I’d been a bit surprised when Rowan asked for us to come out here to hash out some of the divorce details. I thought once we got everything situated that I’d be able to go spend Christmas with my family. I don’t think that is going to happen now. Not only because of the snow either. Rowan is up to something.

  As much as I love the town of Winter Falls, we never come here anymore. It’s hard to make things work with Rowan's schedule. The man works so damn much. He’s never home, and even when he is, it feels as if he’s distracted.

  Though when I think back, it’s hard to recall if he always worked that much or if it started about the time I began to push away. I don’t know how the past two years have felt both painfully slow but are still a blur as if they’d gone by fast.

  “Want me to make dinner?” Rowan asks after he gets the fire going.

  “A storm is rolling in. They said we’ll be stuck here for a few days.”

  “It’s Christmas. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”

  “Maybe I was.” I fold my arms over my chest. It’s the only way I can try to maintain the wall between Rowan and me. I need to keep my guard up, or we’ll end up in bed together.

  “I’m spending Christmas with my wife.”

  “Stop calling me that.” I roll my eyes.

  “No.”

  “It hurts!” I snap. Rowan lifts his brows in surprise.

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? What, you care that I have a backbone all of a sudden?”

  For so long I worried about making everyone happy but myself. Until one day, I decided that I was going to do what I thought was best for me. I was tired of waiting for Rowan to make me a priority in his life. I never knew if he’s coming or going. He can be so hot one second and cold the next.

  “I care a fucking lot.” A slow smile pulls at his lips. “It’s sexy. I rather like it,” he says, surprising me. He walks over to stand in front of me. “I saw some Christmas decorations in the closet. How about I go get us a tree? If we’re going to be stuck here, we might as well do it up.”

  “Rowan.” I close my eyes, dropping my head to his chest. It doesn’t matter how mad I might be, there is always this pull I have to him.

  I’m starting to see what’s going on here. If I didn’t know any better I’d almost bet he set up this snowstorm. I know it’s impossible to control Mother Nature, but I don’t put anything past Rowan. Not when he’s a man on a mission. I’m not sure what his plan is, but I know he has something up his sleeve.

  “Please.” That one word breaks my resolve.

  I simply nod my head in agreement because I know I’m fighting a losing battle. If we are going to be stuck here with each other for the next few days, we might as well make the best of it. A pang of sadness hits me out of nowhere at the thought of this being our last Christmas together.

  “I want to come with you. To pick out the tree.”

  “It’s cold, and it’s really coming down.” His brows furrow together.

  “I’m not asking, Rowan.” I tilt my chin up. “I’m not a child.”

  “Trust me. I know you’re far from a child, but I can’t stop wanting to take care of you.”

  “I know.” I shake my head. “It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you, Rowan. But taking care of me doesn’t mean putting me in a box to pull out when you want to play with me.” He opens his mouth to say something but closes it, seeming to think over his next words.

  “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “I do. That box gets lonely. Especially when I don’t think you hear me.”

  “Charlee.”

  “No, that’s not all on you. That’s on me too.”

  “Okay. Bundle up. I’ll go check the shed I saw out back for an ax.”

  “I’ll hurry.” Without thinking, I lean up and kiss him before I dart back toward the bedroom, where he put our bags. I quickly find something to wear and layer up. When I come out the front door, Rowan is stepping out of the shed with an ax over his shoulder.

  My husband has always been hot. His suits are always sexy on him, but right now he’s really pulling off that whole lumberjack thing. I swear he can pull any look off.

  From the first day I met him, I’ve been a bit shocked how into me he was. He wasn’t only out of my league in the looks department but everywhere really. He was rich, educated and extremely successful. Rowan could do anything he put his mind to. I’d been more than lost and always thought of myself as a bit homely back then.

  Except when I was in Rowan’s arms. No matter how busy he might have been, whenever his eyes were on me, I felt like I was the sexiest woman in the world. That’s the thing with Rowan. When he has all his attention on you, you’ll never want to be anywhere else. But when it’s gone, you’ll never feel colder. I’d been a bit addicted to his obsession with me. I still am. In brief moments, I’ll think I have it again, but as soon as I think I see it, he’s gone.

  “You got a hat?” he calls, making his way toward me.

  “In the car.” I hop off the porch. It’s slicker than I expected, and I slip, falling a bit forward but catch myself on the fluffy snow with my hands.

  “Charlee!” Rowan shouts.

  I can hear the irritation in his voice. I’m sure it’s really fear but still. I’m okay. He rushes over toward me. I grip a handful of the snow in my palm and pop up before he’s halfway across the yard. I nail him right in the chest with a snowball.

  He stops dead in his tracks, and his head drops to stare down at the snow stuck to the front of his very expensive coat. “You wanna play?” A smirk pulls at his lips. I lean down and pick up another ball of snow.

  “I think I do,” I say before I throw another one at him. He drops the ax, letting it fall into the snow. I watch as he bends down to grab his own handful of snow. I turn, taking off toward the woods.

  “When will you learn, wife?” he calls after me. “You can run, but I will always chase.”

  I pray he catches me soon. I’m not sure how much more I can bear.

  Chapter 5

  Rowan

  Puffs of white trail behind Charlee as she screams with laughter. I pelt her with one snowball after another until she collapses on the ground, her hands covering her face. “Enough! I surrender!”

  I drop the snow in my hands. “As you should.” But when I lean over to lift her to her feet, a giant block of snow is smashed into my face. She giggles with glee and wriggles out of my grip, slipping and sliding until I catch her again. I swing her into the air and then over my shoulder, giving her ass a solid thwack before moving swiftly toward the house.

  The chase has raised my blood pressure, and my cock can’t handle much more teasing. It needs to be inside her, surrounded by her snug, hot cunt.

  “Put me down,” she yells, batting her fists against my back.

  “When I’m ready,” I reply.

  “I don’t want to go inside,” she whines when she notices the direction of my feet.

  “It’s too cold to make love out here.”

  She goes still, and the air takes on a sudden chill that has nothing to do with the weather.

  “What?” I ask even though I don’t want to know the answer.

  “I thought we were having fun out here.” She kicks and wiggles until I lower her to the ground.

  “We were, and now we’re going to have fun inside.” I take her hand and start up the steps to the front door. When she doesn’t move with me, I tense and look over my shoulder.

  Her happy face has grown tight. “But we are more than sex, Rowan. I mean, we have to be more than sex, otherwise we won’t survive.”

  I clench my jaw. What I’m hearing her say is she doesn’t want to have sex. Or maybe fucking is fine, but it’s me that’s the problem. “Are you seeing someone else?” I spit out. “All those nights that I’m working to provide for us, are you spending those with someone else?”

  Her face grows blank and then hard with fury. “Are you serious right now?”

  Why is she angry? I’m not the one who turned her down. I’m not the one who filed for divorce. “What else am I supposed to think when you’d rather sit out here freezing your tits off than go inside and lie down by the fire and make love?”

  “It’s not even that cold out here, and I wanted to spend some time with you that didn’t involve us taking our clothes off! We can’t spend every minute we’re together naked. We have to learn how to talk to each other.”

  I cross my arms. “So talk. Who are you sleeping with?”

  She throws her hands in the air. “No one, including you!”

  She spins on her heel and dashes into the house, slamming the door behind her. The little house shakes on impact. I could storm up the stairs and wrench the door open, which will end up in us making love, and then she’ll be angry, accusing me of only wanting her for sex. I force myself down the stairs and back to the chopping block. It takes me two hours to work out my frustration and sexual energy, and by that time, I have enough wood to last us an entire winter. I carry a load into the house. The kitchen is spotless, and the small living room is clean too.

  I dump the firewood beside the fireplace and throw two more logs onto the dwindling flames.

  “Charlee?” I call.

  “In the bedroom,” comes the quiet response.

  I find her tucking in a pretty quilt with colorful patchwork.

  “Sorry,” she says without looking up. She tosses a pillow on top of the quilt and makes a show of plumping it until it looks like a stuffed turkey.

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “Shouting at you, I guess. I don’t want to fight.”

  “I don’t like that either.” I reach across the bed and tilt her chin up. “What’s got you worked up?”

  “Why did you accuse me of cheating on you? I would never do that.” There’s a real wounded look in her eyes.

  My heart squeezes. “Sorry. The thought of you with another man makes me crazed. I can’t take it. You know how possessive I am. I don’t even like seeing the clerk talk to you at the convenience store on the first floor of the building.”

  “I know.” One side of her lip whisks up only to fall again. “Are you having an affair?”

  “No,” I reply swift and sharp. “Is that why you asked for a divorce? You were my first, and you’ll be my last, Charlee. It’s until death do us part for me. When I said my vows, I meant them.”

  “You’re implying that I didn’t mean my vows?”

  I rein in my temper. I know I have a fearsome one, and I need to keep it at bay. At least she’s talking to me, and that’s the whole point of us coming here. No divorce until we talked through the fine points. “I can only judge things by your actions. Telling me you want to end our marriage, going to a lawyer behind my back and getting papers drawn up says that you don’t believe in the things you swore to. What am I supposed to think?”

  “Right.”

  Silence falls. I wait for her to say more, but her mouth seems zipped shut. My fingers clench and unclench at my side as I contemplate reaching across the mattress and throwing her down on the bed. When she’s nude and under me, there is never any talk of divorce or separation. There’s only want and need. Is there any question as to why I’m constantly taking her clothes off, sliding inside her body, rutting into her until neither of us have energy to move? I raise my hand and she startles, skittering back until she’s more than an arm’s length away. I let my hand fall to my side. Sometimes in business, you have to take a risk to get a big reward. It feels like you’re jumping off the top of a building with no safety net, but if you don’t make the leap, you’ll never get to the jackpot. I curl my fingers into my palm and jump.

  “I’ll give you a divorce on Christmas morning if you do everything I say until then. No questions asked.”

  Chapter 6

  Charlee

  I stare at Rowan in shock, trying to get my anger under control. How can I go from laughing and having the best time with him to wanting to scream and cry in rage? Only Rowan could ever draw all these different emotions from me.

  I know it’s because of how deeply I love him. With him, I always feel so much more. When it’s great, there is nothing better in the world. When it’s bad, I want to curl up in a ball and hide from the rest of the world.

  This was the last thing I’d ever thought I’d hear him say. It’s a double-edged sword. It hits me that I never actually thought I'd follow through with this divorce. That I figured Rowan would always sideline it.

  I could push and say I was going to. That I am strong enough to go through with it. But I know I’m only lying to myself. I realize now that there was no real fear when I sought out a lawyer. I could pretend to myself that I was pushing forward. Give myself the illusion of control knowing he’d never let it happen. Now he’s changing the game by offering me what I’ve been asking for.

  I know getting a divorce would be like losing to him, and Rowan never loses. He’ll fight for things till the bitter end. It’s a quality I loved in him generally until recently. I hate the idea of him staying married to me because he thinks getting out is a failure.

  I open and close my mouth as I try to wrap my head around everything. This has to be a trick. I must be missing something. Or maybe I just don’t want to face the fact that he is actually willing to let us go.

  “I don’t believe you,” I challenge.

  “When have I ever lied to you?”

  “You just did.” I call him out.

  “You don’t believe I’ll follow through with this....” He pauses for a bit. “Divorce.” If I wasn’t so worked up, I might laugh at how much he doesn’t want to say the word divorce. It’s almost adorably sweet.

  “I wasn’t talking about that. I wasn’t your first.” I never asked Rowan about his past lovers. I didn’t want to know. Not only is my husband handsome, but he’s very successful too. I’ve seen the way other women look at him. How they try to get his attention whenever they can. I’ve always wondered how I held it so easily in the past. Until I started to question if I really did. I hate that.

  “I might be a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them.”

  “Rowan. I’ve met one of your past lovers.” I glare at him. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Forget it. You have a deal.” I throw up my hands, not wanting to talk about this anymore.

  Truthfully, I never wanted to talk about that. About her. I just don’t want him to think he got one over on me. I might be naïve in a lot of things. I know that. I even counted on Rowan to keep me a bit hidden at times from things, but he’s not getting off on being some saint. Especially after he just accused me of cheating.

  I gasp when Rowan all but leaps over the bed like some lumberjack ninja. The hell? He’s on me, pinning me to the bed in the blink of an eye. My body immediately heats, the same way it always does when he’s near.

  “Don’t move,” he orders.

  “I will—”

  He covers my mouth with his hand. “You made your deal, wife. Nod if you understand.” I glare at him but nod. “Don’t move.” I watch as he slips from the bed. He opens his suitcase. A moment later, he comes back with a few of his ties.

  “Rowan?”

  “I’ve always wanted to tie you to the bed. Did you know that?” I shake my head no. Rowan has always been a bit dominating in bed. I could sense that he was holding back, but I was unsure why. It was almost as though he was trying to hide a darker part of himself. “There are so many dirty things I’ve wanted to do to you but held back,” he says as he ties one hand and then the other. “But now I’m going to do every single one of them. I’m going to get my fill of you.” As mad as I am at him, his dirty words already have me growing wet between my thighs.

  Once he’s got my wrists firmly tied, he grabs my shirt, ripping it right down the center. My bra is next to go. He’s pissed. Good, he’s letting go of all that control and doing what he wants.

  “Rowan.” I lick my lips as my breathing grows heavy.

  “Am I scaring you or turning you on?”

  “I’m not scared of you, Rowan.”

  “You should be. If you knew the dirty things I’ve wanted to do to you.” He goes for my pants next. “Only you,” he adds, stripping the rest of my clothes off until I’m naked. He trails his fingers up and down the inside of my thigh. I part my legs, inviting him to give me more. I whimper when his fingers stop right as they get to my sex then drift back down my leg.

  “Don’t tease me.”

  “You’ve been keeping things from me, and I don’t like it. I’m going to have to change how I get information from my wife. Now tell me. Who lied to you? I’ve only been with you, Charlee. Even if you leave me, there will only ever be you.” I want to call him a liar again, but the intensity of his stare stops me. “Don’t make me do it,” he warns as he grips my thighs and pushes them apart as he moves between my legs.

  “Rowan,” I whimper when he brushes his mouth against my clit. He lifts his head. I can see the desire in his eyes, but there’s something else there too that I can’t place.

  “Charlee,” he warns. I buck, trying to lift my hips. A yelp pops from my mouth when his hand slaps down on my sex.

  “You did not just do that.”

  “I did,” he says before he does it again. The loud smack would make you think it’s painful. Truthfully, it’s anything but that. My clit starts to throb with need and an intensity I’ve never felt before. “Someone lied to my wife, and I want to know who.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I grit out between my teeth. “You’re not going to do anything. I already told you once to get rid of her, but you didn’t.”

  His eyes widen in realization of who I’m talking about.