The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride (14 page)

“I think tomorrow we need to get a little Christmas cheer into this place,” he decreed. “What do you say we cut you a tree and decorate it?”

The man just always made her smile….

“Isn't that a lot of work for just a couple of days until it's all over?”

“A couple of days is still a couple of days that you'll get to have it,” he said, looking at her again and making her think that it wasn't only a Christmas tree on his mind when he said that.

But one way or another, what he was suggesting would give her more time with him and even though she told herself she shouldn't do it, that he was just too hard for her to resist and that she was tempting fate, she heard herself say, “I've never cut my own Christmas tree….”

“So tomorrow it is?”

“If you don't have anything else to do…”

“I don't have anything else I'd rather do.”

He held her eyes with his for another moment. He kissed her again—this time a quick buss. And then he said, “Tomorrow it is,” in a husky voice, before he opened the door and went out into the cold.

And not even the blast of winter air that shocked Shannon as she watched him go could cool her off.

Instead, hours and hours after she'd closed the door, changed into her pajamas and gone to bed, she was still feeling the heat of Dag.

And still wanting him every bit as badly as she had when she'd been in his arms.

C
utting down a Christmas tree for the apartment was delayed on Thursday when Chase received an answer to the email he and Shannon had sent to Ian Kincaid.

Shannon ended up spending the morning with Chase, using the phone number in the return email to try to reach Ian.

That eventually happened, leading to a lengthy conference call during which Ian let them know that he and Hutch also had no idea there were other siblings, that he had thought Chase and Shannon's email was some sort of scam until he'd spoken to his mother. Reluctantly, his mother had admitted that there had been another brother and two sisters.

Ian—like Shannon and Chase before him—was thunderstruck. But he had agreed to arrange a time to meet Chase and Shannon after the first of the year.

The second twin—Hutch—was another matter.

Hutch was apparently not on good terms with the Kincaid family. They had not been in touch in several years.

“This is the last email address I have for him, but I haven't used it in so long, I can't tell you that it will get you through to him,” Ian said, giving them the address but not offering to relay the news of newfound family himself. And also, Shannon noted, not explaining why a rift existed.

When the phone call ended, Shannon went from Chase's loft to the main house in search of Dag. But Dag had gone into town and left word for her that he would be back soon.

Soon
was just after lunch and that was when Shannon bundled up in borrowed heavy-weather gear to go out into the countryside to finally cut her Christmas tree.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, but it was only three degrees. Shannon wouldn't have blamed Dag if he had backed out of the tree-cutting with the temperature that low, but he was good-natured, full of energy and enthusiasm, and—as usual—game for anything. The only thing he would concede to was not going too far to find a tree.

Luckily there was a stand of evergreens a mere two miles from the barn on Chase and Logan's land, so that was where Dag and Shannon went. Dag parked as near as he could to the small forest but they still had to hike through knee-high snow to reach the trees.

Shannon was grateful when they located one that was a mere four feet high not far into the cluster.

“This one! This is the one,” she decreed, breathing warm air into her gloved hands. “Cut it down and let's get out of this cold!”

Dag grinned at her, seeming amused by her chattering
teeth. But he didn't hesitate to use a chain saw at the base of the low-lying fir while Shannon stood back and watched.

And that actually helped with the cold.

The mere sight of the big man, dressed like a burly lumberjack, wielding the saw with expertise, was enough to chase away some of Shannon's chill. Or maybe it was just the fact that she was so enthralled with him that she forgot about the frigid temperature. Instead—as she had so many times since she'd put a stop to it—she relived in vivid detail all that had happened between them the night before. And that was like a little ray of private sunshine heating her from the inside out…

When the tree toppled, Dag bent over, picked it up with one hand and held it in the air as if it were a trophy. “Another brother and a Christmas tree for Shannon Duffy all in one day!” he shouted in victory.

“Let's just get the tree home where there's heat!” Shannon said in response, pretending that Dag didn't generate that for her all on his own.

The remainder of the afternoon went into building a stand for the tree, after which Shannon and Dag joined everyone else at the loft where Hadley had made a dinner of beef stew.

And as much as Shannon enjoyed having so many people around her and being included in the large extended family, tonight she was eager to get away from them all, to get back to the apartment.

Only to put up her Christmas tree, she told herself. It wasn't merely another evening alone with Dag that had her antsy.

Except that visions of Christmas decorations weren't dancing through her head.

Regardless of how much she denied it, it was still Dag who was firmly on her mind….

 

“That's what you were doing in town—buying lights and tinsel and ornaments for my tree? I thought I was just using whatever Logan and Chase had left over,” Shannon said when she and Dag finally got to the apartment Thursday evening and Dag brought in two sacks full of Christmas decorations that he'd purchased that morning.

“It isn't much. But while you and Chase were talking to Ian Kincaid, I got the bug to go pick up a few things. This stuff will all get used somewhere again next year, so what's the harm?”

There wasn't any harm. In fact it was another nice thing he'd done for her. Another nice, thoughtful thing.

“Let me at least pay for them,” she offered.

“Nah. This close to the big day everything was on closeout. Consider it part of your Christmas gift.”

“
Part
of my Christmas gift? You got me a Christmas gift?” Shannon couldn't resist saying.

Dag grinned. “Santa brings everybody a Christmas gift,” he answered with a wink as he hunkered down to make a fire before they got started.

Try to keep a lid on it,
Shannon warned herself when her eyes followed him to the hearth, devouring the sight of him much the way she had that afternoon.

But she wasn't sure she could.

After cutting down the tree and making the stand for it, they'd gone their separate ways to get ready for the evening. For Shannon that had meant a shower and shampoo to get the sawdust off her.

It had also meant some special attention to curling her hair into loose waves around her face, into applying fresh makeup and into opting for her tightest jeans
and a teal-green turtleneck that also conformed to her curves. A turtleneck sweater that she'd buttoned up all the way to her chin but that stopped at the exact spot the jean's waistband began so that if she raised her arms the slightest bit, she flashed a hint of skin—unless she wore a tank top underneath it, which she usually did. Except tonight…

Dag had showered, as well. He'd also changed into clean jeans that were low on his hips. And tonight, rather than wearing one of the thermal T-shirts underneath a second shirt, Dag had on the thermal T-shirt alone—a white crewnecked thermal knit that fit like a second skin and left no question that his V-shaped torso was all lean muscle and sinew.

And the fact that he had the long sleeves pushed to his elbows and she could see his forearms? Who would ever believe that one look at those forearms could send a tiny tingle along the surface of her own skin? But it did.

He'd also shaved again before dinner, and combed his hair, and he smelled of that cologne that she attributed to him and him alone. And altogether Shannon knew it was not going to be easy to keep a lid on anything when it came to Dag.

Once the fire was made they went to work on the tree, using an end table to elevate it. All the while they did the job, Dag sang in a surprisingly good voice, making Shannon laugh because his own made-up versions of the old favorite Christmas carols were sometimes a little raunchy and always irreverent.

And when the tree was finished he brought out a bottle of wine he'd also gotten in town that morning, opened it and poured them each a glass.

Then he turned off all the lights so the apartment was
illuminated only by the fire's glow and the tiny twinkling white lights on the tree.

They'd taken off their wet shoes when they'd come in and they sat together in the center of the sofa again, only tonight they were slumped down, both pairs of stockinged feet on the coffee table, heads resting on the back of the couch—to sip wine and look at their handiwork.

“Sooo…I've been wondering about something,” Dag said then.

“What?”

“Well, you've mentioned wanting a bigger life a couple of times, but it occurred to me that I'm not quite sure what exactly makes up your idea of that. Is it traveling around the world in a hot air balloon? Climbing Mount Everest? Wiping out illiteracy for all time?”

Shannon laughed. “Traveling, yes—but not necessarily around the
whole
world, just the parts I'd like to see with my own eyes. And definitely not in a hot air balloon, a plane would be just fine. And forget Mount Everest, Montana is cold enough for me. Sure, I'd like to wipe out illiteracy for all time, but I'm happy sending one kindergarten class a year on to first grade with the basics. It isn't as if I have grandiose visions.”

“What, then?”

“I guess I mean
bigger
as in broader—not isolated, with more options, more choices for everything. I don't want to always be the person looking at other people's pictures and hearing other people's stories, I want pictures of my own to show, stories of my own to tell. I don't dream of being the first woman to walk on Mars, but I want to be
having
experiences, not just watching them on TV.”

“You want more freedom than your parents had, more
than you had, since you had to take care of them. Up until very recently, your life was bound to theirs.”

Shannon hadn't thought of herself as
bound
to her parents' life, but now that Dag put it into that perspective, she knew she had been.

“You're right,” she said. “And in a lot of ways, to me, I guess having a bigger life means the kind of freedom most people have and take for granted. It doesn't necessarily have to be full of fanfare, it just has to be…I don't know, life not lived in a cocoon.”

“Like the cocoon of a small town.”

“A small town does seem cocoonlike,” she agreed.

And she knew that appealed to Dag. But for some reason, tonight, highlighting where they differed seemed depressing. Thinking beyond what they had right then, alone together, talking, enjoying the wine and the fire and the tree, brought her down. So she changed the subject. “Now, what
I've
been wondering about is if you really did date a circus performer….”

Dag laughed out loud, heartily, happily, with that barrel-chested laugh he had. And just the sound of it made her smile and chased away any doldrums that had threatened.

“You're wondering if I really dated a circus performer because of my safety-net-tightrope-walker crack last night?” he clarified. “As a matter of fact, I
did
date a circus performer, and she
was
a tightrope walker. And a contortionist.”

“Oh, dear…” Shannon said, thinking that that was a lot to compete with. If she were competing… “Isn't that every man's dream?” she asked. “Being with a contortionist?”

“I don't know about every man's dream, but I know it
got me some high-fives in the locker room. I just didn't admit that I never got her into bed.”

“That's not an image I want to think about,” Shannon confessed, laughing herself. Then she persisted with what she'd actually been curious about. “But what about serious relationships other than the last one that got you battered—have you had any?”

“Serious? Two, I guess. If serious means thinking and talking about marriage but not actually getting to the engaged phase.”

“But close to it?”

“Both times were after a long while of dating—one for a year, the other for almost two—when the women I was involved with decided that was enough of the dating—”

“They proposed to you?”

“Proposed? No, it was more like ultimatums—marry me or we're done.”

“So you were done?”

Dag shrugged. “I didn't have marrying kinds of feelings for them. I was sorry about it, sorry to have the relationships end because I liked both Steph and Trish and I enjoyed my time with them. But that's just the way it was—when I tried to picture myself with them forever, I couldn't do it. What about you? Anybody before the Rumson?”

“Two for me, too. But mine were both proposals.”

“Really…” he said, raising his eyebrows at her. “And assuming you said no both of those times, too, the Rumson made it
three
guys you turned down? Are you allergic to marriage?”

“No. The first one was my high school sweetheart—he didn't have plans to go to college, he'd already gone through a mechanics training program and was going to
work repairing cars as soon as we graduated. He wanted to get married then, too, thought having an apartment over a garage—like our apartment over the shoe repair shop—was the perfect setup and that was his goal—”

“Minus your parents' poor health, he was inviting you to have the same life you had.”

“Except without the feelings my parents had for each other—I liked Trip, but that was as far as it went. And I wanted to go to college, and he didn't want me to do that, so there was no way I was marrying him.”

“And the second guy?”

“I dated him in college. Lou. His family owns a factory that manufactures and sells some sort of cog that almost every piece of machinery uses. When he finished college he was set to be trained to take over for his father to run things—”

“Another bigwig?”

“Not on the level of the Rumsons, but Lou's family is definitely well-off, so yes, I guess you could say he was another bigwig-in-the-making at least.”

“Offering another bigger life.”

“In Texas.”

“But your family needed you in Billings so you said no?” Dag guessed.

“My family needed me in Billings
and
I also didn't have strong enough feelings for Lou to marry him—same as you and the contortionist.”

“The contortionist wasn't one of my two other serious relationships. I told you that didn't go anywhere.”

Shannon merely smiled. She'd just been giving him a hard time.

She finished her wine then and did a sit-up to put her glass on the coffee table before settling comfortably back alongside Dag again.