Healed Under the Mistletoe

by Amalie Berlin

  All the same things she’d been told when her father had been shot. Maybe even in the same order, but she didn’t say, Wrong place, wrong time. That didn’t help. Never helped.

  She must have cried, because the chaplain looked worriedly at her a time or two. She didn’t know. All she did know was she was glad to have changed and cleaned up. They were suffering enough without seeing the amount of blood that had sprayed from a loved one. No one needed that memory.

  * * *

  Lyons sat in the office chair, staring up at the ceiling, mentally listing every breed of horse he could remember, along with the names of any mounts he’d ridden of those breeds. He couldn’t say when it had become a way to try and exert control, take back his mind when the memories of that day took control. Prevent what came next: examining everything he’d done, thinking of all the things he could’ve done, what might’ve changed it.

  “Lyons? Lyons.”

  He pulled his gaze from the ceiling and focused on her concerned face. When had she come back? How had he missed her, standing right over him?

  “What?”

  He should probably go home. He was no use to anyone here, and the day was almost done. Or maybe it was done.

  “I said put your head down. You’re breathing too fast.” As she spoke, her hand settled against his cheek, warm and alive, delicate but with strength there that he did not feel in that moment. Better than listing horses—when she touched him, every thought drifted away. Peace flowed through her touch, like a drug.

  He tilted his head into the touch, but she shifted her hand to the back of his neck and, leaning in, voice coaxing, said again, “You’re breathing too fast.”

  He was? He didn’t notice, but if it meant she’d keep touching him, he’d do whatever she asked.

  She crouched to follow him down, and soon was on knee level with him, hand still warm on the back of the neck.

  “Breathe like me,” she said, her breath fanning the side of his head, and lifted one of his hands to her chest to feel the rise and fall, the cadence of her breathing.

  He felt the difference then and heard it—with her cheek pressed against his head, mouth close to his ear. She breathed far slower than he was. She was right, he had to slow down...

  “Hold.” She spoke, trying to help. “Breathe.”

  No one outside their little huddle could’ve heard, and in that intimate embrace he wanted to obey but his body had other ideas, still convinced he needed more air.

  “Hold,” she said again, catching him on the third breath, and this time when she directed him, her hand began to knead the back of his neck, and the muscles he knew were corded and tight. When they started to give, it was like a waterfall; the release spread through his shoulders and down over his back, and he relaxed into her, his breath slowing with it.

  Her touch was magic, or maybe it was just her proximity. She wrapped his hand in hers and her thumb stroked back and forth across the back of his hand, slow and rhythmic, and he found his breath slowing to the time she set.

  Over the years, he’d been told by many—mostly nurses—that touch healed, and he’d scoffed. Stupid.

  The spike of adrenalin, which he could now identify, passed and everything got a little easier. Thinking. Not thinking. Taking the peace that flowed from her hands and cheek against his head.

  When he breathed slowly enough for her to be satisfied, she leaned back. The loss of her made him look up to fill the distance growing between them. That fog wasn’t gone; he felt it still around the edges, pressing in.

  Not ready. Not yet.

  He stood, pulling her to her feet with him so he could get his arms fully around her. Even if it was selfish of him to take what she offered, she slid her arms around his torso in response and laid her cheek against his shoulder.

  They stood that way for some time, his chin resting on her forehead, breathing in concert.

  He could’ve stayed like that for hours, and certainly stayed that way longer than he should’ve, but couldn’t make himself care. He’d stick right there until she put him away from her.

  “Who did you lose?” Her question came and, although he didn’t want to break the spell, her hands petting up and down his back soothed it out of him.

  “She wasn’t mine.”

  Lyons took pains to never talk about that day. Wolfe had tried a little at first, and with more vigor lately, but Lyons could have lived his whole life fighting that talk.

  But now... With everything that had gone on today, with this woman who was practically a stranger, he wanted to answer.

  “She wasn’t mine,” he said again, marveling at how easy it came. “But I couldn’t save her.”

  “She was your friend?” she asked, still holding tight.

  “Yes.” He didn’t know how else to answer. The situation had involved someone else’s marriage, usually forbidden territory to him. He minded his own business. His parents had their fill of affairs and he’d witnessed the carnage that spiraled out of them, but with her, he’d broken his own rules in the name of helping. But he’d only made it worse.

  “You loved her.”

  “No.” Love didn’t enter into it and he didn’t know if that made his guilt better or worse. One thing he did know: this kind woman wouldn’t offer her comfort so freely if she knew Eleni’s death was on his hands. And it was.

  “When?”

  “Christmas Eve,” he answered, a little amazed that the answers kept coming. He didn’t have to tell the story this way; she prompted, and he answered. It came easier.

  “Oh, Lyons, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t do that,” he rasped. He didn’t want her sympathy, didn’t deserve it. He might be able to accept the comfort of her touch, but he couldn’t accept her emotional investment in him. He couldn’t accept sympathy.

  Before she truly pitied him, he added, “I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell anyone. I don’t like people to know.”

  Even if he hadn’t told her half of it—he hadn’t told her he’d been shot in the process, or that it had happened at work. And he wouldn’t, or she’d really pity him, or refuse to accept the truth of his guilt in it.

  Her arms relaxed just a little, and his instinctively tightened, still not ready. The extra squeeze made her tremble, or was he just getting out of his own head enough to notice?

  He stilled, and it continued—light, but there. Not fleeting. Constant.

  “You’re trembling.”

  “I know... I’m sorry.”

  He held tighter again but forced his arms to relax before he crushed her. “Don’t apologize. Is it me?”

  Or the shooting? Or talking to the family?

  Breaking bad news was never easy, but for all he knew, this was her first time—and no one should perform that duty for the first time alone. If she had, she’d done it for him. And he’d let her.

  That would make this worse—not just because he took the comfort she offered but took it when she needed it herself.

  “Who did you lose?” he asked, hoping that was the reason, like a true bastard who didn’t want even another drop of guilt pressing him down.

  “My dad,” she replied, just as he had done. Quiet words that belied the damage they caused.

  He closed his eyes. Wrong again. And the only thing that would be worse than him hoping her pain wasn’t his fault would be to leave her alone with it now.

  “How?”

  “Line of duty,” she whispered, both sliding quieter and quieter, as if the words themselves were dangerous.

  She’d lost her dad in the line of duty.

  “Cop?”

  She nodded.

  He’d been shot. Dammit.

  “When?” His voice went hoarse and she pulled back to look up at him, though she stayed within the circle of his arms. Her dark eyes searching his. Still trying to make
sure he was all right.

  He wasn’t all right.

  “When?” he repeated, giving her a little jostle. If he had a drop of strength left in him, he’d shake it out of her.

  “I was fourteen,” she said, and then she was peeling her arms away.

  Still not ready to let go.

  His hands went to the back of her head and pulled her back to him, anything to keep her there with him, and he suddenly didn’t care if she hugged back because he needed it and she realized that, or because she needed it too. Even if it couldn’t wind back the clock and keep her from doing what had hurt her to do.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You needed me to do it.”

  She might not have meant it to, but the soft words carved into his pride.

  He couldn’t think of a single bad thing she’d done in their short acquaintance. She’d been scared of him at first, but even despite having seen him at his surliest, she was still kind to him when he needed it. God help him, he might be holding a genuinely good person in his arms, or his own private angel.

  He leaned back, not letting go, but needing to see her. She tilted her head back to look up at him, her eyes damp and redness there he couldn’t believe he’d missed before.

  She did need comfort. When her gaze tracked briefly to his mouth, instinct took over.

  Before he knew it, he’d angled his head to her mouth, and she leaned up on her toes to meet him.

  The sweet, warm heat of her lips threw his heart into an unruly rhythm, and heady, intoxicating tingles spread from his lips down over his chest, reaching all the way to the hand he’d threaded into her caramel-hued tresses.

  She’d met him; she needed this too. He clutched her to him, holding tightly enough to nearly lift her from her feet, just because he needed closer. Deeper.

  The bitter grief that had dragged them together faded in the tide of something honeyed, something glowing.

  She clung to him, and before he knew it, they’d moved onto the desktop—he’d laid her out and followed her down.

  Since the shooting, he’d distanced himself from everyone. There had been no sweetness in his life; he hadn’t let there be. He hadn’t wanted it. But in that moment, he would’ve said or done anything to get closer to her, and it salved his pride to know it gave back something he’d taken from her.

  * * *

  Belle clutched at his back, wrapped and reveling in the solid bulk of him. In his heat. She didn’t know why he was kissing her, or why she was kissing him back, aside from simply wanting to.

  Everything she’d seen about him, from his quick temper to cradling and massaging the heart of a patient with tears in his eyes, to the devastation that clung to him when he lost her, all said he’d suffered and deserved kindness, tenderness. His kiss said he needed to be touched, that he craved the kind of affection his actions likely kept at bay.

  Something more than attraction had her clawing at his back to get closer. It might have been built on making him into a repository for her Christmas needs, or a desire to have someone meaningful in her life or to be that to someone else, or maybe it was just an instinctive answering call to his own need.

  She didn’t know or care. She just wanted more of this.

  Her hands tangled in his hair and she slid one leg up to hook over him as his heat pressed her into the cold desk surface and shifted so that had there been no clothing in the way, everything would’ve gotten far more serious.

  Another shift, this time from him, and the cotton scrub bottoms felt like nothing at all. Neither did her top. His hand found her breast, and her bra gone, and he groaned into her mouth as his thumb began a rhythmic stroke over the peaked nipple.

  A loud noise jolted him back, and both heads jerked to the door, expecting to find someone there, caught. But there was no one.

  He still lay against her, and his breathing, fast and heated, fanned her cheek as those pale blue eyes fixed on hers. “Telephone.”

  “Huh?”

  “We knocked off the telephone.”

  Mundane words, almost emotionless despite the breathlessness that buoyed them, but the set of his brows and the way he looked back and forth from her eyes to her mouth said he was trying to decide whether he should kiss her again, but wanted to.

  She made the decision for him, tugging his head back to hers. She wanted to stay there, drift in his kisses a little longer. When his tongue slipped into her mouth, she forgot to question why she was doing it. There was no reason not to, at least not that she could recall. His arm, beneath her shoulders, cradled her head from the hard surface of the desk, and his other hand returned to her breast, his long elegant fingers cupping, massaging, stroking...

  He knew how to kiss, how to touch, and only when she’d frantically begun pulling at the hem of his top, mindlessly wanting more, did he pull back.

  Not only back, he slipped his arm from below her head, and stood to walk away from the desk, leaving her senses reeling.

  His hands fell to his hips, and, facing the wall, back to her, he gulped air, leaving her to gather her own wits, or what was left of them.

  “This is a mistake,” he said roughly, and after another several deep, forcibly slow breaths turned to look at her.

  She’d worried his hair, which he kept a little longer on the top than she normally liked, into a bit of a tangle.

  “Why?” she asked, making herself sit up, and right her top. It probably was a mistake, but not for whatever reason he thought—unless he realized she was the one leaving him gifts.

  Which suddenly felt kind of deceitful instead of in the spirit in which she’d intended.

  If they’d leapfrogged over all other relationship activity and were at the point of kissing now, did that mean she needed to change her Secret Santa plan? Did it cross some kind of honesty line to keep it up? He’d enjoyed the gifts, she thought. Maybe. Or maybe hadn’t been bothered one way or another. Friday he’d been in a good mood, but today was her second gift, and he’d been in a bad one—even before the shooting victims had come in, he’d prowled around the department, biting the head off anyone who’d looked at him wrong. Statistically, it was a wash, no way to tell one way or the other. Unless she asked him, but that would give her away entirely.

  He said something about the end of shift having passed, picked up the telephone they’d knocked to the floor, said goodnight and then just left her sitting there, a little stymied about what had happened and why.

  He’d said mistake, but nothing in his kiss had echoed the sentiment. The only part of her questioning her decisions was aimed at the gifts right now.

  Slowly, she slid from the desk and straightened her clothes. The bloody scrubs they’d discarded had been forgotten, and she couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t been right since their patient had arrived, and that was the only reason she should reconsider kissing him again in the future. All this might have been her taking advantage of him. Except that he’d kissed her first. No, at the worst, it was the two of them seeking some kind of comfort.

  Nanna had been right: Those who hurt others were suffering too.

  Lyons had been hurt, he’d lost someone and blamed himself. I couldn’t save her.

  If they were going to continue exploring this attraction, she’d have to stop the gifts, for sure.

  But not now. He wasn’t continuing this exploration, or the kisses, so she had no reason to stop either.

  He needed kindness and care, and she needed someone to give to.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING was busy, and Belle only caught sight of Lyons once as she was heading into the room of a patient.

  After his departure, she’d done everything she could to avoid thinking about the forbidden office, including an hour of man-shopping on a dating site, and being excessively uninspired to even put anything in her cart.

  The
y’d passed in an empty hallway, and he’d looked long enough that she’d known he’d seen her before he’d looked away. Not approaching. Not even nodding hello. It was next-level snubbing. Snubbing with purpose. Which pretty much cleared up the question of whether or not they were going to be doing more kissing in the near future.

  And stung more than she’d like.

  The last thing Belle needed was a relationship, hence the aborted man-shopping. What she wanted was friends. Casual friends. Friends she wouldn’t grow too attached to. Not someone else she’d spend the rest of her life mourning when she inevitably lost them.

  Leaving the cafeteria cashier with her tray, she spotted a likely friend candidate she hoped to not get too attached to: Dr. Conley, sitting alone, with a book, at the small table off to the side of the cafeteria where Belle also liked to seclude herself.

  Angel, as she’d insisted Belle call her, had been kind to her from day one, and even had warned her about Lyons’s difficulty with Christmas, so that made her the perfect friend she wouldn’t get too attached to: someone who might be an ear and give the advice she couldn’t get from Noelle, but who was already attached to Lyons’s brother so would have to go only one direction if some kind of skirmish did break out between her and the wounded doctor.

  She headed over.

  “Hi, do you mind if I join you?” she asked, and, when Angel looked up, nodded to the book. “I can choose another table if you’re engrossed in reading. I personally hate it when I’m in a book and someone interrupts...”

  “Oh, I’m not that engrossed, sadly. It’s supposed to be a suspense, but the author keeps telescoping the punches, so I’ve seen all of them coming. I’m mostly reading now out of spite, and the hope that she surprises me somehow.”

  Belle laughed despite herself and settled down opposite Angel. “I know that feeling. Usually happens when a book has been massively hyped to me and then it’s Disappointment City.”

  “That’s actually the sixth borough of New York: Disappointment City. Populated with out-of-work actors, aging chorus girls and people who believed the hype...”