Читать книгу Cole For Christmas - Darlene Gardner, Darlene Gardner - Страница 10

“THIS IS A DISASTER,” Anna said after she chased Cole into the cold, calm night. She shivered. She’d been in such a rush to right things that putting on a coat hadn’t occurred to her. “What are we going to do now?”

Cole stuck his hands in his pockets, looking maddeningly untroubled by their problem, not to mention impossibly handsome. She bit the inside of her lip. When had she started thinking of him in those terms?

“I thought we’d enjoy each other’s company tomorrow,” he said.

Anna threw up her hands. “I’d say we did a little too much enjoying tonight. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

“I thought tonight went well,” he said over his shoulder as he descended the three porch steps to the sidewalk.

The better to make a quick getaway to his car, she thought.

“Tonight did not go well,” she refuted emphatically as she chased after him. His legs were so much longer than her own long legs that she had to practically run to keep up with him. “You heard my family. They think we’re involved.”

He was halfway to the car before he abruptly turned to face her. When he spoke, she could see his breath. “So what? We know we’re not so I don’t see that it’s a problem.”

She knew her mouth had dropped open by the cold air that swooshed inside. “How can you say that? Didn’t you listen to them tonight? They’re probably inside right now talking about what they’ll get us for wedding presents.”

He laughed and skimmed his fingertips down her cheek. She wasn’t sure if her shiver was from his touch or her negligence in putting on a coat to walk him to the car.

“You’re exaggerating,” he said.

Clouds obscured the moon but the Christmas lights scattered over the property made it possible to read his expression. The harsh lines of his face had softened, and his eyes roamed over her with appreciation. This time her shiver was definitely not from the cold.

“You’re doing it again,” she accused.

“Doing what?”

She put her hands on her hips. At least she thought they were her hips. She was so frozen she could barely tell where one body part ended and another began. “Touching me. And looking at me like you want to kiss me. No wonder my family thinks we’ve got something going.”

He focused on her lips while his tongue flicked out and licked his bottom one. “I can’t help the way I look at you,” he said in a hypnotically soft voice.

Her heartbeat sped up but she wasn’t about to let him know that. She narrowed her eyes, which had begun to water from the cold. She only hoped her tears didn’t ice over. She tried to make her voice harsh. “Sure you can. You don’t look at me that way at work.”

His eyes roamed over her in the way she was talking about, the way that made her insides melt like chocolate in the sun. “You’re different around your family than you are at work,” he said. “Softer, more feminine. When I look at you right now, it’s easy to forget we work together.”

“Then you need to get a better memory, buster, because work is the reason we can’t get involved,” she said.

She might have sounded more convincing, she thought, if her teeth weren’t chattering.

“I agree,” he said.

“You do?”

“I do,” Cole said so reassuringly that she didn’t protest when he took her lightly by the forearms. His hands moved up and down her arms, creating a wonderful friction and chasing away some of the chill. “If you and I get involved, I’d find it too hard to concentrate at work.”

“Me, too,” she admitted.

At that moment, it was difficult to concentrate on much more than the feel of his hands on her. They were such large, wonderful, magic hands. How would they feel, she wondered, on someplace more intimate than her arms? Heavenly, she answered herself.

She cleared her suddenly clogged throat. “Can I ask you something?”

“Um, hmm,” he said absently as he continued the delightful massage.

“If we’re not getting involved, why are you trying to turn me on?”

“I’m not trying to turn you on.” His voice was husky and spiced with deep-toned laughter. “I’m trying to warm you up. It can’t be more than thirty degrees out here.”

“Oh,” Anna said weakly.

“Is it working?”

That depended on whether he was talking about warming her up or turning her on. Hot little pockets of sensation were erupting in places deep inside her but the outer layer of her skin still felt as though she’d been hanging like a slab of beef inside an industrial-sized refrigerator.

“Not entirely,” she said.

He let her go, making her fear she’d given the wrong answer. She fisted her hands so she wouldn’t reach for him and watched in confusion as he unbuttoned his overcoat. Before she could ask if he was crazy, he drew it open.

“Come here before you freeze to death,” he invited.

Said the spider to the fly, she thought. But the promise of warmth plus the chance to be close to him was more temptation than Anna could withstand.

“Oh, all right,” she muttered before letting him en-fold her in the flaps of his overcoat. Their bodies touched from chest to thigh. Delicious warmth spread through her, and she was honest enough to admit it was only partly due to the coat.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her cheek to the cool cotton of his shirt and heard his heart rate speed up. Hers was already galloping.

“Nobody better be looking out the window,” she murmured without lifting her head. “Otherwise we’ll never be able to convince them you’re not my boyfriend.”

“Does it matter that much what they think?” he asked. His breath was warm against her temple.

“It’s not so much what they think as what they’ll do,” she said. “They’re crafty. They like you. They’ll throw us together whenever they can.”

“Is that why you never brought Larry Lipinski home?”

“I never brought Larry home because he was a chronic liar,” she said. “I couldn’t trust him.”

He was silent for a moment. “Then why did you date him?”

“It’s not like I knew he had a Pinocchio complex ahead of time,” she said. “But we’re getting off the subject. We were talking about why you can’t spend tomorrow with us.”

She felt his body stiffen. “I already said I would.”

“I have an idea about that.” She spoke into his chest, finding it easier to deliver her news when she wasn’t looking into his devastatingly attractive face. “When I go back inside, I’ll tell them you remembered accepting another invitation.”

“But I didn’t.”

“They won’t know that. It’s the perfect plan.”

“You say that like it’s already been decided.”

Realizing she couldn’t drive home her point while talking to his chest, she lifted her head. His sensuously curved lips had thinned and his eyes had hardened into chips of blue ice, not the mark of a happy man.

“It has been decided,” she said firmly.

“No,” he said, shaking his dark head emphatically. His jaw firmed. “You decided. I didn’t. This isn’t like at work where your word goes, Anna. Your family invited me. I have some say in whether I show up.”

She felt her eyes widen. “You can’t mean you actually want to spend Christmas with my family?”

“I like your family,” he said. She got ready to argue that he’d never have met her family if it hadn’t been for her but he wasn’t through talking. “And it would sure beat staying home alone.”

The argument died on her lips. Alone, he’d said. “You mean you really don’t have plans?”

“I told you. I’m new in town. I don’t know many people.”

“Nobody invited you over?”

“A couple friends in San Diego, but I decided to stay here. I didn’t think it would bother me to spend Christmas alone,” he said, then gazed at her so intently she was surprised his glasses didn’t fog up. “Until your family invited me to spend it with all of you.”

She sighed. “You don’t play fair, Cole Mansfield.”

A corner of his mouth kicked up. “Does that mean you’re as much of a sucker for a guy alone on Christmas Day as you are for one going solo on Christmas Eve?”

“Not quite, but close.” Now that they were no longer at odds, she was intensely aware of her body humming in sensual awareness against his. That called to mind, once again, their problem. “Tell you what, you can come tomorrow on one condition.”

A fat snowflake drifted down from the sky and hit her nose, distracting her from what she’d been about to say. It was followed by another and then another. She raised her eyes and saw hundreds of white flakes leisurely falling to earth against the gray blanket of night.

“It’s snowing,” she said, grinning up at him in delight.

Almost instantaneously, she heard voices in the distance break into “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Making sure to stay in the warm circle of Cole’s arms, she turned to watch a party breaking up across the street. The departing guests were singing. Most of them had their arms flung around each other.

She giggled. “It looks like the Gumberts can’t restrain themselves.”

“Neither can I. Not any longer,” Cole said in a strangled voice. His arms tightened at her back and she felt the tension in him give way as he gathered her close.

Even before she turned all the way back around, she knew he meant to kiss her. He was so tall that avoiding his mouth would have been a simple matter of bowing her head. Instead, with her blood thrumming and her senses singing, she lifted her head and met him halfway.

In Anna’s experience, first kisses were usually clumsy, with neither party sure exactly how to please the other. But Cole’s mouth molded to hers as though it had been designed to fit there, like the interlocking piece of a puzzle.

His lips, warm and tasting vaguely of the fine red wine he’d drunk at dinner, moved gently, persuasively against her mouth. The lower part of his face was vaguely scratchy against her smooth skin, underscoring his potent masculinity.

Intoxicating sensations poured through her, surprising in their intensity. She could feel his erection against the lower part of her stomach, and a swirling, liquid heat settled deep inside her.

She moved her hands from his waist, up the hard contours of his chest and circled them around his neck. If she didn’t anchor herself, she was afraid she’d get drunk on his kiss and sink bonelessly to the sidewalk.

His tongue slipped inside her mouth, feeling like heated velvet. She moaned, and a heady sensation shot straight to her head.

She was getting drunk on his kiss.

She angled her mouth to give him greater access, wanting to get closer to him. She almost cried out in dazed protest when he lifted his head, but then the cool feel of the snow falling on her face penetrated her haze.

The snow reminded her of where she was. She blinked once so that his face came into stark focus. She needed to remind herself of who she was with: Cole Mansfield, the man angling for her job. Lines of strain rimmed his mouth and his glasses were fogged.

“If we don’t stop now,” he said in a low growl, “I’m afraid your neighbors across the street will get more of a show than they bargained for.”

Although an unwise part of her wanted to cling to him, she resolutely loosened her arms from around his neck. She stepped back from the protection of his overcoat and the chill of the night immediately enveloped her.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said, trying to resurrect the businesslike tone she used at the office and failing miserably.

One of his large hands came out to brush the hair back from her face, an intimacy she shouldn’t have allowed him. But then hair touching paled in comparison with lip locking. He gave her a sexy, lopsided smile.

“You never did tell me that condition,” he said.

She drew a blank until it occurred to her that she had been about to place a provision on him spending Christmas day with her family.

“Of course, the condition,” she repeated, stalling while she searched her muddled brain for it. Finally, it came to her. “Tomorrow, you need to make it clear to my family that we’re not involved.”

His dark eyebrows arched. “In that case, I’ll need one to last me.”

Before she could guess his intention, he cradled her head between his large hands and brought his mouth down on hers. Their initial kiss had exceeded every expectation she’d ever had about first kisses, but this kiss surpassed it.

This time, there was nothing tentative about the way they came together. Their mouths opened, their tongues tangled in an erotic dance and her insides quaked so hard the rumbling might have registered on the Richter scale.

He held her head steady but it wasn’t necessary, not when she couldn’t gather the will to move away. Knowing that she shouldn’t be kissing him didn’t seem to matter, not when the heat was back, making a mockery of the winter night.

She met his passion, ravishing his mouth the same as he did hers. Her mind seemed to switch off so only sensation remained. Again he was the one who drew back, but she couldn’t have said for certain how much time had passed: seconds, minutes, hours.

His glasses had fogged again, making it impossible to see his eyes. She had the sensation that he was gazing deeply into hers, looking for some acknowledgment of what they’d just shared that she knew instinctively she shouldn’t let him see.

“Good night, sugarplum,” he said.

Then he grinned, kissed her on the nose and disappeared down the sidewalk as she stood gazing after him. He whistled a holiday tune that was so off key she couldn’t recognize it. She had no trouble identifying the one running through her head, though.