Now, to get Kyle back into a good mood. He was quiet and distant, preoccupied. Not that she blamed him one bit. Her blood boiled again at the thought of the restraining order. Fucking Rick the Dick was worse than Scrooge and the Grinch put together. She stood in the kitchen behind the peninsula. Through the glass sliding door across the great room, she looked at the twinkling lights on the outdoor Christmas tree, the blue star at the top shining through the falling snow. It looked like a snow globe out there, like a pure and good place, and she had Kyle to thank for it.
Despite what Rick implied, Arden knew down to her soul that Kyle was a good man. He had his issues like anyone else—and his obvious PTSD complicated that—but he would never lift a finger to hurt her. So far, all he’d been was kind and funny and—oh, hell let’s admit it—sexy as all fuck. If it weren’t for their feud over Camo, she’d be pushing him to stay as long as he could. She wasn’t quite ready to admit she wouldn’t have minded if he decided to relocate from LA to Colorado. But she smiled at the thought of teasing him about being his Colorado native ‘sponsor’ if he did decide to emigrate from California.
She wouldn’t have minded one bit. Because a part of her was pretty sure she was falling in love.
As soon as they’d gotten back, Kyle immediately got to work installing the new cameras and adding them to her system on the laptop. If Arden had tried to do it on her own, it would have taken her a full day and several calls to a helpline, but Kyle had the project done in just over an hour. He’d told her that he worked for a security company, so of course he knew what he was doing, but his speed still surprised her. She’d only just finished making the pie crust, washing the potatoes, and was starting on peeling the apples when he finished.
Kyle was sitting on the couch in front of the fire staring intently at his phone and typing, obviously doing some back-and-forth convo. Camo lay curled up in a ball and sleeping next to him.
“Everything okay?” she asked as she stirred a bowl of chopped apples mixed with cinnamon and sugar.
He looked up at her, his expression neutral. “Yeah. Just catching up on some work.” He glanced back down, typed a little more, then set his phone aside, and stood up. “Okay then. Let’s get down to the business of the ranch, what do you say?”
“It’s only late afternoon. I don’t have to feed everybody for another couple hours and two of the owners came by while we were in Lyons to check on the horses.” She poured the apples into the waiting pie crust.
“No, no.” He walked to the other side of the peninsula. “I mean theimportantbusiness.” His mischievous grin was back, much to Arden’s relief.
“Importantbusiness?” She laid the top crust over the pie and tucked in the edges to make a crust. “Do tell.”
“Arden,” he admonished, shaking his head. “Do you know what day it is?”
Oh. “Ummm.” She tapped her chin. “Thursday! It’s Thursday.”
Kyle snorted. “Try again, Ebenezer.”
Trying not to laugh, Arden put the pie in the oven and set the timer. “Do you mean, I don’t know…Christmas Eve?”
“She’s a genius, ladies and gentlemen!” Kyle slow-clapped while Arden tossed a balled-up kitchen towel at his face.
“Okay, so it’s Christmas Eve. The only important business I have is the usual. Feed the animals and feed the humans.”
“Eb-en-ez-er.Scrooge.” Kyle gestured around the great room. “We need to get this place decorated.” He clapped twice. “So, come on, move it. Let’s get the rest of the boxes down from the attic already. Chop-chop.”
Arden shook her head laughing. “You don’t need to do this. The tree outside is more than enough.”
Kyle turned serious. He came around the peninsula. He took her hands in his. “It’s not enough,” he said softly. “You deserve more. You deserve to have the nicest Christmas imaginable. You’ve lost…a lot. Let me make it up to you, even just for a day. All I’m asking for is twenty-four hours where the world out there doesn’t exist. It’s just the two of us on this ranch.”
Arden pushed down her grief and the thought that Kyle would be gone after Christmas day, either with Camo—leaving her alone—or without the dog and hating her for it.Just for a day. Okay. She could do that. She could pretend just for a day that everything was all right and that it would keep on being all right. Arden was damn good at pretending that very thing. At glossing over the ugly, horrifying bits of life and getting on with things.
“Race you to the attic,” she said, then pushed past him and ran toward the hall. He quickly caught up, swooped her up in his arms, and carried her laughing to the spare bedroom door. Then instead of carrying her in, he turned his back to the doorway, set her down, and backed in while pushing her away as she tried to get past him.
“You big cheater!” She tagged his arm.
“But I won,” he said smugly. Goddamn, why did smug have to look so sexy on him?
“Oh, you think so? I’ll have my revenge.”
“Really? How?”
“Two words.” She held up her fingers. “Spiked. Eggnog.”
He crossed his arms. “I doubt it.”
“Trust me. Spiked eggnog can be a lethal weapon. Especially the way I make it.”
Kyle grinned and her knees turned to plum pudding. “Challenge accepted.”
The rest of the evening passed like a dream, like they were the ones living in the snow globe. They got the boxes of decorations down and sorted, but without a tree—the Volker family always bought a live tree from a neighbor’s tree farm—Arden had no idea where to hang everything. Until Kyle noticed the box of fake evergreen garland and came up with the idea of putting it across the mantel and pinning either end up the wall and across the edge of the ceiling, then hanging all the decorations on it.
