This is just a little holiday blurb, thanks for reading and happy holidays to everyone!
The ice coated the lake completely, thick enough to walk on, Matt thought as he and the three other men headed out to the shelter which was erected during the winter time just for ice fishing. The small dwelling was sparsely furnished with the requisite hole drilled in the center for the fishing lines to sink into in hopes of catching fish. The men dressed warmly even though inside, it wasn't that cold at all.
They had already tried fishing earlier in the day but not much luck so mostly they had sat around talking about whatever topics had come to mind. Jonathan had told them that he had been working as a consultant in the private sector and while he had missed the excitement and unpredictability of working with the U.S. Marshal's office, he didn't want to return. Jed had gotten married to Bonnie and after being a widower for quite some time, found the return to being a husband again to be what had been missing in his life.
And Matt told them of his decision to hire more investigators to help him and Roy out after his near fatal bout of pneumonia the previous Thanksgiving. He had flown into Colorado with C.J. after they spent the Christmas holiday together at her new home in Houston. They had both been invited to the ranch by Thea and Matt had finally decided to try a new pastime called ice fishing. It appeared even more laidback than fishing off the banks of a lake but with plenty of beer, warmed food and just enough room in the makeshift building for them to sleep in, it promised to be an interesting couple of days.
He thought about C.J. who was staying back in the house with Thea and Rhonda who had come up with her boyfriend, Jonathan and Bonnie who spent most of her waking hours there. No doubt, they were sitting by the fireplace drinking hot drinks and catching up with each other while the men were out with nature in the middle of a winter in the Rockies trying to snare some elusive fish.
"Do you think there are any fish even under there," Matt asked.
"Sure there are," Jed said, "We usually catch about two or three of them before heading back."
Matt didn't mind the cold weather really even though he was more familiar with heat waves than frost days back in L.A. But C.J. had made sure he left with some extra layers in case it got really cold. She had embraced him goodbye dressed in worn jeans and an extra long woolen sweater with a scarf around her neck when he and the other men left the house to head off on their fishing adventure.
The relationship between Matt and Jonathan who had been C.J.'s ex from years ago had thawed considerably when the former agent had been instrumental in helping C.J. stay hidden from the ruthless trafficker who had kidnapped her and then hunted her down after her escape. After that ordeal had finally ended, she had remained in Houston to start her new career working to help women and girls in crisis and had gone into therapy to help her recover from her ordeal. She had come so far and how much so became apparent to Matt every time he saw her but she still struggled daily with how she related to people especially men. Not uncommon for a woman in her situation and one she so much wanted to change.
She had been pretty quiet on the flight over from Houston to Denver on his Lear Jet and on the trip down through the mountain ranges to the ranch just outside Silver Lode. But she had spent months on the ranch hiding out from those who looked for her and he knew she considered it a safe haven even now. And sure enough when they finally arrived, she had gone into the kitchen to help Thea and Bonnie finish the dinner meal, and he could hear chatter and laughter from where the men sat in the living room.
He sighed where he sat in the dwelling now watching his fishing line for any sign of sudden movement. His beer beside him and a blanket on his legs, as he thought about the woman who meant so much to him, the one he had just left but couldn't wait to see again.
The men would be heading back the next day for New Year's Eve and hoped to arrive back at the house by evening, just in time for a small dinner party with the women who stayed behind along with other guests.
Matt looked up and saw Jed come in from outside.
"Looks like we're in for some snow," he said, "Don't know how much but we'd better move our dinner inside tonight."
Matt nodded and Jonathan had already pulled out another beer and began to drink it. He had looked much better than the last time Matt had seen him and he suspected leaving the Marshal's office and hooking up with Rhonda had a lot to do with that. The two of them made a good couple though to many they might appear to be a study in contrasts. But Matt had known Rhonda since the episode in Bannon County and had been happy that she had found someone.
He got up to look outside the doorway and noticed it had gotten quite cloudy, noticeable even in darkness and indeed it did look like they were going to get a decent snow.
C.J. sat bundled up in a chair by the fireplace with a comforter over here remembering when she had done the same during the last winter when she had spent months recovering here. When her health had improved, she had wanted to leave the isolation of her bed and she sat down here for hours just watching and listening to the activity around her, getting to match the faces with the voices and trying to reconnect with the world again.
Now, in a much different place in her life, she had spent the time by the warmth of the fire talking and laughing with the other women, with Bonnie knitting and Rhonda getting a lesson. It sounded like her friend was enraptured in her relationship with Jonathan which made C.J. happy that two people who mattered so much to her had found happiness with each other.
"He's happy working for himself, much more so than when he was a fed," Rhonda said, trying to copy one of Bonnie's stitches, "and it's pretty good money."
"You just like it because you get to spend more time with him," Bonnie said, "though I haven't seen him so happy in a long time."
C.J. had noticed that too. He had always been a bit of a perfectionist with great attention to detail but he seemed to have relaxed that side of him somewhat and had become easier going like when she had first met him on his first day of work as a bartender back at Regency's. They had gone through such an ordeal that night getting caught up in what they thought had been Julia's regular dose of drama but that had been the first time that C.J. had crossed paths with the man of her nightmares, Andre Duval. The shared ordeal had accelerated the relationship between her and Jonathan but it had ultimately doomed it at the same time. What had happened had wound up coming between them even more than her close friendship with Matt.
She furrowed her brow as she thought about him out there in the cold. The weather forecast on the radio had mentioned a possible snowstorm moving into the valley and Thea had assured her that Jed could handle any kind of weather and that Jonathan had grown up with living in harsh winters too. But C.J. still worried thinking back to Matt's serious bout of pneumonia which had sent him to the intensive care unit.
Damn that was when she had really knew…that she loved him and not in the way that she always viewed her feelings towards her friend. No, she wanted more than that from him but that realization had scared her and when he had stabilized, she had flown back to Houston. Oh, she told Roy and Matt that she had to get back to work on a case but in actuality, she couldn't face what she had learned about herself. That she was in love with him. As broken as she had been by a cruel man steeped in obsession, she still harbored those feelings, but she knew that they couldn't go anywhere, not when she couldn't bear for a man to touch her in ways that were intimate, outside the boundaries of friendship. Her therapist said she needed to be patient with herself but she struggled with that.
"I need some more wine," Rhonda said, getting up, "This needlecraft is tensing me up instead of relaxing me."
Bonnie looked over at her attempts at knitting.
"It will come to you," she said, "All it takes is a lot of practice."
Rhonda brought over the wine bottle and poured herself a glass.
"It's really starting to snow out there," she said, "I couldn't see much of the barnyard from the kitchen window."
C.J. thought about that and hoped that the men were keeping warm but if it dropped a lot of snow…
"I hope the men are going to be all right tonight."
Thea looked up from her reading.
"They'll be just fine," she said, "They're probably telling fish stories right now, getting them ready to bring back."
C.J. smiled at that and reached to pour herself some wine as well. Her muscles ached from a morning ride on her favorite mare Sienna out to the foothills before the steeper mountains and back. The air had been clear and crisp, the wind a gentle if icy caress on her cheek. The buckskin mare seemed unaffected in her winter coat but C.J. felt the chill through her clothing.
She had spent much of the previous winter going out mostly to search for wayward yearling Cisco who hadn't really settled down she noticed but this time around, she saw how much he had grown, how much more he resembled his sire, the stallion Diablo Del Sol who owned the valley. Now she sat back enjoying the warmth of the living room and the taste of wine and delicious stew.
"I wonder if they'll actually catch anything," Rhonda wondered, "though from what I understand that's not really the point."
Bonnie nodded while settling a stitch.
"It's some time to relax from the hard work of ranching and enjoying some male bonding time."
C.J. left her chair, the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders to the window that she often had looked out and saw the snow falling in bigger clumps of flakes, weighed so heavily, they sunk quickly joining the carpet of white on the ground that was beginning to pile up into drifts.
She knew Matt had dressed warmly as had the other men and that he had learned survival skills for all kinds of weather in the military but she still felt concern and besides she missed him a little bit.
Because she had stronger feelings for him than she could even admit to herself and certainly to him. He had just broken up with Crystal not long before spending Christmas in Houston with C.J. but he was just in between his past girlfriend and the next, a woman he hadn't met yet who could give him what he needed and wanted.
Not like her.
She pushed these thoughts out of her head because they did her no good and besides, he had been such a great friend to her particularly in the past year when she had so much needed him. Thea came up to her and joined her as they looked out into the snow.
"It's definitely winter," Thea said, "Although it will take another month of this for cabin fever to start to develop…even though the work has to be done, it's all the rest of the time indoors that can weigh on people."
"I can imagine that," C.J. said, "It was never that bad back in Boston but we did have some severe snowstorms…I just spent most of my free time in the library anyway so it wasn't too bad."
"Matt's certainly recovered since his pneumonia," Thea said, "It must be good for him to have that new investigator working with him."
Oh yeah, Brody the ex-LAPD detective, C.J. thought, she hadn't really met him but he had come highly recommended from Hoyt who had supervised him in homicide.
"I'm glad he hired someone," C.J. said, "I think he was working himself way too hard this past year to make up for…being gone so long."
"He was where he wanted to be," he said, "He knew you needed him close by."
C.J. nodded.
"Yeah I did…I didn't know what to do when I returned," she said, "Getting back into my own life didn't prove to be easy at all."
"But you're building a new one," Thea said, "You have a new career where you get to help women."
"I do really enjoy what I do…and Houston, he's really busy back in L.A.," she said, "Sometimes I miss him but I know he's happy."
"But you love him…"
C.J. looked at her suddenly.
"Why of course I do…I always have…we've been friends forever…nearly so anyway."
Thea smiled.
"I mean in a very different way."
C.J. didn't know what to say at that point, but the woman in front of her once again had shown the ability to read her very well.
"Maybe…but it's so different from what reality is right now," she said, "Besides, he's back in L.A. picking up his life as it was when he left it."
Thea looked at her critically but with affection.
"Are you so sure about that?"
C.J. tilted her face.
"That's what he's been doing," she said, "He's back on investigating cases with Roy and Brody and he's had a couple girlfriends."
"Have you talked to him about this," Thea said, "About how you feel?"
C.J. shrugged.
"I don't know what I feel…maybe it's just gratitude about everything he did to help me…including being very patient when my emotions have been all over the place. Maybe I'm just confusing that for love."
Thea considered that as she looked back out the window.
"Maybe you feel that way but it doesn't mean you don't love him anyway."
C.J. considered that but in reality, her feelings just seem so complicated now about him and her life in general. Building it back and reclaiming every piece of it, had been a struggle that often left her feeling depleted and scared. She didn't know if those days and nights would ever be behind her. The counselor said they would lessen as time went by although at first, it might be noticeable. There were days when she saw how far she had come and then others where she still felt lost.
"Yeah…I guess you're right."
The men sat inside the fishing shack which kept out the bitter cold wind and the flailing snow, as they sat back and heated up some coffee.
"Do you think we'll get snowed in out here on the lake," Jonathan asked, reaching for his mug.
Jed shrugged.
"We'll be okay if that happens," he said, "We've got food and fuel…and beer."
Matt leaned back, feeling the warmth of the portable stove, and then reached for the coffee to pour himself some.
"Got a deck of cards?"
Jed smiled and then reached into his pack.
"Actually I do…We've played a lot of poker out here…we used jerky and trail mix for chips in more remote spots, here we have corn nuts."
He pulled out some of those as well and the men started playing their first of what was expected to be quite a few hands before they called it a night. Matt loved poker as much as anyone but his thoughts went back to the house where C.J. probably sat with the rest of the women enjoying their time away from the men folk.
They had flown to Denver, driven to the ranch and spent a couple of days together, but hadn't really talked that much. She had buried herself in helping with the cooking of meals with Thea, Bonnie and even Rhonda pitching with at least the simpler tasks. Matt had been out helping Jed and the other ranch hands with the chores or talking with Jonathan who he had grown to view more as a friend than they had been years earlier.
"So Matt, you going to hold or fold," Jonathan asked from behind his cards.
Matt looked at his own hand and then opted to swap for new cards, not that it improved his spread.
But he kept thinking about the woman left behind…when he returned to the ranch house he would spend more time with her.
"Rhonda's really liking it here at the ranch," Jonathan said, "Said it reminds her of when she was younger..The better part of it."
"Seems like a nice woman," Jed noted, "I imagine Bonnie's trying to make a knitter out of her."
Jonathan chuckled.
"She said she'd do well enough to start with a scarf and work her way up to a sweater."
Matt listened to the happiness in Jonathan's voice, the clear affection he had for the woman who in many ways couldn't be more different than him but he still loved her. And Rhonda clearly loved him back, the former federal agent being the first man to get past the defenses she hid behind an acrid sense of humor.
C.J. of course had her own ways of trying to keep people at a distance, perhaps some she wasn't even aware were there. And Matt respected them, because he knew that she'd discard them when she no longer felt she needed them to survive. Sometimes it was hard because he had realized that his feelings for her hadn't stopped growing in the past year since they returned to Houston from their life on the run. But he kept them under wraps to himself because he knew for the longest time they hadn't been what she had needed and if you loved someone, you couldn't put your needs and wants first if it were detrimental to them. And he had known that he had loved her even before he had returned from his global travels to find the world very much different than the one he had left with her having been abducted after leaving the office one evening in L.A. That had been what had finally brought him home, that realization sparked by a dream he had after the sweat lodge session and he had been so eager to share that with her.
Only she had been gone for nearly all the six months he had been traveling, first being kidnapped and held captive by a sex trafficker and then forced into hiding after she escaped from him. He had put his business, his whole life on hold to go find her and then help her do what needed to be done to wrest control of her life back from those who held it.
But Matt knew that C.J. still had serious issues she had tried to work through during her healing process and that she needed to do that so he had given her plenty of space. She had just broken up with a guy back in Houston because she had felt she wasn't ready for an intimate relationship and he guessed she had essentially closed the book on that part of her life…at least for now.
"I think I'll fold," he said, putting his cards down awaiting a better hand next time.
Jonathan won that round with a straight and Jed started dealing the cards again.
C.J. buried herself underneath the covers including a comforter in her bedroom, as the snow continued to fall and she heard the wind bustling against the windows and in the trees outside of it. She hoped that Matt and the other men were keeping warm and able to sleep through what must be quite a storm out on the lake. Whether they would be able to return back to the house the next day, that wouldn't be known until daybreak.
The cat with the worn patchwork of colors on his coat nestled next to her, purring as it had done when she had spent months at the ranch, most of it through a winter just like this one.
She slept much better here than she had before, having nicer dreams of better times in the past including some of the nicer memories she had accumulated in her year of recovery. The time spent with her friends Chris, Fran and Rhonda during their lunch breaks where they'd invariably meet in some eatery in downtown Houston and on the weekends when they shopped, went to movies or just hung out.
But the time she spent with Matt had been most special too, when he had come to visit her including during the Christmas holidays, when they had walked hand in hand in the malls decorated for the holidays or together on her couch drinking some wine in the evenings. She felt comfortable around him, certainly more so than she had any of the men she had tried to date the past year. The relationships of course hadn't gone too far before she felt crowded and overwhelmed with fear sometimes bordering on panic, feelings that she felt too ashamed to share. Let alone what had happened to her that created them inside her so ending the relationships just seemed more prudent…and certainly easier. And each time she did it, it seemed easier not to care about what had once been an important part of her life before…it had been ripped apart.
That's why she knew it would be better not to harbor these feelings she had for her best friend, which could go nowhere. No better focus on the things in her life she could still control like her work…and the time she spent with her friends. She and Matt…were just better off being close friends that had to be enough.
Still as she drifted off to sleep, she wished life could be different…
Matt tossed and turned in his sleeping bag inside the shack listening to the winds howl against the walls rattling them. The other men had fallen asleep after Jonathan had won the majority of the corn nuts and then passed them around to the other men so they could snack before they hit the hay. The shack felt warm enough but Matt's mind lingered back to the house where the women likely slept much further removed from the elements including her.
He had done some thinking about his life in L.A., his work which mercifully had settled down into being less frantic what with adding people like Brody and Kyle to his investigative staff. At first, he wanted to provide all his clients with the personal touch but he and Roy had decided that didn't seem realistic given the caseload that had piled up during Matt's absence. That and being the victim of his own success, the unwanted publicity from the ordeal he and C.J. had battled had led to more exposure for his firm.
But he felt the loss of C.J. keenly and wished he could leave his business more often to visit her or maybe…even go further and pick up stakes and move back to Texas…but when he thought about it further than that, he wondered if C.J. didn't really need the distance between them. Maybe she wanted it as well.
He had been dating woman with Crystal being the latest one that he romanced and left but his heart hadn't been at it. His life and how he looked at it had been turned upside down the past year but he felt that he was ready to take it in new directions; his near fatal illness had reinforced that. He just hadn't figured out how and he felt a bit at a loss to decide that.
C.J. joined the other women in the kitchen including Bonnie who had stayed the night rather than headed back to an empty home. They cooked up some eggs, roasted potatoes and some coffee, eating it around the big table.
She had woken up feeling refreshed, and had looked out the window down onto the drifts of snow. The sky still appeared leaden but the snow had stopped falling though Thea had said it sure felt as frigid as it looked outside when she had gone to the barn. Reed and Carter had stopped by to help with the chores until the men returned from their fishing holiday.
"Do you think they'll make it," Rhonda asked, "I bet the lake's under a ton of snow."
Thea didn't appear fazed, nor did Bonnie. After all, they were used to this type of weather.
"They'll make it," she said, "They know there's steak and potatoes waiting for them tonight."
C.J. smiled knowing that would be enough to get Matt through any bad weather and she couldn't wait until he did return. They hadn't spent much time together here and she intended to change that.
Matt and the other two men packed up their things after a quick breakfast of presto omelets and warmed muffins along with another pot of coffee to get them through the hike back through a lot of snow, a trip that due to the weather might take most of the day.
"I'll break the trail first," Jed said, "We'll take turns and the others will follow in the footsteps…parts of the drifts might get pretty deep over the meadows."
And so they started hiking and Matt started looking forward to reaching the ranch house and warming up by the stove because right now, despite their protective gear, the wind still nipped at their faces as they trudged forward. Occasionally, the leader would sink deep in the snow almost waist deep and have to be helped out but usually the drifts were more up just above the knees.
Each foot stepped brought them closer as they traveled through a world, stark in its whiteness.
Bonnie had been teaching Rhonda to knit while C.J. picked up a novel she had brought with her to read. It had been romantic suspense filled with mysterious agents and missions, and it quickly took her away…enough so she could park her thoughts about her best friend on hold.
She had checked her messages earlier and had received a phone call from the U.S. Attorney's office, the prosecutor in charge of the team that was preparing to convene another grand jury on the trafficking ring. He had said that the scheduled hearing had been canceled again and that he could call her back when it had been rescheduled. She had sighed after listening to it, because this hadn't been the first time the all too crucial next phase of the arduous process had been put on hold. At this point, she wondered if the grand jury would ever convene or whether anyone would be charged in connection with what happened to her and other women.
Putting that call out of her mind had been done easily enough because she had done that quite a few times as well. The potential defendants were in custody and their reach had diminished greatly although they weren't the only players she had to worry about because she still hadn't reached any word from the feds about this Jaguar guy, the one who believed that he had purchased her from Andre Duval.
Until he was identified and dealt with, she could never stop looking over her shoulder even if the others were convicted at trial and imprisoned. Anyone close to her was in danger as well, another reason to keep Matt at arm's length, to beg off when he wanted to visit her in Houston…though this last time, she couldn't bring herself not to want him to fly in…she just missed him too damn much. But when they left the ranch and flew her back to Houston…she had to find the words to convince him to head back to his life in L.A. And so without worrying him or tapping into his vigilance which had strengthened as his career in investigating had taken off.
The book kept her occupied but C.J. just couldn't search for the words she needed to keep him away from her so no one could hurt him to get at her.
She had to find them, she didn't know what she would do if she didn't.
Matt looked up and blinked his eyes, though it made his face sting. Up ahead was the ranch house with smoke coming out of the chimney. A mirage, he thought but the other men had seen it too and they began heading towards it, their enthusiasm making up for the weight of fatigue they felt after hiking for hours.
They reached the kitchen door and walked inside it, to see the women sitting around the table looking up at them and smiling. Matt didn't say anything after removing his coat but walked towards C.J. and embracing her tightly. She settled into his arms easily and rested her head against his shoulder. Any words she had to say to him, the ones that had seemed imperative shortly before could now wait as she wrapped her arms around the man she loved.
The man who loved her.
They all celebrated the New Year together with champagne after having eaten a hearty dinner that filled them up before they had settled in the warmth of the living room. As the seconds ticked down to midnight, Matt and C.J. felt the world recede around them as they looked at each other, making promises silently to themselves that the new year would bring mostly a new beginning, one that somehow they could build together.
That when they stood together one year from now, they would be together celebrating wonderful changes in their lives that hopefully would weave them closer together.