Covert Christmas (11 page)

Cam had always loved the holiday season, just like she did. How could he deny himself, deny his daughter, the joy of Christmas in their wonderful home? Especially over guilt for something that was not his fault.

Well, she would not deny herself. No way.

If she was stuck here, and couldn't have Cam, she would at least have Christmas.

 

After Cam warmed up over a breakfast of the oatmeal Tara had fixed while he was on the roof, he excused himself and went to feed the animals. Breakfast had been a desolate affair and he was happy for the excuse to leave and get out of the chilly atmosphere of the warm kitchen.

He knew Tara was as miserable as he was, but he refused to talk about it with her anymore. Last night when she'd begged him to make love to her, and he'd needed her so badly he thought death might be the preferable way out, everything suddenly became clear.

He was ashamed of what he'd become and what had brought him to it. He could barely face Tara now, knowing the truth. She hadn't taken his parents' money. But the guilt of what
he'd
been still haunted him.

Stomping back into the kitchen, he was ready to confront her. To tell her to keep her distance while they were forced into this close proximity. He didn't care if she understood his reasons or not. No questions. He would find a quiet place upstairs to be alone while she stayed downstairs on her own.

As he searched her out to tell her his new plan and couldn't find her, he worked up a good steam of mad. He hadn't asked for this. She'd interrupted his life, not the other way around. He wouldn't force her to leave, but he'd only let her stay until they could reach the sheriff. After that, she could go. Out of his life again, the same way she went before.

Yes, he still loved her and wanted her. But that was the whole problem. By the time he realized the door to the attic stairs was standing open, he was all geared up for an argument. Storming up the stairs, Cam rounded the last corner with his fists tight, ready to pick a fight so he wouldn't be tempted.

The sight that greeted him punched him smack in the gut. Tara was sitting on his grandmother's antique chaise longue, holding a box of Christmas ornaments on her lap. She looked so—so much like family, it stopped him cold.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Remember these?” She held out two of the handmade tree ornaments they'd once made together.

“Stop it, Tara. I don't want to remember.” It hurt too much. “Put that junk away and…”

He grabbed her by the wrist, and something in his mind just snapped.

C
am was pissed. She had no right to drag out old memories and wave them in his face. Neither one of them was the same person as when they'd made those ornaments.

Glaring at her, he suddenly experienced swamping waves of lust and deep need, washing over him like the winter winds over the mountaintops. Past melted into present, and the lost years crumbled to dust.

“You're not the same sweet girl I knew,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I'm not sweet—or soft. Not anymore. You've changed, too. But every time I look at you I still hear music.”

“Stop that!” She had to stop.

“You're angry? At me?”

“I'm mad as hell at you. At me, too.” He jerked her up and ornaments went flying. “I don't want to need you this much.”

Dragging her lush body against him and pulling her bottom against the hard ridge of his erection, he let her experience the truth of what he was feeling. “I hate you for coming back and
making me crazy.” He plastered his mouth against hers and backed them against the wall.

“I need you, Cam,” she whispered against his lips. Looping her arms around his neck, she flattened her breasts to his chest. “You need me.”

Blinded by furious desire, he ripped her T-shirt up and over her head. “I don't…I don't…”

She stood naked to the waist, gazing at him, and he was lost. Taking one of her peaked nipples into his mouth, Cam plundered her with caresses. He let his hands roam over familiar territory as they willed. He allowed the wild man inside him to come out of his dreams.

He stopped touching her only long enough to release his zipper. Even with his eyes locked on her face, he knew Tara was wiggling out of her jeans. This was crazy. They shouldn't—he didn't own any condoms and couldn't have stopped long enough if he did. So help him, he couldn't bring himself to let her go for one second. Not now that he had her this close.

Completely naked now, she began climbing his legs in a frantic effort to wrap her long limbs around his thighs. As she sidled closer, his bad knee buckled. He twirled them both around so he could brace her back against the wall.

This was his Tara in the flesh. His. At last.

She locked her legs around his waist and he reached between them to position his erection to her wet opening. God, the heat between them was incredible. He let the fiery flames engulf him.

“Now,” he groaned. “Nothing matters but now.”

He flexed and plunged while she sucked in a breath. “That's so good.” She bit into his shoulder and hung on as he buried himself deeper in her tight heat.

Consumed by this, whatever this was, he plied her with whispered kisses. It felt like heaven—and it felt like hell.

He didn't just want sex with her—he wanted to claim his right. She was his first. Would always be his. She'd dominated his mind and his dreams for most of his life.

As she rocked frantically against him, his body became one
raw bundle of electricity. He caught her gasps with his kisses until she finally stiffened in his arms and gave a keening cry. He felt the shock waves rolling through her body and pulling him in. Her orgasm was powerful, beautiful. It took him over the edge along with her. His life seemed right for the first time in years.

“I love you,” she groaned. “I've never stopped loving you.”

Her words were like a bucket of frigid water over his head, bringing him back to reality. Groping for balance against the wall, he held her steady until his body stopped quaking and his mind cleared from the blast of fireworks.

He'd just been through possibly the most all-consuming experience of his entire life. And it was the worst thing that could've happened. He wanted to do it again and again.

Hell. His determination and resolve had been completely and utterly undone by his own foolhardiness. Now what?

 

Tara felt the change come over Cam like a cold shower. Before he'd even moved or said a word.

“Better get dressed,” he whispered. “The generator's kicked off again.”

That was it? Those were the only words he could spare for her? After she'd given her all and confessed her love.

She felt foolish for expecting words of undying love. But she would've done fine with a single line about how he hoped she was okay and how great they were together. She was okay. More than okay. She felt changed. Whole again.

When he released her and let her ease down the wall to her feet, Tara caught a glimpse of his eyes. The same wonder and fear that she was feeling showed right in his eyes before he averted them and shut her out again.

He felt as scared as she did. She was petrified. Making love with Cam again had been a life-changing rush. Slightly scary and over the top. She didn't want whatever they had reignited to be over, but knew it must end soon, anyway. She didn't really belong here.

She turned and pulled on her T-shirt, but was determined not let him entirely escape into his shell again. Not now.

“Let's go to the great room and talk,” she suggested.

Cam shook his head while he finished zipping up, but then said, “I'll add a few logs to the fire, and I want to try calling out again.”

What had happened between them was more than sex. She knew it and felt sure he did, too. She slipped into her jeans, but left off the panties.

Cam stood at the doorway, his sandy-brown hair all messed and his shirt hanging out of his belt, waiting for her. The man was just too delicious. She wanted to reach out to him again, but held back for the moment.

Something else needed to be said first. “Please let me put up these decorations. There's only a couple of days left until Christmas, and I think we need a little good cheer.”

His expression became a complex puzzle of emotions as he thought it over. “All right. But downstairs only. And not many. You can pack them away again before you leave.”

Well, it was a start. A crack in the icy wall he'd erected between them. When he turned his back, Tara hurried to gather everything into the box, muttering about the Grinch under her breath. He probably didn't want to touch her again, either. But she would have something to say about both of those things.

 

As the sun dipped low behind Mt. Lincoln Peak much later that afternoon, Cam found himself wondering where the hell Tara had gone. He'd spent the whole day avoiding her, though it had been tough. Her Christmas carol-singing had filled the entire house with lively sounds—the noise of a happy woman working that hadn't been heard inside these walls in over four years. The lilting sounds had made his heart sing and he nearly forgot why he'd done without for so long.

His damned mind kept betraying him. Replaying the look on her face right before he'd coldly told her to get dressed. Once upon a time he'd thrilled to see that same expression on
her face. Love. He remembered it clearly. The day he'd asked her to marry him.

He knew that look promised happy endings. But it had all been a lie back then. And now, even if it were suddenly to come true, he didn't deserve anyone's love and would prefer to hide from the responsibility of telling her as much.

What was he to tell her, anyway? That he loved her too? That he'd never stopped—not for one moment? He couldn't face the guilt. It shamed him to think what a bastard he'd been to marry someone else when his heart had always belonged to Tara.

After checking every room in the house and finding them all empty, Cam finally checked the coat closet and then the kitchen door. Tara's coat was missing and the door alarm had been reset. He groaned. She couldn't simply go off like this when a killer was after her, and he intended to tell her so.

He grabbed his coat and boots and wished for once that he'd kept one of his grandfather's guns in the house for emergencies, but he'd gotten rid of them after bringing Chloe home. What if Tara was in trouble? Already in the hands of her stalker?

The minute Cam hit the back porch, he realized the brunt of the storm was past. Late-afternoon sunshine peeked through the gray. He heard a disturbance coming from the direction of the stand of evergreens behind the barn.

Glancing over his shoulder at the firewood chopping block, he noted that Jim's ax was missing. Storming through the deep snow, following her footsteps, Cam rounded the barn and spotted Tara. Sure enough, she was trying to bring down one of the smaller trees.

His tree. She planned to cut one of the trees from the stand of spruce they'd planted together over twenty years ago. He didn't want the scent of evergreen in his house. Didn't want to remember anything more about their past life than he already did.

But as he came closer, the sight of that flushed face and those blue eyes of hers all lit up with enthusiasm and determination stopped him cold. He couldn't breathe for a moment. And when
he did suck in a deep breath, his lungs filled with frigid air. Cam gasped involuntarily.

Tara turned to him, the expression on her face daring him to try stopping her. “What?” she finally said.

“Just look at you.” It was all he could manage.

She frowned and put her hand on her hip in defiance. “Yes, it's me, chopping down one of your trees. I want a Christmas whether you want one or not. I'm not going to spend…”

He barked out a laugh, surprising both of them. “You look beautiful. Exactly the way you looked as a kid planting this stand. I don't think you've aged a day.”

Tara blushed and pushed a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks, I guess.” She gave him a tentative smile. “So you don't mind…about the tree coming in?”

“No.” Suddenly he didn't. Suddenly it felt as if his mind was clearing along with the clouds. “Let me help you.”

She stood, shaking her head. “What about your knee?”

“It's fine. I'm not crippled, it just aches sometimes in the cold.” He reached for the ax.

Shrugging, she handed it over. “If your knee isn't the problem, then why haven't you gone back to work?”

Gritting his teeth as he planted the ax blade in the wood, he ground out, “I knew you wouldn't let the wounds alone. You'll just have to pick at them until they open up again, won't you?”

“I only want to understand.” She grabbed the top of the tree as it leaned in her direction.

“Fine. Let's move inside and we can talk.”

 

But they didn't talk. Not about the things that mattered the most to Tara. Oh, they argued plenty. About where the tree should go. About putting lights on a tree with minimal electricity available to turn them on. They argued about everything, including which decorations would go best on the medium-size tree.

This wasn't like the Cam she remembered. The man she remembered gave the people around him every single thing
they requested. He was the good boy who grew into the good man who wanted to please the world. But somehow that giving boy was gone and in his place was this man with hurt in his eyes.

Much later that evening, as the fire blazed at their backs and Cam steadied the shaky stepladder beneath her, he handed her a different possibility to try at the top. “Didn't your grandmother used to have an angel she liked to use as a topper?”

“I don't want an angel,” he mumbled. “Try one of these stars or a nutcracker.”

She held up the five-pointed glass star he'd handed her. “Nope. This one looks best with lights behind it. Hand me another. Why don't you want an angel?”

“Chloe.”

Tara tried a silver star. “Your daughter? Doesn't she like angels?” When he didn't answer right away, she added, “Why aren't the two of you together for the holidays?”

After another long pause, Cam said, “Things haven't been the best between Chloe and me lately. We were fine while she was a baby, but now that she's talking and needing more than…I…I…”

Tara turned to look down at him. “What? She's still a baby. What could she possibly have done to…?”

Cam's expression was stricken, full of pain. “I look at her and see everything that could've been. Every mistake I've made is written in her eyes. It breaks my heart. It's not her fault. None of it. But someday she'll know what a bastard her father really is. I just want her to disappear and take my memories along with her.”

“Oh, Cam.” She reached out for him, but he turned away.

Tara shifted, trying to bring him back. Then the ladder collapsed under her.

Instinctively Cam spun at the sound behind his back and caught Tara right before she would've hit the ground. With his heart pounding in his chest and his breathing labored, he carried her over to the sofa and sat down with her still in his arms.

“Thanks,” she breathed. She gazed up at him through the firelight.

He took in the sight of her. Her hair had frizzed up in burnt-red ringlets. She wore no makeup but her lips were the color of rosé wine. Her aqua-colored eyes still carried the deep-purple smudges of exhaustion underneath, but they glittered in the light of the fire. Tara had never been pretty. Not in the classical sense like Mandy's sophisticated looks. But she'd always been fascinating to look at, full of color and brimming with life. Holding her was like capturing a firefly in his hands.

If she'd broken her neck in a fall, it would've been all his fault. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to steady his nerves.

Visions danced in his head. Visions of the two of them as lovers. He remembered how responsive she had always been to his touch. How well they fit together. He hungered to slowly explore her once again.

She shifted to crawl into his lap. If they spent the next few hours reminiscing and having reunion sex, what or who would it hurt? Maybe he could keep his mind blank—for a while longer. Maybe releasing the tension would stop this yearning to keep her with him always.

When he opened his eyes, she gazed up at him as the sensual awareness grew. “Tara, I have nothing to give but a few old memories. I've become an empty shell and the holidays are particularly tough. But I can't help myself, I want you. I want you naked underneath me—like it used to be.”