Page 16 of The Christmas You Crash

“A thirteen.”

Her brow rises. “Damn. Okay, well, hopefully, you two are close in size. Be right back.” She disappears into the room off the kitchen. There’s some rustling, a few curses, and the slamming of a closet door, and then she’s pushing a pair of boots into my waiting hands. “They’re twelve and a half, but they’ll have to do. You can’t wear those sneakers outside in this. You’ll get frostbite.”

“Thanks.” I wince when I shove my feet into the boots. They pinch my toes, and they’re not very comfortable, but they’ll do for now. Hopefully, all of this is unnecessary. If we’re lucky, we’ll walk into the garage and find a wall of cut wood waiting to be burned.

“Come on, then.”

We’re not that lucky.

“Shit,” Lexi mutters. Her eyebrows pull together as she twists her lips to the side in frustration. “This is barely enough for the next two days, even if we just wanted to keep the fire going for ambiance.”

Flexing my injured hand, I can only hope Coach Cross has a massive pile of pre-cut wood out there, because chopping firewood is the last thing I should be doing right now. “Where does your dad keep the rest of it?”

Lexi worries at her bottom lip, nodding her head toward an exterior door. “This way.”

Icy wind smacks me in the face as soon as we exit the shelter of the garage. This is no longer the idyllic snowfall of the nightbefore, and I’m glad neither of us had to navigate this weather yesterday on the drive up. The little Civic in the garage that must be Lexi’s wouldn’t have fared any better than my ridiculous sports car.

“Oh my god,” she says, her teeth chattering.

“We should bring in as much wood as we can,” I say to Lexi’s back as I follow her around the side of the cabin. “We don’t want to come out here again tonight after the temperatures drop.”

“No kidding.”

We come to a stop in front of a blue tarp draped over a stack of wood. It’s a large pile—plenty to get us through the week—and I mutter a prayer to the hockey gods that it’s already split before tugging the tarp off.

“That’ll be enough, right?” Lexi looks between me and the wood. Less than a third of it is pre-split. The rest are thick enough pieces that they’ll need to be quartered, at least.

“I hope so,” I say, trying to do the math. There’s not as much split as I’d like, but with my injured hand, cutting more is out of the question, absent an emergency scenario. As long as we don’t lose power for more than a few hours, we should be fine. And hockey gods help us if that happens. I doubt either of us is prepared for something like that.

When I return my attention to Lexi, she’s staring at the wood with a troubled expression. My anxiety has bled into her, and I kick myself.

Keep your shit together, Ryder. Don’t freak Lexi out.

I press a gloved hand to her shoulder. She looks up at me, blinking owlishly, and I fight the urge to wrap her in a hug. I want her to know that everything will be okay, but she doesn’t know me. I don’t think that would go over well. Instead, I say, “I saw a wheelbarrow in the garage. I’m going to drag it out here. We can stack the wood in it, so we’re not making a bunch of trips.”

“Okay.” She nods. She’s still worrying at her full lower lip, and it’s killing me. “Thanks, Ryder.”

Pushing a wheelbarrow through eight inches of snow sucks. I’m sweating, swearing, and grumbling under my breath by the time I make it to Lexi. Her eyes widen as she watches me struggle, and I can tell she’s fighting a smile. Those full lips of hers twitch and curve before she schools her expression into something neutral.

“Do you need help?” She hurries over to me, ready to help me drag the thing, when she loses her footing. Her emerald eyes go wide, her arms flail in a futile attempt to regain her balance, and her lips pop open in anOshape. “Shit!”

I close the distance between us without thinking. My hands grab her hips as Lexi’s latch on to my shoulders, and her face smashes into the puffy down of my coat with a softoomph. The impact is enough to cause me to slip, and there’s a split second of clarity as her wide eyes lift to mine. We’re going down, and there’s nothing either of us can do to stop it.

Lexi’s not tiny. She seems to be somewhere around average height. She’s thin, but in a fit sort of way. I know she’s strong after watching her do her yoga this morning. But I’m six-foot-five. She’s a pixie compared to me. If I land on her, it’ll hurt. So, I do the only thing I can. I wrap my arms around her and twist my body.

The snow cushions our fall, but Lexi still lets out a little squeak of worry as she lands on top of me. Her hands grip my shoulders, and she’s tucked her face into my neck, so we don’t crack our skulls together. Every single inch of her body is pressed against mine, and for a moment, I don’t feel the snow. The cold doesn’t seem to touch me. All I can feel is her warmth, the rapid puffs of her breath against my neck, and her thigh pressing against the hardening length of my dick.

Shit.

“You okay?” I ask. Hopefully, she doesn’t notice the raspy quality my voice has taken on.

Her lips feather ever so slightly over my neck as she sucks in a few deep breaths, and fuck, if I don’t want to switch our positions, throw her onto her back, and cage her in with my body. If it wasn’t for the snow—and the fact that she’s Coach’s daughter and therefore completely forbidden—I’m not sure I’d be able to restrain myself.

“Lex?”

“I’m okay,” she finally whispers. “I’m okay. Are you? I landed on you. Did I hurt you?”

“I’ve had two-hundred-pound guys land on me in brawls on the ice,” I reassure her with a grin. “You didn’t hurt me.”

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