Page 48 of Christmas in Whitehorn
She set the parking brake, then turned off the engine. No. He couldn’t be here. It was cold and the snow was due to start up any second.
“Are you crazy?” she asked as she climbed out of her car. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be keeping your leg elevated.”
“Would you believe I ran out of ice? I thought maybe if I stuck my foot in snow it would do the same thing.”
She pulled her coat closer around her body. The cold burned her skin and her eyes. As she approached the porch, she saw Mark was huddled on the top step. He had his bad foot buried in snow. She didn’t want to think about how much it would have hurt him to pull on a boot, even though he hadn’t fastened it. She refused to feel sorry for him.
“Why are you here?” she asked, stopping in front of him.
Instead of answering, he held out several thin boxes. “A peace offering,” he said. “Christmas lights. I can’t put them up right now, but maybe by midweek.” He hesitated. “I know you’re a sucker for Christmas.”
“Apparently I’m a sucker for a lot of things.”
He nodded. “At the risk of you leaving me out here in the snow to freeze to death, I’m going to ask you to invite me in.”
His boldness stunned her. “Why would I do that? So you can say more terrible things about me? What do you want to accuse me of now? Has there been a murder in town? Am I the prime suspect?”
He gazed at her. “I want to apologize and explain.”
“No explanation is necessary. Besides, you couldn’t possibly come up with a story good enough.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Something dark and painful. Something that made her heartache ease slightly and her resolve waver.
“Actually, I could,” he told her. “Let me try, Darcy. I know what I did was awful. I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve my accusations, but they’re made and now I would like to explain them.”
She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to deny him.
“Once a sucker, always a sucker,” she muttered as she bent low to help him to his feet. “This had better be good.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Darcy helped Mark to her sofa, then eased him out of his coat. She ignored the feel of his body so close to hers. No way was she still attracted to the man.
She also ignored the three boxes of outdoor lights he’d brought her, along with the fact that he couldn’t have just gone out and bought them today. Which meant he’d had them for some time. As she doubted that he’d planned on putting them up at his place—the man didn’t even own dishes, let alone Christmas decorations—he must have bought them for her. Which meant he’d been thinking of her in a positive way. Which didnotbegin to make up for all he’d accused her of today.
“How’s your ankle?” she asked grudgingly as she took off her coat.
“Sore,” he admitted.
She hung up both their coats, then returned to the sofa. After sitting on the coffee table, she reached for his boot and eased it off his injured foot. She could feel the heat from the swelling.
“You shouldn’t have come over,” she told him. “You didn’t even use your crutches.”
“I thought they might slip in the snow.”
The man was impossible. “You could have phoned in your explanation.”
“You would have hung up on me.”
That much was true, she thought, almost wishing he wasn’t here now. Part of her didn’t want to hear his explanation. For one thing, she doubted it would be enough to convince her that he was anything but the bad guy in this. For another, she didn’t want to give him a chance to trick her into starting to like him again.
She eased his sock-clad foot onto a small throw pillow. “Don’t think I’m going to let you off the hook easily,” she told him. “I’m angry and hurt and I have no intention of forgiving you.”
“I know. That’s not why I’m here. I want you to know why it happened, but I don’t expect anything else to change.”
She glared at him, but he didn’t try to justify his position more. She rose. “I hate that I feel compelled to offer you something to eat. Did you finish the spaghetti?”
“Most of it.”
