faint, are you?”
“Faint?” she managed to say, inserting proud outrage into her voice, a woman determined not to be seen as weak ever again. “I am not the fainting kind.”
But she had managed to sound more certain than she actually felt. Was she all right? Why did she feel as if she was standing in the open doorway of a plane, deciding whether to jump?
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said patiently. “There is no fainting kind. I’ve seen a Marine faint at the sight of his own blood.”
“Oh.”
“Can I go ahead then? Or do you want me to take you to the hospital?”
The eyes were intent on her face, the voice no-nonsense, though his offering her a choice relaxed something in her, even though, logically, she knew it was not a real choice and he was very much in control.
“Go ahead,” she squeaked.
“It’s not so bad,” he reassured her, lifting her leg so he could get a good look at the heel, gently swabbing away the blood with an alcohol pad. “I see a single cut, not very deep. I think there’s a little piece of glass still in there.”
He reached for tweezers, tugged, held up a tiny fragment of glass for her to see before he dropped it into the wastepaper basket that was painted like a toy drum.
“I’m just going to dress the wound,” he explained, his voice deep, soothing, as if he was talking to a small child. “I don’t see any more glass, no need for stitches. A wound to this part of the body just bleeds a lot.”
The voice of a man who had seen many wounds and much blood, without ever coming even remotely close to fainting; a man who would be just this coolly and reassuringly competent in crises of any magnitude.
He placed a cotton gauze on her foot, held it in place by winding a bandage over her heel and up her ankle in a crisscross pattern, all very professional, clinical, detached.
Not, apparently, being bothered by tingles the way she was.
“You’re obviously used to doing this sort of thing,” she said. “This is obviously your first trip to the North Pole, though.”
He looked surprised, and then he smiled.
It was just the tiniest hint of a smile, but it changed the stern lines of his face completely. She glimpsed for a moment something of his past: something reckless, devil-may-care, mischievous. Charming.
He got up, picked up his hat and brushed off his knee with it. He glanced around at the bathroom decor, his eyes resting briefly on a jar of bright candies labeled Jolly Beans, For Medicinal Use Only.
The smile that had tickled his lips evaporated, and she was aware whatever he had once been, he was not that now. He actually winced, as if such adorable corniness hurt his eyes. He stepped quickly out of the bathroom and back into the hallway.
All she could think of was he had nearly brushed against the protest signs, and for the first time in her life she was completely unworthy of trust.
He clamped his hat back on his head, pulled it low, so his amazing eyes were once more shadowed. Then he whistled for his dog, and let himself out the front door.
She limped after him and locked it behind him, aware that even though Snow Mountain itself felt safer to her than it had half an hour ago, she herself did not feel as safe, as if she stood on the edge of something scary. And wonderful.
But that she of all people, she reminded herself with stern warning, should know how very scary a brief encounter with a strange man could become.
It was the reason she’d sworn off real life and chosen to embrace fantasy instead. Her beautiful store, this beautiful town, her literary adventures—those were going to be enough for her. It was going to fill every void, make her feel safe, fulfilled, in control.
A woman would never feel one hundred percent in control around a man like Taggert. Never.
Determined to make the creation of a perfect Christmas her life mission, she marched back to her computer.
Suddenly decorating a bathroom seemed like a terrible place to start How to Have A Perfect Christmas. Terrible.
“You have to start somewhere,” she told herself, aware of a panicky little edge in her voice as she said it. She’d accepted the advance, and worse, she’d spent it. She had a deadline!
Obviously the writer’s block was coming, at least in part, from her insomnia. But it wasn’t helping one little bit that the place on earth most likely to be chosen for a poster of the perfect Christmas town had practically canceled Christmas. Once she looked after that, everything else was going to fall into place.
With a new sense of verve, Lila picked up the phone, took a deep breath and did the thing she had been debating about and putting off since the meeting last night.
“CLEM TV, Spokane,” a voice on the other end answered.
“Could I speak to Jade Flynn, please?” She named the reporter who seemed to do the majority of the human interest stories for the station.
“Can I tell her what you’re calling about?”
“The cancellation of Christmas,” Lila said firmly.
Brody Taggert joined the other men at the window of the Snow Mountain Police Department, took a sip of his coffee and looked across Main Street at the fracas outside of Snow Mountain Town Hall.
The protesters had completely blocked the street, and were enthusiastically waving lovingly hand-painted signs.
Elves Have Rights, Too! Say Yes To Christmas. Save Our Snow Mountain. Save Santa. As they marched around in a circle, they chanted, “Heck no, the elves won’t go.”
It was an unlikely-looking group of protestors—not a dreadlock or pierced body part on any of them. Lots of gray hair out there, with one glaring exception, of course.
Her hair, where it showed beneath the brim of her fur-trimmed Santa hat, was catching the sun, and looked like it was spun through with gold.
It seemed to him Lila Grainger was as eye-catching in that hat, bundled up in a pink oversize parka that made her look like a marshmallow, as she would have been in a furtrimmed bikini.
The CLEM TV mobile van from Spokane was pulling up. Bruce Wilkes from the Snow Mountain News was already happily snapping pictures.
“What are you going to do, Chief?” Randy Mulligan asked uncertainly.
Tag slid Hutch a look. Have a heart attack, came to mind. The chief looked apoplectic.
Of course, his niece, looking positively radiant, was in the very middle of the mêlée. When she separated from the other protestors to go and talk to Jade Flynn, who was getting out of the news van, it was more than obvious who was in charge of the protest.
Tag, instead of making the professional assessment ringleader, noticed that aside from the fact she looked cute as a button, she was still limping.
“You didn’t even catch a whisper of this when you went to see her?” Hutch asked Tag accusingly.
“No, sir. She told me they were going to ask Jamison to play Santa—”
“Like hell I’m playing Santa,” Jamison muttered indignantly, putting enough curse words between playing and Santa to do his Marine corps heritage proud.
“—and that they’d come up with a new name. That’s it.” Well, that wasn’t it. Tag had known she was up to something naughty. He could now clearly remember the guilty blush when she’d mentioned getting city hall to change their minds. He felt he’d probably been distracted by naughty thoughts of his own, especially after he’d carried her down that endless hall to her bathroom, and then spent agonizing minutes administering first-aid to the cut on her foot.
You didn’t admit to your boss you’d had naughty thoughts about his niece, thoughts that might have prevented you from seeing certain things coming, he told himself.
Besides, the grim news about Boo had been pretty fresh that night; Tag knew it had clouded his thinking, and still did, though he wore the mask of functioning perfectly.
“Go arrest her,” Hutch said, thankfully to no one in particular.
Randy Mulligan obviously thought of some urgent work he had to do. He stampeded from the room as if the Hells Angels had arrived in town and he had to personally deal with them.
“Arrest her?” Pete Harper said. “Are you kidding? You know how that’s going to look on the evening news? This town has barely recovered from the elf on fire last year.”
“How’s it going to look if I don’t arrest her and she’s my niece?” Hutch snapped. “Like I’m playing favorites, that’s how. If I don’t do something decisive right now every special interest group in Snow Mountain from the Grannies for Justice to Pals for Pooches is going to think they can shut down the town anytime they don’t get what they want. Pals for Pooches has been trying to get an animal shelter for a lot longer than Lila’s been trying to save Christmas.”
Unfortunately Tag could see his point.
“Well, I’m not arresting her,” Pete said. “My mother would kill me.”
His mother was out there right beside Lila, carrying a sign that showed a tombstone with Santa on it, RIP, and then Killed By Snow Mountain Town Council. Jeanie Harper was also dispensing cookies to the news crews, practically guaranteeing all stories would be slanted in favor of the protestors.
