Wild Christmas (Wild Heart Mountain: Wild Rider’s MC #17)

8. Nate

8

NATE

T he next few weeks pass in a blur. I get used to the smell of cinnamon from all the baking Freya’s doing. The Christmas songs don’t seem so bad now, and I hum along as I get to know the lyrics to her favorite.

The girls spend hours playing in the living room, rearranging the decorations on the Christmas tree and making more and more streamers. They fight less, both caught up in the excitement of Christmas.

Freya hums as she moves about the house, and I find myself smiling every time she comes into the room.

We watch another movie together and then another, making our way through Freya’s favorite Christmas movies. But I stay firmly on the far side of the couch, not wanting to throw myself at Freya again even though it’s taking everything I have not to.

I keep to my office in the evenings when we’re not watching a movie, not trusting myself to be around her. Since I nearly kissed her on the couch, I’ve kept my distance even though it’s killing me. But she’s the nanny, and I can’t take advantage of that even if she did want me.

I regret storming off that night the way I did.

She can’t have known the fear her words sparked in me, and I’m not ready to voice them.

I apologized the next day and ever since I’ve kept myself guarded, maintaining a distance and keeping it professional.

It’s the day before Christmas Eve, and Maisie is at forest school today. Even with a nanny, I like to get her out with other kids a few times a week to socialize. Maybe she’ll learn the people skills I seem to lack.

The house is quiet without the girls, and I stay in my office transferring data off a client’s PC while I get in a few games of Tour of Duty .

My character darts behind an abandoned shed, but I don’t see the enemy on the other side. I fire, but it’s too late. Red splatters the screen, and my character grunts as the bullet wound to the chest ends him.

“Shit.”

I pull off my headphones and throw them down on the desk. I can’t concentrate on shooting bad guys knowing that Freya is wandering around the house on her own.

It’s her day off and I thought she’d head out of the house, but the imminent snowstorm has kept her inside. I hate to think of her sitting up in her room alone.

It never bothered me with the last nanny, but Freya is different. Freya has soft curves and a smile that lights up the room.

I shake the thought out of my head. She’s too young for me, too innocent.

I check the download from the client’s files and head to the kitchen to get some lunch. I expect to run into her at any turn, but the house is quiet.

Once in the kitchen, I grab some bread and leftover chicken and a few other bits and pieces from the fridge to make a chicken sandwich.

There’s a lot of food, and I don’t know if Freya’s had lunch yet. It would be nice to sit and eat with her. To hear more about her life, her dreams, and find out what she’s going to do in a few weeks when Sydney, my sister, turns up.

I have my misgivings about my sister being a nanny. But I’m not going to turn her away when she needs a place to stay and a job. Besides, Maisie will be starting school in March, so it’s only a few months until all she has to do is collect them from school when I can’t.

The thought of my little girl heading off to school makes me heart squeeze. How did my baby girl get so big so fast? Needing to see something of my little girl, I head to her room.

It’s decorated in rainbow colors with animal decal on the walls. Her snuggly toys are arranged on the bed, and I imagine her talking to them this morning in the way she does before kissing them goodbye.

I pick up her favorite, Hoppity, a mangy rabbit with half its ear missing. It’s been through the wash several times, but the damn things keep hanging on. Not that I’d never throw it away. She’s had Hoppity since she was a baby. They gave it to her in the hospital after the accident, and she’s clung to it ever since.

Hoppity smells like Maisie, like glue sticks and crayons from the crafting she loves doing. I breathe in the scent, missing my little girl even though I only saw her at breakfast a few hours ago.

I put Hoppity back on the bed nestled between a fluffy elephant and a bright blue teddy bear. Her pajamas are on the floor even though I’ve told her a hundred times to pick them up. I fold then neatly and put them on the end of the bed.

Her craft box is open on the floor and felts scatter the area. I pick those up and straighten a few other things in her room.

There’s an adjoining door to Dora’s room and I head in there, hoping my oldest has got the hang of tidying up after her.

I stop short when I see Freya sitting on the bed. She’s got a photo album open on her lap, and she closes it quickly when she sees me.

“Sorry. Dora had it out this morning, and I was just tidying it up.” Her eyes dart to the side, and she looks guilty.

“It’s okay.” I hold my hand out for the photo album. “The girls like to look through it often.”

She hands me the album, and I sit next to her on the bed. It’s a small single also crowded with stuffed animals, so that when I sit next to Freya our thighs bump up against each other.

An electric shock courses through my veins, and my dick twitches to life. Which is entirely inappropriate considering where we are, but I can’t control the effect this woman has on me.

I open the photo album and am greeted with the chubby face of baby Dora, which never ceases to make me smile.

“She was an adorable baby,” coos Freya.

“She was,” I agree. “I missed her birth. I was deployed, and she came early. By the time I came back, she was already two weeks old.”

Becky lies on the hospital bed, her eyes dark with exhaustion and a wan smile on her face as she holds Dora up for the camera.

There are a lot of pictures of Becky with her new baby. I want the girls to remember their mom. The photos were taken by my ex-mother-in-law who flew in from Texas to be with her daughter and never quite forgave me for not being at the birth of her first grandchild.

I flip the page to the first pictures of me with my daughter, my face unlined and my eyes wide with wonder. I can’t believe it was only six years ago. I look like a much younger man.

Then me again in my military uniform kissing a two month old Dora before heading off for another deployment.

The time was always too short with my family. Dora wouldn’t remember me when I got back, and by the time she got used to me again it was time to go.

There are more pictures of Dora and her mom, Becky looking better in a floaty summer dress, Dora on her hip, a chubby one year old now. Becky’s hair is loose, and her flawless skin shiny and bright. She looks so young, too young.

I turn another page, and there are more photos of me and Dora and Dora and Becky. There are none of the three of us together, and I wonder if Freya notices.

“Do you miss her?” Freya’s voice is a whisper, and I know she’s asking about Becky.

I think about the fight we had the last time I saw her. How her face that I once thought pretty was screwed up in resentment. How she yelled at me and called me all the names under the sun even though I was the one who should have been angry.

I remember the girls crying in the house, Maisie’s newborn mewls and Dora’s toddler howls. How I begged her to calm down and not scare the girls, to come inside and talk in the morning.

“I miss the girls having a mom,” I say. “I’m sorry for what happened to Becky, but we were getting a divorce.”

“Oh,” Freya says her shock evident. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Becky wasn’t suited to life as a military wife. She was too young when we married.”

Freya doesn’t say anything, and her silence relaxes me. I feel like I can open up to her. “She cheated on me.”

Freya gasps, and when I glance at her she looks horrified. A single tear rolls down her cheek, and my chest squeezes that this woman feels so much. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

My thumb brushes the tear away. “Are these tears for me?”

She nods and my thumb lingers on her cheek, tracing the curve of her cheekbone. “You feel too much.”

Her warm breath brushes my cheek, and I close the distance between us with my lips, pressing my lips against hers. She’s soft and warm and tastes of the strawberries she had on her cereal this morning.

Freya moans, and I pull away. She looks up at me with round, innocent eyes, and I’m reminded of how young she is. Too young. Too young and innocent, and I’m not going to repeat the same mistakes I made with Becky.

“Sorry.” I stand up abruptly, and the photo album slides off my lap and onto the floor. I reach to pick it up at the same time as Freya, and our foreheads bump together.

“Sorry,” we say at the same time.

She rubs her head and I rub mine, and I’m as awkward as I always have been around a beautiful woman, like the geeky guy who won all the math competitions at school and never the girl.

I was the guy who spent his lunch breaks in the computer room while the cool kids played football or softball or any of those other games I’ve never seen the skill for.

I was a mathlete, which is way less cool than being an athlete when you’re in high school and stupid stuff like being cool matters.

It was at a career day when I was recruited into the army. The man in the neat military uniform said they could use someone with my skills.

I joined the Signals and never looked back. I liked the routine of military life; it was neat and orderly until the accident and the honorable discharge I took to raise my girls. Becky’s mom wanted to take them back to Texas, and for once she encouraged me to stay in the military. But I wasn’t giving up my girls. I gave up the army instead.

I moved back home to raise them in the mountains and took on client work that mostly only uses a fraction of my skills. But occasionally the government calls, and I help on special projects when they need my specialist skills.

But day to day I’m updating laptops and switching PCs off and on again for elderly clients who look bemused when they sit in front of a screen.

It’s worth it for my girls.

My instinct is to make a hasty retreat from Freya and what just happened. But I’m not that awkward teenager anymore. I’m a grown ass man with enough experience to know what I’m feeling for Freya is different. So I take a deep breath, put my fears behind me, and say what I came here to say.

“Do you want a chicken sandwich?” She smiles shyly, and its’s disarming, and I don’t think I conveyed to her what I really want. “I mean, do you want to join me for lunch? Do you want to have lunch with me?”