Christmas In Mustang Creek

The place looked and smelled clean, thank heaven.

And it was blessedly warm. No small consideration, with the wind howling outside the window.

“I hope they have a generator,” Jax remarked, probably in an effort to make conversation. “This storm is amping up into a full-scale blizzard.” He sighed and added, “I’m going to take a hot shower and then sleep for about a hundred years. If you want the bathroom first, go ahead.”

The window rattled under a fresh assault of ice-barbed wind.

Charlotte was just as tired as he was, and it was too much effort to argue, even though she had a question—or two—about what he was doing there. He’d had his reasons for leaving New York and settling in Idaho, but what could possibly have brought him to Mustang Creek? A job offer, he’d said. How...coincidental. Or was it? “Just give me a moment to brush my teeth.”

“Help yourself.” Jax sank down on the edge of the bed closest to the window and started hauling off his boots.

She hurried into the bathroom, clutching her cosmetic bag and the flannel pajamas from her suitcase. After closing the door with a firm click, she brushed her teeth, changed and emerged to find Jax wearing only his jeans, brows raised as he took in her less-than-sexy garb.

What had he expected? A little number from Victoria’s Secret, maybe?

Since his bare, muscular chest reminded her of other times, better times, she looked away.

“Pink kitty cats?” he teased.

Charlotte took a deep breath. “My aunt gave me these pajamas,” she said tersely, “so I wear them. They’re comfortable. Not to mention warm.”

“I believe that. Finished with the bathroom?”

She flounced toward her bed. No one ever flounced that she knew of—besides maybe a few select romance-novel heroines who did not do it in kitty-patterned flannel pajamas—but she tried anyway. She waved toward the bathroom door. “Yep. It’s all yours.” With that, she threw back the covers and scrambled beneath them.

“Thanks.” He disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door, and she finally relaxed a little, settling in and staring up at the ceiling.

Then she heard the water running.

He was naked in there, she realized, with sudden, visceral clarity. She imagined water streaming in rivulets over the chiseled landscape of his body, a terrain she knew all too well...

You’re hopeless, she told herself. Then, with tired resolution, she jerked the blankets up to her chin and once again came to terms with the baffling fact that that was then and this was now. And despite the bizarrely coincidental It Happened One Night situation she found herself in, things would return to normal in the morning. All she had to do now was close her eyes and let sleep take her under, enfold her in blissful oblivion.

Exhausted as she was, however, her brain remained busy, chewing and fretting, gnawing at a single thought.

Jaxon Locke was in Mustang Creek.

While she was in New York and he was in Idaho, she’d managed to ignore his existence. Mostly. She’d gotten on with her life, learned to live, even thrive, without him.

Mostly.

Now, all of a sudden, she was sharing a hotel room with him in a tiny Wyoming town.

Where was the logic?

And how was she supposed to survive this?

Simple question.

But no answers in sight, simple or otherwise.

She squeezed her eyes shut, determined to lose herself in sleep.

But she was still awake when Jax emerged from the bathroom long minutes later; through her lashes, she noted that he was naked, except for the towel wrapped around his lean waist. He seemed to know she was awake, although she was pretending she’d already drifted off.

“Listen to that wind,” he said. “Sounds like a pack of hungry wolves. It’s brutal out there.”

She gave up on the sleeping-beauty act. He’d always been able to read her energy in some mysterious way, and fooling him was usually too much work. “Nice of you to share the room.” There. She’d said something civil. Even cordial.

But distant, as well. She certainly didn’t want to send the wrong message.

No way was she going to sleep with him.

Not that he seemed to expect it.

The problem was that a part of her wanted to leap from her bed to his—talk about sending messages—to open her arms to him, brazen as could be, and abandon herself to his lovemaking, to him. To the singular combination of them.

Even after all this time, and all the deliberate forgetting, her body remembered.

They’d certainly never had any problems in bed. Their troubles had stemmed from other things, like his old-fashioned attitudes. He hadn’t wanted a professional woman who could go toe-to-toe with some of the most intimidating people in the advertising world. Some of the bitterness flooded back, sobering and hurtful. No, as far as she could tell, Jax had wanted a carpooling, cookie-baking wife and mother for his children, someone who loved small-town life to the exclusion of all else. Or, at any rate, to the exclusion of any other kind of place. Someone who sewed gingham curtains for the kitchen windows and taught Sunday school and fussed over her flower beds.

All right, maybe he hadn’t mentioned those things specifically, but they went with the territory, didn’t they?

To Jax’s credit, he’d never pretended to like New York City as much as she did. For him, it was a mere stopping place along the way to someplace else, third base in some metaphoric baseball game. Next stop, home plate.

Translation: wide-open spaces, pickup trucks, mixed-breed dogs.

The country.

Well, at least he’d been honest. That was more than she could say for a lot of the guys she’d dated, before and after him.

He’d been considerate, polite, intelligent...and sexy.

Very, very sexy.

Once again, Charlotte was stricken with quiet astonishment. One moment she’d been firmly planted in a reality she knew and understood. The next...

Well, the next moment Jax was here. She still didn’t quite believe it.

“Of course I’d share the room,” he said.

Charlotte was confused. Share the room?

Oh, yes. She’d thanked him earlier, and now he was responding.

Keep up, she chided herself silently.

It occurred to her then that Jax’s voice had sounded a little too gruff. Maybe he’d picked up on her thoughts. Maybe he was going to drop that towel any second now.