The Christmas Challenge Page 6

  “It does,” he said thinking of how his fellow guides and clients would describe him compared to how he was when he was alone in his head, which was much of the time. And how Nina would have described him. For a moment the scene and the vibrant beauty of Tucker dimmed as he thought about Nina and what she’d said and what he’d lost.

  “And if you’re going to be around then maybe you can help me with my wish,” she said, bringing him back into the moment.

  “I’m going to be around for the month,” he said carefully, thinking ruefully that even that seemed like a commitment. Nina wasn’t all wrong, he mentally kicked himself.

  “And I can help you.” She relit two candles and handed one to him and took one, then she pulled him out to the ice, skating backwards, one hand holding his, and her eyes were pools of mystery he felt he could dive into. “If you’d like. Oh!” She smiled, and even in the dark, her face took on a luminous quality that had nothing to do with the golden light and shadows playing on her face.

  “Instead of a wish, we can make ourselves a challenge.”

  “A challenge?” he questioned. “I thought this was a miracle lake. You don’t need a miracle to complete a challenge. That’s just will and perseverance.”

  “Not for me,” Tucker said. She let go of his hand and then palmed her candle.

  “Here goes.” She squeezed her eyes shut and she looked so adorable that he had to bite back a laugh. Gone was the sexy siren with a voice that curled around his cock and made him remember what it felt like to be a man in control of his destiny.

  “Okay, Miracle Lake,” she whispered like a prayer. And his dark thoughts and dark mood dissipated much like the earlier clouds had drifted apart to reveal the moon and spangled sky. “It’s Tucker. I haven’t been here for a while, I know, but I’ve never asked you anything before. Well, except for Colt Ewing to know I was alive and Nick Palotay but those don’t count because they were seniors and I was being a stupid freshman obviously.” Tucker opened her eyes and looked at Laird. “Are you laughing?”

  “Trying not to.”

  “Thank you for being honest.”

  “Always,” Laird said, meaning it. He’d never been a liar, but now he was one big secret and he hated that.

  Tucker cocked her head. “You mean that don’t you?”

  “I will never say anything I don’t mean to you, Tucker.”

  Her eyes held his and he felt the shared promise. The stirring of friendship. He liked this girl. This woman. It was the wrong time and the wrong place but they had coalesced here and now and life happened when it happened. He’d learned that in his travels, with the betrayal by his close friend, Zen Ireland, with Nina’s casual dismissal of him as a man and a potential father, and with his mother’s secrets.

  He was tired of being alone.

  The thought hit him like a javelin chucked by an Olympian. He’d always been alone and on the move. Where the hell had that thought come from? And why did it pack the power to send him to his knees?

  He looked at his watch. “Still December first, Tucker. But barely. State your challenge.”

  “I will be good,” she faced him, eyes on his as if drawing strength from him or making her statement to him, he wasn’t sure. “I will help Tanner, not piss her off. I will be responsible. I will not lust after Luke. I won’t give Tanner even the tiniest impression that maybe I am thinking about Luke in a sexual way at all because I won’t be.” She tossed her head, her voice getting stronger, and Laird smiled, enjoying the resurgence of the willful, confident Tucker. “I won’t create any scandals while I’m home. Even Carol Bingley, the town gossip, will be mute about me. I will help Tanner with anything she needs for her wedding, her honeymoon, running the ranch. Any emotional or physical support she needs. I will be her sister again. The one she can rely on more than anyone else—well, maybe except Luke of course.”

  Tucker put the candle on the lake and stepped back.

  “Your turn.”

  He took his candle, palmed it, but kept his eyes open and on the flame.

  “I will find the answers I seek in Marietta before the end of December,” he said. “And I will find a town where I will put down roots for at least a year so that I can become the man Nina didn’t think I was.”

  He put his candle next to Tucker’s, a little tense about revealing so much, but really he had no choice since Tucker had just gutted herself in front of him, and he couldn’t be nutless next to her. He braced himself for questions. What answers could he give?

  Instead Tucker skated next to him, laid her head against his shoulder and watched the flames dance. Then she slid her hand into his and he felt like she was giving him so much more.

  *

  The next morning, Laird was up early. He’d done his on the road workout in his motel room and wondered if he should try to join a gym for a month while he was here and sleep in his Jeep instead of a motel. He had plenty of money saved up, but he was naturally financially conservative, and he hadn’t worked in nearly six months while he’d cared for his mother through her illness. She’d left him money, but it didn’t seem right taking it now. So it sat in the bank. And he sat metaphorically, as stuck in limbo as the modest inheritance.

  Only now he was doing something. He was in Marietta. Where his life had begun if only for a brief moment.

  Too edgy to stay still in his room, he showered and headed to the Java Café to meet Tucker. He was early, but so was she.

  “Beat you,” Tucker said cheerfully as Laird strode in. “I got here before the barista even opened the door. I got you another special.”

  Laird turned away from the ordering counter at the Java Café and made his way to Tucker. The sound of her voice continued to cause shivers of awareness to streak down his spine and lodge low in his body, rumbling. It had been over six months since he’d been with a woman, and Tucker had a deep, sexy voice that had a husky timbre that was visceral and immediate, like she had a direct line to his cock. He loved sex, absolutely, but he’d never been a guy who’d jumped to the main event soon after meeting a woman. He wanted to talk to them, get to know them. Sex had always seemed too intimate to have with a stranger, but now, meeting Tucker, he was beginning to understand the appeal. He’d never been instantly aroused by a woman. It was like Tucker breathed, and he thought about sex, and now, with her dark green gaze arrowed on him, her full lips curved in a welcoming smile that held just a touch of rue, it was like all the blood rushed from his head.

  He’d been trying since he met her to focus on her face, her eyes, her expressions, and ignore her body because his hands ached, and actually shook as he imagined how it would feel to cup the curves of her full breasts, smooth his thumbs over her nipples. She made him feel alive in a way he hadn’t since Nina had… He cut off that thought. Dragged his mind back north. He shouldn’t be thinking about sex after what had happened to him. And definitely not with a woman who was giving up sex. They had each made a challenge. Tucker to behave and not cause any waves at her sister’s wedding, and he to get the information he needed so he could once again experience peace. And maybe a family. His. Not someone else’s.

  “Thanks,” he said easily, pulling out a chair, turning it around backwards and straddling it. “You look comfortable,” he said, noting how she sprawled in two chairs, her long, slim legs kicked up, in navy skinny jeans and ending in fuzzy boots, on the next chair. One leg was bent, and she leaned back in the other chair, one arm resting on the table the other relaxed on her bent knee while she smiled at him. He loved how she took up her space. It screamed confidence and was sexy as hell.

  Tucker McTavish oozed sensuality, and Laird harbored growing doubts that she had any intention to keeping to her Christmas challenge. And did he really want her to? He’d spent his whole life seeking adventure and experiences. Here one sat.

  But she was vulnerable. And he felt screwed.

  Plus he had a task to complete, but with so many privacy laws, many he wasn’t even aware of since law and orde
r wasn’t his thing, he was having some worries about completing his challenge as well.

  “I could say the same thing about you,” Tucker’s eyes traveled down his body and back up again, lingering on his wide-legged stance and shocking him back to the present. “Are you really in town a month, Laird?”

  He ran a hand over his jaw. That was the question, wasn’t it? He never stayed anywhere long. Usually just a season. But this was the holiday, and now with his mom dead, he didn’t really have anywhere to go, and that should have filled him with optimism. But for once he wasn’t looking forward.

  He was looking back. Uncomfortably.

  “It’s likely I may stay here,” he said slowly then wanted to kick himself for not being more definitive. “Yes. Here. In Marietta. For a month.”

  Tucker’s eyes rounded. “A whole month? Really? You got family here?”

  Maybe.

  He hoped so. He shook his head no.

  Tucker sipped her chai. He watched her. Everything she did was so graceful, precise, sensual without effort.

  “Although the price of the motel a bit out of town is more than I imagined. Usually I camp, but the earlier snows and temperatures are not making that so appealing. I turn thirty this month.” He ran his hand through his hair. That sounded old. What the hell had happened? Where had the time gone? “Must be getting soft.”

  “Not too soft I hope,” Tucker said.

  The easy, casual flirt should not have made his dick stand up to join in the conversation.

  “Nowhere essential,” he tossed back.

  What was it about her that reached him on different levels simultaneously? He needed to focus this month, figure out who he really was, not avoid the problems by diving into casual sex (not that casual came to mind with Tucker). She seemed complicated. Strong yet vulnerable. Confident yet insecure.

  “Look at you teasing me and not even a cowboy,” she sighed. “You would have made a beautiful cowboy. Actually, with those cheekbones of yours and your jaw and build you look a little bit like my former, very former, dream cowboy now starring in my twin’s dreams, Luke.”

  “Is Luke from Marietta?” he asked curiously, his heart racing a little.

  “No, Phoenix.”

  That would have been too easy. He didn’t like how desperate that quick question made him. Desperate was not his style.

  “I’d look like an idiot in a Stetson.”

  “Doubt it,” Tucker took another sip of her chai, her gaze disturbingly assessing, and he could feel her sizing him up for a cowboy hat. Practically the one profession he hadn’t yet tried. “You’d look edible. But if you need to prove your manliness and are worried about the price of hotel rooms for a month you should probably camp out in your Henley shirt and long johns with only a stick and a baggie like that adventure guy on TV a few years ago. You could wow women with your snow skills.”

  “Until I started leading mountain climbing treks a few years ago, my snow skills were flabby,” he said. “We filmed more desert and jungle survival scenes than snow,” he said. “Because Zen Ireland hated, absolutely hated, the cold. He was a California surfer born and bred. Actually grew up in a huge house on the ocean and was practically allergic to cold. His nose would get cherry red when it dropped below sixty degrees.”

  Tucker nearly snorted chai out her nose. “Do not dash my illusions when I am swallowing,” she said. “No way did you work on that show. That guy was wicked hot.”

  “Way. Met him surfing when he got out of the Army. He was restless, daring. We’d go rock climbing, hiking, and he got the idea on one of our climbs out in Yosemite.”

  “You were in on the development? You worked on the show from the beginning? You were friends? Why didn’t you stay with it? And now you’re a mountaineer?”

  The questions kept coming. Laird felt sweat break out on his scalp, his heart rate kick up remembering the falling out with Zen, one of the closest friends he’d had as an adult. Allowed himself to have.

  “I like to keep moving,” he said vaguely. “Try new things. Life’s to be lived.”

  He’d said that more than a hundred times to different people in different places.

  Tucker rolled her eyes. “So how does that line go over in a bar?”

  “Pretty well, actually,” he shot back.

  “Yeah,” she looked him over thoughtfully, a sexy smile curved her lips. “I think it’s a dumb poser line, but the rest,” she indicated toward him. “Would most definitely have worked on me in a bar or on a boat or in a plane.”

  “On a train,” he added.

  “Someone remembers a bit of Dr. Seuss.” Tucker’s eyes sparkled, and they smiled at each other, and the rest of it faded—the café, his hurt over Nina and what she’d said and done, his bewilderment at what his mother had kept from him—and in that moment, he felt like himself again, no longer lost, his mind endlessly spinning like the cell phone icon searching for the Wi-Fi connection.

  Tucker connected him.

  Her phone buzzed. “My sister. I gotta take. Hey Tanner,” her voice was cautious, and she was twirling a lock of her gorgeous…what was it called, auburn? Russet? Sorrel? He sounded like a box of hair coloring. Whatever, her hair was a gorgeous color and judging by her complexion and the utter lack of roots, it was natural, which made him think about other natural parts of her. Great, he was going to hit thirty this month and regress into a teenager with a walking hard on, speculating about women’s bikini area grooming. Fantastic.

  Tucker hung up and eyed him speculatively. Clearly not happy. “You said you’ve had a lot of different jobs, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, curious. He hadn’t known Tucker long, but he imagined with her, the question could lead anywhere. He hadn’t worked on a ranch, but he had mended a lot of fences and trellises with his vineyard work. He definitely had hammer and nail skills and learning to lasso a cow would be fun.

  “What’s up?”

  “Have you cooked?”

  “Endlessly,” he laughed. “For my mother, who would work twelve hour shifts nursing, and I have worked several restaurants as a line cook and even on a fishing boat one summer. Usually I cook when guiding mountain and rock climbing as well as white water rafting trips,” he laughed. “I even had my own ramen food cart in Portland, Oregon, for a couple of months when I took over for a buddy and his girlfriend when he’d been in an accident, although I changed the menu to ramen items because I’d just come back from Nepal and thought ramen around the world would be a good idea in a city of foodies. Someone hungry?”

  “Lots of someones.” Tucker hauled him to his feet. “Tanner’s desperate. The chef, and that’s a fancy word for what he did, who’s cooked at the ranch for years and his daughter have had a family emergency and Tanner is driving them to the Bozeman airport. That means there’s no breakfast for our ranch hands. Or lunch or dinner. Can you help? I can’t even manage biscuits without turning them into carbon. So the fact that Tanner is actually speaking to me and thinking I can do something about the impending starvation shows the gravity of the situation.”

  She faced him. “I’ll be your whatever that’s called. Assistant. Please, please, please.” Her face was pale, but her eyes shone and her beautiful bow-like lips were so soft and kissable that Laird almost lost the train of conversation. How would anyone ever say no to her even if he hadn’t been intrigued by the challenge? “We will definitely pay you. Can you pull something together for today and quite honestly maybe longer?”

  He laughed. He had begun to wonder if he should try to find some part time work and here it was dumped in his lap. And perhaps being at a well-established ranch he could make a few inquiries about the families and see if anyone knew a teenager who’d given birth to twins and adopted them out thirty years ago. Small towns had secrets and people talked. As someone working on a ranch he wouldn’t stand out as much as a stranger.

  “See, Miracle Lake is already weaving its magic,” Tucker said, pushing him toward the door.

 
“How so?” He continued to sip his latte and already his brain was thinking of hearty breakfast meals with simple ingredients the ranch would be likely to have in stock, but her statement interrupted his train of thought.

  “I am helping Tanner.”

  “Through me,” Laird said amused.

  “I’m going to be your kitchen slave,” Tucker said.

  “That has possibilities,” he said, and then kicked himself. If Tucker was behaving, he was too. That had been easy for the past six months, but now his libido was definitely wide awake and looking for action. Damn.

  Tucker stopped right as he reached for the door handle around her, thinking to be a gentleman so that his chest came in contact with her body. She had a beautiful, rounded ass that he’d been trying to ignore since he met her at the lake. She could help him out by wearing bulky winter parkas that covered neck to knee, but no, not Tucker.

  Her parka’s sculpted to her body, nipped in at the waist and flaring slightly at her hips. Or she wore a bomber style coat so he could enjoy the curve of her ass and long, slim, athletically toned legs encased in skinny jeans that looked glued on. So he felt her curves, and his reaction, already simmering went to full boil. He sucked in a quick breath and took a step back, but already he was at attention. Primed and ready for action. He hadn’t been this hopped up since he’d been sixteen.

  And over a woman who had asked him for help to behave and who had sworn off sex for a month. How dumb could he be? It was like he was trying to start a new career in masochism.

  As if reading his mind and his arousal, Tucker turned around and looked at him, his eyes, his mouth, and then lower, definitely assessing. He could practically hear her thinking, and a shot of desire warred with a shiver of apprehension, because that intense look meant Tucker was up to something and the quirk of a smile seemed like she’d come to a decision.

  “Going to let me in on your plan?” Laird asked.

  “I will owe you forever,” Tucker told him softly, reaching for his hand.