“Yeah, that probably wouldn’t be very nice for the other to parade around half-dressed. Might be a little bit of a tease.”
“Yeah, just a little bit,” he agreed, “not that I won’t already be getting teased at work while you’re dancing.”
I snickered. “True, but that is work.”
His response was a grunt, and I grinned at his back as I followed him.
We reached the top of the stairs, and he directed me to the second door. It was a large bedroom with a basic bathroom in beige, but at least four times the size of the one at my apartment. The suite had a queen-sized bed that looked comfortable and not lumpy like mine. He set my bag on the bed.
“Come on, I’ll give you a quick tour of the house.”
He pointed out the other three rooms, but since they were unfurnished and it was still the middle of the night, he suggested I look at them tomorrow when the sun was up and then led me to the first floor.
As we passed through the foyer again, I refrained from looking at the wall and instead stared at the slate on the floor. He led me to a large open area which encompassed the kitchen and family room. There was a television hanging from the wall that appeared longer than I was tall and two bulky couches with a couple of cushy armchairs in burgundy leather. It looked like a man’s room if I’d ever seen one.
The kitchen was done in stainless steel with black counters and slate gray stone floors. It was classy looking, and I loved it.
“This is nice, Wallie.”
He took my hand. “Come here, I want to show you one more thing.” He grinned as he walked me down a hallway, and we came to a closed door. When we reached it, he stopped and took me by the shoulders. “I want you to know that I have never used this room. It was here when I moved in. It seriously wasn’t until we were standing in the kitchen that I remembered it and realized that you’ll be able to use this room.”
I looked at him skeptically. “Don’t tell me you have a hidden spa in here.”
He pushed open the door and flipped on the light. In the middle of the room was a dance pole. The floors were parquet like a dance floor, and the walls were mirrored. My jaw dropped as I stepped inside.
“You can use it to work on routines.”
“Why do you have this in your house?” I asked.
“The guy who used to own this house owned quite a few strip clubs. I guess he kept this room here for his ladies to practice, or maybe to give him private shows, I don’t know. I actually bought the house in a sheriff sale after he was arrested for solicitation and drug trafficking.”
I laughed. “Well, wasn’t that perfect.”
“Yeah, I think the neighbors were a little nervous when I moved in, and they found out where I worked. I think they worried I would be just like the old owner.”
“But you’re not.”
“Nothing like him.” He crossed his arms and glanced around the room. “So I guess we should probably clean back here, and it needs music, but otherwise you could work on some new material or at least exercise. Will that work for you?”
I walked around the room and grabbed the pole, giving it a shake to test its sturdiness before I twirled around it once. When I came back around, I put my feet down and looked at him.
“Why are you doing all of this for me, Wallie?”
He approached me, putting his hands on my hips for only a second before he swallowed and stepped back, letting me go. He smirked. “This is going to be really difficult, but, Reba, I think you are so damn worth it.”
I brushed my hand down the side of his face. “Lee, I’m beginning to think that we are worth it.”
Chapter Twelve
Wallie
Reba had gone to bed, and I stood in my kitchen sipping a glass of orange juice. I glanced at the clock; it was almost six in the morning. The neighborhood would be waking up and people would be heading off to work.
I turned off the lights downstairs, set the alarm again, and headed up the stairs. As I passed her bedroom door, I paused and found myself grinning. Yeah, she wasn’t in my bed, but she was in my house. At least she was under my roof. It was going to take a little while to get things straightened out for her, but once they were, I had every intention of moving her from that bedroom right into mine.
As I undressed, I tried not to think about her sexy little body in my guest bed, and instead, contemplated the time frame. If it was December fifteenth now and she had about three months to get this debt paid, that meant that, hopefully, by March, she would be done dancing. All I had to do was keep my little leprechaun locked in his dungeon until St. Patrick’s Day and then he could have his rainbow and his pot of gold.
I fell asleep quickly to images of Reba’s auburn hair spread over my pillow and her body curled against mine.
By the end of the week, Reba had officially moved in. Quinn hadn’t been very happy about the arrangement, but he’d finally relented once we’d signed an agreement stating that we would both terminate our employment if we became sexually involved with one another during the time she was employed as a dancer.
I thought it was overkill. Why we needed to sign something else I didn’t understand, but if it got Ty and Quinn off our backs and let Reba relax a little bit, then I’d do anything asked of me.
Despite telling Reba that I’d be her personal bodyguard, I’d confessed to her how hard it had been for me to be around her when she was dancing, and how hard I knew it would be for me now. She released me from that vow, saying that I’d done so much for her that she didn’t want to make me any more uncomfortable by having to watch her dance. I knew she wished she didn’t have to, we both did, but each night when she returned home, laid her tips on the counter, and marked down the amount she had collected to go toward her debt, I could see the weight on her shoulders falling away a tiny bit with each dollar she earned.
It was Sunday afternoon, and we were both off. We’d decided earlier—with the encouragement of Britt—that we should at least put up a Christmas tree. It was less than a week until Christmas, and I’d never thought about putting one up for just myself. With Reba living in the house, it seemed like the right thing to do.
I made us omelets for breakfast—late lunch if we were going by the time of day—and then we bundled up to head out to look for a tree and decorations. The tree lot was hopping with last-minute shoppers grabbing their family trees, and I noticed that Reba looked like she felt as out of place as I did.
“Hey,” I grabbed her hand and pulled her over to a tree that looked like every other tree in the place, at least to me, “what about this one?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Yep, works for me.”
“Great,” I scanned the crowd, looking for an employee, and waved one over. Twenty minutes later, Reba and I tossed the bundled tree into the bed of my pickup truck and headed to the next store.
The two of us stood at the end of a long aisle filled with people.
“Now what the hell do we get to put on it?” I wondered aloud.
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“I guess most trees have lights, right?”
“Yeah, lights. We need lights.”
I followed Reba down the aisle until we reached the lighting section, and the two of us stood there, scanning the shelves for a few minutes.
“Who knew there were so many different kinds of lights?” she mumbled.
“Yeah, no shit.”
“What kind should we get?”
“I have no idea.”
I was overwhelmed by the choices and heard a woman begin to snicker beside us.
“First Christmas together, right?” she asked.
We turned to a woman who looked to be in her late forties, and Reba replied, “Yes, and we have no clue.”
“Well, I can give you some tips if you want them,” the woman said with a kind smile.
“Would you?” Reba asked quickly.
“Absolutely. I assume the tree will be inside, right?” We both nodded. After a fe
w more questions, she pointed us to the top shelf and then told us where to find the other items we’d need to “trim the tree” as she called it.
“Thank you so much!” Reba gushed.
“You are quite welcome—and Merry Christmas to you both.”
“Merry Christmas,” we replied in unison.
Reba looked at me and smiled. “Okay, this just got a whole lot more fun.”
I caressed the side of her face briefly. “Yes, it did. Now that we have lights, let’s go look at everything else and see if we can come up with a design. How about we pick up Mexican on the way home and then we can start decorating?”
“Mexican while we decorate a Christmas tree?”
“Yes, they do have Christmas in Mexico, Reba, you know, Feliz Navidad and all.”
She laughed. “Okay, fine, Mexican it is.”
It took us over an hour to choose our selection of decorations for the tree, and by the time we got out of the store, I was hungry and tired of people. If it hadn’t been for Reba’s flirtatious smiles and jokes, I would have probably lost my mind in the mad holiday craze of people pushing and shoving to get what they wanted.
Armed with bags and bags of goodies, we loaded my truck, and I called in our dinner order before we left the parking lot. Thirty minutes later, Reba helped me carry everything inside, and then I brought the tree into the foyer and uncut the binding while Reba got our dinner on the table.
“Do you have good memories of Christmas from when you were growing up? You don’t ever say much about your younger years,” Reba asked me as we ate.
I shrugged a shoulder. “I guess they were okay. When I was real young, they were pretty good. When I was a teenager, I knew things weren’t so great between my parents, so that made it hard around the holidays.”
Reba froze for a second, and I could see the wheels turning inside her head. She was wondering if she should continue or not. Finally, she asked, “Did they not get along?”
“My dad was a control freak, like, serious control freak. I didn’t really understand some of it until I was a teenager, and it wasn’t until I went into the military that I really understood it. It wasn’t that he wanted to control me or my sister, but he had to control my mom. He controlled everything she did, from what she wore to work to what she made for dinner—to who her friends were.”
“You have a sister?” she asked when I finished talking.
“Had, she passed away a few years ago. That’s why I got out of the military. She was in a car accident and was in a coma. I wanted to be there for her when she woke up. I wanted to help her with her recovery because she was my best friend. We were Irish twins, you know, born eleven months apart.” I thought back to when we learned the news. I could still see the muted yellow walls of the hospital waiting room. “Only, they told us that she wasn’t ever going to wake up. She had a stroke in her sleep one night just when we thought she might be getting ready to come out of the coma. She was only twenty-eight.”
Reba set her fork down and pushed her chair back, coming around the table and pulling my chair away from the table so she could wiggle onto my lap. “I’m so sorry, Lee. I didn’t know any of that. How long ago was that?”
“Four years ago this Sunday. She died four years ago on Christmas Eve.”
Chapter Thirteen
Reba
My heart broke for Wallie as I not only saw the sadness in his face for the loss of his sister but felt it in the air around us. I held him, wanting to offer him whatever I could.
He whispered into my neck, “I haven’t celebrated Christmas since she died.” I hugged him more tightly. “In fact, I packed my bags that night, got in my car, and drove here. I was in Ty’s driveway when he got home from work at three in the morning. The club had just opened the month before, and he got me a job there.”
“You didn’t go to her funeral?”
“No, I couldn’t. I think she would have understood. I was just too angry then.”
I pulled back. “But what about your mom?”
“I talk to her all the time, don’t worry.” He cupped my cheek. “It’s my father I don’t talk to. I hate my father for what he did, even though my sister would have eventually died. He was such an ass about the way it was handled. He could have waited until after Christmas. He could have let my mom and me have two more days with her. He could have given the rest of the family and her friends time to say goodbye. Instead, he gave a command to remove life support and expected us to be okay with it.”
“What did he do when you left?”
“Carried one of my bags out to my truck, slapped me on the back, and told me that one day I would understand what he did, and why he did it.”
My eyes popped open wide, and Wallie began to laugh softly. “There is no love lost between us. My mom divorced him two years ago; she lives about two hours away from here now. I see her a couple of times a year. I haven’t seen him since the day Lisa died, and I have no interest in ever seeing him again.”
“Wow, and you haven’t celebrated Christmas since then?”
He shook his head. “Not really. I haven’t had a tree or decorated or anything like that. I’ve bought a few gifts for friends, but on Christmas Day, I’m usually kicking it back on the couch, watching movies and eating leftovers of some kind.”
“Not this year,” I told him. I wound my arms around his neck and leaned toward him, the agreement that we had all but forgotten as my own fantasies began to take over. “This year, we are going to celebrate Christmas. We are going to decorate our tree, and we are going to have presents under it. Then we are going to eat a big meal, not leftovers or takeout, on Christmas Day. Maybe we can even invite friends over that have no place else to go.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
I wiggled in his lap, trying to get more comfortable, and Wallie pushed the chair farther from the table so I could situate myself. I ended up straddling his lap and put my arms around his neck again. “Yes, that is exactly what I want to do, Leroy Walters.”
I felt his breathing beginning to pick up just as my heart began to beat a little faster. “I want us to start this relationship off surrounded by our friends.”
For a few seconds, the two of us stared at one another, and I got lost in his bright blue eyes. It would take nothing to roll my hips a little closer toward his groin. I knew if I did, I would find his groin beginning to harden. I could see the desire growing in his eyes. We were on the edge of the abyss.
“Do you know how much I want you right this moment?” he asked huskily.
I shook my head as I pulled my bottom lip under my teeth.
“I want to be surrounded by you, deep inside of you.” He put his hands on my hips and pulled me flush to his groin. His erection was thick and hard, and I whimpered as my head dropped back on my shoulders and I grabbed his shoulders to keep myself from falling off his lap. The wave of lust that slammed over me as our clothed bodies came together nearly did me in.
“Oh, god,” I murmured, “I want that so badly.”
Wallie leaned forward and ran his nose over my neck, causing shivers to break out over my skin. “I know you do, but you know we can’t.” With one smooth movement, Wallie stood and set me away from him gently. “Do not take that as a brush off. You know how much I want you, but we have to keep our distance. If you were in my lap another five seconds, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”
I giggled. “Well, I’m glad someone was strong enough because I was already past the point of no return.” I backed away from him and returned to my chair. “I’ll try to behave myself and stay on this side of the table.”
“I would appreciate that,” he replied, his voice so deep that more chills skittered over my skin.
For the rest of the evening, we behaved ourselves, well almost. Apparently, it was harder for me to control myself than it was for him. I’d been scolded an additional time that night. It wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t keep my hands to myself when he bent over t
o hang something on the tree. My hands had a mind of their own and found themselves on his backside, following the curves down his legs and then back up.
We managed to get all the decorations done, except one, without getting into any trouble. It wasn’t until I pulled the last one out of the bag that Wallie nailed me with a look. “Why did you buy one of those?”
“Every house has to have mistletoe.”
He rolled his eyes. “Isn’t that what got us into trouble before?”
I laughed. “No, what got us into trouble before was you making a big deal out of kissing me under the mistletoe. Besides, you said that you wouldn’t kiss me under the mistletoe in an entryway, so don’t worry.”
“I said someone else’s entryway.”
He snatched the decoration from my hands and stalked off toward the entryway, grabbing the stepstool on the way. I followed behind him, grinning like an idiot. I knew that once it was hung, he would have to kiss me because that’s what you had to do—but it would just be one kiss, no big deal.
The moment Wallie hung the greenery, he climbed off the stepstool and rushed from the room.
“Hey, you need to christen that,” I called out as he brushed past me.
“Nope, I’m not under it, and neither are you.” He set the stool down. “In fact, I forbid you to step under it.”
I burst out laughing. “You forbid me?” I turned away from him and strode right over to the decoration, standing directly under it. “Now what are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
He began to clean up some of the mess that we had made in the family room.
“So you’re just going to leave me here under the mistletoe—all alone?”
“Yep.”
I contemplated that for a moment. “Okay.” I whipped my sweatshirt over my head and flung it at him before I began to unbutton my jeans. “What if I’m naked?” His head whipped my way. “Are you still going to just let me stand here?”
Whispers of Winter: A Limited Edition Collection of Winter Romances Page 111
