“Keep going. It’s like sucking through a straw, it takes a few pulls to get the milk coming.”
After a few more failed attempts, Miles once again placed his hand over mine and helped to guide my hand. Very soon after, milk was streaming into my cup. Miles removed his hand and let me keep squeezing. A smile leapt onto my face. I hadn’t expected to feel so proud. I had just milked a cow. Who would have thought? Laura Ingalls Wilder had nothing on me.
Miles grinned at me. Once I had enough milk in my cup, he held out a plastic spoon.
“This might be a good time to tell you that I hate milk.”
When I didn’t take the spoon, he leaned over and stirred it himself. “Good thing this is chocolate milk, then.”
“No. I hate all forms of liquid squeezed from a cow's”—I glanced down to the cow munching on grain beside me—“lady bits.”
Miles and his dad had a good, long laugh over that while I stood there stiffly, chin up, taking in the fascinating scenery around the barn, before meeting the watering eyes of Jack, and a small laugh broke free.
“It’s on the bingo card,” Miles said, clinking his glass to mine in a toast. “On three.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Suck it up.”
“Milk is gross.”
“One.”
“Miles, no.” I grasped his shirt in panic until I felt his muscles against my fingers, and I dropped my grip awkwardly. “I milked it. Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s fresh. It’ll taste better than anything you’ve had.”
“I don’t want to!” My voice sounded pathetic and immature even to my ears, but I couldn’t help it. The cup was warm in my hand. Warm. I honestly hated the taste of milk, and I highly doubted that the warm frothiness I watched spew out directly from a hulking, stinking bovine would help me to suddenly like it. Bile rose up in my throat, and I fought to swallow it down.
“Two.”
“I’ll do another mistletoe kiss,” I bargained breathlessly in a panic, glancing toward Jack, making sure he was out of earshot, filling some buckets with grain for the cows to munch on while in the barn.
Miles was about to say three before he stopped short, humor in his gaze. “I know you will because you missed the first time.”
“I didn’t miss.”
He snorted. “The mistletoe was nowhere near us.”
“You didn’t notice either.”
He leaned in closer, mischief running rampant all across his face. “Who said I didn’t?”
My mouth dropped open.
“Three.”
He clinked his plastic cup against mine and drained it in seconds, leaving a frothy line across his lip that he casually licked away. For a second, my eyes traveled downward across his lean body full of lines and hidden muscles and wondered if milk really was the key to doing a body good.
He leaned in close, bracing himself with a hand on my shoulder. The second his lips brushed against my ear, I froze. “Carrots, you’re a wild woman now. There’s nothing you can’t do. You jumped into a frozen pond. You had a non-mistletoe kiss with a hot guy. You just milked a cow. You can do this. I know it. You can drink these two ounces of milk.”
I pulled back from his laughing face and scowled at him. He had been doing so well.
Jack made his way back to where we were standing with a grin on his face as he nodded toward my cup. “You haven’t drunk it yet?”
I stared into the cup. Before I could let myself overthink what I was about to do, I brought the cup to my lips, closed my eyes, and chugged.
The moment the milk hit my throat, I gagged, the warm foam too much for my sensitive palate. Warm, frothy brown milk spewed out my mouth and nose, spraying both Jack and Miles. I coughed and sputtered a bit longer before facing the men. Both were wiping at the excess moisture across their faces and bodies.
“I told you.”
The men began to laugh. “You did tell us,” Jack said, giving his face one more wipe. “We should have listened.”
Miles was grinning when he leaned forward, brushing a drop of milk from my cheek with his finger. “But at least we get to count it.”
“You sure about that?” Jack teased, leaning forward to finish milking the cow. “I don’t think she swallowed any of it.”
“It counts,” I insisted strongly, and for once, both men gave me no grief.
“You don’t have a Christmas tree,” Miles said as I opened the door to him and his incessant knocking exactly two minutes after he had just dropped me off from the cow-milking debacle.
According to the list, today we were supposed to cross off the milking of a cow, drinking chocolate milk, and watching a Christmas movie.
“What?” I asked, moving back to let him inside again.
“I just realized. The lodge never prepped this cabin to have a tree. Nobody was supposed to be in here. We need to get you a tree.”
Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it. In my mind, this Christmas was a wash. Maybe next year I’d be more open to a real Christmas, but this year…I had a cold, dead Scrooge heart, and a Christmas tree wasn’t going to help that.
“I’m okay. I promise. Besides, it’s not part of the bingo thing.”
He looked at me, his hand sweeping across his chest in mock offense. “My mom would murder me if I knowingly let a guest spend the week here without a tree. I’m adding it to the list. Today. After lunch.”
It was pointless to argue, so I didn’t.
“Fine. Should we just run to the grocery store and grab one off their lot?”
He looked mortally wounded. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
After lunch, he picked me up, wearing more dang flannel that was beginning to mess with my head. I’d always thought of flannel as something old men wore, but this was…different. It was flannel I had touched during a kiss. Not just touched either. My greedy fingers roamed all over it. It was a soft and sturdy fabric. The kind a girl could depend on to keep her warm. He looked like the cover of a book Chloe would love. Curse her and her endless lumberjack comments.
He handed me a pair of black gloves and pulled a white beanie onto my head, slinging it low across my ears. I pulled on the gloves, marveling at their warmth, and followed him like a stray puppy down the cabin steps and directly west into the woods.
“Did you buy these gloves?” I asked hesitantly, noticing the tag still on them. I hoped they were a pair his parents had been gifted or something. A pair they just had laying around the house.
“Can’t take my freezing-cold girlfriend Christmas-tree hunting without gloves.”
“I have gloves,” I said, trying to keep up with his long stride.
“I know. But you need gloves that don’t look like you ripped them off a three-year-old.”
He tossed me a smile over his shoulder and seemed to realize he was moving too fast, so he slowed down and grabbed my now warm, grown-up-glove-covered hand into his.
“Just in case anybody sees us heading to the woods,” he stated, holding up our clasped hands. My eyes narrowed, but I allowed the touching breach to continue—for our cover.
“What’s in your pack?” I asked, referring to the bag slung across his shoulder.
“A bow saw.”