Hers to Choose (Cannon Cousins) (24 page)

Damnation! Wasn’t that
the very thing that had already led to all this agony, where her emotions
tangled around her ankles and knocked her flat? They hardly knew each other. If
she had to guess, she would have to assume it had to do with Dan. That was the
whole thing to start with. Everything else she had built out of thin air. She
gulped the last of the martini and swayed back to the sideboard for another.

But she didn’t stop.
Instead, she imagined him on his knee with a diamond ring, his eyes blazing
with desire as he proclaimed his undying love. They would whisk away for a
honeymoon on some tropical island and she would spend the rest of her life in
utter bliss.

Bryn sat up in the chair.
What would happen to the farm? What if things went wrong? If she didn’t have
the farm and things fell apart with Alex, where could she go? Wasn’t it exactly
this kind of starry-eyed infatuation that got her in so much trouble with
Ethan? What happened to her taking charge of her life?

Only slightly restrained
from her giddy first response, she decided she didn’t have to figure out
anything now.
Or ever, if it had to do with a life with Alex.
Nothing like that would happen. Dinner blurred by, television, all while she
kept remembering that Alex would soon be in her house again and beside that,
silly romantic thrill that it was, nothing else mattered.

***

In the ten remaining days before
Christmas Eve, Bryn cleaned her closets, the kitchen cabinets, mopped and waxed
the worn wooden floors of the kitchen, bathroom, hallway, and her bedroom. She
inventoried her best underwear and decided what she would wear during his stay.
A small pine she cut from the creek bottom stood ornamented in the living room
window near by the dining table. A wreath of cedar limbs tied with red ribbon
hung from the front door, and another from the mailbox.

A frenzy of baking
resulted in brownies, oatmeal raisin cookies, and sugar cookies cut into
holiday shapes she carefully decorated with colored icing and spangles. Orange,
cranberry
pecan,
and banana walnut breads were sliced
and wrapped in thick wedges to add to the gift bags she put together for
neighbors, the mailman, the newspaper delivery guy, and the senior center.
Creamy fudge and delicate divinity with black walnuts added to the bags, and
crowded in mismatched dishes on her coffee table.

Long hours of struggle resulted
in two wrapped gifts for Alex under the tree. What could she possibly give him
that he didn’t already have? And with the small budget she allowed herself,
nothing she might buy could measure up to his standards. She ended up with a
locally crafted basket filled with things to eat—blackberry jam and peach
preserves from the winter farmers market, candied walnuts, a loaf of her best
orange pecan bread, a loaf of garlic poppy seed bread, little packets of fudge
and divinity, and a potpourri of dried sage, rosemary and thyme she had dried
from her garden, partially crushed and neatly tied in a muslin pouch.  A
calendar for the next year featuring Ozark scenes nestled in its own wrap as
the second gift.

Christmas
Eve.
She wore jeans,
boots, and a slightly threadbare pale pink cashmere sweater. A baked ham sat in
its golden crust on the stove. A lemon cake in pale yellow icing waited on the
cake stand. She mixed dry ingredients for gingerbread to wait until later in
the afternoon; the only way to eat gingerbread was hot from the oven with
butter melting on top.

She had memorized the
Google map of the route from St. Louis down to the farm, a winding road through
mountainous land once he turned south off I-44. Every five minutes—or more
often—she looked out the window at the rainy sky and the muddy driveway and
worried the weather would delay him.

Anticipation and
excitement reached fever pitch. Her body hummed. Her mind darted from thought
to thought. At the mirror, she realized her face had flushed with bright red
spots on her cheeks, and her eyes stared back at her with a crazed expression.
Alright, she was crazed. By 3 p.m., she decided if he didn’t arrive soon she
might spontaneously combust. By 3:30 she had resorted to sitting in the
overstuffed chair facing the living room window and staring at the driveway
turnoff from the road.

Finally, at a little past
four, a sporty black coupe eased off the road and rolled to a stop by the
house. She squeezed her shaking hands as she watched the car door open and a
dark head emerge. There he was, looking toward the house carrying a valise and
a large bag, his wide shoulders inside a fleece-lined denim jacket.

She threw the door open
and stood at the opening as he stepped onto the porch.
His
eyes, his body, all of him in real time, in the flesh, walking toward her.

“Bryn,” he smiled,
shaking rain off his things. Droplets beaded up on his eyebrows and hair. Her
eyes locked on his blue stare, his lips. Her knees had no strength as she
turned to welcome him into the house. She forced herself not to throw her arms
around him.

“Alex, did you have a
good drive?” she managed to breathe. “Here, you can put those things on this
chair,” she motioned to where she had been sitting.
“Or the
couch.”

She watched him walk, his
butt and thighs tight in the jeans. Dear god, she would have an impossible time
of keeping her hands off him. But she managed, barely, to remain firm in her
vow to wait for him to initiate anything personal. She honestly didn’t know if
she more fervently wished that he made a move, or that he didn’t.

He dropped his things at the side of
one of the chairs and pulled off his thick jacket. The first two buttons of his
faded blue plaid flannel shirt were unfastened, revealing the broad base of his
neck and hinting at the chest underneath. She swallowed over a dry throat and
glanced up at his face.

“Bathroom first,” he
commented with a grin before walking past her. A few minutes later, he emerged
and stood by the Christmas tree. “Nice job—did you cut that yourself?”

“Yes,” she came to stand
nearby. “Down past the cabin in that little thicket of pines.”

The multicolored lights
on the tree twinkled and reflected against the window glass. Daylight was
fading fast. The other ornaments shifted slowly in the movement of air. A
tumbling sound from the wood stove reminded her she hadn’t added wood lately.
She turned.

“Let me,” Alex said. He
crouched at the stove and poked the coals before adding more wood. “One of the
things I love about being here,” he grinned up at her.

She hung on his words. He
loved being here. The sight of his strong body crouched at the stove sent
another shiver of desire through her belly. Maybe she was a hopeless case. She
only hoped that whatever happened next wasn’t too much disappointment to bear.
It wasn’t a good sign that he had not yet said anything personal or touched her
in any way. But then, in so many ways he was a complete stranger. Somehow, they
had managed to do everything backwards.

“Would you like a drink?
I’ve made baked ham and mashed potatoes for dinner.”

“Umm.
Sounds wonderful.
I’ll have a drink, if you’re having one.” He smiled, standing up from the stove
and brushing off his hands.

His gaze ran up and down
her body. Surely he meant her to notice that. But then, she cautioned herself
as she went into the kitchen, men had always done that with her, and he was a
man after all. This was just one more curve on the roller coaster, with no end
in sight.

Gin, Campari, and the
rest of the
Negroni
ingredients swirled in the
shaker. She couldn’t resist the delicious drink, slurping half a glass in a
couple of long thirsty gulps. The bitter aftertaste exactly matched her mood.
She slid a second orange slice onto Alex’s glass and set the pitcher onto a small
tray along with a cheese ball and savory crackers before walking to the coffee
table.

He had seated himself on
the couch and watched her sit down across from him.

“To you, Bryn McClure,”
he said, lifting his glass.
“The most magnificent hostess
ever known.”

She lifted her glass to
his and then sipped the fiery liquid. “Thanks, Alex. I enjoy creating
pleasure.”

“Well, you damn well know
how to do it,” he said with a smiling grimace at the drink. He spread a cracker
with the cheese, popped it into his mouth and licked his finger.

She lingered on the sight
of his hands. Her clit throbbed against her jeans as his tongue slipped over
his sensual lips. And of course the instant she glanced up to see if he had
caught her staring at his mouth, his expression told her ‘yes,’ smiling and
almost mocking. She flushed. The room had become intolerably warm.

He pulled two wrapped
gifts from the large bag before walking to the tree to place them underneath.
“Is it your tradition to open gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning?” he
asked as he settled himself back on the couch for another gulp of the
Negroni
.

More cheese on crackers,
more tongue, more of her inability to keep her stare from following every
movement with rapt attention. What had he said?

“Oh, definitely
Christmas morning.
You have to wait for Santa, you know. Never open on Christmas Eve. What about
you?”

He nodded.
“Christmas morning.
Stockings first, then
the wrapped gifts.”

“Wow, I think I was maybe
ten when the stockings stopped happening.” She hadn’t thought about stockings
in a long time. “We didn’t have a fireplace in the house we moved to that year.
Maybe they kind of forgot about it, or maybe they thought I was too old.”

“I think I was maybe
twelve or thirteen when Dan and I graduated from stockings.” He glanced up at
her. “Dan and I...his folks raised me after I was eight. My folks...” he
cleared his throat. “There was a plane crash, they didn’t survive.” He finished
in a matter-of-fact voice. “Dan was an only child, so, it worked out. We’re
like brothers. Share everything…” He stopped, although his eyes had more to
say.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Alex,
your parents.” The thought of his tragedy squeezed in her chest. “Uh, but yeah,
I guess it was wonderful it worked out that way with Dan’s family.” She ran her
sweaty hands down her jeans and swallowed more of her drink. “That must have
been—really awful. I can’t imagine. You were eight?”

He nodded. “We were a
good little family, lots of memories. It all seems like a dream now. I don’t
think about it much anymore. Lots of years have gone by since then.”

She wanted to cry.
“And Dan’s parents?”

“They retired a couple of
years ago and left us with the whole thing.” He laughed, scooping up another
slab of the
cheeseball
and heaping it onto a cracker.
“We have to call them every so often to get advice on how to get out of one
mess or the other. I think they like knowing we can’t quite get along without
them.”

So much she wanted to
ask.
Everything about him—his life, his pleasures,
activities.
She didn’t know where to begin.

Maybe he was married.
Or had a girlfriend.
Aside from the random glance or smile,
this all seemed so casual and friendly, not what she would have expected from a
man who had come to further a relationship. But of course she knew that had
been an outrageous idea from the start, and she had managed to put it mostly
out of her mind. Well, not completely, she realized now as a slight bit of
disappointment crept in.

And, ridiculous wench,
that isn’t what you want anyway.

She struggled with what
to say. “Did you always know you would work in the company?”

He nodded. “The folks
involved us even as kids. The Cannon brothers started it, and always wanted
their sons to take it over someday. Of course there were times when I imagined
myself doing something else. But somewhere in the middle of my architecture
degree, I fell in love with design and couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into the
real world.” He finished his drink. “Some of that excitement died down soon as
I realized how much hard work was involved in meeting clients’ expectations. Or
should I say, mostly not meeting the expectations.” He shook his head. “Hardly
ever have clients with budgets to match their vision.”

Her lips felt hot and
faint pain raced across her forehead. This was nothing like she had imagined it
would be. She needed to get the potatoes on to cook.

“What about you? How did
you end up here?”

He followed her to the
kitchen while she worked to finish dinner. She told him about her degree in
accounting and how in hindsight she should have become a CPA. But by then her
folks had moved to take care of her mom’s mom and there weren’t resources for
more college, plus her student loans had accumulated to outrageous levels and
her dad had become ill. She told him about the bookkeeping job in St. Louis.

“And there was a guy,”
she said before turning on the mixer. The noise ran on for a few minutes until
the butter and milk had meshed with the fluffy potatoes. She popped the beaters
out of the appliance and went to the sink.