Cougar Christmas Read online

  But when she pulled back to look up at him, he was grinning, clearly pleased with her praise.

  “I don’t care,” she said honestly. “You should be proud. You’re so much different…so much more than I thought you were all these years we’ve been working together.”

  “I could say the same thing about you, you know.” His voice had gone deep and soft and she could see that his eyes were half-lidded in the dim light. “I think the Ice Queen has finally melted.”

  “And it only took a bear attack to do it.” Genevieve sensed they were getting in deep here—they needed to be careful. And yet, part of her didn’t want to be careful anymore.

  “In that case, remind me to take you to the bear exhibit at the zoo as soon as we get back home,” Drew murmured. “Or will any large, carnivorous mammal have the same effect on you? Lions…? Tigers…?”

  “Drew…” She smiled at him and gave him a lingering kiss on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “And as for thawing me out, you had more to do with it than the bear.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. But speaking of Mr. Bear, I think we should stay here for a while—maybe even spend the night. It’s getting pretty dark and I don’t think it’s a good idea to go out with a hungry predator roaming the woods. We might look a little too much like a midnight snack.”

  “Staying the night sounds good to me.” Genevieve shivered. “But do you think we can get a fire started in the fireplace? If there is one, I mean.”

  “Pretty sure there is. Let me see.” Drew fished around in his jacket pocket and came out with a small flashlight. “Thought we might need it walking back if our picnic ran long,” he explained, switching it on. “Come on—let’s explore.”

  It turned out that the little cabin was extremely snug, if somewhat dusty. Drew speculated that it must be someone’s summer home and the owner had gone someplace warmer for the winter. The heat wasn’t working because the electricity had been cut off, but there was a small stack of wood in a basket by the fireplace and a little searching yielded some matches on the mantelpiece.

  While Drew started the fire, Genevieve took his flashlight and explored the rest of the cabin. There was a small bathroom and a tiny kitchen but strangely, no bedroom. She did find a stack of somewhat moth-eaten blankets and a few clean sheets in a tiny, narrow closet but it was a mystery as to where the owner of the cabin slept.

  “Well, there’s a bathroom and a kitchen but no bedroom,” she told Drew, when she came back from her brief tour. “I don’t know where we’re supposed to sleep tonight.”

  “Let me see…”

  He had been crouched by the fireplace, where a steady blaze was going by now, but he stood up and went over to the loveseat which was still blocking the door. As Genevieve watched, mystified, he pulled off the cushions and began to hunt around for something.

  “Ah—here we go,” he exclaimed. With a tug, he pulled out an ancient looking folding bed with a faded flowery sheet already on the mattress.

  “Oh—a hide-a-bed, I didn’t think about that,” Genevieve remarked.

  “An old one.” Drew grunted as he dragged the small couch, its unfolded bed sticking out like a tongue poking out of a mouth, towards the fireplace. “Solid iron—that’s why this little baby is so heavy. My grandmother used to have one just like it.”

  “So that’s where we’re sleeping?” Genevieve frowned.

  “Unless you’d prefer the floor, I’d say yes.” Drew shrugged. “But I’m not sleepy yet. How about it we see if we can scrounge up something for supper since Mr. Bear got our picnic?”

  A search of the postage stamp sized kitchen resulted in a slightly stale box of crackers and, inside the tiny refrigerator, a block of gouda cheese that still looked good.

  “A feast fit for a king—or at least a couple of refugees from a bear attack.” Drew grinned. “Just slice it up and we’re in business. Don’t forget, we still have our bottle of wine to go with it.”

  While he fixed a crackers and cheese platter, Genevieve busied herself changing the sheets and shaking out the moth-eaten blankets on the little fold-out bed. When she was done, she thought it looked quite cozy, positioned as it was right in front of the fireplace. The soft, rosy glow made even the strange little hide-a-bed look inviting and she’d even managed to find a couple of pillows at the very top of the little linen closet. The room was getting warmer now too—she took off her outer coat and warmed her hands by the small fire gratefully.

  “Looks like you’ve got it all set up,” Drew remarked, coming in with the cheese and crackers. He had also taken off his coat and was wearing a close fitting navy blue sweater that emphasized his broad shoulders and brought out his eyes. “We’re good to go here too—as long as you don’t mind drinking your wine out of a coffee mug. I don’t know who the owner of this place is, but there’s a shocking lack of champagne flutes in the cabinet.”

  “A coffee mug works for me.” Gen settled beside him on the edge of the fold out bed with the plate of cheese and crackers between them and a mug of good red wine in one hand. She started to eat a cracker but Drew stopped her.

  “Wait a minute—I thought this was supposed to be our ‘feed-me’ picnic—where we feed each other every bite we take?”

  “Oh?” Genevieve looked at him in surprise. “You still want to do that?”

  “Just because a bear got most of our picnic is no reason to abandon the whole thing,” Drew pointed out. “Any more than the fact that we’re away from the resort for the night excuses us from doing our exercises.”

  “The intimacy exercises you mean?” Genevieve asked in a low voice. Suddenly, her cheeks felt flushed and her heart was beating much harder than it had been.

  “Mmm-hmm.” There was a hungry look in Drew’s eyes that had nothing to do with the crackers and cheese between them. “I mean, what if Phillips asks about it tomorrow?” he murmured. “We’ll need to give him the intimate details since he doesn’t have a camera all the way out here to record us.”

  “I…I guess you’re right,” Genevieve murmured, feeling her cheeks go hot. “But we’ve done most of the other exercises and we left role playing costumes and the, uh, other props back at the resort.”

  “Who says we need props?” Drew murmured, giving her a knowing little smile. “I’m sure we can come up with something here.”

  “I…uh…” She didn’t know quite what to say.

  “Don’t worry about it for now, baby,” Drew told her. “First let’s have our picnic. Here…” He picked up a cracker with a small piece of cheese on it and put it in her mouth. “Enjoy.”

  Genevieve ate it obediently and sipped the expensive red wine from her chipped china mug but she couldn’t help thinking of the night to come and what “exercise” Drew might dream up for them to do together.

  Of course, with no cameras around, there was really no need to do anything—they could just lie to Phillips and spin him a convenient fable. But she didn’t want to do that and she was sure Drew didn’t either. The intimacy exercises might have started out as a major embarrassment but now they were an excuse to get close to the man she was beginning to care about very much—probably much more than she should.

  Her stomach was full of nervous butterflies and she couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next.

  Chapter Nine

  “Well, that wasn’t too bad as picnics go,” Drew remarked, popping the last cracker with cheese into Genevieve’s mouth.

  She swallowed obediently and took a sip of the potent red wine before answering.

  “No, not at all.”

  Drew watched her, wondering what she was thinking. Her pupils were dilated in the firelight and when he reached out to cup her cheek, he thought he felt a little tremor go through her.

  “So we’ve done most of the other intimacy exercises,” he mused, thinking out loud for her benefit. “And you pointed out we can’t do the role-playing without our costumes. But there are several exercises still on the