by Lori Wilde
His grin deepened as he guided her around the floor. “Hey will you look at that.”
“Look at what?”
“You’re dancing. You’ve stopped analyzing why you can’t dance and you’re just following my lead,” he pointed out. “You’re out of your head and into your body.”
Ding! He was right about that.
“How often do you exercise?” he asked.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“I take that as never.”
“I walk. I live in Manhattan.”
“You walk in crowds, bustling up against people.”
“So?”
“It’s not the same as smooth, repetitive motion. Like dancing. It gets you out of your castle.”
“My castle?” Sarah laughed. Honestly, she should break off the dancing and walk away, but she was fascinated by how he seemed to know her so well without really knowing her at all and by the way his eyes sparkled when he looked at her. Then there was the thing she didn’t want to admit, not even to herself, that the pudgy fifteen-year-old buried deep inside her was wildly thrilled to be here in his arms, even if it was for just a moment.
Seriously, woman, that’s so sad.
The music changed. Now “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” was wailing from the jukebox. They were in the middle of the dance floor and suddenly Travis stopped moving.
Sarah looked at him. “What … ?”
He canted his head toward the ceiling. She glanced up.
Mistletoe.
They were standing underneath the mistletoe suspended from the center of the ceiling. Talk about your Christmas clichés.
Her toes curled inside her boots. It had been so long since she’d been kissed. She started to say no, she meant to say no, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.
He must have taken her parted lips as a full-speed, go-ahead sign, because he pulled her up closer and lowered his head.
Her breath caught and her treacherous hands rose of their own accord to link around his neck.
Travis.
She was kissing Travis Walker, the object of her teenage affections. The man whose name she’d once doodled in her high school notebook. The man she’d once dreamed endlessly of kissing.
His mouth was on hers.
Right now. And this was no dream.
She wobbled on her three-inch heels, her knees as wavy as overcooked spaghetti. The tang of pine filled her nostrils, along with something else … the fragrance of heated male skin, crisp like ginger snap cookies and full of sharp cinnamon spice.
He splayed a palm against her lower back and
the tip of his tongue ran lightly over her lips, sending a sweet shiver down her spine. His hand felt so big, his fingers so strong and firm. His lips teased, not taking the moment seriously. Not really kissing her, she reminded herself, but rather, showing off for the ladies of the First Love Cookie Club.
Still, she made a soft little noise at the back of her throat, encouraging him when it was absolutely the wrong thing to do at the wrong time in the wrong place. But when had Sarah’s timing ever been good?
Travis deepened the kiss, but only slightly, leaving her feeling inappropriately irritated and achy. The pressure of his mouth spun her head, making her both dizzy and delirious. What was she doing? Why was she putting up with this? She should step away, smooth down her fringe of bangs, and act as if nothing had happened.
Holy schmoe, but the guy could kiss. He hadn’t been the town Casanova in his younger days for nothing.
Someone in the crowded room let loose with a catcall.
Her cheeks flushed hot. She pulled back with a slight shrug, as if it was all a casual joke. Haha. Water off a duck’s back. No big deal. Getting kissed underneath the mistletoe? Old hat.
She did not dare look over at the cookie club ladies. For that matter, she didn’t look at Travis either. And she didn’t finger her lips, which were still tingling, even though she really wanted to. She tried to act casual and distract herself by humming “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” but then that just seemed weird.
Moving slowly so it wouldn’t look like she was hell-bent on getting out from under that mistletoe, even though she was, Sarah stepped sideways off the dance floor.
Don’t look at Travis. Be cool. You’re Sadie Cool, remember? Act your name.
But then she couldn’t stand it anymore and she felt compelled to tilt her head and pretend she was studying the revolving Christmas tree overloaded with ornaments and multicolored twinkle lights, when she was really peeking at Travis from the corner of her eye.
He moved out from under the mistletoe as well, leaned against the wall in a sexy, one-shouldered slouch. She wondered if he had any idea of the compelling figure he cut. Most probably. This was a man who’d had his share of women. He had to know the effect he had on the opposite sex.
Sarah’s lungs filled with the smell of Christmas and community and her own sharp fear, but she could not peel her gaze off him.
Travis caught her eye, and the corners of his mouth tipped up into a cocky grin.
Why couldn’t she just leave? Why were her feet rooted to the spot? Why did she want him to kiss her again and keep kissing her until their lips were chapped raw from all the kissing?
“Thanks for the dance,” he said.
“Um … don’t mention it.”
“I had fun.”
Me too. But she didn’t say that.
“I hate to kiss and run,” he said, glancing at his watch, “but I’ve got to go pick up Jazzy.”
Kiss and run. For no discernible reason, Sarah shivered. “Where is she?”
“Story time at the library.”
“At eight o’clock at night?”
“You’ve forgotten the tradition?”
A memory floated back to her then. Something she hadn’t thought of in a very long time. She’d been nine or ten, a couple of years older than Jazzy was now, and Travis had volunteered to take the neighborhood kids to the story time that the library held after the Dickens on the Square parade. The librarian read A Christmas Carol and served refreshments. The children would circle around her in kid-sized chairs. She remembered Travis took her hand when they crossed the street and how it had made her feel so special. Later, she’d asked Gram why Travis had gone with the little kids to story time.
“His mother is very sick,” Gram had said. “He just needs to get out of the house once in a while, even if it’s just with little kids at story time.”
She recalled feeling sorry for him. His mother had died a year or two after that. He’d lost his mother at a young age and he had a daughter who had been ill for a long time. How hard that must be for him. But Jazzy had looked pretty good. Certainly well enough to participate in the parade and then go to story time at the library. That was good news.
“Not that I would know what Jazzy normally looks like,” Sarah told Travis. “But she seemed very well this evening.”
“She did.” The relief in his voice was palpable. “She’s on an experimental medication and it seems to be working.” He crossed his fingers, smiled a hopeful smile. Briefly, he told her about Jazzy’s condition and her current treatment, and what had started out as smoldering looks and a red-hot kiss,ended softly with sympathetic nods and understanding whispers.
“I better get a move on,” he said, tapping the face of his watch. “Have a nice night, Sarah.”
And then he was gone. Ambling out the door, leaving her staring in his wake, wondering what in the hell was going on between them.
The morning after he danced with Sarah at the Horny Toad and kissed her underneath the mistletoe, Travis woke up with her on his mind. He did not know why he’d kissed her. He certainly hadn’t planned it, but he’d been unable to think about anything except kissing those lush salmon-colored lips from the moment she’d stepped onto the float with him and Jazzy.
It bothered him, because for the last four years the only thing he’d thought about wa
s his daughter. Now Sarah Collier, all sleek and cool, had swept into his life, leaving him feeling hot and bothered and worried.
No, he corrected. She hadn’t swept into his life. His aunt and her friends had dragged her into it. They didn’t fool him one bit. They might have initially brought her here for Jazzy, but now they were playing matchmaker, throwing him and Sarah into each other’s paths. Well, he wasn’t falling for it.
He stood in his kitchen making cinnamon toast for Jazzy and thought about how the soft brown sprinkles of spice were the exact same color as the faint dusting of freckles scattered across the bridge of Sarah’s nose. Those freckles. He smiled and slid the toast from the broiler. She might have buried the Sarah he once knew and replaced her with thepolished guise of Sadie Cool, but she couldn’t hide those freckles.
He put the toast on a plate, and then stirred a package of hot chocolate mix in Jazzy’s pink sparkle princess mug. He added a handful of miniature, multicolored marshmallows just the way she liked it. Jazzy looked good, even after the excitement and activity of the previous night.
Hope lifted his heart. Had they finally found the right drug? Could this be the solution they’d spent four years searching for?
Happily humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” Travis poured himself a cup of coffee and wandered outside in his bathrobe, pajama bottoms, and house slippers to retrieve the Saturday morning edition of the Twilight Caller from the front lawn. He bent down, scooped up the dew-covered newspaper wrapped in clear plastic, and raised his head.
That’s when he saw her.
There, at the edge of his property line, just across the one-lane road from Lake Twilight glimmering silver-blue in the spreading dawn, stood Sarah. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail braid and she wore black Lycra exercise pants and a plain white cotton T-shirt that stretched enticingly across her chest.
His gaze dipped downward as he took her in. It amused him to see she still wore the same black stiletto boots she’d worn the night before. When had she become such a girlie-girl? He remembered her as something of a tomboy.
That was a long time ago. She’d been a kid then. She was a woman now.
Travis eyed her curves. One hell of a woman, in fact.
He straightened, tucked the paper under his right arm, and took a sip of his coffee, trying to decide if she was really there or just a wishful apparition of his imagination. With his free hand, he cinched his bathrobe tighter, trying to cover up his bare chest as best he could, and raised his cup in greeting. “Morning.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to turn and run away, but she stood her ground. He walked toward her.
She raised her chin. “I took your advice about exercising and went for a power walk.”
“In those boots? You don’t have any sneakers?”
“I didn’t think I’d need sneakers and I don’t like to check my bags at the airport, so I try to pack light. Besides, these boots are comfortable.”
“For a power walk?”
“I am working on a blister,” she admitted.
“C’mon in.” He inclined his head toward the door. “I’ll get you a Band-Aid.”
“That’s okay.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m good.”
He watched her pull in, raise her defenses. “So, other than the blister, how did the walk make you feel?”
“Good … great … amazing actually.” She sounded surprised.
“Fresh air clear your head?”
“Yes.”
“Get your blood pumping?”
“Uh-huh.”
He grinned. “Told you.”
She flicked her gaze behind him and he turned to see what she was looking at. All he saw was the Queen Anne-style cottage built in the 1920s, complete with gingerbread trim, a wraparound porch, and window boxes.
“You’re living in my grandmother’s house,” she said softly.
“You didn’t know?”
She shook her head.
“Crystal and I bought it from your parents after your grandmother died. Then I paid it off with the insurance money from when my father passed away and I sold his house. I own it free and clear.”
“Oh.” She stayed expressionless, staring at the house.
Travis loved this house, but Crystal had hated it. “Too small,” she said, “too cutesy.” Crystal had dreams of living in expansive splendor far beyond the reach of Travis’s pocketbook. He had to admit the place was a bit cutesy. It reminded him of one of those cozy cottages in Jazzy’s Beatrix Potter books. It seemed almost magical somehow, especially when the mist rolled in off the lake.
He noticed Sarah had fisted her hands at her side and her lower lip tightened. Was she hurt by the discovery? “Your folks didn’t want to keep the house for you? I know how close you were to your grandmother.”
Sarah’s eyes darkened. “I wasn’t given the option. I was sixteen and away at boarding school when Gram had her first stroke and my parents moved her to a nursing home in Houston. I guess they didn’t think it was important to let me know who bought it and I suppose I never thought toask. My parents …” She shook her head and the long braid swished against her back. “We’re not close. I’m a huge disappointment to them. In fact, I haven’t seen them in over a year. We were supposed to get together for the holidays, but as it always does with them, something came up.”
“Disappointment?” He couldn’t imagine ever being disappointed in Jazzy. “You’ve written a book that has touched thousands of lives, my daughter’s being one of them. How could they not be proud of you?”
Sarah shrugged. “They wanted me to follow in their footsteps. Become a surgeon. I simply didn’t have the aptitude. Or the desire.”
“That’s because your talent lies with words.”
“That’s kind of you to say.” She spoke in a distant tone, the way people spoke to strangers. But he wasn’t a stranger and it bothered him that she was putting up a wall, pushing him away when he wanted to know everything about her.
Why? What was this strange pull of attraction? She was attractive, yes, but so were a lot of women and none of them had ever made him feel … What did he feel? Mesmerized? Captivated? Neither word was quite right. Spellbound?
Maybe it was the history between them. His interrupted wedding. Her heartfelt vow. She’d been completely infatuated with him at the time and he’d been pretty clueless about it. Now he was the one smitten and she seemed disinterested. Was that why he was interested? Precisely because she wasn’t? How twisted was that?
Last night something inside him had come undone. Pent-up sexual desire gnawed at his insides.
Kissing her had felt so damn good, he’d wanted more. Wanted more right now, standing here on his front lawn looking into her faraway blue eyes. He ached to haul her into his bed, strip off their clothes, and thrust into her. He hungered to feel her legs wrapped around his hips, longed to feel her body quiver beneath his. He yearned to smash through the walls she’d erected around herself, shatter her resistance, and claim her as his woman.
The intensity of his desire scared the shit out of him. He’d never experienced anything like this primal pull, and it made him want to turn tail and run for his life. But Travis stood his ground, held her gaze.
A car rumbled down the lane in front of the house, a neighbor behind the wheel. He tooted his horn at them, raised a hand in greeting. Travis smiled, waved back.
“Anyway,” he said, “I just wanted to thank you again for coming back home to make Jazzy’s Christmas wish come true. You’ll never know how much this means to her.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “Well, I better head back.”
He could feel her shoring up her emotions, building her walls higher, shuttering the curtains, locking him out. “Have a good day,” he said.
“You too.”
He watched her walk away, her head high, her steps almost a purposeful march as if she were trying to convince herself
of something. And he couldn’t help wondering, What would it take to break through that tough shell she’d erected and uncover the real Sarah Collier hidden away inside?
CHAPTER SIX
Raylene and Dotty Mae were waiting for Sarah in the lobby of the Merry Cherub. They stood on the guest side of the front desk while behind it, Jenny was bent at the waist, elbows on the counter, chin propped in her palms. All three were leafing through a catalogue filled with angel-related items that lay open on the counter in front of them.
“There you are,” Dotty Mae exclaimed when she spied Sarah. She eyed her workout clothes. “But you’re not ready to go.”
“Go where?” Sarah ran a hand through her bangs, taming them down from the wind off the lake. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that Travis now owned her grandmother’s house and no one had told her.
“You’ve got a full day ahead of you,” Raylene said. “Didn’t you get your itinerary?”
Guiltily, Sarah thought of the stack of info Mayor Schebly had given her the previous day. She’d tossed it on the bedside table in her room and never looked at it again. “Um, I’m sorry, I didn’tread my itinerary … my agent usually handles the details of my appearances.” She realized that sounded like an excuse. She hated public appearances and if Benny didn’t push her, she’d never do them, but it was rude of her not to have looked at the itinerary. She’d kept them waiting. “I should have assumed responsibility for myself. I do apologize.”
“Boy, that agent,” Dotty Mae said, “he’s sure got you spoiled.”
“I suppose he does,” Sarah admitted.
“It’s okay, we haven’t been here long,” Raylene said.
“Could you ladies excuse me for just a little while longer? I need to shower and get changed.”
“You go right ahead.” Dotty Mae waved a hand. “I was just about to order this angel fondue set. There’s Bible verses printed on the bottom of the fondue bowls. When you get done eating, ta-da, you’ve uncovered the word of God.”
Raylene rolled her eyes. “What about your guests who don’t like to mix fondue and religion?”
“Then they don’t have to look at the bottom of the bowl, now do they? Sign me up for a set, Jenny.” As an aside to Sarah, Dotty Mae said, “Jenny sells angelware. It’s sort of like Tupperware, dontcha know, but cozier.”
