A Blazing Little Christmas(34)
Jared
At the end of the note, he included a few details—a phone number for a place called the Timberline Lodge and some flight times out of Savannah if she wanted to make the trek to Lake Placid, New York, to see him.
Her heart was beating so fast she thought she’d launch into cardiac arrest. Jared wanted to see her again? Well, déjà vu, since she’d just been thinking about him. But maybe that wasn’t such a coincidence since they’d met during the holiday season.
“So I assume from the long, drawn-out silence that you’re coming around to my way of thinking?” Her mother laid the blue silk on Heather’s keyboard before she could close the e-mail, but thankfully, her mother didn’t take any notice of the invitation from the One-Who-Got-Away.
The only man to ever leave her wanting more. Maybe that’s what had upset her most about Jared’s hasty exit from her life. He’d gotten to her the way no other man ever had and it hurt to think he’d been able to walk away without looking back. Until now…
“Actually, I am.” Heather didn’t need to compare her four-page to-do list to Jared Tyler Murphy’s sparse invitation five years too late. She’d already made up her mind that spending time with the ghost of her Christmas past would be too interesting to pass up. Especially in light of her former fiancé’s inevitable appearance at the family holiday festivities. “I was thinking that you seem to have a lot of great ideas for the party and it is your party after all.”
Her mother nodded, a smile curving lips carefully drawn in fuchsia pencil.
“I’m so glad you agree—”
“So I think it’s only right you take the reins this year and do it all the way you’d like.” Heather knew most of the work was done anyhow—her four-page list had been more than double that last week—but still she savored her mother’s moment of obvious dismay at the possibility of being outmaneuvered.
“Honestly, Heather, I’m sure—”
“I just got an invitation to the mountains this weekend, Mom.” She grinned, enticed by the prospect of escape from obligation and lovingly pushy relatives for a few days. And the idea of settling an old score tantalized her more than it should.
Loralei appeared ready to breathe fire as she drew her shoulders back and pursed her lips tight, but Heather fully acknowledged she might be exaggerating the moment. Trouble was, she had one-upped her mom so few times in her life she had to make the most of it.
“You’re not serious.”
Heather’s gaze flicked back to the screen and the promise of a little sensual revenge on her partner from the best weekend fling imaginable. A weekend fling that had pretty much ruined her for all other men from a sex point of view since he’d never given her the chance to take the relationship to its natural burn-out conclusion.
“Mom, I’m very serious. I’m going to Lake Placid to watch a real live snowfall.”
And, with any luck, she’d come home next week with a little of that northern ice on her heart where a very real wound used to be.
* * *
Jared Murphy’s breath whooshed out of his lungs and he could have sworn someone took a crowbar to the backs of his knees when he spotted Heather Dillinger. Five years had passed since he’d last seen her asleep in her bed, naked and spooned against him at five-thirty in the morning before he left for a yearlong stint in Afghanistan. But she still had the same effect on him even after all this time, a powerful surge of primal interest that left him struggling for a rational thought.
Five years ago, he had tried convincing himself it was the beer goggles that had made him think she was the hottest woman he’d ever seen. Now, stone-cold sober and freezing his ass off outside the small municipal airport, he knew better.
“Heather.” He wasn’t sure if he spoke her name or just thought it, but she looked his way as she cleared the fence, tugging a small overnight bag on wheels behind her.
His Georgia peach. And yes, he’d actually called her that in those shared forty-eight hours that had burned hot in his brain for months and then years afterward. Her hair was longer than he remembered, the wavy chestnut mass tied close to the ends with a green velvet ribbon that trailed over her shoulder. Her dark wool coat grazed her calves, the tie cinching her small waist and accentuating her curves even through layers of winter clothes.
“This is incredible.” She pulled off a pair of oversize amber shades and smiled in a way that would have warmed any man’s heart.
Except that, as he watched her peer around in wonder at the small parking lot in the middle of the woods, he realized she wasn’t talking about their reunion being incredible.