by Jill Shalvis
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s exactly the same story my fiancé gave me, when I found him in the same position with Holly. Only it was under my Christmas tree, three years ago.”
5
FOR THE FIRST TIME in Katie’s life, her nice, logical world of accounting failed her. She had her computer up and running, a spreadsheet opened in front of her and yet all she saw were numbers leaping and jumping around, making her dizzy.
She found herself mixing her debits with her credits. Confusing her assets with liabilities. Twisting her expenses.
All because of a man. And not the man she’d so carefully picked out for herself either, but one who had the ability to turn her life upside down in a very unsettling way.
How was she supposed to face the fact that the kiss that haunted her dreams with its heat and intensity, the one that had awakened needs and yearnings she hadn’t even been aware of, might have come from a man she could never let herself care about?
Never.
Bryan was everything she didn’t want. Unpredictable. Wild. Uncontrollable.
Not to mention a woman magnet.
Anyway, it didn’t matter, she’d kissed Matt.
She really had.
Oh, Lord. Her head hit the desk with a loud thunk.
Not Bryan, please don’t let it be true.
She was happy with her life just the way it was. Mostly. Okay, she was working on the happy part. But what she wanted for the rest of it was quite simple—the exact opposite of what Bryan made her feel. Her three little S’s.
Security, safety, stability.
All three of those in one, Matt poked his head in her office door and smiled.
She lifted her head and smiled back, stupidly, yearning for his next words.
I’m sorry I’ve been teasing you, of course I remember our kiss.
Or better yet, How about we try that bone-melting kiss again because for the life of me I can’t stop thinking about it.
Actually, if he could just haul her out of her chair, press his body to hers and plant one on her…Yeah, now that would be the best thing to lay to rest all these crazy doubts.
With that in mind, she waited earnestly.
“We need the general ledger,” he said, shattering her hopes with quiet ease. “Do you by any chance have it ready?”
Maybe he was just shy. She could understand that, really she could. But right now she was desperately afraid she knew why he wasn’t responding to her, darn one Bryan Morgan!
She had to know, without a shadow of a doubt, who she’d kissed.
“It’s almost ready,” she lied, purposely not looking down at her desk, where the thing lay out right in the open, finished. “Why don’t you come in for a second while I get it?”
“Okay.”
“Oh, and maybe you could shut the door?”
He did, and then leaned against her file cabinet, tall and lean. Handsome. Reliable. Dependable.
A mental image of a car salesman flashed in her mind and she shoved it out.
Matt was Mr. Perfect, and she was going to prove it to herself if it killed her.
As she walked toward him, some of her intent and purpose must have gleamed in her gaze because he straightened, his brow crinkled in question.
She kept walking, afraid she’d lose her nerve.
Matt abandoned his perch and backed up, until her extra chair hit the back of his knees, forcing him to sit. He gripped the arms and sent her a wary look. “Um…how about I come back later when—”
When she was in her right mind?
Not likely to happen.
“No need,” she said, putting her hands over his as she bent, lowering her face, puckering her lips, not quite daring to close her eyes because she was nervous and deathly afraid she’d miss her target.
“Katie!” Matt scooted back as far as he could in the chair, but she had him surrounded. The chair made an alarming squeak, then started to tip with his efforts as she tried to soothe him.
“Just one more time, Matt.”
“One more time? What are you taking about?”
Her palms grew damp with nerves, making them slip on the armrests. She fell across his lap full weight.
“Oomph,” he said, and though she tried to smile a come-hither smile, he didn’t put his hands on her as she imagined, instead arched even farther away from her as she fumbled. “Katie—”
That was the last word he managed before their combined weight proved too much for the chair. They toppled backward to the floor.
THE HOSPITAL waiting room had been painted a soft green, and decorated with warm paintings and drawings.
Probably to calm people.
It wasn’t working, a half hysterical Katie was certain of that much. Nope, in fact that green was making her feel seasick.
Of course it could have been that she’d nearly killed the vice president of Wells Aviation.
“A concussion,” Bryan said from his chair, watching her pace. “How do you suppose that happened?”
She cringed and kept pacing.
“He’s a careful man,” Bryan said thoughtfully. “I can’t imagine him just…falling out of his chair.”
“Um, yeah. About that…” Katie managed a little smile. “He didn’t exactly fall on his own.”
“I see.” Though his mouth remained still, his eyes twinkled with what she was pretty certain was humor. “You mean something tipped him over?”
“Sort of.” Katie closed her eyes in mortification. “You remember that Christmas party thing?”
Now one corner of his mouth quirked. “I think I do, yes.”
“And that stupid kiss.”
Bryan paused so long Katie opened her eyes.
“That stupid kiss,” he repeated.
“It should have been so simple!” She forced a laugh. “It’s really the funniest thing.”
“Try me.”
“Well, I got to thinking about what you said, you know, about it not being Matt.”
Bryan just looked at her.
“Right. Anyway, I got to wondering—”
“If I was telling the truth? I thought we already established that much. If I wasn’t, how would I even know about the kiss?”
“Well, I didn’t say I was rational.” She managed another smile. “I needed to know for certain if it was really Matt, even though of course it was. You were just somehow teasing me. All I had to do was prove it, so I just…”
“You just…what?”
“Tried to kiss Matt again.” She rubbed her eyes. “And that was that.”
“Not quite it wasn’t. You left out the part where you nearly killed him.”
“Oh, yeah.” She sank to an empty chair and dropped both her bravado and head into her hands.
“The headlines should be interesting,” Bryan told her sympathetically. “‘Accountant Launches Herself at Single Executive, Hoping for a Kiss and Knocks Him Out Cold.’ You know, in some states you could probably get arrested.”
That thought hadn’t even occurred to her, but it did now and Katie went weak. If it had been the other way around, and Matt had been the woman, and she the he… “Oh, God, I sexually harassed him!”
Bryan grinned. “Shame on you. Can you do it to me, too?”
“I’m going to be sick,” she said faintly.
“Well, this is the place to do it.” But he ran his hand over her bowed head in a soothing gesture.
The craziest thought went through her mind at his oddly welcome touch. She was resisting him because…well, he wasn’t grown-up enough, didn’t know anything but fun. And yet here he was, being the mature one in the face of her own stupidity. She might have warmed to him then. Might have, except for his next words.
“Look, it’s not that bad,” he said. “At least now you know the truth.”
“No,” she said miserably. “I never actually kissed him before we fell.”
Bryan stared at her, then laughed. “You poor baby.”
“ARE YOU WAITING
for Matt Osborne?”
Katie straightened in her chair and looked at the nurse in surprise. “Me?”
“He’s been released. You’re driving him home?”
Katie looked around, but there was no one else the woman could possibly be speaking to. Bryan had vanished a half hour ago. “Um…okay.” Guess she wasn’t fired.
Yet.
She followed the nurse down the hallway past the emergency room cubicles. Not all the curtains were closed so she got an eyeful of moaning, groaning, screaming, yelling people.
Not a happy place.
Finally they stopped before a cubicle that did have a closed curtain. The nurse whipped it open, and when Katie hesitated, the woman gently pushed her inside and slid the curtain closed again.
Matt sat on the cot, holding his head in his hands. When he saw her, he straightened, his eyes widening a little.
Terrific. Now he was afraid of her. She forced a smile. “Matt? They said you’re free to go now.”
“Yes.” He looked at the closed curtain behind her as if it were a bolted steel door and he was locked on the wrong side of it.
The awkwardness didn’t fade when she found her feet and moved closer to him. With a barely perceptible movement, he shifted back, away from her.
She dropped to the cot next to him and sighed.
Any second now he’d fire her. She’d take it like a man.
Probably.
“Katie?” He sounded wary but concerned, which made her sigh again.
Mr. Perfect was a gentleman, right to the end. Except that he was watching her as one would a poisonous spider. She supposed she couldn’t really blame him; in his eyes she’d been acting pretty strange since the party.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I’m driving you home.” She attempted a friendly, don’t-worry-I’m-sane smile. “I’ll have you there in five minutes tops.”
He looked as if five minutes were a lifetime. Or maybe he was just worried she’d knock him down again and really injure him this time.
Well, that was her own fault, she supposed. And she still wasn’t any closer to the truth. He was so handsome, and so darn right for her!
Why couldn’t this be simple?
Slowly she lifted a hand toward him, hoping he’d take it. He didn’t, instead stared down at her fingers as if he expected them to separate from her body and yell Boo! “We really need to go,” she said.
“Just checking…” He gingerly took her fingers, studying them intently. Then he slowly craned his neck and stared at the ceiling, and then the walls around him. “For mistletoe.” He shot her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, it’s just that you seem so obsessed….”
She tightened her grip on his hand and gently tugged him up because she was obsessed. And she wasn’t finished; she had to know. She had to put the wild, unpredictable and far too sexy Bryan out of her head. “I have to try this one last time,” she whispered, more to herself than him. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.” Going up on her tiptoes, she lightly pressed her mouth to his.
He stiffened at the connection, and she thought, Yes! because she’d felt the same reaction from him, at the party. But that night his hands had tightened on her, he’d made a rough sound of helpless arousal, and had immediately taken over the kiss until she couldn’t so much as remember her name.
Not this time.
No fireworks, no heat barreling through her veins, nothing except the short, dry, chaste kiss.
Matt immediately pulled back and frowned at her. “What was that for?”
“Yes, Katie. Do tell.”
Katie jerked around. Bryan! What? Was her good karma on vacation?
Bryan lifted a mocking eyebrow, darn him, and sent her a knowing smile.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Me?”
“Yes, you!”
“Matt asked me to drive him home.” Bryan’s eyes sparkled, his mouth quivered suspiciously. “Unless of course, you’re going to do it.”
“No!” Matt said quickly, too quickly, then sent Katie an apologetic but terrified glance.
Katie could only sigh. Bryan’s eyes were still on her, she could feel them, but she’d streak naked through the hospital before she’d look at him again.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” he said lightly, turning her, forcing her to face him.
Oh, yes, given that smug expression, he knew exactly what he’d interrupted, and she’d never live it down.
His cocky, wicked grin only reinforced the knowledge.
6
WELL, AT LEAST she had Tic and Toc, her cats. They’d never abandon her. They’d never look at her with soft reproach as Matt had, wondering why she was trying to ruin his life.
Darn him for giving her a complex anyway. All she’d wanted was one little kiss; it wouldn’t have hurt him to cooperate.
Much.
“Meow.”
Katie let out a long, shaky breath. “Well, I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she told the cat. “But really, now that I think about it, that concussion was his own fault. If he would’ve just stayed still, we wouldn’t have fallen.”
She sat on her porch, both cats heavy in her lap as she watched the sunset and sighed. “I’m still Christmas cursed, apparently. Big surprise there.”
“I’ve heard you say that twice now.”
She nearly dumped Tic and Toc to the floor at the unexpected sound of his voice.
Bryan stood below the bottom step.
In the growing dark, she couldn’t see his expression clearly, and told herself it wasn’t necessary. She didn’t care. More than that, he didn’t care. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she muttered, trying to soothe the two orange tabbies as they both lifted their heads and stared with reproach at this newcomer.
Bryan stepped onto the porch and sent her his trademark crooked grin, the one that did funny things to her stomach in spite of the fact that she’d refused to acknowledge those things.
And not for the first time, she acknowledged somewhere deep down that Bryan was acting far more “mature” than she. Darn him.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I looked up your address in the computer.”
“I mind.”
His lips curved, but he said nothing to that, simply sat on the bench right next to her. “So. What’s this about a Christmas curse?”
“It means I have yet to successfully manage a smooth holiday season.”
“Ever?”
She didn’t, couldn’t, answer. Not when their thighs brushed, their arms touched, and his face, when he turned it toward her, was completely void of the laughter she’d been silently groaning over ever since he caught her trying to kiss Matt.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” he said, reading her mind with horrifying ease.
“Which? Nearly killing our vice president, or having him now be afraid of me?”
“That you didn’t believe me the first time.”
“Oh. That.”
“Yeah.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “That. Katie, is it so hard to believe? That you and I could have shared a kiss?”
“It wasn’t just a kiss.”
“No,” he agreed with a rueful laugh. “It sure wasn’t. And if I hadn’t had that ridiculous costume on, if we hadn’t been surrounded by dressed up, drunken fools, if…” His eyes gleamed with heat. “Well. Maybe it was for the best.”
She was certain somehow his statement should make her feel better. It didn’t.
“So…are you going to admit it?”
“Admit what?”
He let out a short laugh and shook his head. “You can’t fool me, you know. I’m the master of avoidance techniques.”
“You don’t avoid anything. You jump into every single day with your eyes wide-open, one-hundred-percent ready for anything and everything. Don’t tell me you know anything about avoidance techniques.”
“Ah, but the adventure and excitement of my job, th
at has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”
“And what are you talking about?”
“Heart stuff. Emotion stuff. That’s what I’m the master of avoidance at.”
She stared at him, and he stared right back, his eyes clear and open and honest.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because maybe I’m a big fake,” he whispered back. Slowly, as if he were afraid to frighten her off, he lifted a hand. His fingers brushed her cheek in a soft, barely there caress. “When it comes right down to it, I’ve never taken the biggest risk of all. I’ve never opened my heart all the way to a woman.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Was that her voice, all whispery and light? Good Lord, she sounded as if she were having an attack of the vapors. But then he shifted a little closer and those long fingers cupped her jaw, and she became much more seriously breathing challenged. Her pulse raced. Her heart pounded. Her palms went clammy.
Wait, she was having an attack of the vapors!
“You’re breathing funny,” he said.
Well, so was he. “I thought you loved your carefree lifestyle,” she said softly.
“I do. I’m just saying…hell.” A self-deprecating laugh escaped him. “I have no idea what I’m saying.”
“I’ve seen customers fall all over themselves to get your attention,” Katie said. “I’ve seen half the staff—the female half, that is—do the same thing. And I certainly haven’t seen you running away. In fact, I’ve personally witnessed you opening up one of your planes to at least a dozen different dates.”
“I said I’ve never opened my heart. Not my planes, or…anything else.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I have enough women in my life with my family. Because I never felt the need for another nosy, bossy—”
“Hey! We’re not all like that.”
“Then maybe I haven’t met the right woman.”
Oh, she didn’t want to know this, she definitely didn’t, because something within her softened, melted. Warmed.
Darn it. Darn him.
Her insides were going all molten on her, dissolving with each light stroke of his roughened fingers. “Bryan—”
