Her Holiday Secret

But that had nothing to do with it.

Checking on people was simply his job.

As he pushed the gearshift to park, though, Andy thoughtfully scratched his chin. Maggie was there. Standing by her front door. And she’d spotted his truck driving in and turned her head to face him, so it was a little late to slither back out of her driveway and hide himself in the nearest avalanche.

It would definitely seem, however, that she was having absolutely no difficulty recovering from her injuries... judging from the enthusiastic way she had her arms around another man.

She dropped her arms from the guy, and with a look that was half curious, half puckish, promptly took a step toward Andy’s truck. As she was obviously coming to greet him, he didn’t figure he could pull a disappearing act for at least a couple minutes. He swiftly pushed open the door and climbed out.

A bitter wind instantly burned his cheeks and crawled down his collar. Judging from the thick, murky clouds roiling in from the west, he guessed they’d have a fresh foot of snow by morning. Shame he hadn’t taken those ominous clouds as an omen—or else picked up a premonition from those dancing green eyes of hers. Andy was inclined to give himself a whack upside the head. No thirty-four-year-old man—with a brain—should need any such omens to guess Maggie wasn’t likely to be lacking male company.

“Well, hi again, Sheriff. This visit’s a surprise. Did you think of something to arrest me for after all?”

He’d love to level a charge on her—notably disturbing the peace. His peace. But that wasn’t something he was willing to confess. “I didn’t figure I had to worry about you robbing any banks for a couple of days...you had enough bruises to keep you out of trouble at least that long. But I started thinking how remote your place is here and just thought I’d stop by. With your car out of commission, I wasn’t sure if you had any wheels yet or might have needed some help.”

“That was really nice of you. And I’ve certainly been trying to cause more trouble, but my nephew’s been coming over every day by snowmobile to pitch in, bringing groceries and shoveling snow and everything else. Colin, come meet Sheriff Gautier. And Andy, this is Colin Marks, my sister Joanna’s boy....”

Her smile had a lot of mischief in it, enough to make a man feel as though he’d been struck by lightning if he wasn’t careful. Andy was still trying to recover from that smile when her words sank in. Nephew. Boy. And then the kid edged in front of her with a mannerly hand stuck out.

The boy was six-two—Andy’s own height—with a cowlick sticking from his crown that probably added another inch, and the tea-brown hair and green eyes that easily labeled him as Maggie’s kin. It was just the height and shoulder breadth that had Andy first assuming he was a grown man. A second look would have noted the gangling limbs and kid’s awkward nerves, but Andy really hadn’t been noticing much but Maggie. “Nice to meet you, Colin.”

The kid shied back from the handshake, almost tripped over his own feet. “Nice to meet you, too.” Those eyes skittered away from him fast. “Maggie, I got to be going. Mom’ll be wondering where I am.”

Andy had a cop’s sixth sense that something was a little off, something more happening than just a teenager’s awkward nerves, but maybe that was a mistaken first impression. The boy was obviously in a hustle to be gone. Maggie gave him another warm hug, and seconds later Colin was pelting for the snowmobile parked beyond her door. The machine engine roared on and the boy disappeared in a wake of snow.

“Fifteen?” Andy guessed his age.

“On the button. And I’ve got one other nephew, Rog. He’s a year younger. Colin’s more the high energy devil. He can get a wild hair now and then—but he’s got a good heart. They both do. Their dad died last year, really threw both kids and my sis for a long painful loop. And before I tell you any more family history you don’t want to hear—are you gonna keep an invalid outside freezing like this, or come in and have some coffee?”

“You don’t look like much of an invalid.” She looked breathtaking, in his objective opinion, but that wasn’t to say Andy was buying her instant recovery quite at the wholesale price she was selling it. Her hair was worn loose and smooth to her shoulders, the silky brown color shot with honey and sunshine. She’d brushed it over her right temple, but he could still see the blotchy jewel colors of a bruise hiding beneath. A little careful makeup was obviously intended to conceal the circles under her eyes, and her red jacket collar was pulled up over a bandage on her neck. Maggie clearly didn’t want anyone worrying about her—and that smile and full-of-hell spirit could easily distract a man from believing she’d ever been hurt.

“Well, all my best bruises are out of sight. They’re so brilliantly colorful at this point that I’d love to show ’em off...but I’m afraid I won’t do a strip search without a warrant, even for you, Sheriff.” She hesitated. “Of course if you brought a warrant...?”

“Damn. No. But if you give me a second, I’ll try to think up some charges—”

She chuckled. “Well, in the meantime, you like your coffee black or prettied up?”

“Black’d be great—but I don’t want you going to any trouble.”

“Nonsense, I’m freezing and could use something hot to drink myself. Come on in—and no, you don’t have to take off your boots. This floor’s seen snow before.”

He stomped in behind her, shrugging off his jacket and placing it on a hook, next to where she hung hers. Under the outer gear, she was wearing a red turtleneck sweater over jeans and thick socks. Practical, comfortable clothes, but the loose cut of her jeans still showed off the curve of her fanny, and the sweater faithfully outlined ripe, firm breasts.

He was only watching her—he told himself—to judge if she were really as recovered from the car accident as she made out. Her movements seemed a little careful and deliberate to him, and he noticed she unconsciously pressed a palm to her ribs, as if the bruises there were still giving her trouble. Still, she was obviously getting around okay... which made it all too easy to shift his eyes to body parts that had nothing to do with any judicious, altruistic motives.

Forcefully he cut his attention to safer territory, while she bustled around finding mugs and coffee. It wasn’t hard to inhale her place in a single gulp.

The main floor was all open space, with the kitchen two steps up from the great room. The kitchen had brick walls, with an old-fashioned baking oven built into one. A vanilla-colored counter served as her table. Pots hung from a metal turnstile overhead, and spaghetti sauce simmered on the stove, the scent hot and spicy. Somehow he didn’t think it came from opening a jar.

Below, the great room had one stone wall with a fireplace carved in—where a huge fire now roared, splashing sparks up the chimney. Two sets of double glass doors led to a wraparound cedar patio, with a view of secluded woods and a sharp ravine.

Maggie obviously liked blue. Furniture clustered in the room’s center, blue couches, blue chairs, and a thick plush blue carpet made for bare feet. Nothing looked too pricey or overly color-coordinated...more like she just plain loved blue, and had chosen comfortable furniture big enough to curl up in.

She came up behind him, carrying two steaming mugs. “You might as well just tell me that you think the place is splendiferous. You’ll hurt my feelings if you don’t.”

“I think it’s beyond splendiferous. The whole place has a great hideaway feeling.”

“Good boy.” She grinned. “Built it myself. Or that’s the story I tell. The truth is more like I couldn’t possibly have handled the chimney or window fittings or plumbing. But I designed it, did the stonework and even the roof, so I figure I should get the lion’s share of the credit.”

“You won’t get any argument out of me. I’m impressed. Seriously.”

“Well, I almost killed myself tackling the roof...got my feminist knickers in a twist trying to play Superwoman, when I should have had the brains to call for help. But that’s water over the dam.” She took a fast sip from a royal blue mug, and then motioned with it “Come on, I’ll show you the rest. There isn’t much. Just a sleeping loft upstairs and my office and a storage room...”

The storage room combined laundry with a squared-off space for sports gear—she was an experienced skier and climber both, judging from the sturdiness of her equipment—and she had a shop section with tools serious enough to make a man drool. Her office, by contrast, was pure female. A fancy high-tech computer setup was back-dropped by girl stuff everywhere—scented candles and bowls of potpourri, a hanging lamp with a fringy shade, doodads and plants and pictures all fighting for the same space.

“I take it you work from your home here?” he asked.

“Yeah. I do technical writing for Mytron, Inc.—they’re out of Boulder. I put together brochures and manuals for them, that sort of thing. Once every few weeks—at least once a month—I drive to Boulder and stay overnight, do the face-to-face meetings kind of thing. Otherwise all I really need are the phone, fax and modem to make the telecommuting style work just fine. And I’ll show you the loft, but only if you promise to blind your eyes.”

He had to chuckle. “Trust me, I’ve seen messy before.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve heard big claims like that before. But I’m talking bad messy. I’m talking disgrace. I’m talking my sister is ashamed to know me, it’s so bad.”

An open staircase led up, where a waist-high balcony viewed the stone fireplace below. The room was a cluttered mess, so much so that Andy’s first thought was Good, not too likely she’d had men sleeping over recently.

She whipped a bra out of sight, kicked a scrap of something pink under the bed, kept him chuckling, but a second and more serious thought had already followed the first...for all her apparent pep and lively spirit, she’d had some rough nights since the accident. Her queen-size bed had a white down comforter over salmon sheets. The sheets weren’t just rumpled but untucked and pulled out, as if her dreams had been wild and troubled.

It was her architecture and design she was showing off, though, so he played along. The slanted roof had a skylight. The floor was carpeted with an Oriental rug that looked ankle-deep, but it was tricky to tell the pattern with the clothes and papers and books she had piled all over. The adjoining bathroom was big enough to have a square tub and a sit-down counter space. Her scent pervaded the bath. Soft, not sweet, not a scent he knew or could pin down, but distinctive and evocative. Like her.

“So how long have you lived here?” he asked.

“Almost four years now. Grew up in Colorado Springs, got the job at Mytron in Boulder when I graduated from school. But I really like country life, and my sister lived here, and when her husband was diagnosed with cancer about then...well. She’s my family and they needed some help. It took a while to convince Mytron that I could do the job via telecommuting, but once I could see that was going to work out, I started looking at land to build a place. I really love the area.”

“I was born and raised here, but I love it, too. Think I’m addicted to the mountains, and I can’t imagine living in a place where buildings close you in.” As they climbed back down the loft stairs, Andy again noticed the slight limp in her right leg. But a shadow moving on her porch snapped his cop’s eyes in that ditection...at least for a second. “Um, I believe you’ve got a deer on your patio.”

“Yeah. Horace. He’s a voyeur—around this time of day, he usually shows up for a handout and peeks in my windows at the same time. He was in love last fall. God, there is no worse doofus than a buck in love. Brought Martha up to the patio to meet me. But I haven’t seen her since, think the love affair must have gone sour, and he’s gone back to peeking in my windows again.”

Andy scratched his chin. “I’m not sure there’s a charge for a sexually deviant deer.”

“It’s okay. I don’t think Horace is highly motivated to reform anyway. The only neighbor who gives me real fits is Cleopatra—she’s a raccoon, and I swear she steals anything that isn’t nailed down or padlocked. You want a refill on that coffee?”

“Thanks, but I really should be going.” Andy figured he’d stayed long enough for an uninvited visitor. “Never heard a name like Cleopatra for a raccoon before.”

“Well, it seemed to fit. Honestly, if you saw her, you’d fall for her. All the guys do. She turns up pregnant every spring. I think it’s in the eyes. She’s got that fatal allure kind of thing.”

“Maggie?” She made him chuckle again, imagining a raccoon with fatal allure. But they were ambling through the kitchen toward his coat. Andy considered he only had a few minutes left to get in anything serious, and Maggie cocked her head curiously when she heard the change in his tone.

“You’re pretty isolated on this stretch of road. You really getting around okay since the accident?”

“Yeah. Really. Just fine.”

“How about wheels?”

“Well, I have to get around to car shopping. A fate worse than death, if you ask me...but I’m fine for now anyway. Colin brought in some fresh groceries, and this time of year I’ve always got a stocked freezer because there’s always at least one blizzard before Christmas. My sis has a car I could borrow if I had to. Really, I’m fine.”

“You want some company car shopping?”

She’d paused to stir her spaghetti pot, glanced up. “Frankly, I wouldn’t ask that of my worst enemy, Andy...but if you mean it...sure.”

“Yeah, I mean it. The doc clear you to be out and around?”

“The doc ordered me to sack on the couch for a couple of days. I’ve rested until I’m blue in the face,” she said dryly.

“So rested that the memory came back that was bothering you so much? You remember the accident now?”

It was the first time he saw that upbeat smile of hers falter. The shadows darkening her eyes made him think of that rumpled, torn-up bed. “No,” she admitted quietly. “It’s like that whole twenty-four hours before the accident was just wiped off my map.”

He unhitched his leather jacket from the hook, burrowed into it, but his eyes stayed honed on her face. “It still just happened a few days ago.”

“I know. And the doc must have told me a dozen times that it’s really common. It’s just... Andy, you don’t know me. But I’m just not a person who folds in a crisis. I do rescue work. I hiked the Appalachian Trail alone when I was a kid. I’m no wimp. And especially since the accident wasn’t my fault, I just don’t understand why I can’t make those memories come back unless something else serious happened.”

She was so frustrated, she didn’t seem to realize she was waving her spaghetti spoon around, spattering bits of red on her brick-tiled floor. Andy’d told himself—several times now—that it was time he left. But he instinctively stepped back into the kitchen to remove the lethal weapon from her hand. “I don’t know what you’re worried that ‘something else’ could be. You think you held up the local liquor store earlier that day?”

She had to know he was teasing, but he still couldn’t win that smile back. “Heck. Maybe I did.”

“And maybe cows fly. You’re right that I don’t know you, Maggie. Not well. Not yet, anyway. But offhand, I’d say the community’s safe from your thieving, murderous ways. No offense. But I’d bet the bank you don’t even hit the aspiring criminal ranks near any of the seven deadly sins.”

“Hey, I speed,” she said defensively.

“Well, hell. Let’s cuff you right now and send you up the river.”

“Darn it, Andy. Cut it out. You’re making me feel better.”

“Um...that was kind of the idea. In fact, seems to me if speeding’s enough to give you a guilt attack—whether you can remember the specifics or not—I think you can safely rest your mind that you didn’t rob any banks that day.”

“Okay, okay, I admit I really doubt I did anything like that either,” she said wryly, but then she sighed. “Only I keep waking up from these dreams. Nothing there. No substance. But my heart’s pounding and my hands are sweaty. And the whole feeling just tastes like guilt, like I must have done something really wrong.”

Andy was standing close enough to touch her, but he never intended to. His hand just somehow lifted to her cheek. The thing was, she seemed so troubled about that little twenty-four-hour memory lapse, when everything about her came across as strong and honest. She was a woman who damn near reeked integrity. He just wanted to communicate empathy, reassurance, and words alone didn’t seem to be getting the job done. Possibly, conceivably, there were a few other small factors motivating his need to touch her, too.

Like the little swish in her behind when she walked. And the mischief in her humor. And her naming a deer Horace. And that elusive, evocative scent she wore. And the way being near her had his rusty hormones kicking up an unsettling tizzy, when that hadn’t happened to Andy in a dog’s age. He didn’t lack for female company and he wasn’t particularly wary—hell, every matchmaker in town had been throwing single women at him since the divorce. But leaping for an impulse just wasn’t his way. He was too old to be impressed by a cute tush, and the kind of attraction that mattered took both time and seriously testing the compatibility waters before risking a bunch of grief that wasn’t worth it.

So it was way too soon to even think about touching her.

And way out of line to be thinking about kissing her.

But once his palm touched her cheek, she lifted her face. Something was there. An expression that made him feel heart-punched, a connection in her luminous eyes that made his thumb instinctively stroke the edge of her jaw. She didn’t move. She met his eyes, with all the wariness of a doe edgy with a buck in her territory. But she watched him on that long, long trip when he was bending down. And her lips were parted by the time he’d traveled the distance to hers.

Soft. She tasted soft and warm and tremulous. Both times he’d met her, she’d come across with that I’m-sturdy, I-can-take-care-of-myself routine. He believed it. It was probably why he’d taken to her so damned impossibly fast. But that wasn’t how she kissed.

It’d been so long since he kissed anyone he figured he’d forgotten how. Real quickly he realized that past experience wasn’t going to rescue him from this problem anyway. This wasn’t like any other kiss. She wasn’t like any other woman.

His lips touched down, traced hers, in a testing questing kiss that she seemed to answer in the same language. It was like discovering a field of wildflowers in a snowstorm. Magic where it couldn’t be. A time-out from reality that made no particular sense. He could smell her spaghetti sauce bubbling. Feel her kitchen lights glaring. His life was going fine, he wasn’t all that lonely. Until he kissed her.

Her hand lifted, clutched at the folds of his leather jacket. Not pushing him away, just holding on. And that wooing, whisper-soft kiss kept coming on, like a spell being woven from her textures, her scents, the way her mouth fit his like she belonged to him, like he’d been missing her all this time and hadn’t known.

He didn’t try deepening the kiss. Didn’t want to. But he kept thinking there had to be a catch. He kept waiting for the goofy, crazy feeling of a soul connection to disappear, for some common sense to give him a whack upside the head. Only it didn’t. And she responded with the same wary, winsome, tremulous honesty, as if her sanity had been ransomed by that hushed, soft kiss the same as his had.

He got around to lifting his head. Eventually. She got around to opening her eyes. Eventually. They stared at each other like such a couple of shell-shocked teenagers that he had to smile. Eventually.

“I didn’t come here expecting that,” he said.

“I never thought you did.”

“I just came to make sure you were okay. That’s the truth.”

“I believe you, Andy.”

“Seems to me, chemistry that strong pops up out of nowhere—it’s nothing you can trust, just asking for trouble.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Uh-huh.” He zipped up his jacket, grinned at her. “You can count on it. I’ll be back.”

Three

Maggie whisked the dinner plates into the dishwasher and sponged down the counters, but her gaze kept darting to the kitchen window. Predictably by the first of December, the sun had long fallen even this early in the evening. After two days of howling winds and incessant snow, the drifts swirled and curled in mystical shapes that looked like glazed icing in the moonlight. But her driveway was cleared—and empty, except for her sister’s car. Andy wasn’t due for another hour, so there was no reason on earth for her to start looking for him this early.

She grabbed a dish towel to wipe her hands, half amused, half exasperated to realize how nervous she was. Men never made her nervous. Offhand, she couldn’t think of much in life that had ever intimidated her...outside of the strange, unsettling nightmares prowling her sleep since the accident. But that problem had nothing to do with Andy.

She didn’t normally volunteer a house tour to strangers—much less expose her disastrously messy sleeping loft to a man’s eyes. At the time...well, she hadn’t known he was going to kiss her. Didn’t know that kiss was going to knock her for six. But something had been kindling and simmering the two times she’d been around him. And the mistakes Maggie had made with men in the past all had the same roots.

Most guys claimed to be comfortable around a strong woman, but they really weren’t. Someone looking for a vulnerable, traditional sweetie just wasn’t going to find it in her. She’d been self-reliant and independent too long. These days, if there was even the tiniest hint of potential kindling, Maggie just believed in being frankly blunt about who she was. What you see is what you get. No faking it. Being nice just got in the way—if a guy was going to be scared off by her independence or messiness or anything else, better to know it and move on before either of them had a pile of hurtful emotions invested.

But Andy hadn’t been scared off. At least not by anything she’d shown him so far. And for Maggie, that was downright rattling. Men always had some sweet, macho protective thing to say about a woman alone living in such a remote location. They fretted about her safety.

Safety was a relative term, Maggie mused. Trussed and blindfolded, she could capably cope with a dead furnace in a blizzard or a wounded moose wandering in her backyard. Piece of cake. Danger never had been a common word in her vocabulary—until meeting Andy, anyway. It struck her ironic humor buttons that something in those dark, sexy eyes made her feel distinctly unsafe.

And that was new and rattling, too.

“Maggie, for Pete’s sake, I told you I’d do the dishes. I was only gone for a minute! I didn’t mean to leave you with all the work.”

Maggie whirled around when her sister Joanna emerged from the bathroom. “No big deal. The two of us didn’t use enough dishes to take me more than two shakes.”

“But you made the dinner. And I really meant to help—”

“So you can help next time.” Although that would never happen, Maggie suspected. Growing up, the sisters had bickered like cats and dogs over stuff like this. Joanna was infamous for making the virtuous offer, but somehow always managed to be out of sight when it came time to do the dishes or the chore. But that was then, and this was now. “I made a fresh pot of tea—raspberry mint. You want a cup?”

“Maybe a short one. But I don’t want to rush you on time. When’s the sheriff picking you up?”

“Not until seven. And I keep telling you, it’s no big thing. Andy just offered to take me car shopping.” Maggie set a sturdy mug in front of her sister, feeling her heart catch just looking at Joanna’s face.

Any nerves about meeting Andy were backbumered. She was so worried about her sister that she could hardly think. Steve had died more than a year ago. God knew the two had been inseparably in love, but Maggie felt at an increasing loss for how to help Joanna move past her grief.