Scooping up a branch, he knelt to sweep away her tracks. "Wouldn't want you to break rules."
A snowball thunked him on the head.
Well, he'd claimed to like her unexpectedness. Just about as much as he liked surprising her right back.
Slowly, he rose, finding Alicia waiting with another arm arced back, snowball missile aimed and ready.
"Watch it, my love. You start surprising me too much and I'm going to get turned on."
He waited for the explosion.
Instead, she laughed, surprising him again.
"Good God, Josh. It's fifty below. I can barely feel my toes. How in the world can you feel your...uh...well... you know."
Yeah, he sure did know, and damned inconvenient timing it was. Shouldn't his body be focused on survival? Instead, it was screaming for him to procreate before he died.
Back to her question and off thoughts of procreating. "I trusted you could start a fire in the cave, so I figured it was best to conserve the lighter fuel for an emergency."
Her arm sagged to her side. The second snowball splatted to the ground, icy missile and anger diffused.
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For trusting me to pull my own weight."
Her sincerity knocked him off balance as much as her unexpected anger. He couldn't afford to have his concentration shaken, especially not now. Time to regain distance. "No problem. And, hey, that's a mighty fine butt you were working off anyhow."
Her laugh echoed again, hoarser this time. "Good thing you're my husband or I could write you up on sexual harassment charges for a statement like that, Colonel."
Except he was only her husband for a short time longer, which made her joke fall flatter than the abandoned snowball.
A holiday miracle sometime soon sure would be nice. But he'd given up counting on miraculous rescues when he was fifteen years old watching people bleed out all around him.
These days, he knew if there was any saving to be done, he could only count on himself. >How ironic that the view in front of him—trees, snow, a star streaking through the darkness—resembled a picture-perfect scene worthy of any Christmas card, and yet it carried such deadly undertones. Just as that year had for her, only she'd been unaware of the lurking tragedy, something they shared in common after all.
He reached around the tree trunk to rest a hand on her arm. She probably couldn't feel the gesture through the layers of winter gear, but he couldn't keep his distance.
"The first Christmas without her was hard. I knew there was no way I could make things better for Dad, but I really wanted little Hank and Darcy to grow up with holiday memories, too. Maybe not as cool as the ones Mom would have made with us, but they would have their stories to tell."
"What did you do?"
"I had Dad take all three of us to a big Christmas mall. We shopped for hours trying to pick out a creche. Except I'd like the Mary in one, but the lambs were goofy. Darcy wanted a certain angel, but thought the Wise Men looked creepy. Then I remembered Mom crying over that perfect tree because she wanted her hodgepodge one back. So, we just played mix and match. We bought our favorite piece from each set to create a whole new set that was uniquely our own."
He could see her, so young herself but taking charge while recognizing the beauty of their individual tastes. How could this woman tempt him in the middle of a blizzard when he couldn't even see one inch of her luscious body?
Josh cleared his throat, if not his thoughts, that were tumbling faster than a plane in a barrel roll. "So that explains your clothes."
"Huh?"
"No matched sets."
"Oh. No." Her laugh floated round, packing more of a punch than her sigh. "Actually, I just don't have any fashion flair since there wasn't anyone around to teach me. Hey, scratch that last part. It sounds un-PC and totally ungrateful to my dad. But he wore his uniform all the time and didn't have a clue about clothes. A couple of the other squadron wives tried to help, but, uh, you may have noticed I'm a bit prickly in the pride department."
"No? Really?"
"Smart-ass," she answered, but her tone was lighter, and damned if those two words didn't sound a little affectionate. "I knew they meant well. Maybe I didn't want to shop without Mom. Who knows? But those pity looks really bugged me. So next time we went somewhere, I deliberately mismatched. I found I liked it better than 'normal,' anyway. Now, after wearing a uniform all day, playing with colors is fun."