Page 40 of Baby It's Cold Outside

Her head flopped over the arm of the couch as the alcohol buzz bathed her in its glow, a stark contrast to the winter wonderland outside. So what if she was drunk at breakfast? There was no one here to judge her and, besides, it must be five o’clock somewhere in the world.

Australia? It had to be well past five in Sydney. In fact, they’d probably already rung in the New Year by now. Did they have a ball that dropped somewhere? she wondered, and then smiled and shut her eyes as the room rocked from side to side.

Gradually Tamara became aware of scraping and then thudding at the door, like something—or someone—very big was stamping its boots. Her head snapped up, and her pulse took off at a gallop. Unfortunately, the room took a few seconds to catch up.

Who the hell could that be?

Georgia had told her the place was hers. It was written on the note. The one she’d attached to the pitcher of New Year’s eggnog she’d so thoughtfully whipped up before making the long drive to New York City early this morning during a break in the awful weather.

Something thumped against the door. Tamara leaped from the couch, quilt dropping to the floor. There’d been reports of looters around with all the unprecedented wild weather they’d been having along the Eastern Seaboard. Not in the deepest darkest corner of Vermont, sure, but maybe this looter had champagne tastes?

The door handle rattled. Her pulse spiked as she wildly scanned the room for some kind of weapon with vision that seemed to turn everything double. She spotted a bag of golf clubs by the door and scrambled over to them.

Something metallic scraped at the lock.

She froze. Was he picking it?

Didn’t they usually just throw something heavy through the window?

She whipped out the closest golf club, her breath loud in her ears as she stood behind the door and watched it slowly open. A blast of cold wind and a flurry of snow preceded the tall, hooded intruder. A surge of adrenaline shot into her system, mixing with the rum. The door slammed shut and she brought the putter down in the direction of the intruder’s head, yelling, “Yaaaaaaa!”

She wasn’t quite sure what happened next but there was a deep muffled curse, then somehow she was flat on her back, pinned to the floor by a hulking weight. Thankfully her parka and multiple layers of clothing cushioned the fall.

For a moment, neither of them moved or spoke and she noticed two things at once. This man—she had no doubt he was male—didn’t feel like some skinny, looting teenager. And he smelled like soap, pine needles, and the wild blue yonder. Looters didn’t smell like that, did they?

An errant part of her, possibly the part that hadn’t had a man on top of her for a very long time, or the part of her that was really feeling the effects of the rum, wanted to stay right where she was and just sniff him. Damn, she’d missed the way men smelled.

But then he shifted and sense returned to her sluggish brain. “Get off me!” she demanded and began to struggle.

Sergeant Luke Jackson had gone straight into combat mode at the sound of the blood-curdling banshee yell, and it took several seconds for the adrenaline spike to release him from its grip long enough to compute the fact that there was no danger. He had no idea who was beneath him, but the landing had been too soft to register it as a threat.

Still holding firm to the attacker’s splayed wrists, his father’s old putter discarded and well out of reach, he looked down into stormy gray eyes. He may only have been able to see an oval cut-out of her face from the confines of the hood she had pulled tight around her head, but it was definitely a woman. No man owned such delicate bone structure and had a nose as cute as that.

“What the hell?” he demanded back at the woman moving ineffectually underneath him. He’d just trudged two miles through a freaking blizzard from the bus depot to be greeted like this?

“Get off me right now you...giant...ass!”

“Who the hell are you?”

The woman stopped struggling and glared at him. “Hey buddy, this is my house. I get to ask the questions and you”—she struggled some more—“are”—more interesting squirming, shoving, and pushing—“squashing me!”

Luke pushed away immediately and stood towering over her. She looked like a felled Eskimo in full winter regalia. “Ma’am, I don’t know who you are, but I think you’ll find that this is my house.”

She gave him an indignant look as she lay there waving her arms and legs like a stranded beetle. “While I appreciate your manners,” the beetle with the elfin nose and pixie cheekbones said, “I’ll have you know that this cabin belongs to the Jackson family.”

Luke nodded. “Yes. Edward and Sophie. My parents. I’m Luke. Luke Jackson.”

He offered her his hand to help her up, fearing that with all those clothes thwarting her attempts she would never make it unaided.

The angry pixie’s eyebrows knitted together as she glared up at him, but reached her mittened hand for his anyway. “Nice try. Luke Jackson is in Afghanistan and I think impersonating a US soldier on active duty is”—she paused as Luke pulled her to her feet—“beneath contempt.”

Luke didn’t bother to look at the portrait of him and Georgia that he knew hung on the wall to his right. He just jerked his thumb toward it and waited patiently for the penny to drop. The woman blinked at the picture as if she was having trouble seeing it. She peered at him, then back at the wall, then back at him, squinting and scrutinizing it carefully, as if she’d been asked to pick him out of a lineup.

The picture had been taken a few years back on his return from his first tour to Afghanistan, but he hadn’t changed that much.

Not anywhere that was visible, anyway.

And then he heard her gasp and watched as her face fell. Yep. Now she was with the program.

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