Page 12 of Her Christmas Lumberjack

As I’m plating up the food, I hear footsteps coming down the hallway, and my heart stutters, chest tightening with anticipation. A moment later, Aurora appears in the kitchen, looking so adorable that all I can do is stare. My t-shirt is like a dress on her, draping almost to her knees. Her hair is still a little mussed, and she yawns as she joins me, reaching down to pet Rudolph as he rushes toward her.

“Morning,” I say.

“Good morning.” Her voice is thick with sleep. She’s so fucking cute it hurts.

“You sleep okay?”

“Great, thanks.” She smiles at me, then her eyebrows raise in realization. “Oh! And merry Christmas Eve.”

“Damn, it’s Christmas Eve already? Well, merry Christmas Eve to you too.”

She thanks me for the pancakes and we sit at the table in a comfortably sleepy silence.

“The snow fell pretty hard,” I say eventually, feeding Rudolph a chunk of pancake. “I don’t think the roads will be clear enough to go anywhere today.”

Aurora nods, and I’m relieved to see she doesn’t look disappointed. But there’s sadness in her face. Last night she was more open than I’ve ever seen her, and now the familiar guilt is back, and I can’t make sense of it.

“Are you okay, Aurora?” I ask her.

She looks up at me and smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’m fine.” Immediately, she changes the subject. “Hey, I noticed you don’t have a Christmas tree up.”

“Haven’t really been in the spirit this year,” I grunt. “Kind of ironic for a guy who owns a Christmas Tree Farm.”

Aurora bites her lip. “It must be hard—the first Christmas without your dad. You must really miss him.”

She’s right. Missing Dad is like an ache—a lost limb. But with Aurora here, I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time. Her presence drowns out the pain, muffles it like snow, and a rush of affection hits me as I look at her pretty face, filled with concern for me.

“What do you say we go cut down a tree?”

She stares at me. “For real?”

“Sure.” I glance out the window. “We can’t drive anywhere, but we could walk down to the farm, no problem.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then her lips curve into a smile. “I’d like that.”

The snowoutside the front door is so high that I have to climb out of a window and clear it with a shovel until Aurora is able to open the door. Rudolph seems reluctant to leave the warmth of the cabin, so he stays behind, watching us from beside the fireplace.

“I think he’s had enough of being outside for a while,” I say, grabbing my axe before I close the door behind us.

“I can’t blame him. He must have been freezing out here.”

We pass Aurora’s buried car before heading through the trees. It doesn’t take long to reach the frozen lake, and we cross the bridge into the Christmas tree farm. We’re walking so close that I can feel Aurora’s body heat radiating against my side. All I want to do is wrap my arm around her and pull her close, but I don’t want to fuck this up. There’s still something skittish about her, like she’s scared I’ll see something I shouldn’t if she looks at me for too long.

Fuck, she has no idea how crazy she makes me.

There’s no way a gorgeous young woman like Aurora would ever want a grumpy lumberjack who’s pushing fifty. Logically, I know she has her own life in Denver. She’s only here because of the blizzard—otherwise, she’d have walked right out of my life yesterday and probably never given me another thought. But dammit, that doesn’t stop me from wanting her more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Just looking at that pretty face makes my cock ache.

“These look good,” she says, pointing at a row of firs.

“Pick whichever one you want. Your choice.”

She beams at me, melting my heart as she examines each tree, finally settling on a thick Douglas fir that’s almost twice as tall as her.

“Is this one too big?”

“It’s perfect,” I tell her, making sure she’s standing well back before I start chopping the trunk. It doesn’t take long for the tree to topple to the ground, and I give it a rough shake before hauling it over my shoulder.

Once we’re back at the cabin, I pot the tree and place it in the corner where it stands proudly. Rudolph sniffs it approvingly, and Aurora heads to the kitchen to make us some cocoa while I grab a couple of dusty boxes of decorations from the attic. When I return to the living room, Jingle Bell Rock is playing from Aurora’s phone, and she hands me a steaming mug of cocoa with a smile.

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