Mills & Boon Christmas Set

“We had a smaller version of it once we moved into town. My grandparents got older, families grew up and people moved. It just kind of faded away.”

They sat there in silence for a long time.

“Are you up for a bit of a hike?” he asked. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

He contemplated that invitation, even as he took her hand. He’d never taken anyone to his secret place before. Hailey would not have wanted to go. She would have complained incessantly about bugs and branches snagging her clothes. She would have worried about bears and cougars and wolves.

He guided Angie to a trail that was sadly overgrown, though the animals still used it, so it was passable. Even though her footwear was entirely inappropriate—a flimsy pair of flip-flops, she was uncomplaining as they wound their way steadily upward through the forest growth and the steadily increasing afternoon heat.

The trail ended an hour later at a waterfall. It cascaded out of a rock outcropping fifty feet above them and ended in a gorgeous green pool.

He watched, not the waterfall, which he had seen a thousand times, but her.

Her face was a study in wonder.

“This,” she declared softly, “is the most beautiful place in the world.”

They were both hot and sticky after the hike, so he stripped off his shirt.

“Ready to swim?” he asked her.

She hesitated and then tugged the hem of that serape/frock invention over her head.

He was aware his mouth fell open. He snapped it shut. He ordered himself to look away. He didn’t.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s all they had at the Emporium.”

Sorry? She was a goddess. She was a vision. He had to turn from her and dive into the water to break away from the spell she was casting on him in that tiny polka-dot bikini.

He surfaced. She was standing at the edge of the pool. Her arms were wrapped around herself. She was a self-conscious goddess.

“Come in,” he called.

She stuck her toe in and emitted a very un-goddess-like shriek. He swam over to her, took the flat of his hand and splashed her.

“Hey! I’m getting in my way. It’s very cold.”

“It’s mountain fed. Of course it’s cold. Get in.”

“Quit being bossy.”

“I’ll be bossy if I want. I’m the boss.”

She giggled at that. “I’ll have to look at my contract,” she said, putting a finger to her chin and tapping. “I’m not sure if you’re the boss here, or just in the house.”

He exploded from the water, wrapped his arms around her, and fell backward into the pond, taking her with him.

She broke from his embrace and the water, sputtering wildly and shaking water droplets from her curls. She glared at him. She stomped toward him. He moved away. She moved after him.

“Come back here,” she demanded.

“That seems as if it would be foolish,” he said, moving a bit farther from her.

What he knew, and she didn’t was that the floor of the pond dropped away suddenly. He took one more step and was treading water.

She took one more step and was in over her head. When she came up for air, paddling to keep her head above water, the laughter rumbled up from someplace deep inside of him. It felt so pure and so good.

“I’m going to get you,” she said.

“If you can catch me. You couldn’t this morning. I don’t see what has changed.”

“You are infuriating.”

“Yes, I know.” He splashed her.

“Oh!” She plunged after him.

Now that the bathing suit—or lack thereof—was hidden by the cool, pure water, the same playfulness that had been between them with the spider erupted again.

He wanted to keep her from thinking of that phone call. And he wanted to make her laugh again.

Soon they were chasing each other around, splashing and shrieking. Their laughter rang off the walls of the mountains surrounding them and echoed in the rocky cavern behind the waterfall.

Finally, he allowed himself to be caught, and good-naturedly suffered a decent splashing. He guided her under the water of the falls. They could stand up here, and he helped her find her feet. He put his arms around her naked midriff to steady her against the pummeling of the water. She lifted her face to it. And he lifted his.

He stood there, in awe of it, of being baptized by mother earth, cleansed, purified, as if he was being prepared for a new beginning.

Finally, cooled, drenched, pleasantly exhausted, they dragged themselves out onto a huge sun-warmed rock beside the pond. They lay there side by side, until their breathing had returned to normal.

She reached out and laid her hand on his naked back as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“I never want to leave here,” she said.

And he heard himself saying, “I don’t, either.”

He closed his eyes. He let the energy ooze from her hand like heated oil, thick and healing, onto his back. And then through the skin of his back and inside of him, bringing light to a place that had been in darkness.

And days later, he knew the place had not been about the waterfall, because they had left the waterfall and yet that feeling of a warm energy, of something deeply comfortable and playful, remained between them.

Jefferson told himself he was allowing this to happen only because he was being a better man. He was distracting Angie from the pure terror of discovering her predecessor in Winston’s affections had gone missing.

But somehow it wasn’t a job he was doing. There was a kind of joyous discovery of the world they were sharing. His world was boats and water and woods and waterfalls. They took the boat out; they swam, they picnicked, and one memorable afternoon he taught her how to catch a fish. In the perfect marriage of their worlds, she taught him how to cook it.

After the success of that, she invited him into her world even further. He could see what an amazing teacher she must be as she taught him how to make cookies and the correct way to do his laundry and how to sew on a button.

“When I have young guys in my class?” she said. “I consider it my obligation to their future wives to make sure they have a few rudimentary skills.”

Who would have guessed gaining a few rudimentary skills would be so much fun? And so intense?

The awareness between them was like a storm circling. The electricity crackled around them. It was in their eyes meeting and in the accidental brushing of their hands. It was in everything.

And yet, he would not allow himself to follow it. He was always the one who pulled back, reminding himself, sternly, that she was here under his protection and that she was as vulnerable as she had been after her fiancé had left her.

He could not take advantage of that.

It was Angie who reminded him they had a house to get ready for a photo shoot.

And somehow, doing that, was also a journey in discovery.

A few days later, Jefferson watched as Angie settled back into the deepness of the couch and sighed with contentment. The house was nearly ready. They were sitting outside on his deck in the comfort of his living room furniture. It was the last big job they needed to do, get the furniture out. She had insisted on spending a very hot afternoon scrubbing the floors and waxing them.

Now, as they waited for them to dry, the sun was going down. Jefferson, without asking, had placed a glass of wine in her hand.

“I should have thought of this before,” Jefferson said, looking out over the lake. “This furniture is great out here. Very comfortable. I think I’ll leave it out here.”

They were sprawled out on the sofa. He was covered in sweat, and so was she.

As far as romantic moments went, moving furniture was probably way down the scale. But honestly? If you wanted a woman to see your muscles? Woo-hoo.

“You will not leave it out here,” she said. “You’d wreck it.”

“Who cares? I barely use it anyway.”

“Don’t you like it?”

He was silent.

“You don’t like it.”

“Hailey picked everything for this house.”

“Ah, so it has sentimental value.”

“The funny thing? I don’t think she much liked it, either.”

“But why, then?”

“It’s a long story.” He did not feel ready to tell it. For when he told her the truth about his marriage, all this magic between them would dissipate. She would see who he really was, that there was nothing remotely heroic about him. But for now, he was not strong enough to break the enchantment between them.

“I think I can hook up the TV to work out here,” he said. “You want to watch Wreck and Me?”

“Yes!”

And so, as the stars winked on in a glorious night sky, they sat on his couch outside and watched the movie about a solitary ogre who reluctantly falls in love.

Jefferson found himself frowning. That ogre, living alone in his cave, enjoying his life of solitude, reminded him of someone. The beautiful princess, who so desperately needed the reluctant ogre’s help, reminded him of someone, too.

He had refilled her wineglass several times, and when the final song, “A Night for Us,” came on, it made her bold.

“Dance with me,” she whispered. “There’s nothing in the living room. The wax is dry. It makes for a perfect dance floor.”

“I’m not much of a dancer.” He had to stop this nonsense before he created a problem worse than the one she was running from.

“I love to dance,” she said.

“Did you dance with him? With your fiancé?”

She smiled, a touch wryly. “No. He hated dancing. I don’t think we ever danced together. Once, I bought tickets to a ball. They were very expensive. He said he would go, but then he was conveniently ill that night.”

Jefferson contemplated that. If you loved a woman and you knew she liked something, was it not part of what you had signed up for—to put yourself out a bit?

“What did you love about him?” he asked. He wished he could take the words back. Why did he want to know?

She sighed and took the last sip of her wine. “Looking back on it now? It’s more like I selected a candidate than fell in love.”

“Selected a candidate?”

“I wanted the things I lost when my father abandoned our family. I wanted to feel secure and safe. Now, I’m not so sure what that has to do with love.”

Jefferson felt a shiver along his spine. Why would she know more about love now than she had then?

“It seems to me,” she said softly, “maybe love is a leap into the unknown rather than retreat into the known.”

This was not going well, Jefferson thought. He was sitting out on his deck on a star-studded night, discussing love with a beautiful, beautiful woman.

The well-known female vocalist’s voice soared out over the lake. It seemed to mingle with the stars and the warmth of the summer breeze.

“‘We have come through every valley, we have come through every plight,

“‘Let me take your hand and show you the magic of the night...’”

Jefferson did the worst possible thing. He needed to avoid this discussion. At the same time he felt a deep, masculine desire to show her he was a better man than Harry.

In his haste to do both, he held out his hand to her. He said to her, his voice a hoarse whisper, “Let’s dance.”

He realized, too late, he had just taken that great leap into the unknown.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ANGIE DID THE worst possible thing. Even though she had instigated this, even though she knew Jefferson had asked her to dance because he felt sorry for her that Harry had been such a boob on the subject, even though she knew it was moving them toward uncharted territory, she put her hand in Jefferson’s.

She let him lead her into the house. With the doors of the living room folded open to the night, they swayed together to the hopelessly romantic music. She gazed upon the face she had become so fond of and contemplated what she had revealed, not just to Jefferson, but to herself, about the nature of her and Harry’s relationship.

She hadn’t loved Harry. She had picked him as the most likely to give her the life she had wanted ever since her father had walked out the door with hardly a glance back.

She knew that now. She had not known it then.

She thought about why she knew it now when she had not known it then. Because now she had eaten ice cream during a storm. Now she had chased a man with a spider, the air ringing with their laughter. Now, she had stood under a waterfall. And squealed as a slippery fish had landed in their boat. Now she had watched Wreck and Me under the stars.

Now, she was dancing in an empty room with no one watching.

She stared up at Jefferson and drank in the face that had become so familiar to her. She felt the heat of his body and the strength of it where it was pressed into her.

It occurred to Angie exactly why she knew now that she had not fallen in love with Harry when she had not known it before, even when he left her.

She stopped dancing.

Jefferson stopped dancing.

“Would you like to come to a real dance with me?” he asked. “The town is having a fund-raiser in Hailey’s memory.”

She knew it would be craziness to say yes.

“It’s going to be very hard for me to go alone.”

Which made it impossible to say no.

“It’s called A Black Tie Affair.”

There was her excuse. She did not have a single thing to wear to a function called A Black Tie Affair.

She started to say it and then snapped her mouth shut.

That was the Angie she had been, before. Before she had driven down that long and winding road and knocked on the door that had led her to this man. To Jefferson.

That was the Angie who had been afraid of everything. Even before she had been stalked she had played it safe, tried to arrange a life that would make her feel comfortable and secure.

Playing it safe, she realized, had not gotten her one single thing that she wanted. The exact opposite was probably true.

“I’d love to go to the dance with you,” she said.

“It’s on Saturday.”

“What day is it today?”

“I have to think about it,” he said wryly. “I’ve lost track of time. Tuesday. Today’s Tuesday.”

She broke away from him. “That’s only four days away. And the photographer from the magazine is coming on Monday. I have a great deal to do.”

Not being swayed by the bemusement in his eyes, she fled from Jefferson and went up the stairs to her room.

She knew she should say no to going to the dance, but she could not. She sat down and did a sketch, and stared at it.

It was even more beautiful than the wedding dress she had designed. It had a strap over one shoulder, the other shoulder bare. The upper portion of the dress, bodice to waist, was fitted. And then it flared out in a cloud of whimsy. She had only a few days.

It occurred to her she really did only have a few days. It had been their agreement that she would leave after the photographer came. Her job here would be done. Her time here.

But she felt as she had lying on the sun-warmed stone by the waterfall.

I want to stay here forever.

She reminded herself that Jefferson had broken that spell. That Jefferson broke all the spells. She wanted things to deepen between them. He did not.

And that was good. It was a good thing that one of them could be pragmatic when the storm was building all around them, threatening to pull them right into its vortex of power.

She looked at the dress again. If ever a dress could challenge a man’s best intentions, it would be this one. Is that what she wanted to do?

It was what she wanted to do. She did not want to be safe anymore. She wanted to fling herself into the storm, to put herself at the mercy of love.

Love.

She looked at her drawing again and let that word wash over her, felt the power of the feeling that accompanied it. Could she really pull this off?

She thought with longing of the woman she had been, ever so briefly, when that storm was over.

Fearless.

She wanted that again. She wanted to be fearless.

What about getting his house ready for the photographers? She was going to have to do both. She was going to have to be fearless and pragmatic.

Well, anyone who could coax cookies and a sewing project out of thirty reluctant teenagers could most certainly handle the pragmatic aspects of the assignment she had given herself.

She got up from her desk. She went over to those cubbies filled with fabric and sorted through them. They were swatches. It was almost as if they had been put here for show—to add splashes of bright color to the room—rather than to be of use. Angie had managed to scavenge her bathing suit cover from these, but the dress in the sketch was another matter.

She went to the window and stared out at the darkened lake. The breeze lifted a curtain and it caught her eye.

Angie laughed out loud. It was pure white silk. She caressed it with her fingers. She couldn’t use his curtains for a dress, could she?

The old Angie might not have been able to. The new Angie got on a chair and tugged the draperies down off their hooks.

* * *

Jefferson would not admit how much he missed Angie. Since that night they had danced in the living room, and in a moment of weakness when he had wanted to give her everything she wanted, and had invited her to a real dance, he had barely seen her.

She was a flurry of motion—racing through the house, cleaning crazily, organizing for the photo shoot and then disappearing up the stairs to her room.

She was making meals—in the middle of the night?—and leaving him notes on how to cook them, but he missed her. He was glad they were going to have a whole evening together to just enjoy each other.

On Saturday evening, he came out of his room. He and Hailey had often gone to events that required this kind of garb—the opera, plays, fund-raising balls. He had not dressed like this for a long time. He had never felt like this about it, either. Strangely awkward, almost shy. Standing in the hall, he put a finger between his collar and his neck, trying for a bit of breathing space.

He heard a sound on the stairs that led to Angie’s room.

He turned slowly. He dropped his finger from his collar. It was hopeless. He was never going to be able to breathe. Every thought of the impression he was going to make on her fled him as the sight of her—the impression she was making on him—filled his every sense and stole his breath away.

Could this woman be Angie?

Even in that ultra-sexy bathing suit, he had never seen her look like this.

She floated down the staircase toward him on a cloud of white. The dress hugged her upper body, showed the sensuous curve of her recently sun kissed shoulders, then flared out, sweeping around her. She looked like a princess in a fairy tale.

“What?” she asked, pausing on the stairs.

Could she not know what a vision she was?

“Where on earth did that dress come from?” he managed to choke out when that was not what he wanted to say at all. “I’m pretty sure the Emporium does not stock anything like that.”

“Have you ever seen The Sound of Music?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Curtains,” she said. “I’m afraid I owe you a set of curtains.”

He vaguely recalled a scene in that movie where curtains had been transformed into play clothes. It was a movie. They would have had a team of tailors and seamstresses working on that.

“How did you do this?” he asked. Another movie came to mind. Cinderella, where the cleaning girl was transformed.

As if drawn to her by an invisible cord, he went and stood before her, looking up the stairs at her, at the sweep of the dress, the delicacy of her naked shoulder, the formfitting bodice.

“This is what I always wanted to do,” she said. “I wanted to design clothes.”

“And you didn’t, why?” He could hear the astonishment in his own voice.

“Because I was told to pick a practical career, and that’s what I did. Instead of following my own heart.”

She was looking at him with an unnerving intensity, as if that was all changed now. As if she fully intended to follow her own heart from now on.

He realized it was not the dress, alone, that made her beautiful. He realized it was her radiance. He had invited her to go to the dance as a gift to her, to give her something she had always wanted.

Jefferson contemplated the nature of gifts.

For this one had come back to him. It felt as if what he had given her since she arrived, the gift of sanctuary, had unveiled her bit by bit.

Now she stood before him, confident and radiant, the woman she really was, the woman she had always been meant to be.

And so the gift was returned to him. In leading her back to herself, it was he who had come fully alive. This gift of awareness did not fall gently against him. No, it smashed into him with all the force that was needed to take what was left of the severely compromised armor he had put around his heart and leave it in shards.

It felt as though he was stepping over that shattered armor as he reached for her, as her hand came into his, as he placed his kiss of recognition and welcome first on the top of her hand and then on her cheek.

He could fight no more.

They went by boat to Anslow. That journey, through inky waters, the spray from the boat white against blackness of the sky and the lake was the beginning of the magic. When they arrived he had to squeeze in to find a place to tie up, there were so many boats at the dock. A horse and carriage were at the end of it, waiting to take guests who had arrived by water to the community hall.

The interior of the hall had been transformed with thousands of bright fairy lights. They illuminated the line of the roof, climbing the walls like vines, tracing the outlines of linen-covered tables.

The place was packed. The people of Anslow loved an occasion—weddings, graduations, fund-raisers—they kept finery that would not have been out of place in New York City for these community events.

There were no speeches, just a dinner followed by a clearing of the tables, a bar being set up, a band taking their places on the raised stage at one end of the room.

He introduced Angie to people who had been his family and his friends and his neighbors since he was six years old.

They welcomed him into the fold of their lives as if he was a soldier who had been away from home for too long. They extended their acceptance of him to Angie. But almost too much so! He could not get near the woman he had escorted to the dance.

She quickly became the belle of the ball. For the first set, every old geezer in Anslow had to claim a dance with her. By the second set, the young men who had been fortifying their courage at the bar were jostling to have a turn around the hall with her.

Angie, amazing in that dress, was an astonishing dancer. Her movements were fluid and natural and unconsciously sensual. Her laughter carried through the hall. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were radiant. She was a princess, casting an enchantment.

Watching her, dance, watching her shine, Jefferson had a sense of having done the right thing. This is what she had led him to again and again since she had arrived at his door.

She required him to do the right thing. She forced him to be a better man.

And then, for the third set, he wearied of all the attention being paid to her and went and claimed her for his own. When Gerry Mack tried to cut in, he told him no. By the time the fourth and final set of the evening arrived, no one was trying to cut in anymore.

They danced until their feet ached. They danced until they could hardly breathe. They danced until the last dance, when he held her tight, rested his chin on the top of her head and realized something had happened that he thought would never happen again.