he stopped, the pony stopped. He had more immediate things that needed his attention, anyway.
“Are you all right?” Sam dropped to his knees in the snowbank beside her. “Why on earth didn’t you let go when the damn thing bolted? It nearly dragged you right in front of the car!”
“If it hadn’t taken me an hour and half to catch her, I might have!”
Something about the tone, annoyed and clipped, and yet husky and smooth, sent a little shiver along Sam’s spine. He reached for the hood and brushed it back, aware he was holding his breath.
The hood fell away, and Sam found himself staring into the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. They were an astonishing hazel, part brown, part green, part gold.
He should have started breathing again, but he didn’t. Her hair, light brown, turned to honey as it caught the distant light from the barn. It tumbled out from under the hood. It looked to Sam as if her hair might have started the day piled up on top of her head, not a strand daring to be out of place. Now, part of it had escaped its band and part of it had not, and it hissed with static from the hood being pulled away.
Recognition stole his breath away.
Hanna Merrifield was all grown up, and she was not in the least gnome-like.
SAM REGARDED HANNA with astounded awareness. Under a ridiculously large and cumbersome plaid jacket—she had obviously thrown it on over the top of what looked to be a beautifully tailored black slack suit—she was lovely, and slender, and surprisingly curvy in all the right places given that slenderness.
She glared at the pony in frustration, running her fingers through the lush tangle of her burnished hair, scraping a mat of snow from it, but failing to restore her locks to any kind of order.
Despite the wildness of her hair, her makeup was subtle and expert: a hint of green shadow bringing out the spectacular hazel of eyes that were enormous with a combination of both fright and annoyance at the moment.
She had a touch of gloss on her mouth that made her lips look plump and kissable. Sam remembered, suddenly and in almost excruciating detail, the flavor and texture and warmth and invitation of those lips.
He realized his hand was still resting at the edge of her hood, and he snapped it down by his side. He noticed she had a brush of color on high cheekbones—from the crisp air or chasing the pony or an expert hand with a makeup brush—he couldn’t be sure.
But in a face that was otherwise winter-pale, her skin as delicate as porcelain, the color on her cheekbones made them look sculpted and accentuated the breathtaking perfection of her face. It occurred to him that once she had been cute. That cuteness had transformed into beauty.
“Hanna. Hanna Merrifield,” he said, and then ran a hand through his own hair, sending melted snow flying. “Mr. Dewey told me you didn’t live here anymore. He said you haven’t lived here for years.”
“I haven’t, I don’t,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice, more shaken than she was letting on.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Mr. Dewey quit two hours ago, though I’m hoping by morning he will have reconsidered. He let me know the pony was loose on the highway.”
Hanna would, he knew, be super annoyed to know that despite the polished perfection of her makeup and hair, and the clear indication of education in her voice, he still saw the girl who had been pressed into service as a Christmas elf to help with selling trees, visits with Santa, and pony-pulled sleigh rides on her family’s Christmas tree farm.
Maybe it was because the too-large parka over her suit reminded him of her as an elf all those years ago. The boots, comical in their largeness, obviously did not belong to her either, but added to the impression of a child playing the grown-up.
He remembered, suddenly, as clearly as if were yesterday, the day he had seen her in her green elf costume in her father’s Christmas tree lot. She had probably been all of fifteen.
It was the first time he’d ever noticed the girl who went to the same high school as he did, but was in the grade behind him, and therefore invisible.
But in that elf suit? Anything but invisible. Cute and comical, but with the length of her legs being shown off by the shortness of the green tunic, there had been just a whisper of something else...
She’d been mortified that he and his friends had seen her, and if he had been then the man he was now, he would have possibly had the grace to pretend the encounter had never happened.
But he had just been a boy himself, and after that day, he had not been able to resist teasing her when their paths crossed. He had liked seeing her looking flustered and adorable, spitting at him like a cornered barn kitten.
But then, he reminded himself, she had shown him she had some claw, and that was a lesson about Hanna Merrifield that he would do well to remember.
Her focus moved off the pony, and she was regarding him intently now, curious how he had known her, and then recognition dawned in her features.
“Sam?” she asked, and it was evident she was as stunned by this unexpected reunion as he was. “Sam Chisholm?”
“One and the same.”
Hanna Merrifield’s fingers combed through the lushness of her thick hair once more, and she sent a flustered look and a frown at the clumsy boots on her feet, and muttered, “Oh, sheesh.”
Sam raised an eyebrow at her and she flushed.
“A person just wants to make a good impression when they meet someone from their past,” she said, tossing her head a bit defensively. Then she bit her lip, regretting having said it, even though it was true. “I’m an accountant. Banks and Banks.”
Sam realized she was trying to divorce herself from the very image that had first leapt into his mind: of Hanna as an adorable Christmas elf. Still, he tried not to look too shocked. Hanna, an accountant?
“Why on earth didn’t you let go of the pony?”
“Easy for you to say,” she said, tearing her gaze away from her boots, and glaring sideways at the pony. “I’d just caught her.”
Was Hanna cradling one of her hands in the other? “Did you do something to your hand?”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“I seem to remember pony frustrations in your past,” he said, and earned himself a sharp look that clearly said I’m an accountant now. I just told you.
“It’s the same pony,” she said, reluctantly and not at all fondly. “And now she’s on the loose again.”
His fault entirely, from Hanna’s tone of voice.
“Well, she doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. Can I have a look at your hand?”
“No. And she never appears to be going anywhere. She’s not fond
