White Christmas with Her Millionaire Doc, page 7
In a beat Jax dropped her hand and hurried back outside into the snow.
CHAPTER EIGHT
OPHELIA WATCHED JAX pull on his ski boots one by one. Cody was swinging on the porch swing with Kit, the housekeeper, both of them swathed in thick blankets, engrossed in a huge book called Amazing Animals of Montana.
Jax had left a note on her door, told her to dress for a hike, and she felt excited but nervous in his company after he’d kissed her cheek like that earlier on. The action had made Carson throw her knowing looks, all day. She’d contemplated not coming, she was far too invested in Jax for her own good already, but intrigue had won her over and she liked how Jax kept all her other thoughts away—the ones she’d come here to avoid.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked. The sun would be setting soon. As usual, Jax didn’t seem fazed at the prospect of being out there after dark with a bear on the prowl.
‘Just some place I did a frostbite and cold injury seminar today, with the students.’
‘I hope everyone survived,’ she joked as he led her to the snowmobile again. It was parked in the tree-lined driveway between two huge snowdrifts. He handed her a helmet, and her breath caught as he fastened the clasp under her chin then helped her up to the seat.
‘We covered the latest research that’s informed the most up-to-date medical practices, the stuff that’s reducing the need for early surgery,’ he said, motioning her forwards in the seat and swinging his leg over behind her. In a second he was straddling her from behind. Her heart skidded as his thighs locked around her legs.
‘What...?’
‘I think it’s time you drove us, don’t you?’
‘Really? You trust me?’
‘I think it’s time you trusted yourself.’
Ophelia did her best to let his instructions sink in as she steered them away from the house on the path carved out in the snow for the snowmobile. All she could think was that if his legs weren’t locking her in place she might have floated away.
‘You’re doing great,’ he enthused as she took a turn on a snowy corner lit by a blinking reindeer light and shrieked with the thrill of it. It wasn’t as difficult as it looked. They were headed for the base of the mountain, where the trails began. Her feet were warm in her boots, for now, with his own wedging hers protectively into the foot treads either side. She felt safe with him, or rather she wanted to. It was her heart that was the problem.
Jax was far too attractive and emotionally unavailable to consider her as anything more than a locum, a temporary presence that kept him distracted from missing his dead wife. And she didn’t belong here anyway, she had to keep reminding herself. No matter the undeniable attraction between them, she was a future partner at the prestigious Health Dimensions over two thousand miles away...though she hadn’t quite committed to her father’s plans for her yet. Not in writing anyway.
She wondered absently as she drove what he’d do if he knew she was having serious second thoughts, and had been for a while already.
* * *
The path through the forest was thick with heavy branches. Ophelia hadn’t walked this way before, but Jax was storming through it as if he had an agenda, moving the branches to clear her path whenever it got too narrow. Every now and then a clearing revealed how high they were climbing into the sunset-streaked sky.
‘How are you handling it, city girl?’ he asked her, stopping to offer her a hand over a huge fallen log. She almost slipped on some icy snow, but his grip was firm and she found her feet.
‘Is this another test or something?’ she asked him, and he laughed, forging ahead.
She flung some branches out of her direct eyeline, ducking to avoid their vengeful swipe. ‘You keep calling me city girl, like you think I can’t handle myself out here.’
He stopped short in front of her. ‘Well, can you?’
Jax was smiling now. At least, the top row of his teeth was on display and there was a faint curve to his lips. No crease below his eyes, no twitch of the cheeks. He was vaguely amused by her, she realised, feeling her cheeks grow hot.
‘You just haven’t said exactly where we’re going,’ she said, narrowing her eyes.
He smirked. ‘And you seem to be a person who doesn’t much like surprises. Come, we should be quiet till we get there.’
She followed him, keeping her mouth shut, watching the way he manoeuvred himself and scanned the forest around them with some kind of sixth sense. He was giving her the benefit of the doubt, letting her drive the snowmobile and having her hike with him out here after a long, tiring day at Base, but if he really didn’t think she could handle his outdoor ‘surprises’, she was going to keep proving him wrong. Even if the bear showed up.
Ophelia shivered involuntarily, staying close to Jax. Was he thinking about the bear at all, as she was? Or did he think of Juno on long walks out here, where he’d probably hiked with her and Cody loads of times? Had he honestly thought nothing of the fact she’d almost put Cody in danger? She wished she could switch off her thoughts and embrace the silence as he’d suggested, that time on the lookout, but it wasn’t always easy.
She felt an ice-cold lash of dread, knowing she’d do anything to protect a child, but would probably never have another. She’d wanted Little Bean so much, and look what had happened there. The thought that she might be an unsuitable childminder, let alone host for another baby, added to her weariness.
‘Here we are,’ Jax said suddenly, stopping at the entrance to another clearing. Giant trees towered over a rocky archway, its entrance obscured by low-hanging branches. Her knees ached from the long hike, and her damp scarf was starting to make her shiver, but she wouldn’t show it. She might have grown up a city girl, but she’d never had adventures like this in New York.
Jax swept aside a curtain of fir, sending snowflakes swirling around them. The sight that revealed itself was breathtaking. A waterfall, seemingly frozen in motion, was making icicle white teeth around the mouth of a yawning cave, almost ten feet wide. What was left of a river swirled a few feet below. ‘Stay close,’ he told her, inching along the rocky precipice towards the entrance.
Icicles hung like upside-down towers from the ceiling, shimmering in the late sunshine, and Jax ventured on, carving a path for her with his footprints, looking over his shoulder with the excitement of a child wanting to share his magical findings.
‘I don’t bring everyone here,’ he said, and his words echoed around the wet rugged walls, adding a whole new dimension to their adventure as he led her inside.
* * *
‘Memories like this will keep me going, when I’m back home,’ Ophelia announced, coming up to stand alongside him. ‘How long does it stay like this?’
She was spinning around now on the rocks at his side, gazing up at the icicles that lined the mouth of the cave. ‘It’s like this from early October till March,’ he told her, bewitched for a moment by the sight of her. Her bright red scarf was dazzling against the pale shades of winter. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and he knew he had to get the fire going. She was more fragile than she let on.
He felt her eyes on him as he pulled a warm blanket from his bag. ‘Thank you for bringing me here, and showing me this,’ she said as he draped it over her shoulders. He could see she was tired after a long day at Base, but he hadn’t forced her into anything. Maybe he was testing her. Or testing himself, to see if that look she gave him sometimes still made him want to kiss her. He took the firewood from his bag, arranged it on the dirt inside where no icicles could melt and fall.
Her shadow fell over him as he lit the fire, as it had every time he’d put her first, to walk ahead of him on their hike. He’d watched her in shafts of orange sunlight through the branches, the way she hugged her arms to herself, or held her shoulders rigid when she was struggling with not saying something. She’d been enduring every minute for him and, judging from the way she’d been walking at times, trying not to take hold of his arm or hand to steady herself. She was probably as confused by this...thing...between them as he was.
Carson had come by after his shift, pretending to need to talk to Abe. Instead, both older men had questioned him together about Ophelia: ‘We’ve seen the way you look at her...what’s happening?’
He didn’t even know the answer to that himself, not that he would have shared if he did. She was different, so different from Juno, and not his usual type, a city girl. But, for all their differences, at her core she was the same, a fighter, a survivor like him, who’d wandered a wilderness of her own to get this far. And she seemed to really see him, in a way he hadn’t felt seen in a while. ‘I come here when I need to think,’ he said, pulling out the food he’d brought and offering her the package in tin foil. ‘I had Hunter make us these.’
Ophelia crossed her legs. Her snow boots scuffed the ground and the blanket fell from one shoulder as she unwrapped the sandwich. He watched her mouth in the firelight as she took a bite. Those lips...not glossy or pink any more. She’d abandoned the make-up along with her hair straighteners, it seemed. He liked her even more like this, all natural.
He’d wanted to kiss her since the night of the dinner, and every time it had come to a perfect moment for it, he’d backed off, or made an excuse as to why it was a bad idea. He knew he was running out of excuses.
They ate in silence, which was normally fine for him, except he wanted to know more about Ophelia. ‘Cody really likes you, you know,’ he said.
She turned to him, wiping her lips slowly, smiling into her napkin. ‘I like him a lot too. He’s so in tune with this place, and he’s learning an incredible amount about the world through you, the real world. It’s not the kind of education we’re used to where I grew up, but it’s different out here. You have a whole other set of rules.’
The way she spoke made him swell with pride and desire, two things he hadn’t felt for a woman in a long time. ‘I’m glad you see it that way,’ he said. ‘He wants to work with the eight tribal nations in Montana, you know, to promote tourism to Native American territories. He’s more in touch with this land than I am. He gets it, how it is, how it used to be. You should see him in the summer on the horses.’
‘I’d like to see that.’ She smiled, watching him over the ruffled edges of the blanket. ‘It’s clear you’re doing a great job with him, Jax. You make me wonder what kind of mother I would have been if I hadn’t lost my...’
Ophelia stopped talking and flinched as if she’d said something out loud that she’d meant to keep inside. His heart was thudding hard.
‘You had a child?’ Something made him reach for her hands, but she pulled the blanket around her more tightly, blocking him. Her eyes fell to the floor.
‘I was safely past the twelve-week point, but I miscarried not long after Dad came home and told us how he’d found Ant. I had never seen him cry before that day... Everything just fell apart after that.’
The vulnerable hunch of her shoulders ignited some primitive urge to shelter her.
‘Sanjay never wanted the baby from the start. He wasn’t ready to be a father.’ She scrunched up her nose. ‘Gosh, I’m sorry, Jax. I didn’t mean for that emotional outpouring...’
‘It’s OK,’ he said. He didn’t know how to tell her that what she’d said had made him respect her even more. To think she’d lost a child and come out the other side as she had was a miracle. If anything ever happened to Cody he would crawl into a hole and never come out, which was pretty much the same as dying.
‘And what about you, Jax? Do you truly feel a sense of peace about what’s happened to you?’ she asked him, still dabbing her eyes. ‘I’ve seen you work the crowds, everyone thinks you’re moving on just fine, and you say you are too, but you won’t reopen that disused ski slope.’
Damn.
He dropped his eyes to the fire. What was he supposed to say to that?
She continued gently. ‘All I’m saying is, I’ve noticed we could help a lot of people get to Base much faster if it was open. So you must have a very good reason for keeping it closed.’
‘Cody was out there with us, when it happened,’ he said eventually, watching a twig crackle and spark against the icy ceiling instead of her eyes.
‘We were a few months off the start of the new season. Juno and I...we thought we knew the mountain well enough to go off-piste while we still could. This time I had Cody on a toboggan. Juno was ahead of us on skis.’
Ophelia looked speechless. ‘Jax...’
‘I will never forgive myself for letting them go out there when it wasn’t safe, Ophelia. Cody had to watch the accident. He watched his mother die.’
He lowered his gaze and searched her eyes, looking for the judgement he knew he deserved, preparing himself for the disbelief that he could be such a careless father and husband, taking his wife and kid out off-piste on skis and a toboggan. He expected her to ask for details about the accident, but she didn’t. He thought for a second that he’d said too much, but at the same time he knew he could talk to her about it. He wanted to.
‘You keep it closed for Cody?’ She was studying him closely, quizzically. ‘How does he feel about that?’
‘He doesn’t need to be up there. He doesn’t need to see that every day.’
‘Or maybe you just don’t want to see it, because it reminds you of that day,’ she said gently.
He frowned, contemplating her observation. There was no judgement in her eyes, but no one else had ever said that to him before. He felt his wedding ring burning like a hot gold reminder that he was verging on falling hard for someone he could never really have. But he hadn’t counted on making a connection like this with anyone in such a short amount of time; he couldn’t have seen it coming. He felt paralysed, glued to her eyes. Talking like this, about all this personal stuff—it made him want to shut down, but at the same time she was driving him crazy.
‘I think we could write a book about grief together,’ he told her. ‘Or...’
He didn’t finish, instead he pressed a kiss softly to her upper lip, testing her, tasting her, silently asking if she wanted more.
She did.
CHAPTER NINE
JAX TASTED LIKE salt and snow, and their crashing kisses sent hot electricity pulsing from her lips to everywhere else.
Jax seemed to kiss her as if she were his lifeblood, then the next second had her dangling in the abyss as his lips left hers to focus on another part of her aching body—aching from the hike, aching inside to feel more of him.
In every split second before his lips kissed a different part of her, every nerve in her body and brain was electrified. The anticipation of being with him in a brand-new way was almost as good as feeling it happen. It felt as though hours passed as she caved into her carnal desires and he worshipped her as if he’d been storing up all the different ways he might please her, ever since they’d met.
She was in an ice cave by a fire, Jax was the hottest man she’d ever been this close to, and this was nothing like she’d ever experienced...what if the bear came in?
Jax didn’t seem concerned. He was only focused on the areas of her body that were being exposed as he undressed her. Strangely she wasn’t shy, she wasn’t embarrassed, she only felt hot, flaming desire and the urge to satisfy him too, however she could. It surprised her how quickly and how easily they surrendered to each other, and how much she loved it.
He could dominate her, and then submit to her himself—both made her desire him more. Naked on the soft blanket, they moved as one, and it was the most exhilarating sexual encounter of her entire life so far...even if she might regret it later. As time passed in sighs, and moans, and kisses, and strokes, she felt as if she were watching the scene from outside herself somehow.
‘You are something different,’ she whispered into his chest at one point. She couldn’t help it.
‘I knew you were something different too,’ he groaned, pressing his hips to hers, drawing her closer against a backdrop of icicles. ‘The second I saw you on that video call.’
‘We might regret this,’ she breathed, but it was too late to stop. His body was one thing, but the way he moved with her went beyond the carve of his muscles. She couldn’t recall how long they spent like that, discovering each other in the silence, but as they were curled up together in the afterglow a voice from somewhere outside made Jax turn rigid in a shield around her.
‘Help! Is anyone here?’
She could barely make the words out. Jax was on his feet in a second, snatching his gun back up from the floor. She scrambled into her jeans and watched him stamp out the fire in heavy boots.
He fetched a heavy bag from the moss at the back of the cave. ‘Hurry, we need to go.’
‘I’m coming, hold on.’
Shivering at the shift in atmosphere and urgency, she shoved the blanket back into his backpack with shaking hands. The voice called out again: ‘Help me, please!’
* * *
The pathway from the frozen waterfall felt dangerous at night. Uneven snowdrifts seemed to block their path on purpose, but she had to trust Jax. His flashlight lit the way around the trees, and Jax bent the branches ahead, forging a path as if he’d done it a thousand times before. ‘Where’s the voice coming from?’ she hissed, feeling the cold creep back into her bones.
‘Over here!’
The look on Jax’s face was pure determination now as he made off in another direction, and she trailed him as if she were under a trance, still tasting him on her tongue. She’d just slept with him in a cave! This was getting out of control. She wasn’t here to be his winter distraction...if that was even what he was doing with her.
