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She muttered something that he couldn’t quite make out.
“What was that?” he asked.
A flush crept up the back of her neck. “I said, like I really had a choice.”
“Of course you have a choice.”
“Not if I want that tree to get put up tonight,” she said, facing him with a renewed sparkle in her eyes.
Trace laughed despite himself. “I do love a woman who’s always working an angle.”
“Of course you do,” Savannah said. “Makes you feel more at home, doesn’t it? I’ll bet you spend most of your time with female boardroom piranha types.”
Trace chuckled at the all-too-accurate assessment. “True enough,” he admitted. “But something tells me that’s about to change.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Savannah sent Trace in search of Hannah, while she got dinner on the table. She also needed the time to compose herself. She knew precisely why she had overreacted to Trace’s teasing. It was because she had actually been tempted to take him up on his offer to slip away for a so-callednap.Even if they’d actually done no more than crawl into bed together and snuggle, it would have satisfied the yearning that had been building in her ever since he’d arrived earlier in the day.
Of course, she doubted a man like Trace would have settled for simply holding her in his arms. He would have wanted much more, and while she was tempted by that, she didn’t want to wind up with her heart broken when he left in a few days. It was better that she’d made her position perfectly clear. If she was lucky, there would be no more temptations.
Next time I might not be teasing.
Trace’s words suddenly came back to haunt her. How convenient that she had forgotten the warning.
At the sound of his laughter as he and Hannah came toward the kitchen, Savannah’s pulse raced a little faster. The same wicked yearning that had gripped her earlier teased her senses now. She sighed. Resisting him was going to be a whole lot harder than she’d ever imagined. She’d just have to keep reminding herself that he was cut from the same cloth as her workaholic ex-husband.
* * *
“Mom, can we put the Christmas tree up tonight?” Hannah pleaded as they finished up bowls of ice cream after the best spaghetti Trace had eaten in years.
“According to tradition, we never put it up till Christmas Eve,” Savannah told her, but she sounded regretful, as if this were one tradition she could be persuaded to change.
“Maybe it’s time to start your own tradition,” Trace suggested, earning a high-five from Hannah. “Besides, the sooner the tree is in its stand and has some water, the better it will be, right? It’ll last much longer, and it will fill the house with the scent of pine. Why not start enjoying it now?”
Hannah studied her mother, clearly trying to gauge her mood. “Please,” she begged finally. “I’ll go up in the attic and bring down all the decorations you said are up there. Trace will put it up and string up the lights. You won’t have to do anything.”
“Except keep the carols going on the CD player and the hot chocolate flowing,” Trace corrected. “What do you say, Savannah?”
“I say that you two are a formidable team,” she said, feigning an air of resignation that was belied by the spark of excitement in her eyes. “Go on. Bring in the tree.”
“Do you know where you want it?” Trace asked. “Once it’s up, I don’t want to be hauling it all over the house.”
She frowned at him. “It goes in front of the window in the living room. That’s where it’s always been.”
“And you’re happy with that?” he persisted.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Since you’re starting new traditions and all, I just thought you might want to go for broke and pick a new location.”
“I think the old one is just fine,” she said. “That way, anyone driving up to the house will be able to see the lights on the tree.”
Trace resigned himself to moving the sofa that normally sat in front of that window. “Where should I move the sofa?”
Savannah regarded him blankly. “The sofa?”
“The one in front of that window.”
