The Mistletoe Kisser: Blue Moon #8

by Score, Lucy

  “I’m not used to having any,” he admitted, moving his leg restlessly. She had flannel sheets on the bed. He’d never slept on flannel sheets before. He liked the texture. “This one-night stand thing. I’m supposed to leave now, right?”

  There was a sweet smile playing on those lips that he couldn’t stop staring at. “Well, it does avoid the need to make awkward conversation around the breakfast table the next morning,” she mused.

  “We already made awkward conversation at the breakfast table yesterday morning,” he reminded her.

  “Good point.”

  “’K. I’m just gonna close my eyes for a minute before I go find my pants,” he said.

  “’K,” she yawned.

  24

  The cat paw poked her in the face twenty seconds before her alarm went off. Sammy hadn’t figured out how her cats always seemed to know when the alarm was about to ring or why they couldn’t stand giving her the last few seconds of precious sleep.

  Cats were assholes. Psychic assholes.

  She stretched luxuriously in the pre-dawn dark, dislodging the fur ball from her chest, as she mentally assessed her body. She felt good. Sore. Satisfied.

  All because Grumpy Ryan Sosa had banged her into oblivion.

  Her eyelids flew open, and she slapped a hand to the mattress next to her. It was empty. His half of the bed was already neatly made. Disappointment settled in her chest, dulling the glow of the previous night’s satisfaction. The dumb, twittery flicker of hope she’d felt when he’d looked across the pillow at her and confessed his maybes.

  “Maybe do something different.”

  Had she really thought that meant her? Ugh.

  “Dr. Dumbass reporting for duty,” she muttered under her breath before kicking off the covers and climbing out of bed. For a very intelligent woman, she sure did some stupid things.

  Her mood had officially gone surly. Her tiny fluttery butterflies of hope had withered up and died. She had a full day of wreath assembly and booth setup ahead of her. Then there was the stack of grant applications that Mr. Bed Abandoner had offered to help her with. For a second, she thought about just crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over her head until New Year’s Day. That would count as self-care. Right?

  But duty called.

  She’d start fresh in January. Saying no. Blow-drying her hair. Not getting pillow talk confused with actual relationship plans. All she had to do was survive the next few days and then she could hit the reset button.

  As she trudged down the stairs, her internal pep talk was interrupted by the smell of food. Real food. Not microwaved leftover food. The lights were on downstairs, holding back the dark of the winter morning outside the windows.

  Mouth watering, she peered over the railing into the kitchen and blinked.

  Ryan stood at the counter very precisely arranging parsley over two plated omelets. He was barefoot. His jeans were left temptingly unbuttoned, and he was wearing what she’d dubbed her I Give Up sweatshirt. An oversized Cornell hoodie that had been washed so many times the front pocket had fallen off. On her it looked sloppy. On him it looked hot.

  He glanced up and caught her watching him. His smile went straight to her nether regions, making them feel all warm and woozy again.

  “You’re here,” she said.

  He gave her a hungry look. “I hope you don’t mind that I never found my pants and left last night.”

  “I don’t mind.” She sounded as if she’d just run five miles after an ice cream truck.

  “It’s your fault for having such a comfortable bed,” he said, with that swoon-worthy half-smirk on his lips. “And for fucking me cross-eyed.”

  She tripped over a cat on its way to stare at its food dish and barely managed to not take a header onto the linoleum.

  “Nice try, Holly,” Ryan said. “I already fed them and your duck.”

  Holly looked down at her empty dish and back up at Sammy with hostility.

  “Wow. Thank you,” she said. “Where’s Stan?”

  “He’s outside with McClane and the duck. I hope they’re allowed outside because they didn’t give me a choice.”

  She floated over to him on the wings of happy hope butterflies. The part of her brain that was warning her not to get too excited was drowned out by a breakfast she didn’t have to cook and fresh coffee she hadn’t had to brew. Both served by the still-here, still-smiling, hot accountant in her kitchen.

  “They’re indoor-outdoor,” Sammy explained. “They’ll be back for morning treats.”

  At the word “treats,” Holly wove herself in between her legs and pretended not to be evil.

  “You said you have three cats,” Ryan said, digging forks out of her utensil drawer. “I’ve only seen two.”

  “Hans is cat Number Three.”

  Ryan snapped his fingers. “McClane, Holly, and Hans? Did you name all your cats after Die Hard?”

  “It’s my favorite Christmas movie.”

  He paused and gave her a long, searching look. “You’re telling me that you think Die Hard is a Christmas movie?”

  “Yeah. Why? Don’t you like McClane storming Nakatomi Plaza?”

  “I have zero issues with Die Hard,” Ryan promised, fisting his hand in her shirt and dragging her in for a kiss.

  She melted against him, feeling deliciously female.

  “But back to your third cat,” he said, releasing her and handing her a plate. “Why haven’t I seen him yet?”

  “Hans is shy. Or maybe he doesn’t live here anymore,” she said, studying the perfectly plated omelet.

  They both eyed the table. The chaotic mess of craft supplies had been made exponentially worse by their bodies rolling over it the night before. There was a distinct butt print outlined in glitter.

  At this rate, she’d be sparkling until Flag Day.

  “Let’s eat on the couch,” Sammy suggested.

  They gathered plates and mugs and trooped into the living room.

  “Are you saying you aren’t sure if you have a third cat?” he asked dryly.

  Sammy pulled her feet under her on the couch and picked up her mug. “He’s this fat, orange cat that’s a master of hiding. I only see him every few weeks. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and this big, dumb, orange face is hovering over me. Or he’ll pop out of a kitchen cabinet when I open it looking for cookies. Once, I was in the shower, and I felt someone watching me. I reached for a bottle of shampoo to use as a weapon—”

  “Naturally.”

  “And I found Hans sitting on the edge of the tub between the conditioner and the body wash just staring at me.”

  “Has anyone else ever seen Hans?” Ryan asked pointedly.

  “I know what you’re getting at, and the answer will only reinforce your point, so I’m going to go for a distraction instead,” she announced. “What’s the plan for today?”

  Did they still have a plan? She wondered.

  Was it weird that she wished they were touching?

  Was it weird that they weren’t touching?

  Was she making it weird by not touching him and overthinking everything?

  “The plan is to start with breakfast,” he said, pointing a fork at her.

  He wouldn’t have stayed, wouldn’t have cooked if he didn’t like her, right?

  Unless he felt some sort of gentlemanly obligation to her since she’d put out and rocked his world. But honestly, out of the two of them, Sammy was confident that was more her modus operandi than his.

  They sat side by side on the overstuffed gray couch and dug into their breakfast. The omelet was—like his performance in bed—impressive.

  “Oh mah gawd,” she managed around a mouthful of egg, cheese, and tomatoes.

  “You’ve mentioned that sentiment a few times since last night,” he said smugly.

  “Someone’s got their cocky pants on this morning.”

  While they ate, they ignored Holly’s plaintive meows about how she was starving and no one ever f
ed her. When they were finished, he stacked their plates and utensils on the coffee table next to her clean laundry and rubbed his hands on his knees.

  He was nervous. And that made her nervous. She picked up her mug again to give her hands something to do.

  “How are you feeling about… everything?” he asked. “Any regrets?”

  “None here,” she said, trying to watch his face out of the corner of her eye. “How about you?”

  “One,” he said.

  He reached for his coffee, sipped, then cleared his throat. Uh-oh. It was coming. The “thanks for last night, but I need to get on with my life” lecture. At least she got two orgasms and a hot breakfast out of the deal. At least he hadn’t just vanished. God, she was tired of “at leasts.”

  “Sam. Last night… it made me see things from a different angle. Thank you for that.”

  “That’s the sex hangover talking,” she assured him.

  “Maybe. Or maybe it’s you.”

  “Me?” she squeaked. Her stupid hope butterflies landed on her stomach lining, waiting to be crushed by the fly swatter of reality.

  “What do you regret?” she asked, hating herself for needing the answer.

  “That I wasted a whole night here without you.”

  Hot. Damn. It was the most perfect sentence ever uttered to her before seven a.m. in her entire life.

  Before she could form a sexy, flirtatious sentence, he was taking her mug, setting it on the table with a definitive click and kissing the hell out of her.

  The kiss didn’t taste like a goodbye. It tasted like a good morning.

  Touching was good. Definitely not weird, she decided as his tongue drove her just a little wild. Somehow she found herself on top of him, straddling him on the couch while the cat shot judgmental gazes in their direction.

  The denim of his jeans felt rough against the inside of her thighs. But there was a prize beneath it. A long, rigid prize.

  “Mmm. Wait,” Ryan said, pulling back. “We have things.”

  “Lots of things,” she agreed, rolling her hips in a quest for the friction she was suddenly desperate for.

  “Plans. To-do lists. Action items,” he murmured, sinking his teeth into her neck.

  “We should definitely stop.”

  “Definitely.”

  Half an hour later, Sammy found herself on her back, partially under the coffee table. Her sweatshirt was stuck around her neck. She was missing a slipper.

  Her legs were tangled up with one of Ryan’s limbs, where he sprawled on the floor next to her. His jeans hung over the back of the couch. His shirt was unaccounted for.

  “If I’d have known that this would be the upside of some crooked small-town bank trying to screw over my uncle, I wouldn’t have complained so much about coming out here,” Ryan murmured into the fuzzy area rug.

  She blinked. “Wait. What?”

  “Rainbow Berkowicz.” He yawned. “She’s trying to collect on a loan that doesn’t exist by threatening Carson with foreclosure if he doesn’t make some kind of phony balloon payment.”

  Forgetting where she was, Sammy sat up swiftly. Well, she tried. She smacked her forehead on the underside of the coffee table.

  “Ow! Run that by me again?”

  25

  “Where are we going?” Ryan demanded, jumping into the passenger seat of Sammy’s SUV when she revved the engine. “I told you, I have Rainbow right where I want her.”

  “You’d like to think that,” she said tersely. “But you don’t. Buckle up.”

  She was mad. So mad she could feel her face heating up to 9,000 degrees. The diabolical underhandedness was unfathomable. “What exactly did Carson tell you when he called?” she asked, throwing the vehicle into reverse.

  Ryan ran through it again as she sped toward town. “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  “You’re being set up,” she snapped. “We’re being set up.”

  He looked confused in the early morning sun. Confused and disheveled and sexy as hell. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let them do this to you.” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and pretended it was Bruce Oakleigh’s neck.

  “Who?”

  “The Beautification Committee.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Ryan admitted.

  “It’s only funny when they do this to other people,” she muttered grimly.

  He was pinching the bridge of his nose now. “Do what, Sam? You’ve got to stop speaking in code,” he insisted.

  But she was too angry to explain. The Beautification Committee had toyed with them, manipulated them. There was zero chance Ryan was going to find it “charming” that a band of vigilantes had marked them for love.

  She found the enemy in One Love Park where setup for the Solstice Celebration was beginning in earnest. Vendors lugged tables and goods to their designated spots. Pop-up tents in a rainbow of colors dotted the landscape. Food trucks parked and rolled out their canopies. It looked like any other normal town function. Except for the web of lies originating from the small clump of people huddled under a bright yellow tent.

  In their little bubble of matchmaking machinations, several Beautification Committee members buzzed about unpacking and arranging a display of their nude fundraising calendar.

  “Rainbow Berkowicz, you manipulative puppeteer,” Sammy bellowed, as she marched up to the bank manager and her husband, Gordon. Rainbow looked sedate in a black wool coat and ski hat. Gordon shunned the cold with purple corduroy bell-bottoms and a hooded knit poncho.

  The couple glanced at each other then back at her. And Sammy saw the unspoken “uh-oh” that passed between them.

  “What can I do for you, Sammy?” Rainbow asked.

  “What are you two doing here together?” Gordon asked. “You weren’t supposed to see each other until tonight.” His wife elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Did you get Ryan fired just so you could play matchmaker?” Sammy demanded.

  “What?” Ryan’s question cracked like a whip on the cold morning air.

  “Don’t be silly!” Bruce Oakleigh bustled up in the bottom half of a Santa costume. The beard and belly were real. “That would be overstepping our bounds just a touch. Don’t you think? Although, with all the money we’ve made on our tasteful nude calendar, we probably could have afforded to orchestrate a firing.” He stroked his fluffy silver beard as if he were considering the strategy.

  “You’re absolutely ridiculous!” Sammy’s anger was entering the stratosphere. They’d ruined Ryan’s life just to lure him there under false circumstances, dangled him in front of her, and she’d walked into the snare without a backward glance.

  “Oh, no, dear. He’s quite serious,” Willa, proprietor of Blue Moon Boots and known for her matchmaking sneakiness, insisted. “We’ve made $700,000 so far.”

  “Seven hundred thousand dollars? You know what? Never mind.” Sammy shook her head, unwilling to get derailed. “Did you create a fake bank foreclosure just to get Carson’s nephew into town?”

  “Oh, that,” Rainbow said. “Yes. We did do that.”

  “Are you saying she tried to collect on a bogus loan to get me here?” Ryan asked. “That’s illegal. It makes no sense.”

  “Nothing they do makes sense,” Sammy snarled.

  “Everything we do makes sense,” Bruce countered.

  “It’s all for your own good,” Gordon promised. “But you two shouldn’t see each other before tonight. We have it all planned out.”

  Ellery, in black lipstick, Princess Leia buns, and an ebony cape, hustled over on four-inch platform boots. “Sammy! So good to—”

  “Can it, Ellery,” Sammy snapped. “Are you or are you not trying to match Ryan and me up?”

  “Match us up to do what?” Ryan asked, firmly dragging Sammy out of Ellery’s face.

  “Get married,” Sammy said.

  “Excuse me?” Ryan scoffed. “Is that even legal?”

  “Now, Samantha,�
� Bruce said jovially. “You can’t seriously be asking us to show you how the vegan sausage crumbles are made.”

  “Oh, I’m deadly serious,” she said, trying to advance on the man. But Ryan held her by the waist. “Because if you mess with me, Bruce, the next time your cat Pepper gets stuck in an air duct, I won’t make a house call.” It was a weak threat. Of course she would show up to save Pepper.

  Bruce gasped theatrically. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  She leaned in and poked him in the shoulder before Ryan picked her up and whirled her around. “Try me,” she snarled.

  “We need a town grump,” Bruce insisted. “Everyone here is too cheerful. It throws off the balance. Plus, Mason needs a business partner. And you—”

  “If the next words out of your mouth are ‘need a man,’ Sheriff Cardona is going to be throwing my ass in jail tonight, and you won’t be up for any diabolical matchmaking until at least the New Year,” she threatened.

  “Would someone explain what the hell is going on here?” Ryan asked, tightening his grip on her.

  “I was going to say you are ‘at the top of our matchmaking list,’” Bruce insisted.

  “Aren’t you tired of coming home to an empty house, Sammy? Watching all your friends pair off and start spending Sundays naked at home?” Willa pressed.

  Now she was picturing all her friends frying bacon naked. Thank you, Beautification Committee.

  “No. I’m not! I love my life. And I’m not marrying a grump that you brought here under false pretenses!”

  “Someone needs to explain what the hell is going on right now or I’m letting her rearrange all your faces,” Ryan ordered.

  “These hippie manipulators are trying to match us up so we fall in love, you move here, and we get married and have babies,” Sammy told him.

  “Technically the marriage and babies are entirely optional,” Ellery cut in. “We don’t dictate what constitutes a successful match.”

  “Carson assures us Ryan is the perfect match,” Wilson Abramovich, the town jeweler, said helpfully.

  “You did have your first kiss with him,” Willa reminded her, interlacing her fingers under her chin. “Isn’t that romantic?”