As the man started down the path toward her, awareness flickered through Faith, warming her chilled skin, and surprising the hell out of her in the process.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been attracted to a guy, but it had to have been more than a year. She’d broken up with her first and only boyfriend, Eli, at a Halloween party the year before and hadn’t dated anyone since.
She had high standards—impossibly high to hear her mom talk—and refused to compromise them. Faith knew what she wanted in a man and wasn’t willing to settle for anything less. She understood that meant she might spend the rest of her life alone, but she was fine with that. Almost as fine as she pretended to be around Jake and Jamison…
She had urges like everyone else, but she wasn’t the type to get silly over a guy just because he had broad shoulders, or a nice body, or a confident strut. Or all three. Especially before she’d even gotten a look at the broad-shouldered, nice-bodied, confident-strutting man’s face.
Faith warned her libido that the guy coming toward her could have chewing tobacco sores in his mouth or a butt picking habit. He could be a creepy mouth breather, or a sociopath, or a cocky jerk every bit as obnoxious as Neil. But the mental simmer-down talk did nothing to cool Faith’s flushed cheeks. She was still warm all over and buzzing in places that hadn’t buzzed in ages, when the man stepped into the gaslight’s glow and the shadows concealing his features faded away.
“Mick Whitehouse?” His name burst from her lips in a tone every bit as incredulous as she felt. Faith slapped a hand over her mouth, mortified by her outburst, but it was too late. Mick’s gaze had already shifted her way.
“Faith Miller. There you are.” He laughed—a little uncomfortably Faith thought—before ambling toward the arbor “My sister saw you head out here and asked me to come check on you. You okay?”
Was she okay?
No, she was not okay! She’d just been feeling frisky feelings about a guy she’d known since she was in kindergarten, a boy she used to pound on in second grade when she was going through hell at home and he was the only person in her class smaller than she was. These days, Faith was a respectable five eight and one-hundred-and-fifty pounds of pure muscle, but back in elementary school she’d been the runt of the litter.
Except for Mick Whitehouse, the shortest boy in class, all the way until graduation five years ago.
Mick Whitehouse, who had obviously done quite a bit of developing and lifting of heavy things since then, who had grown into his big, goofy grin and whose smile now made things low in Faith’s body flutter.
But Faith knew she couldn’t say any of those things. Ever.
“I’m fine,” she said, doing her best to keep her teeth from chattering. “I’m just hiding from Neil.”
“Ah, I see.” Mick nodded, casting a glance back at the ballroom as he stopped in front of her, close enough for her to smell the sugar cookie and clove scent clinging to his tux. It was a homey smell and shouldn’t have made Faith’s flutters any worse, but it did, ramping up her awareness of the man Mick had become, proving her body was in a state of full-out rebellion.
“Naomi told me about Neil,” Mick said, sending another zing of awareness coursing through her as his big blue eyes met hers. “He sounds like a hairy asshole.”
“The hairiest asshole ever,” Faith said, laughing as she wrapped her arms tighter around her body, determined to get a hold on herself. “Actually, he’s more like a dingle berry clinging to the hairy asshole. Wouldn’t want to give him too much credit.”
Mick laughed, a sexy rumble that did nothing to help Faith with the “getting hold of herself” thing. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
Faith shrugged and exhaled a puff of crystalline fog, wondering why the question hurt a little. “I don’t know. I guess not.”
“Here, take my coat,” Mick said, shrugging out of his tuxedo jacket and swinging it around her shoulders before she could insist that she didn’t need it. “You’re turning blue around the edges.”
“Thanks.” She paused, looking up at Mick, still trying to wrap her head around the fact that she had to look up at Mick Whitehouse. Senior year, he’d barely come to the bottom of her chin.
“You certainly have changed, though,” she continued, motioning up and down with one hand before she tucked her arm back inside his coat. “When did you do this whole…turning into a giant thing?”
Mick smiled. “Freshman year of college. I grew six inches in ten months. I was a human string bean. Took me all of sophomore year to eat and exercise enough to put any muscle on, but I finally managed.”
Boy had he managed…
“Well, it looks good on you,” Faith said, careful to keep her tone friendly, just a casual compliment from the girl who used to shove him off the monkey bars in elementary school.
Which reminded her…
“Sorry for pounding on you back when we were kids,” Faith said. “I don’t think I ever apologized for that, and I should have.”
“Afraid I’m going to take my revenge now that I’m the bigger, stronger one?” he asked, stepping closer, a teasing twinkle in his eye that made Faith smile no matter how hard she tried not to.
“No,” she said, rolling her eyes, acutely aware that Mick had joined her under the arbor and was now standing less than a foot away. “I just wanted you to know I’m sorry. I was going through some crappy stuff back then and I took it out on you, and that wasn’t right. So maybe I’ve been too hard on Neil. Maybe I’m the asshole.”
“You’re not the asshole,” Mick said softly, brushing a hair the wind had whipped into her lip gloss back over her shoulder, making Faith’s heart lurch and her throat feel tighter than it did before.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “I was just thinking that I could probably still take you down if I had to. Even if you do have fifty pounds on me.”
Mick’s eyebrows lifted, and his smile grew wider. “I’d say more like sixty or seventy. I weigh in at two ten on a good lifting week. Even with those gorgeous arms, you can’t be more than a hundred and fifty.”
“It’s not good manners to talk about a woman’s weight,” Faith said, the “gorgeous” part of his comment flustering her more than she would have liked.
“It is when you’re trying to convince her she’s not in the same weight class you are.” Mick braced one hand on the arbor above Faith’s head, his face so close to hers she could smell the mulled cider on his breath. “And that she shouldn’t start something she can’t finish.”
“Oh, I could finish it,” Faith said, lips tingling from the electricity crackling in the air between them. “Don’t underestimate me, Whitehouse.”
“Never. I’ve heard all about you, Miller.”
“Oh, yeah?” Faith asked, voice so breathy she barely recognized it. “And what have you heard?”
“Enough to know you’re probably going to punch me if I kiss you right now,” he said, pushing on before Faith could talk her heart down from where it had lodged in her throat. “But you’re standing under the mistletoe.”
Faith’s eyes flicked up to spy a sprig of mistletoe dangling from the top of the arbor, the sight sending her heart diving down to collide with her flipping stomach.
“And your pal Neil just stepped outside,” Mick continued, cupping her face in one big hand, sending a rush of heat spreading from his warm skin to every inch of her body. “And I’m not the type to let a chance to kill two birds with one stone slip through my fingers.”
Faith opened her mouth to protest—to tell Mick she didn’t kiss people she didn’t know, or hardly knew, considering that until tonight, she hadn’t spoken more than six words to him since grade school—but before she could get her tongue to cooperate, Mick’s tongue was slipping between her lips.
For one crystal-clear, breathless moment, time stopped. Something deep inside of Faith stilled, paralyzed by the recognition that she had never felt like this, never had a man’s kiss ignite something combustible at
her center even as it sent sweet, easy warmth spreading through her chest like molasses. It was a moment of enlightenment, brief but powerful, rocking her to the core before the fireworks exploded.
And there were sparks of light dancing in the air around Mick’s face, in the vines above their heads, in the pockets of darkness at the edges of her vision. Even when Faith’s eyes closed with a moan, her arms wrapped around Mick’s shoulders, and she kissed him back with everything in her—tongue sparring with his as his arms drew her closer and his heat warmed her from head to toe—the night was still sparkling.
Sparkling. Like too much champagne, like a hundred cameras flashing at once. Mick’s kiss was dizzying, blinding.
None of the sweet, respectful, perfectly acceptable kisses she’d had in the past could compare to this, to feeling like a door had opened in a guarded part of her and Mick was walking inside, seeing all the dusty corners and childhood fears and secrets Faith did her best to keep concealed. She felt exposed, but helpless to close the door he’d opened. Because closing the door would involve pulling away from Mick, and that was…unthinkable.
She didn’t ever want this moment to end. She wanted to stay right here, marooned on an island of kiss-generated warmth while the rest of the cold world spun on without her. For the first time in her life, Faith knew what people meant when they said they’d been swept off their feet. She had been swept, so completely swept that by the time Mick finally pulled away her head was spinning and her body floating with all ten toes still on the ground.
“He’s gone,” Mick said, his breath coming faster and his arms still tight around her, holding her so close Faith could feel the strong planes of his body pressed tight to hers.
“Who?” Faith asked, blinking once, twice, hoping it might help banish the fizzy haze clouding her thoughts.
“Neil,” Mick said, but it still took a beat for Faith to remember who Neil was and why she should care.
“Oh, right,” she said. “Well…good.”
“Great,” Mick said, squeezing the curve of her hip with one hand, the touch so intimate and possessive that it helped bring Faith back to her senses.
She stepped back, untangling herself from Mick’s arms, welcoming the sharp gust of cold, thought-clearing air that rushed in between them.
This was crazy. Mick Whitehouse hardly knew her, and he certainly didn’t respect her. If he did, he wouldn’t have assumed he had the right to kiss her—mistletoe or no mistletoe—and certainly wouldn’t have run his hands over her like she was property that belonged to him when he hadn’t even so much as asked her out on a date. She should be livid with this man. Her hands should be balling up, ready to teach him some respect with a swift sucker punch to the gut.
Instead, she was still tingling all over, achy and needy and wanting nothing more than to be back in Mick’s arms. She wanted him to pull her tight against him and kiss her senseless all over again. She wanted him to put his hands wherever he wanted—do whatever he wanted to do to her—as long as he kept making her feel like she was sparkling from the inside out.
Faith wasn’t scared of much—not burning buildings, or mean dogs, or meaner people, even those twice her size—but suddenly she was scared to death.
This must be how her mother had felt, all those times Pressie Miller had been so gone on a guy she’d let Faith’s welfare take a backseat to the man of the moment. This craving for more of a man’s touch was why Pressie used to feed Faith at four o’clock and send her to her cramped room by five-thirty so her daughter wouldn’t be underfoot when Hank or Ron or Pete got home. This was why it took Pressie six months and catching Hank in the act to believe Faith when she said that Hank hurt her when her mom wasn’t around, that he pinched her arms and legs and told her he wished she would get lost and stay lost, that he wished she had never been born because her mama would have been better off without a burden like Faith hanging around her neck.
“Faith? Are you okay?” Mick asked.
Something in his voice made Faith believe it wasn’t the first time he’d asked, but she couldn’t seem to get her mouth to move. She was too horrified, terrified by the realization that she was her mother’s daughter, after all, as pathetic as the woman she had spent her life struggling not to become.
Mick put a gentle hand on her shoulder, but Faith shrugged it off with a swift whip of her hand.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice tight as she stripped off Mick’s tuxedo jacket and held it out to him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his handsome brow knitted with concern, making no move to take the jacket.
He looked even more tempting with his lips puffy and his dark curls mussed from where she’d driven her fingers through his hair while they were kissing, Faith thought, disgusted with herself for noticing.
“Nothing, I just have to go,” she said, giving the jacket a shake, indicating that he should take it.
“Listen, if this is about the kiss,” Mick said, still not reaching for the coat, “then I’m sorry. I just wanted Neil to get the message to back off and…I wanted you to know that I like you.”
Faith frowned. “You like me? You don’t even know me.”
“Sure I do,” Mick said. “I know you’re funny and interesting and different than any of the other girls around here, as well as one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”
Strong.
She wasn’t strong. She was weak, as weak as her mother, and she couldn’t stay here with the man who had made her realize it another second.
“Sorry, I’m not interested.” Without another word, she dropped Mick’s jacket to the ground between them and darted from beneath the arbor, moving so fast she was halfway down the path when Mick called out.
“Why not?” he asked, starting after her. “Can I at least call you? Can we go out for coffee or something and talk about—”
“I don’t talk,” Faith threw over her shoulder, rounding the gaslight at the center of the garden and aiming herself for the ballroom. “And I don’t date. Ever.”
“Never?” Mick asked with a laugh, obviously not understanding that this was no laughing matter.
Faith stopped, spinning back to face him to make sure he got her message loud and clear. “Never. So don’t call me, don’t think about me, don’t even look at me sideways if we run into each other on the street. Got it?”
“What about straight on?” Mick asked.
“What?” she asked, a scowl pulling at her face.
“If we run into each other on the street, can I look at you straight on?”
“I’m not kidding,” Faith said, pointing one accusing finger at the arbor. “That never should have happened, and it’s never going to happen again.”
“Never is a long time.” The humor vanished from his expression. “Especially to go without another kiss like that,” he said in a low, husky voice that made Faith’s traitorous body start to tingle all over again. “I can’t remember the last time a kiss made me feel like that, and I know you felt it, too.”
“Like I said, you don’t know anything about me.” Faith stood up straighter, determined not to show any more weakness tonight. “Goodbye, Mick.”
She turned, grabbing the door handle and hurling herself into the warmth of the ballroom, ignoring the fact that the night seemed colder than it did before.
Colder than back before she knew what she was missing, before Mick Whitehouse set her to sparkling and blew her happy, simple, single-and-loving-it world apart.
Chapter Fourteen
Naomi finished checking the coats and headed to the fireplace, but Jake wasn’t there to meet her. She threaded her way through the crowd and circled around the refreshment table, only to find no trace of Jake or Maddie’s to-die-for caramel medallions, just an unhappy-looking Faith escaping into the garden.
After sending Mick to check on Faith—figuring he could use some help doing his good deed for the day—Naomi snagged a maple walnut cookie and wandered back to the fireplace. She assumed Jake m
ust be stuck in line for the restroom or have been kidnapped by someone needing him to carry something (which happened a lot when a person had muscles as big as his), but after another fifteen minutes, she started to worry.
After twenty, she did a thorough search of the ballroom and adjoining rooms in the historical home before taking her search outside. But she made her way all the way around the house to the parking lot without seeing a soul.
Assuming she and Jake must be chasing each other in circles, Naomi turned back toward the ballroom, determined to stay by the fireplace until Jake found her, when an engine rumbled to life in the parking lot behind her. She turned, surprised to see Jake’s truck backing jerkily out of its spot and peeling toward the exit with a speed that wasn’t like him.
Jake didn’t drive like that, especially in places where there might be people around who could get hurt. He must have loaned his truck to someone…someone who needed to calm down before they headed toward Summerville.
Naomi frowned and started across the parking lot to see who was at the wheel, but before she could reach the truck, the driver pulled onto the road headed away from town and roared into the darkness with a squeal of tires.
“Crap,” Naomi muttered, crossing her arms at her chest. She was getting used to the cold, but not enough to wander around with bare arms for more than a few minutes. She should have held on to her coat and her purse. That way she could have called Jake to let him know where she was, and that whoever had his truck might have had a bit too much mulled cider.
She was on her way back inside to get in line for the coat check and reclaim her purse when she spotted Jamison headed across the parking lot. He emerged between two minivans, his swift footsteps crunching the gravel and his breath coming fast enough to look like a steam engine sending up puffs of smoke.
Melt With You (Fire and Icing) Page 13
