Romancing the Holiday Read online

  “Yeah, I used to say that kind of nonsense, too.”

  “You’re stupid in love now. I just had sex.” Sex, yeah the word tasted funny in Spence’s mouth. What he’d shared with Lila had been uncontrolled and so damn hot his heart threatened to stop a few times. Equating it with the sex he usually had—once or twice, over and forgotten—struck him as wrong.

  Oh, he’d had great sex before. At thirty-three and living in a town where everyone knew not only your name but what you ate for dinner the night before, he usually traveled to meet women. He was lucky to find success often enough to keep him satisfied. But women rarely stayed in his head past breakfast.

  Delilah or Lila or whatever she wanted to call herself had. If he closed his eyes he could call up the softness of her skin and smell of her hair. He chalked it up to the fancy hotel and room service. The trappings made it all better somehow.

  “I’m just impressed you know the difference between sex and love.” Austin laughed. For the first time since the conversation started, the stiffness across his shoulders eased.

  “Do you care to explain any of these cryptic shots you’re taking at me?”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Austin stood up. “I’m heading back to D.C. tomorrow morning to take my lovely wife to her fancy holiday work shindig then help her pack to come back here for an extended holiday vacation at home. So, if you don’t go to Mountain View tonight, let me know and we’ll have dinner before I leave.”

  “I am not going to the campground.” Spence was adamant on that point.

  “If you say so.”

  He’d had his uncomfortable meeting-after with Lila. She’d pretended not to know him. Fine. He was a big boy. He could take it and now he could go back to forgetting her. There was no need to drive to Mountain View. None.

  And he refused to take the bait any more than he already had. “I do.”

  Austin put his hand on the doorknob. “I won’t wait up for your call.”

  Chapter Three

  Lila had almost recovered from the Austin-is-Spence reveal when she drove through the towering trees and up the long driveway to the Mountain View Resort. The bubble of hope that had been expanding inside her ever since her uncle offered this restart deflated with a resounding pffft as soon as she pulled into the clearing.

  She seriously considered turning the car around and heading straight back for Philadelphia. Sure, she didn’t have a job or any friends left, but she could sleep in the back seat under a pile of coats and hope for an unexpected December heatwave. That solution might be better than this place.

  She should have visited when she came to West Virginia three months ago. Now she knew why Uncle Ned had suggested they meet at the hotel away from here. He’d said he had an appointment with his attorney and wanted her there, but now she knew he really didn’t want her to see the campground’s current condition. Probably worried she’d be upset about him on top of everything going on with her, which was right because she would have been concerned about him.

  Of course, all those questions he’d asked over lunch also made more sense in retrospect. He’d talked about selling the campground then ran her through a bunch of questions about her ties to Philadelphia and plans for the future in light of her marital implosion. When she said she didn’t have any, he’d insisted on seeing the attorney alone, probably to secretly arrange for handing over the title to the place.

  The unexpected opening in her schedule led her to the hotel bar and to Spence and, well, she didn’t want to think about him or what happened then for even one more second.

  She focused on memories of the campground and being a kid in pigtails, running across the lawn and getting so excited for the evening campfires here. She could picture the homey cabin her uncle always reserved for her family’s visits and the special bed he’d wheel in just for her.

  Apparently Uncle Ned took all of that nice stuff with him to Florida and left behind...this. Fifteen cabins, each looking shakier than the one next door, sat in a semi-circle. If one started going there would be a domino effect ending with a big pile of wood and puff of dust. The one on the far end with the crooked number fifteen hanging off the door actually looked ready to tip all on its own. The porch post leaned, approaching a sixty-degree angle.

  Cracked windows. Holes in the walls. Broken porch steps. Overgrown shrubs. Clearly Uncle Ned needed a dictionary with a better definition of the word resort. This place looked like a crap pile.

  She sighed and rested her head against the steering wheel. She’d have to invest money to make money on the campground, and she didn’t have that much money left. Not enough to rebuild the structures and make them rentable while she struggled to create a viable business. And heaven help her if there were state or county codes and regulations for this sort of thing. She’d never pass an inspection.

  She knocked her forehead against the wheel again and sat up with a start when the horn beeped on the third thump. With any luck, that scared off whatever furry creatures were living nearby, waiting to pounce.

  A blast of frigid air smacked her in the face when she opened the door. Forcing her legs out of the car, she stood up and trudged the muddy path to the larger cabin off to the left of the others. This one had striped curtains and no obvious holes or rips in the roof. Uncle Ned had lived here up until a month ago. She hated to think about what critters might have taken up residence since. If anything slithered or bit or attacked she’d let out a scream that would bring the entire county running.

  Tires crunched on the unpaved ground behind her. She spun around in time to see a truck with the Thomas Nurseries logo take the last bend. Before she could find a weapon or bolt, and boy was she tempted to try a little woman-versus-woods thing all of a sudden, the vehicle rumbled to a stop. She thought it had wandered too far over and out of the parking lot and into the grass, but who could tell.

  The bigger problem was the driver. This wasn’t the cute young guy or the safe married one. Nope, since her luck had spun into horror territory and refused to budge from there, the driver was the lying sexy one who looked ridiculously good naked. Not that she remembered or anything.

  Showdown time.

  Spence, Austin, Ralph, Robin Hood or whatever the hell he was calling himself today jumped out of the truck and slammed the door behind him. He stalked toward her, his legs eating up the distance between them in long strides. He resembled his brother around the eyes and a little in the way they talked, but the most obvious similarity was in the confident way they moved, head up, broad shoulders back and a laserlike focus forward. It was as if they knew their place in the world and never doubted their judgment.

  She wondered what that level of assurance must feel like. Stephen had robbed her of that when he treated her like crap then dumped her before she could dump him. The moron. She wanted to blame him for everything but, really, her taste in men was atrocious. She had no idea when or how that happened. She’d had a happy childhood and what she thought was a solid marriage...until it wasn’t.

  She needed a class or something. Either that or a moratorium on men.

  “I’m not sure what to call you,” she said, hoping to knock Spence off guard before he reached for the upper hand.

  He stopped right in front of her. “That goes both ways, sweetheart.”

  “I have some ideas. Want to hear them?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, making the move look like some sort of call to war. “Look, you made your point at the nursery with the whole ‘I don’t know you thing’ and thanks for doing that in front of my brother, by the way. It will be a decade before he lets that go.”

  That part made her smile, and heaven knew she didn’t have much to smile about at the moment, including the air whipping through her cheap winter jacket. She kept moving her feet to keep from freezing solid. “Maybe if I had known you had a brother I would have been more careful.”

  “We both pretended to be someone we weren’t back in that hotel.”

  Funny but she
had felt more herself there than she had in years. “I used my real name. I just skipped the usual nickname.”

  His mouth twisted. He even let out something that sounded like a snort. “Technicality.”

  “The ‘t’ word you’re looking for is truth. Though I can see where you might not be familiar with that word, what with all the lying you seem to do.”

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “I am two seconds away from backing my car over you. The least you can do is admit you were a gigantic lying ass.”

  “Okay, fine.” He surrendered the battle stance and blew on his hands, which did nothing to keep them from turning red. “I’ll concede I wasn’t honest on the name thing.”

  For some reason she doubted she’d won anything. This guy didn’t strike her as someone who took losing all that well. “Since it’s true?”

  He shrugged. “But you have to admit Delilah sounds...”

  “What?”

  This time he tucked his hands in his jeans pockets. Even took a step back. “Like a woman who might enjoy three days in a hotel room with a stranger.”

  The fury simmering inside her exploded in every direction. Good news was it warmed her chilled blood. Bad news was it delivered a headache right behind it that pounded hard enough to muffle the rustling of the leaves and some of this annoying conversation.

  She was tired of being judged and certainly couldn’t tolerate it from someone who was an equal partner in her supposed hotel shame. “Well, Austin...oh, wait. That’s not your name, Mr. Judgy McJudgy.”

  “I didn’t...” Spence winced. “Yeah, admittedly that comment about your name may have come out wrong.”

  “You think?” She had a feeling the admission, lame as it was, wasn’t easy for him. The tic in his cheek gave that away. It also saved him from getting a kick in the shin...for now. “What were you going for?”

  “I have no idea, but the words sounded better in my head, though at the moment I’m not sure how.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Let’s agree we both enjoyed a bit of anonymity that weekend.”

  As if she’d let him off that easily. “Only if you agree you were way out of line in using your brother’s name.”

  “Austin pointed that out to me back at the nursery.”

  It was as if Spence thought that comment was enough to absolve him. Honestly, the man was clueless.

  She put a hand to her ear. “I’m still not hearing an apology.”

  “Do you expect me to get on my knees and beg?”

  Wow, did that bring back memories. Not the begging, that part was all her pleading for him to go faster, but him on his knees and her...yeah, she remembered and she was pretty sure from the satisfied look on his face that he remembered. “I am going to start the car in two seconds, so you might want to run because I don’t plan to brake.”

  Amusement danced in his eyes as he lifted one hand in what looked like some demented version of a Boy Scout pledge. “I shouldn’t have lied, or at least should have come clean by day two, and I’m sorry. Honestly, we didn’t spend a lot of time talking and by the time I got your clothes off I didn’t care what your name was, or mine, so long as we stayed in bed.”

  Despite the killer smile and sparkle that had moved into his eyes, she kept her defenses up. “And?”

  “What?”

  “I’m waiting for you to say something to annoy me.”

  “I’ve been assured that’s inevitable with my personality.” He held up just one finger now. “Just give me a second.”

  The rage left her in a whoosh. The name thing had been stupid but, act or not, the men-are-idiots self-deprecating thing he was doing worked on her. Of course, if history were any indication, most anything this guy did worked on her. She hadn’t been a screamer before him. She also hadn’t left a bar with a stranger since college. Even then she’d known the guy through friends and never let her drink out of her sight. And it was stupid but all those years later with Spence most of her defenses had fallen again.

  Out of nowhere, the strangeness of the situation hit her. “What are the chances of us being at the same hotel at the same time then ending up here?”

  “Probably pretty good. There aren’t exactly a lot of nice hotels around here.” He rocked back on his heels. “Why were you there that day?”

  “Meeting with Uncle Ned. Apparently he was auditioning me for taking over and I unwittingly said I’d love to be a part of the campground and that it should stay open. Sight unseen, which appears to have been a great plan on my part.” The sign on cabin fifteen picked that moment to crash to the porch. Spence’s eyes widened. “You didn’t come over and check out the resort first?”

  “We all need to stop calling this...” she swept her arm in a wide arc across the overgrown landscape, “...a resort. I’ve been to resorts and they aren’t this.”

  He chuckled. “Good point.”

  “I’m not sure transients would stay here in this condition. It sure didn’t look like this when I was last here.”

  “When was that?”

  “More than a decade ago. Probably more than fifteen.”

  He blew on his bare hands again. “Any chance we could go inside and finish this conversation?”

  The last time she combined a small space with Spence the result was horizontal mattress time. Still, she was starting to lose feeling in her big toe. And in the glass-half-full department, if there was a critter behind the door, maybe Spence could annoy it enough to make it leave.

  “Sure.” She turned back to the cabin. Rather than engaging in a bit of comfortable silence as they walked, she picked a question at random from the long list she wanted to ask him. “So, why did you end up at the hotel on that weekend?”

  “I needed to get away.”

  She didn’t realize he’d finished his explanation until she was left listening to the wind as it tunneled around the cabins and whistled past her. She paused in her steps. “That’s it? You’re done with your answer?”

  “Yep.”

  He clearly thought the past was off limits and they were moving on. She disagreed. “That’s not really an explanation.”

  “I already apologized.”

  “You’re such a guy.” A red light flashed in her brain. She ignored the snap that came after the creak when she put her foot on the first step to the cabin and turned on him. “Oh, man. Please tell me you aren’t hiding a wife and ten kids or something. Because, honestly, I will hit you with a rock and bury your body in the woods if you made me the other woman in your marriage.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s the third threat of violence in ten minutes.”

  It was her turn to hold up a finger. “Put one woman on my jury and I walk.”

  He blinked a few times. “It’s a little disturbing how easily these attack plans come to your head.”

  Little did he realize that one was G-rated. She wondered what he’d think if he heard the really bad ones. “I’ve been working on it since Austin informed me he was Austin and you weren’t.”

  Spence held up a palm as if making a solemn pledge, this one much more convincing than the apology. “For the record, no wife or kids or anyone else you’d need to commit homicide over.”

  A sharp crack, as if a tree fell somewhere close on the property, echoed around them but she kept her attention on Spencer. This was too important not to nail down. “Really?”

  “Promise.”

  She was annoyed at how light and giggly that information made her. “Then you get to live.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that.” Testing his weight before planting his foot, he made it to the cabin door without falling through the rotted porch wood. “Tell me about your plan for this place.”

  She welcomed the conversation diversion. It was easier than dwelling on the whole him-being-single thing. Her stomach continued to tumble at that admission. It was hunger. Had to be.

  “I guess setting the buildings on fire to collect the insurance money would be too obvious,” she said, only half ki
dding.

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Something thudded in the distance. Something that sounded suspiciously like the collapse of a roof. His gaze moved behind her for a second then returned to her. He made a face as air hissed through his teeth. “But maybe not.”

  She froze with the key halfway to the lock. “I refuse to look and see, but tell me this much, are all the cabins still standing behind me?”

  He glanced over her shoulder again. This time his eyes narrowed. “Define standing.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She bit back the groan rumbling up her throat and fighting to get out. “Then my only other choice is to fix up the place and try to catch part of ski season and be at full speed in time for the hikers and climbers to arrive in the spring.”

  “Are you handy?”

  She was lucky if she got through the day without dropping anything. Some might use the word clumsy. She preferred distracted. “I can recognize a hammer in a tool line-up.”

  “That doesn’t really inspire confidence.”

  She’d forgotten how laughter danced in his eyes, about how much she wanted to trace her finger over that strong jawline when they stood this close. She cleared her throat. “My life is currently spinning out of control, and you are part of that, in case you’re wondering, so my only goal is to hang on and not throw up.”

  “I say we do everything to make sure you keep that goal.” He took the cabin key from her.

  At the touch of his hand against hers, heat flushed through her skin and made her head spin. Whatever energy arced between them at the hotel still had some life left in it. She vowed right then to keep her clothes on and her hands to herself whenever he was around.

  The lock clicked and he pushed the door open. They both stood at the threshold and peeked inside. The silence ticked on as she shut her eyes and opened them again. Nope, still a dump. Actually, that was disrespectful to dumps. This place hoped to one day be nice enough to be considered a dump.

  A steady plopping sound vibrated through her. “What is that noise?”