’Tis the Season

by Judith Arnold

  Filomena had glimpsed his room once or twice but never been inside it. The children never went in there while she was baby-sitting, so she’d never had a reason to enter it.

  She had a reason now, and her heart pounded in the knowledge of what that reason was. She’d thought about this moment for so long, dreamed of it, warned herself against it. She was no femme fatale, no love-’em-and-leave-’em vixen who took such things lightly. But Evan…

  For one night with him, she would forget who she was and what her life was about.

  He edged up behind her, sharing the view she was admiring. She felt his mouth touch the crown of her head. “I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you,” he confessed.

  She spun around, both flattered and unnerved. “You did?”

  He nodded. “That first time, when you came tramping out of the woods with Billy and Gracie and I didn’t even know who you were.”

  “Is that why you hired me?”

  “God, no. Hiring you ruined everything. You were my kids’ baby-sitter. How could I even think about making love to you?”

  “Maybe you should have thought about it, anyway,” she teased. She’d certainly thought about it. Plenty of times.

  “Making a pass at you, Fil…” He offered a lopsided, stunningly sexy grin. “I mean, it’s not as if I’m some kind of smooth operator. I’m just an ordinary suburban dad.”

  “Ordinary?” She laughed, letting her hands come to rest on his shoulders. “Evan, you are the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met.”

  He kissed her then, a fierce, devouring kiss. Not the sort of kiss a smooth operator might give, but a kiss that communicated all his need, all his longing, the kiss of a man who had what he wanted and wasn’t going to let it get away. He ran his hands along her back, as low as her hips and up again, his palms skimming the velvet of her jumper, his body radiating heat into her chest and hips as he drew her close. Then he broke from her and sighed. “Is there a zipper on this thing?” he asked.

  She laughed. “No. You have to pull it over my head.”

  “Oh.” He gathered handfuls of the plush fabric, catching her turtleneck on his way. Her moon necklace got tangled in the mess, and before she knew it he’d tugged everything off her in one pull. Her hair crackled with static electricity before settling back against her shoulders.

  Stripped to her bra and tights, she felt a sudden chill—until Evan’s gaze swept the length of her. Then she felt warm. Hot. She had never been ashamed of her body—she wasn’t stylishly thin, but she was healthy, with broad shoulders and firm muscles. The intensity burning in Evan’s eyes, the motion in his neck as he swallowed, the nearly imperceptible tremor in his hands as he reached around her to unfasten her bra told her he was thrilled by what he saw.

  He had her stripped naked in less time than it would have taken for a ball to slide down the minute column of his new clock. He had himself stripped naked in even less time—with some assistance from her. Two people could unbutton a shirt faster than one. Two people could shove down a pair of slacks much, much faster.

  His body was a wonder of sleek surfaces—taut muscles stretching across his chest and back, sinewy arms and legs, not a hint of fat anywhere on him. It was an athlete’s body, lithe and limber. Sparse swirls of gold-tinged hair spread across his upper chest, his shoulders appeared to have been carved out of rock, and his arousal…

  She curved her fingers around the swollen flesh. He groaned and peeled her hand away. “Don’t do that unless you want this over very quickly,” he pleaded in a hoarse whisper.

  Somehow they made it across the room to the bed. He switched off the bedside lamp, letting the room fill with the silver moonlight that spilled in through the windows. And then they lost themselves to each other, hands sliding, gliding, legs twining and flexing, lips grazing over skin. He kissed her throat, her breasts, the soft curve of her belly. He caressed her sides, her thighs, wedged his hand between her legs and found her damp, so ready for him.

  She touched him, as well, at first avoiding his erection while she learned the warm expanse of his back, the tense flesh of his buttocks, the ridges of rib and muscle shaping his chest. But eventually she sneaked back down to trace his penis with her fingers. He was damp, too, as ready for her as she was for him. “Evan,” she whispered.

  “I know.” Barely a breath of sound. “I know, Fil…” He rolled away from her and yanked open a drawer in his night table. She heard the sound of foil tearing, and then he came back to her. In one smooth, graceful motion he was on top of her, his legs spreading hers, his body finding hers. He entered her with a thrust so deep and certain she nearly came just from the acute pleasure of having him inside her.

  For a moment they remained motionless. It took all her concentration just to breathe, just to keep her eyes focused on his beautiful face, the tension in his jaw, the helpless hunger in his eyes. And then he moved, and she moved with him, their bodies rocking, dancing, meeting again and again in such perfect harmony she felt tears gather in her eyes. He paused for a moment, then drew a shaky breath and started again, closing his eyes, gathering her hands in his and squeezing.

  His thrusts came faster, harder, lifting her higher. She followed him, then surged ahead of him, feeling her body coil tight, needing, needing more, until her soul burst in a blissful, throbbing release. Above her he shuddered, overtaken by his own climax.

  After an eternity, he sank onto her. His mouth found her cheek, planted a kiss there, and then he settled onto his side, breathing raggedly. She watched him, wishing he would open his eyes. When at last he did, they were shaded with worry.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  “Sorry?” For what? Making love with her?

  “I went so fast, I—”

  “Shh.” She touched her fingers to his mouth to silence him. “You were wonderful.”

  His lips moved against her fingertips and she pulled her hand away. “Really?”

  “Yes, Evan. Really.”

  He studied her face in the moonlight, as if searching for a sign that she was lying. Why on earth should he be so doubtful? She hadn’t had sex all that many times, but she could honestly say that none of those other times had come close to satisfying her the way this had. The way he had.

  “Really,” she said again, because he seemed so desperately in need of convincing.

  He traced her cheek with his thumb, tucked her hair behind her ear and sighed. “I haven’t…” he began, then halted, his gaze skittering away.

  She cupped her hand to his cheek and guided his face back to hers. “You haven’t what?”

  “I haven’t—” he swallowed “—been with a woman since my wife left.”

  That stunned her into silence. Two years? He was such a strong, virile man. Surely he must have known women, had urges, acted on them.

  But he was more than a virile man. He was a father who had no time. He was a solid businessman who’d been abandoned for a hotshot famous athlete. He was a gentleman whose ex-wife had done quite a number on him. He was someone who would never have been with a woman just to have sex.

  “I am honored,” she said, the words rising from her heart, “that you saved all that passion for me.”

  He closed his eyes again, but this time she saw relief wash across his features, soothing him, rinsing the strain from his mouth and erasing the lines in his forehead. “That passion belongs to you, Fil. It’s all yours.”

  “Good.” She kissed his tender smile. “I want it all.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FROM SOMEWHERE behind Evan came the sound of the kids’ voices. As his mind sluggishly groped toward full consciousness, he realized the kids were far away. Their voices were drifting up the stairs from the den. They sounded as if they were behind him because he had his back to the door.

  He had his front to Filomena. She slept in his arms, her shoulder blades pressed to his chest, her tush nestled snugly against his groin. One long strand of her hair snagged in the stubble of his be
ard.

  A wave of heat swelled in his brain and rolled down his spine to his hips, lurching him from pleasantly to ferociously aroused. He couldn’t believe he wanted her again. They’d gone at it all night long like horny adolescents, like sex-starved fiends, like a man and a woman wildly, insatiably, in love. Hadn’t they done it enough?

  No, they hadn’t. He could have made love to Filomena a million times, and it wouldn’t have been enough.

  He skimmed his hand along her side, following the slope down to her narrow waist and up to her hip. She made a soft sound, half a yawn and half a sigh, and arched her back. He was so hard it hurt.

  He couldn’t make love to her now, not with the kids up and about. He wasn’t worried about them barging into his bedroom—not with a Santa sackload of new toys to occupy them downstairs—but he wouldn’t be able to give himself fully to Filomena, knowing they were on the loose. A part of his mind would remain with them. He couldn’t help it. He was a father.

  Filomena arched again, shifted onto her back and blinked awake. She gazed up at him, her eyes so stunningly pretty he wanted to kiss them.

  He kissed her mouth, instead. He kissed her so deeply, so thoroughly, so blissfully, that for a few scattered seconds he actually lost his awareness of the kids. For those few seconds, when his hand moved to her breast and circled it, and she covered his hand with hers, holding him against her, and she hooked her foot around his leg and drew him nearly on top of her, he forgot that he had a son and a daughter.

  “Good morning,” he murmured when he came up for air.

  “Good morning.”

  He was unused to the sound of a woman’s voice in the morning. Unused to the warmth of one in his bed. He could get used to it really quickly, if the woman happened to be Filomena.

  A gale of Gracie’s laughter blew up the stairs, cooling off his body. He eased out of Filomena’s arms and settled on his back next to her, staring at the ceiling until the fog cleared from his brain. Once he could think again, he realized he had a big problem.

  “What about the kids?” he asked.

  “What about them?”

  “You’re going to go downstairs wearing what you wore yesterday. They’ll know you spent the night.”

  “I think we can deal with that. Don’t you?”

  He didn’t know. He’d never been in this situation before.

  Gracie was probably young enough not to understand the implications of Filomena’s emerging from his bedroom dressed in yesterday’s outfit. But Billy…He already knew something was going on between his father and his baby-sitter. He knew it related to the fact that his mother was gone. He might not have all the mechanics down, all the anatomical configurations worked out, but he knew that when a woman spent a night in a man’s bedroom, something was definitely going on.

  “Relax,” she whispered, propping herself up on one elbow and placing a light kiss on his cheek. “I’ll handle it.”

  “We need to do this right,” he warned. “Because…” He fell silent, afraid of saying the wrong thing, pressuring her, laying on the table cards she didn’t want to play.

  “Because what?”

  He couldn’t lie to her. “Because I’d like you to spend more nights in my bed.”

  “Relax,” she said again, brushing another breezy kiss against his cheek before she swung out of bed.

  Trying not to ogle her, he got out of bed, too. He loved the ease she seemed to have about her body, the strong muscles in her arms and legs, the generous curves of her breasts and hips. He loved the long black tumble of her hair and the golden undertone of her skin, which was as smooth and soft as the velvet dress she’d worn yesterday.

  She lifted that dress from the floor, unraveled her top and necklace from it and shook the wrinkles out of the garments. He didn’t want her to put them on. He didn’t want her to leave this room. He wanted to spend the entire day behind the closed door with her, making love to her the way he had all night, touching her everywhere, kissing her everywhere, drowning in the sound of her hushed moans and broken sighs. He wanted to make her come the way he had last night, make her cling to his back and bite her lip and pulse around him as if her heart were beating between her legs. He wanted to make her crazy with ecstasy.

  For the first time since Billy’s birth, he wished he weren’t a father.

  He opened the door to the master bathroom. “Let me get you a towel,” he said, preceding her into the small room and pulling a clean bath towel from the shelf. She might think she could handle breakfast with his kids, but he still wasn’t sure it was going to be that simple. Not with Billy wondering, putting it together, sitting in judgment of him.

  “You can have the shower,” she said generously. “I’ll just wash at the sink. I’ll shower when I go home.”

  He didn’t want her to go home, but if he begged her to stay, she’d feel smothered. Forcing a smile, he yanked the shower lever until the water sprayed hot.

  The shower failed to help him unwind. The steaming water slid over his skin, making him wish Filomena’s hands and lips were sliding over his skin. And her hair. God, her hair had turned him on. It had tickled and teased, sensuously soft. At one point, when she’d been on top of him and her hair had cascaded down around his face…

  He adjusted the water to a cooler temperature and murmured, “Billy and Gracie, Billy and Gracie,” until his body subsided.

  When he turned off the water and swung open the frosted glass door, Filomena was gone from the bathroom, although her scent lingered in the steamy air. He wrapped a towel around his waist and opened the door into the bedroom. She wasn’t there, either.

  For a strange, disorienting moment he wondered if he’d dreamed last night. But no, his bed was an absolute mess. No way could he have left the sheets so rumpled by himself.

  Remembering how those sheets had become rumpled practically nullified the therapy of the cool shower and the chant of his children’s names. He turned away from the bed, heading back to the bathroom to shave.

  Ten minutes later, dressed and groomed, he mustered his courage and left the bedroom. Perhaps Filomena wasn’t nervous about facing his children because they weren’t hers. Perhaps she figured she’d be gone from their lives in a matter of days, so any embarrassment she might feel would be as transient as she was.

  What a depressing thought. Shrugging it off, he strode down the hall to the stairs. Cheerful voices and an appetizing aroma emerged from the kitchen.

  “Fil’s making French toast!” were the first words from Gracie’s mouth. Not “How come Fil’s here for breakfast?” Not “How come Fil’s wearing the same outfit as yesterday?” Not “How come you look like you didn’t get more than a half hour of sleep last night?”

  French toast was clearly the answer to all Gracie’s questions.

  She was kneeling on one of the kitchen chairs, her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her hands as she studied the crystal moon Evan had given Filomena. Billy stood by the counter, where Filomena must have plugged in the clock she’d given him. Evan couldn’t catch the boy’s eye—and maybe that was just as well.

  Filomena herself was at the stove, arranging slices of egg-and-milk-soaked bread in a skillet he vaguely recalled using a year ago to make scrambled eggs, which neither of the children had eaten. One of his few forays away from the wonderful world of broiling. He’d learned his lesson.

  But the French toast smelled great, and at least Gracie seemed ready to accept Filomena’s presence. “This thing is so pretty,” she said, gazing at the moon inside the ball. “Fil says you gave it to her for Christmas.”

  “That’s right.” Evan wandered farther into the room, wishing Billy would turn around and acknowledge him.

  “It’s beautiful. Did you spend lots of money on it?”

  From the stove came the sound of Filomena’s laughter. “Gazillions of dollars,” Evan deadpanned. “Fil’s worth it, don’t you think?”

  “I think this moon is worth it,” Gracie said reasonably.


  Evan sidled up beside Billy. “Fil gave me the clock. What do you think?”

  “It’s cool,” Billy said, his gaze sliding toward Evan for a second and then turning back to the clock.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” Billy pushed away from the counter and gave his father a solemn smile. “Fil’s making French toast.”

  “I know. And she doesn’t have to do that,” Evan said, addressing Filomena as much as Billy. “She shouldn’t be making breakfast. She’s our guest.”

  “Well, I told her that,” Billy said indignantly, “but she said she wanted to make breakfast. I told her we could just have cereal or bagels or something, but—”

  “It’s true,” Filomena confessed, forking the browned slabs of toast onto a plate. “I had a craving for French toast, and you’re all going to have to suffer for it.”

  By the time they were seated around the table, coffee and milk and orange juice poured, maple syrup passed around and plates heaped with French toast, Evan realized that Billy wasn’t upset about Filomena’s having spent the night. He was upset about Filomena’s having made breakfast. Several times he’d explained that he’d offered to put bagels and cream cheese out on the table and that would have been a great breakfast, but Filomena had denied him the opportunity to act like a proper host. Despite his resentment, he managed to wolf down more slices of French toast than anyone else, including Evan.

  He asked whether they could go to the skating rink that day, and when Evan said it was a possibility, Billy asked Filomena if she’d join them. Obviously, he didn’t mind her appearing in his kitchen in the morning, clad in the same clothes she’d had on yesterday. Whether or not he understood all the implications, he didn’t seem the least bit troubled by her having spent the night with his father. When she said she needed to go home and take care of some things, he actually looked disappointed.

  Evan felt as disappointed as his son looked. He didn’t want her to go home and take care of things.