Holiday Sparks

by Shannon Stacey

  “Honey, if I get any more distracted, I’m not going to be able to walk today.”

  She sighed in a regretful way that just turned him on even more. “Okay, but plan on a long lunch break.”

  “Meet me in your bedroom at noon.”

  “It’s a date.” She gave him a look that almost set his hair on fire and walked away.

  Scott looked at his watch. A grueling, endless four hours until lunch. If he made it that long.

  * * *

  “What about this one?”

  Chloe eyed the sweater Scott was holding up with a skeptical eye. “You said your sister was a little overweight. Somehow I doubt she’d appreciate Pepto Bismol-colored horizontal stripes.”

  “This sucks.”

  She just laughed and shook her head. They were playing hooky together, skipping work to make the drive into New Hampshire for some last minute, tax-free Christmas shopping. While they’d already made two trips to her car to unload her bags, he’d yet to buy a single thing.

  She was running out of suggestions. “Why don’t you get her a gift card?”

  “We’re not allowed to give gift cards. Ma says it’s not personal enough and Lanie says it’s a cop-out.”

  Lanie being his sister, who’d probably appreciate a gift card more than an ugly pink sweater, no matter what she might say. “How about a big gift basket with bath oils and lotions and stuff.”

  “I don’t know what she wants to smell like.”

  “What does she smell like now?”

  He frowned and threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know. She smells like…Lanie.”

  She tried not to laugh at his growing frustration, but he was so damn cute trying to find the perfect gifts for his family. He was cute anyway, but seeing the side of him that was son and brother and uncle made her feel a little mushy on the inside.

  With their holiday fling half over, feeling mushy on the inside was something she was having to resist more and more often. They worked and they made love, but they also sprawled on her couch and watched movies. They took walks in the snow with Kojak. They argued politics and told bad jokes.

  Their compatibility extended beyond the bedroom and that worried her. She’d agreed to a fling and flings didn’t include feelings like the ones she thought she might be starting to feel for him.

  “There’s nothing good here.” He was starting to sound downright grumpy.

  “Let’s walk across the street to the steakhouse and have lunch.” Maybe some charbroiled protein would boost his spirits. If not, she could at least have a drink. Or two.

  “How’s Operation Secret Santa going?” he asked after they’d been seated and ordered too much food.

  “So far so good. If they knew the truth, I’m sure I’d have heard from Dad by now.”

  It had become obvious after a couple of phone calls from her mother they wouldn’t be able to explain away Scott’s near-constant presence at the Burke house by either a blown fuse or even a torrid affair. So they started with her mother’s best friend, who was the most likely culprit for the dime-dropping, and quietly spread the word Chloe was buying them an electrical upgrade for Christmas and nobody could tell John or Anna. That meant no picking up the phone every time the Quinn Electric truck was seen in the driveway.

  Since the only thing more juicy than gossip was keeping secrets, it seemed to be working. Anna was still under the impression her daughter was in a blossoming relationship with Scott Quinn, but at least people had stopped calling her, which meant she’d stopped calling Chloe.

  “Speaking of family,” she said. “What have you told your family about me?”

  He shrugged. “I told them up I’m upgrading your wiring.”

  Since that probably wasn’t a euphemism for having sex, she felt a pang of disappointment. “Oh.”

  Something about her tone must have caught his attention because his expression turned wary. “I thought it would be easiest that way.”

  “So they haven’t heard any of the gossip about us being a couple?”

  “They did. But I explained to them we were trying to keep the rewiring a secret and that was the reason you gave your mom.”

  So he’d made it very clear to the people who mattered most to him he wasn’t sleeping with her. Despite her constant—and apparently futile—attempts to keep her emotions out of their relationship, that hurt.

  “Look,” he said, “my family’s been after me to settle down for a while. If they knew we’re…having a fling, they’d be all up in our business. Hell, they’d probably start sliding bridal magazines under your door and that’s not what we’re doing here.”

  No, it wasn’t. And she’d do well to remember that. “No sense in getting their hopes up.”

  When their meals were delivered, she deliberately steered the conversation back to Christmas shopping. Even though shopping with Scott had stopped being fun about six stores ago, it was better than thinking about their relationship. Or non-relationship, as it was supposed to be.

  Reining in her emotions and focusing on enjoying the physical aspect of their arrangement while it lasted was the only way she was going to survive walking away with her heart intact.

  Hopefully it wasn’t too late.

  * * *

  When Scott almost obliterated his thumbnail for the third time, he swore under his breath and dropped the hammer. Pounding in wire staples wasn’t rocket science, but he couldn’t even manage that today.

  He’d hurt Chloe’s feelings a few days before—he’d seen it on her face—and, even after dwelling on it since then, he had no idea what to do about it. The change was subtle because she was doing her best to hide it, but he could see it when she thought he wasn’t watching her.

  The only conclusion he could come to was that hearing he’d lied to his family about their relationship had bothered her and that didn’t make any sense. He’d like nothing more than to take her home for dinner—to reintroduce her to his parents and his sister. He’d love to watch her sitting on the floor, playing dolls with Bethany.

  But that was a level of pretending he couldn’t handle. His family would be thrilled he’d finally found a woman he really liked, but justifiably apprehensive because she had a life in Boston. He’d tried holding on to a woman not cut out for small town life once and had his heart broken.

  He was skating on thin ice as it was when it came to remembering he and Chloe were supposed to be having carefree sex. A temporary holiday fling, with no strings attached. That was a hard thing to remember when she was tucked under his arm, laughing at an old sit-com with him. Even Kojak sulked when it was time to go home without her every night. He didn’t need to take his family along for the rollercoaster ride.

  “Everything going okay?”

  He turned, surprised to see Chloe halfway down the basement stairs. He hadn’t even heard her open the door at the top. “More or less.”

  “I was poking around in the fridge and I could hear you through the heating vent. Sounded like a lot of bad words for a more or less.”

  “I hit my thumb with the hammer. Again.”

  “And I just accidentally wiped out half a day’s work. We’re a matched set today.”

  “Let’s go for a ride,” he said.

  “A ride to where?” She sat on a step and crossed her arms. “I’m not doing any more Christmas shopping with you. I swear you morph into some kind of cranky old man when you cross the threshhold of a store.”

  “No, a ride on my sled.”

  She laughed. “Snowmobiling? Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

  “I’m ahead of schedule, so a few hours won’t hurt. Come on. We can drop Kojak off at my house and you can borrow my sister’s gear. They don’t have a garage and my parents’ is full, so they leave their sleds and all their crap in mine.” It looked like she was caving, so he pressed on. “There’s a spot out in the woods I want to show you.”

  “If you think I’m having sex with you out in the woods, Scott Quinn, you’re craz
y. It’s thirty-eight degrees.”

  As tempting as that idea was, he had no intention of exposing any more of his anatomy to the elements than he had to. “Just a ride. On the sled, I mean. Promise.”

  Twenty minutes later, he was unlocking the front door of his house, thankful he’d outgrown his slob days. It was a small, two-bedroom cape, with a farmer’s porch and a home gym in the semi-finished basement. Nothing fancy, but it wasn’t too shabby, either.

  “Make yourself at home,” he told Chloe. “I’m going to take Kojak out back for a few minutes and call my folks. They have a fit if I don’t file a flight plan with them.”

  She laughed, but he could see she was more interested in checking out his house than in what he was saying. There wasn’t much to see. Some family pictures on the wall. A bookshelf full of mysteries and thrillers, with the occasional horror novel wedged in between. His computer desk sat in one corner, the paperwork he loathed precariously close to avalanche stage. A kick-ass home theatre system rounding out the decor.

  “I remember Lanie a little,” she said, peering at one of the framed photos on the wall. “She was ahead of us in school, though, right?”

  “By three years. She ran with a more popular crowd that I did, though. And, because she was a girl, she could let her hair grow long rather than risk Ma hacking at with her scissors.”

  She’d already moved on to the next photo, so he gestured to Kojak and walked through the kitchen to the back door, trying to tell himself it didn’t matter what she thought of his house.

  It was a temporary holiday fling. Then she’d go back to Boston and he’d go back to the way things were before she came. A little lonely and a little boring at times, but overall he’d been happy. And once she’d left, with a little time and distance, he was sure he could be happy again. Pretty sure, anyway.

  Chapter Six

  Chloe had forgotten how much she loved the sensation of flying over the snow, the wind tugging at her jacket and the speed making her shiver just a little. Her father had taken her riding with him often when she was little, but they’d hit a rough spot and had to sell the snowmobile. For some reason he’d never gotten around to buying another.

  Bundled in Lanie’s gear and plastered against Scott’s back because his machine wasn’t really built for two people, she wasn’t cold so, as long as she held onto him and didn’t get thrown off the back, she was free to enjoy the ride.

  Occasionally, when they hit a nice smooth patch, Scott would let go with his left hand and let it rest on her knee instead. It was a casual gesture—the kind of thing a boyfriend would do—and that increasingly hard to ignore part of her that wished that were the truth reveled in it.

  “Are you warm enough?” he yelled over his shoulder.

  “Yes!” Between the helmets and the wind and the engine, that was about as far as conversation could go.

  She’d been surprised by his home. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected—maybe something more bachelor pad-like—but his house was cute and very neat. Maybe a little austere in the decorating department, but she liked a man who cherished family photos the way he obviously did.

  When Scott turned off the main snowmobile trail onto what was essentially the snowmobiling equivalent of a cow path, she swallowed hard and held on tighter. The narrow, barely packed down trail wound tightly through the trees and she could tell by the sound of the engine they were climbing in elevation.

  He finally stopped in a clearing barely big enough to turn the machine around and hit the kill switch. She looked around while they disentangled themselves from the sled and took off their helmets, but she couldn’t see what made the place worth going off the main trail for.

  “This way,” he said, taking her hand to steady her in the snow. It wasn’t deep yet, but it was uneven and slushy from being filtered through the trees.

  She could tell somebody had walked there since the last snowfall, but it obviously wasn’t a well-traveled path. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  When he cautioned her to step over a root she couldn’t even see because it was covered with snow, she realized he came here a lot and probably not just during sled season.

  When they broke through the tree line, Chloe stopped, unable to believe the view. She could see almost all of her hometown, spread out below her. They weren’t very high up, but it was just enough to see over the surrounding woods. She could just make out the roof of her parents’ house, but it took her a few seconds to find Scott’s, tucked into the trees a little ways east.

  “You can’t see as much in the summer,” he said, “when the trees are full, but right now you can see almost everything.”

  Everything that mattered to him, anyway. She could hear it in his voice and see it on his face when she looked up at him. He loved this town she couldn’t wait to be free of when she’d went off to college, and it would probably never occur to him to live somewhere else. Not that she’d thought about what it would be like if he’d move to Boston…much.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, because it was obvious he expected her to say something.

  And it was. With a blanket of snow and smoke puffing from many of the chimneys, it almost looked like a Christmas postcard.

  It was a far cry from her crowded, noisy Boston neighborhood, and it couldn’t have illustrated any better the differences between them. Scott belonged here, in a place where everybody not only knew your name, but knew what you did in the second grade to get you called into the principal’s office.

  She thrived on the city life. Anonymity. Museums and theatres and the ability to fulfill a craving for almost any cuisine at almost any hour. Forget the Monday night beef stew special. Not only could she have crab rangoon at three in the morning, but she could have it delivered.

  “How come I’ve never been up here?” She’d lived there the first nineteen years of her life, but she’d never seen the town from that angle.

  “This land was all owned by some guy from Connecticut for decades and he had it posted against trespassing. When his son inherited, he opened it for hikers in the summer and sledders in the winter. It took us—the snowmobile club, I mean—almost two years to fully develop the trail, but it connects two existing trails and really opened it up for us.”

  He not only lived there, but he was invested in the place. In the people and in the town and even in the land. She’d never felt that bond with her home town. Instead she’d spent her teen years biding her time, waiting until she was old enough to leave it behind.

  “I’m boring you,” he said, nudging her with his elbow.

  “No. I think it’s great you were able to make a trail up here. It would be a shame not to be able to see this view.”

  “So what now? You wanna keep going or are you ready to head back?”

  There was a part of her enjoying the ride so much she wanted to keep going. But there was another part that felt herself getting sucked into his life—a life she didn’t belong in. She was just visiting.

  Their relationship was supposed to be just about the sex. Nothing else. “Actually, I was thinking since we have to go back to your house anyway, maybe we could twist up your bedsheets for a change.”

  He grinned and raised an eyebrow at her. “I think that’s one hell of an idea.”

  They made it back to the snowmobile a lot faster than they’d make it to the look-out and he took off so fast she was surprised he didn’t blow the engine. They were definitely on the same page when it came to sex.

  * * *

  By the time they finally got the sled pulled into the garage, Scott was as revved up as his engine had been on the ride home and, as far as he was concerned, they couldn’t get naked fast enough.

  House first, though, because the garage wasn’t heated and he wasn’t about to streak to his front door. He took her by the hand and led her across the yard as quickly as he could without making her jog, then slammed the door behind them. And she laughed when he divested himself of his sn
owmobiling gear in seconds and started helping her out of hers.

  There was a brief loss of momentum when Kojak pushed his way in between them, nuzzling for a hello scratch. Scott tried to get away with a quick head rub, but the dog jumped up and put his paws on his shoulders, knocking Chloe a step backwards in the process.

  “Okay, Kojak.” He gave the dog a good tousling, then pushed him down. Content with that, the dog went back to his oversized flannel bed, turned around a couple of times and flopped down. “Stay.”

  Taking Chloe’s hand again, he led her to his bedroom—thank God he’d just changed the sheets—and resumed divesting them of their clothes. She helped, he grabbed a condom from his dresser, and within minutes he had her naked on his bed.

  “Who decorated your room?” she asked, holding him off with one hand.

  “I did.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “Whatever.” It was a bedroom. With some beige stuff and some blue stuff. Whatever had looked like it wouldn’t give him a headache. “I’d give you the grand tour, but I’m a little busy right now. Kinda hoping you’ll be busy too.”

  She laughed and pushed him onto his back. “It’s not going to kill you to wait two minutes.”

  “It might.” Every second he wasn’t touching her killed him a little bit more. “And speaking of two minutes, that might be all you’ve got left. Riding back, thinking about you naked in my bed, with the sled vibrating between my legs…let’s just say I’m ready.”

  She straddled him and he tried to think about baseball and algebra and the rising cost of wire, but nothing helped. “Does that mean I’m not getting any foreplay?”

  “Can we do it after the sex part?”

  “I don’t think it’s foreplay after.”

  Just when he thought he was going to embarrass himself with a premature display of just how much he was dying for her, she sat back on his thighs so he could roll on the condom.

  And then, finally, she lowered herself onto his length. The friction was so exquisite he had to clench his fists to keep from grabbing her hips and pounding into her.