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Something about the tone, annoyed and clipped, and yet husky and smooth, sent a little shiver along Sam’s spine. He reached for the hood and brushed it back, aware he was holding his breath.
The hood fell away, and Sam found himself staring into the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. They were an astonishing hazel, part brown, part green, part gold.
He should have started breathing again, but he didn’t. Her hair, light brown, turned to honey as it caught the distant light from the barn. It tumbled out from under the hood. It looked to Sam as if her hair might have started the day piled up on top of her head, not a strand daring to be out of place. Now, part of it had escaped its band and part of it had not, and it hissed with static from the hood being pulled away.
Recognition stole his breath away.
Hanna Merrifield was all grown up, and she was not in the least gnome-like.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_fd9c4c7b-c17b-59bd-b609-775bbd2b8a41)
SAM REGARDED HANNA with astounded awareness. Under a ridiculously large and cumbersome plaid jacket—she had obviously thrown it on over the top of what looked to be a beautifully tailored black slack suit—she was lovely, and slender, and surprisingly curvy in all the right places given that slenderness.
She glared at the pony in frustration, running her fingers through the lush tangle of her burnished hair, scraping a mat of snow from it, but failing to restore her locks to any kind of order.
Despite the wildness of her hair, her makeup was subtle and expert: a hint of green shadow bringing out the spectacular hazel of eyes that were enormous with a combination of both fright and annoyance at the moment.
She had a touch of gloss on her mouth that made her lips look plump and kissable. Sam remembered, suddenly and in almost excruciating detail, the flavor and texture and warmth and invitation of those lips.
He realized his hand was still resting at the edge of her hood, and he snapped it down by his side. He noticed she had a brush of color on high cheekbones—from the crisp air or chasing the pony or an expert hand with a makeup brush—he couldn’t be sure.
But in a face that was otherwise winter-pale, her skin as delicate as porcelain, the color on her cheekbones made them look sculpted and accentuated the breathtaking perfection of her face. It occurred to him that once she had been cute. That cuteness had transformed into beauty.
“Hanna. Hanna Merrifield,” he said, and then ran a hand through his own hair, sending melted snow flying. “Mr. Dewey told me you didn’t live here anymore. He said you haven’t lived here for years.”
“I haven’t, I don’t,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice, more shaken than she was letting on.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Mr. Dewey quit two hours ago, though I’m hoping by morning he will have reconsidered. He let me know the pony was loose on the highway.”
Hanna would, he knew, be super annoyed to know that despite the polished perfection of her makeup and hair, and the clear indication of education in her voice, he still saw the girl who had been pressed into service as a Christmas elf to help with selling trees, visits with Santa, and pony-pulled sleigh rides on her family’s Christmas tree farm.
Maybe it was because the too-large parka over her suit reminded him of her as an elf all those years ago. The boots, comical in their largeness, obviously did not belong to her either, but added to the impression of a child playing the grown-up.
He remembered, suddenly, as clearly as if were yesterday, the day he had seen her in her green elf costume in her father’s Christmas tree lot. She had probably been all of fifteen.
It was the first time he’d ever noticed the girl who went to the same high school as he did, but was in the grade behind him, and therefore invisible.
But in that elf suit? Anything but invisible. Cute and comical, but with the length of her legs being shown off by the shortness of the green tunic, there had been just a whisper of something else...
She’d been mortified that he and his friends had seen her, and if he had been then the man he was now, he would have possibly had the grace to pretend the encounter had never happened.
But he had just been a boy himself, and after that day, he had not been able to resist teasing her when their paths crossed. He had liked seeing her looking flustered and adorable, spitting at him like a cornered barn kitten.
But then, he reminded himself, she had shown him she had some claw, and that was a lesson about Hanna Merrifield that he would do well to remember.
Her focus moved off the pony, and she was regarding him intently now, curious how he had known her, and then recognition dawned in her features.
“Sam?” she asked, and it was evident she was as stunned by this unexpected reunion as he was. “Sam Chisholm?”
“One and the same.”
Hanna Merrifield’s fingers combed through the lushness of her thick hair once more, and she sent a flustered look and a frown at the clumsy boots on her feet, and muttered, “Oh, sheesh.”
Sam raised an eyebrow at her and she flushed.
“A person just wants to make a good impression when they meet someone from their past,” she said, tossing her head a bit defensively. Then she bit her lip, regretting having said it, even though it was true. “I’m an accountant. Banks and Banks.”
Sam realized she was trying to divorce herself from the very image that had first leapt into his mind: of Hanna as an adorable Christmas elf. Still, he tried not to look too shocked. Hanna, an accountant?
“Why on earth didn’t you let go of the pony?”
“Easy for you to say,” she said, tearing her gaze away from her boots, and glaring sideways at the pony. “I’d just caught her.”
Was Hanna cradling one of her hands in the other? “Did you do something to your hand?”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“I seem to remember pony frustrations in your past,” he said, and earned himself a sharp look that clearly said I’m an accountant now. I just told you.
“It’s the same pony,” she said, reluctantly and not at all fondly. “And now she’s on the loose again.”
His fault entirely, from Hanna’s tone of voice.
“Well, she doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. Can I have a look at your hand?”
“No. And she never appears to be going anywhere. She’s not fond of wasted motion. She’s saving all her energy for when I make another attempt to catch her.”
Against his better judgment, Sam held out his hands to her. He noticed she reached out with only one. Still, he could feel the warmth of that hand rising past the Merino wool of a very good glove. He set his legs against the slippery footing, and then pulled Hanna to her feet.
They stood regarding one another. He looked for signs that she had changed, and despite the cut of her I’m-an-accountant-now suit and the passage of nine years, he found very few. If he was to wipe away that faint dusting of makeup, Hanna Merrifield would look much the same as she had looked at fifteen. The bone structure that had promised great beauty had delivered.
Except there was something faintly bruised about her eyes, like she carried sorrow around with her, which Sam knew she did. It made him want to squeeze her uninjured hand, which he realized, uncomfortably, he was still holding.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” he said, and gave in to the impulse to offer comfort. He gave her hand a quick, hard squeeze before dropping it. “Wasn’t it six months ago now?”
Hanna nodded. She was looking down at her hand as if even through her glove she had felt the same nearly electrical jolt as him.
Sam shoved his own hands in the deep pockets of his long, leather jacket.
“I’m also sorry about nearly running you down. You and the pony just seemed to materialize out of the night. Do you think the pony is all right?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said gloomily, and he couldn’t help but smile at her tone. “She’s the reason I’m out here. The farm manager has just quit because of her dreadful antics. Though I’m hoping I can talk him out of it.”
Though he wondered about the wisdom of trying to talk the manager out of quitting when he had obviously left her in a complete pickle, Sam kept that to himself.
“Bad timing, isn’t it?” he said. “Right before Christmas? His defection explains why the driveway isn’t plowed for customers.”
“I don’t think the tree stand or gift shop has been open at night.”
The businessman in him couldn’t stop from commenting, “But that’s when it’s convenient for people who work during the day to shop.”
“It’s early in the season,” Hanna said, a bit defensively, and then sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.” Her gloom seemed to deepen.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Sam told himself it was purely his interest in the farm, and not any kind of interest in her, that made him want to know the details.
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Things have been different the last few years and the farm has been run by managers. It has been on a downward slide ever since.”
Then she seemed to realize she did not want to confide in him after all, and bit down on that plump bottom lip.
Hanna pulled herself to her full height, which was not very high, maybe five foot four or five, and said with graceful polish, “And you, Sam? What are you doing in the driveway of Christmas Valley Farm on a night when it would seem wiser to stay inside and drink cocoa? Are you shopping for your Christmas tree?”
“I’m not exactly the stay-inside-and-drink-cocoa kind of guy,” he said with a snort. “And I’m even less of a shopping-for-a-Christmas-tree kind of guy.”
And he saw something flash through her eyes. Crazy to think it might be a memory of that one kiss they had shared so many years ago.
“I understand you’ve put the farm up for sale,” he said. “I’m here as a prospective buyer.”
* * *
“You?” Hanna could hear the disbelief in her voice, and she saw the hardness settle around his features at her tone.
Still, it was shocking. Sam Chisholm buying Christmas Valley Farm? The shock of it took her mind off the throb of dull pain in her hand that had been caused by hanging on to the pony’s rope when she should have let go.
Though, now, too late, after the disbelieving words had come from her mouth, Hanna saw there were differences between this man and the one she remembered from years ago.
Sam Chisholm’s shoulders, gathering snow on them already, were immense under a tailored long coat that was not buttoned. It was the kind of coat people around here did not wear: a beautiful dark leather, turned up at the collar. He had a plaid scarf casually threaded under the collar of the coat.
Would she have recognized this man if she had passed him on the street? Of course, she had the fleeting thought that if they were going to meet unexpectedly, she would have much rather passed him on the street.
In her rush to get home to deal with the Molly emergency, Hanna had not packed proper farm wear.
So she stood before this gloriously attractive man in a too-large mackinaw of her father’s, and boots that may have been her father’s too, which she had found still standing at the back door of the farmhouse though he had been gone for years.
Her fault that her father, too young for such things, had collapsed in his tracks, hands over the heart that had exploded in his chest? The heart that she had broken.
The thought blasted through Hanna. Her life in the city was so full, so busy. Planning for the wedding, her pace had become even more frantic. She hadn’t had time for thoughts like that. And she had loved the fact that her life was too full for thoughts of the past. Maybe that was why, even now, she filled every spare second with work...
The guilt she had been running from seemed to have settled over her like a cloud as soon as she had opened the back door of the farm, stuffy from being shut up for so long.
Easier to focus on the distraction of Sam Chisholm than the guilt she knew had been waiting for this moment: her return to her childhood home after a six-year absence.
Sam looked deeply sophisticated, and gave off the unconscious air of wealth and control. He also radiated a certain power that went beyond the perfection of his physique, that perfection obvious even beneath the line of that expensive jacket.
His hair was devil’s food-dark, cut short and neat. His face was clean-shaven and exquisitely handsome: wide-set eyes, straight nose, honed jawline, strong chin with just the faintest and sexiest hint of a cleft in it. His lips were full and sensual, and there was something faintly intimidating about the set of them.
But right underneath those surface impressions of strength and confidence lurked a certain roguish charm—of a pirate or a highwayman. In fact, that remembered rogue seemed to dance in the darkness of those eyes, so brown they appeared black in the shadowed light of the snowy night.
“You don’t think I’m a suitable buyer for your farm?” he asked, those dark eyes piercing her. His voice was faintly amused, but challenging at the same time.
His voice reminded her of a large cat: a growl that could be pure sensuality, or could be danger, or some lethal combination of both. It had an almost physical quality to it, as if sandpaper had whispered across the nape of her neck.
Hanna registered, as a sad afterthought to her sizzling awareness of how damned attractive Sam was, that she had managed to insult the only prospective buyer the farm had seen since it was listed six months ago. And she’d unwittingly revealed its slow decline to him, as well.
“I’m sorry,” Hanna said hastily. “No insult was intended.”
“None was taken,” he said, but his voice remained the pure raw silk of a gunslinger just as prepared to draw as to smile.
“I can see you’ve changed,” she said, but the brightness in her voice felt forced. In truth she felt a certain unfathomable loss at the change in him. “You are certainly not the renegade boy I remember, though I must say you don’t strike me as any kind of a farmer.”
The sense of him having changed in some fundamental way was underscored by the deep confidence in his voice. And by the way he was dressed, which backed up what she had just said about him not being a farmer.
She had a sense of being very aware of him, as if she was tingling all over, maybe because of the jolt she had felt when he had taken her hand.
Likely just static, she told herself firmly. Or the chill of the night penetrating her clothing.
Or maybe not. The lights from the headlamps of his car had illuminated them in an orb of pure gold. His breath was making puffs in the crisp air.
Hanna had the oddest and most delicious sense of breathing him in.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fc8b72ec-ba1f-57e8-9dfb-d883979414b2)
SAM DID CUT a breathtaking picture, standing here in the crisp chill of a winter evening, his hands deep in his coat pockets. His coat was undone, and his look underneath it was casual, but not casual in the way that was interpreted around here, certainly not farmer-casual.
No, around here, in the rural community that surrounded the upstate New York village of Smith, casual was plaid shirts and faded jeans, work boots and ball caps.
Sam’s casual was more in keeping with Hanna’s life in the city, a look that could have taken him for drinks at an upscale club after work or to the theatre or to dinner at any of New York’s finest restaurants.
He was wearing a long-sleeved, creamy shirt, which looked to her like fine linen. With its thin blue pinstripe, the perfectly pressed shirt looked casually expensive. It was open at the strong column of his throat, and tucked into knife-creased, belted, dark slacks that definitely did not look as if they had come off the rack at a chain store.
“Renegade?” he asked, lifting a dark slash of an eyebrow at her.
Was there a nice way to say he looked very respectable now? Back then, respectability was what she—or anyone else—would have least predicted for him.
They had done a silly thing in the Smith High School Annual every year: under each photo of a graduating student, it had said Most likely to...sometimes flattering, but mostly not.
Most likely to become president, most likely to make a million, most likely to rob a bank.
She recalled Sam’s had said Most likely to sail the seven seas.
Just a silly thing, and yet, those few words had captured something of him: a restlessness, a need for adventure, a call to the unknown.
Of course her own, in her senior year, before she had left Smith forever, had said Most likely to become a nun and how ridiculously inaccurate had that proven?
Sam had been older than her by a year, the heartthrob of every single girl in Smith Senior High School, so he had graduated and gone before her own senior picture had appeared in the annual.
“You aren’t going to deny that, are you? That you were, uh, something of a renegade?” It occurred to her it might have been better to pretend she could barely remember him at all, but she simply wasn’t that good at pretending.
