She stood there for what felt like an astronomically long time, and he didn’t answer. She had no way of knowing if he was home or out on his farm, or if he’d left town for the holidays.
Never one to give up, Bailey reached up and pushed the doorbell again, listening to itding-dongthrough the house. She leaned into the door as she knocked. A few seconds later, a loud beep filled the air, and a man’s voice said, “I’m just coming in from feeding the fowl. I’ll unlock the front door, and you can come in.”
Bailey knew that voice subconsciously, as he had laid behind her and kept her warm for a half-hour until she had woken up.Embarrassment still made her cheeks burn that he’d undressed her and laid down with her in such a state. But she knew there was nothing nefarious or sexual about it.
“Are you sure? I can just—” She cut off as the mechanism on the front door whirred and then clicked.
“I’ll be in in another thirty seconds,” he said, and Bailey tried to find the camera and couldn’t.
Another sign of a lot of money, she thought, as she reached out and opened the door. She entered the house to a friendly, if a little bare, foyer. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting: a bench where he would sit and take off his boots? He probably didn’t use the front door at all, what with all of his work and business out the back. When he had to leave his house, he’d go through the garage. She couldn’t imagine that he got many visitors, because she certainly didn’t.
“It’s Bailey from next door,” she called, and when she didn’t get a response, she peered into the office on her left.
“Wow,” she said at the professional camera equipment set up there. He had cameras and lights and tripods, with battery packs sitting on the desk wherethreemonitors lazily showed a neon screensaver tumbling across them.
“You here, Bailey?” he called, and she tore her attention away from his office and hurried down the hallway into the back of the house.
It opened up to vaulted ceilings and windows that faced south to draw in all the winter light. He had a gourmet kitchen, and a stone fireplace, and plush, comfortable-looking couches. He stood at the back door, wiping his feet and peeling off his gloves.
His face held pinkness from the cold outside, and Bailey simply stared at him. She hadn’t really gotten a good look at him from their first meeting, and wow, the man possessed some seriously good-looking genes.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” he asked.
Bailey took in the absence of a Christmas tree, but the presence of a single stocking hanging on the mantle. No other evidence of the holiday existed, and her curiosity burned at her. Not only that, but a very loud voice shouted at her in her mind that she hadn’t come here to ogle.
She lifted the peppermint bark. “I just came to bring you a little holiday treat,” she said. “And thank you face-to-face for what you did for me a couple of weeks ago.”
Reeves reached up and removed his cowboy hat, hanging it on a hook by the back door, just as she’d suspected.
“Anyone would have done it, Bailey,” he said. “I’ve told you that.”
“I know,” she said, a hint of humiliation running through her. “It’s just, we’re going to be neighbors and all, and I thought I should probably meet you properly.”
Meaning clothed, she thought.
She gave him a smile. “Your house is really nice.”
“Thanks,” he said. “But I just bought it like this, so don’t be impressed.” He gave her a grin then and walked over toward her. She handed him the peppermint bark.
The thought to invite him to her family’s Christmas activities lit up her mind. “Do you have family coming into town for the holiday?” she asked.
“Nope.” Reeves turned his back on her and walked into the kitchen, where he put the bag of peppermint bark on the island next to a box of graham crackers.
“Well, if you’re not busy,” she said. “My family’s doing a Christmas Eve dinner since—” She cut off so abruptly that Reeves turned on the sink and then just stood there and watched her.
“Since what?” he asked, his voice low, undemanding, despite the fact that he didn’t use very many words.
She couldn’t tell him that Otis and Georgia had taken their family out of town for Christmas, so they weren’t celebrating OJ’s birthday tomorrow, and therefore her parents had decided to have their big family dinner on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. She really couldn’t get into her backstory of her biological son in the first five minutes of dropping off a treat.
“We’re just not doing anything on Christmas this year,” she said. “My momma and daddy live up at Whiskey Mountain Lodge, and they do a big tree lighting every year on Christmas Eve, and we’re going to do dinner after that. You’d be welcome to come.”
“To your momma and daddy’s place?” he asked. “Do you have the authority to invite?”
“They invite half the town,” she said. “One more won’t matter.” She didn’t mean to make it sound likehedidn’t matter, and she hoped he didn’t take it that way. “I mean, if you’re not busy.”
“Thank you.” He focused on washing his hands in the kitchen sink. “I appreciate the invite, but I don’t think I can this year.”
Bailey wanted to press him and ask him if he didn’t have people coming in for the holiday, perhaps he was traveling to see them. She told herself not to pry, because she’d spent plenty of Christmases without family in Butte, and a person could look whole on the outside—and, in fact, be devilishly handsome like Reeves—and still carry internal wounds.
