The Baby Made at Christmas

“Aha, is that a confession?” He stepped toward her and swung her easily into his arms, lacing his fingers in the small of her back and rocking her from side to side. It was as if they were dancing. “I knew it! I knew you were a cat.”

“Do you, um, like them?”

“Like what?”

“Cats.”

“What’s not to like?” he said softly. “They feel good to touch.” He ran his hand down the side seam of her jeans. “And if you treat them right, they purr for you.” He brushed the skin behind her ears and under her jaw, and so help her, she almost did purr! Her eyes wanted to close, and she wanted to rub against him and coil up and stay there. And she’d most definitely purred last night. But there were things to do and places to be....

He was still speaking. She opened her eyes again and found him looking at her. “And their eyes go big when something exciting happens.”

“Yours, too,” she whispered. Big and so dark.

“And they’re such phenomenal athletes, so fit and sinuous, the way they move. They know how to use their bodies so well. I’ve always loved that in a...cat.”

He was speaking of her, not cats at all, but all she could think of was him. She could imagine him, suddenly, out on a powder run, making effortless, snaking tracks through pristine snow with his shoulders squared to the slope and his strong legs pumping like pistons or springs.

“Let’s ski together,” she blurted out. “Could that be part of the plan? For next time?”

“And sometimes they’re just plain hilarious.”

“Wh—?”

“I’m seducing you, Lee, and you want to hit the slopes.”

“No, I...”

Shoot, how did I miss that? Of course he’s seducing me!

“We have time,” he insisted.

“Do we?”

“If we’re fast. And not fancy.” He added slyly, “I’ll set my watch.”

She laughed. “How long?”

“Ten minutes. Fifteen, by the time our shoes are back on.”

“You’re serious.”

“I totally am.”

So they were fast and not fancy, stripping and laughing and falling on the bed, and taking every shortcut they could think of....

Oh, it was so good. So short, but so hot and good. She knew they would both be laughing about it, thinking back. Laughing about the fact that you could make it into a race and still get it right.

The timer on his watch started bleeping just as he was reaching for his socks. “Damn! We didn’t make it as far as the shoes!” he said.

“Near enough,” she suggested.

“Near enough is not good enough. We’ll have to go for a rematch on this one.”

“On the fast thing?”

“Why, didn’t you like that?”

“I did,” she said.

With a look of lascivious reminiscence, he drawled at her, “Yeah, you did.”

* * *

Oh, she did, she liked it! Mac enjoyed the memories in this area whenever they wandered through his mind that day—and it was often.

He didn’t see any point in pretending about this kind of thing. He felt what he felt, and he let it show. He never made promises he didn’t intend to keep. Most of the time, this meant not making any promises at all. Better safe than sorry. She seemed to be the same, the kind of woman who played it straight, who wasn’t about games or emotional blackmail or saying one thing when she meant the opposite.

He hadn’t come to Aspen with the idea of hooking up with someone right away, and was a little surprised, to be honest, that it had happened like this.

Well, huh. So he had a woman in his bed, and it seemed to be working.

Nice.

All the same, from the word go, he kept a good lookout for danger signs and deal breakers, because even the most apparently casual fling could have a sting in the tail if you weren’t careful....

* * *

Lee didn’t mention Mac to her friends at Christmas dinner that night, but then she saw him every day for a week. He found a small apartment down valley, about twenty minutes’ drive, but told her, “You’re not seeing it until I have it fixed up a little,” so they always came back to her place. He downloaded and read A Room of One’s Own, on his eReader, “Purely so I can drink from more of your mugs.” She told him he was an idiot, and it became a running joke between them.

The Narmans left the day after New Year’s, which gave Lee a full schedule of instructing all day and then cleaning the house out until past eleven o’clock that night, with more still to do the next day. It was only when the Narmans were in residence that she called in the team of cleaners, who could be in and out in an hour. When the family wasn’t around, she did the work herself, because then it didn’t matter if it took her a day or two, and she could make sure it was done absolutely right.

But there was no time for Mac.

Two days later, when she’d closed the doors of all the spare bedrooms, replenished supplies and sent several things off to the dry cleaners, she grabbed a private moment with him at the ski school office and told him, “Guess what? We can have the house today.”

“The whole house?”

“Well, I usually just stick to one bedroom and bathroom, but, yep, they’re not due back until three days at the end of January.”

“Will we be able to find each other in that place?” He gave her a big grin. “Should we text our whereabouts whenever we move rooms?”

“We could get one of those Swiss alpenhorns that are about eight feet long.”

“Or walkie-talkies.”

“Or a 1970s intercom system.”

Another instructor overheard them. “Oh, wow, my house used to have one of those! My parents tortured us with it.” He gave a chuckle and shook his head. “We had Muzak piped into every room.” He moved on, out of earshot.