The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters

three words in a row that made the baby stop yelling for a moment, and stare at him with wide-eyed wariness.

      He would have appreciated a little wide-eyed wariness from Amy, but she was smirking mirthfully.

      “Oh, my,” she said silkily. “Are you blushing?”

      “No.” He folded his arms again, leveled a warning look at her, which she ignored.

      “Yes, you are.”

      “You’re bluffing. There’s no way you can tell through all this smoke what color my face is. But you can take my word for it, Amy, I haven’t blushed since I was ten or eleven years old.”

      Amy. He contemplated that. How had Mrs. Mitchell become Amy so quickly?

      Marching by her with as much dignity as he could muster, Ty grabbed a towel from the drawer he had described to her earlier. He went and stood under the smoke detector and flailed at it until the rush of air created by the tea towel infused it with enough fresh air to shut off.

      Still laughing, she went across the kitchen, scooped up the baby and covered his tearstained face with kisses. He hiccupped several times, and then stopped crying, abruptly, as if someone had pulled a switch.

      The silence was blessed.

      “Don’t believe him,” she told the baby. “Nobody stops blushing when they’re eleven. That’s when they start.”

      Ty ordered himself not to show the slightest curiosity. But, despite the order, he heard himself saying skeptically, “You remember what made you blush at eleven?”

      “Of course.”

      He ordered himself not to pursue it. He heard himself say, “And?”

      “The cruelty of boys, of course. First bra. The back strap being snapped.”

      He did not want to be thinking about her with her first bra. Or any bra at all. But once a man’s mind went to those places it was tougher than wrestling an ornery steer to bring it back in line.

      Black and slinky? Red and sexy? White and sporty? He hardened his features as she squinted at him.

      “You’re right,” she decided. “I don’t think you are blushing. So, what made you stop blushing at the tender age of eleven?”

      He was standing in his kitchen in his underwear, being encouraged to exchange confidences with a perfect stranger. He ordered himself to go get dressed.

      Instead, he said, “I was raised by a man, around a family of men, a couple of old ranch hands who were as tough and as hard as two buckets of old nails. The hands seemed to consider it part of their job to educate me, no matter how embarrassing the information they imparted was.

      “I was toughened up on incessant teasing, prank-pulling and roughhousing. Those guys considered it their sacred and sworn duty to ferret out any form of weakness in me and snuff it out before it blossomed. Believe me, by the time I was ten or eleven, I’d learned absolute control over my reactions to everything.”

      He’d said way too much. She looked horrified and fascinated, as if she had met a man raised by wolves.

      Which, of course, was probably not that far off the mark.

      So, no, he knew he was not blushing. Though if ever a situation called for embarrassment it was this one!

      Ty had just stepped out of the shower when he’d heard the smoke detector going off. He’d gone into rescue mode, some deep instinct he didn’t know he had kicking in. There was a baby and a woman in his house, and if the place was on fire, he had to get them out.

      But even in hero mode, he wasn’t running out there naked.

      And so he’d opened his bottom drawer—he was into the stuff he never wore because he hadn’t gotten at the laundry for a while—and randomly picked something to shove on.

      Now, his adrenaline still pumping, even though it was obvious his house was not on fire and no one needed him to be a hero, he looked down at his choice of attire again.

      He said the three words again. Jamey commenced howling.

      Amy and Jamey gave him identical looks of accusation, though hers was tempered by that tiny smile that wouldn’t quit, and that kept drawing Ty’s eyes back to the full, luscious curve of her plump bottom lip.

      “Oh, I get it,” she said. “You swear instead of blush. Very manly.”

      She was being sarcastic!

      “There, there,” she said, patting the baby’s plump shoulder. It seemed it would be ineffectual against the tears and hollering, but both subsided almost instantly, and Jamey burrowed deep into his mother’s shoulder.

      Then he peered at Ty with yet more accusation, put his thumb in his mouth and took a long pull on it.

      “Odam,” he said through his thumb, and then slurped contentedly.

      “See?” Ty said approvingly. “It’s what men do. They swear. Your baby just said ‘damn.’”

      “He did not swear!” she said indignantly.

      “Mild, but still a cuss. Good boy.”

      “Stop it. He wasn’t cursing. I think he may be calling on the Viking god.”

      “Ha! You’re telling me your baby is versed in Viking mythology?” Ty realized he was enjoying this little interchange.

      She shrugged as if it was a possibility. That damned smile was still tickling along the luscious lines of her lips.

      “I mean, I’m all for embracing Viking ways,” he said. “No Christmas.”

      “Tell your shorts you don’t like Christmas.” She looked as though she was going to start laughing again. Her laughter was one of the nicest sounds he had ever heard. He felt it could be like a drug, making him weak when he needed to be strong.

      But even so, a man had to defend himself. “Just to set the record straight, for your information, I didn’t buy these for myself. We do a gift exchange with the neighbors. It’s mostly gag gifts.”

      “All right,” she said soothingly, “I get it. Christmas spirit only by accident in the Halliday household.”

      He nodded his confirmation. “And just while I’m setting the record straight, his name is Odin.”

      She looked baffled.

      “The Norse god, worshipped by the Vikings. Odin. Not Odam.”

      Her mouth fell open.

      He knew he had said quite enough, but he didn’t even bother ordering himself to stop, because he felt as if he couldn’t.

      “Also, while we’re setting the record straight, I’m not just some dumb cowboy who fell off the hay wagon yesterday.”

      Why was he saying this? She didn’t need to know this!

      Obviously, there had been no one around except the horses and cows to talk to for a very long time. Too long. His mouth felt as if it was running like a river that had been let loose of a dam.

      “I read,” he said, “I read all the time. I read everything I can get my hands on.”

      “Have you really read Jane Eyre?”

      He wasn’t going to stand here in his underwear making confessions about his reading material. He felt annoyed enough with himself that he had told her something so integral to who he was.

      There it was again, his childhood, rising like a ghost. A lonely little boy longing for his mother, reading his pain away despite the fact that he had been teased unmercifully for it. It had never stopped him, though, maybe even driven him deeper into his passion for books.

      When he said nothing, her eyes went round. “You have!”

      He