Their Christmas to Remember

by Amalie Berlin

  She hadn’t even thought about the house, but his question forced her to do so as they sat up and the room stopped spinning. “At least the kitchen.” Then, “We should unpack the cookies and icings and candies...”

  “And the instructions?”

  “Those too.”

  He climbed down and extended one hand like a gentleman to help her down, but his eyes still screamed scoundrel.

  This wasn’t over.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WOLFE FINISHED THE morning’s surgery and made it through lunch without seeing Angel, but not without thinking about her. A busy schedule could save him from physically running into her, for a while, but nothing could keep his mind entirely focused. She’d even slipped in there during surgery, which was a sacred time, when he wanted his attention so razor sharp as to border on supernatural.

  That was the goal, and that had not happened today. The reason he’d been hiding the last hour, eating his lunch in an empty office, was the hope he could get his head together and go five minutes without someone asking if they were dating, if they were going to the winter ball together.

  He looked at his watch, scrubbed his hands over his face and headed for the door. He was supposed to meet her at one to get ready; no more avoiding the locker room where they were supposed to change into the ugly jumpers.

  The entire point of last evening’s shenanigans had been to build gingerbread houses to set up this afternoon’s activity—eating gingerbread men and making their own with construction paper and cotton balls in the children’s ward activities room.

  That kiss had ruined him. He couldn’t even pretend he could keep his head straight about her now. Not until this madness ran its course, and until she left town.

  The thought caused his stomach to sour, and he retreated instinctively into the thousandth replay of that kiss.

  He’d been sure he wouldn’t break his rules. Not two minutes before she’d arrived, he’d been giving himself another stern lecture about keeping his hands to himself. Remembering the looks and comments he’d received from peers about them, not really about the shenanigans, and the spark that pulsed between them all the time. No one missed it. Except maybe the kids. He wasn’t sure about Jenna. After the demand for a mistletoe kiss, she’d retreated into telling him he looked happy, and then casually mentioning Angel looked happy too. Really smooth. As if he’d gotten amnesia over her asking him twice already to marry Angel so she wouldn’t leave town.

  Marry Dr. Angel—as if he could even picture that. Every time he tried to think of marriage, he got a mental image of his parents shrieking at one another, and occasionally throwing breakables.

  He should’ve told Angel that one. He didn’t keep breakables because they made him nervous, not that they’d be broken by accident, but that they’d end up as projectile weaponry.

  Not that he could picture her doing that either. It would probably be him: You are what you eat. You become what you know. And none of that stopped him wanting her. Or liking her. He even worried about her, which was actually pretty annoying.

  He’d been so confident in his self-control. Then she’d arrived, looking as white as that vat of frosting they’d eventually dove into, and all thoughts about a normal, run-of-the-mill cookie-construction campaign had fallen right out of his head. He’d kissed her. Then lost his damn mind.

  Instead of a couple of hours together, five had flown by. That had also been his fault. More than half of that time had been them cleaning up the kitchen after the gingerbread death match he’d impulsively started after she’d handed him a frosting bag with a tiny spout, and he’d been unable to resist using the thing like a ropey, ineffective squirt gun. To make her smile again. Distracting her put her at ease, even if her reaction to his home was strange.

  Comments on the stream and in person today had assured him the kids thought it was great. But by the end, they’d both been covered in frosting, buckets of crumbs and candy sprinkles. She’d been unable to leave without a shower. He’d literally locked himself in another bathroom, and every door between them, to keep from helping himself to her shower just so he could wash her sugar-frosted skin or give himself diabetes by licking her clean.

  He pushed into the locker room. With any luck, someone else would be in there. Anyone. A buffer. Even Reynolds. God, especially Reynolds. She’d suck the temptation right out of the whole situation.

  But he was alone, the jumper nowhere in sight.

  Maybe she’d already changed and gone looking for him; he was a few minutes late. Maybe there was still hope.

  He sat and braced his elbows on his knees, stretching his shoulders forward to try and ease the tension that had his neck cracking every time he looked too far to the right.

  A few minutes later, the squeaky door opened, and he heard her before she rounded the locker bank. He knew it was her by the cadence of her steps, and if that wasn’t some sign he was in trouble, he didn’t know what could be.

  “You all right?” she asked, stopping beside him so that he had a good view of her shoes, and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “Tough surgery,” he lied, then lifted his head. “Stiff shoulders.”

  That was true at least.

  Her hand stayed there, and she looked at him so seriously he almost fell for it. “Is this a war injury?”

  “War?”

  “Last night. There were no memory-corrupting head injuries I’m aware of.” Teasing. Flirting. Perfection. “I suspect it’s more from the clean-up than the actual battle. Big baby.”

  He felt his smile start in his chest, and he was chuckling by the time it got to his mouth. “I told you the cleaning people would take care of it today, but no.”

  “That’s right. I clean up my own messes. Not spoilt like some Scottish cookie war losers.”

  “You have to stop saying Scottish. I’m not ish. I’m a Scotsman. I’m a Scot. Not ish. Ish is when somethin’ is a bit like somethin’ else. I’m a Scot, and if you start doubtin’ me I’ll be in here in a kilt tomorrow, and then you’ll have to defend my virtue from all the ravenous women in this hospital.” He stood up, unable to remember why he’d dreaded seeing her when it actually felt so good. Especially now that she was playing with him in return, it wasn’t just him lobbing teases to be met by her huge-eyed blinks.

  “You think women would?” she asked, then just shook her head. “Never mind. You’re right. You have too many women wrapped around your little finger without doing anything so blatantly sexy.”

  “To American women.”

  “To all women!”

  “American-ish women.”

  She laughed in return and opened her locker to retrieve a red and green jumper, which she handed to him.

  “Green, eh?”

  “I didn’t invent the Christmas colors,” she said, then pulled out another garish jumper for herself. “Look at the front.”

  She held hers to her chest, and he had to fight to not just think about the curves the jumper draped over. Reindeer. Gargantuan head. Little red bulb at the nose.

  His would be Santa; he knew without even opening it.

  “Right, let’s do this, then,” he said, turning his back to her so that he could maintain some level of decency while she changed.

  That was the intention at least.

  She went along with his direction, and though he’d been hoping she’d find a bathroom to change in, the sound of rustling cotton told him it was happening there, behind him.

  He grabbed trousers from his locker and kicked his shoes off, trying to get done as quickly as he could.

  Only his balance was all messed up from his attention riveted to the sound of her undressing at his back.

  Locker rooms aren’t sexy.

  He repeated twice to himself to keep from turning around despite being so desperate to look that his imagination provided visuals
anyway.

  The freckles. He knew they’d be on her back, chest, maybe lower. He hoped lower. Anywhere sun had touched, he might find them, and though he doubted that Angel was the type to ever go nude sunbathing, there might be freckled, permanent tan lines on the cheeks of her bum. Wouldn’t that be something?

  He wobbled and sat down before he fell on his face trying to get out of his scrub bottoms, cracking his shoulder loudly on the locker door on the way down.

  “You okay?”

  “Just bumped the door,” he muttered, tugging off the other shoe so that he could get the scrub bottoms off. Smooth. No game. No game at all today.

  She wasn’t clanging around like a drunk or looking away. Her gaze on his back felt almost as physical as her hand on his shoulder moments ago.

  Standing again, he threw the bottoms down, then stepped into the trousers, trying to be so quiet. Trying to listen to her, not just because he was suddenly a creepy jerk who got turned on by the sound of a woman dressing, but because he wanted to know when she was done. When he could safely stop averting his eyes.

  But in the effort to listen to her, all he heard was his heartbeat, and his ragged breaths.

  Maybe he was the one who should’ve gone to the dammed bathroom to change.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.” He fastened the trousers, then looked into the locker, no longer sure what the next step was in dressing. “Am I supposed to wear something beneath this?”

  “Like a turtleneck?” she asked, and he nodded, staring hard into his locker.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “I didn’t bring one either. I hate them.”

  “Me too,” he murmured. “I have a tee shirt, or the scrub top.”

  “It’s an acrylic fiber, not wool, you could wear it without anything under and not suffer, but a tee shirt is fine.”

  And he was taking forever. He grabbed the tee shirt and yanked it over his head.

  “I’m just going to wear this beneath mine.”

  Without conscious thought, he turned to look and found her holding up a long-sleeved undershirt, often layered beneath scrubs for warmth. But she wasn’t wearing it right now.

  Bottoms. Pink cotton bra. And freckles. Good God, the freckles. Over her chest, the swells of her breasts, so close in color to the otherwise sensible bra.

  Belly too, his gaze kept traveling down. Less thick there, but present. On her hips. Her trousers sat low enough to see that curve that had bewitched him on the way to the tree lighting, and it was exactly as he’d convinced himself it wasn’t.

  “Wolfe?”

  He was doing it again.

  “This is a hot mess, Angel,” he muttered, dragging his gaze to the ceiling and licking his suddenly dry lips. “My willpower is extremely brittle right now.”

  She took the suggestion and shook the top out to shimmy into it.

  “I’m sorry, I was... That was very...not how I usually operate. Not operate. I don’t operate. Like surgery. I hated surgical rotations.” She seemed to realize she was babbling and puffed out a slow breath. “I meant with men. I’m not good with men, and that. Flirting, I guess.”

  “That was you trying to flirt?” He looked at her again and breathed a little easier to find her skin all covered up.

  “I was trying to see if you still thought I’d be fun to kiss after you kissed me last night,” she explained, in the most ridiculous and adorable manner, her hands gesturing in this weird dismissive wave, as if she were stuck between fanning herself and shooing herself away.

  Not confident, though he couldn’t imagine why.

  Before he’d thought it through, he stepped right over the bench separating them and grabbed her cheeks, then pressed his mouth to hers. Kept pressing until the lockers were at her back and she was grabbing at his hips, his waist, around and under his shirt, pulling him closer, seeking skin.

  Deeper than last night’s kiss, he stroked his tongue into her mouth, and the world tilted when she moaned low enough to rumble his lips and tongue.

  Need and want sparked through him, obliterating his self-control and all desire to participate in today’s shenanigans unless they were private, and in his bedroom.

  Boldly, despite her moment of doubt, her hands slid under his shirt, contouring the muscles of his bare back, and the feel of her soft hands on his skin rippled out and his imagination took over. It was just his back, but it might as well have been a direct touch to his front, because that was where it all converged.

  When his body began to ready, harden, he broke from the kiss, but still couldn’t break entirely away from her. His mind demanded it, but still he licked and sucked down her neck, causing the most delightful stuttering gasp to wrench out of her.

  It echoed.

  His heart beat hard enough to pulse in his vision, and even his harsh breathing echoed, and a metallic creak.

  The locker behind her.

  Because...they were in the locker room.

  Damn.

  “I want you,” he panted against her neck, then leaned back, done fighting it. All he could bear was to postpone. This couldn’t happen there. They had the kids to think of, and if he was going to throw his personal code down the toilet, he’d do it right. At home. “Come to my house.”

  “For the tree?”

  She looked as dazed as he felt, and her lips were so pink he found himself thinking of the color of flesh he’d find lower. Would it match her lips? Her nipples?

  “No.”

  He should put some air between them, but his body ignored his orders. He just stayed mashed against her, even knowing she’d feel how hard he’d grown. What she did to him.

  “Why?”

  “I need help movin’ furniture.” He couldn’t help playing with her, eyes locked to her heated, hungry gaze, and added thickly, “The bed, specifically.”

  “The bed,” she repeated, and nodded, as if she didn’t have to think about it at all. “Okay.”

  “Okay.” He repeated her this time, because it had somehow become insanely sexy that she couldn’t string together a sentence right now.

  “For sex,” she suddenly blurted out.

  And here he thought he was being direct.

  “Yes. Lots of loud, obnoxious sex. Messy, filthy, moderately untidy...whatever.” He said those things partly to see if he could make her blush hotter—and he did—but then realized she needed the reassurance of actual words and added, “With me. Since you seem to want to spell things out.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay?

  He couldn’t stop the grin now if he tried. “How’s your knee?”

  “Okay?”

  “Good.” He stepped back, pulling himself from her and sitting directly down in the hopes his galloping heart slowed. “I need a minute before we go up.”

  “Okay.”

  Fourth time that word had come out in a row. He looked at her, still leaning on the locker, expression as scrambled as his brain.

  “Are you all right?”

  The question seemed to get her moving again. Her nod jerky and uncoordinated enough to suggest a neck injury. “Need to finish and, er, get upstairs.”

  Yes, they did. They had that whole gingerbread thing.

  Then he was dragging her home with him. Directly home, to spend the night.

  * * *

  Nothing should have been less sexy than spending time with sixteen sticky-fingered children making gingerbread people for the bulletin board, but every time she watched him crouch down to help a child with a fussy bit of cotton, or fetch a dropped crayon, she saw him as a daddy. A real dad. A good dad. The kind who did arts and crafts with his children and made airplane sounds while zooming a cookie toward a crooked little smile. The effect was hell on her stability.

  Wonderful to behold, but not exactl
y sexy until it led to picturing just how those imaginary children would be made. Not the whole time, but it popped up now and then, and every time it brought some strange trembling in her torso. Infuriating and persistent. An earthquake only she could feel. Impossible to ignore, but light enough she could almost function.

  Until he looked at her. When he looked at her, when his startlingly pale blue eyes locked to hers across the room, the rumble went from low-grade aftershocks to the kind of tremor that could shake and crumble foundations.

  Now, as the last of the children were escorted back to their rooms, Wolfe caught her tidying up scraps of paper. “We’re done.”

  “We made a mess.”

  He wasn’t shaking; nothing about this rattled him in the slightest. He’d said his willpower was brittle, but if he touched her and felt the tremble, he might actually drag her to the ER.

  “I’m going. You’re going too.” He looked at her mouth, but, after a couple of slow blinks, pulled back and turned to lead her out. Still holding her hand, dragging her behind him.

  He didn’t stop until they were in a cab, and only waited until it was outside easy eyeshot of the hospital before pulling her to him and launching right back into the kiss they’d aborted for cookie time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BY THE TIME they’d made the short drive to Tribeca, Angel had forgotten entirely about the driver. She knew only one thing: him. The way he smelled. The rasp of his stubble on her skin. The glide of his tongue. His fingers stroking her jaw, her neck, tangling in her hair. The heady pleasure of being so wanted.

  She’d never had that. Sex, infrequent even before she’d moved to the city where she’d never feel at home, had only ever been nice.

  They weren’t near a bed, fully dressed, and just kissing, but it seared into her in a way she couldn’t ignore. In a way that would leave a hole when it ended, and feeling that, knowing that, she still couldn’t hold part of herself back.

  All she could do was hope that he gave back whatever his kisses demanded later or leaving would be harder.

  Even if his interest evaporated, right now she felt like the focus of his world too, and it sang through her in a way that made it possible to let go. In Wolfe’s arms, she was sexier, stronger, enough. At least for now.