Taming His Montana Heart(50)
It was a little after four in the morning which meant she’d slept longer than she usually did on the dream nights. She wanted to turn on her outside light but that might disturb her neighbors so changed to an all-music station on the TV in the hope it would quiet her mood.
The Christmas songs she’d found were mostly modern with just enough of the traditional carols sprinkled in to take her back to when her mother had told her about her own childhood in the same farmhouse. Haley’s grandparents on her mother’s side had died when Haley was too young to remember them, but her mother had brought them to life with pictures, stories of a house filled with Grandma’s baking, and a grandfather who kept the wood stove stoked.
Stay with the good. Focus on the safe and not the other.
However, no matter how hard she tried, the seeds of the nightmare she’d lived with since her mother’s violent death again sprouted. She knew what had spawned tonight’s dream—Shaw.
Not Shaw himself, she amended, but what she’d told him.
Darn it, why had she revealed so much? Only a handful of people, and no one in her current life, knew that her father had murdered her mother. She’d never intended to tell Shaw what she had. Because of the emotional and sensual impact he was having on her, she’d gone so far as to warn herself to avoid subjects that came remotely close to that time in her life.
But she’d told him. He knew. There was no taking anything back. The next time she saw him, he’d look at her with sympathy and pity. He might ask for details.
No details. Nothing more than the little she’d told him because he’d hate her if he knew everything.
*
Christmas Eve arrived the better part of a week before Haley thought it was due. The twenty-fourth had snuck up on her while she’d been distracted by work plus making a flying trip to Kalispell. She couldn’t put a name to what was happening between Shaw and herself but she’d made gingerbread cookies as his Christmas gift. The domestic chore had been deeply satisfying.
There’d been two storms since she’d had Shaw over for dinner, one a quick in and out that hadn’t produced much snow. However, the other had deposited four more inches of the white stuff before moving on. Because she’d already tested the trail groomer, she’d turned its operation over to Daron so she could focus on the steady stream of clients.
When she wasn’t working, she conferred with Daron about which online classes he should take. He’d wanted to start with a single class, math. She’d convinced him to add another, science.
The first time Shaw called after they had dinner at her place, all he’d done was tell her that someone had spotted several elk on the road into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. After agreeing they wished they’d seen them, they decided the elk had probably chosen the road since the going was easier where snow had either been removed or packed down. What he said didn’t matter as much as the tone of his voice and the way it lingered inside her long after they’d hung up. She’d fallen asleep that night replaying their conversation and hadn’t had any disturbing dreams.
He’d called again the next morning. After asking how she was doing and praising her slow cooker skills, he informed her that area media was planning to cover the dog sled races. He’d already assigned a staff member to handle accommodations for the dogs, their owners, and equipment. His uncle wanted to increase cabin rental rates during the event, but Shaw managed to convince him that goodwill was more important. She wasn’t sure why Shaw had told her what he had, maybe because he considered her one of the few people he could be honest with about his uncle. Once more she’d gone to bed with his voice in her head and the memory of his mouth on hers.
The next evening she’d dropped by his office with a picture of a print in the snow one of her clients had taken—and because she hadn’t seen him for too long. They agreed that the print was too small to have been made by a wolf. It must have been deposited by a dog running alongside a snowmobile. Talking about the pros and cons of letting dogs run loose in the wilderness had helped her deal with her awareness of herself as a woman every time she was in his presence.
When he’d mentioned that the special of the evening was baked chicken, she’d accepted his invitation to join him in the restaurant. The public space was safe and ordinary, nowhere as hard on her nerves as being alone with him and yet she hadn’t tasted her meal.
As for sleeping that night—well, the less admitted about the lack thereof, the better.
They got into the routine, if it could be called that, of calling each other several times a day. She didn’t give much thought to why she was punching his number beyond wanting to hear his voice. She told him about clients who buried snowmobiles in snow and blamed the machines instead of taking responsibility. He countered by suggesting she let the clients get themselves out of their self-imposed fixes. Both knew he didn’t mean it and she wouldn’t.
When she said ‘hello’ in response to his ring on Wednesday afternoon, he complained about children on Christmas break who ran their sleds on the path from the lodge to the lake. Not only was he concerned about liability, he envied them. Eyes closed, she imagined the two of them on a sled, speeding down the hill and onto the ice.
Every evening either she swung by the resort on the way home or he came to where she was working. The first time he showed up, Daron had been concerned he’d done something wrong. After that, Shaw waited until the young man had left for the day. Sharing her office or the snowmobile barn with Shaw thrilled her in ways she didn’t examine too closely. All she knew was she wanted to have as much time with him as possible.