One Winter's Sunset: The Christmas Baby Surprise / Marry Me under the Mistletoe / Snowflakes and Silver Linings

Then he heard the soft melody of a woman’s voice, singing along with the radio. It took him a moment to realize it was Emily’s voice. He hadn’t heard her singing in...

Hell, ten years. At least.

He pulled on his jeans and padded barefoot out of his room and across the hall. Her door stood ajar, the bed made, the room neat and clean. When had Emily become a neatnik? She’d always been the messier one in their relationship, something that had driven him crazy when they were together. Then, when he was on his own, he’d missed seeing her makeup on the bathroom counter, her coat tossed over the dining room chair, her shoes kicked off on the bedroom carpet. He’d tried leaving his own things out but it wasn’t the same. He hesitated only a moment, then took a single step inside the room. “Em?”

The bedroom was empty. Light and steam spilled out of the attached bathroom. The shower was running, and Cole could see the familiar outline of his wife’s curves behind the translucent white curtain. Desire rushed through him, hardened against his jeans. How long had it been since he’d been with Emily?

Months. Three, to be exact. A long damned time.

He hesitated. He knew he should leave but couldn’t tear his gaze away from her shapely outline, the curve of her breasts, her hips. She was hidden by the curtain, yet he knew every dimple, every valley, every scar. He knew how to make her moan, how to make her smile, how to make her...

His.

Except she wasn’t his anymore, and he needed to face that. Accept it. Move on.

Since the separation, he’d told himself he should take off his ring. Date again. But he hadn’t. No woman had interested him the way his wife did. And maybe never would. He missed her, damn it, for more than just the warmth of her body against his.

The water stopped with a screech and a shudder of old pipes. Cole told himself to move. Leave. He didn’t do either.

The song ended and a commercial came on the radio. Emily’s voice trailed off as she reached up and tugged down the towel draped over the shower curtain. She jerked back the curtain and let out a shriek. “Cole! You scared me. What are you doing in here?”

Shit. He should have left. Now he looked like some overeager hormonal teenager, which was how he felt whenever he was around Emily. Even now, even after everything.

“Your, uh, door was open. And I heard you singing and...” He forced his gaze up from the hourglass shape outlined by the fluffy white towel. “I can’t remember the last time I heard you singing.”

A flush filled her cheeks and her gaze shifted to the floor. “I’m a terrible singer.”

“Didn’t sound that way to me. It was nice.” He swallowed hard. “I’ve missed your singing. You used to sing all the time when we were first married.”

She laughed. “That’s because we couldn’t even afford a TV. My singing was our only entertainment.”

“I wouldn’t say it was our only entertainment.” His gaze met hers. Heat filled the space between them. Cole had never been so acutely aware of his wife’s naked body, and the thin scrap of cotton separating them. She’d put on a few pounds in the past couple months, but they only added to her curves and made her more desirable. He ached to take her in his arms, to let the towel fall to the floor and to taste that sweet, warm, peach skin.

“Those were different days then,” she said, her voice low and soft. She fiddled with the edge of the towel. “Better days.”

Had she stopped singing because she’d stopped being happy? Started again today because she was happier without him? Or had he stopped paying attention to Emily so long ago that he didn’t notice her singing? Her happiness?

“You liked it better when we were poor?” he asked. “Living in that tiny fifth-floor walk-up, freezing in the winter and roasting in the summer?”

“Yeah, I did.”

He’d hated those days. Always struggling, feeling like he’d failed, the constant battle to get his business off the ground at night while he sweated on a construction site during the day. Working, working, working, and getting frustrated at how long it took to get from nowhere to somewhere. “Why? We had nothing, Emily.”

“Nothing except each other,” she said. She raised her gaze to his. Tears shimmered in her green eyes. “That was always enough for me, Cole. But it was never enough for you.”

He let out a gust. Why did it always come down to this? Didn’t she understand, he’d done all of this for her? For them? For their future together? The hours he’d worked, the effort he’d put in to take the business from their apartment kitchen table to a global power had been a constant source of friction between them. In the early days, Emily had supported him, but as the years wore on, that support had eroded into frustration and a cold, silent war.

“You can’t blame me for wanting more, Emily. For wanting success. Look at us now. We have everything we always wanted.”

A bittersweet smile crossed her face. “No. You have everything you ever wanted.” The smile shifted, became something he couldn’t read, as if Emily had a secret that only she knew. She nodded toward the door. “I’d appreciate it if you left now.”

He did as she asked and left the room, shutting the door behind him, and feeling more lost than he had ever felt before. Cole was a smart man who had built his company from nothing into a global player. Who had taken them from a run-down apartment to a mansion in a tony suburb outside New York City. All along, he’d thought he was on the same path that Emily wanted.

Now it turned out he’d been wrong. For a long, long time.

* * *

Sleep eluded Emily. She tossed and turned, then got up, tried to write and couldn’t get any further in the book. The whole day had been like that, her creativity stalled. Her mind was still stuck on the moment Cole had walked into the bathroom and looked at her with that hungry, admiring gaze she knew so well. One step forward, and she would have had him in her arms, in her bed, in her.

She craved that, deep down inside, in places that only Cole knew. But she’d held her ground, and after he left the room, she’d told herself she’d done the right thing. Even if it didn’t feel that way.

Her stomach rumbled. She pulled on a robe and headed downstairs to the kitchen. The inn was silent, and only a small light burned on the kitchen table. Moonlight streamed in through the windows, providing enough light for her to make her way through the rooms.

Emily pulled open the fridge, and mulled over the choices. She settled on the leftover apple pie. A second later, she was dishing a hearty slice onto a small dessert plate. After all, she was eating for two now. She could afford an extra serving of dessert once in a while. She heard a sound and looked up to find Cole standing in the kitchen.

He wore only a pair of old gray sweatpants that she knew well. He’d had them for as long as she could remember, the fleece worn and soft as butter. His chest was bare, and the desire that had been burning inside her all day roared to life again. Her hand flexed at her side, itching to touch the hard muscular planes, to draw his warmth to her.

“Great minds think alike,” Cole said, taking a step closer and gesturing toward the pie.

“Do you want a piece?” Then she looked down and realized she’d taken the last of the pie. “Sorry. Um, would you like to share?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” She pulled open the drawer and handed a second fork to Cole. He leaned over one side of the kitchen island, she leaned over the other side and they each took a bite of the pie. Their heads were so close, they nearly touched. It was so much like the early days, when they’d been inseparable and in love, that Emily could almost believe she’d gone back in time. She ached to run her fingers through Cole’s dark hair, to kiss the crumbs off his lips, to giggle when his shadowy stubble tickled her chin.

“Carol’s pies are legendary,” she said instead.

“I can see why.”

Emily forked up another bite. “The other Gingerbread Girls and I would sneak down here in the middle of the night all the time and eat the leftovers. She’d yell at us in the morning, but half the time she was laughing at the same time. And sometimes she’d bake an extra pie, just so we’d have one to scavenge.”

“Those must have been some amazing summers,” Cole said.

“They were. Some of my best memories are wrapped up in this place.” She sighed. “I’m going to hate to see it sold off and turned into condos or something awful like that.”

He scooped up some ice cream. “Why don’t I buy it? Let Carol run it...keep things as they are.”

Emily let out a gust. She put her fork down and leaned away from the counter. “Not everything can be fixed with money, Cole.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

She read honesty in his face, and relaxed. He had helped over the past few days, more than he knew. She couldn’t fault him for wanting to do more. After all, finding solutions to impossible situations was Cole’s specialty. He’d built a business on designing creative answers to customer problems.

For years, he’d been the one she relied on to solve everything from a checking account error to a strange noise coming from her engine. For the past six months, she’d relied only on herself. As scary as it had been, the independence had given her a newfound confidence. It was a feeling she wanted to keep, which meant no more running to Cole to fix the things that went awry. “Listen, I appreciate all the help you’re giving Carol with the repairs, I really do.”

“But...?”

She forked up some pie, but didn’t eat it. Instead, she turned to the fridge. “Do you want some milk?”