His Christmas Wish (3 page)

Sage

“
So stupid,” she whispered through her tears. She should have signed it ‘the biggest fool in five counties’.

There was a knock on her door, then another.

“
Just a minute,” she called out. Rising from bed, Sage wiped away her useless tears and glanced at her clock. It was too early for Mandy.

Frowning, she let out a big sigh.

It had to be her momma. That woman couldn’t leave well enough alone, and to be sure, Sage’s dad had told Virginia about the great stomp off. Or her mother was here for their monthly “pep talk” to encourage Sage sell this house.

She could hear mother’s voice in her head, noting all the reasons why Sage should follow her advice: A single woman didn’t need something so big. Why, what if a man was interested in her and already had his own house? Better to live in apartment and not risk scaring him away. And why didn’t Sage just move back home, like God intended?

Heck, if Virginia had her way, Sage would be working full-time at the dealership and heading up projects for the Holland Springs Town Improvement Committee.

Sage opened the door, prepared to give her mother a piece of her mind for telling her dad about the letters, and to defend herself for acting like a three year old.

Instead she found the most gorgeous man on the planet staring back at her, his smoldering brown eyes searched her face, then slowly traveled the lines of her body. A thick blanket of heat covered her, making her palms wet and her body tingle—in all the unfortunate places.

Joaquin looked pointedly at her left hand and her face heated.

Their eyes met again, and she shoved her arm behind her back, fixing him with her best teacher glare.

A grin broke out on his face as he said, “Missed me, Mrs. Morales?” He held out a bouquet of flowers.

“
What do you think?” Then Sage did exactly what her heart and brain agreed was a good idea. Something that the old Sage would never have done in a million years.

She slammed the door in his face.

Chapter Three

“
That went well,” Joaquin muttered to the flowers, then knelt down to set them beside her door. He flipped up the doormat, raising an eyebrow as he found the spare key. His safety girl was really living on the edge these days.

“
That’s the old one. I had the locks changed,” she yelled through the door. The deadbolt clicked and he rose to his feet.

Okay, so maybe she was still a couple feet shy of the edge. Laughing, he shook his head. “Wouldn’t expect nothing less, sweetheart.”

“
I’m not your sweetheart.”

“
But you are Mrs. Morales.” And she was wearing his ring. That had been a shot of pure lust. Forget skimpy outfits. That tiny diamond declared before the world that Sage Caswell was his. No greater aphrodisiac had existed in that moment.

“
Be quiet before someone hears you.”

His lips flattened. “You’ve kept our marriage a secret?”

“
Haven’t you?” she shot back. “And there is no ‘us’. There hasn’t been an ‘us’ since you went for a drive and
never came back
.”

He hadn’t merely gone for a drive. Eight weeks he had given her to tell her family. Eight damn weeks he’d given her before he expected her to join him in Texas at Ft. Hood. He had picked out an apartment off-base for them to live in. Nothing fancy, but nice. The familiar stirrings of anger and resentment threatened to derail their reunion.

Determination to set things right made him try again. “Well, I’m back, and we’re still married.”

“
Not for much longer,” she said. “This time there won’t be any unsigned paperwork mistake.”

A large part of him had hoped she had purposefully not signed the annulment papers. Yeah, hope was a four letter word that could suck it. He placed his palm on the blue door, wishing he could sweep the lacy curtains aside and look in the small window at the top. “What did you do, Sage?”

The door flew open, dislodging his palm and making him take a step back. She stood in the doorway, her grey eyes stormy behind her glasses and her cheeks flushed. “What did I do?” She poked him sharply in the chest with her finger. “Do you really want to go there, Joaquin?”

“
What I want is for us to talk,” he said, keeping his voice calm. The old him would have stomped off and not talked to her for a couple of days while he brooded. What an ass he’d been.

She tilted her chin and raised her brows at him. “You’ve got five minutes.”

“
That’s not long enough,” he protested. He took off his cap and wiped his forehead with his arm.

“
Four minutes and thirty seconds.”

“
Now wait just a—”

“
Three,” she said, her grey eyes like steel.

“
You can’t—”

“
I can do whatever I want. This is
my
house.”

“
Don’t give me that teacher voice. I’m not one of your students.” He’d forgotten how damned bossy she could be.

God, he missed her.

“
Two.” It sounded as though she relished taking away his time.

He had this whole speech rehearsed. He knew every word by heart and thought it would melt hers, but there was no way it would work. She’d slam the door in his face before he would be able to get to the best part—the down-on-his-knees-apology.

Instead he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Spend Christmas with me, like we—”her eyes narrowed “—planned. Then I’ll head back to Texas.”

“
We
planned?”

He sliced his gaze to the side, then back at her. “Fine. Like you and
Gage
planned.”

“
You’re such an ass, and you’re not going back to Texas. Do you really think I’d miss the ginormous U-Haul trailer hitched to your truck?” She punched him in the arm, just like she’d done when they were in high school whenever he’d done something stupid to get her attention. He was pretty sure pretending to be someone else was ranked way up there on the stupidity scale. “Besides, in what reality would I spend even an hour with you?”

“
Dammit, Sage, I don’t want to be alone.”

“
If you’re so darn lonely, then ask the Snow Queen to spend time with you.”

She was jealous? This was a good sign. A very good sign. “I don’t want her. I want you.” There. The truth all laid out.

Sage fisted her hands on her hips. “Well, you can’t have me, so learn to deal with disappointment!” Then she shut the door in his face again.

Time for Plan C. “If you don’t come with me, Sage, I’m gonna tell everyone that we’re married. I’ll go to church on Sunday and make an announcement in front of God and your momma. I’ll even announce that we ah, consummated our marriage in the back of your daddy’s Cadillac.”

The door flew open again. “You wouldn’t!” Bright spots of color highlighted her cheeks and her eyes flashed.

He placed a palm on the doorframe and leaned in, his mouth inches from hers. Good God, he wanted to kiss those sweet lips. They’d be soft and supple, and she’d taste like heaven. Like his Sage. His wife. “Try me.”

There was a wariness in her eyes, but wariness gave way to fury. “I’m calling bull on you. There’s no way you’d embarrass your parents like that.”

He threw up his hands in defeat. She was right. “Fine!”

“
Have fun with the Snow Queen,” she said in her sweetest voice, one that made him want to choke something—mostly himself for goading her.

Shoving his hat back on his head, he gave her a long hard look that made her squirm. Good. “See you Sunday.” Then he stomped off to his truck and drove off.

He really was full of bull. There was no way he’d embarrass anyone like that, especially Sage. But maybe it would make her think a little about what he’d said. Then again, maybe he should have told her how proud he was of all she had accomplished. Like her sunny little cottage she’d bought, or how she’d graduated at the top of her class in college, and that she’d done all of it without help from anyone.

Sure he had told her in the letters he’d written her, but that had been Gage talking, not him. He patted his uniform, searching for the pocket over his heart and pulled out a creased piece of paper. It was one of the many he had kept stowed away in his pockets. They were his ties to a world he’d used to live in, one full of sunny days, starry nights and no bombs. One without helpless families being starved and abused by evil, powerful men that used religion and ignorance to keep them in line.

Her second letter to him had almost made him tell the truth. Almost made him reveal that he was the one writing to her, not a fictional man he named after a wounded dog his unit had adopted and nursed back to health.

One way or another he was going to convince her to spend Christmas with him. He tucked the letter away and smiled. There was no need to read it. He knew the words by heart. Hell, he knew every word of every letter she’d written and the ones he’d written, too.

Sage and Gage.

He rolled his eyes. That should have been her first clue. It sounded like a couple on one of those soaps his
abuela
faithfully watched on Univision.

Dear Sage,

Please call me Gage. Mr. Huntstone makes me sound old and you’re not one of my ‘men’, so no 1
^st
Lt. anything in our letters.

It’s not too bad here. When the sun sets just right, the country looks peaceful and for a little while, a man can forget what he’s been sent here to do. Sometimes, when I’m going to sleep, I pretend I’m at the ocean, drinking a Corona while listening to Sublime on my iPod. It’s easier than you’d think. My ‘bed’ is a hole dug in the ground since the only structures we have around here are a chow hall and command center.

I know it would probably be easier for us to chat on Skype or Facebook, but our internet connection is sketchy at best, and non-existent at worst. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t have a Facebook page, and I don’t use my army email
for personal correspondence.

Please keep writing me. I won’t be able to respond right away the next few weeks or so, because I’ll be heading up more missions into certain regions. Can’t say when I’ll be back, or even where I’m going exactly—mostly because I’ll get in trouble (just kidding…sorta).

Keep me in your prayers; you’re in mine.

Your friend,

Gage

Dear Gage,

I guess it’s official—we’re pen-pals! Dare we identify our relationship to the world? It
has
been two months since we first ‘found’ each other.

Although I appreciate your police description of yourself, I wish you would send me a real picture (your hand on the unit’s adopted dog doesn’t count and neither did the one with the gas mask covering your entire head). I’d like a face to picture when I’m writing to you…or thinking about you.

However, it’s easy to imagine your brown eyes when I close mine. They’re my favorite color eyes.