Christmas day, Sabra woke to morning light streaming in the loft window. She could smell coffee, which meant that Matthias had been on his feet again.
She went downstairs scowling. But that was more her natural precoffee face than disapproval. The tree was lit up, looking fabulous. He was sitting on the sofa, his laptop across his stretched-out legs, apparently not in pain, his color excellent.
He’d left a mug waiting for her by the coffee maker, same as yesterday. She filled it and drank it just the way she liked it, without a word spoken.
Once it was empty, she set the mug on the counter. “Did you happen to take your temperature?”
He ran his thumb over the touch pad. “Normal.”
“You have internet on that laptop?”
He tipped his head toward his phone on the coffee table. “Not using it now—but yeah, when I need it. Mobile data through my cell. It’s a little spotty here in the middle of nowhere, but it works well enough.” He looked up and smiled at her. Bam! The gray winter morning just got a whole lot brighter. “I also have a speaker. We can have Christmas music.”
“How wonderful is that?” She wandered over to see what game he was playing. “Solitaire?”
“It’s mindless. I find it calming.” He won a game and the cards flew around and settled to start over.
She went on into the bathroom, where her clothes weren’t quite dry yet and her hair looked almost as bad as it had the morning before.
After breakfast, Matthias said he wanted a real bath. She went into the bathroom first, gathered up her things and took them upstairs, after which she found a roll of plastic wrap and waterproofed his bandaged lower leg.
He hobbled into the bathroom and didn’t come out for an hour. When he finally emerged smelling of toothpaste and shampoo, she checked his stitches. There was no swelling and less redness than the day before.
“Lookin’ good,” she said.
“Great. I’m putting on the tunes.” He used a cable to hook up his speaker to his phone. Christmas music filled the cabin.
She insisted that he open his presents. “Just sit there,” she said, “nice and comfy on the couch. I’ll bring them to you.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“If I’m happy doing it, it’s fair enough.”
His presents were the stuff guys get from their families at Christmas. Shirts and socks and a nice heavy jacket. A humorous coffee mug. Gift cards. More books.
Sabra enjoyed the process. For the first time since her mom died, she was loving every minute of Christmas. Sitting out on the porch in the freezing cold, coming downstairs in the morning to the coffee Matthias had already made though she’d ordered him not to—everything, all of it, seemed sparkly and fresh, entertaining and baggage-free.
When the last gift card had been stripped of its shiny wrapper and pretty ribbons, he said, “There’s one more under there somewhere.”
“You sure? I think that’s all.”
“I’ll find it.” He reached for his bear-headed cane.
“Nope. Sit.” She got down on hands and knees and peered through the thick tiers of branches. “I see it.” It was tucked in close to the trunk. Pulling it free, she sat back on her heels. The snowman wrapping paper was wrinkled and the bow was made of household twine. “I don’t remember this one.”
“I had to make do with what I found in the kitchen drawers.”
“It’s for me?” Her throat kind of clutched. Maybe. A little.
“Yeah—and don’t make a big deal of it or start in on how I shouldn’t have been on my feet.”
She slanted him a sideways look. “Lotta rules you got when it comes to giving someone a present, Matthias.”
“It’s Christmas. I wanted you to have something, okay?”
“Um. Okay.” She gazed at him steadily, thinking what a great guy he was under the gruffness and self-protective, macho-man bluster.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbled. “Just open it.”
Oh, she definitely was tempted to dish out a little lecture about how a guy should never call any gift “nothing.” But then he would consider that making a “big deal.” Better not to even get started. She untied the twine bow and tore off the wrinkled paper.
Inside was a See’s Candy box and inside that, a folded piece of paper bag and a small, roughly carved wooden animal. “It’s so cute.” She held it up. “A hedgehog?”
“Close. A porcupine. I made it last night, sitting out on the porch after you went to bed.”
She started to chide him for not going to sleep early as he’d promised—but then pressed her lips together before any words escaped. His gift touched her heart and being out on the porch for a while didn’t seem to have hurt him any.
He said, “Me and my Swiss Army knife, we have a great time together.”
She turned the little carving in her hands, admiring his work. “I love it. Truly. Thank you.”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I thought you might want a souvenir, something to remind you of all that can happen if you go wandering into the woods at Christmastime. You could end up facing down a crazy man with a gun and then having to perform emergency surgery.” He grinned.
She felt an answering smile lift the corners of her mouth. “Why a porcupine?”
“No reason, really. I got out my knife and a nice bit of wood that was just the right shape to become a porcupine.”
“Great choice. I’m a porcupine sort of girl—kinda prickly.”
“But cute.”
Was she blushing? God. Probably. “Did you make your cane?” She tipped her head toward where it leaned against the end of the sofa.
“Yes, I did.”
She had that urge again—to jump up and hug him. Again, she resisted it. But her defenses were weakening. The more time she spent with him, the more she wanted to touch him, to have him touch her.
Shifting her legs out from under her, she sat cross-legged on the floor, set the sweet little porcupine beside her and unfolded the paper-bag note.
Merry Christmas, Sabra,
I’ll make your coffee whether you allow me to or not. And I’ll shut up while you drink it. Feel free to break into my cabin anytime.
Matthias
She glanced up to find him watching her. “You realize you just gave me an open invitation to invade your forest retreat whenever the mood strikes.”
He gazed at her so steadily. “Anytime. I mean that.”
Did she believe him? Not really. But still, it pleased her no end that he seemed to like having her around.
It was a great Christmas, Matt thought, easy and lazy. No tension, zero drama.
They roasted the prime rib he’d brought and sat down to dinner in the early afternoon. There was time on the porch to enjoy the snowy clearing and the tall white-mantled trees. He had board games and they played them. She won at Scrabble. He kicked her pretty butt at Risk.
Not long after dark, as they were considering a game of cribbage, the power went out. She got the footstool from under the stairs and handed him down the two boxes of candles he kept ready and waiting on top of the kitchen cabinets. They lit the candles, set them around the room and ended up abandoning the cribbage board, gravitating to their usual places instead—Matt on the sofa, Sabra curled up in the brown easy chair.
He felt comfortable enough with her to bring up the awkwardness the night before. “I really didn’t mean to insult you last night—you know, what I said about you and that guy named James...”
She gave him a look he was already coming to recognize, sort of patient. And tender. “I told you that I wasn’t insulted.”
“But then you jumped to your feet and ran and hid in the bathroom.”
“Did not,” she said sharply. “I took a bath.” She huffed out a breath. “Please.”
He said nothing. He was getting to know her well enough to have a general idea of when to keep his mouth shut around her, let her come to the truth at her own speed.
And she did, first shifting in the chair, drawing her legs up the other way, wrapping her slim arms around them. “I thought maybe I was getting too personal, I guess.”
“You weren’t. If you want to tell it, I’m listening.”
Her sleek eyebrows drew together as she thought it over. “It is helpful, to have someone to talk to. You’re a good listener and this is just the right situation, you know? You and me alone in this cabin, away from the rest of the world. I think it shocked me last night, how easy it was to say hard stuff to you. You’re the stranger I’ll probably never see again once the roads are clear and we can go our separate ways.” She swiped a hand down her shining dark hair and flicked her braid back over her shoulder.
He could sit here forever, just looking at her.
She had it right, though—yeah, he ached to kiss her. To touch her. To see where this attraction he felt for her might go.
But at the same time, he’d been careful not to tell her too much about himself, about his life. He’d come a long way in the past few years. But not far enough. He still wasn’t ready to jump off into the deep end with a woman again.
And Sabra Bond? She was the kind a guy should be ready to go deep with.
Sabra hugged her knees a little closer, thinking how the man across the coffee table from her reminded her of her dad a little—her dad the way he used to be, back in the old days, before they’d lost her mom. Like her father, Matthias was self-contained. He really listened. He took her seriously but he knew how to kid around, too. He also seemed the sort of man who would tell the truth even when it hurt.
“So, where was I?” she asked.
He tipped his dark gold head to the side, considering, for several long seconds before replying. “You told me about Stan, who left in the middle of the night to move to Austin and become a rock star, the lousy bastard. What about James?”
“James. Right. After Stan, I swore off men.”
“How’d that work out?”
“For a while, I had no romantic relationships of any kind. Then, in my last year at Santa Cruz, I met James Wise. James is from a wealthy Monterey family and he was studying computer game design—not really seriously, though, as it turned out.”
“Right. Because...trust fund?”
“A giant one. He was fooling around with game design and his parents were constantly pressuring him to join the family real estate development firm.”
“So you two were a thing, you and James?”
She nodded. “We were. He was fun and he didn’t seem to take things too seriously. I was so proud of myself for finally having a no-strings sexual relationship.”
“But then...?”
“After we dated for a month or two, James started pushing for marriage.”
Matthias made a low, knowing sort of sound. “And you explained that you planned to be single for years yet.”
“I did, yes. We split up at graduation. I moved to Portland.”
“A fresh start.”
“That’s right. I got my own place and a job at that restaurant I told you about, where I met Iris and Peyton, who became my best friends. I kept promising my friends I would enjoy my freedom, get out and experience a few hot and sexy nights with men I never intended to spend forever with. Somehow, that never happened. And then James showed up in Portland.”
“Because he couldn’t live without you.”
“That is exactly what he said.” She turned sideways and hung her legs over the chair arm, using the other arm as a backrest, shoving a throw pillow behind her for extra support. “And how’d you know that?”
“Lucky guess. Continue.”
“Well, I really had missed him. Yeah, I knew he was a little...irresponsible, maybe. But he was so romantic and sweet—and lighthearted, you know? Since my mom’s death, a little lightheartedness means a lot. He kind of swept me off my feet. We got a place together and he kept pushing for marriage...”
“And you finally said yes.”
“Nailed it.”
“But what about those no-strings flings you promised your girlfriends you’d be having?”
“Never got around to them. And I know, the plan was I would wait till I was thirty to even get serious. Yet, somehow, there I was, saying yes to James—also, full disclosure? I’d never actually met his family or taken him to meet my dad.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Tell me about it.” She groaned. “I ask you, could there have been more red flags?”
“Don’t beat yourself up. It’s all in the past, right?”
A little shudder went through her. “Right. The very recent past, unfortunately—but anyhow, we agreed we’d skip the fancy wedding. I’d never wanted one of those and he could not have cared less either way. We set a date for a quickie Vegas ceremony, which was to have taken place exactly six days ago today. Then after the wedding, the plan was that James would sweep me off for a Christmas vacation-slash-honeymoon in the Seychelles.”
“Christmas in the tropics. That does sound romantic. Ten points for James.”
“I thought so, too. And I did insist he had to at least meet my dad first, so we went to the farm for Thanksgiving.”
“Did you have a nice visit?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Go ahead, Matthias. Pour on the irony.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t look the least regretful.
“You’re enjoying this far too much.”
“I’m only teasing you—you know, being lighthearted?”
She pulled the pillow out from behind her back and threw it at him.
He caught it. “Whoa. Just missed the candle.”
“Watch out. I’ll do worse than knock over a candle.”
He put the pillow under his injured leg. “So? The visit to the farm...?”
“It was bad. My dad was polite to James, but two days in, Dad got me alone and asked me if I was really sure about marrying the guy.”
“Ouch. That’s tough.”
“And I reacted with anger. I said some mean things about how, since we’d lost Mom, he didn’t care about anything—but now, all of a sudden, he’s got a negative opinion he just has to share concerning my choice of a life mate.”
“Admit it,” Matthias interjected in that rough, matter-of-fact tone she already knew so well. “You were worried that your dad might be right.”
She decided his remark didn’t require a response. “After the awfulness with my dad, James and I went back to Portland.”
“Your dad was right, though—am I right?”
She wished she had another pillow to throw at him. “Seven days ago, the day before we were supposed to head for Vegas, James’s parents arrived out of nowhere at our apartment.”
“Not good?”
“Horrible. They’d come to collect their errant son before he made the biggest mistake of his life—marrying some nobody farmer’s daughter when the woman he grew up with, a woman from an excellent family, a woman who loved him with all her heart, was waiting for him in Monterey—with their little boy who needed his daddy.”
“What the— James had a kid?”
She nodded. “One he’d never said a word to me about.”
“Okay, now I want to kick his snotty little rich-guy ass.”
“Thank you. Anyway, James asks his parents to leave. They go. At this point, I’m reeling. I demand an explanation—and James just blurts out the truth he never bothered to share with me before. He says yes, there’s a little boy. That in the year between graduation and when he showed up in Portland, he’d gotten back with his childhood sweetheart and she’d had his baby. He says he hates that maybe his parents are right. Monica—his baby mama—really does need him and so does his son. He says he’s sorry, but he can’t marry me and he’s leaving for Monterey right away.”
“Sabra.”
She glared across the coffee table at him to keep from getting weepy over her terrible life choices. “What?”
“This all happened a week ago?”
“James went back to Monterey exactly one week ago today, yes.”
Matthias took the pillow out from under his leg, plopped it on the coffee table and scooted around so he could rest his leg on it again. Then he patted the space beside him. “Come here.”
“Why?”
He only patted the empty cushion some more.
“Fine.” She got up and sat next to him.
And he hooked his giant arm around her and pulled her close. “Lean on me. It’s not going to kill you.”
She let her head drop to his enormous shoulder, breathed in his minty, manly evergreen scent—and felt comforted. “Thanks.”
His breath brushed the crown of her head. He might even have pressed a kiss there, though she couldn’t be sure. “Continue.”
“What else is there to say? I gave him back his ring and he packed a suitcase and left. I told myself to look on the bright side. I had three weeks off work for the honeymoon that wasn’t happening, time off from the daily grind to pull it together, find a new place and sublet the apartment I can’t afford to keep by myself.”
“Plus, you’d dodged a major bullet not marrying a cheating, dumb-ass rich kid from Monterey.”
“Yay, me.” It felt good to be held by him. She snuggled in a little closer. When she tipped her head back to glance up at him, he bent close and touched his nose to hers, causing a sweet little shiver to radiate out from that small point of contact.
“You okay?” he asked, blue eyes narrowed with concern.
“I am,” she replied, resting her head on his shoulder. “I threw some clothes in a bag and went to the farm, where my dad was still wandering around like a ghost of himself. But at least he hugged me and said he loved me and he was glad I hadn’t married the wrong man. He wanted me to come with him for Christmas with my mom’s side of the family, but I wasn’t up for it. After Dad left, it got really lonely at the farm, so I started back to Portland—and the rest, you know.”
“Luckily for me, you ended up here in time to save my sorry ass from my own hopeless pigheadedness.”
“You’re welcome.” She eased free of his hold to bring a knee up on the sofa cushion and turn toward him. “And at least I’ve learned something from the disaster that was James.”
“What’s that?”
“For the next five years, minimum, the only relationships I’m having are the casual kind.”
He scratched his chin, pretending to think deeply about what she’d just said. “I don’t know, Sabra. Isn’t that what you promised yourself after things went south with Stan? You seem to be kind of a sucker for a marriage proposal.”
She was tempted to fake outrage. But really, why bother? He was absolutely right on both counts. “Yeah, I do have that teensy problem of being monogamous to the core.” A sad little laugh escaped her. “It’s bred in the bone with me, I guess.”
“Why’s that?”
“My parents fell in love when they were kids—and their dedication to each other? Absolute. I just want what they had, but so far it’s not happening.” Matthias was watching her with a kind of musing expression. And she felt...bold. And maybe a little bit giddy. She took it further. “I’m probably never trying love again. And I’m incapable of having casual sex with men I don’t know. That means I’m doomed to spend my life only having sex with myself—and I know, I know. TMI in a big way.” Matthias chuckled. It was a rough sound, that chuckle. And very attractive. She felt strangely proud every time she made him laugh. “And now that I’ve totally overshared the story of my pitiful love life, you sure you don’t want to do a little sharing, too?”
He grunted. “Do I look like the sharing type to you?”
She didn’t back down. “Yeah. You do. Talk to me about the things you said in your sleep the other night.”
He went straight to tough-guy denial. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“The name Nelson doesn’t even ring a bell?”
“Who?” he sneered—but in a teasing kind of way that seemed to give her permission to keep pushing.
Sabra pushed. “So...you don’t want to talk about Mark or Finn, either, or the woman you mentioned. Christy, I think her name was...”
He squinted at her, as though he was trying to see inside her head. “You really want to hear this crap?”
“I’m sure it’s not crap. And yes, I really do.”
“All right, then.” And just like that, he gave it up. “Christy was my high school sweetheart. We were still together after a couple of years of community college. I was messing up all over the place back then, drinking, exploring the effects of a number of recreational drugs and playing video games instead of taking care of business. My issues had issues, I guess you could say. But at least I knew Christy was the love of my life.”
“That’s sweet.”
He snorted derisively. “Wait for the rest of it. At twenty, after squeaking through my sophomore year with a C-minus average, my older brother Daniel gave me a good talking-to—a few blows were thrown. But he did get through to me. I decided to enlist, to serve my country and get my act together.
“Before I left for boot camp, I proposed and Christy said yes. We agreed to a two-year engagement so that she could finish college before the wedding. A year later, while I was overseas, she Dear Johned me via email and then married the guy she’d been cheating on me with.”
“Oh, dear God, Matthias. That’s bad.”
“What happened with Christy was by no means the worst of it.” His eyes were flat now, far away.
She felt terrible for him and almost let him off the hook. But he fascinated her. She wanted to know his story, to understand what had shaped the man he was now.
“Nelson and Mark were good men,” he continued in a monotone. “We served together in the Middle East. They didn’t make it home. I got discharged due to injury. I was a mess. There were surgeries and lots of therapy—both kinds, physical and for my screwed-up head. Finn was my brother.”
“Was?” she asked in a small voice, stunned by this litany of tragedy.
“It’s possible he’s still alive. He disappeared when he was only eight. That was my fault. I was six years older and I was supposed to be watching him. We still have investigators looking for him.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, aching for him and for those he’d lost. “I really don’t know what to say...”
“Don’t worry about it. Can we talk about something else now, you think?”
“Absolutely.”
And just like that, he shook it off and teased her, “I guess, with you being incapable of casual sex, I don’t have to wonder if you took advantage of me that first night when I was at my weakest.”
She followed his lead and teased him right back. “Don’t look so hopeful.”
“Damn. It was only a dream, then?”
“All right, I admit it.” She fluttered her eyelashes madly. “For you, I have made a monogamy exception. You loved it—actually, it was good for both of us.”
“I kind of figured it would be.” He said that with way more sincerity than the joking moment called for.
And all of a sudden, the warm, candlelit cabin was charged with a whole new kind of heat.
Okay, yeah. The guy was super hot in his big, buff, ex-military kind of way. Plus, they’d forged a sort of instant intimacy, two strangers alone in the middle of the woods.
But getting into anything really intimate with him would be a bad idea. After all, she’d just gotten messed over by her second fiancé.
Having sex with Matthias would only be asking for trouble.
Wouldn’t it?
Or would it be wonderful? Passionate and sweet and magical. And right.
Chemistry-wise, he really did it for her—at least, as far as she could tell without even having kissed him yet.
Why should she run from that, from the possibility of that? Maybe they could have something beautiful.
Something for right now. Just between the two of them.
Maybe, for the first time, she, Sabra Bond, could actually have a fling. That would be progress for someone like her.
They stared at each other in the flickering candlelight.
Was he just possibly thinking the same thing she was?
Sex.
Matt was definitely thinking about sex. About how much he wanted it. With the woman sitting next to him. “Sabra.”
Her big eyes got bigger. “Um, yeah?”
“Whatever I say now is just going to sound like so much bull—”
She whipped up a hand. “No. No, it’s not. I get you, Matthias. I do. I think, you and me, we’re on the same page about this whole relationship thing. It hasn’t even been a full week since I almost married a man who’d failed to tell me he had a child. I’m not ready for anything serious, not in the least. I need about a decade to figure myself out first.”
“Yeah. I get that.” He gave it to her straight out. “I’m not ready, either.”
“But I, well, I have been thinking about it,” she confessed. “About the two of us, here, alone. Like strangers. And yet somehow, at the same time, not strangers at all.”
Were they moving too far, too fast? Yeah, probably.
He tried to lighten things up a little. “It’s all the excitement and glamour, right? I mean, I know we’re having a wild old time here, playing board games, sitting out on the porch watching the snow melt.”
She laughed. He really liked her laugh, all husky and musical at once. But then she answered with complete sincerity. “I’m having the best time. I really am.”
And what could he do but reply honestly, in kind? “Me, too.” He wanted to kiss her. What man wouldn’t? And as their hours together drifted by, it kept getting harder to remember why kissing her wouldn’t be wise.
She got up and went back to her chair. He wanted to reach out, catch her hand, beg her to stay there on the sofa beside him. But he had no right to do any such thing.
She settled in across the coffee table, gathering her knees up against her chest, resting her pretty chin on them. “I have a proposition for you.”
His heart rate picked up. “Hit me with it.”
“What if we both agreed that this, right now, in this cabin at Christmas, just you and me—this is it? This is all. When it’s over and we go our separate ways, that’s the last we’ll ever see of each other.”
He felt regret, that it was going nowhere between the two of them—regret and relief in equal measure. A man needed to be realistic about what he was capable of. And what he wasn’t. As for Sabra, well, she’d just gotten free of one romantic mess. A new one was the last thing she needed. “You’re saying we won’t be exchanging numbers?”
“That’s right. No details about how to get in touch later. And no looking each other up on social media, no trying to track each other down.”
“We say goodbye and walk away.”
“Yes.” She sat a little straighter in the chair. “What do you think?”
He stuck out his hand across the coffee table. She shifted, tucking her legs to the side, leaning forward in the chair and then reaching out to meet him.
“Deal,” he said as he wrapped his fingers around hers.