SHE HAD SENSED that something was going on with him by the time they had parted yesterday, and clearly it was a get-rip-roaring-drunk something.
Lachlan had come to her place this morning and told her what happened last night, then he’d driven her back to Smokey’s to get Brody’s truck.
“I was a little bit of a dick to him last night,” Lachlan said.
She wanted to ask him why the hell he had been mean to Brody.
But she hadn’t done that. Instead, she had just listened.
“And he drank a lot, so I have a feeling he has a really terrible hangover,” he continued.
“Well.”
“I don’t know what his deal is. He’s impossible to talk to,” Lachlan said. “Not that I’m any better... But he’s always been...”
“Yeah. I know.” She didn’t have a very hard time talking to Brody at all. But one thing she had been certain of from the beginning was that their talking wasn’t something normal for him.
She drove his truck straight back to his place, and let herself in, waking him up. And now it was time for her to hatch part of her plan.
She was driving to Mapleton to get a big haul of groceries and a few presents.
She would go to the sports-and-outdoor store and look for something there. Granted, she didn’t know what he had, but when she had talked to Lachlan about presents, he had informed her that a man could never have too many knives. And that bullets always made a great gift.
She had found it best not to argue. She was just grateful to have ideas.
She went to the grocery store and got all the fixings for Christmas dinner. Since she was in town, she stopped and bought some more clothes. She was systematically replacing all of the things that she had brought with her from her marriage to Carter. All of the things that she had brought from her old life. It seemed like the best thing to do.
Then she went to the outdoor store, where she wandered endlessly down the aisles until a woman wearing camouflage took pity on her and directed her to a few things.
She left with a knife that had blades you could swap in and out of the handle, and several boxes of ammunition for a few different kinds of guns, which the woman assured her would work for the sort of guns a rancher was most likely to have. Maybe Elizabeth had been bamboozled. But, she felt accomplished. And right now that was what mattered.
SHE DROVE BACK to Four Corners, and set about making a batch of cookies. Chocolate chip cookies. And yes, she knew that he already had a favorite one. That his brother’s friend Charity made them, but she wanted to make him cookies. Because she still thought it was outrageous that he had never had a fresh-baked cookie until he was twenty-five years old, and she felt like the man could use several different favorite cookie recipes, all things considered.
When they were just about done, she texted him.
She had cider brewing on the stove, homemade this time, and Christmas music playing. There were presents under the tree.
And this wasn’t just for her. Some replacement because Benny was gone. It was for Brody.
Of course, maybe he did something with his family. But she had a feeling he didn’t. Not based on what he had told her.
She waited for a response to her text. And waited. And then suddenly, there was a knock at the door. She let out a sigh of relief, and smiled. That seemed like him.
She got up, and went and opened the door. “You could’ve texted,” she said.
“Yeah. I could have. But I started a few and didn’t really know what to say. Since you saw me hungover this morning. Undoubtedly, not my finest moment.”
“That’s okay. I feel like you’ve seen a couple moments of mine that weren’t exactly my finest.”
“Do you mean sad, because your son went to spend Christmas with your ex-husband? Because that isn’t nearly as ignoble as being hungover because you went out drinking with your brother and got into a fight with him.”
“Maybe not. But there’s not much point in comparing battle scars, is there?”
“I guess not.”
“The point is we just all have them.”
“I guess we do.”
“Brody... Merry Christmas.”
He stepped into her house and looked around. “White Christmas” was playing over a speaker on the counter, and the Christmas tree was glimmering even more beautifully than it ever had before.
“I want to make you a big Christmas dinner tomorrow. And tonight, there’s cookies and cider. And there’s presents for tomorrow morning. I’m going to make you breakfast.”
“I...”
“And tonight sex. Lots of sex.”
“Okay,” he said.
“You look a little bit shell-shocked.”
“I’m not sure what I did to deserve this.”
“Just... Everything since I’ve met you.”
“Including the hangover?”
“Okay. Maybe everything except last night. But, that’s a minor experience in the grand scheme of things.”
“I guess so.”
“Now we’re going to be merry,” she said.
“Is that what’s going to happen?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s what’s going to happen.”
“Typically, I don’t like being told what to do.”
“Well, typically, I don’t go around demanding what I want. But in this case... I’m going to.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of this is for you.”
“I love cookies.”
“Anything else?”
“Sex. With you.”
“I’d like to hear more about that.”
“Cider and cookies first.”
He grimaced. “Now they feel like a punishment.”
“It’s called delaying gratification. What do you know about that?”
He looked at her, for too long. “Way too much.”
She actually believed that.
“Well, a little more won’t hurt you.”
“I guess we’ll find out anyway,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
She brought a mug to him, filled with steaming liquid, and a plate with warm cookies. “I can’t believe nobody ever makes you these.”
“I told you. Lachlan’s friend bakes cookies.”
“This is Charity, right? The cute vet?”
He frowned. “I mean, I guess. Cute in the way that a doll is or something.”
“She’s cute,” Elizabeth said. “And she isn’t making cookies for you. She’s making them for Lachlan.”
“She makes them for all of us.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Trust me. They’re for him.”
“What...? You mean, like... She’s making them for him?”
“Yes, Brody,” she said, speaking very slowly. “Because she likes him.”
“Because they’re friends.”
She rolled her eyes. “I think she likes him.”
“They aren’t in fourth grade,” he said. “And she’s engaged.”
“What?” Elizabeth looked genuinely shocked by that.
“I know. I know.” Brody shook his head. “It’s...the weirdest thing to me, but they’re friends. Though it’s like... I don’t know, more somehow, but not in the way I always thought. She protects him, like a feral creature. I thought she was going to take a chunk out of me at the bar.”
“What happened with you and Lachlan last night?”
“It was stupid,” he said.
“It couldn’t have been that stupid. He knew that you were upset, and he came to see me this morning.”
“He was probably looking for me.”
“You know, I don’t think he was. I think he knew that you wouldn’t be at my place.” She didn’t even bother to pretend to be irritated that Lachlan clearly knew that they were sleeping together. She had a feeling that Brody and Lachlan couldn’t keep much from each other, even if they tried.
It was funny. They were the last two McCloud brothers who were single. And she had a feeling their experience of their childhood couldn’t have been more different. But they were both wounded by it.
“He was mad at me. About... He just brought up some stuff from the past. Stuff about my dad. About me not...”
“Did he say something to you about you not getting hit?”
His expression went hard. Any goodwill she had felt for Lachlan a moment ago was gone.
“He isn’t wrong,” Brody said.
“No, Brody, he is. He doesn’t get to tell you how your childhood should have made you feel. Any more than anyone gets to tell me how mine should have made me feel. People have always treated me like I was damaged. And I have issues, I do. But people cared about me. Enough adults showed up and showed me that there were good people in the world, and that made all the difference to me. Did you have that? Did you have one person show up and show you that you are worthy?”
He looked lost. Right in that moment. Like the lost boy he must have been back then, and everything in her ached.
His throat worked, and he looked away from her.
“My dad,” he said.
That stunned her speechless. She just stood there, holding her own mug of cider and staring.
He looked back at her, and there was something defiant in his expression now.
“Yeah. My dad showed me that I was worth something. My dad taught me how to ride a horse. Taught me how to lasso a calf. Taught me how to shoot and skin a deer and pound a nail. So yeah. Lachlan and I had different experiences. I had a different experience.”
“Do you ever get to talk about that?”
He shook his head. “There’s no point. What he did to them... It’s unforgivable. So I don’t think about that stuff. I don’t think about it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It did matter though, didn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about this. I really don’t. I didn’t want to talk about it when Lachlan brought it up, and I don’t want to talk about it now.”
“Okay. We don’t need to.”
He looked up at her. “That’s it?”
“You said you didn’t want to, Brody. I’m here if you do. We had a pretty easy time talking about everything. I told you my stuff. You didn’t run away. I’m not going to, either, because you’re telling me that your feelings are more complicated than anybody has given you permission for them to be.”
“I don’t need anybody’s permission to do anything,” he said.
“Of course you don’t. And I didn’t say you did.”
“I know you didn’t say that. I’m just... Thank you for the cookies. I appreciate the spirit. And I will consider them the first cookies ever baked for me.”
She could tell that he was trying to put a Band-Aid on all of it. And maybe he was right to do that. What was the point in playing these games? What was the point of trying to get to the truth when there just wasn’t time for that? What was the point?
She really did wonder. Maybe there wasn’t a reason. It was just that she... She knew a certain kind of closeness. But it wasn’t this. She had told him things about herself she had never told anybody. She had shared her fears, her insecurities. She told him exactly why she had been vulnerable to falling into a relationship, the things that she had thought. These small, mean issues that she always felt so embarrassed about. And he had just accepted it. He had taught her that somebody could accept it. He had made her feel like she could accept it more. Like she could accept herself more.
She wanted to give him something. Something that looked even a little bit like that. Was that not reasonable? It seems like it ought to be.
But it could also be just cider and cookies and an evening spent not being so lonely. An evening spent making each other feel good. Why couldn’t it be that?
You’re trying to make something “forever.” And you know you can’t do that. You know you can’t force it.
She repeated that to herself. Repeated it to herself because it was that important.
She needed to understand. And she needed to listen.
Because she had already done this overly attached thing. She had already misconstrued something romantic for something permanent.
It wasn’t wrong to believe that “forever” existed. She refused to believe that it was. She had found a kind of forever with Benny. That forever family that she’d always wanted. She didn’t have to project that onto a man.
“These are delicious,” he said.
She took a sip of her cider and sat on the couch directly beside him. She snuggled against him, and looked at the tree. It was beautiful.
“I always dreamed of making my own Christmas,” she said. Because she couldn’t help herself.
He didn’t need to share with her, but there was something healing about her being able to say all these hidden things in her heart that she had never been able to speak out loud before. To know that the man that she said them to was going to want to see her naked later, and he wouldn’t stop wanting her just because he knew... Because he knew her.
Because he knew she wasn’t fancy Elizabeth Colfax. Because he knew the name was borrowed, and so were her clothes. Bought with money that was never hers.
Yeah. He knew that.
He knew that, and he was here anyway. “I saw so many different Christmas traditions growing up,” she said. “Different holiday traditions. I loved all of them. I thought they were all beautiful. I love seeing the way it brought families together. Families of all kinds. No matter their faith, no matter their traditions... They were all wonderful, because they were nothing like what I had ever seen before. But I always wondered what kind of Christmas I would make. I had two Christmases with Benny while married to Carter. And I imagined those being the foundation. The traditions that I would have for the rest of my life. In the house, with that man, with all the children that we would have. And then it was gone. I did my best to make new traditions. But I’m always trying to do that.” She had realized this about herself recently, and now she was saying it out loud. “I’m always trying to make the one thing that will last forever. And this Christmas isn’t going to be like any other Christmas. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with looking back on this, and having this as a memory. And not something that happens every year.”
“I’ve never thought of things that way. Traditions and ongoing things, and one-time things... The only thing I’ve ever really counted on is that life will bite you in the ass. In familiar and unfamiliar ways, randomly all the time.”
She laughed. “I mean, you’re not wrong. I might be a little more satisfied with the state of affairs if I learned that level of acceptance.”
“I don’t know that it’s acceptance. It’s kind of pessimistic.”
“Fatalistic, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s hard to be fatalistic sitting in front of a Christmas tree this pretty.”
“I don’t know about that. I think I can be fatalistic anywhere I want to be.”
“Now, that’s optimism.”
He laughed. “Did you get Benny’s presents?”
“No, Brody. Those are your presents.”
He looked at her, his expression sharp. “What?”
“Those are your presents. I got them for you. But you can’t open them yet. Because it’s only Christmas Eve. You have to open them Christmas morning.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Well. I have something you can open tonight.”
She got up off the couch, set her mug of cider down, then gripped the hem of the new sweaterdress and pulled it up over her head.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. And everything that had happened in the last hour just dissolved. All the difficulty, all the stinking conversations, all the tough admissions and memories he preferred not to have.
Because she was standing in front of him in a red bodysuit that resurrected his very dead Christmas cheer.
It was lace, see-through, and there were straps, and it was a complicated thing of beauty, crisscrossing over that pale skin. He wanted to...
He wanted to tear it off her. Like a caveman. Like...
He was short-circuiting.
In all his days, he had not thought that the prim woman who he met all those weeks ago would be able to send him into this kind of a tailspin. Not in a million years. Not in a hundred million years. He had been certain that she was a prude. He had been certain that she was stuffy...
And right now, standing before him, she was a siren. And if she was going to lure him to his death, then he was going willingly. Because he had never seen anything more beautiful in all of his life, and he had never wanted anything like he wanted Elizabeth Colfax right now.
Lizzie.
His Lizzie. Because he was the only one who was allowed to call her that.
So he did.
“Lizzie,” he said, the name coming out a growl.
She arched her back, and the breath left his body in a gust.
He could hardly breathe past his desire.
The curve of her breasts, the way he could see the shadow of her nipples through that fabric...
“Please tell me that didn’t come from your ex-husband.”
“No. It came from Copper Ridge. You were very nice to me, hanging out in that store while I shopped... It made me want to do something nice for you too.”
“That is very, very nice,” he agreed.
And he didn’t even care that it was being presented as a reward. A little bit transactional. She said it light, she said it flirty. And hell, it made it really dirty, and he was 100 percent okay with that game.
All for him.
Yeah. He liked it. He liked it a lot. His reward.
For that Victorian Christmas nonsense.
She shifted slightly, and he could see... Holy hell. There was no fabric between her legs.
He felt like he might be dying. Then and there. And he never wanted to get laid in front of a Christmas tree, but it was quickly becoming a serious fantasy for him.
She grinned, and moved toward him, then she straddled his lap on the couch, leaning in and kissing him on the mouth.
He growled, pushing his fingers through her hair, kissing her deep and wild, licking into her mouth as he did.
She moaned, rolling her hips forward, her center making contact with the rigid length of his arousal through his jeans.
He had never been so hot for it. Never been so hot for any woman... Ever.
But that had been true from the beginning. He had wanted her and no one else from the moment he had first set eyes on her. And he hadn’t been able to make himself want anyone else no matter how hard he tried.
He just wanted her.
And it was more than sex. More than chemistry. It was that thing that made him want to move mountains for her. It was that thing that made him want to talk to her.
That thing that made him want to listen.
What a strange damned experience that was.
The thing that made her story almost more important than his own, which was what made it easy to finally... Tell bits of his.
He couldn’t have explained it before this moment. As if the brush of her mouth on his in the way that she ignited his blood brought clarity to him that he’d never experienced before.
Somehow.
Even while good sense and reason were being blotted out. Even while he could scarcely breathe, let alone think.
He didn’t think there was any oxygen getting to his brain.
He pushed his fingers between her legs and discovered that she was wet for him.
He groaned, let his head fall back and began to stroke her, moving his fingers through her slick folds, before pushing them deep inside of her.
She moaned, letting her head fall back, resting her breasts forward, and he tilted his chin up and licked her through the thin fabric of the garment she was wearing, before biting down gently on her nipple.
She gasped, her hips rocking in time with the movement of his fingers.
“What a gift you are. What a gift you were all along. And that husband of yours was too damn stupid to see it. What an idiot. His misfortune... That’s my gain.”
She whimpered as he continued to suck her nipples through that fabric, while he worked his fingers in and out of her body, while she moved her hips and moaned, begging him for more. He was happy to give her more. He was happy to give her whatever she needed.
He pushed the flimsy cups on the garment to the side, baring her breasts, leaving the rest of the red lace in place. He had no intention of undressing her altogether. It was too beautifully filthy to look at her like this. His partially unwrapped gift.
And it reminded him, that’s what it was. That’s what she was. A gift.
She smoothed her hands over his chest, kissed him deep and hard on the mouth, then wrenched his shirt up over his head.
Shaking fingers worked his belt buckle, and she freed him from his underwear before settling herself over the blunt head of his erection. She began to slide down onto him slowly, and it was too much. It was just too damned much. He stood, one arm around her waist, bracing her as he walked them to the Christmas tree and laid them down underneath it. He positioned himself between her legs and thrust home. Hard. Those colored Christmas lights painting her skin, the glitter from the golden ornaments reflecting lights over the top of that.
And the sound of their pleasure drowned out the Christmas music, and he couldn’t tell anymore if it was sacred or sacrilege, or some mix of both.
But then, he’d never been able to tell. Not in his life.
What was good. What was bad.
What made him good or bad.
Because he didn’t have an answer. To which it was.
He knew one thing, though. He knew that he wanted her, and right now, he had her.
And that was enough. It had to be enough. Because it was all he damn well had.
The fierce pleasure of her body closed around his, the deep satisfaction of being buried inside her. Of listening to her cries of pleasure even as he sought his own.
He had that.
And it was good.
She was good. He was certain of that. Of all the things in this world he couldn’t make sense of, he knew this for sure.
She whimpered, and he reached down and pinched her nipple, and he felt her climax ripple around him. And he chased his own, unable to hold back. Unable to stop himself.
“Lizzie,” he said, the name fractured on his lips, fractured in his soul, a jagged mirror reflecting pieces of himself that he wasn’t ready to see.
But he needed her all the same.
Even if he wasn’t ready.
That was the problem. He wasn’t ready for her.
He didn’t think he ever would be.
But here they were.
Here they were.
He lay with her under the tree. Looking up into those lights and dark green branches. Something he imagined kids did. Kids who didn’t have ogres for fathers and absentee mothers. Kids who hadn’t been in foster care and never felt like the home they were in wasn’t theirs.
Kids who were comfortable. Secure and safe.
Except, nothing about him felt childlike at the moment.
He was glad of that. And as he drifted off to sleep beneath the Christmas tree, he thought this was probably a singular moment. To feel thoroughly debauched and thoroughly innocent, all at once.
And he thought it was probably only Elizabeth who could ever make him feel that.
He was looking forward to Christmas.
He couldn’t remember ever thinking that before.
He fell asleep with his lips curved into a smile.