Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel)

by Novak, Brenda

“Sometimes I think you were born in the wrong century.” She was loose from the booze and no food.

  He gave her side-eyes.

  “I mean it in a good way,” she clarified. “Like you would have been so happy in the old west, where there were tons of jobs on the land and you could just ride your horse and sleep under the stars and eat beans.”

  He laughed. “Well, I hate beans, but the rest of it sounds good. But there’s still plenty of work to do in this century.”

  “What are you going to do this summer?”

  “I have pre-acceptance at Laramie Tech. Land Management.”

  “You didn’t tell me that!” she cried.

  He could blame his pink cheeks on the wind or the cold, but she knew the truth. And the truth was that big, bad, tough guy Dean McKenzie—blushed. “Well, it’s not Stanford—”

  “Stop,” she whispered. “Don’t do that. That’s exactly the program you wanted, and you worked hard to get there. It’s awesome. What did your dad say?”

  “That it was a miracle.” Dean kicked snow off the toe of his boot. Trina's Mom once said that Dean and his dad, Eugene, fought like cats in a bag. And it was true, they couldn't be in the same room without turning on each other.

  Dean didn't want what his father had. Not the money or the power. None of it. And Eugene could not understand that and so the fights were epic.

  Sometimes Trina didn't know who had it worse, her with her father and their long icy silences or Dean and his dad who clashed and fought and exploded against each other all the time.

  It was a crappy toss-up.

  “Screw him.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Dean tipped the flask to his lips and took a long pull. “Luckily, Laramie is far away and I’ll never have to come back here if I don’t want to.”

  “Hear, hear,” she said, and took a swig when he handed the flask back to her.

  The wind blew past the porch, and she couldn’t control her full-body shiver.

  “You’re freezing,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. But Dean got up off the blanket and wrapped the part he’d been sitting on around her. And then he tugged her against his chest, her cheek against the scratchy fabric of his camouflage snowmobile suit.

  Her eyes went wide. She held her breath, both trying and not trying to feel his body beneath the layers between them. But she felt stupid and awkward. Heavy and stiff, like she’d suddenly turned into a mannequin.

  She tried to pull away, because she didn’t know how to do that—how to lean back against Dean like it meant nothing. Because she didn’t know what she wanted it to mean. Or if it meant something to him.

  Basically, she just didn’t lean back against guys.

  “Just…relax,” he muttered, pulling her close, holding her still.

  She sighed and did as he asked. In stages, she just let him hold all her weight and all the worry on her back, and after a while, after all the awkwardness faded away, it just felt really good. To just let him hold her up. He was big. He was strong.

  He could handle it.

  Dean was the one person in her life with whom she didn’t have to hide all her garbage.

  “It’s Christmas Eve,” she said, staring up at the snow falling from a coal-black sky.

  “Yep.”

  “Won’t your family miss you? I mean the party?”

  “The McKenzie Christmas Eve Extravaganza will go on just fine without me. Besides, Josh is home.”

  “How is your brother?”

  “Still managing to breathe despite having his head up Dad’s butt.”

  It was almost impossible to believe that Dean and Josh were brothers, except they looked nearly identical. They were just so different. Dean lived in his body and in his smile, and he was a pretty decent guy. Josh lived in Skeletor’s Snake Mountain with the rest of the bad guys.

  “Thanks for the food,” she said, holding up the little bag. An olive fell out of one of the holes from the toothpicks, and she put it in her mouth.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t score any of the yule log. It hadn’t gone out yet.”

  Man, she did like the yule log.

  “Did you play?” She wiggled a piece of cheese out of the bag.

  “Yeah. Mom begged.” He sighed. “It’s not the same without you, though. ‘Silent Night’ just isn’t as pretty without the piano.”

  “I miss that party.”

  “No way,” he laughed. “It’s the one nice thing about our parents not being friends anymore. You don’t have to sit through that party.”

  She glanced up at the black, black sky and kept her mouth shut. He just wouldn’t understand how much she used to look forward to Christmas Eve. She’d loved that party. Loved that little half hour in the middle when she and Dean would play Christmas carols.

  “Can I ask you something, Trina?” he said after a while.

  “Sure.”

  “If your mom doesn’t come back…what are you going to do?”

  “Stay out of my dad’s way, not that that will be hard. And then, after I graduate, I’m going to leave and never come back.”

  “Never?”

  “Not ever.”

  He was quiet for a long time, and Trina sat up to look at him. He gave her a quick smile, then looked back out over the glittering snowdrifts to the red lights of the cars on the highway in the far distance.

  People leaving, going someplace else. Someplace better. That’s what she thought when she looked out at those lights.

  I want to be there, she thought. Tires on the road, this town in her rearview mirror.

  “You?” she asked.

  “Same. We gotta get outta Dusk Falls, Trina. Or they’ll poison us.”

  Their parents and this stupid feud between them. All over that patch of land at the boundary of their properties. The same patch of land Dean had ridden the ATV over to get here. The land with the coyotes.

  “Tell me something good,” she said. Having pulled away from Dean, she now wanted nothing more than to lean back against him. But by shifting away she felt like she’d sort of given up her claim.

  “My butt is numb.”

  “Mine too,” she laughed. “And I don’t think that’s good.”

  “Remember the year the Christmas tree fell over at the party?”

  “And smashed into the ice sculpture? Of course I remember. The look on your mom’s face…” She attempted to recreate it. A kind of slow motion horror/panic silent scream.

  “That’s actually not too bad,” he said.

  “Thank you. I’ve been working on impressions. Want to see my dad?” She dropped every ounce of expression from her face and stared out, unseeing, into the distance and pretended to drink a beer.

  “Uncanny,” he breathed.

  “Well if this law thing doesn’t work out, it’s good to know I have something I can fall back on.”

  “You know what I remember?” he asked. “About that party?”

  “That we were picking pine needles out of the cheese tray for like hours?”

  “No. Though that was funny. I remember how you, like… spun my grandma around so she wouldn’t see it and then distracted her.”

  “I asked her about how she ran the ranch during the war when your grandfather was overseas.”

  Dean looked down at her, and for a long moment Trina wasn’t sure what was happening. It seemed, sort of, like he might…might be thinking about kissing her. Not that she was totally sure of what that looked like. Her track record would indicate that she was not a girl that guys tried to kiss. Brian Goser kissed her last year, but he’d looked like he had a stomachache.

  And the kiss had kind of given her one.

  Dean looked intense, and his bright blue eyes were dark, and he was breathing hard. Every exhale turned into a plume of smoke around his head.

  And he looked like a man. And he made her feel—not at all like a kid. When he looked at her that way, she felt different.

  Like a woman? Was that what this feeling wa
s? Her skin felt too small to hold her. Her blood was hot in her veins and all she wanted, all she wanted in the world was to taste him.

  His skin. His lips.

  Just a little.

  Just a lot.

  But then he glanced away and the moment cracked like a thin layer of ice over the creek. “Well, Grandma loved to talk about that.”

  “She would have lost her shit if she saw that tree down,” Trina said, totally discomfited by what she’d imagined on his face. Embarrassed by how badly she wanted…what she wanted. Ridiculous. The cold was getting to her.

  “Luckily she’s deaf as a post and didn’t hear it fall.”

  “And you and your mom—you were like, superhuman cleaning that up.”

  “It’s what Mom and I are good at,” Dean agreed. “Cleaning stuff up.” He took a swig from the flask and then handed it back over to Trina. She took another sip. The flask was nearly empty, and she was much warmer. Because of the booze. Because he was here.

  What would I do if he wasn’t here? she wondered. And the endlessness of her life here blended hard with the endlessness of Wyoming. With her father’s land. And for a minute she couldn’t breathe. It was as if all the space…the distance, it pulled at her, picking apart her seams. And if she didn’t leave—didn’t concentrate really hard on who she was and who she wanted to be—she’d lose herself here.

  She’d just bleed into the air and the snow and mountains. The coyotes would take off with her.

  “My mom’s not coming back.” There was no use in pretending. No point.

  “No. She’s not.”

  “It’s just me and Dad now,” she said, her throat tight.

  “You got me,” he said. “I’m here, too.”

  “Thank you.” The tears she wouldn’t let fall were blinding her. Burning her eyes. But she held onto them. Held onto the pain. Stitching it into her skin, another thing that would keep her from getting lost in all this space. She was the inverse of Virginia Woolf, loading her pockets with rocks so she’d sink.

  Dean curled his hand around her shoulder and pulled her back into him.

  And she was so happy to rest back against him. The scratchy camouflage snowmobile suit couldn’t totally hide his warmth, the sturdy, solid feel of him. And she relished it.

  “You want to leave?” she asked. “We could go to Holly’s.” Holly’s was a bar on the edge of town that didn’t card, or at least didn’t card the two of them. And she was always open on Christmas Eve.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Freezing your ass off on my porch?”

  “Yep.”

  Oh, God, Dean.

  “Tell me how you’re going to go to Stanford,” he said. “And law school, and save the world from the evil corporations.”

  “Well, first I’m going to get a cape.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I might need a sidekick.”

  “Like a trusty dog or something? A sassy gay best friend?”

  “You’re not gay, are you?” she asked, shocked and tingly from the strange audacity of that question.

  His body shook with a laugh. “Not gay.”

  “Well, that rules you out, doesn’t it?”

  He laughed, and there was a strange quick pressure on the top of her head that she barely registered through the thick yarn of her hat.

  Did he… did he just kiss my head?

  She wished for a moment she was another kind of girl, the kind that was brave and bold and could turn around and kiss him. Right here on her dad’s porch.

  But in the end she was Trina Crawford, and so she just leaned against him and tried as hard as she could to soak up some of his strength.

  To last her. Because they were both leaving Dusk Falls.

  And they were never coming back.

  “Merry Christmas, Dean,” she whispered.

  “Merry Christmas, Trina.”

  Chapter Two

  December 24, 2003

  2:23 pm

  To: Tricrawford@hotmail.com

  From: meandean02@hotmail.com

  Hey Trina –

  I got your emails. Sorry I didn’t get back to you. It’s been a crazy year. College is good though. Hard. But fun. SO MANY PARTIES!! How about you? Stanford everything you wanted it to be? I hope so. Mom said you stopped by at Thanksgiving. Sorry, I wasn’t there. I’m staying at school for the holiday. Which is a little lonely, but better than being with Dad. Anyway. I’ll try to be better about writing you back. I miss you. And it’s Christmas Eve and I’m suddenly hungry for a yule log. Later – Dean.

  December 24, 2005

  7:13 PM

  Trina squeezed into the party through a front door that could barely open.

  “Sorry,” some guy said. He stepped out of the way of the door, but it still didn’t open too far.

  The room was wall to wall with people. This was not the “little holiday thing” Dean had talked about in his email. She’d expected a dinner party. An open house kind of thing.

  “Is this the right place?” Trevor asked. He squeezed in after her and they both stood against the closed door, sweltering in their winter coats and scarves. The cake box in her hand was suddenly ridiculous.

  “Is this Dean’s apartment?” she asked a girl walking past with two blue plastic cups held up over her head so they wouldn’t get bumped and spilled.

  “Yep,” the girl answered. She tossed back her blonde hair and jerked her chin toward the kitchen. “He’s at the keg.” And then she was gone. Swallowed up by the sea of people.

  “Give me your coat,” Trevor said. “I’ll find a place to stash them.”

  “I’ll… go say hi and get us some beers.”

  They handed the box between them and shrugged off coats, all while elbowing people who didn’t seem to care.

  “Lots of beers,” Trevor said, and kissed her on the cheek as she handed him her jacket. She loved Trevor, she did. He was capable and independent. He wasn’t intimidated by a room full of strangers. He even agreed to come to Laramie for a Christmas Eve party.

  They were going to try and make it romantic. They had a hotel room in town. Dinner reservations for tomorrow. The deal was they could check their phones and emails three times a day. That was it. That was the deal.

  He was perfect. Totally perfect.

  Trina made her way through the throngs of people toward the kitchen. Convincing herself it was all the people, the wall of body heat that was making her hands sweat against the cake box.

  But that didn’t really explain the butterflies in her stomach.

  It had been years since she’d seen Dean, but they’d gotten better about emails. And when he’d emailed and told her about the party, he probably wasn’t expecting her to come. It was undoubtedly just one of those things people say: I’m throwing a Christmas Eve party for some people I work with and friends who aren’t going home. You should come.

  She lived in Northern California, for crying out loud.

  Stuck between the living room and the kitchen, behind some people who were moving the couch to make a better dance floor, she realized how stupid this was.

  She’d travelled hundreds of miles, dragged her boyfriend and brought a freaking cake to some keg party thrown by a guy who probably didn’t even mean the invitation, all because Christmas Eve made her so crazy.

  She turned and began to head back. She and Trevor could go back to the hotel by the highway—

  “Trina?”

  The sound of her old friend’s voice made her smile. She turned back around and there he was, a head taller than everyone in the party.

  “You came!” His smile did not indicate that she was not welcome, that she’d been stupid to drive. His smile told her this party just got better by her being there. No one—not ever—had looked so glad to see her. And it was shockingly intimate. She wasn’t used to seeing someone’s happiness brought on by her.

  “I did!”

  He didn’t have the same problem she did cutting through the crowd�
��people seemed to make way for him. And quite suddenly, he was there. Right in front of her.

  “Awesome,” he said, and he leaned down a little and she got up on her tiptoes and they hugged. Hard. They never hugged, not even on graduation night when he got so drunk and wanted to egg his own house and she managed to stop him.

  But they were hugging now. He had his arms around her back, lifting her up and into him. She was balancing the cake box behind his head. Totally unexpectedly, she was swept up by some kind of giddy nostalgia, a bright happiness to see him. She’d forgotten how big he was. Or maybe how small she was.

  Because in his arms, she suddenly felt very tiny.

  He smelled slightly of beer and sweat and deodorant and something that reminded her a little of elementary school. Or maybe that was just some kind of Pavlov’s response, since she’d gone to school with him every year from kindergarten to high school.

  The music got cranked up, old Garth Brooks, and someone bumped into them and the hug was over, though Dean kept his hand on her elbow, pulling her and the cake box behind him into the kitchen.

  His hand on her skin felt conspicuous, and she tried to ignore it. But the feeling spread, and soon her whole body felt awkward and strange. Not hers.

  Finally they stopped in a quiet corner near a pantry door. “I can’t believe you came,” he said, smiling down at her.

  “I guess it is a little crazy.”

  “The best kind of crazy,” he said. “What’s in the box?”

  “Something really crazy. Honestly, I’m not sure what I was thinking—”

  “Is it for me?”

  “Yes. I mean, I guess it was for the party. But it’s clearly not that kind of party.”

  He broke the tape on the sides of the box and lifted it.

  Stupid. Such a stupid idea. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “This isn’t for me!” He laughed, that fond teasing laugh she’d forgotten about. “It’s for you.”

  “No! It’s—”

  “Awesome,” he said. “I haven’t had a yule log in years. I’ll hide it behind the milk in the fridge so no one will find it.”

  Someone walked past with a full cup of beer from the keg in the corner, and Dean grabbed it from the guy and gave it to her.