“Guess we can call it a night,” he told Gus, and went up the stairs.
A light shone out from under Casey’s bedroom door, but he was sure she was settling down for the night. He breathed a sigh of relief as he went into his own room.
This was crazy, almost unbelievable. He’d been so worried about Casey’s reaction to his day, but he was the one who ended up with the problem. She’d been fine. He’d been the one craving the soothing and solace.
He sat on the bed and took off one shoe, tossing it toward the closet. His aim was off. Rather than fall on the rug with a soft thud, it took a crazy turn and hit the closet door, making enough racket to wake up Dubber’s household.
A few seconds later, his bedroom door burst open and slammed against the wall. “Mike?” Casey asked. “Are you okay? I heard a noise.”
She was in her flannel nightgown and her thick socks, and looked so sexy it took his breath away. She’d spoken, he knew she had, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what the words had been.
“Are you okay?” she repeated.
“Uh, yeah.” He forced a coherency into his head. “It was just my shoe. Though I may need a new wall. You always enter rooms that way?”
“It kind of flew open,” she said with a grin.
His heart reacted to her smile like it had been shocked into double time. “Kind of?” He would just sit here and the reaction would pass. Or he could go haul more trash, though he might have to borrow some. That apartment was pretty well cleaned out.
“I think Simon helped.” She came farther into the room.
“Simon was worried, too?”
“Well, you said you got light-headed after being in a chase. I was afraid you’d keeled over.”
“I’m fine.” Except that she was too close and coming closer. If she would just leave…
“Are you sure?” She stopped in front of him. “You look kind of funny.”
He had to get her to go. “Melvin keel over a lot?” he asked, knowing this would work. “I’m a bit tougher than he is.”
But she just laughed. “You sure are,” she said. “Melvin gets nauseous at high speeds.”
“Like thirty?”
“Make that twenty-five.”
Why wasn’t she getting mad? She’d always leaped to Melvin’s defense. “He probably wouldn’t have liked diving in a ditch to avoid the crash, either.”
“Is that how you escaped getting hurt? I wondered.”
She sat down on the bed next to him. His body cried out for her, his hands ached to slide under that silly nightgown with its little teddy bears and run along the cool length of her skin.
“You should have asked,” he said. His voice sounded half-strangled.
“I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk about it.”
She touched his hand lightly, running her fingers over the back of it and causing shock waves to race up his arm. He could scarcely breathe. He wanted to grab his hand away, but couldn’t move.
“I don’t know how you guys feel about those things,” she continued as her fingers moved slowly up his arm, still with that featherlight touch that packed a wallop even through his shirt. “You know, whether you’d want to talk about it or not.”
“I’m not sure you ought to do that,” he said, his voice trembling.
“I’m willing to risk the consequences.”
She reached over and began to unbutton his shirt. One button, then another, then another until his mouth was so dry he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak or think or do anything but feel his heart beat.
No, there were a few things left he could do. His hands could reach out to touch Casey’s face, to slide over the softness of her cheek and brush ever so lightly those lips that drove him crazy. They were warm and moist and oh, so very kissable. So that was what he had to do—kiss them and kiss them again and kiss them once more.
His hands slid over her back. The flannel nightgown might as well not have been there. He could have sworn he felt her skin right through it, felt the fire that was consuming him spreading over her. He let his hands pull at the fabric until he could get them underneath it, to feel if her skin was really afire or if it would cool him, cool his ardor.
But she was pushing his shirt off even as her lips were taking everything he had to give. Pressing against him, harder, stronger, more insistently. He could feel her tremble as if a mixture of fear and hunger and wonder were racing through her, each burning in her heart. Her hands slid over his shoulders, caressing his scar and wiping all memories of pain away forever. He fell back against the bed, taking her down with him.
“I thought we weren’t going to do this again,” he whispered into her hair. The scent of it drove him wild, made it impossible to think.
“When did we say that?” she answered.
Her voice teased him, turned his desire into a need so raging and strong that he was sure he would explode. He pulled her nightgown off over her head, then let his lips touch the tips of her breasts. One at a time, he took them into his mouth, tasting their sweet fullness as his blood surged.
“This isn’t fair,” she said softly, as her hands tried to unbuckle his belt. “You have more clothes on.”
“That can be fixed.”
His lips could not stray from the wonder of her softness, but his hands unbuckled his belt and undid his pants. Together they pushed the rest of his clothes to the floor, so that they lay naked side by side, heart to heart, lips to lips. He got his condom from the drawer and slipped it on, then pulled her closer once more.
They kissed, they touched, they awoke new passions that they had never known existed, and then at the last moment, he entered her. They held still for one sweet, delicious, explosive moment, then their passions burst forth and they moved as one. Clung together as if they were one, and then slowly lay back in each other’s arms, still one in peace and love.
“Thank you,” he whispered, kissing her forehead softly.
“What for?”
“For you,” he said, and closed his eyes.
Casey climbed carefully from Mike’s bed. He was sound asleep, but Gus opened one eye. She shook her head at him and he closed his eyes as she slipped from the room. Casey crept carefully down the stairs with Snowflake following her.
So much had happened today. There was no way she could sleep. Mike’s accident. Her realization that she was in love with him. Making love. She went into the living room, leaving the lights off as she and Snowflake settled on the sofa. She could see the dark shape of the Christmas tree in the corner and took a long, deep breath. It had indeed been quite a day.
A faint scent of peppermint seemed to fill the room, but Casey didn’t stir. Snowflake sat up slightly, as if watching something only she could see. Casey didn’t need to see Simon, though; she could feel his presence.
“Hi, Simon,” she said softly. “How’s it going? We’ve had quite a day, haven’t we?”
She didn’t sense the tension in the room she’d felt around him before. It was almost as if he was just a friend over for a visit.
“I was so scared today,” she told him. “I was sure something had happened to Mike, but I couldn’t let him know.”
A tiny shiver went through her, a trace of the day’s terrors, as she laid her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes. Saying the words aloud seemed to help. Saying them aloud to Mike would help the most, she suspected. But would hurt the most, too.
“If I tell him I was worried, he’ll know I love him. And if I tell him I love him, he’ll know I’ll worry. Either way, I lose. So I guess I have to keep my mouth shut.”
For a split second, the grief and longing and regret in the room were so thick she could almost touch them. But then the sense of Simon’s presence and the peppermint faded and she was alone in the darkness with Snowflake. Alone and on her own. The cat curled up in her lap, ready to go to sleep.
“Those aren’t the only things that happened,” Casey said softly. “I keep forgetting one big one.”
Only was it so big if she kept forgetting it? No, it couldn’t be. She had finally put the past in its place. Her worry over Mike had showed her that it was now and tomorrow that counted the most. Not yesterday, or some day long past. Or people long distant from her life.
Casey picked up Snowflake and tiptoed up to her own room. There she took her wallet from her purse and that horrible, stupid clipping from her wallet.
“This has haunted me for too long,” she told her cat. “It doesn’t matter what my mother thought of me.”
She crumbled the paper up into a ball and tossed it toward the wastebasket. Snowflake caught it in a rare moment of agility and batted it across the floor. Casey just laughed softly. That’s all it was good for—a cat toy. The words printed there had no power over her anymore.
“Come on, Snowflake,” she said as she picked up the cat. “We’ve got a better place to be. Let’s get back to bed.”
Chapter Eleven
“Okay.” Casey stopped just inside the entrance to the mall and stomped the snow from her boots. Shoppers streamed all around them, so she pulled Mike off to the side. “Do you have a list with you or do you just wing it?”
He looked confused. “How do you ‘wing’ Christmas shopping?” he asked. “I’d end up with no gifts.”
“Or the perfect ones,” she said. “I like to just look and wait for something to call out to me.”
“You really should see someone about all these voices you hear,” he said, and pulled a paper from his coat pocket. “I need a toy store, a department store and a hardware store.”
“And some imagination. Now, who are you shopping for?”
“Stephen’s family. Joy gave me a list, complete with sizes and colors.”
Casey took the list from his hand and frowned at it. “Don’t you know Christmas is supposed to be full of surprises?”
“I don’t do surprises,” he said.
She put the list in her pocket and took his hand. “We’ll start down at this end.”
“I suppose Melvin’s a creative shopper,” he said.
“As a matter of fact, he is.”
“Maybe you should have asked him to go shopping with you then.”
She frowned at him, then pulled him into a store specializing in blue jeans. “I bet there’d be something here Kate would love.”
Mike just looked around the store, as if the clothing displays were some sort of foreign symbols. “Joy said to get her a case to store her CDs.”
“Just look, will you?” Casey said.
He took a step toward a rack of denim blouses. “She won’t like whatever I pick. It’ll be the wrong color or size or style.”
“I’ll help you figure out sizes.”
He looked through the blouses carefully, looking at each one as if he was hoping for a sign that said Kate Would Love Me. He stopped at one. “I’ve seen a lot of the college girls wearing this kind of thing.”
“There’s nothing a sixteen-year-old wants more than to look like a college girl,” Casey said, and peered at the size tag. “I say take it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why are you so afraid to take a risk?” she asked. “If someone isn’t crazy about a gift, it’s not a rejection of you.”
He frowned at her. “I’m not worried about rejection,” he said. “I just don’t trust my reading of people.”
“But as a cop, you read people all the time.”
“That’s different. It’s not personal.”
Casey just took the blouse off the rack, grasped him by the arm and went toward the cashier. “Believe me, sixteenyear-old girls are just what they seem.”
“What about twenty-six-year-old girls?”
He was looking into her eyes, asking her some question only her heart could hear. But it wasn’t translating for her. Her mouth went dry, her breath got ragged and her hands itched to hold him.
“We aren’t girls,” she murmured. “We’re women.”
“Hey, Casey! Hey, Mike.”
The spell broken, Casey turned. Dubber and Tiffany were next to them, their arms loaded with packages, but smiles on their faces.
“Hi,” Casey said. “I thought you guys did your Christmas shopping already.”
“Only part of it,” Tiffany said.
“Want to do mine for me?” Mike asked. “I got a list and I’ll pay you.”
Casey playfully punched him in the ribs and he responded by slipping his arm around her shoulders. Her stomach tightened deliciously, but she just smiled at the kids.
“You sure got a lot of garbage out by the curb,” Dubber said. “My mom says you must’ve been cleaning all night.”
“Just for a few hours,” Mike said.
“What were you cleaning last night for, anyway?” Tiffany asked. “My dad told my mom that you’d be ringing bells.”
Casey felt her cheeks go red even as Mike’s arm tightened a fraction around her. She could feel his slight shaking; he, too, was trying not to laugh.
“Ringing what bells?” Dubber was asking with a confused frown. “Mike ain’t got no bells in his house, unless you mean doorbells.”
“I don’t know,” Tiffany snapped. “What about dumbbells? Doesn’t he have a weight-lifting set?”
“Yeah, but how do you ring dumbbells?” Dubber waved his arms in emphasis and almost hit Mike. “I think you’re the dumbbell. Your dad never said nothing so weird as that.”
“Who you calling a dumbbell?”
It was time to step in, but Mike beat her to it. “Kids, kids,” he said. “Let’s cool it.”
They quieted, but flashed glares in the other’s direction.
“I think Tiffany’s dad wasn’t talking about real bells,” Casey said. “I think he meant that Mike would be celebrating because he was okay.”
“And when you celebrate you sometimes ring bells,” he added. “You know. Like on New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh.”
“I get it,” Tiffany said, then looked at her watch. “We got to get going. We’re meeting my mom in half an hour and we ain’t done yet.”
“It was nice seeing you,” Casey said.
“Yeah. Later,” Dubber said, as he and Tiffany hurried out of the store.
“Ringing bells?” Mike said. “Where did that come from?”
Casey just laughed as she tucked her arm into his. “I don’t know about you, but I distinctly heard bells last night.”
“Maybe Simon was ringing to get in.”
“No,” she whispered softly, leaning close enough to touch his ear with her lips. “It definitely was not Simon ringing them.”
She got Mike to blush, then blush some more when she laughed.
Mike paid for the blouse for Kate, then they moved on, finding a set of books for Monica in one store and some skates for Brad in another, and a clock radio for collegeage Rob. Casey got sweaters for her twin brothers and a desk organizer for her stepmother, who always complained she couldn’t find anything. She found a wonderful sculpture of a father and child in a local artist’s display for her dad, while Mike got a crystal decanter set for Stephen and Joy.
“Why don’t I run these out to the car?” Mike suggested. “It’ll make it easier to shop for more.”
“I’m not sure I’m up for more,” Casey said. “But go ahead. I still have a couple of things to get. I’ll meet you down by the drugstore.”
So while Mike went out to the car, Casey strolled toward the drug store. She found a sweatshirt-printing store that had a shirt with a dog on it that looked just like Gus, and couldn’t help buying it for Mike.
In another day or two, her heart might actually be back to its regular pace and she could think about yesterday without tasting panic in her mouth. Somehow, though, she’d managed to keep her fears a secret from Mike. She had no idea how; she would have thought half the town could have written an article about it for the newspaper. But somehow Mike didn’t seem to know.
“Casey?” Mrs. Kinder was coming out of the tie shop
. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m fine.”
The woman patted her hand. “Did you get any sleep last night at all?” she asked.
Casey stared for a long moment. Just what was the woman suggesting might have kept her up all night? Worry, it had to be worry. “Uh, yes, I did,” Casey finally managed to reply.
“Well, you tell that young man of yours not to be so crazy in the future,” the older woman said.
“He’s not really—”
“And to call to let you know he’s okay,” the woman added.
It was easier to agree than to explain the real situation. And besides, what was the real situation now? “Yes, I will,” Casey said.
The other woman headed off, letting her finish her walk to the drugstore. What was the situation now? Casey asked herself. Things had changed so she no longer knew where they stood, but how did you ask your friend-loverroommate to define your relationship?
Mike was waiting outside the drugstore. His eyes grew darker when he saw her approaching, and Casey suddenly didn’t care how they defined their relationship, just so long as they had one.
“Sorry, I ran into Mrs. Kinder.”
“Not literally, I hope. I’m pretty sure my homeowner’s policy wouldn’t cover it.”
Casey just laughed and took his arm. “Only a few more small gifts to go,” she said.
“And one major one,” he said.
“One major one?” she repeated. “I got my dad’s, my stepmother’s and my brothers’. The family had a portrait taken at Thanksgiving to give my grandmother. Who’s left?”
“Melvin.”
“You are becoming more annoying than he is,” she told him. “Melvin and I are friends. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Would he have a problem with me?”
“How could he have a problem with you?” Casey asked. “He’s never met you and isn’t likely to.”
This was where he could tell her she was wrong, that he and Melvin would meet when he came to Ann Arbor to visit her. Or when they—
”There’s the perfect gift for old Melvin,” Mike said, pulling her to a stop outside the bookstore.
Christmas Magic Page 18
