“I remember you.”
Her stomach flipped up and over, and then did it one more time. “Good. Uh, I plugged in a bunch of lights and killed the power to my uncle’s house. I might have shut off the heat, too–I’m not sure. But this delivery kid said I should call you–” she cut off before she blathered on about how she didn’t want to call him because he was too hot to be alone in a house with–not that she would do anything untoward, but she would embarrass herself beyond measure.
Actually, she might have already done that.
“I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Oh! Shoot. I don’t mean to take you away from your family.” She shoved her face into the couch. She wasn’t fishing for information on his marital status, but she sounded like it.
He chuckled. “Collin has practice for the school pageant tonight, so I’m free.”
She held onto that info and rolled it around. Did that mean he wasn’t married? Or did it mean that his wife was taking their son, and so he had the flexibility to take a work call? Ah! She shouldn’t care so much. This was bad. So bad. Letting people into her life was hard enough, but letting them into her heart was impossible. If she gave in to this attraction and did something stupid, like ask Ethan on a date, her heart would definitely get involved.
“Text me the address.” Little boots pounded the floor on the other end. “I’m coming, Collin. I’ll see you soon.” He said the last part to her.
“Okay,” she managed before hanging up the phone. With her face on the couch, she started a pep talk. “He’s just a man. A handsome man. A man who works hard and is a great father. A man who takes time to lay under a tree and look at the lights.”
“Can I have my phone back?” asked Cody, who was standing right next to her.
Valerie jumped up and screamed. Cody stepped away from her. No doubt her face was red. It was certainly hot enough to be the color of a Christmas stocking. “Sorry!” She fanned her face. “I–you scared me.”
“You scared me.” He smiled easily.
“Here. Um, can you send Ethan my address?”
He bobbed his head, typing as he headed for the door. “Done! Bye.”
“Wait!” She scrambled to the kitchen, where she’d set the pastry boxes. One of them had two cinnamon rolls. She slipped a fifty under the string. “Thank you for your help.” She handed it over.
He grinned. “Thanks! Wow! That’s really nice of you.”
She lifted a shoulder. “It’s Christmas. Buy your mom a nice gift.”
“I will.” He left, and she glanced around at the room, noting the darkness growing thicker. There was no way she was going to light a bunch of candles. Nope. Candlelight was too romantic.
She would, however, fix her hair.
She took off at a run toward the guestroom. She might be a damsel in distress, but that didn’t mean she had to look like one.
CHAPTERTWO
Ethan stood on the doorstep of the mountaintop mansion and whistled in appreciation of the enormous wooden doors. He could easily see his breath in the moonlight that bathed the courtyard in a soft, silver light. Up here, the stars were clear, and he could touch the Big Dipper; it looked that close.
“These doors belong on a castle,” he muttered as he used the flashlight on his phone to find the doorbell. Over the river and through the woods, Grandma’s house had nothing on this place. With the security gates and guards at the entrance and the twisted turns to find the home, he might as well have had to cross a mote and scale a wall to find this place.
The general outline of the home was country, with several wings and large windows. Though the doors were large enough to be a drawbridge, they looked more like barn doors than anything. The rest of the house was barn-like too. The weathered wood and stone exterior gave it a feeling of being old though it couldn’t have been more than ten years built.
There was a carriage house off to the right with several large garage doors and the half-doors he’d seen in pictures of horse stalls with horses poking their heads through. A fenced round pen was up a level. Since the lot was on the mountain, they’d used boulders to create retaining walls and spots of level ground. Between the house and the garage was a hitching post. Next to it was a rustic wooden bench with wagon wheels as armrests. He glanced around, half expecting a herd of wild horses to thunder up the mountain and run circles around him or a band of train robbers to ride through, shooting their pistols in the air.
The door swung open, and the woman from the Christmas Shop, the one Collin couldn’t stop talking about, and he couldn’t stop thinking about, stood before him. She wore a heavy sweater two sizes too big over her clothing and a stocking hat. She looked so cute, all bundled up. At the Christmas Shop, she’d seemed glamorous with her fur-lined wrap, perfect hair, flawless skin and makeup, and those fancy boots that probably cost more than three months' salary.
She was so far out of his league he chickened out and didn’t ask her to hot cocoa tonight. He’d wanted to. Mainly because she and Collin had hit it off. There weren’t a lot of women out there who would get into a child’s world, and she’d done it without hesitating. At least, that’s what Collin told him. His son didn’t say exactly that, but he did say she went into the store and got right down on the ground with him. Ethan would like to climb under a tree with her.
That sounded dirty.
He didn’t mean it like that.
He meant that he’d like to stare up through the branches of a Christmas tree and get to know her better.
