Free Her Christmas SEAL (When SEALs Come Home Book 7) by Anne Marsh Page B

and Jacks was gone. Just like I’d asked.
    Maybe I should have rethought that plan.

6
    HOLLY
    I slept. Funny how you think something’s impossible, but then it happens. Too much, too fast, and my body had shut me down. Hours later, when I woke up and checked on Frances, she was the proud momma of six. Two white kittens with black spots, two tabbies, and two all-black kittens, one with a tiny white moustache. Frances meeped up at me from her box, as if to say Look what I did , and I rubbed the top of her head.
    “You’re awesome,” I told her, meaning every word of it.
    Then I proceed to explore—okay, ransack carefully —Jacks’s place. It was my first opportunity to check out where he lived, and I wasn’t going to waste it. He clearly hadn’t come back last night, which made me feel ashamed. I’d driven him away, which had been my intention. What I hadn’t intended was to kick him out of his very own home. I sucked.
    The house was nice. Jacks had three bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a sunny breakfast nook. The place had been a working farmhouse once upon a time, and part of me fell in love with it on sight. He’d clearly been working on fixing it up too, because every single room—up to and including the bathroom and the teeny-tiny pantry I discovered off the kitchen—held an arsenal of tools.
    I found the cards on a shelf in the pantry. It wasn’t overly difficult, because the man must have either lived on takeout or eaten elsewhere. His pantry had three bottles of half-used sriracha sauce, a pepper grinder, a stack of cheap paper napkins from fast-food joints, and a Costco-sized box of energy bars. There were also fourteen matching cans of chicken noodle soup. So the cards stuck out.
    They were my cards.
    As I’d reminded him when we remet, I’d mailed him a card for every major and minor holiday. Apparently, he’d kept them. I wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture, but suddenly I needed to know more. Immediately. Retreating to the bedroom where I’d crashed, I fished my cell phone out of my purse and dialed Jacks. At least this time it was on purpose, and I wasn’t masturbating at the same time.
    I heard a cell phone play a snatch of a Christmas carol somewhere close by and followed the sound—outside. The first thing I saw was my car, parked in Jacks’s driveway. He must have gone back to get it for me. The beat-up Civic didn’t even look any the worse for its closer encounter with a fire. Jacks had moved it in time, exactly as he’d promised.
    I couldn’t help but wonder what other promises he might keep.
    Going outside in December in just a T-shirt and panties was stupid. I stuffed my feet into a pair of Jacks’s boots, grabbed a blanket from the bed, and slogged outside. I wasn’t precisely equipped to scale the Matterhorn, but I’d survive.
    The cool air hit me when I stepped outside, but it was impossible not to stop and look around. The mountains dominated the sky, making me wonder if Jacks had picked his place for the view. It was gorgeous but kind of made me feel small. Although he wasn’t too far out of town, the yard was surrounded by trees and had no visible neighbors. Parked behind my tiny car was Jacks’s great big truck. There was probably enough room to squeeze past it, but somehow leaving had lost its appeal. The phone rang again—from inside the truck. Okay. I hung up, wrapped my borrowed blanket around me a little more tightly, and strolled over to take a peek through the driver’s-side window.
    For no reason at all, when Jacks had given me my space last night, I’d expected him to crash with a friend or get himself a hotel room. Instead of either of those options, however, he was sprawled on the front seat of his truck, staring at his phone. I took a moment to appreciate my view. He was a great big rumpled mountain of a man. Easy enough to pop open the door, climb inside, and—do what? I needed to figure out what I wanted. I knew that.
    I