It took several hours to get the decorations up and the empty boxes put away. A sweeper was run. Finally the entire bunch of people settled in the family room, sitting on the floor, chairs, sofas. When the football game ended, Emma’s sister, Mary Kate, sat at the piano to play Christmas carols and they all joined in singing. Emma came to sit beside him and to his amazement, the kids found him interesting, so they had squeezed onto the sofa beside Emma and him. Being crowded together suited him because he could put his arm around Emma’s shoulders without it seeming a personal gesture. He had an arm around two of the little kids on the other side of him, but he enjoyed having Emma pressed against him.
To his surprise, he remembered the old songs he hadn’t sung in years. Finally when they stopped singing, they began to pull coats out of closets.
“We’re going outside because Dad turns on the Christmas lights, a tradition that means the Christmas season is officially kicking off at the Hillman house.”
Zach laughed. “I don’t know how I let you get me into this.”
“I know exactly how,” she said, giving him a sultry look, and his smile disappeared.
“Emma—” Smiling, she walked away and he watched her hips covered in tight jeans as she walked away from him to get her jacket.
The entire family and dogs gathered on the front lawn and waited for the light ceremony. In minutes the lights came on and it was bright as noontime. Zach stood next to Emma and applauded with the others when the lights sparked to life. “Emma, I’ve fallen into Christmas Vacation. This is the Griswold house,” he said softly.
She laughed. “Except the lights all came on at the first try. Dad loves Christmas. Actually, we all do. It’s wonderful.”
The family stayed up talking until one when they began to say good-night. By the time Emma and her younger brother, Bobby, turned in, they had to lock up and switch off lights.
She had an apartment nearby, but she had told him she would stay at her parents’ house. He hadn’t known they wouldn’t sleep at her place until they were almost to Dallas. A huge disappointment to him.
At her door, Zach placed his hand on the jamb to block her way. He tugged on a lock of her hair to draw her closer and leaned forward to brush her lips with a light kiss. The instant his mouth touched her soft lips, his body reacted. He ached with wanting her. His arm tightened around her waist while he kissed her long and fervently. “I want you, Emma,” he whispered.
The look in her eyes made his pulse pound. He inhaled deeply, fighting the urge to reach for her again. This wasn’t the time or the place, so he told her good-night before going to the room given to him for his weekend visit.
He wanted to be alone with Emma now and couldn’t wait to get back to the ranch, but the holiday had been a pleasant surprise.
By Saturday, the weather had warmed. The family sat at a long picnic table, made from five tables pushed together with Zach at one end, his foot propped on a wooden box. Emma’s mother was to his right and Emma sat on his left. Her father was at the far end while various relatives lined both sides of the table. They sat in a sunny spot in a wooded park not far from Emma’s parents’ home.
It was easy to see where Emma got her looks. Her auburn-haired mother, Camilla, was a good-looking woman and appeared far younger than she had to be since she was the mother of Emma’s older brother and older sisters. Brody Hillman, Emma’s dad, had welcomed him, but Zach could feel the unspoken questions and saw the speculation in Brody’s expression. Even more open about his curiosity was Emma’s older brother, Connor. Connor studied Zach and Zach could feel disapproval simmering just beneath the surface. Connor had been friendly, but only in a perfunctory manner and Zach thought it was just a matter of time before Connor quizzed him about his relationship with Emma.
There had been enough curious looks from all of them to remind him that Emma did not bring men home with her for the weekend. He had wished a hundred times over that he had not accepted her invitation, He would have to last until tomorrow afternoon when they would leave for his ranch.
“Zach,” Emma said, “my nieces are so impressed with you. I told them you are a world traveler. They want to know the scariest trip you’ve had or scariest place you’ve been.”
He smiled at a row of little girls staring at him expectantly and told about waking up with a huge snake in his tent, but that was not as scary as swimming and discovering a shark approaching him. By the time he got to that part, the boys had gathered around to listen. The girls sat quietly, their eyes opening wider, and he didn’t want to scare them. “Those were scary moments. Then there was a time I was camped far from a town. My things kept disappearing. I thought someone who worked for me was taking them until I discovered it was a very sly monkey. We found the stash and I got back my things, except my golf cap. I left that for him and hoped I’d see him wearing it, but I never did.”
As the girls laughed, he glanced at Emma to see her smiling while she watched her nieces.
He got out his phone. “I have pictures,” he said, opening it and quickly finding his electronic scrapbook. He held out the phone and Emma had to join the kids to look. She gasped, maybe only slightly less than the little girls. She bent closer, looking at a massive snake that was held by four men.
“Zach, is it alive?” she asked.
“Yes, but it had been fed, so it wasn’t moving much and everyone was safe.”
She glanced at Zach, and he suspected he had just dropped a notch in her estimation of his lifestyle. He suspected she liked homebody types who spent their weekends playing with the kids versus someone who traveled and encountered wild snakes and ran some big risks.
After lunch, they cleaned up and when everything was put away, a tag football game was planned with everyone participating.
“You can be scorekeeper, Zach. We always have two or three scorekeepers, so no one person has to keep up with all of us,” Brody said. “There’s a lot of give and take to scorekeeping for one of our family games. Usually we end up with about as many different scores as scorekeepers, so don’t take any of this too seriously. You’ll see.”
Zach agreed to the task, sitting on the sidelines with his foot resting on a cooler. Brody’s sister, Beth, joined him as scorekeeper along with Brody’s mom, Grandma Kate. Emma’s maternal grandmother, Grandma Nan, was on the field to play; she looked too young to be a grandmother. The oldest of the nieces and nephews was only six, so everyone played around the kids. As three-year-old Willie grabbed the ball and tried to run with it while the family cheered, Zach joined in, laughing at the child clutching the football as if it were a lifeline.
Zach glanced at Emma on the playing field. She had leaves in her hair. She had shed the bulky sweatshirt and wore a bright pink T-shirt with her jeans. She was watching him, laughing with him over the kids, and desire stabbed him. That electrifying tension flared to life, as unwanted and unexpected as it had been the first time she had walked into his home. He wished they were alone. Someone stepped between them and the tension eased, but it did not vanish.
The kids provided constant laughs with their antics and he saw why she liked to come home for the weekend. They were all happy with each other, having great fun. He had known fun with his brothers, but life had been tense if both his parents were present unless they were entertaining a house filled with their friends. Even then, it had never held this relaxed closeness. He realized he was enjoying a whole family of people who loved each other and exhibited a joy in being together. He had this now with his brothers, but they seldom were all together and until Caroline, there had been no small children around.
He could see why Emma thought he was missing something and why she had hated to leave him alone. He looked at her parents, thinking how different they were from his own. The love they shared showed constantly even though they were across the field from each other, or at opposite ends of the long table earlier. He realized he had never seen that kind of warmth between his parents. He looked at Emma, laughing with a small niece. Maybe Emma was the wealthy