скачать книгу бесплатно
She had thrown down her school books and stalked over to him. So close. So close she could smell the leather of his jacket and the heady scent of his soap, and the faint engine and exhaust smells of the motorcycle.
He stopped laughing, but the amusement was back in his eyes, dancing, as they both waited to see what she would do.
Obviously, she should have smacked him.
But she didn’t. Obviously, she had failed, utterly, to convince him of her maturity by opening a discussion on iambic pentameter.
This close to him, she felt intoxicated. Iambic pentameter was the furthest thing from her mind, even if this was the kind of moment that had probably driven poets to create since the beginning of time.
Hanna felt a need to let him know she was not a dull little scholar who had temporarily enlivened his world, provided amusement for him by putting on an elf costume and trying to engage him with discussions of poetry.
She felt a need to let him know her days of being an amusement to him were over.
She had needed to let him know she was not the child the elf outfit had implied that she was.
And so, seeing the astonishment in his eyes, she had leaned closer. And then she had taken the lapels of that leather jacket and pulled him into her.
There had been the slightest resistance to her tug.
But she had ignored it.
And she had, in one moment of misguided boldness, done what she had done a million times in her dreams.
She had kissed Sam Chisholm.
She, who had never kissed anyone, had taken his lips with her own, and covered them. For a moment he had been stunned into stillness, but only for a moment.
Then his hand had rested, lightly, as lightly as though he were stroking a bird, on the back of her neck, and he had brought her gently and more fully into him. Any illusions that she’d had that a kiss was merely a chaste meeting of the lips were swept away.
The initial frosty chill on his lips melted into warmth, and then warmth became heat, and then heat became fire.
Sam explored her, discovered her with a leisurely thoroughness. What he didn’t know, and she didn’t know either, was until that moment she had not been fully alive. Sam had breathed his life into her.
And then, way too soon, he reeled back from her, and stared at her, and the chill crept back across her lips and into his eyes, that were narrow again, darkly angry.
“Look, mistletoe girl—”
Mistletoe girl? Hanna thought furiously. It was another dig at her family’s Christmas tree farm, and it made her feel as if she was standing in front of him in the elf costume once again.
“—don’t play with a fire you can’t put out,” he warned her, his voice stern and flat, and his brown eyes turned black. “You are heading for all kinds of trouble that you don’t have the first clue how to deal with.”
The anger at what she perceived as his rejection—as him acting like her father, instead of a potential boyfriend—chased the chill away again, for a far less satisfactory reason. Anger flared, white hot and consuming, inside her.
It was made worse by the fact he pushed off from his bike, and gathered her fallen books, held them out to her casually, as if nothing at all of importance had happened between them.
As if he, the town bad boy, was a gentleman who had spurned her kiss for her own good.
“As if I would ever start a fire with the likes of you,” she had snapped, grabbing her books from his outstretched arms and holding them like armor against her heaving chest.
She could have and should have left it there, but he had cocked his head at her, unperturbed by her anger, forcing her to go on.
“I know where you live, Sam Chisholm, and I know what your father does.”
It had been so childish, proof really that he was entirely correct, that she was not in the least ready for what his lips had just told her existed in the world.
Looking at the man now, she could still remember the look on his face back then.
It was about the furthest thing from the look he had now: of confidence and composure, a man in control of his world.
No, that afternoon, her words had hit him hard, dashed that self-assured look from his face. He had momentarily looked completely stunned. And then his face had gone cold as he had leaned once again, his rear against his motorbike, regarding her with those turned-earth eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.
Because here was what she knew about his father, since her own father hired him sometimes to work on their farm.
Sam Chisholm’s father was a drunk, who took work as a farm laborer if anyone was desperate enough to hire him.
The school’s sexiest boy lived in the most dilapidated trailer on the worst road in Smith, the one right by the railway tracks and the shut-down flour mill.
His face had gone cold as ice, and he’d looked at her hard enough and long enough for her to feel ashamed, but not to take back words that could not be taken back.
And now he was back in Smith, and she was back in Smith, and he wanted her family’s farm and presumably had the means to buy it.
Was it a moment of vindication for him?
“So, what do you want my farm for?” Hanna asked.
My farm? Where had that come from? Hanna had not thought of the farm as hers, or even as home, since she had left here—in disgrace that it seemed Sam might have been predicting that afternoon all those years ago when he had admonished her so sternly not to play with fire.
“I own Old Apple Crate. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
It was a moment that should have brought Sam great pleasure, because Hanna struggled to hide her awe. Old Apple Cratewas a model of success that was drooled over in business circles.
Relatively new on the business front, Sam’s company specialized in locally grown produce, much of it organic. The company was taking advantage of people’s desire to shop closer to home and know about what exactly they were getting, how it was grown and who grew it.
“I’ve heard of it, of course.”
She noted he looked pleased, but not smug.
Really, he had no reason to be so pleased that she had heard of his company. She was in business. Success stories like his were what businesses like hers paid attention to.
“And Christmas Valley Farm would be a good fit for you because?”
“I like this property for two reasons—one, it’s got a great location, with highway frontage. And two, to certify produce as organic, I need soil that hasn’t been altered by chemicals for a specified number of years.”
“So, you wouldn’t keep it as a Christmas tree farm?” She evaluated the tone of her voice with a bit of dismay.
“Are you disappointed by that?” he asked.
Hanna wanted to say no, and found she couldn’t. He had read her with alarming accuracy.
“Christmas tree sales,” he said mullingly, as if to appease her. “Personally, I’m not a Christmas kind of person, but maybe professionally it could make sense.”
Don’t pursue it, Hanna begged herself. It was way too personal. But he was the one who had mentioned it.
“What does that mean, not a Christmas kind of person?” She had remembered he had also said something tonight about not even shopping for a tree. And not being a sipping cocoa kind of guy, either. So, despite his denial, he still was a bit of a renegade, out of step with the very kind of wholesome family image this business catered to.
Sam hesitated. When he spoke his voice was gruff, stripped of emotion.
“I always just felt, in that season of good cheer and merriment, I was on the outside looking in. We never even had a tree when I was a kid.”
He looked as if he regretted having said that, instantly.
She regretted his saying it, too, because it was hard enough keeping up your defenses around such a good-looking, confident man.
But then to picture him as a small child, feeling left out on Christmas, wrenched at Hanna’s soft heart. “Oh, Sam, we always had some we gave away. Fully decorated. We had a contest every year. You could have had a tree.”
He gave her an annoyed look that rejected her sympathy at the same time as letting her know the impossibility of what she was suggesting.
She felt driven to show him he might not be alone in his sentiments about Christmas.
And so Hanna offered something, too. “I’m not sure it was much better being on the inside looking out. I haven’t bothered with a tree since I left here, either.”
“Really?”
“I grew up believing artificial trees were the devil’s own work, and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to pay what they wanted for a real one in the city. Never mind working out the logistics of getting it home and thinking what to do with it in my tiny apartment once I got there.”
It was, of course, way more complicated than that.
“Oh, well, I’m sure they always had a giant one up when you arrived home.”
Easier to let him think they had remained the family he thought they were, and not to share the truth about that with him, and yet the words came out of her.
“My dad died the year after I finished high school. My mom remarried and moved away, which is why it was left to managers to run. This farm hasn’t been home for me for quite some time. And Christmas...well, Christmas.” Her voice drifted away.
He was looking at her way too closely. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” she said tartly.
“So,” he took her cue and changed the subject, suddenly all business, “a real tree fetches a pretty good price in the city?”
Hanna nodded. “A king’s ransom. Mistletoe is even more dear.”
Oh, gee, did she have to bring up mistletoe around him, of all people? she berated herself, silently cringing. Mistletoe girl seemed to suddenly be there between them.
“Oh, I know mistletoe is pricey,” he said. “I bought some once.”
Not remembering mistletoe girl at all then, but something else, from the faraway look on his face.
“You have never bought a tree but you bought mistletoe?” Crazy to be curious, but she was. “Why?”
He still looked off into the distance. “I think I had this cheesy idea that if I carried it around in my pocket, I could haul it out and hold it over my head, and collect lots of free Christmas kisses.”
“Did it work?” She felt a shiver along her spine at the thought of meeting Sam under the mistletoe.
“Lost my nerve,” he said, but she had a feeling she was not hearing all of this story, and she wasn’t sure why.
“You know, mistletoe was popular around the turn of the last century because the only time people could kiss in public was underneath it. That would hardly seem to be the case today.” Least of all for a guy like him.
But he was not going to have his personal kissing history probed. His interest in mistletoe, now at least, was all about business.
“Do you grow that here?” he finally asked. “I remember you selling it, all those years ago.”
“No, we imported it,” she said stiffly, “from a grower in Texas.”
“Hmm. Mistletoe. Trees.”
“Wreaths,” she filled in helpfully, trying to stay focused on what was between them now, which was strictly business.
“I already have the stores, and keeping local product at the forefront can be a problem during the winter months. I wonder. I’ll check on the viability of a line of Christmas products. It could be a good fit for our company.”
Hanna was taken completely by surprise by what she felt when he said that, because it seemed to her any research on his part would only serve to seal the fate of the farm.
She already knew what he would find out. Christmas products of the natural, home-grown variety were not particularly viable. Or at least they hadn’t been on her family’s farm, certainly not in comparison to a success story like Old Apple Crate.
For as long as she could remember, her family’s business had limped along from year to year, barely making ends meet.
And so why, at the thought of it not being a Christmas tree farm anymore, would she feel these emotions? Loss. Sadness. It seemed impossible. She should feel nothing but relief. And yet...that’s not what she felt.
Not at all.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1aa06ff5-918e-5f1e-b333-efc3fb1b6ce6)
HANNA WAS TRYING not to let all the feelings that were washing through her show on her face.
“That would be ironic,” Sam said. “Me, getting into the Christmas tree business.”
“And me getting out of it,” she added softly. Out of the business, her last remaining link to her family. Good grief! She had the awful feeling she might start crying.
He was looking at her too closely and she turned away from him, acting as if she had just noticed she had a horse on the loose.
“You’re here a day early,” she said, her tone neutral. “You should come back tomorrow. I’ll be ready for you, then.”
She’d been in the house only briefly, to grab a jacket and boots, and she had barely glanced at the barn when she had run in to get a halter and lead rope. But even peripherally, it had been hard to miss that things looked a touch shabby. If she had until tomorrow at noon, when he was supposed to arrive, she could do a few cosmetic spruce-ups.
And talk to Mr. Dewey, and then be on her way.
“My appointment was for tonight,” he said.
She certainly wasn’t going to argue with his word against Mr. Dewey’s.
