A Thunder Canyon Christmas (4 page)

That didn't seem to ease her concern. “You could have been really hurt. He might have damaged your vision.”

“He didn't. I'm fine.”

She closed the book, her fine-boned features tight and unhappy. “I'm really sorry about…everything. I feel so stupid.”

“Why? You didn't do anything wrong except maybe pass the time of day with a cowboy who'd had a few too many.”

“I can't really blame him for getting the wrong idea,” she admitted. “I might have…acted more interested in him than I really was. If you want the truth, I was using him to hide from you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why would you need to hide from me?”

She suddenly looked as if she wished she'd never said anything. “I was embarrassed about being there by myself. It's not something I usually do.”

“I'm glad you were there,” he said as he headed to the refrigerator for the sauce. “Except for your little episode with the jerk, it's great to see you. So are you back in Thunder Canyon to stay?”

She sighed and sounded so forlorn that Tootsie must have sensed it. She nuzzled her leg. “I don't know. Every thing's in…limbo. My mother wanted to come home for the holidays and begged me to come with her so I took a temporary leave from my job until the new year. After that, I don't know what I'll do.”

He really hoped she would decide to stay. He liked
having her around. He started to say so but she spoke before he could get the words out.

“I guess you heard about my…about what happened twenty-six years ago.”

“Who in town hasn't?”

Her sigh this time sounded even more forlorn and he cursed himself for his tactless response.

“Sorry. Was that the wrong thing to say?”

“I really hate having everyone gossiping about me. I hated it after my dad's murder and I hate it more now. Everything is such a mess.”

He couldn't begin to imagine what she must be going through. “How are you holding up?”

“Not too great,” she confessed softly.

He set down the box of pasta he'd just pulled from the cupboard and crossed to give her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.

Instead of comforting her, as he'd intended, his gesture made her big blue eyes brim with tears.

“My mom wants the family together for Christmas. Everyone, including Erin.”

“And that's a problem?”

She sighed. “I feel like I don't even belong at Clifton's Pride anymore.”

He stared. “You most certainly
do
belong at Clifton's Pride! It's your home and the Cliftons are your family. Why would you feel otherwise, even for a moment?”

“I'm not a Clifton. Not really. If not for a quirk of fate and a moment's mistake by a nurse, I never would have known any one of them. I'm not a Clifton. But I'm
not really a Castro, either. I barely know those people. I don't know who I am.”

A tear brimming in her eyes dripped over and slid down the side of her nose and his heart broke.

He grabbed a tissue box and couldn't resist the compulsion to pull her into his arms. She felt small and feminine and he wanted to hold tight and take on all her demons for her.

“You're the same person you've always been. You're Elise Clifton, daughter of John and Helen and sister to Grant. Blood or not, that's who you are.”

“I wish it were that easy.”

“Why isn't it? They're your family.”

She frowned. “They're not my parents! I don't belong in Thunder Canyon at all!”

A dozen arguments swarmed through his head—he hadn't been in law school without reason. But then, she wasn't a hostile witness on the stand, either.

“So blood and genetics is everything? According to your reasoning, anybody who's been adopted into a family should always feel like an outsider.”

“I wasn't adopted!” she exclaimed. “I was switched for their real daughter. For the child Helen and John should have had. They didn't choose to be stuck with me. My whole life is a mistake!
I'm
a mistake.”

“Do you really think that's what your mother and Grant think?”

“I don't know. They're so happy about Erin,” she whispered.

Her tears started flowing in earnest now and she added a few sobs in there to really twist the knife.

Nice, Cates,
he thought.
Take a vulnerable woman who has already had a rough night and reduce her to tears.
He had definitely lost his touch.

“Hey. Easy now. Come on.” He pulled her back into his arms.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” She sniffled.

“For what? Being human? Anybody would be upset.”

“Oh, I'm making a big mess of your shirt and you just changed it for a clean one,” she wailed.

He tightened his arms. “No worries. I've got a good washing machine.”

His words only seemed to set her off again and Matt held her, hating this helpless feeling. With no sisters and a mother who rarely lost her cool in front of her boys, his experience with crying women was extremely limited. This was a novel experience, trying to offer comfort instead of instinctively seeking any handy escape route.

She clutched his waist as if he was the only thing keeping her from floating away on her wild emotions, her cheek pressed against his chest. Her hair smelled like fresh raspberries just plucked from his mama's garden behind their house and he inhaled, doing his best to ignore how soft and curvy she felt in his arms and feeling powerless to do anything but hold her.

He moved into his half-finished family room where he could sit down on the sofa, pulling her with him.

After a few moments, her intense sobs quieted. She took a few slow, hitching breaths and he could feel the shudders against him subside.

With vast relief, he felt her regain control until some
time later when she eased slightly away from him, though she didn't seem any more eager to leave the shelter of his arms than he was to let her go.

“This is the single most embarrassing night of my life,” she finally said, her cheeks flaring with color. “Apparently, I'm a maudlin drunk. Who knew?”

He laughed a little roughly, still unnerved by the intensity of his attraction to her, which somehow far outweighed all those protective impulses.

Elise always had the ability to make him laugh, he remembered. She had a funny, quirky sense of humor and he remembered back in school feeling privileged to be among the few she revealed it to.

“I haven't cried once since…well, since Erin told us all what she suspected.”

“Then you are probably long overdue, aren't you?”

She said nothing for a long moment and then she smiled at him and he felt like he was seeing his first taste of springtime after weeks of fog and gloom.

Even with her reddened eyes and tear-stained cheeks, she was beautiful. He gazed at her upturned face a long moment, then with a strange sense of destiny or fate or inevitability—he wasn't sure—he leaned down and pressed his mouth to that smile.

E
lise froze at the first warm touch of his mouth. He tasted delicious, like fresh-baked cinnamon cookies, and his arms around her seemed the safest place in the universe.

She couldn't quite believe this was happening and wondered for a moment if she was hallucinating. No, she hadn't had quite
that
much to drink. She wasn't sure about a lot of things but she knew that, at least.

Matt Cates, who had never looked twice at her all these years, really was kissing her, holding her, like he couldn't get enough.

Elise would have laughed at the sheer, unexpected wonder of it if she wasn't so preoccupied with the sexy things his mouth was doing to hers.

This all seemed so surreal. She wasn't exactly a
femme fatale. Most guys tended to think of her like the girl next door, somebody sweet and fairly innocent. Blame it on her blond hair or the blue eyes or her small stature. She didn't know exactly what, she only knew that she wasn't the kind of girl men considered for a quick fling.

Now, twice in one night in the space of only an hour or so, she found herself in a man's arms. Not that the two things were in any way comparable. Kissing Matt Cates was a whole different experience than trying to fight off Jake Halloran in the hallway outside the ladies' room at The Hitching Post.

Then, she had been doing everything she could to avoid the man and wriggle away from him. With Matt, she had absolutely no desire to escape. She wanted to stay right here forever, where she was warm and safe.

She should be curling up behind the sofa with a blanket over her head. Even as he kissed her, she couldn't shake her lingering embarrassment when she remembered her emotional breakdown.

Definitely must have been the margaritas. Why else would she spill everything to Matt when she hadn't talked to another soul about her emotional turmoil over learning of the hospital mistake? She hadn't told her mother or Grant or even Stephanie, Grant's wife, who along with Haley Anderson had been her closest friend when they were kids.

Matt only had to show her a little sympathy in those brown eyes and she started blubbering all over him.

Her stomach muscles quivered as he shifted his mouth over hers. What was the matter with her? After all these
years of wondering what it might be like to kiss him, she finally had her chance and she was wasting the moment being embarrassed about the events leading up to this. Was she completely insane?

She leaned into that hard, solid chest and opened her mouth for his kiss. He made a sexy little sound in his throat that rippled down her spine as if he'd run his thumb from the base of her neck to her tailbone.

He wrapped his arms more tightly around her and slid his tongue inside her mouth and she forgot everything else but Matt.

She slid her hands in his hair. Funny, she might have expected his thick dark hair to be short, coarse, but it felt silky and decadent against her skin.

Time seemed to shift and slide and she had no idea how long they stayed there on his sofa, wrapped together. She only knew she didn't want him to stop. Matt suddenly felt like the only solid, secure thing she had to hang on to since Erin Castro shook the foundations of her world.

His hand burned through the cotton of her sweater and she ached for closer contact. As if in answer to some unspoken request, his hand slid beneath her sweater and glided to the small of her back. She shivered at the heat of him and murmured his name.

Well, that was a mistake,
she thought as he froze. Next time she would keep her lovesick murmurings to herself.

He wrenched his mouth away and she felt even more like an idiot. His breathing was ragged and he looked like he'd just been kicked off a prize bull.

He stared at her for a long moment, then raked a hand through his hair. He didn't move, though, and she was still sprawled against him.

“I'm sorry, Elise. That was the last thing you needed, another stupid cowboy pawing you.”

“Was it?” she murmured.

“Yes! You're upset and vulnerable and I completely took advantage of that.”

“No, you didn't.” She was exhausted suddenly, her muscles loose and fluid, as if his kiss had been the only thing keeping her upright. “I'm glad you kissed me. You're a great kisser. All the girls used to say so. I'm glad I finally had the chance to find out. You really were. Great, I mean.”

He gave her a skeptical look but she thought she saw a hint of color over his cheekbones. She was too tired to know for sure, though. She just wanted to close her eyes and ease into sleep like she was sliding into sun-warmed water.

“I never did rustle up something for you to eat.”

She opened one eye. “I'm not hungry. Do you mind if we stay here like this for a minute?”

He looked startled for only a moment, then shook his head. “What man with a brain in his head would mind having a chance to hold a pretty girl for a while longer?”

She smiled, though the last remaining rational part of her brain was sending out a whole host of warning signals. Matthew Cates was exactly the sort of man who could make a woman completely lose her head.

She was definitely going to have to take care around him.

The thought slid through her mind but she pushed it away. She wouldn't worry about a little detail like that. Not right now. For now, she only wanted to stay right here, savoring the warmth of his arms around her and the steady rhythm of his breathing, and indulging in this rare, precious moment of peace.

It was her last thought for some time.

 

This should have been the perfect way to spend a December Friday night. The lights on his Christmas tree glistened brightly and through the window, he could see those plump snowflakes still drifting down.

When Elise had first fallen asleep, he had taken a chance and reached with his free hand for the remote. Somehow he had managed to turn the TV on low without waking her and had turned to one of the digital music stations offered by his satellite provider, this one playing soft, jazzy holiday music.

Matt shifted on the sofa. His legs tingled and he was pretty sure he'd lost all feeling in one arm.

He didn't mind any of that. What worried him was this unaccustomed tenderness coiling through him as he held the slight woman in his arms.

He had always cared about Elise and considered her a friend. Maybe he'd been more protective of her than most of his friends over the years, in part because she'd been small for her age and had appeared delicate, even if she really wasn't, and in part, of course, because of
the terrible event in her family when she was still a girl—her father's brutal murder.

A desire to watch out for her was one thing. This desire for
her
—to taste her and touch her and explore every inch of that delectable skin—stunned him to the core.

He had never been so aroused by a simple kiss. If he hadn't suddenly remembered that she'd had a little too much to drink, he wasn't sure just how far he might have let their kiss progress.

Just remembering her sweet response—those breathy sighs, the trembling of her hands in his hair—sent a shaft of heat through him now.

He tightened his arms around her. What a hell of a mess. He didn't want to hurt a sweet girl like Elise, but his track record at relationships wasn't the greatest. He usually leaned toward women who preferred to keep things casual and that was exactly what he told himself he wanted. Fun, easy, no strings.

He thought briefly of Christine. She was the perfect example. The last thing she wanted from him was a serious commitment. The only reason they started seeing each other in the first place was because neither of them was romantically interested in the other. She wanted to avoid a persistent ex-boyfriend and he wanted to escape his mother's transparent matchmaking attempts.

He had enjoyed taking Christine around town for the last couple of months and they had a good time together, but the few experimental kisses they'd shared just to see if things might progress in some sort of natural order
had left both of them shaking their heads and wondering why they just didn't spark the magic in each other.

Christine was far more his usual type than Elise. His few long-term girlfriends had each been dark-haired and tall like her, funny and social.

Elise couldn't be more different from what he had always considered his usual taste, yet he'd never known a kiss as explosive and stirring as theirs, or this soft, easy tenderness flowing through him, just from holding a woman in his arms.

He shifted on the sofa and finally drew his legs up along the length of it, sliding as far as he could to the side to make room for both of them. She murmured something in her sleep then nestled against him, her arm around his waist.

Her straight blond hair reflected the Christmas lights and he watched them for a moment, then closed his eyes. He would let her sleep for a little while until the effects of the alcohol she'd consumed were out of her system and then he would take her back to Clifton's Pride.

He was only thinking of her, he told himself. Not about how terrifyingly perfect she felt in his arms.

 

So much for good intentions.

When Matt awoke, Elise was still asleep snugged up against him, her arm across his chest, her hair brushing his chin and one of her legs entwined with his.

As he slid back to consciousness, he became aware of her first, small and soft against him. Not a bad way to wake up, he thought, with the sweet scent of raspberries surrounding him and a beautiful woman in his
arms—and then he heard a little well-mannered whine and noticed Tootsie stretched out in front of the door, waiting to go out, something she usually only did first thing in the morning.

He shifted his gaze to the window. That couldn't be right, could it? It looked as if the first pink rays of dawn were sneaking through the slats of his window blind. Had they really slept here all night?

He was going to have a crick in his neck all day from sleeping like this and he could only hope he would regain feeling in his arm one day. Working construction might be difficult if he didn't have the use of his right arm.

Tootsie whined again and Elise made a soft little sound in her sleep and he decided all his discomforts didn't matter—a small price to pay for the pleasure of holding her.

As he watched, her eyelashes fluttered against her skin and a moment later her eyes opened. She gazed at him for a long moment and her brow furrowed.

“Matt? What are you…”

The words were barely out before she groaned. “Ow,” she muttered and squeezed her temples.

He suddenly remembered her excess the night before and winced in sympathy.

“Headache?”

She sat up and opened one eye to glare balefully at him. Her hair stuck up a bit on one side and her cheek was creased with a funny little pattern from the material of his sweater but he still thought she was just about the prettiest thing he'd ever seen.

“Headache,” she groaned. “That's one word for it. If you like understatements. I don't suppose you've got coffee?”

“Sorry. I've been a little preoccupied all night.”

She looked at him and then at the couch and color rose up her cheeks in a rosy tide. “I fell asleep.”

“We both did. I hadn't planned a sleepover. Sorry about that.”

She looked at the pale light outside the window with something akin to panic. “What time is it?”

He glanced at the clock above the gas fireplace. “Early. Looks like it's not quite six. I need to put the dog out.”

“Oh. Of course.”

He winced a little as he stood on numb legs but still managed to make it to the door without falling over. A few more inches had fallen in the night, but not enough to be more than an annoyance. Tootsie bounded out when he opened the door and he turned back to find Elise looking distressed.

“I've been gone all night. Mom must be frantic. And Grant is going to kill me.”

He had a feeling if Grant had
anyone
on his hit list, Matt's name would be right there at the top after last night.

“You're twenty-six years old, Elise. Surely you've been out all night before.”

“Of course I have.” She spoke the words with more than a trace of defiance. “But not when I'm staying with my mother and my brother. Or at least not without let
ting them know I'll be late. Maybe they'll just think I stayed over at Haley's.”

He sighed. “When I let Tootsie back in, I'll run a comb through my hair and then I'll take you back to Clifton's Pride. We'll just explain what happened. I took you home to feed you after we left The Hitching Post and we both fell asleep.”

“I'm sure that will go over just great.”

“It's the truth. Or most of it, anyway.”

She pressed her fingers at her temples again. “It's the ‘or most of it' I think we might have a problem explaining.”

“I wouldn't worry about it, El. Your brother knows me well enough to know I'm not the kind of guy to take advantage of a vulnerable woman.”

No matter how much he might have wanted to. Okay, as much as he
still
wanted to.

 

Much to her relief, Matt was right. Grant hadn't kicked up any kind of fuss about her rolling in just after sunrise from a night on the town.

Her brother had just been leaving the house when they pulled up. He didn't say so but Elise suspected he'd been on his way to look for her since he generally didn't go to work at the resort this early in the morning.

She had feared some sort of scene. Grant could have a temper and was the only male she knew more overprotective than Matt. But Grant—the closest thing she had to a father figure since John Clifton's murder a dozen years ago—had given Matt one long, searching look, then apparently accepted the story.

“I really appreciate you keeping her safe,” Grant said, clapping Matt on the shoulder. “Somebody without your scruples might have taken advantage of the situation.”