Page 76 of Christmas With A Stranger

"This?"

"You. Me. Whatever we've been doing." I motion with my hands between us, as if that will make it clearer.

"And Wyoming?"

"I'm not giving up my ranch. I'm figuring out how to manage it with workers from here."

"For the record, I'm not asking you to give up the ranch."

"What are you asking me, then?"

"Whether you're coming back."

"Yes."

I cross the balcony and kiss her. We get a few minutes before one of the babies starts crying. Mackie laughs against my mouth and leans her head on my shoulder.

EIGHTEEN

Mackie

Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light / And usher in the morning

Graham's cry cuts through the dark, and Carson's already moving. He has a hand under the baby's head before I even get upright. I stand there useless in the low light while he lifts our son against his shoulder.

"I've got him," he says quietly. "Go back to sleep."

I don't go back to sleep. I follow him into the den and lean against the wall by the kitchen while he walks the small loop between the couch and the window, patting Graham's back in the rhythm he's found that works. The stove light puts a green hue on the kitchen island.

It takes him eleven minutes. I count them because I have nothing else to do and because I like watching him. Graham's fist unclenches against Carson's chest, and his breathing evens. Carson carries him back to the bedroom, and I follow as far as the doorway while he lowers him into the bassinet beside his sister an inch at a time.

Then he straightens, and his eyes find me in the doorway. Lis' door is shut. The whole condo has gone still except for the two of us.

I walk toward him. He meets me. We're close enough that the heat off him seeps through the shirt of his I'm wearing.

"This is probably the least appealing I have ever⁠—"

I hear it. The trapdoor swinging open under me, the joke I built to climb out through before he can look too long. Four days in his shirts because they don't catch on the incision, and stitches under that, and a body that isn't mine yet. I hear myself reaching for the punch line, and I stop.

"Finish that," he says.

"This is the least appealing I've ever been and still wanted someone so badly."

"There's nothing unappealing about you, Mackie Larkin."

I reach for him without looking away, catch a fistful of his shirt at the hip, and pull him into the room. He shuts the door with his heel.

The room goes dark blue, only the monitor light and the pale rectangle of the curtain. Five feet away, both babies sleep in their bassinets, chests rising, and I can hear them under everything, that small wet sound newborns make.

Carson stops at the foot of the bed and stands there and lets me be the one who moves. I have spent years making sure nobody looked at me longer than a beat. Long enough to laugh, then gone.

"Sit down," he whispers. I do what he says and sit on the edge of the bd.

He sits on the floor in front of me and takes my foot in both hands. He presses his thumbs into the arch. It tickles and is sensual at the same time.

"What are you doing down there?"

"I want to enjoy every inch of you while I make you know how fucking sexy you are."