Christmas Male (6 page)

"I hope you like roast beef, Maggie Carpenter." John gestured for her to sit in the chair closest to the hearth. "That's what's for dinner. I'd best get back and check on the potatoes. If they overcook, I won't hear the end of it. Miles doesn't like mushy spuds."

"
You're
cooking?" She set her satchel on the corner of the ornate tapestry rug, shrugging off her coat.

"Sure, what's wrong with that?" The older man's smile lit up, creating distinguished and copious wrinkles around his eyes. "You've got something against a man cooking?"

"Oh no, I think there should be more of that in the world." She tilted her head to one side, smiling right back at him. "You don't sound as if you like cooking at all."

"I don't, but I'm a good sight better at it than Winston or Miles. Those are two men best kept away from a stove. In fact, there ought to be a law." John's hazel eyes twinkled—the exact shade of Miles's eyes, she realized with a start.

"Is it just the three of you here? In this big house?" She looked around and spotted a wall hook near the hearth and hung her coat there to thaw. Snow had driven so far into the wool, the garment was nearly frozen through. "You don't even have a maid? The house is awfully tidy for three men living here. Do you do the housework too?"

"No, Tildy did that, before she up and got married." John shook his head, backed up a few steps, perhaps aware of his kitchen duties. "That's the problem with hiring a woman in these parts. There are fifty bachelors for every available woman, so the housekeepers tend to get married real quick. But no fears, I've already got an advertisement placed. I won't have to be doing the cooking for much longer. Oh, hello, there, Miles. Come in and keep this pretty lady company, would you?"

"Sure, Pops, as long as you get that twinkle out of your eye." Miles's baritone dipped low with a friendly warning. His boots struck the floorboards with measured, confident blows as he approached the doorway, but didn't step inside the room. "Miss Carpenter is a guest here. Just a
guest."

John muttered something, something Maggie couldn’t quite hear. Clearly, the two men had some issues and it wasn't her business. She turned to the fire, spreading her numb hands to warm them and drank in the fabulous heat, fighting to keep her emotions buried. She couldn't get the image of Chester drunk and disheveled, first mocking her and then lusting at her in the saloon out of her mind.

Revolted, an involuntary shiver raced through her. Good riddance, she thought, but a hard lesson. One that made her sad and disillusioned. She'd traveled here with such great hopes. Not to mention Chester felt like her only chance to marry, her only opportunity to be a wife and a mother.

Well, maybe it
was
folly to marry a perfect stranger. She stared down at her reticule, still hanging from around her wrist. She loosened the strings, felt the clutch of pain in her chest, deep in her heart. So much for dreams, she thought, pulling out Chester's letters.

My deerst Maggie,

I so wont a wif. I will treesur ya, I promiss. Delberts got a wif now, seein him happy makes me want it to.

She hung her head, overwhelmed. How could he have tricked her like that? He'd made a joke of love and her wish for it every time he wrote one of these letters. Humiliated, she tossed her reticule on the edge of the nearby chair and held the thick stack of letters in her hands. She'd built her dreams on this, words on paper.

They had been a lie. She tossed the letters, every one, into the fire. Watched the parchment curl and smoke in the heat, watched the flames catch, devouring paper and ink until there was nothing left but ashes.

"Are you warming up?" Miles strode in, changing the room with his presence. The air seemed denser, harder to breathe, the air chillier. Goosebumps spread across her arms as he stalked closer.

"Yes." She didn't like how he affected her. "You have a lovely home."

"Thanks. We built it ourselves." He sidled up, hands out to the flames, warming up too. He towered above her, a big, muscular man, at least six feet tall. "We came out here last summer. Pops had bought up a bunch of land out here, he's smart when it comes to real estate. I don't know what the locals thought of three men from New York State attempting to build a log house. They probably figured we were off our rockers."

"Maybe, but you managed it." She couldn't take her eyes off the man. Perhaps it was the way the red-orange light from the flames tossed over him, made him so handsome her pulse gave a flutter. "You had to cut down a lot of trees to make a house this big."

"We logged for six weeks solid." Humor hooked the corners of his mouth, a ghost of a smile. "It's my guess the Collins brothers made a bet on how long it would take before we got hit by a falling tree, but we survived logging without even one injury."

"That's pretty good for city men." For some reason, her gaze traveled downward, over his dark blue flannel shirt, noticing the hard, washboard muscles there. She felt a little breathy. "What do you and your family do for a living?"

"Pops is retired but still buys and sells property. He's good at it." Miles turned around to warm his back, the lamplight glowing almost blue in his thick, black hair. It fell long, past his collar, giving him an even more rugged, untamed look. "Pa retired a few years before we moved out here. He was a lawyer. I used to be one, too."

"You? An attorney?" That she couldn't see. Not one bit. Perhaps it was the rough, mountain man look of him, the granite muscles and iron strength. "I can't imagine you have many clients out here."

"No, but then I quit years ago." He shrugged like it was no big deal, water under the bridge. He arched a dark brow at her. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Just trying to picture you in a suit and tie, all solemn and somber for court." She shook her head, scattering golden blond hair. "No, I can't do it. I don't believe you."

"That's smart. Don't believe anything a man says. That's the best course." Miles winked, causing tiny, attractive crinkles around his hazel eyes. "I'm done with all that. I'm a different man now."

"What made you change?" she asked, really wanting to know. Goosebumps prickled her skin, spilling into her blood. Now she felt prickly all over and it was hard to tell if it was because of him or how cold she still felt, even in front of the fire.

"There's no need to talk about me. I'm not interesting." He shrugged, frowning, evading her question.

"Strange, because most men usually want to talk about themselves non-stop." She studied him through her lashes. "You're a puzzle, Miles McClintock."

"So I've been told." He cast a sideways glance at her, knowing he was going to regret asking this. He didn't want things to get personal. She'd gotten under his skin too much already. "What do you do for a living?"

"I work in a laundry." She stared down at the tips of her worn shoes showing beneath the pretty ruffle of her red calico dress. Her gold hair cascaded forward, hiding most of her face. "At least, I did before I quit coming here. I’ve worked there since I was sixteen. Six whole years. I turned down the chance to buy the business to come here."

"That would have been a good opportunity." He wasn't sure why he was so interested in her. He didn't want to be. "You would have been working for yourself. That's always good."

"True. It
would
have been a smart decision if I'd wanted to turn out like my older sister." Maggie sighed, bobbing away from the fireplace and from him. Her cheeks were pink from the fire's heat. She swirled over to the chair and plunked down on it, adjusting her skirts, as pretty as a picture. "Emma is, well, she's gotten hard as the years have gone by. She's had to be. She was fifteen when our grandparents died and we were put into the orphanage."

"What about your parents?" Curious, he stalked closer, leaning in. It wasn't concern clutching in his chest, he told himself. No, it was the writer in him. He was always interested in a good story.

"They died first, then we went to live with Gramps and MeMe." Her heart-shaped face crumpled faintly, bearing the marks of an old sorrow. That sorrow lived in her eyes, so blue and poignant it drew him in.

"I'm sorry. That's a lot of loss to go through." He shrugged, thinking of his mother and grandmother. They were both gone too, and their losses were just more wounds that would never quite heal. "There was no one else to take you and your sisters in?"

"No, and there are five of us. So we're a lot to take in." Maggie folded her hands in her lap, prim and proper, as regal as a princess—a princess in patched shoes. "As soon as Emma turned sixteen, she got a full-time job. She worked hard, struggling to save every penny she could to get us out of the orphanage. She worked herself near to the bone managing two jobs, and I fear having to endure rather harsh treatment at one of those jobs. It took her most of a year to save up enough money, but she got me out. I'm the second oldest."

"And let me guess." He dragged the coffee table over and sat down on it, propping his elbows on his knees, chin on his hands, watching her. Just watching her. "You started working two jobs too."

"Yes. We were able to get Abby out in less than a year, then Callie and finally Dee." Memories fled across her face, the content of which he couldn’t guess at, but the beauty of them, the emotion in them, plainly showed. Love, hardship, devotion. Clearly, her sisters had been worth it.

It was hard not to like her. Real hard. He couldn't imagine Bethleigh or Sylvia working so hard for those they loved. His chest cinched another notch tighter.

"Those must have been hard times for you." He cleared his throat but the emotions stuck there, caught just below his Adam's apple. "You gave up so much when you were young."

"Oh, I didn't give up anything, not really." She shrugged, her forehead furrowing, the sincere truth written on her face, gentle in her eyes. "It was a hardship living in the orphanage. It wasn't a bad place, just financially strapped. There simply wasn't enough of anything to go around. I wanted to help Emma get the rest of our sisters out, so they wouldn't have to live that way."

"Most young ladies I know would be thinking of new dresses and parties and social events, not trying to help someone else." Miles remembered his youth—those last few years of school, the parties, the pretty girls, rolling up to Bethleigh's family's summer estate in a new buggy, driving the finest horses in the entire state of New York.

"Social events? Parties?" Maggie laughed at that and waved away the idea with the flip of her elegant hand. "I've never cared about those things, unless you count birthday parties and Christmas. Now, I love Christmas. As for new dresses? Those are a luxury in my family. We've only been able to afford the fabric to sew our own dresses recently. Before that, they came from charity barrels."

"Right." He felt humbled by her easy smile. He'd always known the best of everything.

He'd grown up privileged, the first son of a very wealthy and respected family, and while he'd done his best to honor his good luck in life with hard work, he'd never known the type of poverty Maggie had survived and worked hard to climb her way out of. He respected her for that, and maybe that's why she looked even more beautiful to him.

She sat there luminous in the lamplight, softly glowing with a beauty that came from within, with down-to-earth goodness that he'd forgotten could actually exist in a beautiful woman.

Yes, she was beautiful, he thought, reaching out without thought—his hand seemed to move of its own accord—and he brushed his knuckle against the silken curve of her face. So soft, so lovely. Unexpected softer emotions cinched around his chest and yanked hard, squeezing his heart unbearably. More emotion lodged in his throat and seemed to swell, cutting off his windpipe, but he didn't care. For that instant, he didn't need to breathe, he didn't need his heart to beat.

There was just her sweetness, the warmth of her skin. His inability to feel anything other than bitterness shattered. His defenses tumbled down and he was left open to her, heart unguarded.

He ran his knuckles gently along the line of her cheekbone, across silken skin, to fold a lock of golden hair—gleaming almost strawberry red in the lamplight—behind her ear. Tenderness welled up, spilling into his veins. He didn't pull back, gazing into her eyes, seeing the uncertainty in hers.

She dug her top teeth into her full bottom lip. His gaze slid downward to her mouth, rosebud shaped, rich and full, made for kissing. Heat thudded in his groin, fired his blood. Desire hit him hard, like a runaway train charging into him.

Struck dumb, reeling from shock, his pulse gave an extra beat, lurching into a fast and crazy rhythm. In his mind he leaned forward, caught her face with his hands and kissed her, claiming her soft mouth with his. He wanted to haul her against him, wanted to feel her soft curves against his hardness. His entire body shook with the urge to lean in and act on his thoughts—

"Supper's ready." Pops sauntered in, boots drumming hard against the floor.

Miles grimaced, dropped his hand but not fast enough. He launched off the coffee table, determined to put lots of distance between him and Maggie, but that hadn't been quick enough either. He stared into the grinning face of his grandfather and his blood went cold. Pops had seen more than Miles wanted. Damn. He'd seen that calculating look before.

"Oh, sorry to get you at an inopportune moment," Pops said, but he didn't look sorry. He wore the maid's white ruffled apron and a wide, wide grin. "You kids come on to the table when you're finished here. And Miles, I didn't overcook the potatoes this time."

"Great." Miles planted his fists on his hips, cursing his own stupidity. Hell, he hadn't been just stupid, he'd been weak. His pulse still thrummed, his breath kept coming fast and shallow. He was attracted to the woman. It ran deep, deeper than lust, and that troubled him.

Good thing she was leaving on the first eastbound train. He held out his hand to help her from the chair. The contact of her gentle hand turned his blood to lava, but no matter. He could handle it. He was in charge, not his libido, and that's the way it was going to stay. He was not going to trust another woman with his heart. Never again.