Page 41 of Baby It's Cold Outside

“Oh God,” she groaned as she lurched away, heading for the low table next to the couch, picking up a glass, and taking a hefty swig before facing him again. “I’m so, so sorry. I thought you were a looter...or a burglar...or at the very least up to no good. I didn’t know you were home. Georgia was so disappointed you were going to miss her thirtieth birthday party and if I had known, I would never have yelled and attacked you with a golf club. I teach kindergarten...we use our inside voices, we keep our hands to ourselves...”

Luke folded his arms ac

ross his chest, amused at the horror on her face. She obviously wasn’t a violent person. Which only made her actions at defending his family cabin that much more endearing. “You’re Tamara, aren’t you?”

The pixie raised her glass in salute. “That would be me.”

“Pleased to meet, you ma’am,” he said.

She nodded then stopped abruptly. “Wait.” She frowned. “How do you know about me? Georgia and I haven’t known each other that long.”

He shrugged, noting the way her gaze traveled over the contours of his shoulders. Interesting. “Georgia writes a lot of newsy e-mails.”

“Ah,” she said and swayed a little.

Luke reached out a hand. “Ma’am?” he asked, looking at her a little closer. Pink cheeks. Red nose. Unsteady on her feet. A waft of …eggnog? “Are you...drunk?”

She held up her index finger and thumb and tried to narrow the distance between them to indicate just a smidgeon. But, with those eggnog goggles firmly in place, she didn’t seem to have the ability to get them close enough without meeting. “Maybe just a little,” she eventually said, giving up her attempts at demonstration.

He quirked an eyebrow. “Starting early?”

She shook her head. “It’s the middle of the night in Australia.”

“I suppose it is.” Luke rubbed at his jaw. He needed a shave. And a shower. He needed to sleep for a week. But suddenly he didn’t feel so tired. With the adrenaline now settled, something else permeated. He looked around and rubbed his hands. “It’s freezing in here!” He looked at the logs stacked up around the fireplace—there was enough wood for a week. “Why haven’t you started a fire?”

“Can’t find the matches,” she said miserably. “I’ve looked everywhere.”

He laughed. “So you were just going to sit here and freeze?”

“No. Why else would I be dressed in every piece of clothing in my suitcase and be drinking eggnog for breakfast?”

She looked indignant and cranky again. “So...bundling up and drinking was your plan?”

“It was a temporary plan. Just until I thought of something better.”

It was just as well he’d arrived when he did. In a few hours, she’d either be a Popsicle or have drunk every bottle of booze in the cabin. “Alrighty then. Step aside, ma’am, and I’ll get this sucker fired up.”

Luke was conscious of Tamara curled up on the couch behind him, watching as he gathered wood and retrieved the matches from a small, carved wooden box that sat on the mantel. He had no idea what she looked like beneath all those layers, but she’d made him laugh and there’d been precious little of that these last few months. He’d planned on being alone but maybe some company wouldn’t be so bad.

In no time he was crouching beside a roaring fire, its heat warming his cold face. He sensed rather than felt her being drawn to his side like some pixie Eskimo.

“Ah,” she murmured, crouching beside him, her hands extended toward the flames. She smelled like nutmeg and Jamaican rum, reminding him of home and Christmas. It had been a long while since he’d smelled anything quite as sweet. “You have the gift of fire, oh wizard.”

He laughed at her reverence. Fake and drunken as it was. “Yes, ma’am. Although I think my mother would put it down to borderline pyromania.”

“Luke, do you think you could do me a favor?” she asked. He turned his head just in time to watch her fall back inelegantly on her ass.

“Easy, ma’am.” He reached out his hand to steady her but she waved him away, drawing her knees up until she was sitting cross-legged, eyes shut, a little sigh of pleasure escaping her slightly parted mouth as the fire glowed warm and yellow across her delicate features.

“A favor, ma’am?” he prompted with a smile when it looked like she may just have fallen asleep in her fire-worshipping position.

She opened drowsy eyes and his breath hitched as two luminous gray pools sucked him into their sexy shimmer. He had a sudden urge to peel her hood back so he could see the rest of her face.

“Do you think you could not call me ma’am? I know that thirty must seem ancient to someone like you, but I’m spending New Year’s Eve alone and thinking it’s perfectly okay to drink eggnog for breakfast for a reason, you know? Please don’t make me feel any older than I do.”

Luke held her gaze. “I don’t think thirty is ancient.”

She sighed again as she looked back at the fire. “Wait ’til you get here.”

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