“Shh,” she said. “I know.”
Her words unknotted something so deep in his psyche that it felt like release. Like absolution. Like grace.
He kissed her then, because he needed some kind of anchor, because everything had wrenched loose: everything he’d been holding together and trying desperately not to freak out about, all the unsaid things that had fought their way out, all his fears that there wouldn’t be another opportunity to be with her, that he wouldn’t be able to see her, touch her, kiss her.
God, she was sweet, her mouth so receptive and responsive, her body curving toward his, her heat, his arousal, like she was homing, her hands everywhere, in his hair, on his ass, her thumb curving around his hip to find the head of his cock.
The security clerk cleared his throat loudly, and Miles set Nora back from him. “More where that came from. Later.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Promise.”
“Miles? If they charge you, if you can’t make them believe the truth, if you have to go to jail—”
He tried to cut her off, but it was as pointless as it had been earlier. She was determined to say it.
“Whatever happens, I’ll be with you.”
He hugged her so tight that she gave a little squeak; then he released her. “I can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me, but I’ve got some good news.” Her eyes got huge.
“After my talk with Owen, I had lunch with some people who work for me and asked them to forgive me for not being more open with them. I told them I was innocent and asked for their help.
“A few of them got up and walked out, but most of them stayed. I asked them to think about anything they might know about the vendor fraud, anything at all, no matter how small. A bunch of them called my lawyer afterward. One mentioned that my executive assistant had been weird and squirrelly one day about a certain vendor account. They’ve changed the direction of the investigation. I’m not off the hook, but they’re looking closely at his actions. We’ll know more soon.”
“That’s great! I mean, not about your EA, but—”
“I know.”
She looked away, and he caught her regret. “I’m still sorry I didn’t have perfect faith. I wish … I wish I could have shown you a hundred percent certainty. I think you needed that.”
He shook his head. “No.” And then more vehemently, “No, I didn’t. I needed you to be who you were. Exactly who you were. You. You are so fully in the world, and I wanted to be in the world with you. It gave me the courage to dive back in.”
She made another sound, a half hum, almost a whimper, and lifted her face to him, an echo of that moment last year when the numbers had fallen off the clock too slowly.
This kiss was different. Tender, contemplative. It made him ache, not only in the sex-starved rock-hard parts, but all through. He wanted to get her out of here so he could make love to her, slow and sweet. Or hard and fast against a wall. That would work, too, and he was sure she’d be amenable to either. Or both. Both would be good.
When he released her, she smiled at him, her big, buoyant, nothing-held-back smile.
“I’ve never liked New Year’s,” he said. “I’ve always thought of it as a liar’s holiday.”
“Really?”
“Everyone makes resolutions they won’t keep, also known as lies. But New Year’s is growing on me as a holiday, I gotta say.”
She stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, “I’m wearing the red lace boy shorts.”
“Did I mention how much I adore New Year’s?” He slid a hand up her thigh until his fingers met the lace hem of her shorts. “Nora. Let’s get out of here.”
“I think that’s an excellent plan.”
He followed her into a single compartment of the revolving door and crowded against her, making her giggle. They tumbled out into the night. She slipped her hand into his, and he twirled her, drawing her close for another kiss, the heat of her mouth a contrast to the cold air that slid under their clothes. It was hard to think about anything other than the satiny feel of Nora’s thigh where the red lace lay. Or the heat he’d been able to feel even from that distance. Or what a long, leisurely time he would spend tonight reacquainting himself with her.
“Let’s get you someplace warm,” he said.
They hurried along the street toward the T station.
“You’re wrong about New Year’s, you know,” she said.
He tilted his head quizzically.
“Of course we’re going to screw up and fail to keep our resolutions. We know that. But we bother to make them, anyway. Because we have faith we can be better people. And we can. Not perfect people. But better people.”
She knocked the wind out of him sometimes. By being in a room. By saying what was on her mind. She left him breathless and winded and twice as alive.
He tugged her hand to stop her and kissed her again, because it was the best way to show her.
And he left her breathless.
Good. That was only fair.
He stroked her hair. “If I hang around a few months, do you think you could try to explain to me why I shouldn’t hate Valentine’s Day so much?”
She shuddered. He wasn’t sure if it was the cold or the mention of the holiday. “No one can redeem Valentine’s Day.”
“Give it a shot, will you?”
She put her arms around him and rested her face in the crook of his shoulder. She felt right there, as if she belonged perfectly. “Hell, yes.”
Above them, noise exploded from a few open windows, a cacophony of shouts and horns.
“Happy New Year,” he said.
“Happy New Year.”
Across the Boston sky, fireworks scattered like the craziest constellation of stars he’d ever seen. And he kissed her to welcome midnight and the New Year, all the New Years.
Epilogue
Miles stood on the curb outside Nora’s U-Haul, shaking his head. “Nora?”
“Yes?” She struggled up the front walk of his house, clutching two twenty-gallon totes, one stacked on top of the other. Possibly it had been an ill-advised, overachieving idea, but she’d gotten tired of watching Miles carry all the heavy stuff.
“What’s this?”
She set down the totes. He had unloaded Rory from the truck, his yarn mane looking more scraggly than usual. “He’s an old-fashioned rocking horse. Rory was mine when I was little. He was in my mom’s house, but she said I had to take him or she would throw him out, so I picked him up on my way.”
He crossed his arms and gave her a mock frown. “You understand this is a deal breaker. There is no room in my house for an old-fashioned rocking horse.”
She almost enjoyed that grim, serious face of his, even in jest. She saw it so infrequently these days, and it reminded her delightfully of their first New Year’s Eve. “I stood by you in your time of need. I think you can cut me the slack for my rocking horse.”
“I think it might be easier to live with an embezzler than with this guy.” But he gave Rory’s real leather saddle a fond pat, and she knew he was sold. He hoisted Rory overhead and strode past her with an ain’t-no-thang ease, flexing an assortment of muscles in his back and shoulders and nearly causing her to drop her own excessive armful.
Recently he’d started to joke about his lost year. About his flirtation with imprisonment. About how easily he’d adopted the criminal mantle. He whispered to her sometimes that he thought he was secretly more Moriarty than Holmes, more Cigarette Man than Mulder and Scully.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she’d whispered back. “But if you want, you can be Mulder and I’ll be Scully.”
In early March, Miles’s executive assistant had finally been charged with embezzlement, and a few weeks after that, Miles had started back to work. The first month had been hard for him. He’d worried that people at work still secretly believed he was guilty, that he’d lost credibility with his employees, that he wouldn’t be able to lead the way he once had. His worry had ma
de him tentative, and it had briefly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But he’d turned it around, showing up at work one morning with a day’s worth of team-building exercises that put him back on terra firma.
That weekend, when he’d flown to Boston to see Nora, he firmly asserted his leadership in bed with her, too. She remembered that weekend with great fondness.
Somehow, without intending to, she’d sat down on one of the twenty-gallon totes to rest. Miles’s house looked beautiful. He’d repainted it recently—he’d been keeping up with the home-improvement projects on the few weekends this winter and spring they hadn’t managed to be together—and it was a pale gray with navy shutters. Along the front walk, pink and peach roses had begun to bloom, the oaks and ash and hickory in full leaf overhead. Beat the hell out of her Boston apartment. And … well, there was Miles, of course. Miles, maker of the world’s neatest sandwiches, giver of the world’s best oral sex, purveyor, these days, of world’s most potent grins. Also, listener extraordinaire. He talked a lot more than he used to, but when he listened, he listened with undivided, almost disturbingly focused attention. You felt as if you were the only human being on earth.
Miles poked his head out of the truck. “You still have milk crates.” He emerged fully with a white milk crate in each hand, shaking his head.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Don’t you think it’s time for you to own real furniture?”
“I’ve moved almost every two years since I graduated from college. Never seemed worth it.”
“Well, you’re not moving again.”
He set the moving crates down and came to put his arms around her. She felt his lips move along the edge of her hairline, where he especially liked to kiss her. Tingles raced up and down her spine, out her arms and legs, to the ends of her fingers and toes. “Mmm. No. I’m not moving again.” From this spot, she thought.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“Every night.”
For months they’d had to suffer impatiently through the week, then deal with goodbyes on Sunday night. Now that was over. “Every night,” she agreed happily.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, and finally her mouth, a sweet, slick flirtation with abandoning the whole idea of unpacking the truck. His hand slid down her back and scooped under her ass, drawing her close.
He groaned. “God. That was a bad idea.”
“But now you can set boxes down on your boner and use less arm strength.”
“You’re really bad, you know that?” But he was grinning so hugely she couldn’t do anything but grin back at him. “Let’s get this thing done so we can grab dinner and go to bed early.”
“Amen to that.”
And Miles to go before I sleep. The first thing she’d thought when she heard his name, a year and a half ago.
They had flown thousands of miles to be together. Traveled real and imagined geography, bridged gaps, covered and possessed immeasurable territory. They’d collapsed the universe to the size of the space between their bodies, the shrinking distance between their lives. They’d made promises out of tentative resolutions.
I have promises to keep.
She’d sleep here tonight, and the night after that, and the night after that, and all the nights the future held, his lean strength curled around her, his breath at her ear, his heart beating hard at her back.
Acknowledgments
Love and hugs to Lisa Renée Jones and Mary Ann Rivers, my coauthors, for making this book possible and for being so delightfully supportive through the writing, production, and promotion process—I could not ask for better partners. I’m grateful to readers Ruthie Knox, Ellen Price, the aforementioned Mary Ann Rivers, and Mr. Serena Bell for support and suggestions, and to my expert on matters of the law, Chrissy Hanisco, who has shown so much faith in me over the years. My editor, Sue Grimshaw, as always knew where to poke and prod to bring out the missing truths in the story, and the Loveswept team has whipped the book into shape and brought it before the public with precision and flair. And so many thanks to Emily Sylvan Kim, my agent: for pushing me to take a chance and say yes, and for believing in New Year’s Eve and me.
PHOTO: © SUSAN YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHY
SERENA BELL writes stories about how sex messes with your head, why smart people do stupid things sometimes, and how love can make it all better. She wrote her first steamy romance before she was old enough to understand what all the words meant and has been perfecting the art of hiding pages and screens from curious eyes ever since—a skill that’s particularly useful now that she’s the mother of two.
For a while, Serena took a break from penning love stories to explore the world as a journalist, where she spent time shadowing and writing about a cast of fascinating real-life characters.
When she’s not writing or getting her butt kicked at Scrabble by her kids, she’s practicing modern-dance improv in the kitchen, swimming laps, taking a long walk, or reading on one of her large collection of electronic devices.
Serena blogs about reading and writing romance at www.serenabell.com and www.wonkomance.com. She also tweets like a madwoman as @serenabellbooks and posts to Facebook at www.facebook.com/serenabellbooks.
Your Holidays are about to get a little hotter…
Coming November 4, 2013
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Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight): A Loveswept Contemporary Romance Page 35
