She groaned, giving him her tongue. They’d gotten good at this together. He’d learned her body, her responses, and knew where she liked to be licked, where she needed a rough scrape of teeth or a soft, teasing probe.
Today she held back, gasping as he consumed her, until at the end when she chased his retreat and sank her teeth into his bottom lip.
His erection strained in reaction. Yes. He was up for literally anything—within the bounds of what Chloe had carefully established as on the table. No feelings. No commitment. Everything in secret and furtive and not at all what Tom really wanted, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. And when it came to Chloe, Tom was one thousand percent a happy beggar.
“That was nice,” she whispered, her breath hitching as she looked up at him.
“I’ve got more where that came from.”
She smiled slowly, her eyes searching his face. “I know you do.”
And they could do it. Right here, against the wall. He could work her pants down her hips and turn her around. Tight, hard, fast. They’d done it that way before. Or there was the couch. She could ride him nice and slow, until he begged her to come.
Both would also be an option. He had stamina for hours when it came to Chloe.
But she’d come here, and he didn’t want to miss the opportunity to gain a small advantage. “Do you want to do something fun?”
She laughed. “Don’t we always?”
“A different kind of fun.”
A look crossed her face. She wasn’t sure. But after a moment of consideration, she slowly nodded. “Sure.” She took a deep breath. “Outside? Somewhere we could talk?”
“Yeah. Definitely.” He caught her hand in his and reached past her to open the door, taking the opportunity to steal a kiss before pulling her out into the cool afternoon air. He pointed at the climbing tower, which the team used to practice rescue descents on. “Up there.”
Chloe zipped her jacket up again and glanced at him sideways. “Wall climbing?”
“If you want. Or we could go up there and, if we’re quiet enough, I bet we’ll see some deer come through the forest soon.”
“Deer?” Her eyes lit up.
Bingo. She was tough on the outside, but under that brittle exterior was a soft, squishy heart that loved animals.
“Come on.” He took her hand and led her to the stairs. “Up we go.”
The climbing tower was four storeys tall, higher than any building and almost any tree in the area. It had an impressive view, which Chloe got sucked into as expected.
Tom grinned to himself as he stretched out the blanket he’d already stashed up there. When she turned around, she was suitably impressed. “Why haven’t I been up here before?”
So many complicated reasons, most of them on her end, and he wasn’t going to point that out. “No idea. We’ll have to add it to our list of regular spots.”
A quick reaction flickered across her face, then disappeared. “It’s lovely up here, Tom.”
“Even lovelier down here,” he said, holding out his hand. “Come check out my fancy blanket.”
She laughed and joined him, stretching out to mirror his body language. He pointed to the forest below. “Now, you’ll need to be quiet, do you think you can do that?”
“I’m a librarian. Quiet is my thing.”
“I’ve never found your library to be that quiet.”
“You always come at preschool hour, and I immediately kick you out. You haven’t had the full experience.”
He’d put that on the list of things he wanted, too. But first, deer spotting. “So we’re going to be quiet...”
She laughed and poked him.
“And we’re going to watch for movement below. A rustle of trees, birds taking off unexpectedly. Lots of things that will let us know the deer are moving through. And then...” He pointed to the clearings where he usually saw deer stop. “There and there. Those are our best chances to see them.”
“Deer,” she breathed, her eyes wide.
“Yep.”
“This is quite the secret spot you’ve got up here.”
“I only tell my favourite people.”
She snorted.
But he was telling the truth.
They lay there for half an hour. Every few minutes, Chloe would crack a joke, and he’d remind her she needed to hush.
“It’s just so foreign to me to be this quiet if I’m not surrounded by stacks of books,” she whispered back.
“Then I’ll need to keep you busy.” He covered her mouth with his hand, squeezing gently, then trailed his fingers down her throat and onto the fluttering pulse point at the base of her neck. “Can you be very quiet if I give you proper motivation?”
“No.” He lifted his fingers and she whimpered. “I’m just being honest.”
He laughed and kissed her, then rolled back onto his stomach. “Watch. Listen. I’ll give you something to do with your mouth if need be, but I want to see them, too.”
Her cheeks turned pink and she propped her chin on her hands. “Okay.”
She was rewarded less than ten minutes later when they saw a few trees rustle, then another, clearly leading in a path to one of the clearings below. Tom pointed it out and Chloe clamped her lips shut, her eyes wide.
When the deer sprinted into the clearing, she gasped gently, then clapped her own hand over her mouth to keep that inside.
“So pretty,” she finally whispered as they had a snack on one of the trees.
He was looking at her, not the visitors. “Gorgeous.”
“Stop,” she murmured.
He grinned. “Caught me looking.” He crowded closer, kissing the back of her neck, then her shoulder. “It’s because you are gorgeous. And sexy, and...” His fingers crept beneath her, first going to her collarbone, then lower. He tugged the zipper down on her jacket, and she rolled to the side, giving him space to play.
Her tits were marvellous. Firm and sensitive and always game for a bit of pinching—
“Ow,” she breathed.
Maybe not that quickly. “Sorry. You okay?”
She leaned in, her eyes closed, and kissed him. Wet, slick, hot. “Mmm, just be gentle.”
“You sore? Close to your period?”
She froze.
He pulled back. Chloe had never been one to hedge around stuff like that, and he’d always liked that about her. “Are you on your period? You know that’s no big deal to me, right? We can—”
“I’m pregnant.” She blurted it out, her face going white, and his entire world turned upside down.
“Wait, what?”
“I meant to tell you.”
“You meant to—when? After we spent the afternoon screwing?”
“When I showed up, but then you were kissing me. You started it.” She scrambled to her feet. “You wanted to...” She turned in a circle, her arms outstretched. When she faced him again, her expression was tight. Pale. Angry.
Shit.
Before he could get out the right sounds to make an apology, she was jabbing her finger in his face. “Look. You wanted something today. This little show with the blanket, and the deer? What was that, you trying to be Mr. Romantic? We both know that’s not really you. Not by a long stretch.”
He gaped at her. That was her thing, that he wasn’t allowed to want more than fucking. She was why he hadn’t shown her this side of him. But he couldn’t say that, because she was pregnant.
And she wasn’t done yelling. Her words came faster now, tight and spilling over each other, like she’d practiced some of this and hadn’t meant for it all to come out, but it was and she couldn’t help it. “And now you’ve revealed yourself for who you really are. For what you really are, and you don’t get to be mad at me because I gave in to what just might have been the last sex I have for the next eighteen years. And by the way, it didn’t happen, so you don’t get to shame me for that. Got it? I won’t stand for it, Tom Minelli. You hear me?”
“I think everyone north of town hears you,” he s
aid, shock making him stupid. The words were out before he could cut them off.
She gasped, then turned and spun on her heel, heading for the stairs. “Do not follow me,” she yelled as he ignored her.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Of course I’m following you. We need to talk.”
“We don’t.”
“Chloe.” She was down a full level from him, and he started taking the stairs two at a time. How was she moving this fast?
“I told you not to follow me. You are a terrible listener.”
She’d just said more about him—about them—in thirty seconds than she’d said in the past year. His brain hadn’t caught up. And she was still moving. “How can I not follow you? What the hell? Chloe, stop.”
She jumped the last few steps, landed on the ground, and kept moving. Not stopping. Not listening.
Tom’s heart pounded against his ribs. She was really storming out.
She was pregnant.
He’d pissed her off, but damn it, she’d blindsided him. She just needed to slow down and—
But she was already in her car.
He threw his hands in the air as she powered her Honda Civic to life. Great.
What the hell had just happened?
“Congratulations,” he yelled at the retreating car. “I sure as hell hope it’s my baby.”
And then he felt like the complete jerk that he probably was.
Chapter Three
Christmas Day
AS SOON AS DAWN BROKE, and it was safe to drive across the causeway to the Vance cottage, Tom poured an entire pot of coffee into an extra-large Thermos and headed out.
Zander had talked him out of driving across the night before. They’d tracked her down using the last known ping off her cell phone, and then his brother had waited on the mainland while Tom had walked out to the island.
He’d just needed to see her. For a minute, just to make sure she was okay.
Then he came back to his apartment and spent the night talking himself out of doing exactly what he was about to do. His bed had never felt so empty.
It was strange to miss Chloe in his bed when she’d never slept over. Not even once. But she’d been there many times, for a few hours. Warm and happy. Their secret little games, their shared pleasure.
And at the first brush with hard reality, that had all disintegrated. None of it had been real. But he’d spent the night missing her all the same. He’d spent a week figuring out how to make up for lost time, how to make right what had to have been an awful moment for her—hey, stupid, I’m having your baby, and oh look, you’re being fucking stupid about it.
He’d also spent a lot of the last week feeling sorry for himself, which is why it had taken him a week—and that was yet another mistake. He’d waited too long, and now he had that to regret on top of missing what could have been, what others had, what they could have had if he’d simply been brave enough to say it out loud.
I want more with you, Chloe.
He’d say it today.
But he needed to be alive for that, so he waited until he could see where he was going.
As his truck heated up and the windows defrosted, he stared out at the lake and thought about what he would say. He needed to be clear now, because it wasn’t a long drive from his cabin to the island where the Vance cottage stood. She’d hidden in plain sight, practically under his nose.
He needed to know why.
But he needed to keep his cool if he had any chance of getting an answer to that question.
That’s what he told himself on the short drive. It took nearly as long to cross the narrow, single-lane causeway between the county road and the island as it did to get there.
He put his truck in four-wheel-drive and powered through the drifts of snow, holding his breath every time the wheels jerks beneath him. The track he’d walked in last night was now gone, and the freezing cold lake was right there on both sides. There was no way Chloe’s little car would get back to the main land.
Once he was across the skinny spit of a lane which made the island not really an island at all, he did a three-point turn in front of the house. Backing in meant his truck would at least be pointing straight at the causeway.
It was beyond foolish to spend any length of time out on the lake during a winter storm. Even in a cottage as robust as the Vance home, which was full-season and larger than most houses in Pine Harbour proper, it wouldn’t take much to be cut off from the main land.
Tom would know. It was often his role to run rescues to fetch people from their islands when the rustic Christmas-at-the-cottage plan inevitably went sideways.
He and Chloe wouldn’t need to be rescued, though—except maybe from the past.
He turned off the engine. It had rumbled loud and long enough to clearly announce his arrival. But even as his cab grew cold, he didn’t move.
The adrenaline of going to see her yesterday, finding her apartment empty, and then tracking her down had carried him this far. But he didn’t know what was going to happen when he knocked on that door.
Except he wasn’t going to need to knock. She’d heard him arrive. Watched him sit in his truck like a coward, clearly, because now she was standing in the open doorway, hand on her hip.
He grabbed the Thermos of coffee and hopped out of the truck, stopping at the back to grab the box of gift-wrapped presents that were his excuse for coming to see her.
“What are you doing here?” she called out.
He could ask her the same question. He would. If she wanted to leave, why didn’t she go very far?
He stopped just shy of the threshold and stomped his feet lightly, brushing off the snow. “I came to make sure you were all right.” His gaze dropped to her midsection, and her hand followed.
“I’m okay.”
“You disappeared.”
She took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Can I come in?”
She hesitated a beat, then stepped out of the way, letting him in.
It was hard to step close to her and not lean all the way in and kiss her, but they’d messed this up. He’d messed this up, and that wasn’t an option. But she wasn’t a stranger to him, either. Why was she so hard to read? “Good morning. I should have led with that.”
Her response was a soft whisper. “Good morning.”
Damn it, why was this so awkward? Because you were an ass when she told you she was pregnant. He set down the box of gifts and unzipped his coat, inviting himself to stay a while. “Merry Christmas.”
“I’m not celebrating this year.”
“Then Happy Regular December Twenty-Fifth to you. I brought hot coffee. Pre-made as double-double.” Two cream, two sugar. Which was how she took her coffee, and not at all how he took his.
Of course, this gesture required her to know that he knew how she took her coffee, which maybe she didn’t. Maybe he’d been the only one watching carefully every time they were in adjacent booths at Mac’s. Maybe she really had been studiously ignoring him instead of it being a pretence like he’d hoped.
“You made coffee?”
“Yeah.”
“For me?” She looked at him suspiciously.
“Ideally, for us to share.”
IT WAS TEMPTING TO snatch the Thermos and point him back out the door. Nope, she wasn’t ready to talk. Wasn’t ready to deal with anything other than the rioting feelings inside her that only got worse when Tom was close.
But on the other hand, he’d brought her coffee. Her kind of coffee, not his. And he hadn’t asked her if she could have caffeine because of the bundle of cells inside her. She was pretty sure she’d toss him into the nearest snowbank if he did, because yesterday she’d thought it a grand plan to only bring hot chocolate with her.
This morning she’d regretted that choice—and then Tom had shown up with sweet, sweet coffee.
A sly move if ever there was one.
“Thank you,” she said, and she meant it. For all the complicated mess that stood between them,
she was grateful for his presence. Sharing would be a bit of a problem, though. “I have a mug, but you’re going to have to use the Thermos lid.”
He gave her a confused look. “Okay...”
“I’m not being petty,” she told him, leading the way to the Vances’ kitchen. The completely empty kitchen. She lifted her mug that was sitting next to the kettle and gestured around. “They cleared this place out at Thanksgiving. It’s being gutted in the spring for renovations, so...no mugs. Terrible hospitality, I realize. If you don’t want to stay long, that’s fine.”
He looked alarmed. “The entire house is empty?”
She shrugged. “There’s a couch and a bed. I brought hot chocolate and books. It’s fine. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
He threw his arm out wide, pointing at the window. “Are you? Do you have any idea how much snow has accumulated over night? I had a hell of a time getting across the causeway in my truck. I don’t think your car is going anywhere until we can get it plowed.”
“It’s not that much,” she insisted, ignoring the new twist of worry in her gut. “The forecast said—”
“Forecasts mean nothing on the lake.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He was always so safety conscious. “Then I’ll wait until it stops snowing, and I’ll get plowed out.”
His jaw clenched.
“I know a thing or two about this town,” she reminded him. “Everyone and their brother has a plow hitch. There’s no need to be dramatic.”
Instead of answering, he gestured to the fridge. “Is that thing empty, too?”
Not technically. She’d brought milk for her hot cocoa.
He gave her an incredulous look when she didn’t reply. “What are you eating, then?”
“Crackers,” she admitted. It was so clichéd, but they felt good on her endlessly nauseous tummy. As did coffee, so she took another sip.
His face shifted from concerned to understanding. “Speaking of crackers...I think we should talk about it.”
“It.”
“I want to talk about it.”
Again, she played dumb. “It?”
And understanding morphed immediately to frustrated. “The fact that you’re pregnant.”
Snowed in for Christmas Page 24
