Christmas at Twilight (15 page)

“It was just like that,” Meredith said, and proceeded to describe in detail the depth of his abuse and her dawning horror that she'd married a monster who was never going to let her go. “Except instead of faking my own death, I managed to find a great psychologist who helped me get away from him to the point of providing me fake credentials and hiding me in a safe house. Considering Sloane's career and the power and clout he had, she understood that I was a special case. Unfortunately, she paid for it with her life.”

He arched an eyebrow.

Meredith told him how she believed Sloane had tampered with the brakes of her psychologist's car after he stormed into her office and she refused to tell him where Meredith was.

“I left Sloane three months after I married him and then I found out I was pregnant.”

Hutch sank down on the mattress beside her, his impulse to comfort her, but then he worried she might think he wanted something more since they were sitting on a bed, so he didn't make another move.

“I was so happy when Ben was born,” she said. “No matter who his father was, I swore my little boy was going to know only love, and you can see for yourself what a sweet child he is.”

He nodded. Ben was a loving child. It wasn't just a mother's natural prejudice.

“I did everything I could to keep him safe. Moving from town to town, changing my name and appearance. Always looking over my shoulder. Holding my breath and waiting, just waiting for Sloane to find me again.”

He rubbed a thumb over her knuckles. Her jigsaw smile broke his heart.

“So now you know why I was so trigger-happy with the pepper spray. You're about the same height and build as Sloane, and when you came out of the house, I saw him even though I knew it wasn't.”

He wanted to tell her that was just fine. She could pepper-spray him every day if it made her feel safer.

She pulled her hands up inside her sleeves. “I couldn't be a nurse, Sloane would look for me in hospitals and clinics, so I took any unskilled labor jobs I could find. It's hard feeding a child and living in a safe place on minimum wage. I tried working two jobs, but then I was never home with Ben. Then I remembered that I'd never told Sloane that I was a licensed massage therapist.”

He so admired her courage, respected her resilience and ingenuity. She'd managed to survive being stalked by a sociopath for five years with very little help from anyone. She was remarkable.

“Whenever I'd go to a new town, I'd tell a version of my story to the spa owners, show them my real ID and massage license and tell them I was on the run from an abusive ex-husband and I need to keep my identity hidden for my own protection. Everyone understood and kept my vicious secret.”

She'd suffered so much. Thinking about her pain was a samurai sword slicing clean through his shabby heart. How he wished he could have been there to protect her, to keep her safe.

Meredith drew in a deep breath and continued. “What I didn't tell them was that I was wanted for attempted murder in Colorado.”

Restlessly, she plucked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweater. “When Ben was two years old, Sloane caught up to me in Fort Collins. His mistake was thinking I was still that naïve young woman he'd married. You should have seen his face when I pulled out the Colt and told him to get out of my house.”

Wow. His entire body tensed as he imagined petite Meredith facing down a guy as big as he. He could just see her, Mama Bear fierce at the end of her rope, prepared to go down fighting.

“He didn't believe I would shoot him and he came right for me, assuming I'd crumble.” A savage laugh burst from her lips. “You should have seen his face when I pulled the trigger and the bullet hit him dead in the center of his chest. I thought I'd killed him. I prayed I'd killed him. But I didn't wait to find out. I snatched up Ben and my purse. I put him in the car and drove away as fast as I could. It never occurred to me until I heard about it on the news that the son of a bitch was wearing a bulletproof vest. Of course,” she finished, spongy regret in her voice, “the cops believed his version of events.”

Violence. More violence. She'd had a life strewn with it.

His life had been littered too. He'd made a career of violence just like Meredith's ex-husband. Why had Sloane turned out one way and Hutch another? Was it genetics? Nurture? Life experiences? All three?

What made a man in a position of power go bad?

Had he been guilty of abusing his power? Lines could blur so easily. He thought of some of the sketchy situations he'd been in, some of the questionable on-the-spot decisions he'd been forced to make.

Yes, he convinced himself he was in the right. It was easy when you believed you were right. He was fighting on the side of the good guys, right? But nothing in life was ever like the old Westerns where the bad guys wore black hats and the good guys wore white.

How did a man square who he thought he was against the things he'd done? How did he reconcile his identity with his ideals?

When Hutch walked out of Walter Reed, he had no idea who he was anymore. His identity had fled with his voice. He was no longer part of The Unit. His teammates, his close friends and comrades-in-arms, were dead. They had been his family. His identity. Without them, he was adrift.

And he'd returned home to find Meredith and Ben and Kimmie, who were equally adrift and needed someone to plot their course. He rallied himself to fill the void, and the strangest thing had happened. He'd discovered not a new identity, but the very essence of who he really was.

He'd become a father figure. Someone people could depend on. All the good images of a father filtered through his head. The father he'd never had, but the example that had been set for him by the many kind men in Twilight, like Hondo Crouch.

It hit him like a sledgehammer how the men of the town had taken him under their wing. It was something he'd never really appreciated before. Judge Blackthorne had taken him fishing, taught him to love the river. Hondo had shown him how to build things. Flynn's father, Floyd MacGregor, had taught him how to cook. The men of Twilight had shaped him, kept him from going completely off the rails when he could have so easily ended up in prison for his tendency to get into fights protecting his mother and sister. They'd channeled his aggressions. Shown him a better way.

“So you see why I freaked out when you threw the Magic Slate? I know I was wrong to paint you with the same brush as Sloane, but I've been running scared for so long that I overreacted.”

He shook his head. She'd done what she needed to do to feel safe.

“You've also probably guessed by now that I thought I saw Sloane in the town square and that's the reason I was packing. I'm probably wrong. It's not the first time I thought I saw Sloane when it wasn't him. I don't want to go, but I'm scared.”

Christmas lights shone through the partially open curtain, blinking rhythmically as the preprogrammed pattern changed tempo. The shifting colors, from white to blue and back again, cast the room in an icy winter wonderland glow.

They sat side by side on the mattress, and he could feel her body trembling through the box springs. Simultaneously, they turned their heads toward each other and their gazes wed.

“Hold me, Hutch,” she whispered. “Please hold me.”

Hutch drew her into his arms and he pressed her face against his chest and just held her like that for a long time. Feeling heartbreaking tenderness for her and an unspeakable rage at the bastard who'd reduced her to a life of running and hiding in the shadows.

After several minutes, she pulled away.

He stared at her and she stared right back, his throat swelling at the thought of what she'd suffered at the hands of her ex-husband until he feared he would choke on the bile of his anger.

“I've made so many mistakes,” she whimpered.

He put his index finger against her lips. Shh. He'd made tons of mistakes himself.

Her lips parted and she leaned toward him.

God, he wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe but he wasn't going to do it. He would not take advantage of this situation.

“Hutch.” She moistened those sweet lips. “Would you mind if I kissed you?”

Mind? Excuse me while I do a few back flips.

He leaned in slightly, testing her intent, but giving her enough room to skitter away in case she had second thoughts. It was tough because he wanted to gobble her up, give her hot, passionate kisses that would leave them crazed for each other, but she'd been through too much for that.

“Don't hold back,” she said, reading his mind. “I'm not a china doll. I'm a real live woman.”

Yes, you are.

“I want to be kissed by a good man with a kind heart.”

Oh baby, why did you have to say that? I'm pretty damn far from good.

Her pupils widened, darkened to midnight blue, the color of misty twilight. Tentatively, he dipped his head, kept his eyes trained on those beautiful lips. The most perfect lips in all the land. He felt as if he were in a fairy tale, a children's cartoon. He was the hulking ogre and she was the beautiful princess.

He stopped, waited for her to make the first move.

“I changed my mind,” she said.

That's okay, that's okay
. His muscles were corded so tight a cannonball would have bounced off them. Delta Force operators were nothing if not highly controlled. Too soon. It was too soon. He'd known that.

“I want you to kiss me.”

That was a twist. He gave her a look that said,
Are you sure?

“Certain,” she confirmed.

He pressed his lips to hers so lightly it was more a mixing of breath than skin. A hundred fears and expectations coalesced into one quivering question in the anxious brushing of their cautious mouths.

Is this really what you want?

Hutch could see her heart hammering through her clothes, could hear his own pulse quicken pace as blood galloped through his ears.

He tumbled into those liquid eyes, sank right to the bottom and swam around. This was what he'd never known he'd spent his life searching for. He saw past all the hurt and sorrow and tragedy that had led her to him and marveled at how she'd retained her inner goodness, hope, and beauty in the face of such dark forces.

She kissed him right back with all the passion that had been building inside them both for the past few weeks. Meredith was the one who took it deeper, her saucy tongue teasing his teeth apart, and he loosened his jaw, letting her all the way in.

This could get out of hand real quick, Hutchinson.

A soft moan seeped from her and she curled both hands around his forearm, clung to him.

More. He had to have more. This taste was sweet, but it was not nearly enough.

He tilted her head back, exposing that magnificent creamy throat, and planted a hard kiss on the underside of her chin.

The furnace clicked on, sending warm air shooting through the ceiling vent, adding heat to the flame.

She swung herself into his lap and went exploring, slipping a palm up underneath his T-shirt, skimming hotly over his bare chest and unraveling him completely, and for a moment he was operating on nothing but blind masculine instinct, going for what he wanted.

Hutch kissed his way up the left side of her neck, to her earlobe, where he nibbled lightly, as she wriggled with delight. His tongue found the jagged scar behind her ear and he did not have to ask, but she supplied the answer anyway.

“Sloane broke a beer bottle over my head.”

Talk about a mood killer, but he was glad she said it. Glad she reminded him precisely why this was a bad idea. Meredith was not in a good place emotionally. She was using him as salve. He wasn't opposed to that in principle, but she was too fragile for that whether she knew it or not.

He pulled back.

“Don't stop!” she protested, and captured his face between her hands. “Please. I need this. I need you.”

God, he was only human. A mere mortal, and she was the sexiest thing that had ever straddled his lap. He didn't know if he possessed the strength of character to turn her away.

The sound of a tiny little fist knocking on the door drew both their heads up at once. From out in the hallway, Ben's little voice called, “Mommy, I feel hot and shivery all over.”

H
is kiss left her in ruins.

Meredith lay in the darkened bedroom, two sick kids tucked on either side of her, still wide awake and thinking of what had passed between her and Hutch in the guest bedroom.

From the look in his eyes, he'd been just as decimated as she. Knocked sideways by the sheer force of their hunger for each other. If Ben hadn't knocked on the door when he did . . .

She blew out a breath, and laid the back of her hand against her forehead. Although this chemistry had been building from that first day when she'd undressed him in the bathroom, Meredith never anticipated that kissing him would feel this damn good.

Clichés flew around in her head—mind-blowing, earth-shattering, lightning-that-lingered, but none of those trite, overused phrases began to describe this. She felt as if she had been born blind, and Hutch's kiss had restored her vision. There was a whole big world out there she never knew existed. Eyes wide open, and there was so much to see.

How could a kiss promise so much? Be both sweet and arousing? And why did it have to come from the most complicated man she'd ever met?

She traced her fingertips over her lips, remembering, closed her eyes, and sighed. She had asked him to kiss her and he'd obliged. It had been so long since someone had kissed her with true tenderness. So very long, and she'd sponged it right up.

And she'd told him everything. Stripped her soul bare. She'd held nothing back. He knew all her secrets and she didn't know his.

What was she doing? What was she thinking? She didn't have to tell him the truth. She could have just left. It would have been so much easier to leave.

This could go no farther. Nothing more could happen between them.

But oh those lips of his . . .

Meredith moved her hand from her forehead to her mouth, bit down lightly on the knuckle of her index finger. Mistake. Kissing him had been a mistake. Stirring instead of sating the sexual tension. Why did he have to be a world-class kisser? Madness. This was madness. Torturing herself over something she could not have. All right. He was a magnificent combination of admirable masculinity, sheer brute sexiness, and alarmingly disarming kindness. But they both needed saving and she was smart enough to know that two drowning swimmers would only pull each other down. He had to find his own salvation and she couldn't be saved. Not until Vick Sloane was six feet under.

Ben was her primary concern, her only concern. His safety and happiness would forever come before her own.

Her breath stilled in her body, a hushed quiet that led her deeper into the landscape of her own mind. Air stifled, pressure built, her lungs burned, aching with certain knowledge that there could be no happily-ever-after for her and Hutch, no matter how desperately she wished it.

T
he next morning Meredith and Hutch took the children to see the pediatrician. Mild virus. Going around. Bed rest. Plenty of fluids. Children's ibuprofen. Good as new in three days.

Things looked rosier in daylight and Meredith was glad she hadn't cut and run after what she perceived was a Sloane sighting. Otherwise, she would have been on the road when Ben's fever spiked. And that wasn't the only reason she was thankful. Last night, sharing her secret with Hutch, telling someone the full truth about herself for the first time in five years, brought a sense of liberation she had not expected.

Despite waking up several times to check on the sick children, Meredith experienced the best sleep of her life.

Bright side of what had happened last night.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, things between her and Hutch were tenser than ever. The sexual tension that had been simmering between them for weeks had erupted into a full, rolling boil in the span of an hour. No putting that alchemy back in the genie bottle. And yes, she knew she was mixing her clichéd metaphors. The situation flummoxed her. She couldn't leave, not with a sick child. Didn't want to leave. And those sparks were undeniable. Sooner or later the forest was going to burn down. Did she really want to be in it when that happened?

To make things worse, the massage bookings took a dramatic dip the week leading up to Christmas, leaving Meredith with more time to spend around the house. Normally that would be a good thing, but with all the rules broken and the boundaries knocked down between her and Hutch, she worried how they would navigate so much togetherness without giving in to temptation.

The first three days went by fairly smoothly because the sick children kept her occupied. The only private conversation she had with Hutch was about the gifts Ashley had put on layaway for Kimmie at Walmart. Via Magic Slate, Hutch told her he'd take care of the layaway.

“Would you pick up my layaway for Ben while you're there?” she asked, reaching to get money from her purse.

Hutch shook his head, wrote: MY TREAT.

“No, I take care of my own child. You're not paying for my layaway.” She thrust out both her jaw and the money at him. “Take it.”

At first, she thought he was going to refuse it, but then an expression came over his face as if he'd just gotten a brilliant idea, and he accepted the money.

“Hmm, what are you up to?”

His insouciant shrug said,
You'll never guess.

On the day before Christmas Eve, with the pediatrician's okay, they took the children to pick out the Christmas tree. They roamed the graveled lot looking for the perfect one.

They passed a pine flocked in pink and Meredith felt a tugging at the bottom of her coat. “Mommy,” Kimmie said. “Can we get this one?”

Meredith's chest iced up cold while her heart beat hot. Kimmie had called her Mommy again.
Ah, dammit, Ashley. Come home. It's Christmas and you're missing the most wonderful part of it.

She clenched her jaw and looked up, her gaze catching Hutch's. He'd heard it too. Their original agreement had been for Meredith to stay through Christmas, but that had been with the assumption that Ashley would be home by then. What would happen to Hutch and Kimmie if she did not return?

“We're not having pink. Guys don't have pink trees, do they, Unca Hutch?” Ben asked.

“Well, I'm a girl and girls wike pink trees.” Kimmie pouched out her lips in a forceful pout and folded her arms over her chest.

Ben shook his head vigorously. “No way, Jose.”

Kimmie pressed her palms together in supplication and batted her big blue eyes at Hutch. “Please, Unca Hutch?”

“No,” Ben said, and gave her a shove.

“Excuse me, young man,” Meredith scolded. “We don't shove. You apologize to Kimmie. Right now.”

Ben hung his head. “Sorry.”

Kimmie lifted her nose in the air. “Hmph.”

“Their first fight,” Meredith said to Hutch, and laughed. “They'd been cooped up indoors too long.” To Kimmie, she said, “We're not going to get a pink tree, but later we'll go get hot chocolate with pink marshmallows in it at Perks.”

“Yay!” The kids applauded in unison, happy again.

If she let herself it would be so easy to imagine this as her life, the mother of two children and married to a brave man like Hutch who could keep her safe. A man she could trust with her darkest secrets. She never thought it possible that she could find a man like him.

But he wasn't hers, was he? She could never forget that a monster dogged her every step, and the second she let down her guard, he'd be upon her.

But how tempting the dream!

Hutch led the way to the back of the lot, but stopped after he'd taken a few steps and waited for them to catch up. The children darted between the trees, laughing and playing tag.

“Be careful of running on gravel,” Meredith warned, just as her own boot caught on a loose rock and her knee buckled. Going down. Bracing herself for the fall, she squeezed her eyes closed, gritted her teeth.

But instead of hitting the pavement, a pair of strong masculine arms went around her. Hutch. Righting her, he kept his hand pressed to her back. Gently rubbing his palm in a circle in a wonderfully comforting gesture that said,
It's all right. I'm here. I've got your back.

She peeked over her shoulder at him. Their eyes met. Over the loudspeakers, “Baby, It's Cold Outside” played.

They stood close to each other, neither one moving away. She was aware of his scent and the way his hair fell into a natural part on the right. She wondered what he was thinking. She wished he could talk and she wondered what his voice sounded like.

Meredith couldn't stop looking at him. Hutch. Brian, a tall force-of-man that would make any woman's knees buckle, naturally tanned skin, leather jacket, the scars on his neck and hands making him that much sexier. Declaring he was a man who had lived and survived.

He pointed to a tree. This one.

Oh yes. The reason they were here. Buying a Christmas tree.

The salesman helped him load it into his pickup truck. They'd brought both vehicles because of the car seats.

The children, still a little weak from their bout with the virus, lifted their arms up and begged to be carried. Hutch scooped up Kimmie, and Meredith tucked Ben onto her hip.

“You're getting too heavy for this,” she said, sad for that fact, but happy she had this one last Christmas to be able to lug him around.

At Perks, they got a table near the window so they could look out and watch the town square decked out in Christmas pageantry. Couples strolled hand in hand to a Christmas music medley. Last-minute shoppers raced from store to store. Was it possible to fall in love with an entire town in less than three months? Apparently so, because Meredith had already given her heart away.

Caitlyn and Gideon Garza and their two boys walked into the coffee shop. They waved and came over. Caitlyn jiggled her two-year-old son, Levy, on her hip. Meredith smiled, remembering when Ben was that age. She'd always wanted at least three children, but Sloane had killed that dream forever. With the life she led, she could not have a long-term relationship, much less another child.

“So many exciting things happening.” Caitlyn's eyes sparkled. “Have you heard the weather report? They're calling for snow for Christmas! In North Texas. Can you believe it?”

“Buckets of it,” said their preteen, Danny.

“Snow, not ice,” Gideon clarified. “For you out-of-towners.” He grinned at Meredith. “In this neck of the woods, we mostly have ice storms instead of snow.”

“Do you know how often we have snow on Christmas?” Caitlyn marveled, and then answered her own question. “Maybe three or four times in the history of North Texas weather keeping!”

“Don't get your hopes up too high,” Gideon cautioned. “You know Texas weather. It can change in a blink.”

The children wriggled and giggled over the possibility of snow. Ben made funny faces at Levy.

“Also, did you hear about the Secret Santa?” Caitlyn put Levy down so he could climb up on the chair with Ben.

“No.” Meredith cocked her head, watched her son interacting with the younger boy. Ben was trying to explain to Levy what snow was.

“Well,” Caitlyn said, more animated than Meredith had ever seen her. “Two days ago someone went to Walmart and paid for all the accounts that were on layaway. There are a lot of hardworking moms and dads in town who are going to have a great Christmas because of a generous soul.”

“That's so kind,” Meredith said as her gaze strayed to Hutch. “Do they have any idea who this person was?”

“Walmart promised anonymity to the Secret Santa, but someone used the pronoun ‘he.' All the Fort Worth TV stations sent a camera crew out here to cover the story. It's generating buzz, which for a tourist town is always a good thing.”

“It was a man, huh?” Meredith locked eyes with Hutch. Two days ago he'd gone to Walmart to pick up the toys she and Ashley had put on layaway. “That must have cost someone a fortune.”

“They're saying in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars,” Caitlyn said.

Hutch's face gave away nothing. He looked innocent as all get-out. But his pupils darkened slightly and he couldn't hold her stare for long. He got up and waved for Caitlyn to take his seat. Then he and Gideon picked up a nearby table and butted it up to the table they were at so everyone could sit together.

“I like that new hair color on you,” Caitlyn said to Meredith. “Thumbs up.”

Meredith touched her head. She'd almost forgotten she colored it, and that sent a fret of fear running through her. She'd never stayed in a town after she'd changed her hair color. “Thanks.”

Caitlyn leaned over to whisper in Meredith's ear. “The man is besotted with you.”

Meredith startled. “What?”

She nodded in Hutch's direction. “He can't take his eyes off you.”

He
was
staring at her. Heat swamped Meredith's body even as cold air came in with the latest customer, the cowbell over the door jangling merrily.

“Mommy,” Kimmie said. “Your cheeks are the same color as the marshmallows in my cocoa.”

Caitlyn raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

The conversation shifted back to snow and the Secret Santa and the Angel Tree project Gideon and Hutch were working on together. Tomorrow, they would be delivering toys and Christmas dinners to needy families in the community.

It was fun. Sitting there laughing and chatting like a normal family with their friends. Drinking hot chocolate and eating slices of chocolate cream pie.

Meredith's gaze strayed across the square to the spot where she thought she'd seen Sloane. She touched her hair again, unable to tame her uneasiness.

Yes, spectators peeking in the window at them would think they were leading a picture-postcard life.

They would be wrong.

T
he snow started on Christmas Eve morning, and just as Danny predicted, buckets of fat, wet flakes fell from the sky, and just for a little while, Meredith allowed herself to believe in Christmas miracles. If it hardly ever snowed in North Central Texas on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, this was truly special.