Blame the Mistletoe (Montana Born Christmas Book 1) Read online

  His masculinity was hanging by a thread these days. Maybe that was part of the reason he couldn’t get enough of her physically. It was escape from reality and made him feel potent and manly. She was probably right. He was exercising a form of denial.

  But later, after they’d cleaned up and put the dried sheets on the bed, they made love lazily, with the contented knowledge they’d be doing this all month. He held her and thought about how sad she’d looked on his wedding day. He wished he could fix things for her, life things that no one could fix, except maybe like this. With physical closeness.

  And he lay awake, worry for their lack of a future eating a hole in his gut.

  Chapter Six

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  Liz was falling in love.

  With a town.

  Marietta drew her firmly under its spell with each passing day.

  She craned her neck as Blake passed the turn onto Main Street. The downtown looked like Bedford Falls from It’s A Wonderful Life. Snow gently fell, lights glittered in the trees down either side of the street, people bustled to and fro . . .

  “We’ll park at the library. Do you mind walking?” Blake asked.

  “No,” she said absently, straightening and bouncing a little in her seat, eager to get back there and soak up the atmosphere. It looked so perfect and Christmas-y. Not a mall with weak sunshine pouring through a skylight. No layers of cotton batting penning a Photo-with-Santa display surrounded by grouchy parents yelling at crying kids. This was . . .

  Bells. She heard bells and Christmas carols floating on the cold air as she slid from the truck. She, the girl from California, who had painted the nails of movie stars, felt like she was in a movie herself.

  Except this was real and so magical.

  “Thank you for bringing me,” she said, patting her gloved hands together in a little clap of excitement.

  He smirked. “Ethan used to get worked up about it, too. When, he was eight or nine.”

  “I thought you wanted me to get into the season?” she defended.

  “I do.” He hooked his arm around her waist to draw her into his big body.

  As he bent to kiss her, she pulled back a little. “Do you think we should be like this here?” She meant in public, not right here in the shadows between a few vehicles. High above them, snowflakes glittered in the glow of the library’s lights and a car crawled into one of the few last spaces across the lot from them. “When you said people might talk, it made me realize this could get back to . . . ”

  She trailed off as she watched his face harden.

  “I don’t run my life to suit the Flowers, Liz.”

  “I know, but the kids.”

  He made a face of reluctant acknowledgement and backed off, letting his arm drop away.

  She hugged herself, feeling the cold as they both confronted something they hadn’t been talking about since she’d gone out to the ranch and climbed into bed with him. That had been four days ago and they had stuck to much lighter topics as they’d made excuses to see each other. He’d shown her around his outbuildings, helped her shovel her drive, and lent her a book on Marietta’s history. She’d made gingersnaps in his kitchen, kept the fire going while he was out most of the day, and bought a specialty coffee that filled the house with a clove-and-spice aroma for their lazy mornings in his bed.

  They were living in the now, neither thinking much about the arrival of Christmas—or Ethan on the twentieth—when their ‘dates’ would be curtailed. In her heart of hearts, she longed to hear Blake say that this was more than an affair. She wanted it to be the beginning of a relationship. But, what kind? Was she really prepared to cash in her California life and move here to Montana?

  It was early days for those sorts of thoughts and part of her worried she was simply staving off a lonely time of year. Was she fitting Blake for the role of Mr. Right out of terror that the real one would never show up?

  “I’m not trying to force anything,” she said, as much to remind herself to take things slow as ask him to. “I just don’t think they need to know what we’re doing until we do.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed, but in the stiff way that people used when they hated hearing the truth.

  And she hated hearing the lack of expansion in that. No assurance that they could work something out. No asking her if she’d consider staying here forever.

  She watched the people from the other car start toward the activity of Main Street, their daughter skipping between them, singing, “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells.”

  Why did reality always have to show up and ruin Christmas? Was she her own killjoy, always looking for what was wrong, rather than what was right? Boy, that sounded a lot like her grandmother. She sighed.

  “Hey,” Blake said with a nudge on her arm. “Don’t look so gloomy. We’re still going to have fun tonight.”

  “Are we?”

  “Yes,” he insisted with a reprimanding scowl. “It’s Christmas. No Grinches allowed.”

  Mollified, she accompanied him toward the promising sparkle of The Stroll, waving at the people in the hay wagon as it passed on its way into Crawford Park. The pleading lyrics and bluesy sound of Please Come Home for Christmas grew louder as they approached the brightness of the downtown. Her heart lightened.

  “Oh, hey, we need to put these on,” he said, removing his gloves then digging something out of his pocket. Buttons. They were emblazoned with the 30th Anniversary Marietta Stroll logo. He fixed one to her lapel then pinned his own to his coat. “We’re officially part of Christmas now.”

  “You’re a great Dad, aren’t you?” she said, wishing Petra had had a father capable of that kind of whimsy.

  “I can be a hard-ass if I need to be,” he said ruefully, drawing her into the bright chaos of the Stroll. “But I like kids.”

  Liz privately acknowledged Petra could have used a man capable of that, too, rather than having a Mom who had to play Bad Cop all the time, while her father watched sports and never lifted his eyes off his phone.

  “Ethan always likes to check out the Gingerbread houses down at the bank, but are you hungry? Because this German place makes a specialty sausage for this event. They put it in a pita pocket with coleslaw and sauerkraut and mustard. It’s messy as hell, but it will change your life. I like to eat it as we go.”

  “Sign me up,” she said, following him into a cloud of tangy, meaty scents where people tried to bite into paper wrapped sandwiches without spilling it down their fronts.

  Helping herself to napkins while she waited, she took in the families and bunches of teenagers jostling in every direction. The band had switched up to Santa Baby and a couple on cross-country skis whizzed by, singing along.

  A few minutes later, Liz savored being a part of it all, strolling, not hurrying, but dawdling with Blake as they tried to keep sauce off their chins, while groaning with enjoyment over their Bavarian-inspired meal. The bright shop windows were etched in spray-snow with depictions of mangers and three kings and Santa in his sleigh. Inside the stores, displays of smart winter jackets and spangled dresses vied for shoppers’ attention against framed paintings and work by local potters, slick tablets and big screen TVs.

  Liz eyed the small notice in the empty shop that had been taken over by local artists. She and Blake hadn’t talked about whether they’d exchange gifts. She had no intention of putting him in that position. The fact he was treating her tonight was bothering her a little, when she knew how dismal his finances were, not that she’d knee him in the pride and say so. No, she would just casually show up with enough groceries to cook for him tomorrow.

  But he had already enriched her life enough that she wanted to give him something. Something that would make him think of her forever. Not something practical like socks or a new shirt that would almost look like charity and eventually wear out. Something completely frivolous would seem tasteless when he had to be so judicious with his own money. Hmm.

  “Gingerbread houses?” he asked, drawing her across
the street to the bank.

  The scent inside the building was heavenly: spicy and sweet with hints of gumdrops and peppermint. The houses themselves were works of art. She marveled at miniature castles lit from the inside, drawbridges held by licorice strings. A replica of the courthouse had hand painted snowflakes adorning its front. A gabled, New England style house was layered in thick drifts of icing. One structure was a full course meal with peanuts for shingles, candy-cane icicles off the roof and candy-corn trim on all the edges. Chocolate chips encircled the windows and cinnamon hearts formed the bricks in the chimney that climbed the outside of the house. Vanilla wafer cookies were cut and laid like paving stones for the drive. A coconut ball snowman had been built by its imaginary residents in the icing-covered yard.

  “Do people really eat these after?” she asked, astonished that all this work would be broken up into little pieces and consumed, leaving only crumbs.

  “Some are coated so they last for months, but yeah, a lot of them are eaten.” He snagged cups of cocoa and cookies on their way out, then stopped to introduce her to some of his friends.

  “You love this, don’t you?” she asked a few minutes later, as they continued to meander down the street without a particular destination. “Seeing people you know, just being part of the community?”

  “I do,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “Ranching is quiet work, and I’m good with being solitary a lot of the time, but once Mom died, and knowing what Crystal had said about Ethan . . . Knowing he might grow up and move away like Meg . . . I need this connection. This sense of home and roots. It might be all I have. And this town has been really good to me. Not just when I was going through a crappy divorce, but when my birth parents died. I could have been shipped off to a foster parent anywhere, but efforts were made to keep me here, close to my grandparents. When we lost Mom and Dad, the whole community looked out for us after that. I can’t even describe it. And now, hell, I have tabs at nearly every business in town. I do what I can to pay them down, but they know my situation and cut me a break. I’d have goons at the door if this was the city.”

  She ached for him, wanting to help, wanting to alleviate his troubles, but she was so glad he had the support he did.

  “I wish I had a community like this,” she murmured.

  “City life, right?”

  “That’s part of it,” she agreed. “But I had a nice network when Petra was little. You make friends with the parents of your kid’s friends, right? And I relied on them a lot through the divorce, but now all our kids are in high school and we’re all going different directions. I work a lot so that keeps me from doing much socializing. Like you said the other day, in a small town you’re bumping into people all the time. The friendships are constantly reinforced just by going about your day. It’s nice.”

  “Why do you have two jobs? Doesn’t Dean pay support?”

  “Some, yes.” She didn’t get into what she did with Dean’s money. Tucking it away was another of her passive aggressive moves. She still had work to do on her sour streak, she thought wryly. “I got into the writing when Petra was a baby. Kind of by accident. Dean was writing a User Manual for one of the new phones, asked me to type it. I wound up registering for a course on technical writing. It was something I could do around a baby, so I kept at it. The salon management job is a mixture of loyalty and defiance.”

  He sent her a curious glance.

  “Once Dean began his own management climb, he didn’t like that some of his colleagues’ wives came to me for their manicures. It didn’t occur to him they might like me or my work. In his mind, it made me look like a servant or something. Mom wanted to open a second location anyway, so I took over managing the first one. We got good at running it like a franchise and added more over the years.”

  “And now you have a dozen.”

  She nodded. “We’re looking at expanding into Tahoe next. At least, I said I would scout some locations this winter, since I had to put snow tires on my car to come here.”

  “Tahoe,” he said thoughtfully. “Where you could probably charge three times what you’d get for the same thing here.”

  “Four,” she corrected sheepishly, shrugging as she added, “We cater to a high-end clientele. My grandmother started as a make-up artist and got my mother into nails as a kind of add-on service. Once Mom had a family, she wanted to stay in one place, not drive across L.A. to some star’s mansion, but she was good enough that they started coming to her. We learned at the knee of the master.”

  “You and your sister.”

  “And my brother. Never tell a soul,” she said with a finger against her lips. “It paid his college tuition, though.”

  They bumped into more of Blake’s friends, which distracted them from the topic. Then, he took her to the Graff Hotel where he asked Santa to move aside, put on the red hat, and had Liz sit on his own knee while the camera flashed. A glance at the snapshot afterward revealed the two of them looking into each other’s eyes. The glow of happiness surrounding them was surely a trick of light, because the joy seemed palpable.

  But later, when they passed the nail salon on Marietta’s Main Street, with its poster advertising gift certificates and nail polish as the perfect stocking stuffers, she thought she understood what Blake had really been trying to find out when he’d casually asked about her work.

  I’m not rich, she wanted to protest, but she wasn’t poor. She was actually doing really well, considering how hard a lot of single moms struggled. Was Blake a reverse-snob? Incapable of letting a woman assist him when he needed it?

  Don’t, she thought. Don’t ruin it by fretting and over thinking. Just enjoy.

  They wound up spending time at the petting zoo, laughing over the little ones in their face paint and thick jackets squealing with excitement, as they touched a miniature horse and potbelly pig.

  When they wandered back to the truck, as the evening wound down, she was pleasantly tired and mellow.

  “I didn’t buy anything!” she realized, showing him her gloved but empty hands. “I was supposed to shop for Petra and my Mom . . . ”

  “You can do that anytime. How often can you count the lights on a tree and maybe win a snow blower?”

  She laughed as he referenced the draw they’d entered at the hardware store. “I hope I counted right, since I don’t have anything else for Mom. I’m sure she’ll appreciate finding that under her tree. In Santa Monica.”

  “Am I allowed to kiss you yet?” he asked as he unlocked the passenger door of his truck.

  “Yes,” she said shyly.

  He pressed her against the cold door, tenderly ravaging her mouth until they were both breathless.

  “Come home with me?” he asked in a low, gravely voice, nose gently bumping against hers.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “Perfect night,” he said.

  It was. This man, this moment, this season was utterly perfect.

  She hugged him and all of it close, wanting this memory to stay inside her forever.

  *

  The weather cleared and softened late the following week, making it the perfect day to get a tree. Liz was fitting into his world so well, Blake kept forgetting she was actually a city girl.

  When she came out of the house dressed for the weather and stopped, eyes popping, and said, “On horseback?” she took him aback.

  He’d never got one any other way. For about one second he entertained the idea of putting Rocky back in his stable and driving the truck out to the tree farm, then he gave his head a shake. He was not going to pay for a tree when he had a hundred acres of them.

  Still, he experienced a moment of doubt that cut with surprising sharpness down his center. In many ways they seemed made for each other, but she was seeing the easy side of ranching. Maybe the harsh winter and hard work would take a toll in the long run as it had on Crystal.

  “How did you think we were doing this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. On foot . . . ?” Sh
e glanced around, making a face as she noted how far away the nearest copse of trees was. “I’ve never been on a horse.”

  “Well, sweetheart, today is the day.”

  “I don’t even know how to get on, Blake!” Her anxious eyes measured Rocky’s substantial frame.

  “Start with a run from back there and when you jump, you’re going to want to put your hands here . . . ” He pointed to the horse’s rump. “Open your legs—”

  She folded her arms, blinking with tested patience.

  “Come over to the fence,” he said with a grin and a jerk of his head. “And don’t be scared. The snow’s pretty deep, so we’ll be walking.”

  “Oh. I thought you were going to say that means it would be soft if I fall.” She picked her way toward the barn and the fence that encircled the corral.

  “I won’t let you fall. Are you really scared?”

  “Just nervous. What if he doesn’t like me?”

  “Rocky likes everyone. Even Curly. Don’t you, Rock?” He patted the horse’s neck, then coaxed him into position next to Liz as she stood on the rungs of the fence.

  She climbed on smoothly enough, but she was tense, arms clinging around his waist and fists knotting into his jacket.

  “It’ll be fine,” he soothed as he got her centered behind the saddle. “Relax.”

  He would have gone alone if she was genuinely terrified, but her shaky laugh at herself as she tried to ease her grip on him reassured him that she was willing to give it a try.

  A satisfied calm moved through him, even as a distant worry niggled. He wanted her to like his home. His life. He could feel himself showing it to her in all its textures and layers, eager for her approval. He wanted her to become part of this, was making room for her and liking what she brought to it, how she enriched his world.

  And he didn’t know if he could hang onto any of it. Not her, not his ranch. Oh, he would scrape by for another year or two, but without some kind of influx of cash, he was never going to pay down his debts and flourish again. His life would be hand to mouth, until the bank couldn’t extend any more favors and then . . .