Three Nights before Christmas (12 page)

L
acey’s heart thudded
painfully at the shock of being touched. So long. It had been so long since anyone had cupped her cheek, held her head tilted at that perfect kissing angle, pressed his fingertips gently against her scalp, abraded her skin with a few hours’ growth of whiskers.

Cradled her lips. Caressed them. Rubbed them with his thumb.

When he pulled away, she dropped the pattern to the floor and clasped his wrists, worried that shock had leeched her strength and she would tumble to the ground, too.

“What…” She didn’t even know where to begin.

“That was a bad idea.” The gruffness of his voice made her confusion worse.

“Why…” Great, she couldn’t even put a sentence together.

“For a million reasons.”

She’d meant
Why did you do that?
not
Why was that a bad idea?
She had endless answers to the second question but none for the first. Her head tipped forward, propped against his chin. He pressed a quick kiss against her hairline before stepping back and saying shakily, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why did you?” she asked.

He looked lost. “I wanted to thank you.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “You have a high opinion of your kisses.”

His face flushed. “I’ve gotten compliments.”

She didn’t want to add to them, even though the words
life-changing
and
take me now
pumped through her on a rush of hormones. She’d dreamed of hot, sweaty sex with him. Kissing had never entered even her craziest dreams—and certainly not a sweet kiss like that one. If she’d had any idea…

Crap, did she need to report this apparent mistake to her parole officer? She had to let him know every time she had an encounter with a law enforcement officer. Kissing counted as an encounter, right?

Oh, God.
“Let’s just buy what we need and get going.”

She couldn’t say much as he bought a big bag full of craft supplies. He didn’t seem to be in a chatty mood, either. When they walked out the door, she pulled her wool hat from her jacket pocket and pulled it down over her hair, needing some kind of protection, even if her armor was made of yarn.

“Where are you off to now?” he asked after a long, awkward silence.

Her shopping mood had disappeared, replaced by a pump of adrenaline that needed more. “Home, I guess. Unless…”

Don’t say it. Don’t offer. He’ll take it the wrong way.

Or, worse, he’ll take it the right way.

“Unless what?”

She swallowed hard. “Unless you want to go back to your place.”

The winter air thickened with taut silence. She clenched her gloved fists, shoving them deep into her jeans pockets and burying her face in her scarf.

“Lacey, look at me.”

She forced her feet to stop walking, forced her gaze to rise to his. Lines bracketed his mouth. The ones around his eyes, the ones made of laughter, weren’t laughing now.

“It would be a bad decision,” he warned.

She shrugged. “Those are the kind I make best.”

He looked like he needed to be convinced. Like he
wanted
to be convinced. Stepping into him, she lifted onto her toes and grabbed the front of his jacket. “How about this? I’m not begging for it. I’m not desperate, either. But it’s been a hell of a long time, and for some reason my body seems to recognize something it likes about yours.”
The power. The strength. The danger.
All the things she should feel ashamed for craving but was tired of fighting. “I want to rub myself all over you. Ride you and kneel for you. I don’t know why it’s you, and I wish like hell it wasn’t. But it is, so let me know now if you’re interested. I don’t do second chances. Not anymore. You either want me or you don’t.”

He blew out a shaky breath. “We can’t.”

Rejection.
Her jaw quivered in shocked humiliation. She bit so hard on the tender insides of her cheeks a metallic tang flooded her tongue. She tried to wipe her face clean of emotion, hiding everything from him as she let him go, stepped back and nodded brusquely. “Whatever. Just an idea.”

He adjusted the shopping bag on his forearm and reached for her, but she shook him off and took a few steps backwards. “I still need to get Sawyer a present, so I’d better go. See you at the annex later.”

“Lacey—”

She turned her back and tried to walk as casually as she could, lifting her hand in a dismissive wave and turning the first corner she saw.

Oh, great.
It was an alley that dead-ended at a chain-link fence. Like hell would she let him find her down here. Powered by adrenaline and abject humiliation, she jogged to the fence, leaped onto it, and climbed until she could jump to the other side. With a quick glance behind herself to make sure he hadn’t followed her, she rushed down the other side, ducked into a doorway and called her big brother to pick her up.

*

By the time
Sawyer arrived, she was in a pisser of a mood. In fact, she and Sawyer could’ve battled for the prize of least talkative sibling. When he pulled up alongside her and she hopped in, he greeted her makeover with a surprised grunt and a “Money well spent.”

She bit out a cheerless, “Thanks.”

She slammed the door of his truck and pulled on her seatbelt.

“No shopping bags?”

She snapped, “I don’t need new clothes. I’m fine the way I am, and if you can’t see that it’s your damn problem, not mine.”

Clearly taken aback by her attack, his face shuttered, and he shoved the truck into gear. “Yeah, except it’s
not
my damn problem. It’s never my damn problem.” Then, under his breath, “If it was my damn problem, I’d fucking
fix
it.”

She spun toward him, all systems set to
asshole
. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shook his head, concentrating on pulling out into the traffic on Main Street. Unable to keep from goading him, she pointed out, “Your hands should be at ten and two.”

“And your mouth should be at
shut
and
up
.”

Lacey clamped her jaw closed. This whole thing was her fault. She knew it was. Austin’s rejection had stung worse than she could’ve expected, and she was taking it out on Sawyer, who’d been nothing but good to her…in his workhorse, emotions-are-of-the-devil way. But because he was the one sitting next to her, the only one she trusted herself never to lose, she’d poked at the grumpy bear until he’d swatted back. His comment about fixing her problems stung, and she wanted to shout—
Do you think it’s that easy?
Some words were better left unuttered, though, and those were right up there with
Wanna go back to your place?

She bit back a groan. What had she been thinking? Of
course
Austin wouldn’t want her. In his mind, she’d been instrumental in a drug trafficking ring, a crime that was anathema to his law-and-order sensibility. She didn’t know what would be worse—for him to believe that or to realize the depths of her naiveté. She’d trusted Dave, and it had cost her everything.

No, not quite everything. She had Sawyer, even if their relationship had strained to breaking at times. The fact he put up with her said more about his character than hers, something else that pissed her off.

She also had her brain and her hands and could use them to fix a train for a kid who’d done nothing to deserve the crap hand fate had dealt him. Maybe all that was enough to start rebuilding her life.

Sawyer let out a frustrated sigh. “If you’re that unhappy with your haircut, go back to the salon and tell them to fix it.”

Her head swiveled in surprise. “What?”

“Hell, Lace, you were in a good mood when I dropped you off. Now you’re a she-devil. Only other thing that’s changed is your hair style.”

“I got a twat wax, too.”

He closed his eyes just a little too long to be safe, given the amount of traffic and snow on the road. When his lids popped back open, he jabbed at the truck’s radio, cranking up the country. For some reason, getting the better of him lightened her mood. She wasn’t proud of it, but there it was. Apparently, she would always be a little sister.

When they approached the turn for the farm, Sawyer pulled over and nodded at the mailbox. “Think you can empty that?”

“Of course. The wax wasn’t
that
hot.” She jumped down from the cab and gathered a handful of envelopes and ads before getting back in the truck. Even though she knew there would be nothing for her, she flicked through it. Mail delivery had always been special inside, and she hadn’t lost that feeling of excitement. “Hey, look. A postcard from Mom and Dad. Santa in a red Speedo, sunbathing on a beach in Tampa. Not really a mental image I needed.” She flipped the card over and read. “We miss you both so much and look forward to the sunny day when we can all be back together. Boarding cruise ship now. Talk to you after Christmas! Love and Christmas cheer, Mom and Dad.”

Her heart welled up, and she looked out the truck’s window as they drove down the gravel drive toward the house.

“Nice. Anything else?”

Blinking, she went through the rest of the mail. “Electricity bill. Ad. Ad. Ad.” Her fingers froze as she uncovered a white envelope with her name scrawled in familiar chicken scratch, a DOC number and
Montana State Prison,
Deer Lodge
in the upper left corner. Her gut seized up, and she quickly shifted the letter to the bottom of the pile. “Junk mail. Everyone seems to want something.”

“Special time of year,” Sawyer replied wryly.

She swallowed hard and tried to force her heartbeat back to something close to normal, but her heart wouldn’t listen. It jackhammered so hard she wanted to leap out of her skin.

Sawyer parked the truck and gazed at the barn, which was brimming with customers. “I’m gonna get straight back to work. Can you take the mail inside?”

“Yep.”

She was barely inside the house before she had her phone out and her lawyer’s friendly voice in her ear. Her own voice shaking, she bit out, “Jenna? I just got a letter from Dave.”

‡

A
ustin got to
the annex earlier than he’d expected. Though he hadn’t worked today, he’d spent several hours in Bozeman finding gifts for his family and picking up some of the locomotive parts that had been cleaned and restored by a local train mechanic.

Okay, and he’d been searching for Lacey. After she’d disappeared around that corner, he’d forced himself to walk away. But she’d said she was going to find a gift for her brother, so he’d kept an eye out for her in every shop he’d entered.

No luck in Bozeman, but his luck looked ready to change when he pulled up to the annex, as lights twinkled in the windows and Christmas tunes boomed from inside.

He gave himself two minutes to sit in the cab of his truck and stare at the festive building. She’d come, even though he’d turned her down earlier. He didn’t know if he would have that kind of pride, that strength of resolve. Hell, he didn’t even know if he could face her now.

He got out of the truck, crossed to the annex, stomped the snow and mud off his feet, and opened the door. Music hit him in a tidal wave of sound. Irish voices belted out “Fairy Tale of New York,” a grimy, guttural song of bitter disappointment. Lacey worked in time with the music, installing what appeared to be the new boiler tubes that had arrived yesterday. Despite the bite of the air outside, she was sweating from hard work, so much that she’d stripped her shirt off and wore nothing but a tight, grease-stained white tank top and her jeans and work boots. Some of her hair had fallen free of her messy ponytail and stuck to her neck and shoulders. She moved with strong, determined motions as she conquered the locomotive’s boiler system on her own.

She was a phenom. A fallen Christmas angel trying to make good. A woman fighting for a second chance.

She was so fucking hot. And he was an idiot for listening to his good sense earlier.

He stepped into the annex and stripped off his thick jacket, dropping it on the peg by the door. Next came his flannel shirt.

He’d hurt her today. Rejected her. Yet still she’d come here. She’d reached out to him not once, not twice but three times today. First, in a gesture of friendship she’d let him know about the world’s ugliest sweater. Then she’d offered him her body. Now she worked her ass off in an unmistakably
up-yours
gesture.