Home for Christmas (26 page)

Voices in the hallway and a quick knock at the kitchen door had Owen growling low in his chest at the interruption. When Nash stuck his head in, wild-eyed and shocked, it was all Owen could do not to snarl at the man.

“Crap, get a room,” Nash hissed when he saw them, making a slashing motion with one hand as he darted a quick look over his shoulder. “Only don't, because guys, I hate to tell you this but we have company.”

“Is that my favorite writer in there?” boomed a hearty male voice from the hall. It was unfamiliar to Owen, but from the way Libby went cold and stiff in his arms, she knew exactly who was out there.

“Oh no,” she breathed, tearing herself out of Owen's arms and frantically smoothing at her hair and clothes. Despite Owen's best efforts, her hands were still so sticky that she was messing herself up more than tidying. Owen reached out to help, but she ducked away from his touch, leaving his empty hand to grasp at thin air before falling uselessly to his side.

“Just a quick second,” Nash was saying to whoever it was. “My wife is in the middle of a slightly sensitive kitchen maneuver—I don't pretend to understand it myself, ha ha—but if I can get y'all to wait in the library, she'll be with you in a moment.”

His wife. Owen went cold with dread, but he couldn't let that keep him from moving forward. Calling on all his training, Owen rallied. “Calm down, Libby. Nash bought us a few minutes. Breathe, and give me a sit rep.”

As he'd hoped, curiosity cut through the panic on Libby's pretty face. “Sit rep? Oh, situation report. Right. Um, well, I guess the situation is that the universe hates me? And is punishing me? Because that out there is my boss, Hugo Downing. A day earlier than planned, no less. Since he isn't alone, I can only assume he brought your old pal Rhonda Friend and her camera crew with him. And they almost caught America's Favorite Cook cheating on her husband with America's Favorite War Hero.”

The guilt in her voice battered at Owen's heart, but there was no time to deal with it. “Okay,” he said, going into strategic mode. “We planned for this. All we have to do is go back to the original plan, and we should be fine.”

“I know.” Libby finally went to the sink to wash her hands, and Owen was surprised by how much he wanted to stop her and offer to clean every one of her fingers himself. With his mouth.

Get your head in the game,
he told himself fiercely. For the first time, he wondered if he would actually be able to make it through the entire holiday without betraying the fact that he and Libby were intimately, deeply, irrevocably bound together in a way he didn't even understand fully yet.

“I was just starting to let myself believe we wouldn't have to do this,” Libby was saying, a heartbreaking wistfulness running through the words while she soaped up. “I hate that you've been pulled into my lies, Owen. I hate it so much. I hate that this means we can't tell Caitlin the truth yet, and Nash has to spend the holiday pretending he's not in love with Ivy, and I wish I could tell them to go to hell but there's still my uncle Ray to think about, and I don't know what Grandfather is planning to do about all that and I can't risk…”

This, Owen knew how to deal with. Coming up behind Libby, her cupped his palms over her shoulders and let the outsides of his thumbs stroke her neck. “Breathe,” he repeated, gently implacable. “In and out, honey. Come on.”

Libby drew in a shuddering breath, her head falling forward and exposing the vulnerable nape of her neck. Owen longed to set his teeth to it, to bite down ever so gently and suck a mark of ownership into her fair skin, but he controlled himself.

Pulling herself together, Libby dashed a hand over her eyes and squared her shoulders. She gave him a shaky smile that got brighter as they stared at each other silently. “You can do this,” Owen finally said.

“
We
can do it—together,” she corrected, but her voice lilted up questioningly at the end, as if she still couldn't quite believe it was true.

How did I get here?
Owen wondered suddenly. To this place where he was contemplating lying to the entire world. He hadn't told a lie since the day he joined the army. He'd always taken the army's code of ethics seriously, and had done his best to conduct himself as an officer and a gentleman. But as he gazed at Libby Leeds, Owen knew that he'd do far worse things to keep this woman safe and happy.

“Together,” he told her, snagging her clean, damp hand and bringing it to his lips for one last kiss.

The hardest thing about this situation wasn't going to be lying to the world about who Libby really was. The hardest thing would be lying about who she was to him.

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

Nash showed Hugo Downing and Rhonda Friend into the library with a strange sense of not having woken up completely. Surely this was a dream. And a really, really bad one, at that.

Thank goodness Rhonda had left her camera crew outside in the van for this first meeting, because Nash was pretty sure he
looked
like he was still asleep. He was wearing green and white striped pajama pants, for Pete's sake.

“Love these stately old homes,” Downing boomed. He seemed to be incapable of speaking at any volume less than a roar.

“Hmm,” Rhonda Friend hummed, casting an analytical eye over the antique furnishings. “It's a little dark in here. I'll get the boys to set up some lights … if that's all right with you, of course, Mr. Leeds.”

When she turned the full force of her smile on him, Nash blinked. It was a little like coming face to face with a shark in his living room.

He blinked, and a nearly hidden spasm of annoyance tightened the corners of Rhonda's eyes. “Mr. Leeds?”

Right, Nash was supposedly Mr. Leeds. “Oh, sure. I guess you can bring in lighting. Why not? Except won't you mostly be filming the dinner, in the dining room?”

Ms. Friend stalked a quick circuit around the library, her stiletto heels clicking on the hardwood. “Certainly. But we'll need plenty of B-roll—that's the extra scenes we film for background, to show the happy family, perfect home, et cetera, cut in between the main segment of the dinner itself. Really, it's convenient we're here a day early. We'll have lots of time to get good film.”

“Wonderful!” Nash found himself echoing Hugo Downing's too hearty tone while his mind jumped forward several steps to stress out about having these people underfoot for an extra day.

“This place reminds me of my vacation home on the East Bay,” Hugo Downing was saying as Libby slipped into the library, followed by Owen.

They'd managed to mostly put themselves back together, Nash noted with approval, although Libby was still nervously tucking her messy blonde hair behind her ears. Did it look weird that they showed up together? Could anyone who didn't know them tell that they were
together
together?

Striding over, Nash clapped his own hand down on Owen's shoulder and beamed a huge not-a-care-in-the-world, nothing-to-see-here grin.

“At last,” Nash said loudly. “My lovely wife and her kitchen assistant, Sergeant Owen Shepard. Of course, Ms. Friend, y'all have already met. Owen, this is Mr. Hugo Downing.”

“Proud to meet you,” Downing said, striding forward to pump Owen's hand briskly. “Thank you for your service. As the publisher of
Savor
magazine, I can tell you we're all behind you boys, and we're glad you made it home safely.”

“Safely-ish,” Owen said with a faint smile and a gesture at his wounded leg. “But I'm one of the lucky ones, I know.”

In the brief, awkward silence that followed, Nash caught the stricken look on his cousin's face. She was probably imagining how she might never have met Owen at all if he'd been more severely wounded or even killed in Afghanistan. Or maybe she was worrying about what would happen when Owen achieved his goal of getting back to combat-ready status and reenlisted. Either way, she was as pale as the sky outside, except for her eyes bright with unshed tears.

While Rhonda pranced over to renew her acquaintance with Owen, who didn't seem all that stoked to see her but covered with a polite smile, Nash sidled over to his “wife” and put a supportive arm around her shoulders. Bending his head, he whispered, “Buck up, Libs. You've got to come up with a better place to keep your heart than right out here on your sleeve like this.”

She took a shuddering breath. “I'll try,” she murmured back. “But I wasn't ready. I thought we'd have more time to prepare … or even that the snow would've kept them away.”

Mr. Downing apparently caught the word “snow.” “Yes, yes, awful weather heading this way. We thought we'd fly in a day early and get ahead of it. Hope it's not an inconvenience.”

The way he said it made it very clear that even if it was an inconvenience, Mr. Hugo Downing didn't expect to hear anything about it. “Not at all,” Nash said, mustering every drop of charm he could manage. “It's Christmas! Our house is always open, but never more so than at this time of year.”

“Oh, good. We were hoping you'd say that,” Rhonda gushed, her scarlet smile going feline and pleased. “I'll have the boys start bringing in the luggage.”

Beside him, Libby froze, and a tiny squeak came from high in her throat. Nash was pretty sure he was the only one close enough to hear it, but he hurried to reply anyway. “I thought you were planning to stay at the Fireside Inn, in Winter Harbor.”

“We were. But after today, the ferry won't be making runs back and forth to the mainland,” Downing explained. “And since there's no hotel on Sanctuary Island, no room at the inn as it were, ha ha, our plan was to rely on good old-fashioned Southern hospitality and hope you'd take in a group of weary wanderers for the holidays.”

Nightmare. Had to be. Nash pinched himself surreptitiously, but it didn't help. This was really happening, and he didn't see that they had a choice. Turning Libby's boss and a prominent television personality and her crew out into the snow would raise more questions than anyone here wanted to answer.

“Wonderful,” Nash declared grimly, giving Libby's shoulders a prompting squeeze.

“Yes, wonderful,” she echoed, shaking herself into motion. “Of course, we'd be happy to have you. We have tons of space, even with Sergeant Shepard staying here. How many bedrooms will you need?”

“Four, if possible,” Rhonda answered, so smoothly that Nash started to wonder if this had been her plan all along. “Thanks so much.”

Nash frowned, mentally setting up the guestrooms and counting out the number of beds … uh oh. His gaze flew to Libby's and he saw the exact moment she realized. They would only have enough room for their new guests if Libby gave up her guestroom. Which meant she'd have to bunk in with Nash … or with someone else.

Things were about to get interesting.

*   *   *

The rest of the day was a scramble. While Nash took their guests on an extended tour of the island—Rhonda was eager to get some of her B-roll before the weather kept them indoors—Libby threw herself into her kitchen tasks. Owen pitched in where he could, grateful for the army training that allowed him to make six beds in record time, neat and tidy as anyone could want.

He also whisked Libby's things out of the bedroom she'd been using and moved them to Nash's room, trying his best to ignore how much he wished he had the right to put Libby where she belonged … with Owen.

But maybe this is better,
he thought to himself as he firmly shut the door on the possibility of spending the night with Libby. They'd flirted with intimacy, and he would never forget the sight of her coming to pieces at his touch, but since the night of the storm, they'd been too busy getting ready for Christmas to go any further. And maybe that was good. He'd gotten in so deep with Libby, and right when his life was in the biggest transition and turmoil he'd faced since he left home as a teenager.

A decade in the army had given Owen stability, security, order. Six months without it, and he felt lost. Unmoored. How could he think about getting seriously involved with someone like Libby Leeds when he didn't know where he'd be in a month? When he didn't know if he'd be caring for his daughter as a single dad or if he'd be leaving her here with the aunt who loved her? When he couldn't even figure out what would be best for Caitlin, much less himself?

They worked through the rest of the afternoon, tidying and finishing decorating, cooking and cleaning. Through it all, there was no word from Libby's grandfather, and she got more and more despondent about it as time went on. By the time their guests returned, cold and red-cheeked and full of the wonders of the Sanctuary Island scenery, Owen was ready to call it a night. Nash seemed to agree, disappearing at once upstairs with an expression that said he'd done his time and couldn't take much more of their illustrious company.

But Rhonda Friend had other ideas.

“I've been looking forward to eating your cooking for some time now,” Rhonda purred, glancing at the closed kitchen door. “I hope you're not going to disappoint us.”

The kitchen door was closed because behind it, the kitchen looked as if a flour bomb had exploded. Dishes were piled all around the sink, and dirty knives and utensils covered every surface, but Libby had made it through her prep list like a champ. However, Owen had his doubts about whether she had the energy to get back in there and prepare dinner for all these people after a full day of intense cooking.

Libby wilted before his eyes. “Oh. Gosh, I wasn't really planning on—you see, the fridge is so full of things for tomorrow…”

“But surely that's no problem for an accomplished home cook like yourself,” Rhonda said. “You must throw parties like this all the time. At least, according to your articles, you do.”