Silver Bells

Books by JoAnn Ross

Bad Boys Southern Style • Bayou Bad Boys

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

FERN MICHAELS

Silver Bells

JoAnn Ross

Mary Burton

Judy Duarte

KENSINGTON BOOKS

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

The deer came flying out of nowhere, a flash of dark brown in a swirling white-on-white world.

At least it seemed that way.

One minute Holly Berry was driving on the winding, two-lane road that snaked through Washington’s Cascade Mountains at a crawl, straining her eyes to see through the wall of white snow piling up too fast for even her furiously working windshield wipers to handle. The next minute she was fishtailing into a series of dizzying spins that a gold-medalist Olympic skater would’ve envied, sliding helplessly toward the edge of the cliff.

That’s when she realized that it was true—your life really did flash before your eyes just before you died.

“You’re not going to die,” she insisted, as if saying it out-loud could make it true.

After what seemed a lifetime, but in real time was only a few seconds, her SUV slammed into an ice-encrusted snowbank.

Then pow!

While her heart was pounding like an angry fist against her ribs, the airbag exploded from the center of her steering wheel in her face.

Which wasn’t exactly like getting hit by a marshmallow.

Actually, it hurt. A lot.

It also filled the car with acrid smoke and a fine powder she’d managed to suck into her lungs as she’d shouted out a string of curses that turned the smoky air even bluer and would’ve made a sailor on shore leave proud.

Unfortunately, as soon as she’d opened her mouth, she’d sucked the stuff in, which triggered a coughing fit as she fought against the bag that was—thank you God!—quickly deflating.

That, and the fact she was alive, was the good news.

Once the huge white bag was out of her face, she could see that not only had it cracked the windshield, her dashboard looked as if a maniac had attacked it with a sledgehammer. And steam was rising from beneath the snowbank, hinting at a burst radiator.

Which was, she feared, just the beginning of even more bad news.

“And wow, isn’t this just what you need?”

The rain that had been falling when she’d left her downtown Seattle apartment had turned to sleet as she’d crossed the bridge into east King County. She’d thought things were looking up as she began driving into the mountains and the sleet was replaced by a scattering of downy white flakes.

Unfortunately, by the time that deer had leaped in front of her, the damn snow had escalated into something close to a blizzard.

Dammit, she never should’ve swerved. Then again, if she’d continued to drive straight ahead, she would’ve risked hitting the deer, which could’ve resulted in it flying through her windshield onto her lap.

And wouldn’t have that just been fun?

Since her electrical system seemed to have been killed, the windows wouldn’t go down, so, shoving the deflated nylon bag out of her way, she cracked open the driver’s door to let out some of the smoke. Which, in turn, let wind-driven snow come swirling in.

Retrieving her purse from where it had fallen onto the floor, she took out her cell phone and flipped it open. Unsurprisingly, given her remote location in these mountains, her screen showed no signal bars.

“And isn’t this a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” she muttered as she wiped the air bag talc off her face with one of the wet wipes she always carried with her and tried to decide what to do next.

Holly had always prided herself on her practicality. Oh, she was aware that creative people were considered by many to be flighty. Unpredictable. Impulsive. Even undependable.

But just because she told stories for a living didn’t mean that she didn’t plan every single detail of her books. She’d plot the stories for weeks, even months beforehand, each and every scene carefully detailed on Post-its, color coded by character, and stuck onto the huge board that took up a major portion of her office wall. She never wrote so much as a first line without first knowing her characters’ goals, motivation, and conflict. And each and every scene in each and every chapter was totally completed to her satisfaction before she moved on to the next.

Real life, to her mind, was no different. Which meant that her goal was to get herself out of this mess and her motivation was to do so before she froze to death—which was, needless to say, the ultimate conflict of man (or in her case, woman) against nature.

She knew the conventional wisdom was to stay with the vehicle so search teams could find her. The problem was that it could take several days for anyone to even realize she was missing. Oh, sure, the hotel in Leavenworth was expecting her this evening, but if she didn’t show up, the desk clerk would undoubtedly just shrug it off as yet another undependable guest, and, since she’d given them her AMEX number to guarantee the room, they’d just run her card and not give her another thought.

Since the crash and subsequent air bag explosion had also disabled her dashboard GPS, Holly had no idea of exactly where she was. Actually, she’d begun to suspect that the calm female voice directing her over the mountains may have made a mistake, because although she’d never driven this way before, it seemed the highway should be four lanes, not the two that had, because of snowplows, narrowed down to about one and a half.

Unfortunately, the Washington state road map she’d bought as a backup was still sitting on her kitchen counter. The totally uncharacteristic oversight had her grinding her teeth even as she assured herself that just as she’d gotten her last heroine away from that serial killer, she could plot her way out of this predicament.

Holly’s idea of exercise might be walking to Starbucks down the street from her apartment, but surely she could hike to wherever the next town was. And wouldn’t movement keep her warmer than if she stayed here, shivering inside her disabled vehicle, like a damsel in distress waiting for a white knight in a shiny suit of armor to show up?

Of course, the flip side of that was that trudging through the snow could expend energy. Which wouldn’t be good. Also, the sun was sinking lower and lower behind the mountains and no way did she want to risk becoming dinner for a mountain lion or bear.

Since this was, after all, supposedly a major road, surely the state would have the snow plows out working to stay ahead of the storm. A storm that hadn’t even shown up on the weather channel. She’d checked the forecast before leaving her apartment.

Forty-five minutes later, as the snow kept falling and the sky darkened to a deep purplish blue, and her fingertips, even inside her leather gloves, had begun turning to ice, and Holly was beginning to get seriously concerned, she thought she heard the low drone of a car engine.

Of course, that could just be a hallucination.

Or a dream.

Didn’t people fall asleep as they were freezing to death? She was sure she’d read that somewhere.

Using her gloved hand to wipe the steam off the window, she saw a fire engine red Ford Expedition, which dwarfed her stuck Highlander, come chugging out of the storm and pull to a stop.

Even as she could have sworn she heard a chorus of angels singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah, the Expedition’s door opened and a pair of long legs, clad in jeans and a pair of heavy PAK boots, swiveled out.

The rest of him, wearing a dark blue parka, followed. Despite those angel voices of joyous relief ringing in her mind, all the research over the years she’d done for her mystery novels had left Holly more distrustful than the average woman.

Still, while it was difficult to tell through the swirling snow, he didn’t look like a serial killer.

Of course, neither had Ted Bundy. Who, now that she thought about it, just happened to have been from Washington state. As had the Green River Killer, along with several others, including the never apprehended Snohomish County dismemberment killer she’d used as a model for the villain in her first novel.

He was getting closer, his stride long and purposeful as he crunched through the snow.

Feeling as if she was in some woman-in-jeopardy movie, Holly retrieved her Zeus Lightning Bolt stun pen from her bag and slipped it into her jacket pocket.

Chapter Two

It was amazing how much a guy’s life could change in twelve months, Gabriel O’Halloran considered as he cautiously made his way around the twisting switchbacks of the icy mountain road. This time last year, he’d been in Iraq, patrolling streets, dodging insurgent gunfire, praying like hell that he and his fellow Marines wouldn’t get blown to pieces by an IED.

On a sixty-five-degree Christmas morning, while on patrol, his team had nearly walked into an ambush. Fortunately, one of the bad guys had gotten trigger-happy and begun to shoot as the first Marine entered the alley. Even better was that his “pray and spray” gunfire hadn’t managed to hit anyone.

The battle, which was a long way from the peace the season was supposed to celebrate, lasted less than five minutes. The insurgents, knowing when they were outgunned, faded away, undoubtedly to fight another day.

As leader of the patrol, Gabe could have ordered the team to go after them. Deciding he didn’t want to be responsible for any deaths on Christmas Day, they’d returned to camp in time for a traditional feast of prime rib, turkey with cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, served up by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound master sergeant wearing a red, white, and blue Santa Claus hat.

Now, here Gabe was, plowing his way through a frigging blizzard, tires crunching beneath the snow, the radio reporting road closures and accidents throughout the mountains, his eyes burning from trying to focus on the road as he doggedly made his way in near whiteout conditions home to a town that had boasted the teeming population of six hundred and twenty-five.

Six hundred and twenty-seven now that he and Emma had settled in.

Having spent his teenage years trying to escape his hometown, then intending to be career military, becoming a Christmas tree farmer and running an inn and bar wasn’t the future he’d planned. Not by a long shot. But having seen a great deal of the world, despite the twists and turns his personal road had taken over the last few months, he had begun to enjoy himself.

Hell, he even had a dog, who was currently curled up in the backseat, snoring away like a souped-up chainsaw.

Couldn’t get much more damn domesticated than that.

He’d just cautiously maneuvered around a particularly nasty S-curve, his studded tires crunching on the icy pavement, when he viewed an SUV partly buried in a snowbank. Pulling as far as he could off the road, he set the emergency brake.

The dog, having been born into a war zone, immediately sensed trouble. Choosing flight over fight, he scrambled off the seat onto the floor, where he somehow managed to curl up into a remarkably small ball, considering that the last time he’d been weighed at the vet, he’d come in at one hundred and thirty pounds.

“Stay,” he told the dog as he retrieved the first aid kit—just in case—from the floor.

The dog looked conflicted. On one hand, or, more accurately, paw, he obviously wanted to stay hunkered down out of danger. On the other, he’d spent nine months of Gabe’s thirteen-month second tour on patrol loyally sticking close to the squad of Marines who’d adopted him.

“Stay,” Gabe repeated, holding up a hand. “Everything’ll be okay.”

Gabe hoped.

He’d no sooner jumped out of the Expedition when a woman stumbled out of the disabled Highlander. She was tall, leggy, and wearing a scarlet ski jacket, snug black jeans, and sheepskin-lined boots that rose nearly to her knees.

“Looks like you’ve gotten yourself in a little trouble,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Well, mostly,” she allowed as his gaze swept over her, looking for injuries. “I swerved to miss hitting a deer.” Before he could respond to that, she held up a hand. The red leather glove was thin, fitting her hand, well, like a glove, and while a nice look with the coat, wasn’t all that practical for this kind of weather. “I know you’re not supposed to do that, but it was all so sudden, and…”

She paused, as if picturing the moment he figured had been indelibly scorched into her mind. Emotions—especially fear—could do that to you. God knows he had memories that still, even after a year stateside, occasionally, when he least expected it, played in his mind.

Her hair—which fell in a trendy, expensive-looking cut that just skimmed her shoulders beneath a red knitted cap—was a strawberry blond, more gold than red. Her slightly slanted catlike eyes were moss green, her complexion, the part of it that wasn’t already turning red and splotchy, which he suspected was the beginning of what could be some serious bruising, was as smooth and pale as top cream.

A sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of a cold-reddened nose, and a mouth that was a bit too wide, but eminently kissable, along with the way her diamond face came to a point in a slightly stubborn chin kept her from being perfect.

“And?” he prompted.

“This is going to sound crazy, but although I’m admittedly no expert, it didn’t look like an ordinary deer. More like a—”

“Reindeer?”

“Exactly.”

Which was, of course, ridiculous, Holly told herself. Adrenaline, caused by the stress of the moment, must have caused her brain to fritz out, overlaying the actual event with other pictures in her memory. Pictures from the storybooks her father had read her so long ago.

He nodded. “That’d be Blitzen.”

Leaving her staring after him, he strolled around to the front of the car and studied the hood buried deep in the snowdrift. The steam had quit rising from the radiator several minutes ago, but it didn’t take a mechanic to know the poor Highlander wasn’t going to be driving anywhere soon.

“Good thing the guard rail was there under the piled-up snow,” he said. “Or you could’ve gone right over the edge and might not have been found until spring.”

“Well, isn’t that a lovely thought?”

She slipped a hand into her pocket and curled her fingers around the stun pen. Although he certainly looked normal enough (actually he was obscenely handsome, with slate gray eyes beneath black brows, a face that was all masculine planes and angles, and a jaw shadowed by a day’s worth of dark beard wide enough to park his Expedition on), from that casually issued comment about the reindeer, she feared he might be a 5150, which a cop she’d once interviewed for research had told her wasn’t merely an old Van Halen album but police code for a crazy person on the loose.

“And what do you mean, Blitzen?”

“He’s a reindeer.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well, this one happens to belong to a friend of mine. He escaped from his pen yesterday.” He opened the driver’s door, looked into the car, and frowned. “Wow. Who’d have guessed an airbag could do that much damage?”

He looked down at her, eyes narrowed as he scrutinized her face. Then frowned. “You’re going to have some bruising. And maybe a black eye.” He skimmed a gloved finger beneath the eye in question. “But you’re damn lucky you weren’t burned.”

That was, admittedly, one positive. “I guess I am.”

Some people were touchers. Holly was not. Backing up a few steps, she flicked the cap off the marker-size stun pen, just in case. The salesman at the spy store had assured her that the electric arc that pulsated across the top of the pen would create a sharp, crackling sound, intimidating most would-be attackers.

And if that wasn’t enough, the 800,000 volt output would drop a guy to his knees. Although it was supposedly able to zap those volts through clothing, Holly wondered how effective it’d be through all those layers of down parka.

“You seriously have a friend who owns a reindeer?” Her tone radiated her skepticism.

“Not just one. Eight.”

“Next you’ll be telling me he uses them to pull his sleigh.”

“Actually he does.” He gave her a slow, easy smile that was too charming for comfort and sent something turning inside her. Steeling herself against its charm, she told herself that Ted Bundy had probably used much the same smile to lure unsuspecting victims into his Volkswagen. “But Blitzen is the one who always seems to get antsy this time of year.”

He had to be putting her on. Wasn’t he? Feeling like Alice after she’d fallen down the rabbit hole, Holly wondered if she was hallucinating. Maybe she’d knocked herself out in the accident and was dreaming this entire conversation.

Because if she was awake, he could be seriously unbalanced. She took another step backward and, considering her escape options after she’d tasered him, hoped he’d left the keys in the Expedition.

“You know,” he said, his midnight deep voice breaking into her tumultuous thoughts, “it’s obvious that your rig isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And, as you’ve undoubtedly discovered, cell service here is pretty much non-available, so why don’t you let me give you a ride into town, then we can arrange to have your SUV towed to a garage in the morning?”

That was obviously the logical thing to do. The only thing to do. But accepting that didn’t stop every FBI serial killer profiling book she’d ever read for research to go flashing through her mind.

“Look.” He folded his broad arms and seemed to be holding in a sigh when she didn’t immediately jump at his offer. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m a former Marine.”

The proud. The few.

And wouldn’t he just look dandy on a recruiting poster?

While his service record was moderately encouraging, if it were true, it also could mean he was armed. Not that he’d need a gun to kill. From the size of those big, black-gloved hands, Holly suspected he’d be able to snap her neck before she knew what was happening. Before she could even turn off the safety switch on the stun pen and find a down-free place to jolt him.

She’d taken a self-defense course taught at the police station just last year. One of the basics she’d learned was GET—to go for the groin, eyes, and throat if attacked. Holly was considering the logistics of that when she realized he’d caught her checking out the G part of that acronym. Which was covered up by the heavy parka he was wearing, but given his size…

Heat flooded into cheeks that only moments earlier had been turning to ice.

“Sorry,” Holly muttered, wondering about the chances of an avalanche coming down the side of the mountain to bury her and save her from further humiliation. “Suspicion comes with the job.”

The humor in his gaze faded as he took a longer, more judicial look at her. “You a cop?”

“No. A writer. Mysteries.” And just because she wrote about serial killers and psychos didn’t mean she couldn’t tell fiction from reality. At least most of the time.

She waited for him to ask if she’d written anything he’d read. Instead, his cheeks creased as he flashed another of those devastating smiles—who knew Marines had dimples?—and said, “Cool.”

He held out his hand. “Gabriel O’Halloran. But most people, except my mother, call me Gabe.”

“Holly Berry.”

She waited for the inevitable joke about her name. It was especially difficult to escape this time of year.

Instead, he tilted his head. “The Holly Berry who wrote Blood Brothers? Deadly Deception? Power Play?”

“My publisher’s fond of alliteration.”

She was currently plotting her sixth book. The previous had garnered good reviews, even landing on some prestigious bestseller lists, and while she was no John Grisham, she was making a nice enough living.

“I thought you looked familiar. I’ve seen your photo on the back of your book covers. You’re a lot better looking in person, by the way. Not that it’s a bad photo. In fact, it’s pretty cool, with you in that kick-ass long black leather coat, glaring at something in the distance, looking like you eat bad guys for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then either shoot them or send them up the river for life plus ten.

“But…Shit.” He shoved back the hood of the parka and dragged a hand through his wavy black hair. “Why don’t you do me a favor and just shoot me and put me out of my misery before I dig this hole I’m sinking into any deeper?”

“I’m not armed.” Holly figured the taser pen didn’t really count and wasn’t prepared to tell him about that yet. Just in case. “Besides, you’re right. That’s exactly the look the photographer was going for.”

“Well, it worked. My mom’s a huge fan.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

A breath she’d been unaware of holding came out on a puff of ghostly white. He’d actually been kind of cute when he’d gotten all embarrassed. And that he had a mother—who made him smile when he talked about her—was a positive sign.

Until Ma Barker came to mind.

“Some moms read romance.” The smile in his gray eyes echoed the one on his sinfully chiseled lips. “Mine is into murder and mayhem.”

“Well, thank her for me.”

“I’ll do that. So, now that we’ve introduced ourselves, and hopefully you’ve decided I’m not going to slit your throat once I get you alone with me in my vehicle, are you ready to get going?”

“I didn’t think that,” she lied as she recapped the pen and reached into the backseat of the disabled Highlander to retrieve her suitcase and computer bag.

“It’s good that you’re not a cop,” he said conversationally, as he took the suitcase from her hand and began walking toward the Expedition.

“You don’t like cops?”

“My dad’s a cop and I like him just fine. He’s sheriff of Cascade County. Which is where you are,” he tacked on, in case she didn’t know. Which, admittedly, she didn’t. “He was an L.A. cop. I was in eighth grade when he turned in his shield and moved up here.”

“That must’ve been a big change for all of you.”

“My sisters—I have three—bitched for a long time about missing all their girlfriends.”

“Totally understandable.”

“I suppose.” He shrugged. “But there was sure a lot of door slamming going on around the house for the first year or so. I missed the surfing. And the Cineplex, and, given that my hormones had just begun to kick in, all the girls in their itsy bitsy teeny weeny bikinis.”

“I can see how that would be a loss,” she said dryly.

Doing the math, since he seemed in his early to mid thirties, she guessed she hadn’t quite made it into bikinis by the time his family had left California.

“But the change seemed to suit my mother and him, which was the idea. She transferred to teaching English at Cascade County High until she retired last year.”

He opened the back of the Expedition, tossed in her case, and held out his hand for her computer, which she handed over.

“Dad says he never minded working the hard streets—burglary, murder, that sort of thing. It was the domestic disturbances that really got to him. Up here he mainly deals with tourists who don’t realize that tossing back tequila shooters at a mile-high elevation has a helluva more effect on your bloodstream than it does at sea level.”

He retrieved a black box, opened it, and took out some red plastic highway flashers. “There’s also the usual barking dogs, mailbox bashing, and the occasional tree snatching. Pop’s always said it’s sorta like retirement, but he doesn’t have to spend all his time fishing or playing golf.”

Holly had climbed up into the Expedition and was just beginning to relax when a head that could’ve belonged to a small horse suddenly popped up over the top of her seat. She couldn’t stop the slight sound—not quite a shriek, but close enough—from escaping her lips.

“Damn. Sorry about that.” Gabe unzipped the parka, reached into an inner pocket, and pulled out a Milk-Bone the size of a dinosaur thigh, which he tossed at the animal, who snapped it out of the air. “I should’ve warned you about Dog.”

Huge yellow canine teeth made short work of the cookie.

Holly, whose writer’s imagination had kicked back into gear, immediately thought of Cujo. She also wished she’d left the cap off the taser pen.

“He’s certainly large.”

“Yeah. But you don’t have to worry, because he’s about as vicious as a newborn kitten.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and rubbed a hand over the dog’s huge head. “Say hello to the lady, Dog.”

The dog sat on his haunches and lifted a gigantic brown paw between the seats.

“Hello, Dog.” The beast’s furry tail began pounding the floor like a jackhammer when Holly shook his extended paw. She glanced up at Gabe. “That’s his name?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to get too attached to him. It seemed naming him would make it harder to leave him behind.”

“Behind where?”

Wiping the dog drool onto her jeans, she looked back at the animal, who’d crawled up on the backseat and was now sprawled over what appeared to be a camouflage-colored sleeping bag.

“Baghdad. He was a stray pup running the streets. At the time he was about a tenth the size he is now and it was obvious he was on his own, so my squad started giving him food. Which, of course, had him adopting us back.”

“I imagine that’s not uncommon in such a situation.”

“Not at all,” he agreed. “A lot of the troops had camp dogs. Not only did it lift morale, some served as additional force protectors.”

“Still, I’ll bet those other troops didn’t jump through whatever hoops it took to bring them back to America.”

“No. But Dog was special. Although you could tell gunfire—and just about everything else—scared the hell out of him, he still insisted on going on patrol with us. He sniffed out an IED one day, which saved I don’t know how many lives. No way was I going to leave him behind after that.”

“Well, that’s quite a story.” She couldn’t imagine the paperwork that it would have taken to get a stray dog from Iraq into America. “Sounds like you were lucky to have met each other.”

“Yeah. That’s pretty much the way I look at it, too.”

“What kind of dog is he, anyway?”

“Beats me, but my best guess is a cross between a Great Dane and a Hummer.”

After flashing her another quick grin, he crunched his way back through the snow and set up the flashers in both directions from the disabled Highlander.

“They’ll go for thirty hours before the batteries run out,” he told her when he returned. “Give us plenty of time to get a tow truck out here in the morning.”

“I appreciate that. Of course, that leads to the problem of where I’m going to spend the night. Is there a town nearby?”

“Yeah. About forty-five minutes away in this weather.”

“I guess I won’t have any choice but to get a motel room there.”

“That might be a little tricky this time of year,” he said. “Given that it’s a really small place and high tourist season. But we’ll work something out.”

She had an idea of what that something might be. If he was thinking she was going to spend the night with him, he was going to be disappointed. But, weighing her options, Holly decided she’d wait until they got to town to face that discussion.

“Were you serious about the tree snatching?” she asked, deciding to change the subject.

“Yeah. The timber industry’s taken a hit these past years, but there’s still some good money to be made in stolen trees.”

“Really?” She looked up at the towering fir trees packed together beside the road. “How much money?”

His laugh was deep and rich and took a bit of chill from her blood, making her feel as if warm brandy had begun flowing in her veins. “Enough.”

Sensing that he was laughing at her, she folded her arms. “Something funny?”

“Not about timber theft. A full grown old growth cedar can bring in five thousand bucks at a sawmill, and a larcenous guy could make a hundred thousand with a few days’ hard work, so it’s not as benign a crime like it sounds. But, like I said, it’s a good thing you’re not a cop, because your face gives away your thoughts.”

He twisted the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life and began blowing blessed heat through the dashboard vents. “I could practically see the wheels of a possible murder-for-tree plot turning in your head.”

“It has its possibilities,” she allowed on a voice as chilly as the outside temperature. An intensely private person, Holly wasn’t wild about anyone reading her so well. Especially since Gabriel O’Halloran was the first person to ever have accused her of being that easily read. “Though at the moment I’m working on another idea. A black widow murder.”

“Ah.” He nodded as he pulled the Expedition back onto the narrow road. “The chirpy, white-haired owner of Black Forest Cookies who’s accused of having poisoned six husbands.”

“You’ve heard of the case?”

“Sure. Leavenworth’s just on the other side of the mountains,” he reminded her. “Maybe you could call it The Cookie Caper.”

She was about to inform him that his suggested title was more suited to a cozy mystery when she realized he was joking, playing with her alliterative title idea. Again, not exactly serial killer behavior.

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

Chapter Three

Having already had one accident that day, Holly was relieved when he kept the Expedition at a safe crawl, the yellow beam of the headlights bouncing off the wall of white stuff that continued to fall.

“We’ll be in the town in another twenty minutes or so,” he told her after they’d been driving approximately twenty-five minutes.

He’d turned the radio down, but she’d listened to a steady stream of road closures throughout the state. His voice sounded deeper and richer in the intimacy of the snow-shrouded silence.

“Okay, here’s where I admit I have no idea what town that might be.”

“Santa’s Village.”

“You can’t be serious.” Maybe he wasn’t a stone-cold killer, or even 5150 insane, but once again Holly began to worry about him being delusional.

“It’s the town’s name, all right. Population six hundred twenty-seven.” He glanced over at her. “It’s also not on the way to Leavenworth.”

She definitely would’ve noticed that town on the map while planning her trip. “Damn GPS.”

Not encouraging was that she’d bought the faulty navigation system from the same guy who’d sold her the purse-size Zeus Lightning Bolt taser pen. What if it turned out he was pushing fake Chinese stuff on an unsuspecting public? How many lives could that put at risk?

“Ah.” He nodded as she filed the idea of a faulty taser away. She couldn’t see it working in her black widow cookie killer story, but perhaps, like all the other bits and pieces of criminal behavior she had tucked away in her mind, it could prove useful down the road. “It told you to turn right at that crossroad outside Skykomish,” he guessed.

“Exactly.” Which was where she’d obviously gone wrong. “How did you know?”

He shrugged. “It seems to be a glitch in some programs. We’ve gotten lost drivers before.”

“Who suddenly find themselves in Santa’s Village.”

“Yep.”

Damn. “That’s certainly a colorful name. Is it one of those cutesy theme towns?”

Leavenworth, where she’d been headed, had re-created itself from a dying timber and railroad town into a faux Alpine Bavarian Village, which reputedly drew two-and-a-half million tourists a year.

“It pretty much is.” He glanced over at her. “Sounds like you’re not a fan of cute.”

“Cute has its place. Like puppies and kittens. Johnny Depp. I just don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“So, is that a religious thing? Or were you at some time traumatized by a department store Santa?” Easy humor laced his voice.

“Let’s just say the rampant commercialism gets to me.” Her tone, chillier than the snow falling outside, strongly suggested they drop the entire subject.

Holly hated Christmas. The whole Christmas season.

She hated the tinsel, the trappings, the decorated trees, the wrappings, and most of all, she hated Santa Claus, whom she’d quit believing in when she was seven years old.

“And here I would’ve guessed the season would be a big deal for you. Given your name and all.”

“My father named me. He liked Christmas.” Which was putting it mildly.

She couldn’t remember all that much about her father, but she could recall him taking her to see them light the tree at Rockefeller Center every year.

They’d been living in New York City, and, although she couldn’t remember it, she’d been told that she was a year old the first time she’d attended Macy’s parade, dressed in an elf green snowsuit, perched atop her father’s shoulders. The next year he’d put her on double runner skates and taken her ice skating for the first time.

Christmas, especially Christmas in Manhattan, had been nothing short of magical.

Then, the night Holly turned seven, while she was at home frosting sugar cookies for Santa with her mama, while out doing his annual Christmas Eve shopping, George Berry had been shot dead by a mugger who’d gotten away with three credit cards, forty-five dollars in cash, a Timex watch, and a Josephine Irish Cabbage Patch Kid with a pink dress and cranberry-colored pigtails.

Her mother had gone into what Holly now recognized as a deep clinical depression. So dark that she packed up what was left of their little family and moved them to L.A.

But despite the bright sun that was always shining above the palm trees, a dark cloud had settled over the house. And the next year, when Christmas rolled around again, there was no tinsel-draped tree. No presents. No trips to Macy’s to sit on Santa’s lap.

That was when Holly, in an attempt to bring some small ray of happiness back into their lives, had written to Santa.

She could still remember the letter. Dear Santa, she’d written in her very best second grade printing with a red pencil in the hopes the bright color would help it stand out from all those other millions of letters he probably received at the North Pole. My mama cries all the time since Daddy died. She says you can’t bring him back to life. But this year, the only thing I want is a happy family. Like I used to have. Thank you and Merry Christmas to you and Mrs. Claus and all the elves and reindeers. Especially Blitzen. For some reason, whenever her daddy had read her The Night Before Christmas, Blitzen had been her favorite. Love, Your friend, Holly Berry.

P.S. In case you didn’t notice, being so busy with your toy factory and all, I’m living in California now.

Whatever she was thinking wasn’t good, Gabe thought. Her lips were pulled into a tight line and she’d encased herself in enough ice to cover Mount Rainier. The lady was a touchy one. He also suspected there was a story there. One he intended to discover for himself.

Meanwhile, with her Highlander stuck in a snowdrift and the roads closed all throughout the mountains, it wasn’t like she’d be going anywhere soon.

And neither was he.

Chapter Four

She stayed silent for a long time, seeming lost in thought as she watched the woods out the passenger window.

The only sound was the crunch of the snow beneath the tires, the slight scraping noise of the wipers as they struggled with the snow that was rapidly turning to ice, and the low drone of the voice on the radio announcing yet more road closures.

Her scent—reminding him of a vacation his family had taken to Vashon Island, where they’d gleaned fruit from a peach orchard—bloomed in the heat blasting from the dashboard vents.

He wondered if she smelled like that all over. Wondered if she tasted as good. Which had him imagining her lying on hot, tangled sheets while he ran his tongue down her smooth white throat. Across her collarbone. Then lower, over her pink-tipped breasts that he’d make wet with his kisses…

Fire shot, along with his blood, from his obviously fevered brain to his groin.

“I don’t understand,” she said as he shifted to adjust his suddenly too-tight jeans. “This storm wasn’t even on the radar. I checked. The forecast was sunny, with temperatures in the high forties.”

“Things change fast in the mountains.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“So, you’re not from around here?”

He was hard and ached and short of pulling over to the side of the road and somehow getting her out of those tight jeans and boots so she could ride him hard and fast—which, unfortunately, wasn’t an option, especially since he didn’t exactly run around with a condom in his pocket these days—there wasn’t a helluva lot he could do about it.

At least not for now.

Although it might not make a lot of sense, Gabe suddenly wanted to know everything about her—her favorite food, her favorite color (though he’d guess, from the coat, hat, and gloves, that would be red), whether she was a morning person or night owl, whether she liked her sex hot and fast, or slow and dreamy.

He wanted her both ways. First fast, then, once they got that out of the way, he’d take his time, touching her all over. Tasting her everywhere. Drawing out every sensation, warming every bit of her fragrant peach-scented flesh until she was begging for him to finish her off.

Then, what was really scary, was the absolute certainty that he’d want her again. And again.

“I’ve been in Seattle the past six months,” she said, her voice breaking into a fantasy of being deep inside of her, feeling her contracting around him. “Before that I lived in L.A.”

“Now there’s a coincidence. Us both coming from the same town.”

It didn’t suit her, he decided. With that white as cream skin, she was the least likely California girl he’d ever seen.

“So, is your family back there?”

Significant other? Fiancé? Lover?

Or, oh hell, how about a husband?

“My father died when I was a kid.”

“That must’ve been tough. I’m sorry.”

“So was I.” She exhaled a slight breath that told him she still hadn’t quite gotten over it. “My mother’s spent the past few years traveling.”

“Lucky her.” Having joined the Marines to see the great big wide world, Gabe wouldn’t mind if he never left these mountains again. “But where’s her actual home?”

“She doesn’t have one. I mean she really travels. She works as a croupier on a cruise ship. So mostly she sails around the Caribbean. And occasionally along the Mexican Coast, what’s called the Mexican Riviera.”

“Sounds like an interesting gig.”

And lonely, Gabe thought. Even though you’d be surrounded by people, wouldn’t they mostly always be strangers? That was one of the things he’d liked about being a Marine. Semper Fi wasn’t just some snazzy military slogan. It was a way of life. Once you got that service emblem pin at graduation, you became part of a family for life.

Not that he didn’t love his own family. But after having grown up with three older sisters, it had been cool to have brothers.

She moved her shoulders in a small shrug. “Mom seems to like it.”

Her tone didn’t exactly ring with enthusiasm.

“Although you might not celebrate Christmas, to a lot of people it’s a pretty big deal,” he said. “So, can I take the fact that you’re traveling to a murder trial over the holidays to mean that you don’t have some guy waiting for you back in Seattle?”

She glanced over at him. “No. Why?”

The NO TRESPASSING sign was up and flashing in bright Day-Glo neon letters. A sensible man would back away. But, dammit, Gabe had been unrelentingly sensible for the past year. And more amazingly, celibate for two.

Maybe it was high time—hell, past time—to take a few risks.

Having never been one to play games, he decided to just lay his cards on the table.

“Because you’re a good-looking, obviously intelligent woman and you pretty much had me from the moment you stepped out of that SUV. So, I just wanted to know if there’s some guy out there I’m going to have to fight for your favors.”

Her eyes widened. The smudge around the right one was growing darker. Yep, the lady was definitely going to have one helluva shiner.

“Well, that’s certainly direct and to the point.”

“I’ve never been one to beat around the bush. Or waste time playing games.”

“I’m not one to play games either. But has anyone ever told you that you’re a very unusual man?”

“Because I admire a woman with brains and looks?”

“No. Because, along with supposedly having a friend with eight reindeer and a sleigh, and living in a town called Santa’s Village, you don’t know anything about me.”

“That can always be changed. And, for the record, about the town? It gets worse. Santa’s Village bills itself as ‘The Most Christmassy Town in America,’ and you happen to be looking at the guy who not only owns an honest-to-God Christmas tree farm, but the Ho Ho Ho Inn.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

She was, unsurprisingly, less than impressed. He figured the usual guys she went for in the city were lawyers and stockbrokers who wore Armani suits and lived in penthouses overlooking Puget Sound.

“Hey,” he said, “it’s not like I named it.”

Of course, admittedly, he hadn’t changed the name either. He’d told himself that was because it was, in a way, a historical landmark. But it was mostly because Emma loved it.

After having been absent for so much of his young daughter’s life, Gabe was willing to give her whatever she wanted. Within reason. And hey, his ego was strong enough not to feel the need to change the name to something his former Marine buddies wouldn’t have ragged him to death about.

“I returned home last year and bought it from this couple who’d run it for the past thirty years and decided it was time to go lie in the sun and catch marlin and sun fish in St. Petersburg, Florida.”

He could tell she thought he was crazy. And, hell, maybe he was. But he’d been starting to get crazy more and more back in the sandbox. And to Gabe’s mind, the admitted wackiness of his hometown was a helluva lot better than the insanity of a war zone.

Chapter Five

“When do you think he’s going to get here?” the five-year-old girl asked for the umpteenth time in the last hour.

“It’s been snowing to beat the band,” Beth O’Halloran reminded her granddaughter yet again as she took the basket of sliced potatoes out of the deep fryer and dumped them onto a plate next to a half-pound of Angus beef burger. “It takes time to get back up here from the city.”

“I know.” Emma O’Halloran’s frustrated sigh ruffled her bright bangs. “But it’s just taking forever!” She began pacing again, the heels of her pink cowboy boots clicking an impatient tattoo on the heart-of-pine plank floor of the Ho Ho Ho Inn.

“I know,” Beth said sympathetically, stepping around the little girl to get the coleslaw out of the commercial refrigerator.

With three of her four children being daughters, Beth was accustomed to the amount of passion that could simmer inside even the youngest feminine body.

Emma stopped in front of the kitchen window again, pressing her nose against the double-paned glass, peering into the gathering purple darkness. “Do you think he’s bringing my present?”

“He probably did some shopping,” Beth hedged as she added the slaw to the plate.

“No. My real present!”

Beth sighed. They’d been through this before. Too many times to count. Although Gabriel had been, in some ways, easier than her girls, Emma was definitely her father’s child when it came to tenacity. Once either one of them got something into their heads, it was nearly impossible to shake loose.

“Even if your father does decide to give in and get you that pony, I doubt he’d risk pulling a trailer up the mountain today.”

“Not that present.” The pink ribbon Beth had tied the unruly red-gold curls back with this morning loosened a bit as Emma emphatically shook her head. “I changed my mind. To something more special. Something I’m going to ask Santa for.”

Beth sighed again as she thought about the palomino Welsh pony currently residing at Lucas Nelson’s stable waiting to be delivered on Christmas Eve night. Although she’d personally thought the gift had been a little extravagant, she understood why Gabriel had bought it for his daughter. And it was a sweet little animal, she allowed. And docile enough for a child to handle.

Now, if Emma had changed her mind this close to Christmas, with the roads being closed, even if they could order a new present on the Internet, the delivery trucks wouldn’t be able to reach town.

Well, no point in borrowing trouble, Beth decided. Whatever else her granddaughter had her heart set on now, Beth knew Emma would be over the moon when she got up on Christmas morning and saw the pony grazing in the small pasture behind the inn.

She held out the plate. “Here. Take this over to Ben Daughtry. He’s sitting in the back booth.”

“That’s where he always sits.”

“It’s called tradition. Some people believe it’s a good thing.”

Heaven knows, until this past year, Emma’s life had been unsettled enough. There were times Beth blamed herself for that. She and Will had visited their granddaughter three times a year and had never witnessed any signs of domestic trouble, but if they’d left the mountains and moved back to California, perhaps they might have been able to provide the stability they hadn’t realized the little girl had been missing.

Then again, had she known about her daughter-in-law’s illicit romance with her wealthy property developer boss while Gabriel had been overseas, Beth wasn’t sure what she would or could have done. Surely e-mailing her son about his wife’s adultery would’ve just given him one more thing to worry about during a time when he’d needed to keep focused on staying alive.

Unfortunately, life was a great deal more complicated than it appeared in those mystery books she liked to read, where problems were presented, then, in four hundred pages, neatly solved, with the bad guys behind bars and the good guys living happily ever after.

She watched the little girl carry the plate across the wood floor with the care that suggested she was walking on eggshells. Her teeth were worrying her bottom lip. Better fretting about a dropped cheeseburger than her daddy having an accident, Beth decided.

There may be state laws against child labor, but the way Beth saw it, this was a family business, Emma was most definitely family, and besides, having the child help out now and again made her feel useful, kept her out of trouble, and most important, tonight would hopefully keep her mind off her father’s trip up the mountain.

Emma had reached Ben Daughtry’s booth without incident. The sixty-something artist had moved here after being priced out of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, which, he’d complained, was having its bohemian roots overtaken by Starbucks and sushi joints. He’d never married, apparently choosing to direct all his energies toward his art, which, when he’d arrived had been—to her mind—disturbingly dark.

These days, rather than painting landscapes of a school of sharks attacking kayakers in Puget Sound, or King Kong atop the Space Needle fighting off attacking fighter jets, Daughtry earned a comfortable living creating seasonal watercolor greeting cards that all tended to make Santa’s Village look like, well, a Hallmark card.

Beth suspected his former artist friends in the city would be amazed at the transformation of the man who’d arrived depressed and argumentative, but she wasn’t surprised. She’d seen it happen many times, and although there were those few detractors who suggested that the town council was putting something in the water, she liked living in the kind of small town epitomized in old black and white movies and the Sinclair Lewis stories she’d enjoyed teaching to high school English classes.

Ben was good with children, she’d give the man that. After chatting easily with Emma for a moment, he took a pencil from the pocket of his red and green plaid shirt and quickly sketched something on a white paper napkin.

Emma studied it with a seriousness way beyond her age, then bobbed her head and beamed.

As the little girl returned back toward the kitchen, the napkin in hand, Daughtry dug into his dinner. Which was also the same thing he had every night, except on Wednesday, when, for some reason Beth couldn’t fathom, he’d switch out the coleslaw for baked beans.

Her gaze drifted out the window. Although she would never admit it out loud, she was a bit concerned by the delay as well. Gabriel had blessedly escaped injury during all his years in the military, including two tours in Iraq and another in Afghanistan, but that didn’t mean that a mother ever stopped worrying about her child.

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Chapter Six

From high atop the town, bathed in the rising moonlight that cast a bluish glow over the snow, the small town of Santa’s Village looked like the set of a model railroad. There appeared to be one main street—strung with, natch, bright red and green flashing lights—then a handful of others going off at ninety-degree angles. It was admittedly charming, if you liked the It’s a Wonderful Life approach to the season. Taking the moonlit scene in, she decided the entire village couldn’t be more than nine blocks square.

Winter-bare trees in front yards were strung with fairy lights and electric candles flickered in windows.

“Cute,” she murmured dryly as they passed by a giant statue of Santa welcoming visitors to “Santa’s Village, The Most Christmassy Town in America.”

The part of her accustomed to editing her manuscripts wondered if Christmassy was even a word. The right arm, which had to be at least six feet from fingertip to shoulder, was automated to wave a manic greeting. It was, hands down, at the same time both the ugliest and scariest thing she’d ever laid eyes on.

“Granted, he takes some getting used to,” Gabe said as he turned onto—what else?—Rudolph Road. “After about three months I just quit seeing him.”

Holly figured it would take longer than that for her to stop seeing the oversize jolly old elf. As it was, she feared the scarily grinning Santa was going to appear in her nightmares. Looking a lot like Freddy Kruger wearing a pillow beneath a tacky red velvet suit.

The sidewalks were lined with lighted pine trees, and more lights, which flashed merrily, had been strung across the streets. Every storefront seemed to be trying to outdo its neighbor.

“Is the town decorated like this year round?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” he allowed. “Though people do tend to crank things up a bit come Thanksgiving. Tourism has become a major industry here, especially since the timber business dropped off. Along with the Christmas junkies, we do get a lot of sportsmen and cross-country skiers.”

“That’s nice.”

Holly had never understood the appeal of strapping sticks to your boots and trudging through miles of snow, but she figured it took all kinds to make a world. After all, not everyone enjoyed murder mysteries either.

They passed what she supposed must be the town square, boasting a white Victorian bandstand decorated in yet more white fairy lights. A towering Douglas fir blinked in multi-colors, a crèche topped by a star and lit by a floodlight shared space with a menorah that had to be eight feet tall, with flickering red bulbs atop the candles.

“Nice to know Santa’s ecumenical,” she murmured.

“We try.” When he made a left turn on Dasher Drive, Dog sat up and began paying attention. “Fortunately, the pagans signed on to the tree as their symbol and I’ve got a committee working on what to put up for Kwanzaa for next year.”

“You have a committee?” Holly absently petted the huge head looming up through the space between the seats.

He shrugged. “I’m mayor. Which isn’t any big deal,” he told her before she might suggest it was. “The previous owner of the inn had the job, so I sort of inherited it along with the mortgage.”

“Well, that’s one way to avoid paying for a new election.”

“There’s not that much to do,” he said. “Between the council, the school board, and the tourism bureau, the town pretty much runs itself. The main business has always been Kris Kringle’s Workshop.”

“Okay. Now you’ve got to be pulling my leg.”

“Although it’s a very fine leg—which seems to go all the way up to Canada, by the way—and there are a lot of things I’d like to do to it…beginning with starting at the ankle and nibbling my way up it…actually, I’m not.”

“You’re going to be disappointed regarding the nibbling,” she said firmly. Just because he’d saved her from possibly freezing to death didn’t mean she was going to show her gratitude by getting horizontal with him. “As for the workshop, if you are telling the truth, I’m starting to wonder what Kool-Aid you all are drinking here in this charming little hamlet.”

His chuckle was deep and rich and stirred places in Holly she’d forgotten could be stirred. “Sam Fraiser’s the seventh-generation owner, and although he’s never actually laid claim to the title, a lot of people, and kids, in town believe he’s the ‘real’ Santa Claus.

“Anyway, the workshop had been facing some lean years, make that decades, but all the problems with imports have made the shop’s more traditional toys—like wooden planes, trains, and cars—more in demand. In fact, he got written up in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week last month.”

“Okay.” She gave the so-called Santa reluctant points. “That’s admittedly impressive.”

“A lot of people think so. Though the Fraisers have never been in the business for fame. In fact, my sister Rachel, who works as his accountant and business manager, says producers from Ellen, GMA, and CBS News Sunday Morning have called in the past few weeks, wanting him to appear on their shows, but he’s turned them all down.”

Holly had met writers who would run over their dear old grannies for such an opportunity.

“So, what is he? Some sort of hermit? Or another Unabomber in hiding?”

“Gotta love a woman with a twisted mind.” Again Holly found his deep chuckle way too appealing for comfort. “Actually, he told them it was his busy season.”

“Of course it is,” Holly said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from sharpening her tone. “After all, he’s got a big trip coming up.”

“That’s what he reminded them.”

Forget about falling down the rabbit hole. Holly had just decided that somehow she’d gone into another dimension and landed in the Twilight Zone when he turned one more corner and the Ho Ho Ho Inn came into view.

You couldn’t miss it. With those flashing red ten-foot-tall letters. But she’d been expecting some sort of tacky little motel-looking place. The type where you’d expect to find animal heads hanging on cheap paneled walls. Granted, the inside could still meet expectations, but the exterior was a surprise.

It was actually a compound of log and stone buildings nestled in a grove of fir trees. The lodge itself had a roof that soared two and a half stories high. The front was all glass and jutted forward like the prow of an ancient sailing ship. Perhaps a dozen smaller cabins were scattered around in the woods. Close enough to give a sense of a community, but far enough apart to allow privacy, if that’s what a guest had come here seeking.

“Okay, I’m impressed.”

“You were expecting, perhaps, the Bates Motel?” Rather than seeming to take offense, his voice held that humor she was beginning to find all too appealing.

“Something like that,” she admitted.

“According to old-timers, the original main inn was more along those lines. But it burned down two years ago after it was hit by lightning. The owners had plans drawn up and had begun construction when they decided they didn’t want to make that much of a commitment at that point in their lives. So, they put it up for sale just when I got out of the service and was looking to make a lifestyle change. The top two floors are living area. I had soundproofing put in between the floors that allows me to live above the store without getting any of the downstairs noise.”

“Lucky you.” A warm, welcoming yellow light gleamed forth from the windows. “And it’s stunning. But you’ve got to admit the signage is a little tacky.”

“More than a little,” he agreed. “The thing is, it fits the town’s building code. I could’ve left the flashing lights off, but decided to put them back up because my daughter loves them.”

“Your daughter?”

“Yeah.” He pulled up in front of the lodge, parking between an ancient VW bus that had been painted in geometric squares reminiscent of the Partridge Family tour bus and a trendy Lexus crossover. “Emma’s five. Needless to say, she finds all the kitsch in the town to her liking.”

“I can imagine.” Memories of her own childhood Christmases in New York, which she’d buried deep inside her long ago, stirred. From habit, Holly rigidly tamped them down. It figured that the first guy she’d found appealing in months was not only married, but a player. “How does your wife feel about it?”

“Wife?”

He cut the engine and turned toward her, a quick spark firing in eyes that had turned to flint. The easy humor was gone and the mouth that had been so quick to smile was drawn into a hard, tough line. For the first time she could see the warrior dwelling inside the friendly Good Samaritan inn owner.

“What the hell would I be doing hitting on another woman if I had a wife waiting for me at home?”

She shrugged. “People cheat all the time. You wouldn’t be the first married person to fool around.”

In fact, although she wasn’t prepared to share the fact, she’d lost her virginity her freshman year of college to her English Lit professor, who’d neglected to mention a wife who’d just happened to be away on sabbatical studying the Brontë sisters at University College, Oxford.

The ironic thing about that whole sad affair was that at the time the Brontës had been her favorite authors, and the dark, broody, and overly temperamental professor had reminded her of Heathcliff.

“Other people may cheat.” Something else came and went in Gabe’s eyes. Something Holly couldn’t quite read. “But not me. No way. No how.”

He was suddenly looking at her as if she were a stray dog. No, worse than a stray, given the story of him having adopted that oversize mutt who was currently whining impatiently to get out of the SUV—he actually liked strays.

“Okay.” She held up a hand. Obviously she’d misread the situation. “Since I just met you, I’ll have to take your word for it. But may I point out that you’re the one who hit on me. Talking about nibbling on ankles and such.” Just the thought of all the other body parts representing the “such” was enough to make her blood run a little hotter. “Then, out of the blue, you brought up your daughter.”

“You’ve never heard of a single dad?”

“Of course. I’ve just never actually met one.”

The line of his jaw hardened. “Well, you have now.”

Apparently he’d had enough of the conversation because after muttering a rude curse, he opened the door and climbed out. Not quite understanding how the mood had taken such a drastic turn, just because she’d made an understandable mistake, Holly didn’t wait for him to come around the front of the Expedition, but jumped out and placed a hand on his arm.

“Look,” she said. “I’m sorry if I offended you. That wasn’t my intention.” She offered a smile of contrition. “Especially after you rescued me from turning into a popsicle.”

He looked down at her hand. Then cursed again. It might’ve been mild for a Marine, but it still wasn’t a word Holly had said more than once, okay, maybe twice in her life.

“Hell. While we’re sharing apologies here, let me offer you one for overreacting. My only excuse, not that I have much of one, is that you hit a hot button I didn’t realize I had.”

As they stood there in the snow-covered parking lot, Gabe looking down at Holly, her looking up at him, something stirred in her. More complicated than lust, it felt uncomfortably like need.

“Okay,” she said through lips that had gotten suddenly dry. “So, we’re even. No harm. No foul.”

As quickly as the winter storm had swooped down over the mountains, his grin was back, quick and, dammit, sexy as sin. “Gotta love a woman who can use a sports metaphor. I don’t suppose you eat meat?”

“I’ve been known to eat a bloody steak from time to time.”

“How about carbs?”

“A steak without a baked potato or fries is like a day without chocolate.” She shrugged. “What’s the point?”

The air was biting, the snow continued to fall, but Holly was feeling warmer and warmer inside as his eyes swept over her face.

“I don’t suppose you’ve watched ESPN on occasion?”

She tossed her head. Flashed him a flirty smile she didn’t even know she had inside her. “I’ll see your ESPN and raise you. I happen to subscribe to the NFL network.”

“Be still my heart.” He patted the front of the parka with that wide gloved hand that she was no longer worrying about breaking her neck. No, it was the other things she was imagining it doing that could prove really dangerous. “I’m not absolutely positive, but I think I may have just fallen in love.”

“Don’t get overly worked up,” she said as he opened the back of the Expedition and got out her things. “I only signed up because I was thinking about writing a book about a crazed fan who killed off players from rival teams.

“Although that concept didn’t quite work out, I kept the network, because, while I couldn’t tell you an option play from a quarterback sneak, what’s not to love about hunky guys in shoulder pads with tight butts running around in spandex?”

“I’d never thought of it that way.”

“Now there’s a surprise.” Although the single former Marine Corps dad was certainly no Rambo, the testosterone he oozed was definitely of the heterosexual variety.

Toughening herself against it—and him—she turned and began walking down the narrow path someone had shoveled from the parking lot to the front door.

Chapter Seven

The sweep of headlights flashed in the window.

Over the sound of the wind in the tops of the trees, Beth heard a truck door open and shut. Then, surprisingly, another.

The door to the combination inn/restaurant/bar opened a moment later and Gabriel entered with a woman who looked vaguely familiar.

“It’s her!” Emma hissed.

“Who?” Beth looked closer.

“My present!”

“What present?”

“The one I decided I wanted more than a pony,” Emma insisted on an impatient huff. “My new mom!”

“What?”

“See.” The little girl shoved the napkin at her grandmother. “I had Mr. Daughtry draw her for me, so Santa would know exactly what she looked like.”

Beth studied the pencil sketch, then looked back at the woman stamping the snow off a pair of calf-high chocolate-hued Uggs.

Daughtry’s sketch wasn’t as detailed as a photograph. But there was no mistaking the resemblance. The artist had captured the pointed, stubborn chin, the wide mouth, which was smiling in the sketch, unlike the real woman whose intelligent green gaze was sweeping over the room.

It was only a coincidence, Beth assured herself, as her granddaughter ran across the wooden floor to greet them. Just random luck. Just as it was only the chill of the night air that had caused the goosebumps to rise on her skin.

Revealing a speed that belied his size, Dog streaked past Gabe into the inn just as Emma came barreling toward him.

Then she skidded to a stop in front of Holly Berry, staring up at her with the awe that the adolescent boy Gabe had felt upon his first sight of a Playboy Playmate of the Month foldout.

“Hi.” Her little voice was breathless, her face beatific.

“Hi, yourself.”

The woman won huge points with Gabe when she returned his daughter’s smile. Meanwhile, Dog came screeching to a halt with the scratching sound of claws on the wooden floor, rolled over, and waited for Emma to start scratching his stomach, as she always did.

“I’m Emma.”

“I’m Holly.”

The little girl’s eyes lit up as Dog began wiggling on the floor, trying to get the attention he’d grown used to receiving. “Like Christmas Holly?”

“Exactly like that. I was born on Christmas Eve, so although my mother was pushing for Caroline, my father, who was a huge fan of Christmas, won the argument.”

“That’s cool.” Emma’s beaming smile could have lit up the town of Santa’s Village for a month. “Maybe your daddy would like to live here. This is the most Christmassy town in America.”

“So I read on the sign.” When Dog, tired of being uncharacteristically ignored by his small owner, let out a deep rumbling bark, Holly absently began scratching his belly. “Unfortunately, my father died when I was young.”

“That’s too bad.” Rosebud lips pulled into a pout Gabe recognized all too well. Even a five-year-old female, he’d discovered, could be every bit as capricious as the older variety, and Emma’s emotions could swing in a wide arc. “My daddy almost died in Afghanistan. But he saved a bunch of people in a big battle and got a medal.”

“Well.” Holly glanced up at him. “That’s very heroic.”

Gabe cringed inwardly. He hated talk of heroism. “I was just doing my job,” he insisted as he always did when either his mother or daughter brought it up. His father—having been a grunt in Nam—was wise enough to let sleeping dogs lie. So to speak. He took off the parka and hung it on the rack on the wall. “Same as any other Marine would’ve done.”

“Hmm.”

He could tell Holly wasn’t exactly buying that, but was grateful when she didn’t push for details. Instead, she stood up again and swept an appraising glance over his daughter. “I like your outfit.”

Emma preened like a Junior Miss Cascade Rodeo Days finalist as she skimmed a small hand down the front of the pink fringed faux suede skirt. “It’s my cowgirl outfit.” She stuck out a small foot. “See, I have boots to match.”

“I’ve never seen pink cowgirl boots before.” Holly gave them an admiring appraisal.

“They’re special. My aunt Julie sent them to me from Calgary. That’s in Canada.”

“I know.”

“She went up there to compete in the barrel race in the Calgary Stampede, which is this really big, famous rodeo. But she fell off her horse and broke her arm.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Not really. Because she fell in love with the doctor who put her cast on.”

Holly won additional points with Gabe by smiling. Not just a phony patronizing one for show, but a real one that crinkled the corners of her green eyes. “Sounds like a lucky break.”

“That’s what Aunt Julie says. Especially since she’d never, ever”—red curls danced as Emma shook her head—“fallen off her horse before. My uncle Jeremy—he’s the doctor she married—says it was kismet. That’s kinda like magic. Like Ariel saving Prince Eric from drowning, and falling in love with him.”

“Sounds like it to me,” Holly agreed, exchanging a glance with Gabe, who rolled his eyes. She suspected the family had very few secrets with this pint-size Paul Revere living among them.

Not that she’d pump a little girl for information about her father. Even if she was interested in the man. Which she wasn’t.

Liar.

“Did Daddy bring you back from Seattle with him?” Emma asked.

“Part of the way.” He’d shoved his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans, his thumbs arrowing downward, drawing her attention to his 5-button fly. “I had an accident, and he came along just in time.”

“That’s what heroes do,” the little girl said, as if she were an authority on such matters. “Like Aladdin did when he rescued Princess Jasmine when she was about to get her hand cut off for giving an apple to a poor beggar.”

“The world according to Disney,” Gabe murmured, once again sounding more than a little uncomfortable at being stuck atop that pedestal his daughter had created for him.

“Nothing wrong with fairy tales,” Holly murmured back, even though her own mother had never allowed her to read them. Or go to Disney movies.

Better, she’d said, for little girls to grow up believing in reality. Of taking charge of your own life. Because waiting around for knights in shining armor and expecting happily ever after endings could only lead to heartbreak.

Still, Holly hadn’t needed to spend a bundle talking about her childhood with some Freudian shrink to make the connection between her father’s murder and her having grown up to be a mystery novelist.

Perhaps NYPD had never managed to catch George Berry’s killer, but in Holly’s stories, the bad guys were always captured by the final chapter, justice prevailed in the end, and the good guys—and women—went on to live happily ever after.

It was, in its own way, every bit a fantasy as the one those romance novels her best friend, Jeanine, who ran the Body Beautiful Day Spa next to the Starbucks down the street from her apartment, gobbled up like chocolate-covered coffee beans.

“Which is why they call it fiction,” Holly had been quoted as saying just last week during an interview on Seattle’s KOMO’s Northwest Afternoon program.

Since selling her first book the same week she graduated from college, for the past seven years crime had been Holly’s business. And fortunately, since people seemed to be endlessly fascinated by murder and mayhem, business was good.

Still, she was intrigued by the idea of this hottie Marine sitting in a theater, or even on a couch in his living room, watching The Little Mermaid.

“Ms. Berry has had a long day,” he said on a mild tone that nevertheless brooked no argument. Holly figured the quiet authority must have served him well in the military. “We need to see about getting her a room for the night.”

“She could stay with us,” Emma volunteered quickly. A bit too quickly, Holly thought. “We’ve got lots of room.”

“I think Ms. Berry might feel more comfortable with other arrangements.”

His fingers curved around Holly’s elbow as he led her across the room, which she was surprised to find tastefully decorated for the season. The fragrant green fir had been draped in white fairy lights, its branches adorned with what appeared to be hand-carved ornaments. Fresh wreaths hung on the windows, and the staircase was wrapped with pine garlands.

There were no animal heads on the walls, no inflatable snowmen or waving Santas.

Unfortunately, there was a juke box from which Lonestar was promising to be home for Christmas.

Yeah, right, Holly thought.

Great group. Stupid song. In fact, it was, thanks to her own personal history, her least favorite song ever recorded. Unfortunately, this particular one seemed to have been covered by anyone who’d ever picked up a microphone and it was impossible to get through the holiday season without being bombarded by various versions.

At least the country edge to this rendition kept it from being as saccharine as the one by The Carpenters, which had come onto the Highlander’s radio as she’d left Seattle.

The kitchen had been built with a large window, allowing diners to watch their meals being made. It also, Holly thought, enabled the kitchen staff to keep an eye on their customers, thus allowing better service. The smells emanating from the room outfitted with what appeared to be state-of-the-art equipment made her mouth water. Then again, all she’d had to eat since that bagel this morning had been a thermos of coffee and a package of M&M’s.

The fire he’d told her about probably made it impossible for the long check-in counter to be original, but it certainly looked antique. Perhaps an old bar from an 1880s saloon. She ran a finger over the crease in its polished surface and imagined a bullet skimming by during some long-ago gunfight.

A woman, with fashionably silver hair cut in a short bob, wearing a white chef’s apron over jeans and a blue Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt came out of the kitchen.

“It’s about time you got home.” She wrapped her arms around Gabe’s wide shoulders, went up on her toes, and kissed his beard-roughened cheek. “I’ve been a little worried.”

“I was delayed.” He ran the back of his hand down the side of her face, the gesture easy and natural, demonstrating yet again that he was a man comfortable with physical displays of affection. “Holly, this is my mother, Beth O’Halloran. Mom, this is—”

“Holly Berry.” Twin dimples that echoed her son’s creased in her cheeks as she smiled. “I’m a huge fan.”

A slender gold ring flashed in the twinkling white lights of the Christmas tree as she held out her hand. “Welcome to the Ho Ho Ho Inn.”

“Holly had an accident on the road,” Gabe revealed. “She swerved for Blitzen.”

“Sam said he’d gotten out again,” Beth agreed. “But, thank heavens, he’s back home now.” Hazel eyes swept over Holly’s face. “Let’s get some ice on that eye while I fix you some dinner.”

“I was thinking perhaps, since we’re booked solid, she could stay with you and Pop until her SUV’s fixed and the roads open again,” Gabe suggested.

“Well, now, of course you’d be welcome,” Beth agreed. “But as it turns out, we’ve a lovely one-bedroom cabin that just opened up today. The Davidsons’ daughter went into labor early,” she informed Gabe. “Even if they could get over the mountains, which they probably can’t, since your father’s been out putting up road closure barricades all day, they understandably decided to stay in Portland.”

She smiled at Holly. “They’ve been regulars since their daughter, Madison, was about Emma’s age. We’ll miss them, of course, but it’s a lucky timing for you.”

“It seems to be.” Holly decided her luck had definitely been mixed the last few hours.

“Is Madison okay?” Gabe asked.

“Better than okay. The Davidsons are now proud grandparents of twins.”

“That’s good news.”

The genuine warmth in his tone suggested he knew the new mother. Which only made sense. Of course, there could also be a history there, Holly considered. She couldn’t imagine many teenage girls not noticing Gabriel O’Halloran. Especially in a town this small. As the idea of a Christmas vacation fling with a hunkier younger version of the Marine single dad came to mind, Holly felt a little twinge of something that felt uncomfortably, ridiculously, like jealousy.

“Fabulous news,” Beth agreed. “Anna sounded over the moon about being a new grandmother when she called to cancel. Why don’t you take Holly’s things over to the cabin, Gabriel,” she suggested, “while I fix her something to eat.”

“I’ll help,” Emma chirped up. “Do you like gingerbread?” she asked Holly.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Holly responded, suspecting that was the answer the little girl wanted to hear.

“Good. Because Gramma makes the best gingerbread in the whole world. I helped her make it this morning.”

“Emma’s quite the little helper,” Beth agreed, her smile once again reminding Holly of her son’s. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

Five minutes later, Holly was sitting at a small table in the kitchen, a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a dish towel against her eye, while Beth whipped up a serving of the daily special—gravy-smothered chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes.

Even as she could practically see the dinner attaching itself to her hips, Holly, who was more accustomed to nuking a Lean Cuisine or takeout Chinese, couldn’t deny it smelled heavenly.

If she was going to get stranded somewhere, a town called Santa’s Village definitely would’ve been her very last choice. Well, at least right above hell.

Still, as Emma chattered on like a little red-haired magpie about her various aunts and uncles’ adventures, and Beth bustled around the kitchen with an ease a finalist on Top Chef would’ve envied, Holly decided it was actually rather pleasant.

When Gabe’s mother put the white plate in front of her and she discovered the calorie-laden dinner tasted even better than it had smelled, she decided she could have done a whole lot worse.

Chapter Eight

The cabin, which was stone and wood on the outside, was warm and cozy, with overstuffed furniture covered in sturdy fabric designed to take a lot of abuse. The furniture was an eclectic mixture of pine and other woods, the plank coffee table wide enough to encourage visitors to put their feet up.

Someone—it had to have been Gabe—had lit a fire in the stone fireplace while she’d been eating dinner. There was a powder room and large but cozy combination living room and kitchen separated by a granite-topped counter downstairs. Upstairs, in the loft, was a bath with separate shower and oversize whirlpool tub that looked out onto the dark expanse of forest, and a bedroom boasting a king-size four-poster bed created from logs.

Yellow plank pine walls glowed like warm butter beneath the wrought iron chandelier. A second fireplace, this one gas, flickered in the corner and a Native American print quilt and pillows covered the bed.

A smaller blanket, bordered in deep brown and blue woven petroglyphs, hung on the wall opposite the bed. A fanciful figure in colors ranging from red to bright yellow stood in the center of the blanket.

“It depicts a spirit quest,” Gabe told her as she paused in front of it, “symbolizing a young brave seeking his destiny. The petroglyphs were designed after those found near the Columbia River. They’ve been dated back to over ten thousand years. The ones on the stones,” he said. “Not the blanket.”

“It’s lovely,” she murmured. The woven wool was incredibly soft to the touch. “It must’ve been nice. To believe in such a thing.”

“Nice?” He tilted his head and looked down at her.

“That’s not exactly the word I mean. More life affirming. The idea of a quest to follow your fate.”

“And you don’t believe in that idea?”

“I believe we all make our own fate…. What?” she asked, after a long, humming moment when he didn’t respond.

“I was just thinking how I used to believe that, too. When I left town on, I guess you’d have to say, my own spirit quest.”

“Which led you into the Marines.”

“Yeah. Where I learned that despite all the training, despite being a member of the strongest military in the world, fate has a helluva lot more to do with life than most of us want to admit.”

Suspecting that he’d seen a lot during his years in the service, Holly didn’t want to argue. Besides, if she was going to get technical, she suspected fate had played more than a little part in that Manhattan murderous mugger being on the street corner that long-ago Christmas Eve.

“Well.” She blew out a breath. “Thanks for rescuing me. And for the place to stay. And the dinner.”

“The Ho Ho Ho Inn prides itself on its hospitality.”

She couldn’t help smiling.

“What?” His chiseled masculine lips quirked just a bit in response to her smile.

“I was just thinking how amazing it is that a big tough Marine can say the name of this place with a straight face.”

His rich, warm laugh was every bit as intoxicating as the buttered rum Beth O’Halloran had insisted on sending with her in a foam to-go cup, along with a plate of ginger spice molasses cookies.

“Believe me, it took a while.” His eyes warmed like gleaming pewter in the glow from the wrought iron chandelier’s candelabra bulbs. “Nearly as long as it took me to get used to the idea of being an innkeeper.”

“It seems a little—” She paused, taking time to find the right word. “Staid for someone who’s obviously accustomed to more action.”

“Which is precisely why I’m happy with staid for the time being. Plus, there’s Emma to think of.”

Holly wondered how he’d ended up in America’s most Christmassy town the single dad to a little girl. Where was the former Mrs. O’Halloran? If there’d even been one.

“She’s darling. And going to be a heartbreaker when she grows up.”

“Oh, Lord. I don’t even want to think about that.” He’d unzipped the parka he’d put back on to walk her to the cabin, and now rubbed a hand against his chest. “I’m thinking about locking her in a closet at puberty and letting her back out at thirty. Or seeing if I can talk her into a convent.”

“Well, those are two possible solutions.” She wondered if her own father would’ve felt the same way. Felt a tinge of the sadness at the idea she’d never know.

“Probably not the most practical,” Gabe allowed. His lips were still smiling, but his heavily lidded eyes, as they moved slowly, intimately over her face, were not.

“What?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically soft after another long, drawn-out pause.

“I was just thinking about fate.” Thoughtful little lines appeared at the corners of those unreasonably sexy eyes. Once again demonstrating he had no concept of personal space, he ran a hand down her hair. This time Holly did not—could not—move away.

“What about it?”

“How if all of the events of the past few years hadn’t conspired to bring me back to this place I always swore I wanted to escape, I wouldn’t have happened to have been on that road today.” He combed the long, dark fingers of his left hand through her hair, which was still a bit damp from having walked out into the snow again from the inn to the cabin. “Just a few minutes after you’d run into that snowdrift.”

“It was more like forty-five minutes,” she managed through lips that had gone ridiculously dry.

“Then I guess I’m damn lucky that fate kept some other guy from getting there before me.”

At this moment, Holly was almost hoping that some other man had. Someone like, perhaps, Sam Fraiser, the owner of Kris Kringle’s Workshop, out searching for his runaway reindeer. If only she’d been rescued by the village’s own personal Santa, she wouldn’t be so tempted by those lips that were getting closer to her own.

And she definitely wouldn’t be going up on her toes to help him close the gap.

“Gabriel.” His name came out on a ragged breath.

“That’s funny.” His free hand slid beneath the back of her sweater, roughened fingertips warm against her flesh.

“What?”

“The only person who’s called me that since sixth grade is my mother.” He drew her closer. “But it sounds really, really different coming from your lips.”

He lowered his mouth and brushed at those lips with a feather-soft touch that was more temptation than proper kiss. The hand on her back was both gentle and confident as it pressed her even closer against him.

“Say it again.” His breath was warm against her lips. He tasted of coffee, and cinnamon gum, and desire. A desire that was ribboning through her own veins.

“Gabriel.” The archangel’s name came out on a shuddering breath. “Please.”

“Please yes?” His lips continued to drift over hers in a slow, lazy seduction that was as enticing as it was enervating. “Or please no?”

Although her taser pen was back inside her bag, which was currently lying on the coffee table in the other room, Holly knew she could stop him. She had, after all, taken that protection course at the police station, and while she might not be able to break bricks with her bare hands, she knew moves that could have him writhing on the floor gripping his wounded balls.

But she knew that she wouldn’t need those GET skills with this man. Knew that she could simply step away and he’d stop.

But, oh God, his mouth was so amazingly clever. The almost kisses so tempting, drawing her into complacence, even as they excited.

Telling herself that it was only because it’d been a very long time since she’d been with any man, that this hot, intoxicating pleasure had nothing to do with Gabriel O’Halloran himself, or the admittedly unusual circumstance that had landed her in first his SUV, then his arms, Holly twined her arms around his neck.

“Yes, dammit.”

Chapter Nine

She closed her eyes, expecting the former Marine to ravish, to take what she was so willingly offering. But instead, she felt the curve of his lips against hers.

“Well”—his voice, husky with lust, but tinged with humor, had her toes curling in her Uggs—“since you put it that way.”

Needs. Hunger. Lust. They surged through Gabe, battering away at his hard-won self-control, demanding satisfaction.

In response to her demand, he crushed her against him as his lips turned hard. Fueled by his own burning hunger, driven by her uninhibited response, he wanted to devour her—her warm, ripe mouth, her hot, peach-scented skin, which was practically melting beneath his now roving hands.

His tongue was in her mouth, his hands were beneath the sweater on her breasts, and as he pressed against that soft, womanly place between her thighs, he felt about to burst all five metal buttons beneath his fly.

Too fast, he told himself as her mouth clung to his and her silky soft hands dove beneath his sweatshirt. Too soon. Although his aching body was shouting at him to take her the hell to bed, now, when he did make love to her, and Gabe had every intention of doing exactly that, he wanted to be able to take his time. To give, as well as take.

When her greedy touch went lower, her fingers slipping between denim and skin, he grasped hold of her wrists.

Not yet ready to quit, he pinned her hands to the wooden post of the bed and slowed the pace, lips plucking at hers again, rather than devouring, his tongue leaving the lush hot moistness of her mouth to skim a slow, tantalizing circle around her parted lips.

“Dammit.” His breath was rough. Ragged. His body ached and his damn heart hadn’t pounded against his ribcage this hard since the last time he’d been on a battlefield. “Do you have any idea how much I want you?”

And because he did want her, more than was either reasonable or safe, he let go of her and backed away.

“I think that was fairly evident.” Her eyes were wide, and just a little unfocused, which was sexy as hell, as she rubbed her wrists.

“You didn’t say no,” he reminded her.

“Would it have mattered?” On a flare of heat, she tossed up that stubborn, pointed chin.

“Hell, yes.” She might as well have slapped him. “I’ve never been into forcing women.”

“Like you’d ever have to,” she muttered.

The mood was disintegrating. Like morning mist that rose from the lake each summer, only to be burned away by the sun. But her tone, rather than sexy warm, or even annoyed hot, had turned as chilly as the icicles hanging from the cabin’s eaves.

Women, Gabe thought. From five to twenty-eight—and he knew exactly how old she was because he’d taken the time to Google her while she’d been in the kitchen with his mother—they could all be as capricious as the damn weather.

“You met my mother.”

Because it was impossible to be this close to her and not touch, he linked their fingers together and led her out of the room and down the stairs, away from the temptation of that king-size bed.

Not that the lack of a bed would stop him if he put aside principles and just went for what he wanted. Especially since he was really, really tempted to drag her down onto the rug in front of the stone fireplace.

But hadn’t he learned the hard way that people could get hurt when you only thought about your own sexual needs?

“Do you think she’d have raised a guy who didn’t respect women?” he asked.

“No.” Holly blew out a breath as they reached the front door. “And it’s not just her. I watched you with your daughter. You’re a nice guy, Gabriel O’Halloran.”

“Terrific.” Because his body still wanted her, still ached with the need for her, and because she’d just reminded him that Emma was waiting in bed for him to read the Grinch story to her, Gabe laughed. A harsh, rough sound from deep in his throat. “Kittens are nice. Boy Scouts and TV weather-men are nice. Believe me, sweetheart, a lot of the things I want to do with you don’t begin to fit into that category.”

He skimmed a finger beneath the eye that, despite the ice pack his mother had given her, was still blossoming into one hell of a shiner.

“You’ve had a stressful day.” His mother’s response to stress came to mind. “Why don’t you take a long, hot bubble bath and relax?”

Hell. The words had no sooner come out of his mouth than Gabe regretted them. Because they stirred up images of being naked with her straddling his legs in that oversize tub. And afterward, smoothing lotion the scent of ripe peaches over every inch of her porcelain-pale skin.

“Get some rest.” He plowed forward before she might just go insane and invite him into that bathtub with her. “Since breakfast comes with the cabin, and you obviously haven’t had time to go shopping, I’ll see you in the morning.”

He skimmed a finger down her nose. Then, before he could change his mind, he turned and walked out of the cabin into the dark and snowy night.

Chapter Ten

Holly stood at the door, watching him walk out of the yellow circle of light from her own porch back to the inn. White flakes continued to fall, shawling silently over the land, and once he’d been swallowed up by the snow-swirled darkness, she could have been the only person in the world. Which was all it took to kick Holly’s imagination into high gear.

She hadn’t been all that wild about the cookie murders, anyway, having already written a black widow killer. But six weeks ago, although she’d never allowed herself to believe in writer’s block, she’d run smack into it.

She’d always read three newspapers a day looking for story ideas. Desperate, and with a deadline approaching, she’d added two more papers and more magazines than anyone could read in a lifetime.

She began taking tabloids home with her frozen dinners from the supermarket. Okay, her audience might not want to read about bat boy being found on a melting glacier at the North Pole, or the Titanic being discovered by a lunar rover in a previously uncharted sea on the moon, but there were a lot of crimes profiled between those newsprint pages. Unfortunately, none had gotten her balky muses—who seemed to have gone into permanent PMS—to cooperate.

Neither had Court TV. Nor any of the other true-life crime shows that seemed to run 24/7 on cable. It had been desperation, and a need to be anywhere away from home on Christmas, that had had her driving over the Cascades to Leavenworth.

And that same desperation had landed her in the arms of a hottie ex-Marine who had her feeling things she’d forgotten she could feel. Tingling in places she’d never known she could tingle.

But now, as she closed the heavy wooden door, she thought about all the things that might be lurking out there in the dark winter night.

Mountain lions, perhaps? Although bears were supposed to hibernate, surely once in a while a rogue one might come out of its den to go searching for food. Or wolves, which, thinking about it, the wind in the top of the trees sort of sounded like. Did they have wolves in Washington?

But even as that idea caused the hair to rise on her arms, she didn’t write about killer animals. Well, actually she did, but Holly had always thought human animals could be far more terrifying due to their propensity for evil.

What if a woman was alone here in this very cabin while a serial killer lurked outside, armed, with a huge hunting knife—with a serrated edge and ugly blood groove—hidden in his boot?

But what was the woman doing here, out in the middle of nowhere? Perhaps her car had broken down?

No.

Holly shook her head as she took the plastic lid off the take-out cup and sipped the buttered rum, which while no longer exactly hot, was still warm. That was too close to real life. It wasn’t always easy keeping fact and fiction separate, and bringing her own experience into her story could very well blur the line.

So…

She began to pace the wooden plank floor, her mind spinning with possibilities. What if it just wasn’t a lone woman at risk—which brought to mind all those Halloween slasher stories—but a young mother? With a small son.

No. A little girl. With hair the color of a newly minted penny, who was clever and funny and chattered like a magpie.

Although Holly hated putting children in jeopardy, even in books, there was admittedly something visceral about the idea. Something that her readers could connect emotionally with.

“But what would they be doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” she asked herself out loud.

Running from something. Or someone. Hiding out. Perhaps to keep the little girl safe?

Holly felt a stirring in the far reaches of her mind and realized that she’d just hit on something that had appealed to one of those bitchy muses who’d been refusing to cooperate.

“That’s it. She’s running from her husband.” A dangerously possessive psychopath who’d do anything, stop at nothing, to get her back.

Of course, she considered as she took another sip of the cooling rum, even if her beleaguered heroine knew every martial art in the world, and was armed to the teeth, she’d still be in danger.

Unless…

“There’s a hottie sheriff in town.” That worked, she thought. So long as he was self-assured enough not to overpower the heroine’s autonomy. “Maybe former military.”

She nodded, liking that idea. “A former Navy SEAL.” Which was a possibility, but she’d also written SEALs in her second and fourth books, which had been set in San Diego and Virginia Beach.

“Maybe a former Marine.” Her mind immediately spun up an image of thick black hair and steely gray eyes. “Who’s come back to his hometown and taken on his father’s job as sheriff.”

That worked, Holly decided.

She went over to the kitchen table, where Gabriel had left her laptop, took it out of the case, and sat down to work.

As the words started flowing, like water from a magical well, and her muses finally began to cooperate, Holly decided that she wasn’t the only one who found the hunky inn owner an inspiration.

Chapter Eleven

It was the knock on the door that woke her. Sitting up, Holly looked around the unfamiliar surroundings.

It took her a moment to realize where she was. Aha! The inn out in the middle of the Cascade Mountains, where she’d landed after wrecking her Highlander. She squinted, trying to read her watch.

“Ten in the morning?”

She never, ever slept past seven. Except that time two years ago, when despite having a shot, she’d come down with the flu. Or, when she’d been writing madly until deadline. Which is exactly what she’d been doing last night.

She vaguely remembered saving her story. Then e-mailing it to herself, just in case some crazy electrical storm surge might come along to fry her laptop.

Then she’d dragged herself upstairs where, because even with the central heat there was a chill in the air, she’d put on her flannel pajamas, after which she’d fallen into bed.

Then crashed. That had been, what? Two hours ago?

She thought about ignoring the knock, rolling over, burying her head in the thick cloud of down pillow, and going back to sleep. But what if it was something concerning her Highlander? What if the tow truck driver had already arrived with it?

Rubbing the grit out of her eyes with her knuckles, she padded in sock-clad feet downstairs, opened the front door, and found herself looking a long way up into Gabriel O’Halloran’s apologetic gaze.

“Sorry. It looks as if we woke you up.”

“I worked late.” She ran a hand over her hair, which, if it was behaving in its usual bedhead fashion, was undoubtedly stuck up in all directions, looking as if she’d put her finger in a light socket.

A small bright head peeked around his jean-clad thighs. “Wow.” Bright eyes swept over Holly’s face. “Does your eye hurt as bad as it looks?”

Amazingly, she’d forgotten all about that. Lifting a finger to her face, Holly couldn’t quite refrain from flinching as she touched the bruised skin beneath her eye. “I don’t know how bad it looks,” she said, even as she feared the worst. “But it’s okay.”

“That’s good. I had a black eye in September, after I got in a fight with Jimmy Jones—he’s one of the big kids, in second grade—on the playground because he said Santa wasn’t real.” Pink lips turned down in a moue. “He’s not a very nice boy.”

“Doesn’t sound like it, hitting a girl,” Holly agreed.

“Oh, I hit him first,” Emma said casually. “Daddy said I was wrong, even though he told a fib about Santa.” She glanced up at her father, who nodded resigned confirmation. “Gramma was worried you’d be hungry. So we brought you breakfast. So you can eat before we go out and get your tree.”

The scent of fresh brewed coffee rose enticingly from the brown paper bag Gabe was holding. As uncomfortable as she was, letting the former Marine see her in her flannel jammies and spiky hair, not to mention whatever her eye must look like, there was no way she could resist a morning jolt of caffeine.

“That’s very considerate of your grandmother.” She moved aside, allowing them into the cabin, and folded her arms across her breasts. “What’s this about a tree?”

“It’s an inn tradition.” Gabe put the bag on the butcherblock counter, took out a tall cardboard cup, and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” She took a sip and nearly wept.

“My pleasure.” He skimmed a look over her, and amazingly, instead of cringing, if the light in his eyes was any indication, actually appeared to like what he saw. “As for the tree, like I said, it’s an inn tradition. Everyone who stays here gets to choose their own from the farm.”

“Thanks,” she repeated as she took another, longer drink. It was hot, dark, sweet, and caused a much-needed jolt to her system. “But as soon as my Highlander gets fixed, I’ll be on my way.”

But not on to Leavenworth. After the nearly twenty pages she’d written last night, Holly had committed to her runaway wife and psychotic, possessive husband story. The cookie-baking black widow would have to wait.

“Ken Olson, of Olson’s Auto Repair, took his tow truck out to bring in your rig a bit ago,” Gabe said. “You’ve probably got at least a couple hours until he’s got it back to town and checked it out.”

“Well.” Holly supposed she couldn’t expect things to move as quickly up here in the mountains as they might in the city. “I appreciate your help with that. But I’m really not into the whole tree thing.”

“You don’t like Christmas trees?” When Emma’s eyes widened to saucers of disbelief, Holly felt like the Grinch who stole the little girl’s Christmas.

“I like them just fine,” she said. “It’s just…well, I’ve never had one.”

Emma gasped. “Never?”

“Well, not since I was seven.”

Gray eyes, replicas of her father’s, narrowed as they skimmed over her face. “Wow! That was a really, really long time ago.”

“Sorry,” Gabe said as Holly choked on her coffee. “We’re still working on the concept of tact.”

“It’s okay.” Holly wiped her lips with the back of her hand. When Gabe’s gaze followed the gesture, she knew they were thinking the same thing. Of that hot kiss they’d shared last night.

She could also tell that she’d hugely disappointed his daughter.

“Daddy grows the very bestest trees,” Emma said fervently. “We could find you the neatest one ever. To make up for all the Christmases when you went without one.”

“I think maybe Ms. Berry would just as well forgo the tree hunting experience,” Gabe told his daughter gently.

“But, Daddy, everyone else at the Ho Ho Ho Inn has a tree.” The little girl’s voice rose perilously close to a whine.

Something occurred to Holly. “Don’t you have school today?” she asked. Surely she hadn’t worked through an entire weekend?

“I’m in kindergarten,” Emma confirmed. “Which is just half days until I get to first grade next year. But we had a snow day. Which is even more special because now I get to go with you to pick out the most perfect tree.”

Although the child was only five years old, it was like trying to stand up to a velvet bulldozer. Holly exchanged a look with Gabe. He shrugged, letting her know that it was her call.

“Let me get dressed,” she said. “And we’ll go see what we can find.”

“Awesome!” A small fist pumped into the air. “We brought you doughnuts, too. Since you missed breakfast.”

She held out the brown paper bag. There was a bear claw, a filled doughnut, and a flaky croissant.

“If I lived here, I’d be the size of Mrs. Santa within a week,” Holly said. Then, seeing the frown lines on the small forehead, she managed a reassuring smile. “They smell delicious.”

Emma nodded, the worry lines smoothing. “The lemon-filled doughnut is my favorite. That’s why I picked it for you.”

Holly lifted her gaze to Gabe again, who was watching her carefully. As if she’d hurt a little girl’s feelings? Holly didn’t know what the father and daughter’s backstory was, but she did know how it felt to be a child and have your life pulled out from under you. As Emma’s must have been.

“Lemon-filled are my very favorite kind,” she said, then watched him blow out a breath she suspected he’d been unaware of holding. She didn’t care what he’d said. Gabriel O’Halloran was a nice guy.

Holly took a knife from the drawer, cut the doughnut in half, and put one of the halves on a small plate from the open shelf over the sink. “But I don’t think I can eat them all myself. So why don’t we share?”

“Okay.” The cheerful child was back as she shrugged out of her coat and mittens and happily carried the plate over to the table.

“I’ll be right back down,” Holly said. “As soon as I get dressed.”

She’d just started up the stairs leading to the loft, when Gabe caught hold of her arm.

Holly glanced back over her shoulder.

“Thanks,” he said, with a heartfelt appreciation that didn’t surprise her as much as it might have only a day earlier.

That he loved his daughter was more than a little obvious. Although she wasn’t about to envy Emma for having the father she herself had always dreamed of, Holly nevertheless found herself warming to him. And not in the sexual way she’d experienced last night. But something deeper. And, oddly, more unsettling.

“I’ve never gone tree hunting before,” she said. “I’m looking forward to the experience.”

The oddest thing was, the words that were meant to reassure both father and daughter were absolutely true.

Across the room, Emma was licking lemon filling from a small thumb, oblivious to the look Gabe was sweeping over her.

“You look good enough to eat,” he said.

She refrained, just barely, from running her hand down the front of the cream pajamas covered with deep red cherries. “If you’re hungry enough to eat flannel, there’s a bear claw in that bag with your name on it.”

His deep rumbling laugh followed Holly up the stairs and into the shower, staying with her while she quickly blow-dried her hair and tried to cover up the purple and blue pouch of swollen skin around her eye.

And his laugh was still there, warming her blood in a not unpleasant way after she’d dressed.

There had to be some kind of mind-altering Kool-Aid in the water, Holly decided as she headed back down the stairs to willingly go on a Christmas tree hunt.

Chapter Twelve

Emma was bundled up like a snow princess in her Hello Kitty pink hooded jacket lined with white faux fur, matching pink snowpants and boots, and fuzzy pink mittens, when Holly came downstairs. The expectation on her face was so bright Holly felt she needed to put on her sunglasses.

“Emma,” Gabe said, not taking his eyes from Holly, “why don’t you go check on Dog. Ms. Berry and I will lock up and be out in a minute.”

“Okay.” She obediently went outside.

“Now that she got her way, she’ll be sweet as a sugar plum for at least the next ten minutes,” Gabe said. His wry grin creased his cheeks in a way that made Holly want to lick those dimples.

“She’s darling.” To keep her hands out of trouble, Holly turned her back and slipped her arms into the scarlet ski jacket she’d hung on the wall hook last night. “And you’re good with her.”

“It’s taken some adjustment on both our parts,” he surprised her by admitting. “But we’re getting there.”

His fingers brushed the back of her neck as he lifted her hair from beneath the collar. Like everything else about the man, the casual touch proved unnervingly seductive.

“I don’t mean to pry, but did your wife die?”

Emma’s mother would have been young, but having written a serial killer who targeted soccer moms in her fifth book, Holly knew that youth wasn’t always enough to keep that old boogie man Death from claiming another victim.

“No.” His tone was curt, but in the short span of time it took for her to turn back around, his face had set in a not unfriendly, but unreadable mask.

“Sorry,” she said as she plucked her knitted hat from the rack. “As I said, I didn’t mean to pry. Besides, it’s none of my business—”

“I’m beginning to think it just might be.” He seemed nearly as surprised to hear himself say that as she was to hear it. “But, the thing is, it’s not a pretty story. Not all that unusual, either, unfortunately. But definitely not something I want to talk about when I’m headed out on a beautiful winter day with an even more beautiful woman.”

“Oh, that’s good.” She drew in a short breath. “Do you practice those lines? Or do they come naturally?”

“I don’t know, since, having grown up with three older sisters who never let me get a word in edgewise, I’ve never exactly been the talkative type.” He tilted his head and studied her, the same way he had last night. Slowly. Silently. Intimately. “Come here.”

Holly could no more have resisted that husky invitation than she could have sprouted gossamer wings and flown to the moon.

“I thought about doing this all night,” he said as he enveloped her in his arms. She felt her body melting. Degree by enervating degree. “About holding you again.” He brushed his lips against her temple. “Tasting you again.” His mouth skimmed down her cheek. Nuzzled her neck. “You smell like sugar cookies this morning.”

“It’s the vanilla in my lotion.” She tilted her head, giving his lips access to that little hollow in her throat where her pulse was beating so hard and fast she wouldn’t have been surprised if he could hear it. “I have a friend who runs a day spa. She creates personalized scents.”

“I’m sure she does a dynamite business. But I have the feeling you don’t need any extra embellishment.” His tongue slid silkily up her throat, from that wild bloodbeat to brush the line of her jaw before encircling her lips. “Though I have to admit, sugar cookies are one of my favorite things.”

“I dreamed of this,” she said, as her hands stroked his shoulders.

They were wide and strong and capable of carrying heavy burdens. Just like the small-town sheriff in the story she’d stayed up all night writing. There was no point in denying that Gabriel had been her inspiration for that gentle, but tough, defender of women and children.

“Of you. And me. Together.”

It had been after she’d pictured the sheriff shooting the psycho husband dead. Oh, she hadn’t gotten to that scene yet, but she could see it as clearly as if it was running on her HDTV. She’d had it in her head when she’d fallen into bed, thinking of the abusive bad guy’s scarlet blood staining the pristine moonlight snow.

Once again, justice had prevailed. As it always did in a Holly Berry mystery.

But her muses, and her unconscious mind, had a different ending. As she’d discovered when she’d dreamed of the hero making slow, amazing love to the heroine, in front of a fire blazing in a stone hearth, while the little girl slept the safe, protected sleep of innocents in her pink canopied bed upstairs.

She could feel his lips quirk against hers. “Was it a good dream?”

Holly tilted her head back. “What do you think?”

“I think”—his lips plucked at hers, punctuating his words as he made her blood sing—“that there’s no way you and I couldn’t be spectacular together.”

And then, as if to prove his point, his mouth swept down and took hers. Hard and fast, the sudden punch of heat literally rocking her back on her heels, warming all the cold, empty places inside her.

It was the strangest thing, she thought, as the amazing kiss went on and on and on. His mouth was still on hers, but somehow she could feel it in every cell of her body. Shooting out her fingertips, her toes, curling in her stomach, making her nipples tingle and that hot, needy place between her thighs ache.

“If we were alone,” he groaned into her mouth, one large hand holding her intimately against his lower belly, where he was rock hard and swollen, “we’d finish this.”

“Yes.”

Somehow, as he’d dragged her into the heat, both arms and one leg had wrapped around him. Reality had receded as he’d made love to her with only his wickedly clever lips, teeth, and tongue. At this moment, Holly would have said yes, yes, yes! to anything, everything, Gabriel had in mind.

As he’d done last night, he backed away. His hands on her shoulders, his eyes on her face, which, she feared, was not only bruised, but flushed the crimson color of her jacket.

“Unfortunately, right now, we have a tree to hunt down.” He bent down and kissed her nose. Then her lips again, the brief flare of heat ending too soon. “So, hopefully you’ll be issuing me a snow check.”

“I think you mean a rain check.” Although she’d never been the type of woman to go to bed with a man she’d just met, Holly was definitely issuing one to this man.

“Maybe that’s what you call them in Seattle.” He grinned, took away the leather gloves she was about to put on, and replaced them with a pair of insulated blue gloves covered with white snowflakes.

“My sister Rachel is a serious skier,” he explained. “She was on the Olympic team that went to Japan in ’98 and her closets look like an REI warehouse. Since your own gloves didn’t look that warm, I stopped by her house this morning before coming over here.”

“That’s very thoughtful.” They might not go with her coat, but they definitely looked warmer.

“We do our best to keep our guests comfortable here at the Ho Ho Ho Inn. And, getting back to my plan of nibbling every fragrant inch of your sugar-cookie-sweet body, here in Santa’s Village, it’s a snow check.” He picked up the conversational thread. “We’re a little different from the rest of the planet.”

As she walked out into the bite of an icy winter’s morning and saw the huge sleigh pulled by—count them!—eight reindeer, there was no way Holly was about to argue that claim.

“Blitzen, I presume?” she asked with an arched brow.

“Back left, right in front of the sleigh,” Gabe said without a touch of irony in his tone.

She narrowed her eyes at the brown, antlered reindeer who’d caused her accident. In turn, he returned a blank, brown-eyed stare.

“So, what happened to Rudolph?” Holly asked.

“He’s make-believe,” Emma volunteered from the backseat of the huge red, gold, and black sleigh. Dog sat beside her, long tongue gathering in snowflakes that continued to fall like feathers from a patchy blue and gray sky. “From the song. ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’”

“Of course. I’d forgotten that.”

“I can sing it for you.” Without hesitation, she began to do exactly that.

“There’s still time to change your mind,” Gabe murmured.

“No.” Between the coffee and the mind-blinding kiss, she was already too awake to go back to sleep anyway. “Besides, I’m looking forward to seeing an actual Christmas tree farm.”

The weirdest thing was, it was true.

Five minutes later, Holly was snuggled beneath a pile of blankets next to Gabe, who was actually driving the sleigh.

“You’re very good at this,” she said. Even Blitzen seemed to be obeying the light flick of the reins.

“I’ve had a lot of practice. Sam Fraiser, that’d be—”

“The village’s very own Santa Claus,” Holly said.

Although she couldn’t quite keep the wry tone from her voice, there was no way she was going to question the reality of the man the little girl singing in the backseat had gotten in a fistfight over.

“Yeah. That’s him. Well, he’s been loaning the rig out to the inn for a long time. It sorta adds to the appeal, and bringing the tree back on that rack at the back of the sleigh is more colorful than strapping it to the roof of the Expedition. Also, back when I was in high school, I picked up some extra Christmas bucks driving tourists around during the holidays.”

Picturing the teenage boy he must have been, Holly had no problem at all imagining long lines of high school girls waiting for rides.

“How does this tree hunting thing you’ve got going work during really bad weather?” she asked.

“I don’t know, since this is my first winter running the place and we haven’t had any so far this season. This storm might have closed the roads because of the snowpack and ice, but it’s still nowhere near the blizzards the place can get. I suppose, if the weather got really nasty, most guests would prefer to stay inside by the fire and let me bring their trees to them.”

That was probably the case, Holly thought. But as the harness bells jingled merrily, the metal runners crunched against the snow, and Emma segued into “Frosty the Snowman,” she decided they’d be missing something special.

“Oh, they really do look just like Christmas trees,” she said on a little appreciative intake of breath as they approached the acres of fir and spruce trees lined up like little blue-green conical soldiers.

“That’s the point,” Gabe said. “And I don’t want to burst any bubbles, especially since you’re not a real fan of the holiday in the first place, but although they’re trained to grow into a more pyramid shape than, say, pine trees, they still need to be trimmed and shaped at least once a year.”

“They’re still lovely.” Again, she meant it. “The only thing missing are lights, glass balls, and angels for the tops.”

He bent his head toward her, lowering his voice for her ears only. “The angel’s sitting right here.”

“Flatterer,” she said. When she turned her head, their lips brushed.

“It’s not flattery if it’s true.”

He pulled up on the reins, clucked lightly, and the reindeer came to a stop next to a big gray barn. A huge fresh wreath made up of spruce boughs hung above the closed double wooden doors of the barn, and trees, wearing red bows fashioned from outdoor velvet ribbon, flanked either side. A hand-painted sign offered sleigh rides, cocoa, hot apple cider, free disposal bags, and the loan of saws and axes for the do-it-yourselfers.

“We closed down this past weekend because the previous owner always gave his employees the last week of December and all of January off to spend with their families,” Gabe said. “But if anyone in town wants a tree, they know they’re free to come cut one.”

“Doesn’t that invite tree theft?”

“I suppose it could, though there’s not as much profit in second-or third-growth trees,” he said as Dog jumped down from the backseat and set off across the field, snow flying, chasing after a squirrel.

“Poor guy never catches them,” Gabe said with another of what she was beginning to think of as his trademark grins, “but that never stops him from trying.”

“Maybe the fun is in the chase,” she suggested.

“There is that.”

Taking Holly’s word that she could certainly climb out of a simple sleigh herself, he lifted Emma down.

“How can anyone ever decide?” Holly asked.

She had a vague memory of going to a neighborhood lot with her father, and him carrying a tree back to their apartment, but there couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty to choose among. Here the forest of conifers seemed to stretch on for miles.

“You have to look and look and look,” Emma informed her. “But all Daddy’s trees are the best. You can’t pick a bad one. Do you know Nordstrom?”

“Of course.” Part of the appeal of Seattle, when she’d been looking for a new place to live, had been the fabulous downtown flagship store.

“Well, one of Daddy’s trees is on the front of their catalog this year.”

“I’m impressed.”

Gabe shrugged broad shoulders. “We’re local. It only made sense.”

Holly knew men, both in L.A. and Seattle, who’d be broadcasting such a coup through a bullhorn.

“Good try,” she said. “But I’m still impressed.”

As perfect as every tree appeared to Holly, Emma seemed determined to find the “most bestest” tree. This one was too skinny. Another too tall. A third’s branches were too close together. A fourth’s were too far apart.

“How about this one?” Holly asked finally, after the search had stretched on for an hour.

Emma’s lips drew together into a thoughtful line as she looked a long, long way upward.

Holly, who was holding her breath, realized that Gabe, standing next to her, was doing the same thing.

Emma let out a long, happy breath of her own.

“It’s perfect,” she pronounced. “Better even than the one that lady from Nordstrom picked.”

Not bothering to hide his relief, Gabe took the hatchet and saw he’d retrieved from the barn, and, after making sure Emma and Holly were standing out of the way, lay down on the ground and began to saw.

Less than three minutes later, the tree toppled to the snow. While he was wrapping the snowy branches in netting, Emma gathered up a handful of snow and, giggling, stuffed it down the back of Gabe’s jacket. Which had him, in turn, expertly packing a snowball that he then threw at his daughter.

“Holly!” the little girl shouted as she ran a zigzag retreat through the trees. “You have to help! It’s girls against boys.”

Holly had never, in her memory, taken part in a snowball fight. But as Gabe chased after his daughter, Holly chased after him, throwing herself at his legs, causing him to crash to the ground, with her sprawled on top of him.

“Damn, you’re pretty good. For a city girl.” Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled over, so she was lying beneath him. “But guess what, sweetheart, you and half-pint over there just happen to be outmanned.”

Laughing, and a little out of breath, Holly shoved against him. “Let me up, you big bully.”

“In a minute.” His body was warm against hers, his eyes hot. Holly wouldn’t have been surprised if all the snow on the mountain melted from the way he was looking at her. “Your nose is red.”

“So’s yours.” Reaching out, she grabbed a handful of snow and washed his face with it.

“You realize, of course,” he said, using his superior strength to press her deeper into the snowdrift, “that you’re daring to take on a United States Marine.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she responded breathlessly, as she wrestled beneath him. “The few.” She scissored her legs around his. “The proud.” Using the instructions the Seattle cops had taught her during that class, she managed to flip their positions so she was now lying on top of him. “The oversexed.”

“Got that right.” When he cupped her butt with his gloved hands and pressed her against him, she realized that he’d allowed her to overpower him. “As I intend to prove to you tonight.”

Before she could respond, Emma had returned and was standing over them. “The girls won,” she decided.

“They always do,” Gabe agreed. “At least in this family.”

“Why don’t you kiss Holly?” Emma suggested. “To show you surrendered.”

“From the mouths of babes,” he murmured. “I hereby surrender to the superior super power of females.” Lifting his head, he brushed his lips against hers. While still cold, they managed to send a burst of heat through her veins.

“Okay.” Before she got into more trouble, Holly stood up. “On behalf of the female forces, I accept your surrender.”

“Consider this lone, lowly male your prisoner. Do with me as you please,” Gabe said.

“Funny you should mention that,” Holly shot back just as Dog, looking like the abominable snow beast, came loping up to him and swiped a huge tongue down Gabe’s face.

“God, I knew I should’ve left you back in the sandbox.” Laughingly pushing the ball of wet fur away, Gabe stood up and began brushing the snow off the front of Holly’s jacket.

She did not immediately brush his hand away.

Unable to remember the last time she’d felt so carefree, Holly laughed as they walked back toward the sleigh.

Memories danced through her mind. Of hot roasted chestnuts and gaily decorated store front windows, and holding the hand of a man she suspected she’d gazed up at in exactly the same way Emma was looking up at Gabe.

And, although it didn’t make any sense at all, Holly oddly felt as if having landed here in Santa’s Village, she was catching a glimpse of what her life might have been.

Chapter Thirteen

The excitement of the day had obviously gotten to Emma, who fell asleep in the back of the sleigh on the ride back to the inn.

“Blessed silence,” Gabe murmured.

“I think she’s darling,” Holly said.

“You’re not going to get any argument there,” he agreed. “Sometimes, like out of the blue, it’ll dawn on me that she’s actually my child, you know, the seed of my loins, all that sort of thing, and I’ll just feel knocked flat.”

“She’s fortunate to have you.”

He shrugged. “We’re both lucky.”

Gabe knew Holly was curious. Knew he was going to have to tell her what happened. But since his mother had already warned him about Emma thinking that this newcomer to Santa’s Village had been sent to be her new mother, he feared his daughter might just be pretending to sleep. She had, after all, proven herself to be a fairly good little actress.

He was going to have to talk with Emma about Holly. Explain that while Santa had many great qualities, and while maybe he might be able to fit a pony in this sleigh, which turned magical when he drove it, he wasn’t in the habit of delivering actual people to good little girls and boys. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. It seemed kids grew up way too fast these days, and his daughter was already five going on twenty.

“After I take her back to the inn and we drop off your tree, I’ll take you over to Olson’s, so you can talk to Ken about your Highlander,” he said to Holly.

“Thanks. I’d appreciate that. I also have some shopping to do.”

“If you want to make a list, I can pick some things up for you,” he offered. “Consider it part of the service.”

“That’s nice. But since I have a feeling I’m going to be here for a while, I might as well check out the town.”

“Your call,” he said agreeably.

Twenty minutes later, he’d carried his daughter—who actually did appear to be sound asleep—upstairs and tucked her into bed.

“An advantage of living above the store, so to speak,” he said as they drove the short distance to the center of town in the Expedition, “is that there are always a lot of people around willing to watch out for her. It makes it like a large extended family.”

“That’s lucky. Especially with your mother working there.”

“Not just my mother, but one of my sisters. Janice, who graduated from Washington State in Hospitality Business Management, is in charge of the rentals. From keeping housekeeping on their toes, to arranging for repairs, decorating, the whole nine yards. Even mostly the kitchen stuff, though Mom’s beginning to take that on more and more now that she’s retired. Which allows me to concentrate on the farm.

“I’d like to make it a year-round destination. Maybe have some classes on conservation, invite the school kids to have field trips during planting season, and since it’s located on the other side of the lake, maybe even get into boat rentals, bait and tackle, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds as if you’re really settling in.”

“Yeah.” Gabe was surprised about that. He hadn’t been sure the move from California to this small mountain town would work out. But at the time, not wanting to leave Emma with sitters while he worked some 9-to-5 job, or worse yet, become a cop like so many ex-military, and like his own dad had done, hadn’t been an option, either.

“Her mother left us,” he said, deciding the best way to handle those questions she’d been too polite to ask was the same way he’d done everything else in his life. Just straight out.

“I’m sorry.”

“I guess I was, too. For a while. But it was mostly wounded pride. And it wasn’t as if we’d had what anyone could consider a real marriage. I met Lila while I was stationed at Camp Pendleton. She was a civilian secretary working on base. I thought she was pretty, which she was. I also thought I was the hottest Marine ever to come down the pike.”

“I don’t know much about the military. But from all those commercials I see on TV and in the theaters, I’d suspect that’s pretty much the Marine mindset,” she said mildly.

He chuckled at that all too accurate appraisal. “Can’t argue with that. Neither one of us was looking for anything serious. Then she got pregnant.”

“I see.”

Gabe wasn’t certain anyone actually could understand his and Lila’s relationship. Since he hadn’t understood it himself at the time. Not even after it had crumbled down around them, leaving a vulnerable little girl amidst the rubble.

“She didn’t really want to be a mother. Had never planned to be.” He remembered the conversation as if it’d happened yesterday. “Said she liked kids okay. Other people’s kids.”

“Not every woman feels the need to define herself by motherhood,” Holly said quietly. He could tell she was walking on eggshells.

“How about you?”

Although he knew he was getting way ahead of the game, he’d wondered about that long into the night. As much as he wanted to take Holly Berry to bed, once his mother had told him about his daughter’s belief that this woman was destined to be her new mom, he hadn’t wanted to risk hurting Emma.

As Lila had told him when she’d greeted him at their house with her suitcases already packed, he’d already spent too many years thinking only of himself. Of his own wishes and needs.

Well, that had certainly changed. And although he wasn’t going to deny that he missed sex—a lot—and there were a lot of women in town who’d been more than open about their willingness to let him put his boots beneath their beds, if only for a night, he’d screwed around with too many of those sex candidates in the backseat of his Camaro IROC-Z back in high school. And although those days and nights parked out by the lake had been fun, he wasn’t really in a mood to relive them.

And then, as always, there was Emma. From what he’d been able to glean from their conversations, there had been more than one man in his wife’s life while he’d been away keeping the world free from terrorism. No way was Gabe going to put a revolving door in his bedroom.

Although celibacy definitely wasn’t a natural state, he’d been doing just fine. Until he’d driven around that S-curve and come across Holly Berry, who was causing all his good paternal intentions to pretty much fly out the window.

“If you’d rather not talk about it…” Her voice broke into his thoughts.

“No.” He shook his head to clear it. “You’ll probably hear different versions of the story anyway, if you’re going to stay here for any length of time. You might as well know the truth. I talked Lila into having the baby. I promised that it’d be good. That we’d be a family.”

“Like the one your mother and dad made with you and your sisters.”

“Good guess. Being a male and pretty clueless about the nuances of relationships, I didn’t realize that my parents’ relationship hadn’t come easy for them. That they’d worked at it every day. And that part of the reason for them moving up here had been because Dad had gotten so stressed out at work it was impacting the rest of their lives.”

“Admittedly, I don’t have any experience with a close-up and personal view of marriage,” Holly said quietly. “But I suspect no child really understands what’s going on outside his or her own self-centered world.”

“That’s probably true.” He sighed. “So, Lila had the baby. I was in Panama at the time. During Emma’s very short lifetime, I’ve done two tours in Iraq, and another in Afghanistan.”

“That doesn’t allow much time for being a husband. Or father,” Holly allowed.

He slanted her a look. “Good point. And one Lila made right before walking out the door. She’s now married to her former boss. A property mogul who builds shopping centers. They live in some McMansion in a seaside development outside San Diego. He’s a nice enough guy. But he doesn’t want kids. Especially one who isn’t biologically his.”

“That’s his loss.”

God help him, he didn’t just want Holly Berry. He liked her. A lot. Liked her intelligence, her tenderness, and her matter-of-fact way of cutting to the chase. She might prove a challenge, but a guy would always know where he stood with her.

“Yeah. I remember standing there, thinking that here I was, a tough battle-hardened Marine who’d been on the front lines against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but I had no idea how to take care of a little girl. Hell, the only thing in the house turned out to be Chunky Monkey ice cream and Lucky Charms cereal and since either my mother or the Marines had fed me all my life, I didn’t even know how to make out a grocery list.”

“So you came home.”

“Not at first.” He remembered those early days. “I didn’t want to run back home to my parents because I think it would’ve been too tempting just to hand Emma over to my mother and sisters, who were certainly more than willing to help out. I’d missed out on most of her life. I wanted, needed, to build a bond between us before I brought others into our life.”

“Well.” She blew out a long breath. Her eyes, including the one she’d put a little powder on while he’d been in the inn putting Emma to bed, were bright with a suspicious moisture. “That’s very impressive.”

“No.” Gabe might not be an expert in parenting, but of this one thing he was very sure. “It’s not. Because women do it every day. All over America. The world. Hell, look how well your mother raised you, and I’ll bet there weren’t any people handing out single mother medals.”

“She did the best she could,” Holly agreed. “Under difficult circumstances.”

Haltingly at first, she told him about her father’s murder. Although he’d seen death, killed bad guys himself, Gabe found the circumstances of George Berry’s death even more terrible. Especially given the way it had obviously shattered his daughter’s small family.

“So,” she wrapped up, “my mother moved to L.A. and, well, with all the palm trees and sunshine, we sort of just let the Christmas season slip away.”

There was a lot more there she wasn’t telling. Having spent the first thirteen years of his own life in southern California, Gabe knew that while it definitely wasn’t anything like here, most people still celebrated the holidays. Hell, each December his mother had put a tree in every room, created crafty, handmade ornaments, and directed the kids’ pageant at church, while his father would fill up the front yard with the plywood reindeer, snowmen, angels, and wise men he and Gabe would spend the summer making on the table saw in the garage. Thinking back on it, Gabe suspected their electricity bill between Thanksgiving and New Year’s probably doubled from all the lights.

Speaking of lights…Gabe was tempted to suddenly look up and see if a lightbulb had just lit up over his head.

“What?” Holly asked, sounding defensive. And no wonder. Here she’d just opened up and shared a story he suspected she didn’t tell often, if at all, and he’d laughed.

“I just realized why, of all the towns in America, my parents moved to this one. They’ve always been Christmas junkies.”

“I’m beginning to think that may not be such a bad thing,” she admitted.

“Well, you’re definitely going to be making up for lost time.”

They shared a laugh, putting their individual difficulties behind them as they enjoyed the moment. And each other.

Chapter Fourteen

“A week?” Holly blew out a frustrated breath. Dragged a hand through her hair.

“At least,” Ken Olson, of Olson’s Auto Repair, repeated. “Sorry. But this isn’t the city. It’s hard to get parts over the holidays. Especially with all the roads closed.”

“But surely you have radiators.” She looked around the garage that was packed concrete floor to ceiling with car parts that Ken, a major packrat, had collected over more than fifty years in the business. “Maybe a refurbished one that’ll get me back to the city?”

“Well, now, I might be able to find one that’d fit your vehicle,” he allowed, the unlit cigarette Gabe had never seen him without bobbing between his lips. “But the thing is, you’ve got more trouble than a radiator. Your fuel level float’s flat busted, and the flange on your alternator’s cracked, plus, your power steering pump’s leaking fluid, the front struts don’t look good, and I sure wouldn’t want to send you back down the mountain with those brake linings.”

He took off his red and green plaid wool cap with the shearling earflaps and scratched his head. “No telling what might happen. And without you having an airbag anymore. Well, shoot, I’m sorry, ma’am, but my conscience would just eat away at me like battery acid if anything happened to a pretty young thing like you.”

Holly dragged a gloved hand down her face.

Then turned to Gabe. “I don’t suppose there’s a car rental place in town.”

“There’s a small Avis outlet,” he allowed. “Out at the airfield. But they ran out of cars two days ago. And right now…”

“I know,” she huffed, “with the roads closed, they can’t bring any more in.”

“That’s pretty much it,” he said sympathetically. “If you need transportation, the family’s got enough vehicles to lend you one.”

“That’s very generous. And I might take you up on that,” she said. “But that doesn’t get me back to the city.”

“What happened to Leavenworth?”

“I’ve changed the story. I don’t need the cookie lady anymore.” She drew in a deep breath. Let it out. Repeated. Remembering when his sister Janice was studying yoga, Gabe figured she was trying to find her center.

“Why don’t you let me take you shopping,” he suggested. “Whatever happens, you’re going to want some coffee and chocolate, at least.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know about the chocolate?”

He shrugged. “Hey, I have a mother and three sisters. Plus, I may not write mystery novels, but the M&M wrappers stuffed into your Highlander’s ashtray were sorta a clue.”

Despite her obvious frustration, more, he suspected because she’d lost control over the situation, than the actual problems with her SUV, she laughed at that.

“You’re right. It’s the obvious solution. And I appreciate the offer.”

After she’d settled back into the Expedition, Gabe said, “I just remembered. Mom asked me to give Ken a message to take home to his wife about the inn’s Christmas Eve party. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m sure not going anywhere,” she said.

He walked back into the garage where Ken was standing beneath the lift, changing the oil on an old Dodge Charger Gabe’s brother-in-law Jack had spent two years restoring to its old muscle car–days glory.

“Thanks,” he said. “Appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Ken said, the cigarette clenched between his nicotine-yellowed teeth. “Glad to be able to help out by keeping the little lady in town a bit longer. Writes books, the missus told me. About murders and such.”

“Yeah. She’s good, too.” Gabe had stayed up most of the night reading Blood Brothers, a story about good and evil twins.

“Doesn’t look like she’d write them kind of stories,” Ken said. “Figure that’s more along the lines of a guy job. She’s a looker, that’s for damn sure.”

“You’re not going to get any argument from me about that.”

Gabe was halfway to the Expedition when the older man called out, “Good luck.”

As he headed off to the North Pole Mercantile, drinking in the scent of sugar cookies and very desirable woman, Gabe figured that thanks to Mother Nature, he’d already gotten pretty damn lucky.

The market was a surprise. Although there were fresh trees and wreaths, which Gabe confirmed were from his farm, for sale in front of the store, and the expected towering pyramid of poinsettias inside, it was as well stocked as the neighborhood grocery store around the corner from her apartment. In fact, Holly thought, as she put a bag of pebbly Clementine oranges into her cart, it seemed to have even more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Gabe, it seemed, was particularly popular. They couldn’t get down an aisle without some female stopping to chat. Most often that chat included an invitation.

“Sorry,” he said, after the third such interruption, this one by a brunette wearing ski pants so tight she must’ve had to lie down to zip them up, a sweater beneath her open coat that looked as if it’d been sprayed onto her double-D silicone-enhanced breasts, and a pair of high-heel boots that were admittedly good-looking, but ridiculously impractical. If she wasn’t careful, she could slip on the ice and break her neck.

And wouldn’t, Holly thought acidly, remembering the way she’d put her hand over Gabe’s on the cart handle, that be a terrible shame.

“Must be tough, being the town’s hottest bachelor,” Holly said dryly as the brunette sashayed away.

“It’s a dirty job,” he said with a quick grin.

“And how fortunate for all the women of the town you’re willing to do it.” She turned and reached for a blue box of pasta.

“It’s not that way.” He leaned over her, his chest pressing against her back as he reached over her head and plucked the box from the top shelf. “Actually, until you came along, I was living a pretty much celibate life.” He tossed the box into the cart. “Let me be more specific. Entirely celibate life.”

Holly glanced around. She’d never, ever thought she’d be discussing such things in public, let alone in the pasta and tomato sauce aisle of the North Pole Mercantile, but she had to ask.

“For the entire time you’ve been here?”

He nodded. “And the year before that.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to get personal.” She lowered her voice. Leaned toward him. “But since you brought it up—”

“No, I definitely don’t have a problem in that regard.”

She hadn’t thought so. “Still, that’s a long dry spell.” Even longer than her own.

“I was out of the country the first year,” he reminded her. “And, like I said, I don’t cheat.”

Having learned about his wife’s affairs, Holly understood the flare of heat he’d displayed when she’d accused him of hitting on her when he had a wife at home.

“The last year has been complicated. And, like you said, it’s been a long dry spell.” His pewter eyes swept over her face with all the impact of a caress. “One I’m hoping to change.”

“You never know.” She tossed her head in a flirtatious way that was so not typical for her. “Play your cards right and I might invite you over to dinner tonight. If you think you can get a sitter.”

“Sweetheart, all it would take is for the women in my family to know I had a date and they’d be standing in line to have Emma spend the night with her cousins.”

“Well, then. How do you feel about lasagna?”

“My favorite thing,” he said promptly. “So long as we’re having sugar cookies or peaches for dessert.”

Because it had been too long since he’d kissed her—at least since he’d parked the car in the lot twenty minutes earlier—he bent his head and brushed his lips against hers.

Mindless of the fact that she was in a public store, Holly allowed her own lips to cling. And cling. Until the unmistakable sound of a throat clearing behind them broke through the silvery mist clouding her mind.

“Sorry.” If he was at all embarrassed, Gabe didn’t reveal it. He moved aside. “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Whetherton,” he said with a friendly smile.

Beady black eyes as sharp and dark as a crow’s took in the two of them. “Merry Christmas, Gabriel,” the woman, who looked to be at least in her eighties, said. “And it’s about time to see you spooning with a woman. Your poor mother has been despairing about you ever giving her another grandchild.”

Her gaze swept over Holly, as if checking out her breeding credentials. “You’ll do,” she decided before continuing down the aisle.

Rather than be embarrassed, or offended, Holly surprised herself by breaking into laughter.

Because she wanted some time to herself to explore the town, Holly asked Gabe to take the groceries back to the cabin for her.

“It’s less than five blocks,” she pointed out. “I walk a lot farther than that in the city. And it’s stopped snowing.”

His forehead frowned. “If you have any trouble—”

“Gabe.” She touched a hand to his cheek. “You’re not a Marine any longer. You don’t have to save the entire world. Besides, I’ll be fine. Really.”

“I need to split cord wood for the inn. I guess I’ll just work off some of my sexual frustration on some logs.”

“Don’t work it all off.”

He laughed, a rough, harsh sound edged with need. “Sweetheart, where you’re concerned, that’s not possible.”

Holly knew exactly how he felt.

Chapter Fifteen

The town was surprisingly charming. Oh, overdone, certainly, if you weren’t a fan of Christmas, but still, once you looked beneath the tinsel and trappings shouting out from the storefront windows, there were really lovely locally handcrafted items inside the shops. Many that would easily belong in the trendy galleries of Seattle’s Fremont and Pioneer Square neighborhoods or even Kirkland, known as the Monterey of the West, across Lake Washington.

Telling herself she wasn’t really becoming a Christmas shopper, that she was just paying back a kindness, she bought a lovely cashmere scarf, woven by a local artisan, in soft shades of cream, moss green, and gray, for Beth O’Halloran.

Once she’d done that, well, of course she needed to find something for Emma. Which was when she decided to check out Santa’s Workshop.

The building was housed in what appeared to be an old brick warehouse at the end of North Pole Lane. The minute she walked into the gift shop, Holly decided the place definitely lived up to its name. The floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with dolls (cloth and baby dolls, with not a Barbie or Bratz to be seen), stuffed animals, and what, although she was no expert, even she could see were beautifully crafted wooden cars, trains, airplanes, and boats.

“Welcome to Santa’s Workshop.” A woman, wearing a red wool blazer over a cream ribbed turtleneck and an ankle-length, slim green and red plaid wool skirt, greeted Holly with a remarkably familiar smile.

“You’re Rachel O’Halloran.”

“Got it in one.” The dimples that had been a dead giveaway deepened. “And you’d be Holly Berry.”

“News travels fast.”

“Honey, around here, it’s like lightning. By the time you got back from cutting that Christmas tree this morning, everyone in Santa’s Village probably knew your height, weight, hair color, and what you did for a living. Speaking of which, I like your books, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank you. Sometimes life is just so damn cheery here, I enjoy diving into a good, gory murder. Especially on those days I feel like murdering my own kids. I have three, all boys, which can be a challenge, just like their uncle.”

“Gabe was a challenge?”

“Since everyone already knows about you, including, now that you’ve gone shopping, that you prefer the yellow packet artificial sweetener over the blue, and that you’re cooking my brother lasagna tonight, and it’s obvious that he’s taken with you, it’s only fair that we women stick together. God knows, he’s never been all that talkative, so I doubt he’s shared that much with you.”

Holly was beginning to understand exactly why Gabe wasn’t all that chatty. Especially if his other sisters were at all like this one. “He told me about his marriage breaking up.” The minute she’d heard the words leaving her mouth, Holly wished she could have called them back. Although obviously his family knew at least some of the circumstances, she felt as if she’d betrayed a confidence.

“Did he now? Well, that shows Mother’s right. As usual. The boy’s definitely serious.”

Holly was equally uncomfortable that she and Gabe had been a subject of discussion. One of the things she liked about being a writer was it allowed her to live a very private life.

“He’s not exactly a boy,” she felt obliged to point out on his behalf.

“Well, that’s certainly true enough,” Rachel allowed. “Going into the Marines really changed him from that hell-bent for trouble kid who wrecked that car he’d borrowed from Kendall motors when he was fifteen—”

“Gabe stole a car?”

“Well, he was planning to take it back,” Rachel assured Holly. “It wasn’t exactly his fault Margaret Whetherton was such a horrible driver. She’s always been a menace. You’ve no idea how relieved everyone in town was when her doctor grandson came down from Bellingham and took the keys to her Caddy away. Now we all take turns driving her around so she won’t feel tempted to get back behind the wheel.

“Anyway,” she continued, amazing Holly when she didn’t so much as pause for a breath, “Gabe wasn’t a bad kid. He just wasn’t happy about leaving L.A.—not that any of us were, but at least we girls had each other—and having your dad be town sheriff, as bad as it was for us, because of all the boys who were afraid to try to so much as get to second base for fear of Daddy shooting them, had to have been worse for Gabe because there was so much expectation put on him. Like what they say about being a preacher’s kid. If you know what I mean.”

She stopped. And flashed another of those smiles. When the pause lasted longer than a second, Holly decided she’d just been invited to respond.

“I can see how that would be the case. I was an only child. So I always felt like I had to be perfect at everything.”

“That’s exactly how I felt.” Rachel nodded her dark brunette head. “Although, of course, I wasn’t an only. But birth order has onlys and eldest, which is where I fall in the family, pretty much fitting the same model. So, are you here to visit? Or to buy something?”

“I was hoping to find something for Emma.”

“What a lovely idea.” She flashed another of those Gabe replica smiles. “Especially since she believes you’re going to be her new mama.”

“What?”

“Uh-oh.” Gabe’s sister had the grace to flush. “I guess I let that cat out of the bag. So, Gabe didn’t tell you about her Christmas wish?”

“No. It didn’t come up.”

Holly couldn’t decide whether she was glad or not that he’d neglected to share that little bit of information. Then decided it could’ve only made this morning’s tree hunting expedition uncomfortable. But it did explain why the little girl had been so eager for Gabe to kiss her. Obviously she’d been doing a little matchmaking.

Which wasn’t all that surprising, Holly decided, remembering how many of the men she’d tried to set up her mother with over the years. Including her fifth grade teacher, her pediatrician, and the guy who came by their house every month to read their electric meter.

“Well.” Rachel tilted her head. “I guess, staying at the inn as you are, you would’ve figured it out pretty soon. Let me show you some of the stuffed animals Emma was looking at when she visited last week.”

Holly was trying to decide between a fluffy panda bear and a pink and purple polka dot elephant when the door at the back of the room, which she guessed led into the actual workshop, opened, and a tall, lanky, silver-haired man wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a western snap-front shirt entered the gift shop.

“Well,” he said on a western drawl that possessed just a bit of twang. “If it isn’t Holly Berry, come to pay us a visit.”

She’d begun, just a bit, to buy into the tourism aspect of the town, but if this was the guy they were putting forth as Santa Claus, someone obviously needed to call Central Casting.

“And you must be Sam Fraiser?”

“That’s me.” He held out a huge hand that was nicked and scarred from a lifetime of carving wood. “Welcome to Santa’s Workshop.” He glanced down at the two stuffed animals she was holding in her hand. “Go with the elephant.”

“I guess you know that because, deep down, you’re Santa Claus?”

“That and the fact that the colors match her bedroom,” he said.

“And you’d know that how?”

“Because she’s one of those little girls who wakes up at the crack of dawn and can’t wait for her family to come over before checking out her Christmas presents. So, she and Gabe worked out a deal. Instead of hanging her stocking on the family room fireplace mantel, they put it in her room. That way, she’s allowed to look through it on Christmas morning while she waits for the adults to get things ready.”

He winked. “Last year I put in a coloring book and a set of crayons that kept her busy for a while. This year I’m thinking about a Game Boy. They come in pink now, you know. And there’s a Powerpuff game I think would keep her occupied until Gabe gets up.”

“Whatever happened to handmade wooden toys and baby dolls?” Holly waved a hand toward all the shelves.

He slipped his hands into the front of his jeans. Rocked back on the heels of his Tony Lamas. “Do you have any idea how many children there are in the world?”

“No.” She folded her arms. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“A bunch. So, sometimes the only choice is to outsource.”

“Of course.” She gave him a long look. “You know, you don’t exactly look like a jolly old elf.” In fact, now that she thought of it, he was a dead ringer for Paul Newman. The older, still sexy one, not Hud.

“Yeah, I know.” He rubbed a shaven jaw that was nearly as broad as Gabe’s. “My wife put me on a low carb diet a few months ago. Said that with obesity becoming such a serious problem among not just adults, but children, it’s important for Santa to set a good example.”

“Your wife sounds very wise.”

“She’s smart as a whip,” he agreed. “Has kept me on my toes all the years we’ve been together. And while I occasionally miss potato chips, and still have cravings for Mrs. Fraiser’s apple cobbler, I’ve gotten used to it. For the children’s sake.”

It was a good act. But that’s all it was. An act. And for some reason she couldn’t quite understand herself, although she felt a little ridiculous arguing the subject, especially in front of Gabe’s sister, who was watching with undisguised interest, Holly couldn’t just let his claim go unchallenged.

“You’re not really Santa Claus.”

Blue eyes narrowed even as the friendly smile stayed on his lips. “You’re sure of that, are you?”

“Of course.” Oddly, since it didn’t make any difference in the grand scheme of things, she was beginning to get frustrated. “I’m an adult. I know Santa doesn’t exist. That he’s merely a lovely myth told to children. Partly to get them to behave.”

Fraiser rubbed his chin. “That sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe you’ve watched Miracle on 34th Street recently?”

“I don’t watch Christmas movies.”

“Actually, I know that,” he said. “Which is a shame. But I was merely pointing out a similarity.”

“Look,” Holly said in an exasperated breath. “I think it’s lovely that your family has run this toy shop for so many generations and that the things you make here bring children pleasure. I also think it’s great the way the town reinvented itself to bring in tourism.”

“Is that what you think we did?”

“Winnie Jenson, the clerk at the checkout at the market told me that the post office does a huge business postmarking Christmas cards with the Santa’s Village, America’s Most Christmassy Town postmark.”

“That’s true,” Rachel entered into the conversation. “But it doesn’t bring in revenue. It also causes more work, which is why—”

“So many people in town volunteer to help out,” Holly interjected. “Mrs. Jenson already told me that. And, as I said, I think it’s a great marketing idea. But I don’t play games, Mr. Fraiser. I’m a realist.”

“Yet, you tell tales for a living,” Sam Fraiser pointed out.

Damn. He had her there.

He smiled. “Take the elephant,” he suggested gently, effectively declaring the topic closed. “She’ll love it. Meanwhile, it’s been lovely finally meeting you in person, Holly Berry.”

It wasn’t until the elephant had been rung up and wrapped in paper with a smiling, red-cheeked bearded Santa printed on it, and Holly was a block away, that his words sunk in.

“What did he mean, finally?”

The question puzzled her until she’d turned onto Dasher Drive, headed back to the inn. From what Gabe’s sister had said, the gossip line worked at lightning speed in Santa’s Village. Obviously Fraiser had heard about her arrival in town.

That settled to her own satisfaction, Holly began thinking ahead toward the evening.

Chapter Sixteen

Anticipation, Holly thought, as she bathed in the oversize tub—after stealing a nap so she’d be rested for the evening ahead—then smoothed on the peach-scented lotion Gabe had first mentioned wanting to taste, could be a bitch. It wasn’t as if she were some virgin bride getting ready for her wedding night. She’d had sex lots of times before.

Okay, probably not nearly as many as he’d undoubtedly had. But how hard could it be? She not only wanted his hot, rock-hard Marine body, she liked him. Which was, to her mind, even more important than chemistry. So why were her nerves so tightly tangled they felt on the verge of snapping?

Her cheeks were flushed, more from emotion than the warm bath, and her hands were shaking so hard she’d nearly poked her eyes out with her mascara tube.

Somehow they made it through the dinner, which hadn’t been that much of a problem. Anyone could throw together some lasagna, after all. She’d learned to make the dish when she was only a few years older than Emma, during a time when her mother’s depression had kept her in bed for days at a time.

“If you want,” he said, as they sat in front of the fireplace, sipping on the brandy he’d brought over with him, “I can come over tomorrow and help you trim the tree.” A tree that was currently sitting in his garage because he’d warned her that if she’d taken it inside with all that snow and ice on it, she’d end up with it snowing inside the cabin.

“I’d think Emma would want to help.”

“She’s the one who brought it up.”

“Ah.” Holly nodded. Took another sip and wondered if bringing up the topic of Emma’s Christmas wish would ruin the sex part of the evening.

“Rachel told me she told you about Emma.” He’d put his arm around her shoulders and now smoothed a hand down her hair. “I hope it isn’t going to make things uncomfortable for you.”

“No.” She’d thought about it a lot while soaking in that bubble bath. “I’ll be careful that she doesn’t get her hopes up and make it clear that you and I are merely friends—”

He lifted a brow. “Is that all we are?”

“Well, friends with benefits, which she doesn’t need to know about. Don’t worry, Gabe. I understand how vulnerable she is. And how much she wants a complete family.”

“Yeah.” He brushed his lips against the top of her head. “I can see how you would understand that.”

They sat there, listening to the music he’d brought over that was playing on the CD player. It was something classical, familiar, but Holly couldn’t quite identify it. She’d been grateful, after having the carols blasted to her from the loudspeakers all over town, that he’d left the holiday music at the inn.

“I read one of your books last night,” he revealed. “Blood Brothers. You kept me guessing until the end which brother was going to turn out to be the evil prostitute serial killer.”

“My take on Jack the Ripper.” She smiled a bit. “With a touch of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thrown in.”

“Well, like I said, you kept me turning pages. My mother’s obviously got terrific taste in authors, because you’re really, really good.”

“Thank you.” The compliment, which, if she were to be brutally honest with herself, was just one person’s opinion, should not have given her so much pleasure. But it did.

Silence fell over them again.

“This isn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be,” she said finally as she stared into the flickering orange flames of the fire he’d built when he’d first arrived.

He put a hand beneath her chin. Gently turned her head toward his. “I’m not sure it should be that easy,” he said.

Gabe had figured out that nothing about Holly Berry was going to be that simple. Which was fine with him, really, because he’d never trusted things that came too easily.

“Admittedly, some people might consider this rushing things,” he said, his eyes echoing his encouraging smile. Wanting to soothe, as much as he wanted to arouse, Gabe kissed her, a satiny meeting of lips, a mingling of breath. “But it doesn’t seem too fast to me. And it damn well isn’t going to end up a one-night stand.”

“Not for me either,” she admitted throatily.

He smiled. Took both their brandy snifters, placed them on the coffee table, then stood up and held out his hand.

As if it was the most natural thing in the world, she put her hand in his and together they walked, side by side, up the stairs to the loft. The storm that had brought all the snow that had landed her in the village had moved on, leaving the sky a vast canvas of black satin studded with icy crystal stars.

Silver moonlight streamed across the sheets as she pulled back the comforter while Gabe turned on the gas fireplace, causing sparks to flare.

Then he took her in his arms and lowered his head until their lips were close, not quite touching. “I want you to know, absolutely, that this is important to me.”

“I do.” Her breath shuddered out as he stroked her throat with the pad of his thumb. “It’s important to me, too.”

Those gorgeous creases in his cheeks deepened. Just when she thought he was going to kiss her, really kiss her, Gabe tilted his head so that his lips grazed her cheek. Her mind spinning, she moaned softly as his firm, but snowflake-soft lips skimmed around the curve of her jaw to her other cheek.

She turned her head, trying to capture those tantalizing lips, but his mouth deftly evaded hers, gliding up her bruised face, where she feared the heat raging beneath her skin had burned off the mineral powder concealer she’d applied so carefully earlier this evening.

His breath warmed the hollows of her cheeks, her temples. When it whispered gently over her eyelids, they fluttered closed and she forgot all about worrying about how her black eye might look.

She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Every fiber of her being was so brilliantly, radiantly alive, concentrating on the drugging feel of his clever hands as he undressed her, piece by piece, then following the blazing trail those broad hands made with his mouth.

Finally, it was her turn. Holly took her time, as he had, pulling his sweater over his head, allowing her mouth to drink in the taste of his heated skin. Her blood pounded in her veins as she stripped away the rest of his clothes.

Then somehow—was it possible to float?—they were lying on the moon-spangled sheets, hands touching, lips exploring, soft sounds of desire filling the air as they became lost in each other.

When Holly would have hurried, Gabe slowed the pace, as if intent on savoring every moment. Her body felt as if it had been turned to liquid, flowing heatedly beneath his touch, which promised erotic delights. When his fingertips plucked at her sensitive nipples, she arched her back. But already his hands had moved on, leaving only a lingering sense of pleasure and a steadily rising need.

His hand spanned her stomach, causing a weakening warmth there before continuing downward. When his tantalizing touch skimmed up the inside of her legs, and his thumb flicked against that damp, ultrasensitive place between her thighs, her entire body began to tremble.

Just when she felt on the verge of shattering, wanting, needing to treat Gabe to the same sensual pleasure, she shifted, so she was lying next to him, exploring his body as he had hers, entranced by the contrast of his surprisingly soft skin pulled taut over steely muscle.

She skimmed her lips down his damp chest and drew a shaky groan. Dipped the tip of her tongue into his navel, and had his fists knotting the sheets. The sheer masculinity of him was both powerful and beautiful at the same time, and suddenly, Holly wanted nothing more than to feel him inside her.

As if reading her mind, he caught hold of her shoulders and flipped her over, taking a moment to sheathe himself in the condom he’d placed on the nightstand after lighting the fire.

Bracing himself over her, he looked deep into her eyes.

“Now,” he said.

“Now,” she whispered.

He surprised her. Dipping his head for a soft, tender kiss that for some reason seemed more intimate than everything else they’d shared.

Their hands linked. Watching each other, they joined. Bodies. Minds. Hearts. He began to move, driving her deeper into the mattress, plunging into her hot slick heat until she cried out his name. When he felt the rippling waves of her climax, Gabe surrendered the last of his control. With one last mighty thrust of his hips, he filled her completely, giving in to his own release.

He could still feel her inner tremors as they lay there together on the hot, tangled sheets, pulses of passion continuing to spark between them.

“I wanted this.” He lifted his head and brushed the damp hair away from her face. She still had a few red scrapes from the airbag and her poor swollen and discolored eye looked as if she’d gone ten rounds with Evander Holyfield, but he’d never seen anyone so beautiful. “From the minute you stepped out of that Highlander.”

“I know.” She smiled beneath his thumb as it stroked her love-swollen lips. “At least I sensed something spark. I wanted you, too.” She smoothed a hand down his damp back. Over his butt. “That is, once I got over worrying about you being a serial killer. Or a 5150.”

“A 5150?”

“A crazy person.” She sighed as he kissed her again. “On the loose.”

“I am crazy.” He deepened the kiss. “About you.”

Not wanting to go into the local drugstore and buy rubbers for tonight, which would’ve allowed every damn person in town to know that he’d been about to get naked with Holly Berry, Gabe had been grateful that his brother-in-law Jack, who’d been trying to get him laid since he’d first come back to town, had shown up two weeks ago with an invitation to dinner and a box of Trojans.

The double date his sister had ambushed him with hadn’t worked out. The third grade teacher had been sweet and pretty and had, with a few little hair flips and a lip-licking thing that women did, let him know that if he wanted to get lucky when he took her home, she’d go along with the program.

But there hadn’t been any chemistry. Not so much as a twinge on his part, and if she’d been totally honest, he suspected she hadn’t really been all that hot to jump his bones either. Just lonely. Or more likely, tired of being alone.

Which he could goddamn understand. And identify with. Just not enough to do anything about it with someone he didn’t want to have to talk to over a breakfast table the next morning.

Rachel had complained he was too picky. That it was time to move on. Jack had suggested he just drive into the city, pick up some hot chick in a bar, and go for it without overanalyzing it. That, Jack had decided, was the best way to get over whatever mental block against sex his cheating wife must’ve saddled him with.

As much as he’d appreciated them caring about him, Gabe had ignored both their advice. But as the moon rose higher in the star-studded sky, and he and Holly Berry made love all night long, Gabe was damn grateful for the condoms.

Chapter Seventeen

It was a time of mistletoe and magic. Of cocoa, and carols, and walking hand in hand down snowy lanes. Although she’d spent twenty-one years of her life avoiding Christmas, over the next five days, as if determined to make up for all she’d missed growing up, Holly allowed Gabe to coax and cajole her into experiencing the joy and fun to be had during the holidays in “The Most Christmassy Town in America.”

Although it had been obvious that Emma’s sacrifice to forgo helping decorate the tree had been a matchmaking attempt, Holly insisted the little girl help, and as the three of them hung the wooden ornaments they’d picked out together at Sam Fraiser’s shop, when Gabe had lifted Emma high to put the red-haired angel on top of the fragrant blue spruce, Holly felt as if they were becoming a family.

A feeling that intensified as she attended the school’s Christmas pageant, sitting in metal folding chairs with the entire O’Halloran clan. They watched Emma, clad in a long white nightgown Gabe’s sister Janice had sewn for her and angel wings Holly, Beth, and Rachel had spent an entire evening gluing sequins and tinsel onto, sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Away in a Manger.”

“I didn’t forget my lines,” she said as she flung herself into Gabe’s arms after the play.

“You were perfect,” he said.

“Better than perfect,” Holly seconded. “In fact, when you were singing, I felt as if I was listening to a real, live angel.”

Emma beamed. “This is,” she said on a long, happy sigh, “my bestest Christmas of my whole life.”

Gabe met Holly’s eyes over the top of his daughter’s bright head. “Mine too,” he said, his voice roughened with the desire that seemed to grow, rather than diminish, each time they’d made love.

The auditorium was filled with parents and children. The scent of cedar mingled with the happy buzz of holiday conversation and snatches of carols as students continued to sing, not as a performance, but for their own enjoyment.

But all that faded away, and once again, as always happened when he looked at her that way, Holly felt as if they were the only two people on the planet.

“I’ll make that unanimous,” she said.

The annual Ho Ho Ho Inn Christmas Eve party, unsurprisingly, given that Gabe’s sister Janice appeared capable of being CEO of a Fortune 500 company, went off without a hitch and was a smashing success.

By the time the evening had come to an end, Holly figured she’d danced with just about every male between the ages of fifteen and ninety in town. Including Daniel O’Halloran, a tall, rugged, still handsome man who looked, Holly guessed, exactly as Gabe would look in his fifties. He was also even less talkative than his son, which wasn’t surprising, given that he’d spent so many years living with a wife, three daughters, and now a granddaughter who was showing early signs of someday claiming Rachel’s conversational crown.

No longer bothering to pretend that their relationship was casual, after the last guest had drifted out the door, Holly went upstairs with Gabe and Emma, who, after a day of ice skating on the lake, snowwoman building, topped off by the party, had fallen asleep the minute her head had hit her pink Powerpuff Girls pillow.

It was like a scene from Currier & Ives. Outside the soaring window, fat white snowflakes floated down from the moongilded sky, turning the forest, and the lake beyond, into a winter wonderland.

Inside, a red and orange fire crackled in the grate and two stockings—one for Gabe and another for Holly—hung from the mantel. Emma’s own stocking was, as Sam Fraiser had claimed, hung in her bedroom.

Holly was sitting on the leather couch in front of the fire, her feet up on the coffee table, sipping brandy, as she had their first night together, gazing at the Christmas tree that was decorated with the same wooden ornaments that hung on her own tree and the one downstairs, along with blown-glass balls Gabe had told her had been handed down from his mother, and red and green construction paper chains. She’d never felt more content in her life.

“It was a good party,” he said.

“The best,” she agreed. “That was nice of you to eat Mrs. Fraiser’s pork rinds. I think you and your mother were the only two people who actually tried them.”

“I didn’t want her feelings to be hurt. They’re pretty gross, by the way. Gotta feel sorry for Sam, being on that low-carb diet.”

“Speaking of Sam, I noticed he wasn’t at the party.”

“Never is,” Gabe said.

“Because it’s his busy night.”

“Exactly.”

Holly was in too good a mood to argue something that no longer mattered. If Sam wanted to pretend to believe he was Santa Claus, what harm was there in the entire town going along with the idea?

“It’s perfect,” she murmured.

He followed her glance to the tree. “The construction paper was definitely the final touch.”

Holly smiled. She and Emma had made those chains together at a table downstairs in the restaurant two days ago. “Definitely. But I was talking about my life. Right now, at this frozen moment in time, it’s positively perfect.”

“You know,” he said, with what she could feel was studied casualness, “if you were to hang around here a while longer, we might manage to work our way up to absolutely, positively perfect.”

“Why should I leave?” she asked with a feigned casualness she, too, was a very long way from feeling. “I can work anywhere. Everyone’s so friendly and welcoming.” She ran her finger around the rim of the brandy snifter. “And, of course, there’s Emma. And Dog.” She smiled down at the huge dog who was currently snoring away in front of the fire. But as soon as the lights went out and the adults went to bed, Holly knew he’d sneak into Emma’s room. “And, of course, you.”

“I saw this interview you did on YouTube the other day,” he confessed. “While you were over at the cabin writing.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “I know which one you’re talking about.” She’d been nervous, as she always was when the spotlight was turned on her, but she’d thought it had come out well enough. “About life imitating art after that strangler appeared to be using one of my books as a how-to guide.”

“That’s the one. Anyway, you were talking about how you plot everything out beforehand, with all the Post-its and index cards and notebooks.”

“That’s the way I always worked,” she agreed.

Until coming here. Every afternoon she’d spend two or three hours writing, and without any forethought, the words had been flowing as if from some magic well. Not wanting to send her muses back into sulk mode, Holly hadn’t questioned the change in process. Just welcomed it. Although she did occasionally wonder if again, it had something to do with the magic of this place. Or, perhaps, just how Gabe had her opening up to so many new experiences and ideas.

“This past week I’ve been more of a go with the flow kind of girl.”

“Then you won’t panic if I give you something you might not have planned for? Something personal?”

“Well, I was really hoping for a George Foreman grill,” she said on an exaggerated sigh.

Surprisingly, he didn’t smile. In fact, he seemed unreasonably nervous. “Next time.”

He bent down, and from behind the stack of packages beneath the tree, took out a small, gilt-wrapped box.

Holding her breath, Holly slipped the ribbon off it. Carefully took the tape and paper off. Inside the black velvet box, an antique diamond ring, set in white-gold, glistened like a glacier.

“It’s my grandmother’s,” he said. “If you’d prefer something more modern, that’s cool, too, but I knew if I bought a ring here in town, you’d hear about it before I could get it home, so I figured that perhaps, this could stand in as a promise, and later, we can go to the city, and—”

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked. “When this is so perfect?” Not just because she honestly found the filigreed ring lovely. But because of its history. A history that connected Holly with Gabe’s family.

She slipped it onto her finger. “It fits.” Perfectly.

“I’m glad.” His shoulders, which had looked as stiff as if he’d been standing at attention on a Marine parade field, loosened, revealing his relief. “I love you, Holly. More than I ever thought was possible.”

“I know the feeling.” She reached into her bag and took out an envelope. “I didn’t buy you a gift either, for the same reason,” she admitted. “But I wanted to give you something. So, I wrote you this.”

She’d poured her heart out for nearly a dozen pages. Sharing the years of sadness, some she hadn’t even realized she’d been suffering. And how, since meeting him, her entire life had changed. All because of the wonderous joy of loving this very special man. And his equally special child.

She watched him, her heart in her throat, as he read the deepest secrets of her heart. Her yearnings. And her conviction that despite everything she’d been brought up to believe about fate being merely an appealing myth, her entire life had been leading her here.

To this place.

To this man.

When he lifted his head, his eyes were bright with suspicious moisture. “Thank you.”

Simple words, but she’d already come to accept that Gabe was a man of few words. It was the emotions behind those words that counted.

He drew her into his arms. Kissed her long and deep. Then drew back. “Every time I look at you, every time I kiss you, I fall in love all over again.”

She smiled. Touched her hand to his cheek. “Then don’t stop looking,” she suggested. “Or kissing.”

“Don’t worry. I plan to keep on doing it for the next fifty years.”

“And then?”

“And then we’ll just continue kissing our way to our centennial anniversary.”

“Oh, I do like how you think,” she said on a breathless laugh.

She was about to suggest they move into his bedroom where they could move beyond the kissing part of the evening, when he drew back.

“That’s funny.”

“What?” She followed his gaze to beneath the tree.

“That box wasn’t there when I arranged all the packages before the party.”

He left the couch again and picked it up. It was wrapped in green paper with Santa’s smiling face. The same paper Rachel had wrapped Emma’s elephant in.

“The tag says ‘To Holly. From Santa,’” he read.

“Good try.” She smiled even as she shook her head.

“I swear.” He lifted his right hand. “I’ve never seen this box before.”

Holly didn’t believe him. But, because she loved him, she played along with the game, opening the package.

Inside, lying on a bed of red satin, was a yellowed envelope, addressed in red pencil to Santa Claus, postmarked twenty-one years earlier, from Los Angeles, California.

“It can’t be,” she said. When her fingers began trembling too much to open the envelope, she held it out to Gabe, who pulled out a folded piece of lined filler paper.

“‘Dear Santa.’” He read the all too familiar childish printing out loud. “‘My mama cries all the time since Daddy died. She says you can’t bring him back to life. But this year, the only thing I want is a happy family. Like I used to have. Thank you and Merry Christmas to you and Mrs. Claus and all the elves and reindeers. Especially Blitzen.’”

“He was always my favorite,” Holly murmured.

“Helluva coincidence,” Gabe said.

“That’s one word for it.”

Gabe continued reading. “‘Love, Your friend, Holly Berry.’ There’s a P.S. ‘In case you didn’t notice, being so busy with your toy factory and all, I’m living in California now.’”

“How on earth?” Her mind was spinning with possibilities. Dazzling, gilt-edge possibilities that were as wonderful as they were impossible.

“There’s more. I think you’d better read this for yourself.” Gabe handed her the letter.

Below the careful printing Holly remembered laboring over was a note, written in a big, bold, masculine scrawl. My Dearest Holly. Please forgive the delay in answering your letter. Some Christmas wishes just take a bit longer to fulfill. Merry Christmas back to you and, of course, your own special happy family, Gabriel and Emma. Love, Santa Claus.

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Copyright © 2008 by Kensington Publishing Corp.
“Dear Santa” copyright © 2008 by JoAnn Ross

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ISBN: 1-4201-0757-7