Page 6 of Silver Hills' Christmas Miracle

There was a flicker of something in Rook’s eyes that I couldn’t decipher. Wishful thinking had me believing it was appreciation or thankfulness that I felt safe with him, but Rook was a hard man to read. He hardly ever smiled, and he was always so focused on what my father asked of him that nothing else seemed to matter.

“So…” I moved around the kitchen, sliding my hands over the worktops. The edges were warped with age, and my fingertips caught on several scratches and notches left in the wood. “What do we do now?”

Rook moved around the room, closing the curtains after checking the windows and securing the back door. When he passed close to me, a burst of warmth from his body turned my arms to gooseflesh and my mouth ran dry.

“Now, we wait for the call.”

“What call?”

“The call that says the manor is safe and that asshole has been apprehended.”

I snorted softly and rested both my elbows on the counter. “He didn’t look like he was going far after you punched him.”

“Maybe.” Rook disappeared through the door, and I closed my eyes, tracking the sounds of him moving through the rest of the house.

Being here with Rook definitely wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, I’d dreamed about it once or twice when he first started working for my father. The only thing that turned me off was that he wasa much older man, and given his relationship with my father, I knew there was no way he would look at me as anything other than his friend’s kid.

That didn’t stop my mind from wandering constantly, and with a shiver of fear still echoing in each heartbeat, I wanted him near me. Being held in his arms was a taste of what it would be like to be close to him.

I wanted that.

The floorboards creaked. I opened my eyes, and Rook had returned to the kitchen.

“There’s a bedroom and a bathroom if you want to wash up. Clothes were dropped off here maybe a month ago, so if you want to wash up and change, you can.”

“Sure.” I nodded once. “So, we’re just going to be here until the call?”

“Correct.”

“How will we entertain ourselves?” I asked with a small, teasing smile. Rook’s face remained blank, but that only spurred me on. I knew there was a man with personality hidden under there, he was just too much of a soldier to let it show.

Yet.

Just as I went to press him further, my stomach suddenly flipped and a gurgle of hunger filled the air between us. My cheeks flared red-hot and I pressed one hand over my abdomen.

Rook smirked slightly. “Nerves or hunger?”

“Hunger… I think. Aw man, I was going to buy a pizza from the store after I picked up the decorations. Wait, my cart will still be in the aisle with everything I picked up, and I had the last crystal reindeer. Some asshole is going to get that now.”

Dejected, I slumped down onto the counter.

“There’ll be other reindeer,” Rook replied. He moved past me, and I closed my eyes, breathing in the warmth and faintscent of coffee that clung to Rook. “I can’t help you with that, but I can get you something to eat.”

“Okay,” I sighed deeply. “Amaze me, soldier boy.”

“So, it’s November,” I said over a forkful of rice. Rook sat at the other side of the table and didn’t look up. “You’ve been working with me since May, and I don’t know anything about you. Notreally.”

Rook finally looked up.

“I mean, I know you met my Dad in college and saved his life one night when he drank too much. He uses that story all the time to try andconnectwith the kids. I know you joined the military and you two kept in touch with letters.” I stabbed at the chicken on my plate. “But that’s it.”

“Sounds like you know everything,” Rook replied. He ate swiftly, shoveling the food in as if someone were going to come along and snatch it from him. Maybe this counted as down time and he needed to be back on alert. Protective.

“That’s nothing,” I said. “That could be anybody’s life. Literally. I want to know something aboutyou.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

I rolled my eyes. “Bullshit. You’re not a politician so you don’t have to lie. Come on, tell me something.”

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