Page 58 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses

The first swing felt wonderful, the blade digging in and holding. The raw scent of sap circled, mixing with the aroma of woodsmoke drifting in from town. The pungent sting of the marsh on a rising king tide. Caleb remembered the crude pleasure of demolition. Metal, wood, dominance. It was a basic impulse, to destroy, and basic pleasure derived from it. True, all, but still he experienced the rush. He’d cut down many trees in the days before he had the funds to purchase lumber for his boats. Now, his business was doing so well, he could afford the finest and plenty of it. Could afford that hulking house overlooking the sea. His new warehouse, in a prime location right on the wharf.Fourpart-time employees and maybe more to come by spring. Some days, the success he’d had doing nothing but what he loved, and what he was damnedgoodat, made his mind spin.

Reminiscing made him disregard one critical issue. An issue that had the second swing hurting like a bitch. With the pain came an image of Macy’s lip caught between her teeth as she stitched him up.

“Ah, shit,” he said and let the ax drop to the ground as blood trickled down his arm, soaking the sleeve of his shirt. Beneath layers, he could feel it gumming everything up. “Forgot about that,” he grimaced and shrugged out of his coat.

Noah was there before he drew another breath, mama bear when there’d been no mama since Caleb was twelve years old. “What happened?” His gaze landed on the rosy-red circle blooming on Caleb’s sleeve, then bounced until he caught his brother’s gaze. “Jesus, Cale,” he said even as he was reaching. “You could have said something, you know!”

“Like you can cut down a damn tree.” He exhaled and stepped out of his brother’s grasp. Son of a bitch throbbed, but he wasn’t going to let Noah know that. He’d had enough coddling to last a lifetime. “I’d like to see…the shrub matching your strength.”

He’d not only forgotten about the stitches, but the brother sound asleep behind him. Zach stepped into the fray, lifted Caleb’s arm in his economical manner, turned it this way and that. “How many? Looks like you’ve popped most of them, in any case.”

“Ten. Maybe twelve.” He shook off the hold and pressed his arm to his side. “I don’t know. I lost count.” Lost count staring into a pair of aquamarine eyes. Like the sea at its highest, deepest, darkest tide. He wanted to bathe in that gaze, go under and never come up for air.

Senseless, but he suspected he was barely concealing a possible, very slight butprobable, fascination with the lady doctor.

Noah’s gaze tracked the blood as it trailed from Caleb’s wrist to the tip of his index finger, his jaw flexing like it did when he was trying to contain his ire. “What stitches?” he asked and yanked a handkerchief from his coat pocket and thrust it at Caleb.

Caleb took the cloth and pressed it over the wound. “A minor accident at the warehouse. Nothing to tell. I’m a grown man, unless you’ve forgotten. You”—he stabbed his finger against Zach’s chest, the bloody handkerchief flapping—“have two children to worry about. A wife who runs roughshod over youandthe town you’re busy managing. And you”—he pointed at Noah because jabbing might lead to scuffling, which it often did with this brother, and then where would they be—“have a baby on the way and a wife almost as troublesome. So, can the two of you, please, I’m begging, leave me be?”

“I don’t know why you didn’t mention an injury when we suggested this. That I may worry about my brother, ridiculous, right?” Zach grabbed the ax and stalked through the woods, his hat blowing off his head and fluttering to the ground. “Leland’s going to slam the door in our faces when we ask him to repair the stitches. After each one of us has knocked him on his ass in the past few months, I guess I don’t blame him.” Zach tracked back, grabbed his hat and stuffed it on his head. Pine straw clung to it and shot out at all angles. “Well, boyo, you can bet a shiny new nickel that scar is going to be purposely hideous.”

Caleb waited until they’d started walking again, dodging trees, before he corrected the error. “Miss Dallas did the stitching.”

The unconcealed shock on their faces tasted better than a shot of whiskey. Better than a slice of Elle’s glorious red velvet cake. “I wouldn’t go to Leland for a hangnail,” he added, trying to hold back his grin. Damn, if this wasn’t starting to amuse. And after months of listening to these lovesick fools, he deserved any delight he could get.

“Elle made you do it,” Noah whispered with a look of horror.

Zach grunted, kicking a limb stretched across their path. “A dozen new streetlamps didn’t satisfy. Repaired sidewalks, check. More feminine products at the mercantile. Another check. Now they want the vote. Equal employment at Noah’s lab. Why not flood the town with women doctors? Hell, I guess I’ll go to her since Leland is out.”

“She’s smart.” Caleb tugged his cap over his ears. Without his coat, the wintry bite was starting to sting. “Capable.” He blew into his cupped fist and hunched his shoulders, his wound violently protesting the movement. “Neatest row of stitches you’ve ever seen. Leland’s a butcher in comparison. And I have the scars to prove it.”

Noah sidestepped a fallen log, his gaze sliding Caleb’s way. He was the clever one, the handsome one. While Zach was the honorable one, the protector. That left Caleb to be the Garrett who messed things up, went in temper thundering, brain nowhere in sight. He didn’t know quite how to define himself.

He simply knew he was not thegoodbrother.

Feeling the heat of Noah’s stare, he returned it until his brother dropped his gaze. Caleb recorded the wheels spinning as the Professor tried to figure out how to ask what he wanted to ask. “Your decision to go to her, then?” was what he came up with.

Caleb quit the pine thicket and halted by the wagon they’d left parked on the road leading to the mainland ferry. It was new, built by the finest manufacturer in North Carolina, able to haul any amount of lumber he chose to place in it. Saying he was pleased with the vehicle would be an understatement. He draped his coat over his shoulders as he hoisted himself into the high-backed seat. The sun was setting, the cold really digging in, and his wound thumping unmercifully. “Who else’s would it be?”

Noah climbed in beside him and propped his booted feet atop the toe board. “Am I not allowed to be surprised?”

“Don’t start,” Caleb growled and looped the reins around his fist. His horse danced in place, and he gentled her with a murmur. “I can tell you’re going to start something. You have that interfering look.”

“Savannah’s going to kill me, coming home empty-handed,” Zach muttered as he climbed into the wagon bed. “Now I’ll have to buy one of Flint Newsome’s pitiful pines. They start shedding the day you bring them home. Dead by Christmas. I thought…” He rocked back against the plank wall with a sigh. “Never mind.”

Caleb half-turned on the seat. “You thought what exactly?”

“Well, since you’re asking in the charming tone you use of late, I’ll admit I hoped we might push you back into the light, into living. Everyone loves the holidays. A festive activity to get you out of that warehouse, your mausoleum on the cliff. I know Christabel broke your—”

“Enough,” Caleb said through clenched teeth as he drew back on the reins, sending his horse into a sidestepping canter. “I’mnotheartbroken, that’s just it. I’m empty”—he bumped the heel of his hand on his stomach—“because losing her didn’t hurt as badly as it should have. As I thought it would. Because she was right.”I’m not for you in the way you imagine, Caleb. The way you want us to be. Like Noah and Elle, Zach and Savannah. Can’t you see the difference? It’s whispers in the dark. Looks across a crowded room. The lessandthe more.

The less and the more.

He wasn’t sure what Christabel meant by that, but he wanted to find out.

Macy’s tender, inexperienced kiss had unlocked something inside him. Woken him from a dreadfully secluded slumber. Opened his mind, if not his heart, to a dazzling promise.

The scary thing was, he wanted more than a quick dip in those sapphire eyes. Sex, he’d manage just fine and come out alive, but this wasmore. He wanted to fix her run-down house. Build her a lovely skiff with butter-yellow sails, one he’d spot the moment he saw it gliding over the waves. Compel the townspeople to believe in her medical skills like he did.