One Winter's Day: A Diamond in Her Stocking / Christmas Where They Belong / Snowed in at the Ranch. Marion Lennox
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He put down the drill, picked up the hammer and the wall plug. He positioned the wall plug with his left hand and took aim with the hammer in his right. His sudden curse curdled the air and the hammer thudded to the floor.
‘Jesse! Are you okay?’
‘Just my shoulder,’ he groaned, gripping it and doubling over. ‘Not a good angle for it.’
‘How can I help?’ She felt useless in the face of his pain. Disconcerted by her immediate urge to touch him, to comfort him.
He straightened up, wincing. ‘You hold the nail and I’ll wield the hammer using both hands, it’ll take the strain off the shoulder.’
‘Or you could let me use the hammer.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’
Was it masculine pride? Or did he honestly think she couldn’t use a hammer? Whatever, she had no intention of getting into an argument over it. ‘Okay,’ she said.
He handed her the nail and, using her left hand, she positioned it against the wall plug. She was tall, but Jesse was taller. To reach the nail he had to manoeuvre himself around her. Her shoulders were pressed against the solid wall of his chest. He was too close. Her heart started to thud so fast she felt giddy; her knees went wobbly. She dropped the nail, twisted to get away from him and found herself staring directly up into his face. For a long, long moment their eyes connected.
‘I...I can’t do this, Jesse,’ she finally stuttered as she pushed away from him.
Three of his large strides took him well away from her before he turned to face her again. He cleared his throat. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We can’t just continue to ignore what happened between us at the wedding. Or why you ran away the next day without saying goodbye.’
THE LIZZIE JESSE had known six months ago hadn’t been short of a quick retort or a comment that bordered on the acerbic. Now she struggled to make a response. But he didn’t prompt her. He’d waited six months for her excuse. He could wait minutes more.
Instead he tilted back on the heels of his boots, stuck his thumbs into the belt of his jeans and watched her, schooling his face to be free of expression.
She opened her mouth to speak then shut it again. She twisted a flyaway piece of her pale blonde hair that had worked itself free from the plait that fell between her shoulder blades.
‘Not ignore. Forget,’ she said at last.
‘Forget us getting together ever happened?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was a lapse of judgement on my part.’
He snorted. ‘I’ve been insulted before but to be called a “lapse of judgement” is a first.’
She clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out quite like that.’
‘I’m tough; I can take it,’ he said. He went to shrug his shoulders but it hurt. In spite of his bravado, so had her words.
‘But I meant it,’ she said. ‘It should never have happened. The...the episode on the balcony was a mistake.’ She had a soft, sweet mouth but her words twisted it into something bordering on bitter.
‘I remember it as being a whole lot of fun,’ he said slowly.
She tilted her chin in a movement that was surprisingly combative. ‘Seems like our memories of that night are very different.’
‘I remember lots of laughter and a warm, beautiful woman by my side,’ he said.
By now she had braced herself against the back of the counter as if she wanted to push herself away from him as far as she possibly could. ‘You mean you’ve forgotten the way a rowdy group of your friends came out and...and caught us—’
‘Caught us kissing. Yeah. I remember. I’ve known those people all my life. They were teasing. You didn’t seem to be bothered by it at the time.’
‘It was embarrassing.’
‘You were laughing.’
That piece of hair was getting a workout now between her slender fingers. ‘To hide how I really felt.’
He paused. ‘Do you often do that?’
She stilled. ‘Laugh, you mean?’
He searched her face. ‘Hide how you really feel.’
She met his gaze full on with a challenging tilt to her head. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘You laughed it off. Said you had to go check on Amy.’
Her gaze slid away so it didn’t meet his. ‘Yes.’
‘You never came back.’
‘I did but...but you were otherwise engaged.’
‘Huh? I don’t get it. I was waiting for you.’ He’d checked his watch time and time again, but she still hadn’t shown up. Finally he’d asked someone if they’d seen Lizzie. They’d pointed her out on the other side of the room in conversation with a group of the most gossipy girls in Dolphin Bay. She hadn’t come near him again.
Now she met his eyes again, hers direct and shadowed with accusation. ‘You were dancing with another woman. When you’d told me all dances for the evening were reserved for me.’
He remembered the running joke they had shared—Jesse with a ‘Reserved for Lizzie’ sign on his back, Lizzie with a ‘Reserved for Jesse’ sign. The possessiveness had been in jest but he had meant it.
He frowned. ‘After the duty dances for the wedding—including with your delightful little daughter—the only woman I danced with that evening was you. Refresh my memory about the other one?’
She turned her head to the side. Her body language told him loud and clear she’d rather be anywhere else than here with him. In spite of the café and Sandy and family obligations.
‘It was nothing,’ she said, tight-lipped. ‘You had every right to dance with another woman.’
He reached out and cupped her chin to pull her back to face him. ‘Let’s get this straight. I only wanted to dance with you that night.’
For a long moment he looked deep into her eyes until she tried to wiggle away from him and he released her. ‘So describe this mystery woman to me,’ he said.
‘Black hair, tall, beautiful, wearing a red dress.’ It sounded as if the words were being dragged out of her.
He frowned.
‘You seemed very happy to be with her,’ she prompted.
Realisation dawned. ‘Red dress? It was my cousin. I was with my cousin Marie. She’d just told me she was pregnant. She and her husband had been trying for years to start a family. I was talking with her while I waited for you to come back.’
‘Oh,’ Lizzie said in a very small voice, her head bowed.
‘I wasn’t dancing with her. More like whirling her around in a dance of joy. A baby is everything she’s always wanted.’
‘I...I’m glad for her,’ Lizzie said in an even more diminished voice.
He couldn’t keep the edge of anger from his voice. ‘You thought I’d moved on to someone else? That I’d kissed you out on the balcony—in front of an audience—and then found another woman while you were out of the room for ten minutes?’
She looked up at him. ‘That’s what it seemed like from where I was standing. I’ve never felt so foolish.’
‘So why didn’t you come