The Irishman's Christmas Gamble (Wager of Hearts #2.5)

by Nancy Herkness

  “Especially since this is on me,” Liam said, passing his credit card to the sales clerk.

  “No!” She’d let him pay for the tree because she wasn’t going to argue about it in front of his two new fans, but she would not permit him to fund the extravagance of thousands of dollars in glass decorations. “It’s my tree.”

  “And it’s my Christmas gift to you, to make up for all the Christmases I didn’t give you a present.”

  “I didn’t give you presents either.”

  “I’ve been meaning to speak with you about that,” Liam said. “You owe me.”

  That was so ridiculous that Frankie coughed out a laugh. But she hauled her wallet out of her pocket and pushed a credit card across the counter. “Put the ornaments on my card, or I won’t take them.”

  The sales clerk looked back and forth between them, as he held a credit card in each hand. “Ma’am…sir…I….”

  “You’re torturing the poor lad,” Liam said.

  “No more than you are. How about we split the bill? I figure you forced me to get a tree so you should be on the hook for some of the expense.”

  “You win.” He nodded to the clerk. “Half on each card.”

  “I didn’t win, so don’t pretend otherwise.”

  “You noticed that, did you? I should know better than to try to out-negotiate the woman who sold her company for a billion dollars.”

  The clerk’s eyes went wide and he glanced up at Frankie, who shook her head with a pitying smile at Liam. “You know the Irish. Always making up stories. Next he’ll tell you he’s the superstar soccer player Liam Keller.”

  “Um, he is.” The clerk held up Liam’s credit card with his name on it.

  “He has the same name and bears a slight resemblance to the man, but that’s as far as it goes. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a soccer ball.”

  The young sales clerk looked like a deer in headlights. “Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am.”

  Frankie glanced up at Liam to see his shoulders shaking and the corner of his mouth twitching. She arched an eyebrow at him and signed her credit card slip.

  “Um, how do you want me to bag the ornaments?” the young man asked, looking at the pile of their purchases. “There’s an uneven number of boxes.”

  “We’ll sort that out ourselves,” Liam said. “Bag them however works best.”

  When they were back in the limo, Liam exploded into laughter. “You’re the very devil. ‘Couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a soccer ball.’ I had a coach say that to me once after I missed a penalty kick.”

  “You deserved it for being such a pain in the ass about paying for the decorations.”

  His laughter stopped as though she’d slammed a door on it. “You know, I could buy you several hundred of those balls without having to live on the street.”

  “I know, I know. You were being sweet.” She reached up to touch his cheek, but he jerked his head back.

  “I was not…being…sweet. I was attempting to demonstrate that I am a man of the world with excellent taste and significant financial resources.”

  Maybe she did still think of him as the kid to whom she sometimes gave chocolates that Balfour’s had rejected as not perfect enough. Yet she knew he made millions from endorsements and contracts. In fact, he’d probably had more money than she did, when she was in the early years of building Taste of Ireland. “I’m used to paying my own way,” she said.

  He turned to her with a sharp movement. “That’s my point, Frankie. You don’t have to when you’re with me.”

  “Give me time. I have to catch up with this new Liam. I knew the old one so well. This one is strange to me.” And she’d had to work so hard to be the person she was. Her strength and independence had served her well. It wasn’t something she could—or even wanted to—let go of.

  “Patience was never one of my virtues.” He lifted his hands to thread them into her hair on either side of her face, tilting and holding her head. He waited a breath and then brought his mouth down on hers, his lips warm and firm and challenging. This was not an old friend’s kiss. It was not a question. It was an assertion that shivered down her spine and back up again to send ripples of sensation cascading down her shoulders and over the swell of her breasts before it crashed and pooled in her belly. He slanted his lips against hers and painted a line along the seam with his tongue, letting her know he wanted more.

  Her body seemed to expand and unfurl, like a desert plant in a sudden rainstorm, soaking up the water it had been deprived of for so long. She felt herself softening, melting into him so she could feel more of his heat and power. A strange sound rose up in her throat, a cross between a sigh and a moan, and she opened her lips to touch his tongue with hers.

  He made a sound too, but his was a deep, growling rumble that vibrated into her mouth as they tasted each other. And then his hands were gone from her face, and he was dragging her across his thighs, so she felt the steely muscles in them as she sat on his lap. And she was licking the skin behind his ear while inhaling the scent of warm, clean man with a hint of some exotic citrus shampoo wafting from the waves of his hair. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

  He tilted his head sideways as she kissed along his jawline, the angle of it both familiar and strange. “Ahh, Frankie, a stór.”

  She ran her hands over the patterns and cables of his sweater, hating the bulk of it, wanting to find the contours of his muscles, the satin of his skin. And then his arms went around her and he kissed the same places on her, flicking her neck with his tongue so delight danced through her. She buried her fingers in the thick glory of his hair as he bent to her, the strands stroking her like silk. Every sensation, every touch he gave her or she gave him, slid downward to coil in the hollow at the top of her thighs.

  “Oh, dear God,” she breathed as he ran his hands down her back to cup her bottom and pull her in closer. She was going up in flames.

  “No, it’s Liam. Remember that.” He skimmed his finger down her cheek, his face so close to hers that she could see a tiny scar crossing one eyebrow. Then he set her on the seat beside him and crossed his arms. “While I’m not a patient man, I have learned self-discipline.”

  His sudden withdrawal sent a wave of shock vibrating through her. How could he stop when she wanted to straddle his lap and pull his mouth to hers, to cup his hands over her aching breasts and grind herself against his hard thighs until the tension he’d wound inside her released in a glorious explosion?

  “So you were playing with me.” She tried not to imagine how his lips would feel on her tight nipple.

  “I was helping you catch up with the new Liam.”

  Her body seemed to be catching up faster than her mind. But that created all kinds of other problems. “Now I’m up to date on certain aspects of the new you.”

  “You used to be a quicker student.”

  The limousine pulled up to the curb in front of the Bellwether Club. Frankie pulled herself together enough to hit the intercom for the driver. “We should go around to the back so we can use the freight elevator.”

  Liam gave her an irritated glance. “So I could have bought a bigger tree.”

  Chapter Six

  Within fifteen minutes, the club’s staff had delivered the tree and ornaments to her apartment, set the tree up in a stand, and placed a tall stepladder beside it. When the elevator door closed behind the last helper, Frankie looked at Liam as they stood alone in her living room. “Does that answer your question about the competence of my staff?”

  “You know I was just twistin’ hay to get you out of here.”

  She nodded. “But it still annoyed me.”

  “It worked then.” He sniffed. “There’s something here that smells even better than the tree.”

  “Irish coffee. On the bar, there.”

  “Now I’m impressed with their competence.” He brought the steaming glasses over to the coffee table. “And I see they’ve swept all the snow off
the terrace except the picturesque drifts on the top of the wall. Nice eye they’ve got.”

  Frankie sat on the sofa and took a sip of the coffee, feeling the smooth burn of caffeine, cream, and whiskey slide down her throat. “One of the great things about New York is that people here are smart and hardworking. They appreciate training, so they can move up. And except for a few bloody snobs, there’s not much class consciousness. Not like in Ireland where you stay in your place or get frozen out. I like it here.”

  “Yet you had to start your own club.”

  “I didn’t like being judged by someone else’s standards. I kept my requirements simple here: one billion dollars that you earned yourself. A high bar but nothing else is necessary.”

  “High? Some would argue almost impossible.”

  “The membership is small, but the dues are substantial. And I’ve never had an uncollectible bill.” She smiled over her coffee.

  He lounged back on the sofa beside her, stretching out his mile-long legs. “Always the head for money.”

  “Better than addling my brains by whacking my head into a ball.”

  He chuckled. “You used to yell, ‘There goes calculus’ every time I headed the ball. As though I’d ever study higher maths. Did you?”

  “No need for it. Accounting, now there’s a useful subject.”

  “I sometimes wish I’d gotten past high school.”

  “You have other talents,” she said. “Besides, a college degree doesn’t make you smart. I’ve hired more than one M.B.A. whom I had to fire six months later.”

  He frowned into his glass. “I’d have liked to learn some sciences, more about how the world works.”

  “No one’s stopping you from doing it now.”

  “I don’t have time to do homework. I’ve got a team to whip into shape.”

  “Well then, after that.”

  He swallowed down the last of his drink. “It’s time to decorate the tree.” Tilting his head, he held up his finger for silence so that the faint sound of music could be heard. “Yes, your competent hardworking staff has tuned in to Christmas carols, but we need to turn them up.”

  “Control, increase volume three levels,” Frankie commanded.

  The music swelled so the lyrics were distinct.

  “Control is a very handy fellow,” Liam said. “Where does he live?”

  She pointed to a small white panel set into the wall. “Control is the perfect roommate. He doesn’t laugh when I listen to ABBA or tell me that the room is too hot when I crank up the temperature on a wintry day.”

  “But can he hang ornaments on a fir branch?” Liam rose with the perfect control of an athlete at peak fitness. Taking her hand, he pulled her up beside him. “Can Control brush your hair away from your face?” He stroked a loose strand back behind her ear, his fingertips brushing her cheek, her ear, and her neck, starting a ripple of awareness that flowed across her skin.

  “Maybe not, but he’s damned good at current stock quotes and remembering what movie won best picture in 2001.” Her joke couldn’t stop the vibration Liam had set loose in her body. It made her want to say to hell with Christmas so she could drag him into her bedroom and strip that too-thick sweater off his hard body.

  That was a thought she shouldn’t be having.

  Liam flipped open a box of ornaments. The sales clerk had thoughtfully provided hooks for the balls. He slipped one on and presented the sphere to Frankie. “You should hang the first and the last.”

  She looked at the piles of boxes and at the expanse of unadorned green tree. “I vote we go through two boxes and leave the rest to one of my more artistic staff members. Otherwise we’ll be here for hours.”

  Liam put his hands on his hips, drawing her eye to the worn denim pulled taut over his thighs, and surveyed the tree as well. “I’ll be casting my vote with yours. That’s a hell of a lot of branches.”

  They started singing along with the carols and then dancing to a few and arguing about why they had chosen that particular ornament. So they’d hung four boxes’ worth by the time Frankie threw herself down on the couch, laughing at Liam’s hip-swiveling rendition of All I Want for Christmas is You. “I’m adding to your nickname. You are now Prince Elvis.”

  “But I have no intention of leaving the building,” he said. “Although I think we should adjourn to the terrace to enjoy the last of the afternoon sunlight.”

  Frankie inhaled, drawing in the woodsy scent of warmed evergreen. “But it smells so good in here.”

  “I promise you that it will smell even better as the tree dries out, until you’ll feel like you’re living in the middle of a pine forest.”

  “How do you know so much about—” But Liam had disappeared down the hall that led to her bedroom. “Where are you going?”

  “To get a blanket.” His voice echoed back from the hallway.

  When he returned, his arms were filled with the taupe velvet quilt from her bed and a couple of spares that were stored in her linen closet.

  “Are you planning to camp out on my terrace?”

  “Stow it and follow me.”

  “Stow it?” She should rip into him for such disrespect, but he grinned at her with his eyebrows raised as though daring her to complain. “Ye right bogtrotting maggot of a jackeen.”

  “That’s the Frankie I know and love.” He shouldered open the French door and strode to one of the double-wide lounges that stood in the slanting rays of the pale winter sun. Dropping his pile of quilts onto a table, he picked up the top one and draped it over the lounge, then folded the other two at the foot. Sweeping his arm over the well-blanketed chaise, he said, “Join me. Our combined body heat will keep us warm.”

  There was a hot gleam in his eye that made her pause. She should haul one of the quilts to the lounge next to his. But she wasn’t going to. Not after feeling that beautifully muscled body against hers.

  She was human, after all.

  “Well, if we’re just being practical,” she said, stretching out on the lounge chair.

  Liam came down beside her and pulled the quilts over both of them. The frigid wind still cut through the layers, making Frankie curl into Liam’s warmth. “It’s perishing out here.”

  “My nefarious plan worked,” he said, slipping his arm under her shoulders and bringing her even closer against him.

  As his body heat radiated through her, she let her head rest against his shoulder. The sun struggled to add to the warmth, painting patches of light on the quilt and her cheek. She swiveled her head to see that Liam’s hair glowed nearly red while his eyes took on the colors of a still mountain lake. Then his eyelids drifted downward, and he let out a huff of pure contentment. His body seemed to sink deeper into the cushions of the chaise.

  “I’m adding a terrace to the list of requirements for an apartment here,” he said. His eyes snapped open. “You know what you need? A fire pit.”

  She couldn’t picture herself sitting by a fire pit alone. It was the kind of thing couples did. “Something to ask Santa for.”

  “You’re giving up on world peace?” His eyes were closed again.

  Peace was here, sheltered within the strength of Liam’s arm, warmed by his big body, lulled by the familiar Irish in his voice. Right now, the rest of the world could go up in flames and she wouldn’t care. She wasn’t sleepy but she closed her eyes as he did, heightening her other senses. She could hear the occasional snort of a bus or blare of a taxi’s horn, but the sounds were muffled here on the back of her expensively private sanctuary. The sharp, chilled air was almost scentless, until she turned her head to inhale Liam, a mixture now of wool, evergreen, and himself, the essence of man and friend and something more that sent an ache of yearning through her.

  A helicopter roared overhead, reminding her that the world was still there, would intrude, as he went to work tomorrow, molding his new team into the contenders that would fill all the seats of Yankee Stadium. She would do what she had done twenty-three years ago: send him away for h
is own good. Back then, it had been to soccer. Now, it would be to find a woman who could give him the family he deserved.

  But she wanted a memory to keep with her. Something to fill in the empty spot of the tree when it was taken down after the holidays.

  She shifted onto her side and lifted her hand to graze the reddish blond glitter of stubble on his chin, feeling the rasp of it on her fingertips. Although he didn’t appear to move, his body somehow pulled tight.

  She drew a line along the diagonal of his jaw to the shadow of a cleft in his chin, tracing that shadow up to his bottom lip. When she dragged her finger over the smooth curve of it, she felt his chest rise on a sharp intake of breath.

  The strong arcs of his eyebrows gleamed slightly darker than his hair, so she tested the texture of them, softer than she’d expected. His hair tempted her, the thick waving auburn showing a few threads of silver at the temples. Combing her fingers through it so that it fell onto his forehead, she arranged it into a curl before she stroked it back into place again.

  “There’s more to me than a pretty face,” he said, his voice taking on the peaty rasp of a strong whiskey.

  She felt a little drunk from it all, as she feathered down the column of his throat and under the quilt, flattening her hand on the middle of his chest. His heart beat hard under her palm but the damned thick sweater once again prevented her from feeling what she wanted. However, she hadn’t gotten where she was by letting obstacles stand in her way.

  She skimmed her hand down to the sweater’s ribbed hem, feeling the buckle of his belt and the denim of his jeans as she slipped her hand under the wool and the cotton tee shirt beneath that. She heard herself make a sound of satisfaction as she found the satin of his bare skin with a glaze of hair in the center. The wall of his abdomen contracted at her touch and he groaned, his breath ruffling through her hair.

  “I can’t decide if I want to live or die right now,” he rumbled.

  One hand wasn’t enough, so she levered herself up on one elbow, throwing her leg over his. He caught on fast and used his cradling arm to push her up and over to straddle his hips. She felt the ridge of his erection hard underneath her. But she took her time as she skated her palms and fingertips over the rolling contours of his abdomen, inching his sweater higher so she could see as well as touch. His skin was paler here, although she remembered how tan he would get in the summer, even in rainy Ireland, because he and his mates played shirts-and-skins. Despite his reddish hair, he didn’t burn, but turned a golden toast. Which was probably why he generally chose the skins side.