Page 28 of Santa's Girl
“Maybe tonight you are.”
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. The fire popped. The mountain wind howled once through the chimney, and the smell of smoke and cold air filled the space between us.
Every instinct I had told me to keep it easy, keep it distant.
But right then, with her standing there in my grandfather’s cabin, looking like trouble wrapped in Christmas, distance was the one thing I couldn’t find.
The silence stretched thin enough to hum.
I could hear the clock ticking, the fire shifting, my own pulse in my ears. She was standing close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off her, smell the faint sweetness of her shampoo.
I should’ve moved. Said something.
Instead, I sat there like a fool, caught between wanting her gone and wanting her closer.
When she tilted her head, lips parting like she was about to say something, I thought—just for a second—she was thinking the same thing I was. My hand twitched on the arm of the chair, ready to reach out?—
And she walked right past me.
Into the kitchen. Opened the cabinet.
Poured herself a glass of water like we hadn’t just been standing on the edge of something dangerous.
“Came down for this,” she said lightly, holding up the glass. “Thanks for the whiskey, though.”
She turned and headed for the stairs, hips swinging with a confidence that made my chest tighten and my thoughts short out. The firelight caught her as she reached the landing, casting her in gold for half a heartbeat before she disappeared down the hall.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“Damn,” I muttered to the empty room.
Didn’t see that coming.
The old arm chair hadn’t done my back any favors.
Neither had the whiskey. Half a bottle gone and I still hadn’t taken the edge off.
I woke before dawn, throat dry, head heavy, the cabin colder than it had any right to be.
Fire from last night had burned low, so I stoked the woodstove in the kitchen—the practical one—and then went outside to split a stack of logs. The air bit sharp enough to sober me.
By the time the sun finally crawled over the ridge, the storm had broken. The sky was clear, blue as steel, but the roads were another story—nothing but drifts and glare ice. No way we were getting down today.
Better safe than sorry.
Which meant a long day snowed in with Becca.
I was on my third armload of wood when the stairs creaked.
She appeared in the doorway, hair messy, face still soft with sleep.
“You sure the roads are really closed,” she said, voice teasing, “or do you just like my company?”
I muttered something that might have been a word and went back to stacking logs. “Gotta check the trucks.”
“The ones buried under three feet of snow?”
“Those.”
