Holiday by Candlelight Read online

  He couldn’t do more than scowl to cover up the bolt of fear that zigzagged through his body. Getting a tour around town sounded great, but her proposed cost? Way too high. He shook his head.

  “Work with me here,” she cajoled.

  Damn. Was he going to have to admit how he felt about heights? Sweat dampened his forehead and he tried to subtly wipe it away with the back of his hand. “Garnet, I—I can’t.”

  Chapter Two

  “You can’t,” Garnet echoed. He was just going to leave it at can’t? Seriously?

  But the person fighting not to break into a sweat in front of her was not the calm, serious man she’d met a handful of times while hanging out with her friend Zach. When she’d walked up to Caleb at the counter earlier, he’d seemed his usual self: reserved to the point of approaching stoic, and put together as hell. His charcoal wool coat had cut a perfect line over wide shoulders and a tall, rower’s build. Dark hair curling over the arms of his thick-rimmed glasses. With that coat and his impeccable leather boots, he should have looked out of place. Sutter Creek was quaint and quiet, a Western-rustic mix that didn’t lend itself to urban swagger. But Caleb carried himself like a man at ease in whatever space he happened to be occupying.

  The sheen on his forehead hinted that she’d been wrong on that assessment.

  “I—” His paper coffee cup dented as he gripped it and glanced to the side.

  She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

  Not that she could blame him. He probably wasn’t in the habit of admitting personal details to a woman he barely knew. She’d been told once or twice she overshared and shouldn’t expect everyone to do the same. She cupped her mug, focusing on the heat seeping into her palms as she echoed, “You can’t?”

  His lips wobbled for a fraction of a second before he twitched the corners of his mouth up and nodded.

  A minuscule movement.

  But Lord, it packed a wallop. Something about that clean-shaven jaw begged for a finger to be dragged along his olive skin.

  Her mouth felt like she’d stuck her wool mitten inside it. She moistened it with her tongue. Enough of that. Garnet had been operating on a look-but-don’t-touch basis on the dating front for the last few years, which had made her life a hell of a lot easier. She had no plans of abandoning the strategy anytime soon. Not if she wanted to stay true to her own goals and desires. “Okay, what can you do?”

  “The rest of the legwork to find somewhere else to rent.” He absentmindedly massaged the fingers of his right hand, which looked hella stiff. His cheek flinched, and tightness pulled at the corners of his dark brown eyes.

  The few facts she already knew about him knitted together with what she was seeing. Sympathy spread through Garnet’s chest. Apparently, the guy had been a top-notch surgeon in Denver before he moved to Sutter Creek a few months ago. Rumor was he now spent his off time holed up in the massive, too-modern-for-the-surroundings house he’d bought himself out on Moosehorn Lake. How many times had she heard people gossiping about Caleb while picking up a loaf of Nancy’s famous sourdough at the bakery? The new doctor, so handsome—I heard he was in an avalanche. The one that killed Cadie’s husband. Someone told me he was a skier but I’ve never seen him up the mountain.

  Not surprising. In Garnet’s patrolling and search and rescue work, she’d seen the impact avalanches could have on survivors, including preventing people from wanting to strap on skis again. PTSD was common. Garnet both understood how traumatic getting caught in a slide could be and at the same time couldn’t fathom not spending most of her winter days in the snow. Was that the source of his hesitance? Even though a staff party wouldn’t involve any skiing?

  Well, crap. She had to have a venue by this afternoon. “I get you’re reluctant, but delaying much longer will mean losing the one remaining available place that can handle our numbers. If we want to get our coworkers dancing to ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ with candy-cane martinis in their hands, we need to make some decisions.”

  He checked his watch, a brushed silver design with enough dials to look like it belonged on the dashboard of one of the mountain’s snowcats.

  Irritation flared behind her breastbone. “Somewhere better to be?”

  He cocked a dark brow. “I only have thirteen minutes to hoof it through the crowds of Thursday skiers and holiday shoppers. Locals are still making appointments to get a read on the new guy in town. Add in a few tourists who went too hard on the mountain and are regretting it, and my afternoon’s packed.”

  Her stomach twisted. What if he went back to the clinic and complained about the meeting, about her being stubborn or unpleasant...? Doesn’t matter. Her chest tightened, and she forced herself to take a breath. You’re not responsible for others’ opinions of you. She was beyond changing herself to fit in.

  He needed to respect Evolve, and follow through with whatever tasks he took on for the celebration. Beyond that? Irrelevant.

  “I need another hour of your time, Caleb. We haven’t decided on anything.”

  “Another day. After I’ve done some research.”

  Calm. Breathe. You’ve got this.

  The bakery gossip floated back into her mind. Never seen him up the mountain...

  Maybe she needed to play along in order to get him to see how much of a pinch they were in. “You know, you’re living up to the stubborn surgeon stereotype by needing to do the work yourself to believe it’s true, but if you want to waste your time, fill your boots.”

  His shoulders dropped an inch. “Thanks. I’ll let you know what I find. And also...” He held up his right hand, a grim look on his face. “I’m not a surgeon anymore.”

  Her breath hitched. She could have blamed the shock on the network of red marking his fingertips, palm and wrist. But scars didn’t faze her.

  His openness, though? And wanting to hold that hand, to trail her hand up his forearm and across the thin, teal sweater covering his hard pecs?

  Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

  Or rather, loser, if she allowed herself to be attracted to yet another guy with whom she didn’t share interests.

  “Have you tried acupressure?” One of the reasons she’d been so excited to see Evolve open was to allow people in their small town to access a wide range of alternative therapies that they’d previously had to drive the forty-odd minutes to Bozeman to access.

  “Yes.” A hollow smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I’ve tried everything.” He shot to his feet and yanked his hat onto his head. His jaw hardened until it looked about as flexible as the crag over by Devil’s Playground that she liked to climb during the summer months. “I had my hand crushed between a tree and a rock. Pretty sure it’s normal to have pain.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I still have your email address from arranging this meeting. I’ll send you a note after I finish calling places. Have a good afternoon.” Grabbing his coat off the back of the chair, he strode out of the cafe like an elk was charging him.

  Okay, then. Not so open, maybe.

  And not so stoic as she’d thought.

  She’d give him a day to call around. Maybe even two, just to be generous. She knew the lounge’s event coordinator well enough to ask the guy to give her a heads-up if anyone else was interested in the date of the party. And in the meantime, she’d try to get a better read on Caleb Matsuda’s mental wellness.

  * * *

  The next day, Garnet headed into the Evolve staff room before her Friday afternoon shift. Spending yesterday evening working on people with varying injuries and health issues had only reinforced the curiosity she felt over Caleb’s emotional walls. Seeing him in pain grated on her inner healer. Good grief, doctors were the worst at not taking care of themselves.

  Luckily, she had an inside track with the small number of people who knew him beyond acquaintance. Two of whom were sitting
at the round lunch table, heads bent over a binder thick with clippings and snippets of ribbons and fabrics. Details for Lauren Dawson’s wedding, no doubt. Lauren and her sister, Cadie, had been juggling the management of Evolve and the planning of Lauren’s New Year’s Eve nuptials for months.

  And given Lauren and Cadie had been all over using their familial connection to book a venue, they might be willing to brainstorm ways to work around Caleb’s reluctance. But it didn’t seem polite to jump straight into “Hey, can you do me a favor?”

  “How many days until W-Day?” she asked, gesturing at the bursting-at-the-seams wedding binder.

  Lauren straightened, hands resting on top of her rounded belly. Her blond hair was pulled into a bun and she wore leggings and a long T-shirt. “Twenty-nine. I’m not sure what I’m more excited about, though. The baby, or the wedding. Being pregnant at my height, I swear, I looked full-term at four months. And I’m hitting that third trimester energy suck.”

  “With two months to go? Sleep now, or forever hold your peace,” Garnet said, smiling.

  Lauren glowered.

  “Are you and Tavish signed up for this month’s labor-and-delivery support class?” She, along with a few of her copractitioners and a local midwife, was offering a joint session on pain management during childbirth. “Or does it conflict with your wedding chaos?”

  “We’ll be there.” Lauren’s face turned cautious. “I have a serious case of knowing too much, I think. I’m paranoid I’ll need an epidural and that I’ll end up with a C-section, and I want to avoid that.” Rolling her shoulder, she winced. “And I have a knot in my shoulder the size of a watermelon.”

  “That’s your stomach, Laur, not your shoulder,” Cadie said, brown ponytail bobbing in time with her laughter.

  Garnet cringed but Lauren just rolled her eyes and flipped her sister off. “One of these days Zach’s going to knock you up and you’ll be the one suffering. And it’ll be your second, so you’ll be even bigger.”

  Cadie stuck out her tongue. “Slow down there, Speedy Gonzalez. We don’t all end up engaged in the time it takes us to sneeze. And Ben’s not even eighteen months old. I don’t see getting pregnant quite yet.”

  Taking in the classic give-each-other-crap routine, Garnet’s heart panged. In the last six months, Lauren had fallen back in love with her high school boyfriend, Tavish, and the couple was thrilled about their less-than-planned pregnancy. And Cadie had found the courage to find love with Zach, her late husband’s best friend. The two of them were too cute together, especially when Cadie’s son was around. Garnet could not get enough of watching Zach, normally the mountain’s cool-as-a-cucumber ski patrol director, turn to mush when he was with Ben.

  God, it would be amazing to have such a close family. Garnet usually didn’t mind being an only child, but sometimes she ran up against a reminder that there was nothing quite like that bond.

  Lauren rolled her stiff joint again, and Garnet sent her a sympathetic look. “Want me to work on that for a few minutes?”

  “Ooh, please.”

  Garnet set to loosening the tight band of muscle. “Maybe not a watermelon, but at least a grapefruit.”

  “Oh, my God.” Lauren moaned with pleasure. “I’m marrying the wrong person.”

  Garnet laughed.

  Cadie focused in on Garnet. “How did your meeting with Dr. Do-Me go yesterday?”

  Garnet involuntarily tightened her grip on Lauren and a hiss rent the air.

  “Oh, dang, sorry,” she apologized.

  “That did the trick, I think. I felt it give just then,” Lauren said. “But don’t stop for that reason, please. And what went wrong during the meeting?”

  “He crapped on my idea of holding it up the mountain. I need a way to convince—what did you call him? Dr. Do-Me?”

  Cadie grinned. “He did some of the medical support on Sam’s films. Rumor has it that was his nickname on set.”

  Easy to believe. Those troubled eyes alone could coax a woman between the sheets.

  “I tried to set you up with him, Cadie,” Lauren said.

  “I know.” Cadie’s expression softened to a dreamy musing. “And I ended up right where I was meant to be.”

  Another throb pulsed in Garnet’s chest, followed by a spear of fear to her gut. How did people survive in relationships without losing themselves? She’d certainly never managed to do it.

  She withdrew her hands from Lauren’s shoulders and took a seat at the round table. “If either of you have any inside information, fill me in.”

  Mirrored cocked brows betrayed the sisters’ blood relationship, and that they’d both read Garnet’s intent wrong.

  “Not for personal interest. Good grief. I’m still happy not dating.” Well, “happy” might be exaggerating. Content, out of necessity. “I want to know how to get him to agree to rent out the Peak Lounge.”

  Cadie tilted her head. “Why does it matter so much?”

  Defensiveness rose, and Garnet tamped it down. It was a logical question, not an unreasonable request for Garnet to justify her decisions. She’d promised to stop doing that.

  She wasn’t a chameleon anymore. A girl only needed to wake up with her throbbing, hungover head resting on a random dorm toilet once to realize that making choices based on others’ interests was stupid at best.

  She’d left that behind when she left grad school, and had been learning who she was and what she liked since. Juggling her acupressure practice, her ski patrolling and her work with search and rescue would prove she’d figured it out. Also, staying away from the opposite sex until she could know she wouldn’t throw her interests aside for a set of strong shoulders.

  “Nowhere else has space, not on the last weekend before Christmas. And I really want Evolve’s first holiday party to be great.” The image of a sheen breaking out on Caleb’s forehead surfaced in her mind. “I don’t want to force the issue if it’s triggering him, though.”

  “Triggering?” Lauren asked.

  “I’m not an expert, but his behavior reminded me of an ex-soldier I’ve worked with. And PTSD isn’t an uncommon response to an avalanche.”

  Cadie paled.

  “Crap, sorry for bringing it up, Cadie.” Her late husband had died in the same Whistler backcountry slide that Caleb had been caught in, and Zach, who’d been on-site but hadn’t been swept up, had dealt with some major survivor’s guilt.

  “No, it’s okay.” Cadie’s throat bobbed. “It’s a tricky balance, figuring out how hard to push people to heal. I should know. Zach and I almost didn’t get together because we were both stuck in emotional stasis. I hope Caleb’s not still there.”

  Garnet sensed he was, but it didn’t feel right to speculate further. She sucked in a breath. “Well, I’ll have to be strategic, then. If going up a mountain is a mental health block for him...”

  “Given I was ready to give you an engagement ring after you rubbed my shoulder for a few minutes, I’m putting my money on you getting through to him,” Lauren said.

  “Yeah, but I’m using words with him, not acupressure treatment.”

  “You’ll do right by Evolve, Garnet. I know it. And I’ll save a week’s worth of energy to make sure I can dance up a storm.” Lauren rose, yawning. She turned to her sister. “I don’t think I can handle hitting the lodge lounge after work tonight. I need to go to bed at like, five.”

  Cadie made a sulking face, then laid a wheedling smile on Garnet. “How about you come? Otherwise it’s just going to be me and all the patrol crew.”

  “I’m part of the patrol crew,” Garnet reminded her friend.

  “You don’t count. You talk about things other than who got first tracks where and blah, blah, blah.”

  “Oh, as if you don’t get all warm around the edges when Zach’s in his uniform,” Garnet teased. She really shouldn’t say things like that—Zach was her
boss for her part-time patrol hours, after all. But the appeal of a guy in a red jacket skiing a curling ribbon of turns into fresh powder couldn’t be denied.

  It was entirely an objective observation.

  Unlike the warmth she’d felt around Caleb Matsuda. She’d reacted far beyond objective appreciation. And for the sake of her equilibrium, she could not entertain that.

  Cadie crossed her arms. “I may be guilty of having locked Zach’s office door once or twice when he was decked out in sexy gear. And I’m demanding payment for that admission—you’re coming with me for drinks later. Zach’s sister is visiting, and we promised her we’d actually be fun given it’s Friday. Dad’s watching Ben, and I don’t want to waste a babysitter night surrounded by testosterone and tourists.”

  “That’ll probably be the theme of the night, even if I am there,” Garnet said.

  “So you’re going to desert me, too?” Cadie complained.

  “I didn’t say that. But I’m not going to dilute the hormones and general air of hookups all that much.”

  Cadie pointed a finger at Garnet. “I’ll take it.”

  And Garnet would take the certainty she wouldn’t run into Caleb at the lounge. She’d never seen him hang out with Zach while Zach was with the mountain crew.

  She needed time to prepare before she ran into the sexiest man in Sutter Creek again.

  Chapter Three

  Caleb slammed down the handset on his office phone. Spending his Friday lunch hour working through Garnet’s coffee-stained list had proved he didn’t know a thing about the restaurant industry. As all the hosts he’d spoken to had informed him, their managers and event coordinators weren’t available during dinner service. But he needn’t bother calling back—every place was booked to the last table on the weekends in the lead-up to Christmas.

  Scratch that—the Loose Moose was available. But Garnet had protested hard when he’d thrown it out as an option. He put his chances of convincing her to hold the party at a scuzzy bar between zero and nil.