Christmas Secrets Collection. Laura Iding

I think I would enjoy that. Absolutely, I’ll be there.” Did he slant Zoe a challenging glance?

      She had no idea because she refused to look at him. “Well, okay, then,” she chirped out, falsely bright. “Great.”

      “See you Friday,” he said again, speaking directly to Zoe that time.

      She made herself meet his eyes. It wasn’t easy. “Thank you, Dax. For everything.”

      “Nothing to thank me for.” His voice was brusque. “We both know that. Without you, I’d be dead.”

      She thought of that giant snake dropping out of the trees above her head and suppressed a shudder. “Back at ya.” They were the words they had said to each other in the jungle. And they came out in a near-whisper.

      He nodded and ducked into the limo that waited for him.

      “What an amazing man,” said her mother as the big, black car rolled off. She turned to Zoe with her most loving, coaxing smile. “Come on to the ranch with us, just for an hour or two? The family will have gathered to welcome you home.”

      She couldn’t refuse an invitation like that, even if she’d wanted to—which she didn’t. “Of course. I would love it. I can’t wait to see everyone.”

      So they drove out to Bravo Ridge.

      The whole family was there. When their driver pulled to a stop in front of the wide-spaced white pillars that lined the long verandah, the front door opened and everyone came pouring out.

      It was 2:00 p.m. on a weekday, but each of her hard-charging brothers had taken the afternoon off to see her safe at home again—even Travis, who hardly ever came in from his latest oil derrick. He’d driven up from the Gulf just to give his baby sister a hug.

      Zoe was handed from one set of loving arms to the next.

      Her niece, Kira, even demanded a big hug of her own. She held up her sweet little arms. “Aunt Zoe, Aunt Zoe, me, too! I missed you. I was so worried because you were lost. Hug me, too!”

      So Zoe scooped her up and spun her around and drank in the feel of those small arms clasped tight around her neck.

      When she let Kira down, she smoothed a hand over her short golden hair, reluctant to relinquish the moment. And she thought of what it might be like, to have a little girl of her own.

      Strange. To picture herself as a mother—and not just in a hypothetical sense, but in a true awareness that she wanted that, wanted a baby of her own someday.

      Dax had done that, made her see herself and her dreams of her future all the more clearly—at the same time as she realized that her dreams weren’t his dreams. When she did have children, they wouldn’t be Dax’s. He didn’t want to get married, ever. He didn’t want children. He’d been totally honest and up-front about that.

      She needed, above all, to keep in mind that a relationship between them could go nowhere, even if she were willing to put the job she loved in jeopardy for the chance to be with him again.

      Zoe stayed at the ranch, with her family around her, through an early dinner and most of the evening. Her dad and mom dropped her off at her condo on their way home.

      Everything at her place was just as she’d left it. Even her houseplants had done fine in her absence. She’d put them in trays of water before she left and they’d come through looking as perky as they had on the day of her departure.

      It was almost ten. But she didn’t feel sleepy. And Dax had given her the next day off. She put her cameras, her laptop and her PDA on their chargers and unpacked. Just about everything was dirty. So she sorted laundry and started the first load.

      Then she got the memory cards from her cameras and uploaded the pictures she’d taken onto her home PC. Some of them were really good.

      And a large number of them were of Dax—at the river, basking on a rock, looking like everything a man should be. And by their campfire, putting their fish dinner on the grill, giving her a big thumbs up. She had pictures of him shaving in the morning, his face slathered in a white foam of shaving cream. Pictures of him checking the smoke pit, pictures of his fine, broad back as he hobbled ahead of her on the trail to the river, leaning on his makeshift cane.

      There were pictures of him in the tent, too. Naked. Eyes low and lazy. She looked at those for a long time.

      Mine, she thought. No one but she would ever see those pictures.

      They were for her hungry eyes alone.

      Once she’d uploaded all the photos to their own album in a private space online, she checked email. It was a good thing she still wasn’t sleepy, because there were hundreds of new messages. She scanned them all quickly, checking for spam to dump first. The sixth-to-last message, sent at six-ten that night, was from Dax.

       Thinking about you. Can’t help it. Shoot me.

       Her heart suddenly lighter, she typed, fast, Thinking of you, too. Went out to the ranch to see my family. They’re all looking forward to meeting you Sunday.

      She hesitated, her fingers poised on the keyboard. And then, before she could write something intimate, before she could step over the line they had drawn so carefully and clearly together, she hit the Send button.

      And started again at the top of her inbox, deleting anything that didn’t require a reply.

      The little pinging sound happened a moment later: another email from Dax.

      Her heart did the happy dance. It warmed her, touched her so deeply, to picture him sitting there at his computer, waiting for a message from her. It was almost as good as having his arms wrapped tight around her.

       He’d written, This is going to get better, right? Easier. Say it is, even if you’re lying.

       She wrote back, It is. I promise.

      His reply pinged back in less than sixty seconds. Liar. Good night.

      Good night, Dax. She hit Send, her heart aching.

      It took her an hour longer to finish dealing with email. The whole time she sat at the PC, she was waiting, feeling edgy and out of sorts, hoping for another email from him, knowing that to wish for such a thing was totally unacceptable of her.

      Over and over she reminded herself that these feelings would pass. She just needed not to give in to them. The task was to get through them, to ride them out.

      Two new emails came in during that time. Neither was from him. She applauded his restraint.

      She also wanted to beat her head against her keyboard in frustrated longing.

      It was after two when she finally turned in. By then, all her laundry was washed and folded, her electronic devices freshly charged, her spam deleted, her inbox tidy, her text and phone messages handled.

      Her life was in order. She’d gone down in the jungle and lived to tell about it; she was home and safe. Friday morning, she would return to the job she loved.

      Too bad she felt so depressed. Too bad that no matter how many times she told herself she would get over Dax soon, she still had a big, fat hole in her heart, an empty, desolate space that felt as though it might never be filled.

      She missed the clearing, missed the river and the waterfall and the shy crocodile. Missed the taste of smoked snake, of all things. Missed the yellow tent.

      And more than any one of those things, more than the stunningly precious sum of that life-or-death experience, she missed the man who had shared it all with her.

       Chapter Eleven

      Lin was sitting on the edge of Zoe’s desk, waiting for her, when Zoe got to the office