Rancher’s Christmas Storm by Maisey Yates

Five

Jericho woke up and realized that the room was cold. And that he was very warm.

She wasn’t touching him, but there was only a scant foot between the two of them, and he could feel the heat radiating off her body. He had tried initially to get under only one layer of the blankets, but it had just gotten so damned cold, that he had ended up surrendering to the need to get beneath them. And that put them far too close for his comfort.

And he needed to get that fire going again.

He stood up and looked out the window, pulling the curtains back. It was gray, early. The sun would probably be up in another half hour or so. But he wasn’t quite ready to face the day. Not considering what they had ahead of them.

Because the snow had piled up impossibly high underneath the trees, and one thing was certain, even if the snowplow had been out this far, his truck was stuck on the side of the road. And he was going to have to get to a space where he could get a tow truck.

And right now, none of that was looking likely.

So he got the fire going again, and eyed the bed. And the space Honey had crowded into.

He lay back down, one layer beneath the blankets, and stared directly up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the way her breath fanned over his neck.

She was Jackson and Creed’s little sister. She was practically a sister to him. And what he’d said to her last night had been true. He had always known that she was just a kid grieving her mom.

And it had never really bothered him that she didn’t treat him like there was something grieving and broken in him. It was funny to see her distress over it. Like she thought she should’ve been sweeter and kinder for some damned reason.

As if he was suddenly breakable, because she realized they shared a common grief.

He’d always known that.

The fact that she was such a determined person. The kind of person who did just sort of get along with things... That was one reason he... Well, he recognized it. Because life was hard, and somehow you had to keep going. She was good at that. And he admired it.

Gradually, he realized that he wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep. And he decided the better part of virtue would be getting the downstairs warmed up and figuring out some breakfast. And most especially coffee. He figured round two of bacon and eggs wasn’t the worst thing in the world, and did that up quickly, and then gave up a prayer of thanks when he found a percolator and some coffee.

He set that on to steep and then decided to go back to the bedroom.

He didn’t grab a lantern because the light was gray, and he could see more or less, and he’d taken decent note of the layout of the place the night before.

He pushed the bedroom door open and saw Honey, now curled up firmly in the middle of the bed.

He started to cross the space, but bumped against the dresser and knocked her suitcase down. It popped open, landing on its end, the contents spilling out.

“Shit,” he muttered, bending down to pick it up. He reached down to begin to shove the items back inside and recognized the texture of the handful of things that he grabbed.

Lace.

He had an entire handful of lingerie. Because the suitcase was... Well, hell, it appeared to be 90 percent see-through underwear.

He was frozen. Completely and totally frozen, and grateful for the fact that he couldn’t see all that well, because if he had too much of a sense of the kind of panties Honey was into, he might just die of a heart attack. And he didn’t need that kind of drama, not on everything else.

He didn’t have that kind of restraint; he damn well did not.

But it was too late. Because he was already figuring out exactly what these panties consisted of from just a casual touch, and his mind was constructing highly visual fantasies.

He heard a squeaking sound, and then she sat up, just in time to see him crouched there, holding on to her clothes.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I knocked your shit over,” he said. And he shoved it back into the suitcase as quickly as possible and turned the thing flat.

“Don’t go through my things,” she said, climbing out of the bed and scrambling over to the suitcase, viciously pushing the clips back down.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I just came to tell you that I made coffee. And bacon and eggs.”

“Well, fine,” she said.

“I’d suggest you get changed, but I don’t think you have a change of clothes in there.”

“Oh, you had to say something.”

“Yeah. Apparently I did.” He had meant to say something, because at the end of the day, it was his bad that he knocked the suitcase over and it wasn’t really his business what was in it. But he had seen it. He couldn’t unsee it. Not even a little bit.

“A gentleman wouldn’t comment.”

“I never said that I was a gentleman.”

“Well, that is... That is very clear and obviously true.”

“Settle down, Honey.”

“Do not tell me to settle down. Do not tell me to settle down when you’re the person who...who has been manhandling my things.”

“Were you planning on actually working up there?”

“I was going to have the rest of my things sent. But in point of fact, I was intent on launching a seduction.”

“Hell. I need coffee.”

He turned and stomped out of the room, went down the stairs.

And he heard her furious footsteps behind him.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said. “I was on a mission to lose my virginity.”

Everything in him went quiet. Still.

He turned, and he couldn’t really make out her face in the dim light. Couldn’t tell if she was angry or horrified that she let that slip. Couldn’t tell what she’d been thinking by doing it.

Virginity.

She had been going up there to lose her virginity to...

To some random dude.

And he would never, ever, be able to get that image out of his head. That Honey Cooper was a virgin.

That she was ready to lose it. That she had a whole bunch of lingerie designed for that very thing in that suitcase up there.

He was only a man. And what really worried him was that he might have more in common with Hank Dalton than he had previously realized. Because he was a little bit of a womanizer and always had been, but this was something else. This felt like a compulsion. A tug.

And he didn’t want to think about it. But it was there. And it was driving him.

And he felt...

It was deeper than the attraction he’d felt before.

Something in him felt like he would never really be satisfied if he didn’t strip her naked right then and there, kiss her lips and...

Coffee.

“I am getting coffee,” he said.

“Does that bother you? Does it bother you to know that I was taking control of my life and my sexuality?”

“I was happy to previously have never thought about your sexuality,” he said through gritted teeth.

Such a damned lie.

But a virgin? A virgin. He had not considered that. Not ever.

“Well. How nice for me. That’s the problem, Jericho. I could stay in Gold Valley and remain a sexless, boring object that just sits around the winery, not seen as somebody who could take over, not seen as somebody capable of being the boss, not seen as an actual woman, or I could go off and make a life for myself.

“So maybe you don’t understand why I might want to get a new job, or sleep with the man who gave me that job. Honestly, those things are accidentally linked. I met him on a dating site. I wasn’t going to take work from him, but the offer came up. And it...it seemed infinitely better to what I had. Seemed infinitely better than dying on the vine out in Gold Valley.”

“Let me tell you something,” he said, breaking his own rule and mandate about going to get the coffee. “There’s a whole lot out there in this world, good sex and bad sex, and none of it makes you who you are. You make you who you are, and there should be no reason to go out and fling your virginity at the nearest person you can find just because you’re unsatisfied with the state of things.”

“It doesn’t matter, and yet you are lecturing me on the fact that I shouldn’t throw my virginity away? Can you see how those two things conflict with each other?”

“Dammit,” he said. “That’s not the point of anything. Just sit... You don’t need to find the first guy you’re remotely interested in and...”

He didn’t like any scenario, but for some reason he extra hated Donavan.

“You don’t know who I’m interested in. You don’t know who I have been interested in. And who I haven’t been. You don’t know as much about me as you think. Look, I admitted that I don’t know as much about you as I should. That I kind of just saw you as... It doesn’t matter. But the fact that you knew that I was a grieving little girl doesn’t mean that you know me now.”

“No. It doesn’t. And if I’m honest... I figured that you... I mean... You’re twenty-two.”

“I know how old I am,” she said.

“I figured you had.” He gritted his teeth. “You know. If pressed to think about it.”

“Well, I know you have, because you flaunted all over the place. And that’s what I don’t understand. How is it okay for you to do that, but you’re all up in arms about me.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said.

“Why do you think I would get hurt?”

“Because women do,” he said. “They end up making rash choices about sex and they get hurt.”

“Wow. That is the most... You are infuriating. And you have no right to comment on anything. None at all. I didn’t want you to see that suitcase, I didn’t want you to know about any of this.”

“Why did you tell me?”

She sputtered. “I need coffee.”

She brushed past him and went into the kitchen, grabbing hold of the percolator and the camp mug—that was identical to the plate she’d used last night—and pouring an amount in. “I guess it would be too much to hope that they had half-and-half.”

“Sorry. Nothing quite so civilized.”

“Well, that’s just terrible.”

She just served herself up a heaping portion of eggs and bacon, then retreated into the living room, where there was a fire going. He stayed in the kitchen, stood while he ate.

This was fine. It was early, and the situation they were in was weird. They didn’t need to carry on talking about her hymen, or whatever. He didn’t care about things like that. He never had.

So why his brain should be stuck on Honey and her sexual status, he didn’t know.

Maybe because he’d been too damned fascinated by her to begin with, and now that he knew for a fact no man had ever touched her...

The idea of being the first one to do it...

Hell.

And no.

As if she hadn’t been off-limits to begin with.

After he got the coffee into him, he felt a little more balanced. And he took himself into the living room, where Honey was sitting, her giant bird book on her lap, her empty plate beside her. She was studying the birds.

“How are the birds?”

“Much the same as I left them,” she said, sniffing.

“Good. Good.” He looked at her. “You know speaking of birds. And bees...”

“No,” she said, holding up her hand. “I could happily never have this discussion with you, Jericho.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s awkward. Because I’m going to die of being awkward.”

“It’s just...” He didn’t know why he couldn’t leave this alone.

He had to...deal with it. Talk about it until he wasn’t so preoccupied with it. Make it feel like something normal and not taboo and definitely not the source of a host of new fantasies surrounding a woman he never should have had any fantasies about in the first place.

Let alone fantasies about being her first.

“Look,” he said. “It’s just that... Women get a lot of feelings around sex.”

“Oh,” she said. “Women. Women get a lot of feelings around sex. Which is why you are prowling around like an angry cat unable to drop the subject.”

“I’m not prowling. Most especially not like a cat.”

“Panther.”

“Not less offensive.”

“Why?”

He knew why. Because he felt like a predator all of a sudden. Stuck in the house with her. Like a fox in the henhouse, if he had to choose. No. He had control over himself. He was not Hank Dalton.

He looked at Honey, who was staring yet more resolutely at the birds.

“Are there new birds?”

She didn’t look up. “I can report that there are no new birds since yesterday.”

“But you seem very committed to the book.”

“Just let me deal with the awkward situation by pretending to be engrossed. I think we both know that’s what I’m doing. Why can’t you do the same?”

He didn’t know.

“Because. Ignoring stuff doesn’t make it go away.”

And that was the biggest load of bullshit he ever spewed in his life, because if he was good at one thing, it was ignoring feelings until they went away. Because he had been a lonely, sad kid who had just pushed those feelings aside and made himself tough. Because he had been forced to be grown before he ever should’ve been, taking care of his mother and missing so very much being the one that was taken care of. Because he had developed resentment heaped upon resentment at the father who wasn’t there.

Who hadn’t given them enough money to survive the medical bills that were piling up. Because his mother—because of her pride—refused to accept any money from Hank, or to allow Jericho to ask for any. Yeah. He was a champion at ignoring emotions. A damned king.

And he flashed back to the moment in the winery before he found out that Honey was leaving. Before she yelled at him. And he suddenly had an inkling as to what was going on here. It was an excuse. An excuse that his body was latching onto like a champion. She had introduced something interesting, and he had taken that as an opportunity to swing wide the door on the attraction that had been building there for longer than he cared to admit.

It was harder right now to deny how attracted to her he was than it ever had been. His blood felt hot with it.

It had become harder and harder to think of her as the little girl she’d once been.

The image of her now had fully replaced the one of the past, and it was even hard for him to think of her solely as Jackson and Creed’s little sister. They worked together. They spent a lot of time at the winery together. And he saw her, her moods, her work ethic. Her strength. She was snappy and feisty and every inch the kind of woman he’d love to tangle with if she weren’t...

No. That was a lie. She was not the kind of woman he’d want to tangle with if she weren’t Honey Cooper. Because she was too... She was too earnest. Everything that she felt and did came from a very real place. Including all the anger she’d spewed at him back at Cowboy Wines, and...even her running up north to go sleep with some guy. Because she was put out about the situation at the winery.

Like she was trying to shed her skin, shed her expectations. And he didn’t do earnest. He didn’t, because there was nothing he could do in the face of it. Because he had spent so many years deadening his own feelings. And he didn’t know what to do with the person who simply...hadn’t.

“Isn’t there something to do? Like some manly homesteading thing? That will get you out of my grill.”

“I made you breakfast,” he pointed out.

“And it was appreciated. The coffee was good. But... Isn’t it a full-time job survivaling?”

“Survivaling isn’t a word.”

“It is. It’s what we’re doing. We are survivaling.”

“We’re surviving.”

“No. Because it’s like—” she waved a hand “—survivalist stuff. It’s not just like surviving.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re ridiculous?”

But the ridiculousness didn’t ease the tension. She was too cute, sitting there on the overstuffed couch by the fire, woolly socks on her feet, her brown hair in a loose knot on her head. As she held a giant book that opened across her whole lap and pretended to read it.

She looked up at him. “Oh. All the time.”

“So, you want me to go survivaling. And what are you going to do? Sit here reading about birds? How is that useful?”

“A solid database of avian knowledge can always be useful, Jericho.”

He stared at her for a long moment. At the way the sun glowed on her skin. The curve of her cheekbones, her round, pink mouth. Her whiskey-colored eyes.

She was a pretty creature. No doubt about that.

The kind of pretty, delicate thing his hands could easily spoil. And he would do well to remember that.

“For what?”

“For example, I will know which birds we can cook and eat if it comes down to it.”

“You know, I think I’m going to go ahead and hope we skip that part. There’s no way the weather’s going to keep up like this.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it would have kept up overnight,” she said, putting the book down and scrambling to the window, looking outside. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

He didn’t want to say that he hadn’t either. Didn’t want to acknowledge that this was outside of his scope of experience. “It’ll be fine. We are really very okay with our setup.”

“Yeah. Except for the whole being out of touch with civilization.”

“We don’t need civilization. We have each other.” He paused for a moment. “And bacon.”

“The bacon won’t last forever.” Her voice sounded thin and it made his gut tighten.

They were talking about bacon.

“No.” And he was a little afraid of what might happen if the two of them kept on in close quarters. But no, there was no reason to be afraid. He was in control of himself. In control of his body. Brief flashes of attraction, and a newfound fascination with her sexual status did not get to dictate what he did next.

And what he would do, was go chop wood.

Because that was useful. And it was not sitting here ruminating on things that he shouldn’t.

“I’m going to go chop some wood. Best make me some bread.”

“Bread?”

“Yeah, that’s your women’s work. For the survivaling.”

That earned him her anger and damned it if didn’t ignite a fire in his blood. He needed to go jump in a snowbank.

Good thing there were so many handy.

“Really,” she said.

“Well, once I’m done chopping wood I’m going to have expended a lot of calories.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll make you something. I can’t promise it’ll be bread. I don’t have... Anything. And I’m not good at that stuff anyway. I know just enough to keep myself fed.”

“Well, maybe it’s your chance to expand your skills.”

That hit. And it hit hard. And in spite of himself, he caught himself holding her gaze. Lingering.

It hit him deeper than it should.

Made him think of all kinds of skills he could help her expand.

His hands on her skin. Her body against his. He’d denied it for so long now it was second nature. Wanting what he couldn’t have was his natural state.

As a boy he’d wanted a father. He hadn’t had one.

He’d wanted his mother to be well. He’d wanted to not be a caregiver, and he hadn’t gotten that either.

Wanting Honey was just a piece of all that same longing he’d lived with his whole life.

No.

“Wood,” he bit out.

And then he strode out, like the fire had leaped out of the fireplace and was chasing at his heels.