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Chapter
One
“Hold on to your big-girl panties,
Luce—Sully Jax is back in town.”
Silence slammed
into the usually bustling kitchen of Pauline’s Praline Sweet Shoppe. Only the
Christmas music playing overhead convinced Lucy Crabtree she hadn’t gone stone-deaf
before she resumed beating a batch of cream cheese frosting into submission. Three
sets of eyes zeroed in on her as she stood at the kitchen’s stainless steel
workstation. Or at least she assumed they did. She was too busy making sure the
now-ragged cloak of composure she’d been hiding under for a year covered her
wounds.
“Lucy, honey.” The
motherly voice of Pauline Padgett, the shop’s owner, came from the opposite
side of the workstation. She looked ready to run to Lucy, despite being
elbow-deep in spice cupcakes and having her gout-riddled feet propped up on a
milk crate. “Did you hear Celia?”
“I don’t like
the quality of powdered sugar we’re getting from our supplier lately.” Lucy
lifted the spatula from the bowl of creamy sweetness to give it a critical
once-over. “I get clumps no matter how many times I sift it. It didn’t used to
do that.”
Pauline’s
husband, Willard, a Santa Claus look-alike if there ever was one, seemed to
forget he was supposed to be taking the latest trays of spice cupcakes out of
the oven. “Lucy love—”
“I’m fine.” At
last she raised her face, hoping they saw only calm. She was more numb than
calm, but they didn’t need to know that. “Sullivan’s dad called yesterday to
let me know his son was back, fresh from the final round of rehab they had him
do at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Since he’s still not a hundred
percent he has to be supervised, so he’ll be staying on his father’s property
for a while. Hate to say it, Celia,” she added to the worried teenage beauty in
the doorway, “but you’re behind the times.”
“No fair. You
had inside information.” With a sigh of relief, Celia Villarreal ventured in,
her cheerleader’s bow tied around her ponytail. “Are you okay, Luce?”
“No, I’m
devastated. Like, beyond repair. Any second now my flood of salty tears will
ruin this batch of frosting.” She held out the spatula. “How does it taste, by the
way? Pre-tears, I mean.”
“How can you
wave all those yummy empty calories right under my dieting nose? Though, I
suppose I can always run a few extra laps…”
“You shouldn’t
be dieting at all,” Lucy admonished as the teen scrounged for a spoon. “Hold
your head high and be proud of the person you are.”
“It was nice of
Lowell Jax to call you.” At last, Willard remembered to rescue the latest batch
of cupcakes from an incendiary death. “I’m sure he understood it’d be a shock if
you were to bump into Sully walking down the street. He’s always been a good
guy.”
“If Lowell was
such a good guy,” Pauline inserted, lips pursed as she expertly capped a
cupcake with a swirly mountain of rich cream cheese goodness, “he’d have done
the right thing and invited Lucy over to help welcome Sully home.”
“He did.”
Again, the
silence. Inwardly Lucy cussed a blue streak and wondered how much longer she’d have
to endure things like awkward silences.
“And you didn’t
go over?” Celia, licking the spoon she’d loaded with frosting, stared at Lucy
with huge eyes. “That is so…awesome. I’d
totally do the same thing. I mean, he’s the one who hit the eject button. Why
give him a minute of your time just because he’s a war hero?”
“That’ll do,
Celia.” Pauline gave the girl a hard stare. “I can’t tell if you’re here to
work or gossip. You get paid for one, but not the other. Which is it going to
be today, dear?”
Celia let out a
put-upon groan that only teenagers could get away with, and shuffled off to the
mudroom the workers used as a locker room.
“Tying her apron
on should give us at least fifteen minutes of privacy. Now.” Pauline turned her
scalpel-sharp attention to Lucy. “As much as it shocks me to say it, I agree
with Celia. I can understand why you decided not to force a meeting with Sully.
But Bitterthorn is a small town, and everybody knows everyone. No matter how
hard you try to avoid it, eventually you and Sully are going to bump into each
other. What are you going to do then?”
Lucy kept
beating the frosting to work out the nonexistent clumps and wished—not for the
first time—that she hadn’t dug in her heels and settled back in Bitterthorn. If
only she’d known how things would turn out when she’d made that decision. Now
she was stuck. If she left the moment Sully Jax breezed back into town, it
would look like she was running scared.
She’d be damned
if she started running now.
“I’ve given it
some thought, Pauline.” Translation, I
didn’t sleep at all last night. “There’s no reason for it to be awkward.”
“You don’t think
so?”
“Not at all. You’re
acting like it’s going to be the first time for us to meet since Sullivan got
injured, but I’ve seen him plenty of times since he returned to the States. I
spent all of last winter with him at Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood during
the early stages of recovery.” Never mind the fact that it had been a nightmare
filled with Sully’s screams.
Pauline waved a
hand. “He was still recovering then. That hardly counts.”
“And I saw him
again in July when the divorce was finalized.” She’d been dying by inches ever
since, but again, no one needed to know that. “Sullivan knows I live here. I
know he lives here. There’s no reason why it should be weird.”
Pauline and
Willard exchanged worried glances. “If you say so.”
“I do.” With a serene
expression firmly in place, Lucy was certain no one could hear her screaming
inside.
The remainder of
Lucy’s shift was a self-induced nightmare. Her responsibilities at Pauline’s as
head baker kept her locked in the back, but she could still hear the front bell
sound whenever a customer pushed through the front door. Without fail, every
time the chime sounded, her heart froze. She held her breath, her ears going
into bionic mode, waiting to hear the male voice she still dreamed about. But it
was never Sullivan. War hero. Childhood sweetheart. Center of her universe.
Ex-husband.
For a year now,
she’d been without her other half. A year of half life. Or half death. Logically
she knew there were many other families who had suffered the loss of so much
more. If any one of those families knew her unusual circumstances, they’d
probably switch with her in a minute. She should be grateful. And she was. After
all, her hopes and prayers had been answered, technically speaking. The only
thing she’d prayed for was for Sully to come back alive.
She should have
been more specific.
More than a
dozen customers—none of them Sully—had come to Pauline’s by closing time. Some
actually had legitimate orders, with Christmas a little over a week away. But
others had dropped by in the obvious hope of seeing her reaction now that Sully
was back in Bitterthorn. She knew the type. They were the vultures who slowed
to a crawl to rubberneck at a bad accident. When she was a kid with a mother
who’d done a runner and a father who eventually drank himself into the grave,
those same gawkers had stared as well. It was as if they knew ketchup
sandwiches were the only things keeping her from starvation.
Yeah. She could
spot that type a mile away.
There was only
one surefire way to get rid of them. Give them nothing. Nothing to look at,
nothing to cluck over in their self-righteous way. Nothing to gossip about. Boredom
set in if there was no observable trauma, so that’s exactly what Lucy gave
them. Nothing.
A frigid wind hit
when she stepped out onto the sidewalk fronting Pauline’s, and she tightened the
scarf in her favorite color—a brilliant red—around her neck. The only time it
had ever snowed in the South Texas town of Bitterthorn had been before she was
born. According to those who’d lived through it, a single inch of the white
stuff had brought the town to a shell-shocked standstill. It definitely felt
cold enough for it now, and it got her moving toward her loft apartment over
Lefty’s garage a couple of blocks away, a convenient space she’d been living in
since summer.
Coe Rodas ran
Lefty’s now, a former stock car driver, mechanical genius and, in another
lifetime, her long-ago babysitter. Lucy and Coe had managed to survive growing
up on the wrong side of Bitterthorn’s tracks, and they’d looked out for each other
since day one. It had been Coe who had given her away when she’d married Sully,
just as it had been Coe’s shoulder she’d sobbed on when she’d made the painful
decision to give Sully the divorce he’d asked for. Outside of Pauline and
Willard Padgett, Coe was the closest thing she had to family.
As she rushed
past the post office crammed with people trying to mail off Christmas packages,
the Open sign got flipped to Closed. Lefty’s was on the corner past Mabel’s
Diner, from which delicious aromas from a bustling dinner rush emanated. Through
the gloom she could see Coe’s familiar form waiting on the sidewalk, shoulders
hunched against the cold. She smiled, her chin lifting as she waved when a gust
of wind slammed into her like an invisible wall. Her scarf smacked her in the
face on its way off her neck, and with a squeak she grabbed at it. She wasn’t
fast enough, and had to hurry after it as it somersaulted like a living thing
down the sidewalk. A booted foot came out from the direction of Mabel’s recessed
doorway, stomping on the brilliant scrap of material a scant moment before she
crashed into the body that belonged to it.
“Sorry!” Horrified,
she grabbed at the person before they could both fall. Her gloved hands gripped
lean hips, with one almost completely cupping a firm butt cheek.
Oh,
good God.
Hastily she
jumped back, not sure if she should snatch up the scarf and run for it, or dive
into the mortification pool and acknowledge the inappropriate grope. Maybe if
she made a joke… Hey, was that as good
for you as it was for me? It could work, as long as it wasn’t Father Fabian.
Crap, if she’d just inadvertently copped a feel of the town’s sixty-something
parish priest, she’d freaking die right there.
Breathless, Lucy
looked up into evergreen eyes hooded by dark brown brows, and discovered that agony
could cause sudden paralysis.
Sullivan.
Face tingling from
the cold, Sully worked to get his tongue unglued from the roof of his mouth. Damn. Had that been her hand on his ass?
Hell yes, it most definitely had been. He could still feel each individual
finger digging into the flesh as if the nerves there were now branded. Not
surprising, really. A man would have to be dead not to appreciate a good-looking
woman’s hand gripping his butt cheek as if conducting a squeeze-test for
ripeness.
Even if that
woman was his ex-wife.
Sully’s brain
shied away from the unfamiliar term. To cover the reaction, he retrieved the
scarf and braced himself against the wall when the expected wave of vertigo hit.
Going upside down without his cane to help keep his balance probably wasn’t the
smartest thing to do, but he’d had it with that damn stick. He was sick of
being an invalid. “I saw this slip its knot as you walked by. I had a feeling
it was going to make a break for it.” He held out the bright strip of material
as the last of the dizzies abated. “It’s good to see you, Lucy.”
“Hi.” Her gaze
never wavered as she reclaimed her property. No doubt about it, her eyes were
just about the prettiest he’d ever seen. Blue like the summer sky without so
much as a fleck of gray or green to dim their clarity. They were widely spaced
and framed with thick fans of black lashes, far darker than her toffee-colored
hair now pulled back from a sculpted, oval face. The cold had touched her
cheeks with pink, but the rest seemed as pale as winter frost.
He’d known their
first meeting would be weird. That was why he’d made the decision to get it
over with the moment Lucy had appeared outside the diner’s picture window. No,
that wasn’t quite accurate. As she’d rushed by, she’d suddenly smiled with such
brilliance it had jolted him out of the booth before he’d given it a thought. He
couldn’t remember Lucy ever smiling at him like that.
Then again, that
didn’t mean much.
“So.” Shit, this
was awkward. Maybe there was some greeting card for a situation like this. “Heading
home from work?”
“Work? You mean
that madhouse that keeps me chained to an oven all day?”
Sully grinned.
One thing he’d noticed about Lucy—she was never at a loss for words. “Yeah,
that.”
“Pauline’s is
like an acid-trippy three-ring circus during the holiday season, so I’m lucky
if I can get out of there on time. I’m probably going to dream about being
buried in cupcakes tonight.”
“I can think of
worse dreams.”
“Believe me, so
can I.” There didn’t seem to be any gas left in that conversation, so she
busied herself with retying the scarf, this time tucking the ends into her
jacket collar. “How about you? Any plans now that you’ve received your honorable
discharge? Your dad updated me,” she added when he gave her a searching look. “Congrats,
by the way. If I had confetti I’d toss it at you.”
“Thank heaven
for small favors. And as of the New Year I’ll be doing what I do best—writing
code for a computer security group that my old XO started up when he went into
the private sector.”
Those sky eyes
lit up. “That’s great, Sullivan. Sounds like you’re not going to have any
trouble settling into civilian life.”
“At the moment
it doesn’t seem that easy. I just had an hour-long battle at the post office, mailing
off presents to the family of my best friend who was killed in action last
year. I made a promise I’d do what I could for them during the holidays, so…” He
shrugged, not sure why he felt the need to share that with her. Maybe he was
babbling. “The post office is crazy this time of year.”
“Two words for
you next year. Gift. Cards.”
He groaned. “Why
didn’t I talk to you before I acted?”
Something in her
expression flinched, as if she’d been poked with something sharp. “Well, now. There’s
one helluva question if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.” She touched
her scarf and offered him a tight smile that looked nothing like the real
McCoy. “Thanks for catching this for me. Hope I didn’t hurt you when I full-on
body-tackled you.”
“A Ranger’s
tougher than that.” Except for the fingerprints he could feel burned onto his
ass, he’d already forgotten about it. “That’s a good color on you.”
“You know me and
red—my favorite color in the universe.” Then she bit her lips together, hard enough
to turn them white. “Sorry. I, uh…I like red.”
“Right.” This
was a bad idea, he thought, stepping back on the excuse of not blocking the sidewalk
when someone approached. But the real reason was simple—he didn’t want to be in
this conversation anymore. She wasn’t a part of his life, so it was a mystery
why he’d found himself running to intercept her. Maybe it had been a good idea to
get their first face-to-face meeting out of the way, but forcing something that
wasn’t there was worse than pointless. It was painful. He was so sick of things
that were painful. Simplicity was what he needed now. And simple wasn’t Lucy…Lucy…
His hands curled
into frustrated fists when he came up empty. That blankness meant failure, and
that was one thing the Ranger in him couldn’t accept.
“You’re not
still going by Jax, are you?”
“No.” She gave
him a veiled look. “You suggested that, to put all this behind us, I should
take back my maiden name. I did.”
“Ah. Good.”
As she turned
away she muttered something under her breath that sounded like, nice. “I’d better be going.”
As the vision of
her back filled his view, a jolt went through him. A strange, frantic feeling
he couldn’t control, while the diner door opened behind him. “Wait. Now you’re
Lucy…?”
“Crabtree. Good—”
“Lucy!” His
father, Lowell, hustled from the diner to sweep Lucy in a hug that took her off
her feet. “How’s my queen of sweets? Since you moved out I never hear from you.
Where’ve you been hiding?”
Sully winced at
the lack of subtlety. Apparently while he’d been deployed, Lucy had stayed in
the garage apartment on his father’s property, the same apartment where Sully
now lived. From the moment Sully had walked through that apartment’s door he’d
suffered an intense hatred of the place, when he usually didn’t give a crap about
his surroundings. It just didn’t feel
like home. No place did. He wasn’t even sure what home was supposed to feel like. All he knew was that the apartment
wasn’t it.
“Lowell.” Lucy’s
voice was muffled against his father’s shoulder as she was dumped back on her
feet. “I haven’t been hiding, I’ve been working at Pauline’s and getting the
loft transformed from a dirty storage space to a shiny new home.”
“Everyone knows
Lucy’s the busiest person in Bitterthorn this time of year, even without having
to sink new roots.”
The unfamiliar
baritone snapped Sully’s attention to the man he’d seen approaching. The guy
was a rough piece of work—unshaven, silver hoops gleaming in his ears, his dark
hair pulled back in a ponytail. The new arrival’s attention glanced off him as
though he’d sized Sully up as unimportant before he bestowed a thousand-watt
grin on Lucy. “If she’s not under Pauline’s whip, she’s filling Pfeffernüsse orders on the
side. It’s almost embarrassing, how my garage smells like Mrs. Claus’s
kitchen.”
“Oh, Pfeffernüsse.” Lowell made a sound of swoony yearning. “Lucy,
is it too late for me to sneak an order in? You know I can’t resist anything
you bake, but your secret recipe is something I look forward to every year.”
She patted his father’s cheek, showing a familiarity that made
Sully feel more like an outsider than ever. “For you, Lowell, anything.”
“Pfeffernüsse?” That edgy sense
of failure growled to life while the foreign-sounding word whispered in his
head. “What’s that?”
Silence—that awkward, something’s-not-quite-right silence he
should be used to by now—froze them in place before Lucy shrugged. “It’s a
traditional German-Dutch cookie, usually made during the holidays. The recipe I
use has been handed down from generation to generation for at least two hundred
years. Not even Pauline has been able to coax the recipe out of me.”
“Sounds good. I’ve been craving cookies lately.”
The man with the ponytail glanced his way. “So, Lieutenant Jax. I
hear the mayor’s made you the guest of honor at the Christmas Ball, to celebrate
the return of Bitterthorn’s big Silver Star war hero.”
Sully would have to be deaf to not hear the mockery. “Who are
you?”
“Coe Rodas. Name ring any bells, Lieutenant?”
“Coe.” The admonition
came from Lucy, and the white-hot fire behind the tone jerked his attention
back to her. Strange, she’d never shown any fire around him before now.
Funny thing about fire. He’d always had a crazy kind of thing
for it.
The tough guy, Coe, seemed to recognize all that heat meant
danger, and backed down like an obedient puppy. “My apologies, Luce. I didn’t
mean to mess with someone who’s, you know…fragile.”
Sully’s teeth snapped together. “I went through sixty-one days
of hell in Ranger School, renowned as the toughest combat training course in
the world, where on average nearly half the class washes out the first week
alone. I did it because I wanted to become a part of the army’s most elite
infantry, just to see if I was strong enough mentally and physically to handle
it. My battalion specialized in personnel extraction behind enemy lines, and we
never failed in retrieving our target. We could be deployed anywhere in the
world in eighteen hours flat, whether it was desert, jungle, urban or mountainous—we
trained for it all. I know more ways to kill you than you can probably count,
so the one thing I’m not is fragile. And
I may not have everything straight in my head, but I’d be willing to bet you
and I always had a real goddamn problem occupying the same area. Am I right?”
“Pretty much.” But instead of going toe to toe with him like he
wanted, Coe once again looked to Lucy with those puppy-dog eyes. It took all of
Sully’s strength not to rip his fucking head off. “But that’s ancient history. The
present and future are all that matter now.”
The phrase sounded so much like what he’d told Lucy when he’d pushed
for a divorce—a merciful act to free them from an unwanted obligation—that he
glanced her way. For her part, she glared at Coe as if she believed she could
fry him with a look alone.
No thought could have pleased him more.
“It’s great to see you looking so healthy, Sullivan.” With a
curt nod in his direction, Lucy turned away. “Welcome home.”
***
Sound like something you might be interested in
reading? Here’s the blurb:
Christmas
is the perfect time to start from scratch
Lieutenant Sully Jax saved his unit during an IED attack, but he couldn't save
his marriage. He can't even remember it. Recovered from his injuries, he's come
home to the family and friends he knows—and an ex-wife who's a stranger to him.
Lucy Crabtree was heartbroken last Christmas when Sully announced his plan to
go on one last tour of duty, and devastated when he asked for a divorce after
he awoke in the hospital with no memory of her. She's finally moving on from
her hurt and from losing the man she loved more than anything, and her
cookie-baking business is taking off just in time for the holidays. But now
Sully's back, and she can't deny she still loves him. But how can she trust her
heart to someone who breaks it every time she sees him?
Sully might not remember Lucy, but something inside won't let her go. With
every bite of her cookies, he finds a new love for Lucy, and he soon realizes
he wants to rebuild his life… with her by his side.
36,000 words
***
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