Love for the Holidays (five book Christmas bundle)

by Noelle Adams

  She shifted again, and she felt one of her nipples skim lightly against his side. Her breathing quickened a little, and the tension in her belly tightened even more.

  Cyrus let out a long sigh and seemed to relax a little, as if her presence was helping him. She felt even better, even more right.

  Slowly, like he wasn’t consciously doing it, Cyrus’s hand started to stroke down the length of her loose hair. Gently, leisurely, his palm slid from the back of her head to her shoulder to her back, as if he just liked the way it felt.

  She sighed as he did it again. The light gesture triggered a number of different nerve endings. She shifted against him to get more comfortable, very slightly rubbing against him. “That’s nice,” she murmured. “It feels good.”

  He made a wordless sound, half-murmur and half-grunt, and stroked her hair again.

  She looked up at him, suddenly worried about him. She was enjoying the snuggling, but he might still be suffering. “Are you okay, Cyrus?” she asked again. She’d lost count of how many times she’d asked him.

  He gazed down at her, his expression glazed over but soft and not wounded anymore. “I’ll be all right.”

  She reached up to cup his cheek, her heart aching with tenderness. “I want to help.”

  “You are.”

  Since she’d liked how it felt when he stroked her hair, she slid her hand up to stroke his jaw. The skin was rough with his bristles, and the sensation caused ripples of pleasure to run through her. She could feel that tension she liked intensifying in his body.

  He let out a breath that was mostly a soft, thick groan. The sound was strangely intoxicating.

  She leaned forward to kiss his cheek. This was Cyrus, whom she knew, loved, trusted more than anyone else in the world. And she wanted to make sure he knew it—make sure he knew it as surely as she did.

  After she’d kissed his cheek, she pressed her lips against the skin on his jaw line, enjoying the scratchy sensation. She’d just started pulling away when he suddenly turned his head toward her.

  Her lips landed on his without warning. A surge of pleasure overwhelmed her as his mouth brushed clumsily against hers. His tongue darted out to tease the line of her lips, and one of his hands moved to cup the back of her head.

  The other hand was spanning her ribs, then moving up slightly to delicately brush the underside of her breast.

  She moaned into the kiss, stroking his jaw as she let feeling and sensation overwhelm her.

  It felt good. It felt right. As if this was what she’d always wanted. Cyrus. Always, only, just Cyrus.

  Then suddenly it all ended with a jarring move.

  Cyrus jerked away from her, pushing her off him in a clumsy rush and jumping to his feet.

  Helen stared up at him, dazed and disoriented.

  “What are we doing?” he gasped, rubbing his flushed face. “We can’t—we can’t ever—do that.”

  “Oh.” She blinked, trying to get her mind to work when her feelings were still so intense. “I’m sorry. I just…I don’t know what happened.”

  “I know.” He’d been staring at her, but something like horror flashed over his face and he turned away. “I was completely out of it, but I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

  “It’s okay. I thought…” Her cheeks started to burn as she realized what had happened. She’d come on to Cyrus—to Cyrus. He’d been hurt and wounded, and instead of comforting him she’d tried to make a move on him. “I mean, you seemed to…”

  She couldn’t finish. It had seemed like he was responding to her, but he clearly hadn’t been thinking. Now that he was, he was appalled by the very idea.

  It had felt right to Helen, but it obviously didn’t feel right to Cyrus.

  She felt a full-body cringe overtake her, and she prayed she hadn’t ruined their entire relationship. “I’m sorry,” she said, a little wobbly. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know you didn’t.” He rubbed his hands over his face again. “I’d drunk too much. But we can’t ever do anything like that again.”

  “Okay.”

  He left the room in long, quick strides, and Helen was left alone on the leather sofa. She curled up in a ball, feeling young and childish and foolish and utterly humiliated.

  And desperately scared she’d ruined everything between them.

  After a few minutes, she got up and went to the media room, where they had always watched White Christmas.

  She was on the verge of tears, but she didn’t let herself cry. If things were messed up, they were messed up. Eventually, everyone left her anyway—especially those that she loved.

  She got the movie ready and then went to sit down in a big chair, pulling a fuzzy throw blanket up over her.

  She just waited, staring at the blank television screen.

  Last Christmas Eve, she’d had waited too—while Cyrus had a long phone conversation with Rose Marie, whom he’d just started dating. She hadn’t been sure he would hang up in time to watch the movie with her at all, but he had at last.

  This evening, she waited almost thirty minutes, but Cyrus finally walked into the room.

  His skin was a little pale now, rather than flushed, and his collar was slightly damp, as if he’d thrown water on his face.

  His expression was sober as he walked over to sit on the sofa adjacent to her chair. He leaned forward, clasping his hands on his lap and obviously ready to say something.

  She was suddenly terrified that he was going to say they couldn’t hang out anymore. She sat up straight and said in an anxious rush, “I’m really sorry, Cyrus. It didn’t mean for that to happen. I mean, I wasn’t thinking and it just…I mean, it just happened. It won’t happen again. I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I was the one who…I should have done better. Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course,” she exclaimed, a wave of relief overtaking her. If Cyrus thought it was his fault, then he wasn’t thinking she was some silly little girl who was trying to make a move on him. “There’s nothing to forgive. It doesn’t have to happen again.”

  “It can’t, Helen. I never should have…It won’t happen again.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding and starting to feel a little more hope. “So we’re agreed. We can go back to being being…us. I don’t want to lose you, Cyrus.”

  He let out a breath, and his face seemed to relax. “I don’t want to lose you either. Let’s just chalk it up to temporary insanity and forget it ever happened. Do you think we can?”

  She nodded again. “Yes. Yes. It was just craziness or something. We’ll go back to being us again.”

  “Okay.” He smiled at her, although it seemed tired and worried at the edges. “Do you want to start it?” He nodded toward the television set.

  She pressed play. and the opening chords of White Christmas filled the room.

  She stared at the credits blindly, trying to work everything through in her mind.

  It was fine. It was really fine. It was just a fluke. She and Cyrus would be okay. They needed each other. Something so out of the blue wouldn’t really ruin a relationship that had lasted through the highs and lows of eight years.

  It was fine that Cyrus didn’t want her that way. Other men found her attractive. Other men wanted her. Ethan wanted her—she was pretty sure of that.

  She and Cyrus were about something else. And that was good. That was the way it should be.

  Just because kissing him had felt right didn’t mean that it was.

  After several minutes, she’d talked herself into feeling satisfied with things, and she no longer felt like dying of humiliation every time she remembered kissing him.

  If she could keep that memory tucked away in a secret, undisclosed corner of her mind, eventually it wouldn’t bother her anymore.

  That was the way Cyrus wanted it. That was the way it should be.

  “You all right, kid?” he asked, after several minutes. He was studying her with faint anxi
ety.

  It actually helped—to know he was anxious too. She smiled at him. “Yeah. I’m all right.”

  “Good,” he said, smiling back. “Me too.”

  So everything was fine. They were back to normal, and soon the weirdness would be forgotten as they went back to being who they’d always been.

  What they’d always been was really great.

  It just took a little bit of self-convincing for her to believe it was a pretty good Christmas Eve after all.

  Sixth Christmas Eve

  two years ago

  Cyrus and his father had been debating corporate strategy for over an hour.

  It wasn’t just an academic argument. The stakes were real and affected thousands of people. The fact that his father was taking Cyrus’s opinion under advisement at all, instead of simply making an executive decision, was a sign of the progress they’d made in the last two years.

  “All right,” his father said at last, leaning back in his chair.

  Cyrus blinked. They were facing each other in chairs in front of the fireplace in the library, instead of talking in the office, as a gesture toward its being Christmas Eve and thus technically vacation. “All right what?”

  “All right. I concede the point.”

  For a moment, Cyrus’s mouth dropped open in absolute shock. Not once—not in all his life—had his father ever admitted to being wrong when his son was right. “You concede it in argument or in reality?”

  “Is there a difference?” It was obviously a rhetorical question since his dad leaned back in his chair with a strangely sly smile. “No merger.”

  “No merger,” Cyrus repeated, still dazed with this inexplicable development. “Excellent.”

  Drake glanced at his watch and his eyes widened, as if he hadn’t realized it was so late in the afternoon. “Helen and the Barnacle should be here by now.”

  “I’m sure they’ll arrive soon.” Cyrus stood up, stretching his back and picking up the coffee cup he’d been drinking from earlier. “And dinner might be less tense if you would try not to openly insult him.”

  “He’s not intelligent enough to recognize he’s being insulted.”

  “I’m not convinced that’s true, but either way Helen does recognize it.”

  “If she’s foolish enough to date such a creature, she has to expect me to voice occasional disapproval.”

  Cyrus sighed. He hated Ethan. Hated him. Agreed with every negative comment his father had ever made about the young man Helen had been dating for the last year. He did his best to hide his feelings from Helen, however, since he didn’t want it to end up destroying their relationship.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve discovered anything worthwhile yet in that regard,” his father said, looking as tired as Cyrus felt.

  Cyrus shook his head with that heavy twisting in his gut he always felt about Ethan. “Nothing we don’t already know.”

  “He’s not cheating on her?”

  “My investigators can’t find any evidence of it.” Cyrus’s fist tightened at just the thought of the selfish, arrogant boy cheating on Helen. “But, if he wants to marry her for her inheritance, he’s not likely to risk alienating her with an affair.”

  His father nodded thoughtfully.

  They had no proof, of course, that Ethan was pursuing Helen primarily for the fortune she would inherit, but Ethan’s wealthy father had cut him off with nothing, something Cyrus had discovered shortly after the boy had started dating Helen. So he’d always suspected—and his father had as well—that Helen was Ethan’s way back into a life of wealth and ease.

  Cyrus was convinced his mind could have been changed if Ethan had shown himself to be a strong, intelligent man and a generous, loving boyfriend. But, in Cyrus’s perspective, he was neither of those things.

  “Something will have to be done,” his father said, “I refuse to let that creature marry her and get his hands on her fortune when she turns twenty-one.”

  “We still have some time. I’ve always hoped the relationship would end naturally.”

  “If it doesn’t end naturally, then something will have to be done.” Drake’s voice had turned almost dangerous. “I will not let him touch her money.”

  “I won’t either.” Cyrus felt torn and worried and kind of sick about the whole thing.

  “I will do anything to keep that from happening.”

  Cyrus held his father’s eyes. “It sounds like things might be cooling between them,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “Helen hasn’t wanted to talk about him for the last month or so, and she sounds kind of depressed.”

  Cyrus didn’t want Helen to be sad, but if temporary sorrow meant she would get rid of an unworthy boyfriend, then he was pretty sure it would be worth it.

  “Good. If I have to put up with another weekend of that Barnacle constantly pawing at her, then I will have no choice but to run myself through with her Renaissance dagger.”

  Cyrus laughed and then left the library in better spirits.

  His life had gone downhill in many ways since Helen had started dating Ethan, but at least mutual hatred had brought him closer to his father.

  ***

  Cyrus had just gotten another cup of coffee and glanced out the window to see if there was any sign of Helen’s arrival when a voice startled him from down the hall.

  “Cyrus,” Helen said, approaching him in a stylish black trench coat and a bright red bag that matched her scarf.

  “Hey, kid,” he said, smiling at the sight of her, even as he noticed that her eyes were more shadowed than they should be and her smile wasn’t quite as glowing as it used to be.

  She dropped her bag, and he barely managed to put his coffee down on a console table before she hugged him hard.

  He hugged her back, a clench in his chest easing as he felt how genuine and needy she felt.

  Earlier this year, he’d been worried that her relationship with Ethan would inevitably pull them apart, but things had gotten better in the last few months. They’d talked more on the phone, and Helen had even returned to her old habit of sending him funny little text messages at random times of the day.

  She felt like herself now as he held her—not like some distant stranger.

  When she pulled away, her long, loose hair got tangled in one of the buttons on his shirt. It took some doing to get it untangled, and by the end Helen was laughing and clinging to the fabric of his shirt.

  She wore subtle make-up, diamonds in her ears, and an antique snowflake pendant made of diamonds and one central ruby at her throat. She was thinner than she’d been as a teenager—thinner than he liked to see her, since he assumed the weight loss was Ethan’s influence. So her high cheekbones were sharply sculpted, making her lips look fuller and more sensuous.

  He could hardly recognize in the woman in front of him the little girl he’d found on the side of the road nine years ago.

  The clever, laughing, green eyes were the same, though, and so was the tender softness of her mouth.

  For a moment, Cyrus felt a surge of attraction so strong it blurred his vision, and it only intensified when her hands slid up and down his chest as she tried to smooth out the wrinkles she’d put there.

  Her eyes lowered, almost shyly. As he looked down, he noticed the garish ring on her right hand. A gift from Ethan, although thankfully not an engagement ring.

  His gut dropped sickeningly, and he stepped back—forcing the attraction down with ruthless insistence. This was Helen. Helen. And, even if she hadn’t been in a relationship with Ethan, she’d still be completely off-limits to him in that way.

  He’d done some things he wasn’t proud of in his life, but he wasn’t willing to descend that far.

  “Where’s Ethan?” he asked, saying the name as a reminder and a punishment too.

  “Still in the car.” At his questioning look, she tightened her lips. “He’s on the phone.”

  Cyrus could read displeasure in her expression, so he assumed for some reason the phone conver
sation was a point of contention.

  “Everything all right?” he asked, very carefully. He wanted to know. Wanted for her to know he was there if she needed any help. But he didn’t want it to seem like he was prying.

  She’d made it very clear on more than one occasion that her relationship was none of his business.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess. It’s just…” She trailed off, looking away and biting her lower lip in a way she used to do as a child.

  He had to force himself not to prompt her. Several months ago, when he’d been trying to subtly find out whether Ethan was planning to get a job—since the boy had graduated college and was still making no signs of job-hunting—Cyrus hadn’t been subtle enough. They’d gotten into a two-hour fight that had ended with Helen’s not calling him for almost a month.

  “It’s fine,” she finished half-heartedly. She reached down to pick up her bag. Then she smiled at him fondly. “It’s really good to see you, Cyrus. I’ve missed you.”

  There was no particular reason for her to miss him, since they’d seen each other as much this year as they had many of the years since they’d met. But it had felt different, and Helen must know it as surely as Cyrus did.

  “I’ve missed you too,” he said, speaking only the truth. He reached over to take her bag and walked with her up the stairs to her room.

  When they reached her room, Cyrus set the bag on the bench at the foot of the bed. He turned and gazed down at her as she took her coat off. She wore tailored gray trousers, high-heeled boots, and a fitted silk sweater in a red that matched her bag and scarf.

  She evidently no longer cared that she wouldn’t blend in with the jeans and sweatshirts of a college campus. She wore the expensive clothes well, but Cyrus preferred her in more casual clothing—mostly because it was easier to remember how young she actually was when she dressed like a teenager.

  “Did you ever feel,” she began, a little hesitantly. She dropped her eyes, her lashes spreading out against her fair skin. “Did you ever feel, when you were married to Rose Marie, that…”

  Cyrus’s breath caught in his throat. When she didn’t continue, he prompted, very softly, “Did I ever feel what?”