The Christmas Challenge Read online

  Tucker smeared cream cheese on both sides of the toasted bagel, her movements smooth, efficient, and graceful and then offered him half along with a napkin.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. You have manners. And that was the problem, the thing that got Tanner so tweaked. I was just being polite. Because I caught him naked, I went downstairs and made him a latte like he likes it. And Tanner a cappuccino. Then I cut up fruit as I know Luke likes that for breakfast. Tanner likes toast, which I started, but she didn’t eat and just got all bitchy with me. What?”

  He sipped his mocha. Then he gently removed her sunglasses and placed them down on the table. She wanted to snatch them back. She knew her eyes were puffy. She’d never been a beautiful crier.

  “Did you do it deliberately?” he asked quietly. “Remind her of the former relationship?” Laird asked, his voice and eyes curious.

  “What?” The bagel rested on her parted lips. She hadn’t thought about it that way. She stared at him as the whole scene played out differently in her mind, and then she noticed the way his eyes had gone all molten, almost gold instead of the caramel brown, and that just lit a match deep in her core, and she squirmed a little in her chair.

  He muttered something, and it was the first time she’d seen him look slightly disconcerted.

  “You must see that acting like that showed familiarity, a history,” he said, palming his coffee.

  “Yeah. I know them both.” She took a bite of bagel and chewed thoughtfully. Was Laird going to hang up a counseling shingle? She’d lay on his couch. So would every other woman in town. “I don’t sit around and do nothing well. I had to do something, not just stand there stupidly waiting for my sister to come downstairs. I think. I act. And I wanted to know what was up with the quickie wedding. I mean is she knocked up or what? And I wanted to know where I fit in, what she needs to get done before the wedding.”

  Tucker felt like she could practically levitate with all nervous energy humming around her body. Usually she burned that off with riding, hitting the gym, and her favorite, sex. And with Laird, yes please.

  “No.”

  “‘No what?” Laird asked.

  “No having sex with you. Oops. I was just reminding myself.”

  Two women dressed in workout clothes walked by their table just as Tucker blurted out her thought, and one of them took a double take. “Tucker,” she said, elbowing her friend, whose name Tucker couldn’t remember but her bitchy mouse features were familiar. “Talking about sex in a coffee shop. Wow. Who could see that coming?”

  “Just warming up, Marie,” Tucker stretched her arms high above her head and arched back in what she thought of as a sexy yoga pose and smiled at the two women.

  She sipped her chai and smiled as Marie and her friend looked shocked before hurrying to the counter.

  Good. Their asses were getting bigger. See, kids were not worth it.

  “More exercise, less judgement, bitches,” Tucker said sweetly.

  Laird waited until she looked at him. “Back to the conversation or no?”

  Tucker huffed out a breath. “I guess what you’re saying is that Tanner thought I was trying to throw it in her face that Luke and I were once fuzzy bumping buddies.”

  This time she made him laugh and she felt pleased as if maybe the day, the week, the month, the rest of her life wouldn’t totally suck if she could make this beautiful, sexy, and serene gift to womankind laugh. And she’d like to make him howl.

  No. Nope. Not going there.

  She tore off a piece of her bagel and let it hover near her lips. “That was a figure of speech,” she said primly. “I’m not fuzzy.”

  He choked on his mocha, and she smiled her rodeo-winning smile because even though she couldn’t have him, she could at least enjoy a part of him, and that part was fun.

  “Waxing,” she whispered as if spilling state secrets. “Best invention ever.”

  *

  He smiled into her vivid green gaze that encouraged him to laugh with her. God, she was, well, he hated to use the cliché of “breath of fresh air,” but she was like an alpine breeze in summer: fragrant, invigorating, and holding a hint of warmth and of the future.

  “You are amazing, Tucker.” He couldn’t hold back his smile. “You make me laugh, and I haven’t laughed in a while.”

  “Why not?” she asked, putting the bagel piece back on the plate and turning that beautiful green gaze on him.

  God, her eyes were beautiful, compelling, like jumping in a mountain lake, ringed with evergreens. And the way she was sitting made him realize how long her legs were and how flexible. And the black skinny jeans just highlighted how beautifully shaped her legs were and made him fantasize about how they would feel hooked around his waist. Cowgirls were strong. Inner thigh muscles of steel, right? He’d want to find out if he were a different man at a different time.

  He was trying not to get pulled into her sexual orbit, but she had the orbit of Jupiter, and it had been a long time for him, and while he’d felt no inclination since Nina, now was a hell of a time for his libido alarm clock to go off.

  And why wouldn’t her sweater stay on her shoulder? Without thinking, he reached out to slide it back up, but his hand rested on the soft creamy skin and forgot to move. And he forgot to breathe.

  “Laird?”

  Her voice was low, warm, with a husky catch that seeped into him, rain on parched earth. He found himself leaning forward, wanting to tell her. But he was here to gather information. Not spill his guts.

  “Don’t go nosing around me,” he kept his voice light from years of practice. “I’m too boring.”

  “Yeah. You scream ‘dull.’”

  Her eyes narrowed and he could practically hear her brain ticking over. Without thinking, and how many times had he let impulse rule him anyway, he picked up the bagel piece off her plate and held it to her mouth. She took a bite, her eyes never leaving his and Laird felt as if the world shifted a little bit, a tilt to the left and he would be sliding sideways if he didn’t step carefully, think each move out.

  “Okay. If you won’t play, which is very rude by the way since I totally spilled last night like a giddy tween girl, here’s my assessment so far. Enigmatic, tall, dark, and handsome stranger, holds tongue, rolls into town, and lights up Miracle Lake and ensnares local bad girl. Do you have a Harley?”

  “Not practical in winter.”

  “In other seasons?”

  “Why? Do you have a bike or a biker fetish?”

  “I’m thinking of cultivating one since behaving for a month will make me lose my mind so developing a fetish sounds like a good move.”

  “That’s the can-do spirit,” he murmured, amused. “I’m not so dark though. Too much sun. Bleaches out my hair.”

  “Could he be a fallen angel making vows with troubled souls at Miracle Lake?” Tucker intoned. “Do you have wings?”

  “Yes, but they glow. I don’t want to risk blinding you.”

  “You still need the Harley.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said softly, loving their rapport.

  “You’d rock it.”

  “Almost Christmas. I’ll need a secret Santa.”

  “Have you been good?”

  She was teasing. Easily flirting back like a game of Ping Pong, but the question seared what was left of his soul. Had he been good? Six months ago he would have laughed and said “hell yes,” not taking the question seriously. Not taking much seriously except constantly challenging his body and his skills and keeping his clients safe and entertained. But if one believed in Karma, and he did, he’d been a bastard. Figuratively and literally, apparently.

  “Laird,” she leaned forward in her chair, all hints of teasing gone, her hand soft on his arm.

  He could be friends with this girl. And when she wasn’t so hurt and he wasn’t so angry they could be lovers. She knew the game. That he would leave. Or she would leave. But the thought of playing that game made him feel coated
in something slick and dark and oily. For once he was not going to take the easy path, the fun path, the one he instinctively wanted to explore because it was there and why the hell not, he’d only live once.

  “You were at Miracle Lake for a reason,” she said. “So was I. Maybe we could help each other.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know what you were intending to ask for. You know what I want. Maybe we could be a support team. You help me. I help you.”

  “Like AA sponsors?”

  Tucker ran her fingers through her hair and made a face. “Without the nasty rehab part with ugly furniture and the no-drinking-ever-again part, I guess. But no way can I bite my tongue and give up sex for longer than a month. No way.”

  “That’s your miracle? No sex for a month?”

  “Part of it,” she quirked an eyebrow at him daring him to come at her with something. Instead he crossed his arms over the top of the back of his chair and grinned.

  She was so alive. Even hurt and angry she was amazing. Brutally honest. A balls-to-the-wall woman. And if she could suck it up and lay herself bare, then he’d have to match her courage. He felt a tiny stirring of hope, and the dark sorrow that had pervaded his mind and body for the past eight months curled up a little, got sleepy.

  “There is something you could help me with, perhaps,” he said slowly. Could he tell her?

  “Can you meet me tonight at Tucker Lake?” he teased. “I interrupted your ask, and you distracted me from mine. Can we try again?”

  They stood up at the same time. “Done,” she smiled. “I’ll bring the paint to make a new sign for my lake. Now I gotta roll. Make amends or kick some butt to make my sister see reason, but I would love to skate again with you tonight, and if we get there before midnight it will still be the first, and it will be deserted.”

  “You’re on, Tucker McTavish.”

  She smiled and it was as if the sun came out and warmed the air in the café.

  She held out her hand to shake, and he did, but it wasn’t like any business deal or social meeting he’d ever participated in before. Tucker was electric and he felt her touch and her energy all the way to his toes, and it seemed like electricity zinged through his blood disrupting his brain.

  “It’s a date. So come prepared with your challenge and I’ll bring the real deal hot chocolate.”

  Chapter Four

  The best defense was a good offense.

  Or at least that was what Tucker had heard.

  But that platitude was full of shit and not perhaps the best approach between two fiery-haired twin sisters who were cowgirls and prided themselves on their independent spirits.

  “So what crawled up your butt and died this morning?” Tucker demanded marching into Tanner’s sacred space, the bull barn that was divided into larger pens where one mature bull would winter in the worst weather with a younger or smaller bull. Tanner, Jorge, and Josh were herding a twosome out to a snowy pasture. Tanner walked out with the large two-year-old, talking to him, with a coiled cowhide whip in her hand that Tucker had never known her to use and a large specially made stick Josh and Jorge flanked on horses. Ryder ran next to the bull.

  Terrible timing Tucker cursed herself. She was like a gun joke: “Ready, fire, aim.” Her mom used to tease her about that. Tanner had been the steady twin. Calm. Thoughtful.

  One bull out, Tanner marched back in the barn, the whip tight at her side, her mouth a thin line and her freckles blazing on her pale face. Little whirls of bright orange wispy curls practically flew around her face like she had an invisible stylist with a fan following her about.

  “You had a question?” Tanner’s demand was a grenade and Tucker picked it up and pulled the pin.

  “Get over it, okay? So what? Luke and I… had some good times,” she wanted to use the F word, but Tanner was not big on profanity and dimly she remembered she’d harbored the desire to behave, but really where was the fun in that except… She swallowed down the hurt and anxiety that had been building over the past six months when she’d not placed in four rodeos in a row and she’d been dropped by her three biggest sponsors, agent and manager and then two casting agents had said that she was too old to play an ingénue role anymore. Too old! She was just twenty seven. She stayed out of the sun and wasn’t going to Botox herself into an expressionless mask, but she needed her family now. She needed Tanner and the ranch, and she needed to stop obsessing that she’d made a horrible mistake five years ago letting Luke go.

  All those thoughts hurtled around her brain, and she made the mistake of opening her mouth.

  “We fucked and it was fun. Grow up! He’s marrying you, and I’m not poaching.”

  “Finished?” Tanner looked completely unaffected whereas Tucker could barely breathe. She was panting like she’d sprinted around her former high school Grizzlie track twice.

  With what?

  “Tanner, you ready for Dervish and Bruce Lee?” Jorge asked quietly, tall on his horse, his hand on the pen with two pacing bulls snorting.

  Tanner tucked the heavy stick through a leg loop in her Carhartt pants and then ran the coils of the whip along her palm.

  “Yeah. Let’s get those cuties out into the fresh air. It’s a gorgeous day, and they need the vitamin D. Let’s take them to the second pasture enclosure. I want to see how the new configuration works for them.”

  She turned away and lightly jogged toward the pen, talking to the bulls, gauging their moods before she climbed up the fence and dropped down. Even though she was pissed at Tanner for dismissing her, Tucker couldn’t help but admire the way Tanner moved. Not just the confidence with the bulls that ran eighteen hundred to two thousand–plus pounds of sometimes very aggressive muscle, but that she was moving—climbing and jogging. Like a normal cowgirl.

  When Tanner had had an accident in the Copper Mountain Rodeo barrel racing teen competition at age fifteen, she’d not only hit the barrels at racing speed when her horse stumbled, but her horse had come down on top of her. First they’d been afraid she’d bleed out from internal injuries, and then that she’d never walk again with her fractured vertebrae, broken femur, and jigsaw pelvis pieces. But the doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital had performed miracles. It had taken several surgeries and months—months when she and her twin had been separated for the first time in their lives.

  But Tanner had recovered. Slowly. Learned to walk again. But she was never the same. Never whole. Never raced again. Never curled up with her twin on the porch swing and whispered secrets after chores, dinner, and homework was done. Tucker’s beautiful, graceful sister who had loved ballet more than horses hadn’t been able to do the most basic ballet moves anymore.

  And Tucker never forgot that Woodsong had been her horse and that she had asked her twin a couple of days before the rodeo to switch.

  She didn’t realize that she was standing stupidly silent until Josh came up, heavy leather vest in his hand.

  “You need to wear one of these if you’re going to be in here,” he said, holding out the vest.

  “Safety first.” She repeated a favorite line of her father’s and Tanner’s.

  Tucker preferred the horses. Always had. But she’d known Tanner would be in here.

  “When are you going to get off your high bull pen and actually condescend to talk to me?” Tucker asked about half an hour later when Tanner was no longer herding bull pairs out to their designated winter pastures. She tried to make her voice light, mocking to cover her growing dismay.

  Tanner, the one person she’d always been able to count on to take her side, to believe in her, was a million emotional miles away.

  “Tucker, I’m not,” Tanner said, eyes slits. “You haven’t been home for Christmas except a couple of times in years, and when you did come, it was just for a couple of days and then you had to dash off for a photo shoot or an audition or for…whatever, and now when Luke has time off from the rodeo and is relocating here and working as the Montana IBR stock rep, now you want to com
e home for a month, and I’m supposed to be cool with it? To not be suspicious?”

  “Suspicious of what?” Tucker demanded, not backing down even as Tanner stepped into her space. Tucker flinched in surprise because Tanner had been the one with the big bubble when they’d been kids, and Tucker had always wanted in, to hold hands, bump shoulders, sit side by side, touching.

  “Really, you have to ask?”

  The way her sister said “you” pissed her off, and the coldness in Tanner’s usually warm gaze chilled Tucker to the bone. “You think I’m here to try to…what? Get Luke to cheat on you?”

  “Sure it more than crossed your mind.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Tucker breathed.

  “Every boy I introduced you to in college who was a friend or a boyfriend, and I admit there weren’t dozens of them, but every single one you either slept with or they tried to sleep with you.”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “You walked out naked once when a boy and I were heading out to catch up with friends over pizza and a movie.”

  “All my clothes were in the washer,” Tucker shrugged.

  “Unbelievable.” Tanner rolled her eyes like a thirteen-year-old girl. “You just wanted to prove that you were more sexually attractive and available, and yeah, Tucker, you were and you are, but there’s more to life, and I should be over it, but it still burns. But,” Tanner took a step further into Tucker’s space, and their boot toes almost touched. “I totally trust Luke.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Tucker demanded arms crossed over her chest because she was afraid she’d burst into a million pieces if Tanner said one more hateful word. Or she’d say something unforgivable, but Tanner was waving a red flag in her face, and if it was one thing Tucker hadn’t back downed from ever was a challenge. “If you trust him.” Because Tanner wouldn’t be so upset if she really did, right?