To Santa With Love Read online

“Not going to happen.” Choya shook his head firmly. “Not with her.”

  “Why not?”

  He searched his mind for a solid reason that would satisfy Mrs. Chase and came up with a sketchy one. “She doesn’t look where she’s going, for one thing. And furthermore—”

  “Choya! Anybody can have an accident and that jeep of yours is irrefutable proof.”

  He gave her a half smile, beginning to enjoy the verbal sparring match. “And isn’t that all the more reason I need a woman with a good head on her shoulders? When I get around to dating again, I’ll let you know. It’s not a priority.”

  “Oh, please,” Mrs. Chase scoffed. “You sound older than Sam sometimes. How can you let a girl like that get away?”

  Choya gave a slight cough. “What do you want me to do, hold her prisoner? I will admit I like looking at Jacquie Grey but I don’t need any more aggravation in my life.”

  “You’re awfully judgmental. I have half a mind to fix you up with my cousin’s niece. Bertha is as sensible as they come and not too much older than you—”

  He held up a hand to stop her from saying more. “Thanks but no thanks.”

  “But—well, you know best, Choya.” Mrs. Chase gave a resigned shrug and peered out the window again. “Look at her, sitting on the stairs waiting for you. She’s alone too.” She shook her head sadly. “What a shame.”

  Choya only shrugged, to her evident dismay.

  Mrs. Chase fixed him with a steely look. “You can’t just drop her off here and head back to the ranch. Do the right thing in every situation. I always told you that,” Mrs. Chase said firmly.

  “And I always tried to live up to it. But this situation is—kind of sudden. I’m doing what I can.”

  “Hm. We’ll see about that. First things first: you stay on Brad about fixing that car. Once he gets to tinkering with those old engines, he forgets everything else.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, go holler at Robbie to get back in here,” she sighed. “And when you get back home, tell Sam I said hello, y’hear?”

  “I will.” Choya pushed the door open and gestured to Robbie to come inside again. His son didn’t need any persuading. The door of the jeep swung open and the little boy half-swung, half-scooted back toward the motel’s front office, an old Ranger Rick magazine curled around the side bar of one crutch.

  “I gotta show this to Mrs. Chase,” he said to his father. “It has a picture of baby armadillos!”

  “You do that. Sorry, Jacquie,” Choya called to her. “I’m coming.”

  Jacquie stretched and stood up, feeling a little stiff from sitting on the concrete stairs. She looked Choya’s way to make sure he hadn’t forgotten her overnight bag. The sunglasses had been removed in the relative dimness of the front office after the glare of outside and were tucked in his shirt pocket. But the tawny cat eyes told her no more of the reason he’d stopped to talk to the motel owner than his expression did.

  She assumed they’d known each other for years, like everyone else in Tombstone. Absently, she wondered how long a person had to live here to not be thought of as an outsider. Decades, most likely.

  Unlocking the motel room door, she swung it open to let him enter first. Without a word he stepped by her into the room, flicking on the switch for the overhead light and setting her bag in an armchair. Jacquie started to follow him into the room. She bent her head to hide the smile that swept across her face as she suddenly wondered what he would do if she handed him a tip for carrying the bag. He wouldn’t find it amusing, that was for sure.

  The open toe of her sandal hooked the edge of the throw rug inside the door. She was thrown forward, handbag and cosmetic bag dropped as her arms reached out to break her fall.

  But the expected sprawl onto the floor never happened. With the reflex action of someone accustomed to reacting swiftly, Choya Barnett stepped forward, catching her before she ended up in a heap. One minute Jacquie was falling forward and in the next an iron band was around her waist, abruptly checking her movement and drawing her upright in one motion. He held her as if she weighed nothing, easily but with strength.

  “Oof!” Gasping her surprise at the tumble she hadn’t taken, she felt her heart start beating again. Her hands were resting weakly against a hard wall. With difficulty she focused her eyes on it and discovered the white collar of his shirt opened at the throat to reveal the deep tan of his chest. Then she became aware of the powerful arms that held her. She liked the feeling. She liked it a lot.

  Tipping back her head, pale gold hair cascading over her shoulders, she gazed into the rugged face only inches from her own. The amber flame in his eyes seemed to catch at her breath as it burned over her features. The impulse to kiss him was too strong to resist.

  Willingly, she let her lips move closer to his. She could have sworn she felt him tremble under her hands for a fraction of a second—but that couldn’t be. When their bodies met, he was hard all over, tense and ready. His head dipped toward her in response to her invitation and the fiery warmth of his mouth closed over hers, about to deepen the unexpected kiss. But before another second passed, she was thrust away and held firmly at arm’s length before she was released completely from his touch.

  Her lips were still parted in anticipation of the scorching kiss that had been doused before it had ignited. She blinked in disbelief at the unemotional gold-flecked eyes that gazed at her so coolly now—and asked him a question that was meant to be just as cold.

  “You aren’t as indifferent to me as you’d like to pretend, are you?” Her voice was low and breathless.

  “I’m a man,” he stated as if at this moment she had any doubt about it. “You got a little too close. I don’t think you meant to, but it happened. Physical reaction. Couldn’t help it.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant, Choya.”

  He dismissed that with a shake of his head. “I don’t have any ulterior motives, if that’s what you’re getting at. Just trying to do the right thing.”

  “Really? Is that all?”

  “Yes,” he said dryly. “But I promise not to make that mistake again.”

  She shook her head, unable to understand what she was hearing. “Why . . . why don’t you like me? What have I done?” She raised a hand to her forehead, fingers nervously smoothing the hair away from her face. “It can’t be because of the accident. Your jeep barely got scratched but I may not even be able to pay for my car—”

  His mouth thinned with amusement. “It wasn’t the accident,” Choya Barnett said quietly. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “My guess, Jacquie, is that you have a talent for trouble. And I mean trouble with a capital T. I don’t know what to do with you.”

  “What—what kind of an answer is that?” Indignation made color rise into her face. Was he joking? She couldn’t be sure. Bewildered and even more annoyed, she wondered why she’d been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for one single second. “I really don’t see why you bothered to give me a ride to the garage and brought me to the motel,” she demanded, faint anger growing that she should be so unjustly labeled. “Next question. Why did I say yes?”

  “You tell me. But when I sense trouble, I keep it where I can see it. Does that make sense to you?” A dark eyebrow arched in inquiry.

  Jacquie averted her head. “Not really. I’m not sure who you think you are, Choya Barnett. I hope you understand if I don’t thank you for all you’ve done,” she snapped.

  She was losing her temper, and fast. Invariably when she became angrily emotional, tears would start to fall. She wanted Choya Barnett gone before she lost control of her temper.

  “I do understand,” he replied with dry cynicism.

  Her hands doubled into fists as the motel door closed behind him. She picked up the cosmetic bag and handbag she had tossed onto the floor before her near-fall, and in a fit of rage, hurled them onto the bed, wishing she’d thrown them at him instead. How he must be laughing
at the way she’d invited him to kiss her. She had never been rejected like that in all her life. Trouble! He didn’t know the meaning of the word!

  A few hours later, Choya stopped by the service station to check on Jacquie’s car.

  “Hey, Brad.”

  The mechanic looked up from the engine he’d hauled out of an old car to rebuild and waved a wrench at him, his hands too greasy to offer one to shake. “Hi, Choya—what’s up? Did you get Miss Grey settled at the motel?”

  “Yup.” Choya looked around the garage nonchalantly, spotting her badly damaged car in a dark corner.

  “Good thing there was a vacancy,” Brad said. “The parts place in Tucson just called me back. Nothing’s going to get there until Tuesday and I told her Monday.”

  “Can you give me an idea of the cost?”

  The mechanic set down the wrench and scrubbed up with gooey soap at a blackened sink. “Did your insurance guy ask for details?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Let me check my notes.” He whistled as he finished up at the sink. “I was kinda surprised to see you drive up with her this afternoon. You two on speaking terms now?”

  Choya gave a low chuckle. “You could say that. She’s really something.”

  “That’s for sure. Hell of a way to meet, though. But if you ask me, I’d say a fender bender is easier than online dating.”

  Choya showed only mild interest. “Never tried that. Guess you have.”

  Brad rolled his eyes. “Count yourself lucky. It’s crazy. But here’s a hot tip. Don’t say you work in a garage. They tag you with an invisible sticker that says Grease Monkey.”

  “Yeah? What should I say? Not that I’m going to go online.”

  The mechanic dried his hands with a clean rag. “You have to say what women want to hear. Give them the idea that you got it goin’ on. You could mention that you’re a rancher with a five-thousand acre spread, but don’t act like you never go into town. Put in that you love to dance and stuff like that, and post a recent photo—stand tall and smile for real. Say that you’re looking for a real lady and you want to treat her right.”

  “Got it. But I learned to dance from a book. You know, with diagrams. Tripped over my own feet and pretty much gave up.” Choya laughed again.

  “Same here.” Brad went over to a three-ring binder on the shop counter, flipping the pages until he got to the estimate for Jacquie’s car. “Okay, like I said, I told her maybe Monday but it’s going to be Tuesday.”

  “Can you make it longer?” Choya asked.

  “Huh? I can’t do that, Choya.”

  Choya laughed. “Yeah, I know. I was kidding. So how much is it going to be?” He took a piece of scrap paper and a stubby pencil from a box to jot down Brad’s response.

  The mechanic read the itemized estimate aloud line by line. “Got all that?”

  “Yes. Thanks.” Choya folded the paper and tucked it in his shirt pocket. Brad didn’t have to know that he was thinking of paying Jacquie’s repair bill just in case her insurance company didn’t respond promptly. Choya wasn’t sure if it was because he felt a gentlemanly obligation to help her or a self-protective instinct to get her the hell on her way to wherever she’d been going. Probably a little of both.

  Chapter 3

  The sharp rocks seemed to penetrate the thin soles of her sandals, jabbing the sensitive bottoms of her feet until Jacquie was reduced to picking her way alongside of the road. Although it wasn’t yet midmorning, the sun was already beginning to make its strength felt.

  When she had started out a few minutes before, it had seemed logical to walk the short distance to the famous cemetery just outside of town. She’d read about it in the stack of brochures on the night table—it was something to do and none of its inhabitants was going to bother her with small talk. But not daring to walk on the busy highway, Jacquie had been forced to walk on the uneven gravel of the road’s shoulder. After the first few jagged edges of the sharp gravel had dug into her soles, she kept her attention on the ground. A horn blared behind her, signaling an approaching vehicle.

  “Oh, knock it off!” she grumbled, exclaiming sharply as she hopped away, nearly turning her ankle on an oversized chunk of stone.

  But the vehicle that honked didn’t whizz by as others had done. Instead it pulled to a stop beside her. The cutting words that had been forming to check any proposition from a stranger died in her throat as Jacquie recognized the jeep beside her and the man driving it.

  “Good morning, Miss Grey. Are you leaving town?” Choya Barnett inquired mockingly. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses and the lazy, tawny-colored eyes seemed to find her discomfort amusing.

  “Not on foot,” she retorted. She hadn’t slept well last night, tossing and turning until well after midnight, and she blamed her sleeplessness more on the man she faced now than on the fact she had been trying to sleep in a cheap motel bed. “What are you doing in town this morning? Checking to see where ‘trouble’ was?” Her voice was sarcastic.

  He ignored that. “If you intend to walk far, you really should have more substantial shoes, not those paper-thin pieces of leather.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I just came to the same conclusion, but I didn’t happen to pack hiking boots. Go away.” Jacquie started walking again, determined to treat Choya the way he’d treated her.

  “Maybe you should ask Santa for a pair for Christmas.” The jeep rolled slowly along, keeping pace with her.

  “I was planning to ask him for cash,” she retorted. “It goes with everything, you know.”

  “Oh, shut up and get in,” he requested with an impatient sigh when she grimaced unwillingly at the rocks beneath her feet.

  “No,” she snapped.

  “I said get in,” Choya Barnett said again. “You might as well. A few yards down the road you’ll probably end up with a twisted ankle or cut foot and you’ll have to accept the offer anyway. Get in now and save yourself some pain. Besides, I’m driving in your direction.”

  She’d heard those words before. Twice. And taken him up on both offers, which she deeply regretted. Jacquie came to a dead stop. “You don’t even know where I’m going,” she accused.

  “There’s only one place you could possibly be going,” he replied with thinning patience.

  “Oh?” Her hands slipped challengingly to her hips. “And what is that?”

  “Boothill Cemetery. Every tourist goes there.”

  He sounded so insufferably certain that Jacquie hated to admit he was right. The problem was, looking down the road, there was no alternative destination she could point to except rocks and shrubs. Which were probably infested with snakes and scorpions and other critters almost as obnoxious as he was. She couldn’t very well go off the road to prove him wrong.

  “You don’t expect me to think you’re merely walking for exercise, do you?” Choya asked pleasantly.

  “Just because you made a good guess,” Jacquie muttered, “you don’t have to be so smug when you happen to be right.”

  “Then stop arguing and get in.” The clipped order was followed by a single word she’d never heard from him. “Please,” he added.

  If it hadn’t been for that—and mean little rocks biting through the soles of her sandals—she would have refused. Quite truthfully, she wanted the ride even if she questioned his motives for offering it.

  “Where’s Robbie?” she asked coldly as she made her way across the gravel to slide onto the passenger seat of the open jeep. In the short time she’d known him, she’d gotten used to seeing father and son together. It seemed odd to see Choya alone. “Did you leave him home today?”

  Gold eyes bored into her for an instant before the jeep surged forward onto the highway. “Actually, he happens to be in Sunday school.”

  Jacquie stared straight ahead. “Did you ever go?”

  He waited for a beat before he responded. “You mean when I was a kid? Sometimes. Why do you want to know?”

  “Just wondering. You seem to follow you
r own rules and no one else’s.”

  He only grinned in reply, which irked her to no end.

  “Let me rephrase that, Choya,” she said crossly. “You make up your rules as you go along and change them whenever you want to.”

  Her remark was barbed, but her basic opinion of the man hadn’t really changed. It was just too bad that she still found him incredibly attractive, even after his refusal to follow through on what had promised to be a spectacular kiss. And she still didn’t understand why he’d stopped.

  With a flash of insight, Jacquie figured out the key to his attraction—and her own weakness. Choya Barnett was flagrantly male, more virile and masculine than anyone she had ever dated in college. His body radiated it from head to toe. Or, she thought miserably, toe to head. Those long, muscular legs, for starters. Lean abs. Solid chest and massive shoulders. Dark good looks and great hair she was dying to get her fingers into. And—damn it—those eyes. Mountain cat eyes. Aloof. Spellbinding. Revealing nothing.

  “I usually had other things I wanted to do,” Choya stated. “Even when I was a kid.”

  Jacquie looked at him blankly, so lost in her contemplation of him that she had forgotten her previous comment. When his gaze swung back to her, she felt the force of his male vitality.

  “What?” She fought against the electrifying sensation that raced through her veins.

  “I said,” he repeated dryly, “that I usually had other things to do besides go to church. And I still do.”

  The indifference in his look cut her. It was easy to return a caustic reply when his brief glance swept over her and back to the road.

  “Very important things like keeping track of my whereabouts.” The cool toss of her head was at odds with the green-blue glitter of battle in her eyes.

  The jeep slowed and bounced into the graveled parking lot, stopping in front of the stick fence protecting the cemetery. Weathered markers were visible beyond it. Against the skyline were rising mountains, barren and grim. At their base were undulating plains of sand and sage and cactus.