A Husband For Christmas: Snow Kisses / Lionhearted

He nodded, and not by a flicker of an eyelash did he betray any emotion beyond curiosity. “And if I let you make all the moves?” he asked quietly. “If I let you come close or touch or hold, instead of moving in on you?”

The thought fascinated her. That showed in her unblinking gaze, in the slight tilt of her head.

“Therapy, Cade?” she asked in a soft, steady tone.

“Whatever name you want to call it.” He opened his hand so that she could leave hers there or remove it, as she wished. It was more than a gesture—it was a statement.

She smiled slowly. “Such power might go to my head,” she said with a tentative laugh. “Suppose I decided to have my way with you?” she added, finding that she could treat the matter lightly for the moment.

He cocked an eyebrow and looked stern. “Don’t start getting any ideas about me. I’m not easy. None of you wild city girls are going to come out here and lure me into any haystacks.”

She let her fingers curl into his and hold them. “It’s a long shot,” she said after a minute.

“My grandfather won this ranch in a poker game in Cheyenne,” he remarked. “I guess it’s in my blood to take long shots.”

“Won’t it interfere with your private life?” she added, hoping her question wouldn’t sound as if she were fishing.

He studied her closely for a minute before he replied. “I thought you knew that I don’t have affairs.”

She almost jumped at the quiet intensity of his eyes. “I...never really thought about it,” she lied.

“I’ve had women,” he said, “but nothing permanent, nothing lasting. There’s no private life for you to interfere with.”

She was suddenly fiercely glad of that, although she didn’t know how to tell him. “It’s not going to be very easy,” she confessed shyly. “I’ve never been forward, even before this happened.”

“I know,” he murmured, smiling down at her. “I could sit here and look at you all day,” he said after a minute, “but it wouldn’t get the work done,” he added ruefully.

“I could come and help you,” she volunteered, wondering at her sudden reluctance to leave him.

“It’s too cold, honey,” he said. His eyes wandered over her soft, flushed face. “Feel like kissing me?”

Her heart jumped. She felt a new kind of excitement at the thought of it. “I thought you weren’t easy,” she challenged as she slid hesitantly toward him.

Surprise registered in his eyes, but only for a second. “Well, only with some girls,” he corrected, smiling wickedly. “Come on, hurry up, I’ve got calves to deliver.”

“Young Dr. McLaren,” she murmured, looking up at him from close range, seeing new lines in his face, fatigue in his dark eyes. There were a few silver hairs over his temples and she touched them with unsteady fingers. “You’re going gray, Cade.”

“I got those because of you, when you were in your early teens,” he reminded her. “Hanging off saddles trying to do trick riding, falling into the rapids out of a rickety canoe, flying over fences trying to ride Donavan’s broncs...my God, you were a handful!”

“Well, Melly and I didn’t have a mama,” she reminded him, “and Dad was in poor health from the time we got in grammar school on. If it hadn’t been for you and Calla and the cowboys, I guess Melly and I wouldn’t have made it.”

“Stop that,” he growled. “And don’t make me out to be an old man. I’m just fourteen years older than you, and I never did feel like a relative.”

She put her fingers against his warm lips and felt their involuntary pursing with a tingle of satisfaction. “I didn’t mean it that way.” She looked into his dark eyes with a thrill of pure pleasure. “Can I really kiss you?”

His chest seemed to rise and fall with unusual rapidity; his nostrils flared under heavy breaths. “Do you want to?”

“I...I want to.” She reached around his neck to pull his dark head down to hers, letting her fingers savor the thick coolness of his hair. Her eyes fell to his hard lips and she noticed that they didn’t part when hers touched them, as if he were keeping himself on a tight rein to prevent the kiss from becoming intimate.

She liked the warmth of his mouth under hers, and she liked the faint rasp of his cheek where her nose rubbed against it as she pressed harder against his lips. His breath was even harder now but he wasn’t moving a muscle. With a quiet, trusting sigh she eased away from him and looked up.

His face was rigid, his eyes blazing back at her. “Okay?” she asked uncertainly, needing reassurance.

A faint smile softened his expression. “Okay.”

She frowned slightly, studying his set lips. “You kept your mouth closed, though,” she said absently.

“I don’t think we need to go that far that fast, baby,” he said quietly.

He moved away from her, his hand going to the ignition to start the truck and let it idle. “It’s like learning to walk. You have to do it one step at a time.”

“That was a nice step,” she told him with a smile.

“I thought so myself.” He raised his chin and his eyes were all arrogance. “Are you going to need an engraved invitation every time from now on?”

“I guess I could sneak up on your blind side,” she confessed with a grin. “Or drag you off into dark corners. Maybe if I watch Melly and Jerry I’ll get some new ideas. She said he pushed her into a hay stall and fell on her.”

He burst out laughing, and she found that she could laugh, too—a far cry from her first reaction when Melly had confessed it.

“That sounds like Jerry,” he said after a minute. His eyes searched hers. “It’s what I’d have done, once.”

The smile faded, and she felt a deep sadness for what might have been if she hadn’t been so crazy to go to New York and break into modeling.

“In a hay stall?” she teased halfheartedly.

“Anywhere. As long as it was with you, and I could feel you...all of you...under my body.”

She turned away from the hunger in his eyes with a tiny little sound, and he hit the steering wheel with his hand and stared blindly out the windshield, cursing under his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he ground out. “That was a damned stupid thing to say...!”

“Don’t handle me with kid gloves,” she said, looking back at him. “Melly was right, and so were you. I can’t run away from the memory of the attack, and I can’t run away from life. I’m going to have to learn to deal with...relationships, physical relationships.” Her eyes met his bravely. “Help me.”

“I’ve already told you that I will.”

She studied the worn mat on the floorboard. “And don’t get angry when I react...predictably.”

“Like just now?” he asked, and managed a smile.

She nodded, smiling back. “Like just now.” Her eyes searched his, looking for reassurance. “It frightens me, still, the...the weight of a man’s body,” she whispered shakily, and only realized much later that she’d confessed that to no one else.

“In that case,” he said gently, “I’ll have to let you push me down in the hay, won’t I?”

Tears misted in her eyes. “Oh, Cade...”

“Will you get out of my truck?” he asked pleasantly, preventing her, probably intentionally, from showing any gratitude. “I think I did mention about a half hour ago that I was in a flaming hurry.”

“Some hurry,” she scoffed. “If you were really in a hurry,” she added, nodding toward the snow, “you’d walk.”