Christmas On Crimson Mountain

Shay beamed. “Ranie is the best. She can teach you, too.”

“I’d like that.”

“Don’t you have work to do?” Ranie asked, flipping her long braid over her shoulder. “Taking care of the big-shot author?”

“I’ll have time,” April told her. “Would either of you like a snack before I start prepping dinner?”

“Can we make the snowman now?” Shay asked, going on her knees to look out the window above the bed.

April thought about the promise she’d made to Connor Pierce. “Because Mr. Pierce is writing a book, he’s going to need quiet. I know it’s fun to play in the snow, but—”

“I can be real quiet,” Shay assured her, not turning from the window. “Ranie and me had to stay quiet when Mommy was sick.”

“Ranie and I,” April and Ranie corrected at the same time.

When April offered a half smile, Ranie turned away. April sighed. Between the cabin’s grumpy houseguest and her own ill-tempered charge, this was going to be the longest two weeks of her life. “Maybe it would be better if we found things to do inside the house.”

“He doesn’t want us here,” Ranie said, her tone filled with righteous accusation. “That’s why we have to be quiet. He doesn’t want us.”

April would have liked to kick Connor Pierce in the shin or another part of his anatomy right now. “He needs to concentrate,” she said instead, wanting to make it better for these girls who’d lost so much and were now in a strange state and a strange cabin with a woman who had been their mother’s friend but little to them. “It isn’t about you two.”

“So we can’t go out in the snow?” Shay shifted so she was facing April. “We have to stay inside the whole time? That’s kind of boring.”

Feeling the weight of two different stares, April pressed her fingers to her temples. She should call Sara right now and find someone else for this job, except then she’d have to make holiday plans for these girls. Her work here was a distraction, different enough from real life that she could keep the two separate. It was too much to think of making Ranie and Shay a part of her world. What if they fit? What if she wanted to try for something she knew she couldn’t manage?

A remote cabin and its temperamental guest might be a pain, but at least it was safe. Still, she couldn’t expect the girls to entertain themselves for two weeks in this small cabin, and neither could Connor.

“Get your snow gear from the shopping bags I left in the front hall,” she said after a moment. “As long as we’re not making a ton of noise, we can play in the snow as much as you want.”

“Mommy liked to rest,” Shay said, too much knowledge in her innocent gaze. “Sometimes the medicine gave her headaches, so we know how to be quiet.” She wrapped her arms around April for a quick, surprising hug and then scrambled off the bed.

“I’ll get your stuff, too,” she told Ranie before running from the room. “We’re going to build a snowman.” April could hear the girl singing as she went down the steps.

Ranie was still glaring at her, so April kept her tone light. “I’d better put on another layer. My sweater and coat are warm but not if we’re going to be outside for a while.”

“It’s me, right?” Ranie’s shoulders were a narrow block of tension.

“What’s you?”

“The author doesn’t want me around,” Ranie said, almost as if she was speaking to herself. “It can’t be Shay. Everyone loves Shay.”

“It isn’t about either of you.” April risked placing a hand on Ranie’s back, surprised when the girl didn’t shrug it off. “He’s here to work.”

“Aunt Tracy bought Shay a new swimsuit,” Ranie mumbled, sinking down to the bed.

“For a trip to Colorado in December?”

The girl gripped the hem of her shirt like she might rip it apart. “She wanted to take her to Hawaii with their family.”

April shook her head. “No, your aunt told me the trip was only her, your uncle Joe and the boys.”

“Tyler and Tommy are annoying,” Ranie said.

April smiled a little. “I imagine nine-year-old twin boys can be a handful.”

“I guess Aunt Tracy always wanted a little girl,” Ranie told her, “because I overheard Mom talking to her toward the end. She’d wanted us to live with Tracy, but Tracy would only agree to having Shay.” Her voice grew hollow. “She didn’t want me.”

“Oh, Ranie, no,” April whispered, even as the words rang true. Jill’s sister had been just the type of woman to be willing to keep one girl and not the other. How could April truly judge when she couldn’t commit to either of them?

But she knew the girls had to stay together. “I talked to your aunt before they left on their trip. It’s only for the holidays. We have a meeting scheduled with an attorney the first week of January to start the process of transferring custody. She’s going to take you both in the New Year. You’ll be back in California and—”

“She doesn’t want me.” Ranie looked miserable. “No one does now that Mom is gone. That author guy is just one more.”

“It’s not you.” The words were out of April’s mouth before she could stop them. She hated seeing the girl so sad.

“You’re lying.” Ranie didn’t even pause as she made the accusation and paced to the corner of the room. “Everyone loves Shay.”

“Something happened to Connor Pierce that makes it difficult for him to be around young kids.”

“What happened?” Ranie stepped forward, hands clenched tightly in front of her. This sweet, hurting girl had been through so much. Once again, April wanted to reach for her but held back. She shouldn’t have shared as much as she had about Connor, but she couldn’t allow Ranie to believe she was expendable to everyone she met. At least this way, Ranie could help shield Shay, keep her out of Connor’s line of sight.

April met Ranie’s clear blue gaze. “His wife and son died in a car accident a few years ago. The little boy was five at the time.”

“Shay’s age,” Ranie whispered. The girl’s eyes widened a fraction.

Good. The news was enough of a shock on its own. April didn’t have to share anything more. Not the images she’d seen online of the charred shell of a car after the accident and fire that had killed Connor’s family. Not the news report that said he’d also been in the vehicle at the time of the crash but had been thrown clear.

She hoped he’d been knocked unconscious. The alternative was that Connor Pierce had watched his family die.

* * *

Connor glanced at the clock on his phone again, staring at the bright numbers on the screen, willing them to change. When they did and the numbers read 6:00 on the dot, he jumped out of the chair in front of the desk, stalked toward the door, then back again.

He knew April was in the kitchen, had heard her come in thirty minutes ago. He’d been staring at the clock ever since. Minutes when he should have been working, but the screen on his laptop remained empty.

Every part of his life remained empty.

When his editor had suggested taking two weeks at a remote cabin to “finish” his manuscript, Connor hadn’t argued. He hadn’t wanted to explain that he still had over half the story to write. It had even made sense that a change of scenery might help him focus.

That’s how it worked with writers, right? A quiet cabin in the woods, an idyllic setting to get the creativity flowing. What Connor understood, but wouldn’t admit, was that his inability to write came from the place inside him that was broken. There was simply nothing left, only a yawning cavern of guilt, regret and sorrow. Emotions he couldn’t force himself to mine for words to fill a manuscript, even one that was seven months past due.

He shut the laptop and headed downstairs, the scent coming from the kitchen drawing him forward. That was as unexpected as everything else about April Sanders, since food was no longer something from which Connor derived pleasure. He ate for energy, health and to keep his body moving. He didn’t register flavor or cravings and lived on a steady diet of nutrition bars and high-protein meals that were bland and boring.

Nothing about April was bland or boring, a realization that fisted in his gut as she turned from the stove when he walked into the room.

“How’s the writing going?” she asked with a smile, as if they were friends. She wore a long-sleeved shirt that revealed the curve of her breasts and waist, with a pair of black yoga pants that hugged her hips. April was slim, with the natural grace of a dancer—someone aware of her body and what it could do. Her hair was still pulled back, but the pieces that had escaped to frame her face were curlier than before.

“I could hear the kids playing outside,” Connor said, and watched her smile fade. This was who he was now, a man who could suck the warmth out of a room faster than an arctic wind.

“We stayed on the far side of the caretaker’s cabin and the girls weren’t loud,” she answered, pulling a plate from a cabinet.

“I still heard them.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Were you pressing your ear to the window?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it again. Not his ear, but he’d held his fingertips to the glass until they burned from the cold. The noise had been faint, drifting up to him only as he’d strained to listen. “Why were they outside? It’s freezing up here.”

“Shay wanted to play in the snow.” April pulled a baking tray out of the oven and set it on the stove top. “They’re from California so all this snow is new for them.”

“Join the club,” he muttered, snapping to attention when she grabbed a foil-wrapped packet on the tray and bit out a curse.

She shook out her fingers, then reached for a pair of tongs with her uninjured hand.

He moved closer. “You need to run your fingers under cold water.”

“I’m fine,” she said, but bit down on her lower lip. “Have a seat and dinner will be—”

He flipped on the faucet as he came to stand next to her. Before he could think about what he was doing, Connor grabbed her wrist and tugged her the few feet to stand in front of the sink. He couldn’t seem to stop touching this woman. He pushed up her sleeve and positioned her hand under the cold water from the faucet. “If the burn is bad enough, it will blister your fingertip.”

“I wasn’t thinking, but I’m not hurt,” she said softly, not pulling away.

She was soft against him, the warmth of her both captivating and an irritation against the shell he’d wrapped around himself. She smelled subtly of lavender, and Connor could imagine April standing in a field of it in the south of France, her red hair a beautiful contrast to the muted purple of the plants. Fanciful thoughts for a man who’d become rigid in his hold on reality.

“It’s better to be safe.”

He didn’t want to examine why he kept his grasp on her wrist and why she didn’t pull away. She wasn’t going to blister—the burn from the foil was a surface injury at most. That meant... He met her gaze, gentle and understanding, then jerked away as if he’d been the one scalded by the heat.

“What do you know about me?” he asked through gritted teeth.

She took a moment to answer, turned off the tap and dried her hand before looking up to him. “Only what I’ve read in old news reports.”

Gripping his fingers on the edge of the granite counter, he forced himself to ask, “And what did they tell you?” He’d purposely not read any of the press after the crash.

“Your wife and son were with you during the promotional tour for your last book release three years ago. There was a car accident on the way to an event—another driver crossed the median and hit you head on—they were both killed.”

“We all should have died in that wreck,” he whispered.

“You were thrown from the car. It saved your life.”

She didn’t dispute his observation, which he appreciated. Part of why he’d initially cut so many people out of his life after the accident was that he couldn’t stand hearing any more theories about why he’d lived while Margo and Emmett had died. That it was fate, a greater plan, some universal knowing to which he wasn’t yet privy.

Connor knew it was all nonsense. If there had been any sense in the tragedy, it would have been for him to perish while his beautiful wife and innocent son survived. Anything else was blasphemy as far as he was concerned.

“Unfortunately, it did,” he agreed, wanting to shock her. He’d spent hours wishing and praying for his own death in the months after the accident. His whole reason for living had been stolen from him, and he hadn’t been strong enough to save either his wife or son. He’d wallowed in grief until it had consumed him. The pain had become a part of his makeup—like another limb or vital organ—and it pushed away everyone and everything that didn’t make it stronger.

Eventually, the grief had threatened to destroy him, and Connor had shut it down, his will to live stronger than his wish to die. But in excising the pain, he’d had to cut out other parts of himself—his heart, the connections he had to anyone else in the world who he might fail with his weakness. Perhaps even his creativity. The ability to weave stories was so much a part of him that he’d taken the gift for granted. Except, now it was gone, and he had no idea how to get it back.

The feel of April brushing past pulled him from his thoughts. She placed a plate of food on the table at the one place setting and bent to light the candle that sat in the center of the table.

“That’s not necessary,” he told her, his voice gruff.

“I light candles for all the guests.” She straightened. “Would you like wine with your meal?”

“Water, but you don’t have to serve me.”

“Actually, I do,” she said with a wry half smile. “It’s my job, and I’m good at it.”

“Why aren’t you asking me questions about the accident?”

She studied him for a moment, a hint of pink coloring her cheeks. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head.

“That’s why,” she said simply, and walked back to the kitchen to fill a glass from the water dispenser in the refrigerator.

The fact that she wasn’t pushing him made Connor want to tell her more. As soon as people started asking questions, whether it was his editor, the therapist his publisher had hired, or one of his sisters or his mother, Connor shut down.

Yet the need to share details of the nightmare that had defined his recent life with April was almost overwhelming in its intensity. His chest constricted, an aching reminder of why he kept silent. To talk about Margo and Emmett was to invite pain and sorrow back into his life. Connor couldn’t do that and continue to function.

“I’m going to check on the girls,” she told him after placing the water on the table. “I’ll be back in a few minutes—”

“What if I want you to stay while I eat?”

She paused, meeting his gaze with those big melty chocolate eyes. There was something in them he didn’t understand, not pity or wariness as he would have expected. It looked almost like desire, which he couldn’t fathom. He had nothing to offer a woman like April, someone so full of light and peace. The darkness inside him would blot her out, muting her radiance until she was nothing. That’s how the darkness worked, he’d realized, and there was little he could do to stop it.

“Then I’ll stay,” she said.

He let a sneer curl his upper lip. “Because it’s your job?”

She didn’t blink or look away. “Because you asked me.”

A lightning-quick bolt of emotion passed through him, forcing him to take a step back when all he wanted to do was move closer to her. The unfamiliarity of that urge was enough to have him piling the silverware and napkin on the plate, then picking it up along with the glass. “I’m going to eat in my room. I have work to do on an important scene for the book.”

“You can leave your plate outside the bedroom door,” she said in that same gentle voice. What would it take to rattle a woman like April? “I’ll clean it when I get back.”

“Fine,” he said, purposely not thanking her or acknowledging the effort she’d put into the meal that smelled better than anything he’d eaten in ages. His rudeness was another shield, and he’d need as many as he could create to resist the things April made him feel.

Chapter Three

April let herself into the main cabin before sunrise the next morning. The girls were still sleeping and, before leaving the caretaker’s cabin, she’d prepared a pan of cinnamon rolls to bake when she returned. She needed to make breakfast for her cantankerous guest but didn’t want to take the chance of seeing Connor again so soon. The previous night had jumbled her nerves in a way she barely recognized.

Connor Pierce was arrogant, ill-mannered and a borderline bully. But the pain she’d seen in his eyes when he spoke of the accident that had claimed his wife and son touched her at a soul-deep level. Just as his actual touch made her skin heat with need. Her reaction was inappropriate at best and, more likely, damaging to a heart she’d learned the hard way to protect and guard.

Thankfully, he hadn’t reappeared last night when she’d returned to clean the kitchen. His empty plate had been left on the counter, the cabin quiet as she’d put everything away. A light had still burned in the upstairs window when she’d walked across the dark night to her cabin but that had been the only indication Connor was still awake.

April was grateful since she wasn’t sure she would have been able to resist questioning him more on the heartbreak of losing his family. There was no doubt the grief had been substantial, and she could use advice on how to guide Ranie and Shay through the sorrow of losing someone they loved, even if the circumstances were totally different. April had thought she understood heartbreak after her divorce but later realized that the scars from Daniel leaving had more to do with rejection and humiliation than love.

She started coffee, preheated the oven and then unpacked the lidded container she’d prepped at the other cabin. There was a nonstick muffin tin in the drawer next to the oven, and she began to dump egg-white-and-vegetable mix into the openings. Each move she made was quiet and purposeful so as not to make noise. Her goal was to get everything ready, then leave before Connor woke.

“You’re up early.”

April jumped at the sound of that gravelly voice behind her, the mixture sloshing over the side of the glass bowl. “Is your goal to give me a heart attack?” She set the bowl on the counter and grabbed a wad of paper towels to clean up the mess.

“You spook easily,” he told her. “It’s the only time you raise your voice.”

“You shouldn’t sneak up on people. It’s rude.” Tossing the paper towels into the trash can under the sink, April turned, planning to enlighten Connor Pierce on what she sounded like when shock turned to anger. The words caught in her throat at the sight of him standing on the far side of the island wearing only a pair of loose gym shorts, his chest broad and hard and glistening with sweat.

Glistening. Oh, my.

“There’s a workout room downstairs,” he said, wiping a small white towel across his face and down his front. April followed the movement, the muscles and smattering of hair across his chest making her mouth go dry. She’d thought herself immune to men and the heavy pull of attraction since her divorce. Many of her girlfriends in Crimson were involved with handsome men, but April had never noticed any of them other than with the affection reserved for brothers.

What she felt for Connor was different and dangerous.

Instead of berating him more for startling her, she asked, “Do you need anything?” and hated that she sounded breathless.

“A shower.”

Spoken in his deep voice, those two words sounded like an invitation. April felt her cheeks color. She grabbed the muffin tin and shoved it into the oven, hoping the heat that wafted out would provide a decent excuse for her blush. “I can have breakfast ready in about twenty minutes. Are you always up at this time?”

“I don’t sleep much.”

“Too inspired?”

She’d been referring to his writing, but one side of his mouth kicked up like he’d taken the question another way. “Not yet,” he answered. “But there’s time for that.”

She didn’t understand his mood this morning. He was relaxed and almost flirty, different from the tense, bitter man she’d encountered yesterday.

“Working out helps me,” he offered, as if reading her mind. “Gives me an outlet that I find calming.”

“I teach yoga,” she said with a nod. She opened the dishwasher and started putting away the clean dishes. “It does the same thing.”

“Do you teach at Crimson Ranch?” He moved closer, took a seat at the island. Connor seemed unaware of the effect his upper body was having on her, and she tried to ignore her reaction. Even if he hadn’t been a guest, this man was not for her.

She filled a glass with water and placed it on the counter in front of him. “During the summer months, I teach at the ranch. There’s also a community center in town that offers classes, and another studio between Crimson and Aspen.”

“You’ve done yoga for a while?” he asked, taking a long drink. A droplet of water traced a path along his strong jaw, then over his throat and down the hard planes of his chest. He wiped it away, then met her gaze. It took April several seconds to realize he was waiting for an answer to his question.

“Almost fifteen years.” She concentrated on unloading the dishwasher as she spoke. “I had some injuries from dancing when I was younger, and yoga helped my body heal. I owned a studio in California for a while.” She’d loved the studio she’d built from the ground up, but it had become one more casualty of her illness and then the divorce.

“But you teach for other people here?”

April felt her eyes narrow. Connor was a little too insightful. The woman who owned the private studio outside of town had offered to sell the business to April on several occasions. Marty was in her seventies, ready to retire and move closer to her adult children and their families, but she felt a loyalty to the local clients she had in the area. April knew the older woman had received offers from at least two national chains, but Marty hoped her studio would remain locally owned.

“It gives me more flexibility,” she answered.

“Do you travel?”

She focused her attention on the basket of knives and forks. “No.”

“Have a big family?”

She shook her head, not liking where this line of questioning was leading.

“Why is flexibility important?”

How was she supposed to explain? It was the answer she always gave, and no one had ever questioned her answer. Not until Connor.

April loved Colorado and the town of Crimson, but as much as she was grateful for a new start and the friends that were part of it, there was something missing. A broken piece inside that prevented her from truly committing to this town the way Sara and so many of their friends had in the past couple of years.

There was too much at stake for April, because if she devoted herself to making a life here the way she had in California and then lost it again, she wasn’t sure she’d survive. It was easier to play the part of caretaker and helpful friend. Those roles allowed her to be a part of the community without investing the deepest pieces of her heart and soul in anyone.

Giving too much—feeling too much—left her vulnerable to pain, and she’d had enough pain to last a lifetime.

“Why do you care?” she asked, slamming the empty silverware basket back into the dishwasher and closing the machine’s door. She hated how this man riled her but couldn’t stop her reaction to him any more than she could deny the attraction she felt. All she could do was ignore them both.

He pushed the empty glass across the counter. “Just making conversation,” he said as he stood, his gaze steady on hers. There was a teasing light in his eye, and awareness danced across her skin in response. He didn’t seem upset by her rudeness or realize how out of character it was. But she knew and it scared her. “We’re the only two people here so—”