by Noelle Adams
On discovering that she was in the pool, he’d immediately headed outside to say hello.
It had been a mistake.
He’d watched her climb out of the pool, soaking wet, wearing nothing but a tiny blue bikini, all lush curves and bare skin and slick hair, and he hadn’t had enough preparation to handle the sight.
He’d gotten suddenly, painfully aroused by her gorgeous, wet body and wide smile. And it had gotten worse when she’d run over to give him a hug.
He still tortured himself occasionally at night with memories of how she’d looked, of how he knew she would look naked, in his bed, in his arms. He did his best to keep tight control over his mind, since he knew thinking about her like that was wrong, but occasionally the thoughts snuck up on him anyway.
And it seemed to get harder every time he saw her.
Cyrus continued to the media room, wiping such thoughts out of his brain. It was getting close to midnight on Christmas Eve, and he hadn’t watched White Christmas. While Helen obviously wasn’t going to join him this year, it just seemed wrong not to be there.
He lowered himself onto the couch and flipped on the television, turning it to a cable news channel since he didn’t really care what he watched.
He’d had a good time watching Helen sing, but he still would have liked to continue their normal tradition. Christmas just seemed incomplete without it.
But she was grown up now. She wasn’t the girl who had transformed his world all those years ago.
“Hey,” a voice came from the doorway.
He turned toward it with a jerk. Helen walked toward him, wearing silk pajamas covered by a thick, white, belted sweater.
“Hey,” he said, his eyes widening in surprise. ”I thought you were in bed.”
“I was. But it just didn’t seem like Christmas without Bing Crosby.” She sat down beside him on the couch and nodded toward the television.
Cyrus cued the movie up without speaking.
When the music started, he slanted a covert look at her. She’d plaited her hair into two long braids, he assumed to keep it out of her face as she slept. And her face was scrubbed free of make-up. She looked very young. Innocent. Like she’d been crying.
“Are you all right?” he asked, before he could think through whether the question was wise.
“Yeah,” she said, the one word wobbling a little. She gave a sniff and swallowed visibly.
“Helen?” Cyrus prompted.
Her face crumpled. “I think Ethan’s cheating on me.”
Cyrus’s jaw dropped open momentarily and something started to twist in his gut, but he managed to keep his voice mild as he asked, “Why do you think that?”
“He’s hiding something from me. I know he is.” She brushed away a stray tear impatiently, fighting for control of her emotions.
“Do you have any evidence?” He’d had the best investigators he could find looking into Ethan for the last year, but they hadn’t turned up any proof that hinted at an affair.
She shook her head. “It’s just…he’s hiding something.”
Cyrus took a slow breath. Then decided to take the risk. “Would you like for me to help find out if he is or not?”
She shook her head again, wiping away another tear.
“Helen,” he said with a frown, “If you suspect—“
“It’s not that,” she interrupted, straightening up and trying to keep the sob out of her words, “It’s just that it doesn’t matter. Whether he’s cheating on me or not, this just isn’t working.”
A spark of hope ignited in the back of his mind, but he tried to force it back. Helen was hurting, and he shouldn’t be exulting that she was finally going to dump Ethan at long last. He bit back a response, since nothing he said would be the right thing.
Instead, he reached out and pulled her into a hug. She sobbed into his chest as he held her, and he was hopelessly torn between aching sympathy and relief. She was small and warm and shaking in his arms, and he held her as tightly as he could, offering whatever comfort was in his power.
When she finally pulled away, she wiped at her tear-streaked face and looked up at him through red eyes. “You always thought Ethan was just with me for the money, didn’t you?”
Cyrus sucked in a sharp breath. “Helen, I never would have—“
“I know you’d never say so,” she cut in. “But you thought so, didn’t you?”
He hesitated a long time before he admitted, “I thought it was a possibility.”
“I think he was. I mean, maybe he liked me, but I don’t think he ever really loved me. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it. I was so stupid. But I thought he was so attractive and exciting and he made me feel like I was…I was desirable. And I thought I was grown up, so I could do what I wanted. And since you didn’t…”
When she didn’t finish, he prompted, “I didn’t what?” He was concerned he’d somehow figured into her decision to get together with Ethan.
She shook her head, dismissing the question. “I was so stupid—at first, I think I was just trying to prove something, but then I really fell for him. But I should have known it was a mistake as soon as he started to try to turn me against you and your dad.”
Cyrus blinked. “When did that happen?”
“Earlier this year. But I didn’t want to give up on the relationship, so I tried. And I tried. But I can’t try anymore. It’s just over.”
“Then it’s probably for the best,” Cyrus said. When her face twisted again, he added, “I know it doesn’t feel like it. I’ve been through it, remember? But it gets better. And then you’ll just be…”
She looked up, as if waiting for the word.
“Relieved,” he concluded.
“I hope so.” She rubbed her face with both hands. “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”
“You won’t.”
That seemed to be all that needed to be said. The movie was still playing so they focused on the television again. Helen stayed curled up at his side. She seemed to want to get closer and closer, so he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him. She snuggled up, yanking a throw over her to get warm. It wasn’t long before she was stretched out on the couch with her head in his lap.
He didn’t mind. He liked the weight of her head on his lap, even though it made his stomach clench strangely. She felt like his—his responsibility, his burden, his blessing. He gently stroked her hair as they watched the movie they’d watched every Christmas Eve for the last nine years.
By the time it finished, Helen was almost asleep, and Cyrus was allowing himself to feel a hope that wouldn’t be denied.
Maybe Helen—and he and his father—could be free of Ethan at last.
That would be a good thing. A very good thing. Then things could go back to the way they were before. He and Helen could be comfortable with each other, like friends, like family, with nothing tense or weird or inappropriate coming between them.
Cyrus was sure it could happen, if she could just be rid of Ethan.
And that thought ended up giving him a pretty good Christmas Eve after all.
Seventh Christmas Eve
last year
Helen was in such a rush that she had to try three times to unlock the front door to her apartment.
When she finally got it open, she stepped into the entry hall and dropped her stuff on the floor. Her keys ended up on the floor too, since she flung them onto the console table and they kept sliding off the edge.
She didn’t bother to pick them up. She just took five hurried steps into the main room and stared in defeated horror at the messy living area.
Messy was a generous term. The room was an absolute disaster, and Cyrus would be here any minute.
She fought through her glum stupor and raced through the room, collecting dishes from the last several days that were scattered on the coffee table, side tables, leather chair, and floor. She’d managed to balance them all in one armful when the phone rang.
With a gr
oan, she dumped the dishes in the general vicinity of the sink and snatched up the phone.
The doorman very politely informed her that Mr. Owen had arrived.
“Shit,” she muttered, “I’m not ready. Can you stall him?”
“Stall him?” the doorman repeated, exactly as she should have expected.
“Don’t say it out loud,” she groaned, “He’ll hear and—“
“He said he’s coming up.”
Helen groaned again and had a brief moment of panic as she stared around at everything that needed doing in the forty-five seconds it would take Cyrus to ride the elevator up to her top-floor apartment.
Deciding to use her time wisely, she ran back into the entry hall and picked up her keys, putting them neatly on the tray where they belonged.
Cyrus knocked on the door. “Helen? Are you all right?” he asked through the door. “Why did you need to stall me?”
She resigned herself to the inevitable and went to open the door.
He stood in her doorway, looking as cool and professional as always in black trousers and a thin charcoal gray sweater mostly covered by a black overcoat. He’d lowered his eyebrows and was frowning at her.
She scowled at him. “I wasn’t ready.”
He studied her closely, from her hair, which was messily falling out of the twist that had looked sleek and sophisticated that morning, to her pink top, gray pencil skirt, and expensive high heels. She was obviously still dressed for work, rather than for a leisurely ride to Clarksburg on Christmas Eve day.
“Why were you working today?” he asked. “I thought you had the day off.”
She’d recently won another internship with the same magazine she’d interned for the year before, but this internship was paid and had more responsibility. “There was a last-minute crisis with the issue that goes to press tonight. Since I’m low man on the totem pole, I got the privilege of showing up to fix it.”
“Did you get everything done?”
“Sure.” She glanced back at her apartment. “But I didn’t get anything else done.”
The question on Cyrus’s face transformed to enlightenment as he came into sight of her living area. “So this is why you didn’t want me to come up. What happened?”
She scowled at him again. “Nothing happened. It’s been a long week.”
“I know you’ve been swamped, but what happened to the woman who comes to clean for you.”
“I gave her and her husband a cruise for Christmas, so she’s not been to clean for a couple of weeks,” Helen explained defensively. She wasn’t normally embarrassed about a little messiness, but she wasn’t used to living in such a disaster area and she preferred Cyrus not know she’d been doing so for the last week.
“Well, you can’t leave for Christmas with it like this,” Cyrus said, staring around at the piles of dirty dishes, books, mail, and clothes.
“I know that,” she gritted through her teeth, “I was trying to clean up a little, but I just got home.”
“Do you want me to call a—“
“No,” she interrupted, “It will just take a minute. If you want to help, you can look for more dirty dishes. I don’t care about the clothes and papers, but I’m not going to leave dirty dishes.”
Cyrus looked rather mystified, but he took off his coat and made a circuit through her area while she went to work in the sink.
“Why is there a skirt under your coffee table?” he asked, when he headed into the kitchen with a few stray glasses and a plate. “Do you have a new boyfriend you haven’t told me about?”
Helen flushed hotly, for absolutely no good reason. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in a long time, and not just because she was too busy for one. “The skirt was getting uncomfortable while I was eating the other night so I just took it off,” she said, hiding her face in the dishwasher as she loaded some dishes. “There’s no boyfriend.”
He gave her a quizzical look, which she assumed was prompted by the idea of her eating skirtless. “Who sent you the flowers?” he asked, gesturing with his head toward the bouquet of orchids and pink roses on the dining table, barely visible in the piles of textbooks she’d never put away after the end of the semester.
“Your dad did,” she said, a little surprised by the question. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he didn’t believe her when she’d said she didn’t have a boyfriend.
Since she lived one block from Cyrus, talked to him several times a day, and saw him at least once a day, she wasn’t sure how he imagined she’d be able to keep a boyfriend a secret from him.
The truth was she hadn’t felt much like dating after Ethan. She’d dutifully gone out on dates whenever one of her friends tried to set her up or a guy in one of her classes asked her out.
But it was all rather half-hearted. The truth was she’d much rather just hang out with Cyrus than try to muster up the energy to be charming and desirable on a date.
“For getting the internship?” Cyrus asked.
Helen blinked, taking a moment to remember what they’d been discussing. “Oh, yeah, the flowers were for getting the internship.”
“You wouldn’t accept anything from me for getting the internship.” Cyrus wiped down the granite kitchen island that divided the kitchen from the living area.
“If you’d sent me flowers, I would have taken them,” she said. “But I wasn’t going to take a piece of jewelry or a car or whatever ridiculous thing you were thinking of buying me.”
He rolled his eyes. “It wouldn’t have been a car.”
“Well, good,” she said, feeling a little flushed and embarrassed again for no good reason. Since they’d finished the kitchen, she went into the living room and got a handful of clothes and shoes to carry into her bedroom.
Cyrus just followed her into the bedroom. “So I take it you haven’t packed for the trip yet,” he said, eyeing the explosion of clothes and books in the room with amused astonishment.
“Just sit down and shut up,” she told him blithely, gesturing toward a chaise next to the large window.
Cyrus chuckled and went over to the chaise obediently while she dumped her armful of clothes in the closet and then went to gather another pile up from the bed and floor.
When she glanced over, she saw that Cyrus had started to pick up some of the clothes on the chaise. He held two tops, a pair of slacks, four silk scarves (since she hadn’t been able to decide which to wear the day before), and a velvet jacket. He was staring down at a ruby-red bra.
Helen laughed out loud and went to pick it up for him. She laughed even more when he glanced away from it.
“I would have thought a man who dated as much as you would be used to seeing and removing women’s bras,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed again, but she ignored the silly, flustered feeling and kept her voice dry.
To her surprise, Cyrus didn’t respond in kind. His blue eyes narrowed as he said coolly, “I haven’t dated that much for years, which you should know.”
“I do,” she said hurriedly. She dropped the bra with the other clothes she’d taken from Cyrus onto the bed and walked back over to him, feeling bad since she realized she’d offended him. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry.”
Cyrus dated semi-regularly, always gorgeous women but never casually or gratuitously. He would usually date them for at least a month before he moved on. His habit of one-night-stands had ended when she’d been fourteen—six years ago.
Helen assumed Cyrus was seriously looking for a woman to share his life with, and he’d even dated a couple of women who’d seemed smart, pretty, and nice. Not that she’d liked them. She didn’t really like anyone he dated.
It was probably some sort of irrational territorial instinct. Cyrus was like a best friend or family—and so he felt like he was hers in a certain way. His marriage to Rose Marie had interfered with that to a certain extent, and her relationships with Ethan had interfered with it even more. But since it had ended, they’d gotten even closer.
She was quite happy with the way things were, since it meant she could have Cyrus mostly to herself. Maybe it was selfish, but she would like it to stay that way for a little while longer.
She reached out and put a hand on his chest. “Don’t be mad at me.”
Cyrus’s face softened. “I’m not mad at you, kid.”
She frowned but didn’t say anything. She knew it was just an affectionate name for her—a remnant of their past together—but she was getting kind of tired of his calling her “kid.” She hadn’t been a kid for a long time, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his brows drawing together.
Since it wasn’t worth going into and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, she didn’t explain that she didn’t want him to call her that anymore. Instead, she just sighed and turned back to gather the clothes in her arms again. “Nothing,” she said, “I’m just rushed and flustered and not thinking straight. Let me get packed real quick.”
“Can I help?”
“Sure. Go find me a few outfits—one for dinner and something to wear tomorrow and the next day. I’ll get the rest.”
Cyrus went into her closet while she opened drawers and got socks, panties, bras, and pajamas. She’d packed them in her overnight bag when Cyrus returned with clothes draped over his arms. She nodded in approval as she inspected and then folded each article of clothing.
“Shoes,” she prompted, nodding back toward the closet.
By the time he returned with two pairs of shoes—sleek black ankle-boots and more comfortable loafers—she’d finished fitting the clothes in her bag.
She slid the shoes into the appropriate pockets and then zipped the bag. She went into her bathroom to pack her toiletries, and—as she quickly put makeup and other necessities into a small case—she simultaneously unclipped her hair and started to brush it out.
It fell in a long straight fall down her back to her waist. She should put it up again for the drive, so it wouldn’t get in her way, but she didn’t want to take the time.
“Now I just need to change clothes,” she said, taking her case into the bedroom and setting it by her bag. “Sorry it’s taking so long. I’ll just be another minute.”
