The Navy SEAL's Christmas Bride (8 page)

They showered off together, their ban on touching lifted without a word from either one. Sarah gave him his five minutes and more, allowing him to soap her up all over again, rinse off her body, and then kneel down between her legs and bring her to another shuddering orgasm as the water sluiced down over her and she braced herself against his wide, strong shoulders.

“What about you?” she gasped afterward when he turned the shower off.

“Next time.” He stole a deep, hungry kiss.

Would there be a next time? Sarah met his gaze again, and decided the answer was yes.

‡

“I
told you
you’d like her,” Mason told Dan the next day as Dan helped him finish the morning chores. They moved down the line of stalls topping up the feed mixture for each of the horses. They’d already checked the cattle herd and made sure all was right with the critters that were this ranch’s bread and butter.

“I have to admit it, you were right.”

Mason glanced at him. “You disappeared for a long time yesterday afternoon.”

“Got a little distracted.”

“I’ll bet.” Mason laughed. “I meant what I said yesterday, though. You screw this up and I’ll never hear the end of it from Regan.”

“I won’t screw it up.” Dan hesitated. “How did you know Regan was the one?”

Mason’s eyebrows shot up. “The one? Hell, Dan, you’ve only known Sarah for a couple of days. I wasn’t saying you have to marry her.”

“I know. It wasn’t remotely on my radar when I arrived on the plane, but Sarah isn’t interested in a one-night stand. She’s looking for more.” He shrugged. “I guess I am too. Surprisingly enough. Not marriage, necessarily. Not yet, anyway. But something.” He braced himself for Mason’s ridicule, but Mason looked thoughtful.

“It’s funny how it hits you hard all at once, isn’t it? One minute you’re a SEAL with a job to do, one hundred percent concentrated on the mission at hand. The next minute—boom!—you’re ready to get married.”

“It was like that for you?”

“Yeah, it was,” Mason admitted. “Hit me like a ton of bricks. Guess I always thought I’d have to do a bunch of soul-searching to make my choice, but as soon as I saw Regan, something clicked. It was that simple.”

“Feels about that simple with Sarah.” He was grateful Mason was the kind of friend he could say this out loud to. “I didn’t think I was the marrying kind.”

Mason laughed. “Buddy, no man thinks he’s the marrying kind until suddenly the marrying kind is all he is. If you think you could love Sarah, go for it. Don’t mess around and get caught short-handed when another man steals her away.”

Another man? Hell, no. Every fiber in his body denied that possibility. No one was allowed to touch Sarah.

No one but him.

“Brr, is it
me or is it extra cold today?” Ella said as she entered the Hall’s cheerful kitchen, a gust of cold air blowing past her to prove her point.

“The temperatures dipped way down overnight. Another day or two of this and it will be great skating weather.” Regan carried a plate of bacon into the dining room. Sarah followed her with a pitcher of orange juice. She was beginning to feel at home here on the ranch, and she enjoyed the camaraderie among the women here.

“Today’s a good day for staying indoors.” Ella hung up her jacket, washed her hands, and moved straight to the cutting board where Regan had left several oranges. She got to work slicing them up.

“Don’t forget poker and pool tonight at the Cruz ranch,” Regan said.

“What should we bring?”

“I thought I’d bake some brownies,” Sarah put in. She’d felt so included since she’d come to Chance Creek, she wanted to give back a little, and brownies were her specialty.

“We bought some wine to take along, too,” Regan said.

“Sounds good.”

“Smells good, you mean,” Dan said, coming into the kitchen. “Gotta love the breakfasts around here. No cold cereal at Crescent Hall.”

“That’s for sure,” Regan said. “We all work hard so we get to eat real food. Sit down and help yourself.”

The meal was as noisy an affair as usual as the men all filed in to join them, and Sarah enjoyed the banter as she ate her French toast and bacon. She felt Dan’s gaze on her and did her best not to catch his eye. She felt sure she’d give herself away if she did. The previous day in the bath had been… amazing. Her whole body buzzed with longing every time she allowed herself to think about it—which was about every fifteen seconds. She wanted to be with Dan again. Wanted to feel his touch.

But overnight she’d realized that was a very bad idea.

In a few days she’d return to the military and Dan would move on to start his new career. Despite all their time together they hadn’t once had a real conversation about his plans. He hadn’t asked her if she was interested in his venture, or for her advice—or for her money, as an investment. She was separate in his mind from his future business. Which meant she was probably separate from his future, period.

She was very clear that she wanted more than a fling with Dan.

“I guess you two will have to call off your competitions for the day, won’t you?” Ella asked, shaking Sarah from her reverie.

“I guess.” She caught Dan’s eye and the look he gave her told her he was thinking about their bathtub escapade too.

“Not necessarily.” He reached out and grabbed the butter dish, pulling it closer to his plate so he could butter a piece of toast.

“What are you going to bet on? Monopoly or tic-tac-toe?” Mason asked.

“I’m not into games like that.” Dan shrugged.

“We don’t have video games,” Regan said.

“You could bet on who’s better at washing dishes,” Ella suggested.

“Or mopping floors, for that matter.” Regan smiled.

“How about who’s faster at cleaning toilets?” Austin’s tone told Sarah he’d been stuck with that particular chore one too many times.

“How about who makes better brownies?” Ella said with a smile at Sarah.

“I’d win that hands down.” Her brownies were top notch.

“You gonna take that sitting down?” Austin nudged Dan.

“SEALs don’t bake.” Mason passed the plate of bacon to Regan.

“Maybe SEALs should bake once in a while,” she said.

“I’ll have you know SEALs are very good at baking.” Dan took the plate of bacon from Regan and helped himself to several pieces. “Game on, Metlin.”

“How are we going to judge the winner?” she said. “No fair getting all the men to vote for you.”

“We’ll have to have a blind taste test,” Ella said. “We can do it at Ethan and Autumn Cruz’s place tonight. People will take turns being blindfolded and eating your brownies, and they’ll say which one they like best. We’ll let Autumn tally up the votes—she doesn’t know either of you so she won’t be biased.”

“Won’t she be upset if we take over her party like that?” It sounded rude to Sarah.

“Are you kidding? She’ll love it. Those Cruz ranch people get up to weird stuff all the time. It’s practically joke central over there, from what I hear. We’ve only gotten to know them in the last few months, but I like Autumn a lot. You will, too.”

“And they’ll all like my brownies,” Dan said with satisfaction.

“Do you know
how to bake brownies?” Mason asked Dan later when he caught him hiding out in the barn searching for recipes online on his phone.

“Not a clue.”

“Doesn’t look too hard.” Mason peered over his shoulder at the recipe Dan had pulled up. “I’m sure Regan has all the ingredients in her kitchen. She’s got everything in there.”

Dan just nodded. He was reading the recipe over again.

“What are you doing?”

“Memorizing it. If Sarah sees me following a recipe she’ll know I’ve pulled a fast one.”

“Why don’t you just ask her out? It’d be a hell of a lot simpler than whatever it is you’ve got going on.”

“Simple isn’t necessarily best.” Dan started at the beginning again.

“Yeah, but it isn’t necessarily the worst, either.”

“Do you know
what you’re doing?” Sarah asked later when she and Dan were alone in the kitchen. The others had moved into the living room where they’d broken out board games to pass the time.

“Of course.” Dan picked shards of eggshell out of his batter and wiped his fingers surreptitiously on a piece of paper towel. Sarah pretended not to see. She had noticed the hesitant way he moved about the kitchen, though, as if he didn’t spend much time cooking. Too busy going on covert missions, she suspected. Not that she’d done much cooking these past few years, either. Not a lot of time for that no matter what branch of the military you joined. She’d done a fair amount in the past, though.

“I used to work at a bakery in junior high,” she said conversationally. “Just about every afternoon after school. I came up with this recipe then—it was one of the store’s best sellers. They still carry it today.”

“Nice.” Dan was measuring out an amount of flour that seemed out of proportion to the rest of his ingredients. When he grabbed a box of cornstarch from Regan’s cupboard, Sarah only just stopped herself from intercepting him. Cornstarch in brownies? That didn’t seem right.

“We never named the prizes for this contest. What do I get when I win?” She turned back to her own batter.

“If you win, you get whatever you want. Just remember—you don’t have to make me run around the Hall to see me naked. I’ll indulge that desire any time you like.”

She wouldn’t mind indulging that desire right now, but she only said, “I’m sore from sledding yesterday. If I win, I want…” She hesitated, unable to mouth the words she’d planned. She was supposed to say she wanted him to leave her alone. Instead, she heard herself say, “… an hour massage.”

“That could be fun.”

She berated herself for continuing to embroil herself in a relationship that meant nothing to Dan. “Or maybe you should run around the Hall naked four times.”

“You don’t have much of an imagination, Metlin. Let’s stick to the massage.”

But she did have an imagination. An all-too vivid one. She could picture exactly what it would feel to have Dan’s hands all over her, rubbing oil into her sore muscles, skimming up and down her arms, legs and body. She was getting warm just thinking about it.

“If I win I want to give you a massage with a happy ending.”

She didn’t even know how to answer that, except to focus on her brownies.

She’d better win. No matter how much she ached to lose.

“Those look wonderful!”
Autumn Cruz said as she took the decorative tin full of brownies from Sarah’s hands later that evening. They’d driven over to the Cruz ranch in several vehicles, but Dan had made sure to get a seat next to Sarah. He’d taken her hand and held it during the drive, but otherwise hadn’t made a move. He knew they’d be together tonight in some form or other. It just remained to be seen how far they’d go.

He hoped to make love to Sarah, but he could be patient if he needed to be. He wanted to fully explore this relationship. All afternoon he’d watched Sarah as she baked, as she talked and laughed with Regan and the others, and as she’d stared out the windows at the distance from time to time, lost in thought. He wanted to know what she was thinking about. He wanted to know everything about her. Mason was right, it was far too soon to think about marriage, but he was beginning to think that Sarah was the woman he’d someday propose to. He wanted her to know that’s what he ultimately wanted, even if it was early days yet. He wasn’t sure she was ready to hear that, though. Somehow he needed to convince her he was for real. He’d keep challenging her to contests and doing his best to win them, but it was time for him to show her what he was really all about.

“Those look… interesting,” Autumn said to him when he handed her his own offering. He wasn’t sure about the results of his experiment. While Sarah’s brownies were a deep chocolaty brown, his were decidedly… pale. He’d added baking chocolate, so that couldn’t be it, but something was wrong.

“No one can taste those brownies yet,” Regan chimed in as she entered the Cruz guest house behind him. “We’re doing a blind taste test later one when everyone’s here to determine which recipe is best.”

“Okay, I’ll put these aside then.” Autumn moved away to do just that and Regan caught up to Dan.

“Mason says you’re getting serious about being interested in Sarah.”

“Maybe.” He wished Mason had kept his mouth shut.

“Don’t worry; I won’t tell her. I just don’t think you’re going about it in the right way, if it’s true. All this competition.” Regan shook her head. “Sarah gets that from every guy she meets. What she doesn’t get is respect.”

“I respect her.” And he’d told her that, too. From what he’d seen she was a hell of a woman besides being a hell of a soldier. He hadn’t pushed things too far, had he?

He thought about it, running through each competition in his mind. No, he hadn’t gone too far at all. She had to know he wouldn’t challenge her that way if he didn’t respect her capabilities.

He watched her laugh at something Mason had said. Tonight she looked every inch a woman in her wrap-around red dress, her curly hair framing her delicate face. He couldn’t wait to get her alone later.