She was inexplicably drawn to the master bedroom, though she had no real reason to go there. It was the sight of a couple of suitcases open on the floor, filled with clothing, that saddened her so deeply she felt a small ache in her heart. Oh, she was going to miss him so much! Disappointment filled her—she had looked forward to an hour or two of cuddling before she had to give him up for his ten-day adventure. Now it was probably not to be.

Suck it up, Annie, she said to herself. And with that, she shucked her jacket and went to make sure the puppies were taken care of. “Well, my little loves,” she said to the box of squirming, jumping, yelping, vibrating puppies. “Ew,” she said, taking a sniff. “Time for a refresh, I see.” And she set about the task of giving her little charges clean fur and dry bedding. “Yeah, you’re ready for new homes. You have to be about six weeks by now. Close enough, as far as I’m concerned.”

Her puppy chores didn’t take long. She wandered into the family room and sat on that comfy sofa. That lonely sofa. She hated to leave prematurely; she wanted to give him time to get home, to catch up with her. As she looked around the family room, it seemed so barren. At least compared to the farmhouse, which was full to the brim with food, decorations, people, laughter and happiness.

She turned on the fire to make it more welcoming for him, and then on a whim she went to the garage and looked through the storage cabinets that lined the walls of the three-port garage. She smiled to herself. Nathaniel’s mother had certainly made it easy. One entire cabinet held boxes that were neatly labeled. She skipped the one that said “ornaments” but opened another. And another. And another.

She really only meant to bring a touch of Christmas into the house for Nate, even if it was only for one night, or just an early morning. First was a centerpiece for that long, oak kitchen table, then a couple of fat, glittery candles on a bed of artificial holly, which she put on the coffee table. She thought if she were decorating this house for real, there would be lots of fresh stuff and the smell of pine. And the aroma of hot chocolate and cookies.

She put her jacket on to go back into the garage and soon she had a garland for the mantel, stockings and brass stocking holders, and three-foot-tall nutcracker characters for a grouping in the corner. She found a large basket of red ceramic apples mixed with huge pinecones, a poinsettia with little twinkling lights. That gave her another idea, and she found some tiny tree lights in a box, which she brought in and used to adorn the house plants—a couple of tall ficus trees and a couple of lush philodendron and ivy. She tied thick, red velvet bows to the backs of the kitchen chairs.

A box labeled “Christmas dishes” was just too much to resist. Inside were some festive plates and cups. So she turned on the oven and poked around in the pantry, laughing to herself. Hadn’t she said she wouldn’t poke around? Well, Nathaniel obviously didn’t do a lot of baking, and who knew how long that canister of flour had been there? And the brown sugar was like a brick. But he did have butter, sugar and M&M’s. It took only thirty minutes to produce a plate of pseudo chocolate-chip cookies. She found chocolate-milk mix and fixed up a couple of cups with spoons in them, ready for filling. It was probably in her DNA—she covered the festive plate of cookies with plastic wrap.

“Christmas for a day,” she said to herself, pleased.

She made sure all the boxes were stowed in the garage. Then she looked at the clock. Almost eleven, and she had to get up early for work. But it didn’t take her a second to make her decision—a girl doesn’t find a quality boyfriend every day. She turned down some lights in the house, took off her boots, reclined on the sofa in front of the fire with the throw over her legs and promptly fell asleep.

Six

Nate was was physically tired and emotionally drained. By the time he reached the Bledsoe stables, the mare had miscarried a five-month foal and she was skittish. Frantic might be a better word. Indication was that the horse was sick, the cause of the miscarriage, though Nate had checked her over before she was bred and she’d been in good shape. Because he wasn’t going to be around to follow up, he had called Dr. Conner, the Eureka vet. He tranquilized the mare to calm her, administered antibiotics, made sure the placenta was whole, and then transported the products of conception to Eureka so that Dr. Conner could follow up with a postmortem to try to determine the cause. Conner would probably choose to do an endometrial biopsy. Other horses in the stable would have to be examined immediately; Bledsoe had six breeding at the moment.

But that was not the hardest part. Not only was the mare valuable and the stud a champion, the owners’ teenage daughter had raised this horse from a filly and it was her first foal. The girl was as distraught as the horse, and terrified her mare was going to die.

She wasn’t going to die, but the jury was still out on whether she was a good broodmare. Some mystery problem or illness had taken its toll and caused her to drop the foal and suffer a considerable amount of bleeding. Time and follow-up would tell the story. But when Nate left the family, quite late at night, it looked as though the teenage girl was going to sleep in the stable with her horse.

Now that was something he could see Annie doing.

And to speak of the devil herself, when he pulled up to his house, it was dimly lit from inside and her truck was parked out front. The clock on the car console said two-fifteen. Lord, what was she doing? Half of him was so grateful he could burst, the other half wanted to spank her for staying up so late—he knew she had a long day in the shop ahead of her so that she could be closed the afternoon of the twenty-fourth and all day the twenty-fifth.

Annie, he had learned, was not afraid of hard work.

He entered the dimly lit house quietly. His first reaction was surprise, but pleasure quickly followed. On the breakfast bar a thick red candle flickered beside a plate of cookies and a couple of cups. There was chocolate powder in the cups, ready for hot milk to be added. Bows on the chairs, garlands strung around, table decorations, twinkling lights everywhere, and his girl, asleep in front of a fire. He chuckled to himself. Well, hadn’t she been busy.

It was like really coming home. Holidays meant a lot to her. Her sense of love and family spilled over to everyone around her, and he felt so…embraced inside, like it was his first Christmas. He smiled to himself. In an important way, it was.

He took off his boots, belt and jacket in the kitchen. He blew out candles, turned off all but the twinkling tree lights and fireplace, and knelt down by the sofa, softly kissing her beautiful lips.

“Mmm,” she murmured, half waking. “You’re home. I must’ve fallen asleep.”

“You were probably exhausted, digging through the storage,” he said with humor in his voice.

“I’ll put it all away before you get back,” she whispered. “I should go, now you’re home….”

“Are you crazy?” he asked. He slipped one arm under her knees, the other behind her back and stood with her in his arms. “We’re going to get some sleep. It’s almost morning, anyway. And this couch isn’t going to do it. I want to hold you. I want to fall asleep with you in my arms. Now close your eyes and your mouth.”

She hummed and snuggled closer to him. “Everything all right? With the mare?” she asked.

“It’ll get sorted out. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.” He carried her to his bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. “Do you need the alarm?” he asked her. “I can set it for you.”

“Nah. I haven’t slept past seven in my life.”

“Good,” he said. He pulled back the comforter and crawled in, jeans and all, and she did the same. “Come close,” he said. “All I want in life is to feel you against me. Mmm, just like that. Aaah, Annie, my Annie…”

Suddenly he knew that even as exhausted as he was, he wasn’t going to sleep. He had a stunning thought—this is what it feels like when you actually fall in love. He’d thought that whole falling-in-love thing was some girl story that guys didn’t experience. He was familiar with being attracted. Oh-ho, was he familiar with that! And of course he had known desire in all sizes, from warm to boiling. Wanting a woman, yes, that was a fairly regular occurrence. But this was all those things mixed together and yet something completely different at the same time.

He wanted to be only with Annie; if he were allowed one friend for the rest of his life, he would choose her. He wanted to come home to the kind of warmth she could bring to a room. He wanted to crawl in beside her and feel the comfort of her body, which fit so perfectly against his. He didn’t want to be away from her; he wanted her for life.

He began unbuttoning her blouse. In spite of the fact that she seemed to be asleep, he was undressing her, knowing he shouldn’t. But then he felt her fingers working away at his shirt buttons and he sprang to life, hard and ready. His hands went to the snap on her jeans while hers worked at his. Like choreography, they were slipping each other’s jeans down and off and he pulled her hard against him, his shorts to her dainties. “God,” he said. “God, God, God.”

She pulled away just enough to shrug out of her shirt and remove her socks. She left the panties for Nate to handle, which he did immediately. “Let me have these,” he said, clutching them in his fist. “Let me keep these for the rest of my life. Can I?”

She laughed at him and tugged down his boxers. “Sure,” she whispered against his lips. “And you can keep your underwear.”

He moaned as if in pain, his hand finding a breast. “Why are you wearing a bra?” he asked.

“Because you’ve been undressing me for five seconds and haven’t gotten to that yet?” she returned. She unsnapped the clasp and it fell apart, just in time for his lips on her breast. He rolled on top of her, probing. “Condom,” she whispered. “Condom, Nate.”

“Right,” he said. “Got it.” And he leaped out of bed, raced unceremoniously to the master bath, running back to the king-size bed with a packet in his hand, ripping it open as he went. He flopped on the bed and pulled her close. Then he froze. All motion stopped. Their thighs were pressed together, their lips straining toward each other, their hands pulling their bodies closer, and he said, “Annie? Are you ready for this?”

She didn’t say anything and he couldn’t see her face in the darkness of the room. She took his hand and captured the foil packet. She pulled his hand down between her legs where his fingers could answer his question.

He moved his hand up her inner thigh, opened her legs a bit, caressed her wonderfully wet folds. “Aaah,” he said once more against her lips.

“Ready,” she whispered. “Ready.” And then she applied the protection.

“You know what, Annie?” he said. “Coming home to you, making love to you, it feels like the one thing I’ve always been ready for.”

“Then let’s not waste any more time,” she said.

He fell asleep while still inside her, holding her close. Sometime in the night, they roused just enough to make love again. When he awoke in the morning, he was alone. There was a little puppy, whimpering, faint and distant.

He found her note in the kitchen:

Nate—you were so tired, you slept through puppy breakfast, which was noisy. I decided you should sleep. I want you to have the most wonderful time of your life on your trip. I’ll take care of everything while you’re gone and I’ll put away the decorations. And thank you for last night. It was perfect. Love, Annie

He picked up the note and read it again and again. “It’s awful hard to leave you, Annie,” he whispered. “Especially at Christmas.”

Nathaniel booked his flights to coordinate with the rest of the group—they were all meeting for breakfast in Miami. From there they would fly together to Nassau. He had to take a commuter from Santa Rosa to San Francisco. That meant a two-hour drive south to pick up the first leg of his trip. From San Francisco he would take a nonstop red-eye to Miami. He would be there in early morning. He’d have breakfast in the airport with his old gang. It brought to mind the breakfasts they’d had together after all-night study sessions, right before a big exam. Then they’d get to the Bahamas early in the day to begin their ten-day vacation.