One Winter's Day: A Diamond in Her Stocking / Christmas Where They Belong / Snowed in at the Ranch

Jesse looked so hot in that wetsuit, the tight black fabric moulding his broad chest, flat belly, muscular limbs. Unshaven, his black hair carelessly tousled as if he’d just run his hand through it in his hurry to get to the beach, he’d never looked more should-be-on-billboards handsome. When he’d taken her hand to help her up from the sand, she’d known where it would lead. Known and felt dizzy with anticipation.

Now she kissed him back, lost in the overwhelming pleasure of being with Jesse again. She’d found it impossible to clamp down on her attraction to him—no matter how many times she’d told herself Jesse wasn’t right for her. She might be able to deny herself that Belgian chocolate—but not this.

Desire bloomed in the tightening of her nipples, the ache to be closer, and she tightened her arms around his neck, breathing in the intoxicating scent of his skin. Wanting him. Craving more than kisses. She had never been kissed the way Jesse kissed. Jesse the master kisser would be Jesse the master lover and she shivered in sensual anticipation of the discovery.

What was she thinking? She stilled in his embrace.

She could not let herself want Jesse this much. Too many other women wanted Jesse. It would only lead to heartbreak, to agony. He couldn’t give her what she needed.

She broke the kiss and drew away, pushing against his chest, her breath ragged. He murmured a protest and gathered her back into his arms but he let her go when she continued to maintain her resistance. His expression, passion fading to bewilderment and—yes—hurt wrenched at her heart. She hated that she was the cause of that.

What had just happened was purely physical, she reminded herself. Oh, she wanted Jesse all right. And the more she’d got to like him, the more she’d wanted him. But she needed to be cherished, loved for herself, not be the latest in a line of conquests. She wanted to love and be loved—but she also wanted to trust.

How hard would it be to trust a player again?

‘Jesse, I can’t do this. I won’t do this.’ Her voice came out wobblier than she would have liked. But Jesse got the message.

He choked out just the one word. ‘Why?’

* * *

Jesse gulped in deep breaths of salt-tangy air to try and get back his equilibrium. He was convinced that Lizzie had enjoyed being with him as much as he’d enjoyed being with her. He could see her aroused nipples through the fabric of her bikini top. She was flushed, her eyes dilated, her mouth swollen from his kisses. She had never looked lovelier.

But she turned away from him. Bent down and picked up his towel where it lay rumpled on the sand at her feet. With hands that weren’t steady she draped it around her shoulders but it covered less than it revealed. He wanted her so much it hurt.

She twisted the corner of the towel until it was scrunched into a knot, untwisted it and twisted it again before she looked back up at him. ‘Because all those reasons that make it a bad idea for us to get together are still there,’ she said.

Somewhere in the realm of good sense he knew that. Hell, he had his reasons too. Desire this strong could lead to pain as wrenching as Camilla had inflicted on him. But his body didn’t want to listen to his brain. He wanted Lizzie and he wanted her now. If not now this afternoon, this evening, tonight—and hang the consequences.

‘It was...a mistake. We have to forget it happened. This...this shouldn’t ch-change anything between us,’ she stammered.

He cleared his throat. ‘How can it not change things between us?’

She looked up at him, her eyes huge in the oval of her face. ‘Jesse, I want you so much I’m aching for you.’ Her voice caught and she took in a deep breath but it did nothing to steady it. ‘If...if things were different there’s nothing more I’d want than to make love with you right now.’

He made a disbelieving grunt in response.

‘Oh, not on the beach. But back in my apartment. In a hotel room. At your place. Somewhere private where we could explore each other, please each other, satisfy our curiosity about each other. Even...even if that was all we ever had.’

He groaned and when he spoke his voice was edged with anger. ‘Do you realise what you’re doing talking to me like that? Don’t be a—’

‘A tease? Believe me, I’m not teasing.’ She swallowed hard. ‘In the six months since I last saw you, even though I thought you’d gone off with another woman, I dreamed of you. I kept waking up from dreams of you. Wanting you. Aching for you. Reaching for you, to find only an empty bed.’

‘Then why—?’

‘Because desire isn’t enough.’ She took in another of those deep breaths that made her breasts swell over her bikini top in such a tantalising way. ‘I’m sometimes accused of being blunt but I have to be honest with you,’ she said.

He swallowed a curse word. Whenever anyone used that ‘honest’ phrase he knew he was about to hear something he didn’t want to hear. Lizzie’s expression didn’t give him cause to think otherwise.

‘Fire away,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘I’ve told you, right now there’s no room in my life for a man.’ She was having trouble meeting his eyes. Not a good sign. ‘But if I do start to date again, I want it to be someone...someone serious, dependable, reliable. Not—’

‘Not someone like me,’ he finished for her, his voice brusque.

She bit her lip. ‘That didn’t come out well, did it?’ she said with a quiver to her voice. ‘It’s not that you’re not gorgeous. You are. In fact you’re too gorgeous.’

‘I don’t know how being told I’m gorgeous sounds like an insult, but I get the gist of it.’

Her eyes widened. ‘I didn’t want that to sound like an insult. I wouldn’t want to hurt you for the world.’

I wouldn’t want to hurt you for the world. Jesse felt uncomfortably aware that he had used something like that phrase more than once when kindly breaking up with a woman. But those words directed at him did not feel good. They made him feel scorned like he’d felt when Camilla had rejected him—though she hadn’t been as kind about it as Lizzie was being.

‘No offence taken,’ he said gruffly.

‘I...I’m not very good at this,’ she said, looking down at the ground, scuffing the sand with her bare foot.

Amazing that while she was thrusting the knife deep into his gut and then twisting it, he felt sorry for her having to deliver the message. In the interests of being honest.

‘No one is good at it,’ he said.

‘I do want to try to explain. Because...because I’ve come to really like you.’

Like. It was a runner-up word. A consolation prize word. A loser word. How could he have exposed himself again to this?

‘Continue,’ he said gruffly.

‘My ex was a good-looking guy with the charisma to go with it. I was always having to look over my shoulder to see what woman was pursuing him, what woman he was encouraging.’

‘He was a player, right?’ He practically spat out that word he was getting sick of hearing applied to him.

She nodded. ‘I never want to endure a relationship with someone like that again. I can’t live with that feeling that I’m not the only woman in my man’s life. To be always suspicious of girls he works with, girls he encounters anywhere. I want to come first, last and in between with a man. Not...not always feeling humiliated and rejected.’

Jesse clenched his fists by his sides. He wasn’t that guy. How could she be so wrong about him?A nagging inner voice gave him the answer. Because that’s the way you appear. He’d done such a good job of acting the player to cover up his fears and pain that he’d given Lizzie the wrong impression of him.

It was true, over the years he’d been flattered by all that female attention. But he didn’t want it now. He didn’t want people taking bets on his marital status. Most of all he didn’t want Lizzie so unfairly lumping him in a category of cheats and heartbreakers.

‘What makes you think I’m like your ex-husband? You’re implying that he cheated on you—I’ve never cheated or been unfaithful to a girlfriend. Never.’

‘I...I believe you,’ she said but her eyes told a different story. She’d stuck him in the same category as her ex and nothing he’d done—or the reputation he had acquired—had changed her mind.

He was not the guy she thought he was. He had to prove that to her.

‘What happened at the wedding to cause you to think I’d gone off with another woman was a misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘So what makes you think I live up to my reputation?’

Her smile was shaky. ‘Women adore you. Not just young attractive women who want to date you. Older women dote on you. Ex-girlfriends like Evie want you still in their life. Even children are fans. Amy was beside herself with excitement when I told her on the phone last night that Uncle Jesse would be here when she got back from France. You were such a hit with her at the wedding when you danced her right around the room.’

He frowned. ‘And that’s a bad thing? Would you prefer I was the kind of guy women loathed? Feared even?’

‘Of course not.’ She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. ‘I’m not getting this across at all well, am I? Fact is, it’s not all about you; it’s—’

He put up his hand. ‘Whoa. If you’re going to say “it’s not you; it’s me” forget it, I don’t want to hear that old cliché.’

‘What I’m trying to tell you is that I...I’m a jealous person.’ She looked down at her feet for a moment as if she was ashamed of her words before she faced him again. ‘A jealous woman and a chick-magnet guy are not a good combination, as I found out in my marriage. It wasn’t just his infidelity that ended it; my jealousy and suspicion made it impossible for us to live with each other.’

‘In my book, infidelity is unforgivable.’ He clenched his jaw.

She looked across him and out to sea as if gathering her words before she faced him again. ‘There...there can be shades of grey...’

He shook his head. ‘Fidelity is non-negotiable. No cheating, end of story. If either party cheats—the relationship is over. For good.’

Did she believe him? Or had she heard too many lies from that ex-husband to believe an honest guy?

Her brow furrowed. ‘That stance is not...not what I would have expected of you.’

‘You’ve been listening to gossips.’ He snorted in disgust. ‘What would they know about my private life? You think I don’t know about betrayal? You think I haven’t been hurt?’

‘I...I only know what I’ve heard.’ She bit down on her lower lip, her face a picture of misery.

‘I thought I’d found the woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. Turned out she was a cheat and a liar. But I don’t lie or cheat. Never have. Never will.’

‘I’m sorry, Jesse, if I got it wrong. But I can’t take risks when it comes to men. For my sake and for my daughter’s.’ Only then came that familiar tilt to her chin. ‘No matter how much I might want that man.’

He glanced down at the small scars on her hands and forearms. Scars she’d got in the kitchen, she’d told him, from burning oil and scalding steam and knives that had slipped. Now he realised she had scars on the inside too. Her ex-husband—and maybe before that her father—had chipped away at her trust, at her belief that she could inspire lasting love and fidelity. That she deserved to be cherished and honoured.

Whoa. He wasn’t thinking the L word here. Just the crazy attraction. Then the friendship. And the other L word. He realised how much in these last few days he had grown to like and admire Lizzie. In this context, ‘like’ was not a loser word. It was a feeling that built on that instant physical attraction to something that packed a powerful punch.

Lizzie was right—the reasons they both had for keeping the other at friend status were still there. He didn’t want to put his heart on the line again and he didn’t want to risk wounding her with further scars.

He ached to take her in his arms again but had no intention of doing so. It wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t need a man like him in her life.

‘I’d like to give you a big hug but...but I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ he said, trying to sound offhand but failing dismally, betrayed by the hitch in his voice.

Warm colour flushed her cheeks. ‘I agree. And...and no more kissing. I can’t deal with how it makes me feel.’

He realised how vulnerable she was under that blunt-speaking front.

‘No more kissing,’ he agreed though he hated the idea of never being able to kiss her again.

She looked up at him, eyes huge, hair a silver cloud around her face. ‘Jesse, I...I wasn’t lying when I said how much I liked you. I do count you as a friend now.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah. I like you too. We’re friends.’ But he didn’t offer his hand to shake on it. No touching. No kissing. No physical contact of any kind. That was how it would have to be. No matter how difficult that stance would be to maintain when he had to see her every day.

He looked towards the water. It was still a low swell. Still good for swimming. And he needed to get in there. Physical activity was always his way of dealing with stress and difficult situations. ‘Are you going to swim?’ he asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I should be getting back to the café.’

Good. He didn’t want her to join him in that water. Splashing around with her in a wetsuit moulded close to her curves would be more than he could endure.

‘I’m going in,’ he said. ‘This is my favourite beach and I want to spend as much time as I can here while I’m home.’

She walked back to where her towel and bag were on the sand. She picked up her pink towel and turned her back to him as she swapped his towel for hers. Her back view was beautiful, with her hair tumbling around her shoulders, her narrow waist and shapely behind. He wanted her but he couldn’t have her. He turned his head away. ‘Just leave my towel there,’ he said gruffly.

‘Will you...will you be coming to the café today?’ she asked, facing him again.

He hadn’t given her two hours of help today but he needed distance from her. ‘No. I’m driving to Sydney tonight.’

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘I’ve got an appointment tomorrow with the orthopaedic specialist for my shoulder,’ he said. And he had a video interview with the executives of the company in Houston. ‘I’ll see you when I get back.’

He was going to find it difficult working those two hours a day with her for the rest of his time back home in Dolphin Bay. But he had a commitment to Sandy that he would honour. He also wanted to be a friend to Lizzie now that they’d got this far.

But if she was to respect him as something other than a good-looking player—even in the context of a family connection friendship—he had to prove that the Jesse of his reputation and the real Jesse were not one and the same.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS SEVEN o’clock on the morning of the official opening of Bay Bites and the café doors were due to open in half an hour for their very first breakfast service. Lizzie had been working in the kitchen since five. She was confident she and her team had done all they could to prepare but still she was so nervous she had to keep wiping her hands down the side of her apron.

She’d worked at a start-up before. But not as the person in charge. It was a very different matter taking orders in the kitchen from someone else compared to being the one responsible for the success or failure of the venture. She twirled that piece of her hair that always escaped when she tied back her hair so hard it tugged at her scalp and made her wince. What if no one showed up?

That line of thought was crazy; she knew that—they had confirmed bookings for breakfast, brunch and lunch. Okay, so some of them were Morgan family and friends who had promised to be there to show support. But they would only be there the first few days; after that it would be up to word-of-mouth and reputation for the business to work.

Sandy, whose background was in advertising and marketing, had told her not to worry about all that—it was up to her to promote the new business. It was up to Lizzie to make the food—and the coffee—good enough for people to return again and again. It was all about the food, Sandy had said several times.

Lizzie took a deep steadying breath. She was confident the food was good, that she could hold up her end of the deal. Service had to be good too. Fingers crossed that Nikki, the young barista, could deal with the pressure.

She kept looking up to see if any early customers had arrived yet. The best marketing for a café was a line of people waiting to get in—though the line couldn’t be so long that it put people off.

She was packing one of the big glass jars with freshly baked salted caramel and pecan cookies. She looked up again. And then again. But in the end she had to admit to herself she wasn’t looking for early customers peering through the plate-glass windows. She was looking for Jesse.

Jesse, who had taken off to Sydney on Sunday, telling her he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday evening.

One part of her was upset he would go to Sydney just days before the café was due to open. Another part of her knew she had no right to expect him to be there to help her with all those last-minute things. Especially when she had told him in no uncertain terms she would never want to date him. Both Sandy and Ben had been there after hours to help instead.

Of course the kisses on the beach had changed things between them. How could they not? The kisses at the wedding had been with a hot guy she scarcely knew. But the beach kisses had been with her friend Jesse, a man she’d got to like and in whose company she felt at ease. His kisses had been sensuous, exciting, arousing—but, more than that, it had felt somehow right to be sharing such pleasure with Jesse. In spite of all the strikes against him.

She missed him. She missed him more than she could have imagined. She missed his laugh, she missed his manly way of getting things done, most of all she missed that wonderful feeling of being in his arms. Had she been mistaken about him?

She thought about what she’d said to him on the beach, when she’d tried to be honest, but had succeeded only in wounding him—she’d seen the hurt in his eyes. Was she wrong in filing him under P for Player, with a sub-category of H for Heartbreaker? Had she misjudged him? After all, she still didn’t know him that well. But what she’d got to know she liked. Liked a lot.

Her caution stemmed from his reputation. But surely her own sister wouldn’t have warned her against him if there hadn’t been something to be cautious about?

She’d met Philippe when she was twenty-one and had only had one serious boyfriend before him and none after him. Truth was, she didn’t have a lot of man mileage on the clock and not a lot of experience on which to make judgements.

Delicious smells wafted into the café, reminding her she needed to be back in that kitchen. Tension was mounting. There had been raised voices, tears, the odd thrown utensil but now all was calm efficiency again.

By seven-twenty a.m. there was a line-up outside the door. By seven forty-five she was so run off her feet she didn’t have time to worry about missing Jesse. By eight-thirty young Nikki was in such a fluster managing the constant orders for coffee, Lizzie could see customers tapping impatiently on table tops waiting for their cappuccino, skinny lattes, flat whites and so on. Nightmare!

As she plated an order for French toast with caramelised bananas and blueberries she tried to think what to do. Ask Sandy if she could borrow another waitress from the Hotel Harbourside? Make coffees herself? She’d run through the machine a few times to familiarise herself with it and could probably churn out a halfway acceptable beverage.

Whatever she did, she had to keep calm—if she didn’t the whole place would fall apart. She’d have to expect teething problems, Jesse had said. But paying customers were harsh critics. A café would live or die on the reputation of its coffee—if she didn’t fix the coffee problem Bay Bites would be going backwards on its first day.

Then, at eight thirty-five, Jesse was there. In the kitchen beside her, tying on his blue-striped apron, joking to the staff that he’d be in trouble with the boss for being tardy.

Her breath caught in her throat and her heart started to hammer so fast she felt giddy. Jesse. She ached to throw her arms around him and tell him how glad she was to see him. How she’d felt as though part of her was missing when he wasn’t here. But that couldn’t happen. They were friends. And he was talking to her as if she were the boss and he was the volunteer helper who was late for work. As it should be, of course. She swallowed down hard on a wave of irrational disappointment.

‘I got caught up so couldn’t get here until now,’ he explained with nothing more than courtesy.

She didn’t care where he’d been, just so long as he was with her now. She forced her voice to sound professional and boss-like. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. Nikki isn’t coping with the coffee. If I can ask—’

‘I’ll take over the coffee machine.’

‘What do you mean? How can you do that?’

‘I worked a coffee machine when I was a student. Got quite good at it.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Thought I’d be too rusty to be of any use to you. While I was in Sydney I did a barista course to get me up to speed.’

‘You what?’

He pulled out a folded up sheet of paper from one pocket then a glasses case from the other. He put on black-framed glasses and unfolded the paper. ‘It’s a certificate proving I’m officially accredited as a barista. Turns out since I last did this, I first had to do a course in kitchen hygiene so I’ve got that qualification there too.’ He added the last sentence in his mock modest, self-deprecating way she liked so much.

Lizzie didn’t know what shocked her most—the fact Jesse had gone to Sydney to train as a barista or how hot he looked in glasses. It added a whole extra layer of hotness to his appeal—not that he actually needed any extra layers.

She lowered her voice so the chef and the kitchen hand who were working nearby couldn’t overhear her. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘I knew you were worried about Nikki. I wanted to help. But I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be more hindrance than help if I’d forgotten how to froth the milk. Turns out I hadn’t. And I got a good score for my coffee art, too.’

She stared at him. ‘You can do coffee art?’

‘Rosettes, hearts. I need some more practice to do a dolphin but I’ll get there,’ he said, deadpan.

‘I’m seriously impressed,’ she said. He’d done it for her and her heart skipped a beat at the thought.

‘It’s just steamed milk on espresso, not difficult really.’

As a chef, she knew presentation was a big part of customer appreciation. These days, people had very high expectations of their coffee; they wanted it to look good as well as taste good.

‘There’s more than that to it; I didn’t know you were an artist.’ Then she remembered he’d studied art in high school. She was beginning to realise she still had a lot to learn about Jesse. What other surprises were waiting to be discovered?

He shrugged and then winced. ‘Your shoulder? What did the doctor say?’ she asked.

‘It’s healing much better than expected,’ he said. ‘I can probably go back to work soon.’

Her heart plummeted to the level of her clogs.

‘That’s good,’ she said, forcing her voice to be level.

At the back of her mind she’d thought she’d at least have a few more weeks with him around. But there was no time to ask what he intended to do. It would have to wait. Even in the few minutes she’d been speaking to him the orders were piling up.

Jesse got down to business. ‘Give Nikki a break from the coffee machine. I’ll take over. Let her wait tables. Later I’ll spend some time training her and we’ll see if she’s good enough to stay.’