Before That Promise

by Violet Duke

  “So, crazy question,” tossed out Landon as he rode the elevators back down to the lobby with her for the second time. “Don’t you have this guy’s phone number?”

  Skylar sighed, imagining how nutty she must seem to him. “I do.”

  “Ever call it?”

  “Not even once.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Has he ever called you?”

  This time, her answer was far more depressing. “Not even once.”

  Not that she’d been holding her breath. Drew had made his thoughts on the matter crystal clear. She was too young for him. Period.

  At least for now.

  The reminder of that all-important caveat managed to make her breathing hitch just like it always did whenever she thought of Drew’s parting words for her the last time she saw him, nearly three years ago when he’d been back in town to visit during his first year of college.

  “Five years, Skylar. Exactly how many years it’ll take for you to no longer be off-limits…you better believe I’ll be coming back. And to be clear, I’m not asking you to wait for me. I’m just letting you know to expect me.”

  How was a girl supposed to do anything but moon over a guy like that?

  “So instead of just picking up a phone and calling the guy tonight, you decided to show up at his hotel room unannounced.”

  It was an incredulous question-statement wrapped up in what sounded like a compliment.

  “Can I ask why?” Landon queried after her silent nod, studying her more seriously than he had all night. “Why tonight?”

  “Because…because I’m no longer jail bait for him,” she replied softly. “Not quite the green-light age for him yet, but at least not stop-sign-red anymore. And…because it’s Christmas.”

  The season of red playing nice with green. The holiday of magic and possibilities.

  Her favorite time of year.

  Just the mere mention of Christmas immediately filled her heart with all the misplaced hope she’d lost throughout the year like it always did, and all the unique, irreplaceable nuggets of joy she’d collected and stored away over the years, like colored glass pebbles from the beach.

  …And all the happy memories of her mother Skylar fought tooth and nail to keep holding on to.

  At Christmas time, it was all there.

  With the exception of the winter her mother had passed away after a heartbreaking, decade-long battle with Huntington’s Disease, Skylar never failed to go less than all-out with the Christmas festivities every year. It helped that both her dad and uncle had each fallen in love and gotten married a couple of years back, filling both their homes with a few more Sullivan kids. First her cousin and then her twin siblings.

  None of which would have been possible without the two amazing women responsible for the transformation in the Sullivan men, of course.

  The aunt she’d actually known and loved her whole life and the stepmom who understood her in ways very few could both shared her wholehearted love of the holiday. But only her little brother and sister shared her deep-rooted feelings about its true magic.

  And not for the reasons most preschoolers did.

  Last year, the entire family had joined her in volunteering on Christmas morning at the care center her mother had lived out her last few years in. At the twin’s insistence. Skylar had been volunteering at the care center for years, but last winter had been the first time the twins had started asking her a lot of questions about why she went there so much. She’d kept her answers simple obviously because they were so young, but she remembered distinctly that they’d looked at each other and did that silent twin talk they did before asking if they could tag along on Christmas.

  That morning, as they all spent time with the patients—a good portion of them children—the twins announced that they had surprises in the minivan they needed some help to go get.

  The ‘surprises’ were dozens and dozens of their toys hidden in various nooks and crannies in the minivan, which, given the fact that this was news to their parents, the two sneaky kids must have been doing it covertly every time they’d gone out for a ride over a few weeks at least, judging by the sheer volume of toys they were unearthing like clowns out of a circus car.

  All in all, they had a gently-used, and well-loved toy for every lonely child at the center whose parents were working through the holidays to make ends meet.

  It was Christmas magic in its most basic form.

  This year, she’d been one proud big sis when she’d heard that the twins had already asked—not even a few days into autumn—to celebrate Christmas the same way as last year, only this time, with a surprise present for every child in the center, a goal which had apparently resulted in quite a few door-to-door baked goods fundraising attempts around town over the months.

  Unfortunately, Skylar’s tight travel schedule home after final exams meant she had to sit this one out.

  Even if her flight hadn’t been grounded and she’d been able to land early enough on Christmas morning, it was just too medically irresponsible for her to go to the care center so soon after a flight—aka germapalooza—without knowing for certain that she hadn’t caught some sort of bug while she’d been breathing in all that recycled airline air. Skylar had been volunteering at the center for long enough to know how vital it was for them all to stay on guard against the risk of infections and viruses given the patients’ weakened immune systems.

  On the bright side, however, at least this way, she had some time to rustle up a few more holiday surprises for everyone at the house before they all returned home from the center in the afternoon.

  “So…do you do this drifting off into your own world thing often around guys, or am I really just that dull?”

  Skylar laughed. “You’re far from dull and you know it enough for the both of us.”

  Landon beamed proudly, looking ready to put that on a bumper sticker.

  “I’m sorry I keep zoning out,” she apologized as she re-buttoned her jacket and marched them back outside the hotel lobby to see more of the faint sprinkles of snow she’d watched fall on her shuttle ride over here from the airport, so similar to the midair-evaporating flakes that came down in Cactus Creek only a few special days of the year. “The holidays always tend to bring memories that like to hijack my brain from concentrating on anything else.”

  Just outside of the main entrance to the lobby, she hopped up on the low rock wall behind the brightly-lit hotel sign to try and catch a snowflake on her tongue before it melted.

  Meanwhile, Landon stretched out to drape himself on the wall like a content cat, one arm lazily tucked under his head as he watched her. “Well, between all the spacing out, and the action-packed trips up and down the elevator, not to mention the alarmingly impressive—borderline frightening—amounts of sugar you’ve consumed in the past few hours, believe it or not, we have officially made it to Christmas Day.” He raised his phone up to show her the glowing 12:01 am on the screen. “Merry Christmas, pretty girl.”

  Smiling wide, Skylar threw her head back and closed her eyes to savor it for a moment—the first minute of Christmas morning with fluffy snowflakes falling on her face—before returning happily, “Merry Christmas back.”

  She hopped back down off the wall with every intention of launching into a friendly holiday hug.

  …When a strong arm swooped around her waist and yanked her back against a solid wall of muscle.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Skylar?”

  Drew.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Drew felt his brain nearly short-circuit the second he felt her body against his.

  Skylar Sullivan. In his arms.

  He officially felt his world tilt at how strongly the need to never let her go hit him.

  But he released her anyway. Sort of. Loosened his python-like embrace, at least.

  Slowly turning her around so he could tilt her face up to meet his probing gaze, he had to force himself not to react when her arms wrapped around his waist,
and his name fell softly from her lips.

  Feeling more Neanderthal than human at the moment, he refrained from saying anything that would surely come out in you-come-back-to-my-cave grunts. Instead, he just zeroed in on her face to drink every last detail of her in.

  God, she was a knockout.

  Two years, almost three years since he’d seen her last and, though it defied logic, she was even more beautiful than he had imagined she’d become. It was no secret she’d been the prettiest little thing back when she’d been jail bait for him but now, Christ, she stole the ground out from under his feet.

  She was just as sweet as he remembered, only…sexier. Definitely sexier. With a new throaty lilt to her voice that had him gritting his teeth, just barely resisting the urge to ask her to say his name again.

  What on earth was she doing here in Vegas?

  And not alone, for that matter.

  While he had managed the herculean task of speaking all civil-like to Skylar so soon after she’d been about to hug another man, Drew couldn’t stop the predatory growl vibrating out of his chest now that he was within striking range of the guy who’d been making Skylar smile for the past few minutes.

  A hotel worker, by the looks of his uniform, carefully observing Skylar as if he’d just figured out the answer to a final crossword puzzle question.

  “Huh,” commented the Abercrombie & Fitch model shoe-in, still half eating Skylar up with his eyes, while simultaneously sizing up Drew from head to toe. “So this is the guy?”

  Damn right, I’m the guy. Drew rumbled the silent declaration with a feral possessiveness he felt down to his bone marrow. If he could have it his way, there’d never be a question mark at the end of that sentence in any context when it came to Skylar.

  But not much had changed in the two years since he’d seen her last.

  And the few things that had changed just made it more imperative for him to keep his distance like he’d sworn to her he’d do until she turned twenty-one at least.

  …Something he was going to fail pretty epically at tonight, he wagered, as he skimmed his thumb across the petal-soft skin of her cheek to smooth away a few wayward locks of hair the wind had curtained over her eyes.

  Though he didn’t have nearly enough female friends to know the official descriptive term for it, Skylar looked both blonder and more brunette than he remembered. Her hair was down to her waist now in golden waves that varied in a half-dozen hues that all made him think of the different crystalline jars of paler-than-storebought honey Lia used to bring home from the farmer’s market. It wasn’t all that different from the light, sandy apricot tresses he saw in his mind whenever he let himself think about her—which was more often than he could control—but it was enough of a change to remind him how many years it’s been since he’d been this close to her.

  He sifted his fingers through her addictively soft hair and watched her reaction display in high-def via those incredible, animated eyes of hers—candidly expressive windows to her soul he’d never been able to banish from his mind for very long.

  Always quietly thinking.

  He forgot how much he loved the way he could see a thousand thoughts flashing over her expression at a million miles an hour before she’d eventually land on one, somehow always rooted in kindness, and usually linked to some unique personal insight that would light up her smile.

  Jesus, she was doing it now. Smiling. At him.

  He’d give anything for it to be daylight right now so he could see if her eyes were still the color of the early morning sky, still capable of rendering him captive, powerless.

  It took him a few beats, but he eventually found his misplaced voice and gentled his tone this time when he asked, “Why aren’t you back in Arizona with your family, sweets? Are you here to see me?”

  She nodded, her silky hair sliding against his jaw as she fixed her stare at the third button on his shirt, her teeth snagging on her lower lip for a bit before she explained, “My flight home had mechanical problems.”

  Watching her lips move as she gave him a full answer to his question, he tried to pay attention to the words, truly he did. There was something about a missed flight or a grounded flight…hell, for all he knew, the entire plane could have vanished into thin air, he was having that hard a time concentrating.

  In an effort to remedy that, he moved his hands away from her waist and rested them platonically on her shoulders.

  Immediately, he felt some semblance of control return. But of course it came with an instant gut punch as well—a feeling like something had just been taken from him.

  Criminy, he’d always known it would be this way with her.

  “…And when I’d called the guys last week to see if they needed some temp work while I was home for the winter break,” she continued, completely unaware of her effect on him, “they mentioned you’d be working a contract here at this hotel on Christmas eve.” Another distracting lip-nibble. “So I came straight here from the airport…”

  Her voice wavered just a bit and he bent his head lower to make sure he could hear whatever she was about to say, seeing as how the mere thought of it was making her breathing splinter and spike.

  “I…just really wanted to see you. Be here with you tonight.”

  Well, damn.

  Just then, a musical chime from her jeans pocket interrupted the moment and Skylar reached down to check her cell phone.

  Laughing lightly at whatever was on the screen, she turned back to the smiling annoyance perched on the wall texting her another message from his phone. “Sorry, Landon. No, you didn’t get bitten by a toxic invisibility-inducing spider.” With another elfin chuckle, she added, “And yes, I’m pretty sure superheroes would have to wear jockstraps under their tights. Glad to see you understand the meaning of just-in-case-of-emergency phone number use, by the way.”

  Drew hated that she didn’t hide her eyes from her new friend the way she did with him.

  When her phone chimed again, he had to grit his teeth to keep from snarling at the guy.

  Apparently, he hadn’t grit hard enough.

  Because after giving him a measured look at him in response to the low growl emanating from his chest, which Drew roughly translated to be her saying: “Me=Jane, You=Ass,” Skylar slid fully out of his arms and went over to Mr. Funny Man. Who was still making her laugh via text, dammit.

  The pair exchanged a few polite pleasantries within earshot—plans to keep in touch on Facebook followed by standard offers to meet up if ever in each other’s neck of the woods. Granted, it was no more than a friendly goodbye, plain and simple, and yet every cell in Drew’s body was echoing just one silent word throughout their brief, hugging exchange.

  Mine.

  “…Well, if something changes and you need a different place to crash tonight, or a ride back to the airport tomorrow…”

  The purposely loud-enough-for-him-to-hear words were a taunt, as much as they were a warning. To Drew. In the form of a telepathic Y-chromosome encoded message that declared there would be a set of open arms for Skylar to run to if Drew screwed this up.

  Grudgingly, Drew respected the asshat for looking out for her. And he showed that respect by crowding the pair’s space and rumbling out, “Skylar’s staying with me; I’ll take care of her.”

  In all fairness, he’d tempered that quite a bit. In his head, it was a lot harsher. Somewhere along the lines of, “Stay the hell away from my woman, you big dick.”

  Either way, the message was received, and the bell-douche backed off. Though he, of course, made sure to launch one final get-your-shit-together look Drew’s way before heading off to the parking garage.

  Standard response dictated that Drew begin immediately plotting harmless but satisfying ways to hack into the asshat’s life and make it a circus of annoyances. He was up to exactly two dozen surefire gems when the scent of top shelf amaretto layered with berries and cream invaded his senses.

  Good lord, since when did he wax poetic over scen
ts? Nice, bad, and godawful were the general extent of his usual olfactory descriptions. He didn’t think he’d ever even had berries and cream before, let alone layered in a dessert with amaretto.

  “Okay, let’s get one thing straight, buster.” Skylar’s narrowed gaze and cutting tone sliced straight through all his random self-pondering.

  Fists balled up in the cutest fighting stance ever, she bit out, “I didn’t come here for a quick ‘lay-over,’ nor did I rush over here to have you swoop in to save helpless ole me.” If she’d had a wet fish on her, he was pretty sure he’d have gotten smacked in the face with it after each word. “Landon was just baiting you. And like a guy, you just had to whip it out and join him in the pissing match, didn’t you?” Her stubborn chin rose up and he saw that familiar hellcat spirit of hers come charging out to the forefront for the first time tonight. “Just so we’re clear: the airline gave me a hotel voucher. I don’t need to stay with you. Or Landon, for that matter.”

  And there it was. That sweet sass paired with the ridiculously hot independent streak that never failed to push all his buttons. The combination had been one of the sexiest things about her back when he should’ve been shot in the balls for noticing.

  Now intensified times ten.

  “I wasn’t trying to out-piss pretty-boy back there,” he explained, verbally circling around her carefully. Without any sudden movements. “But you’re right. I was being a guy. A stupid one. Which is what being around you seems to reduce me to.”

  When she proceeded to stare at him in astonishment, he continued with more soul-baring facts—a novel approach he’d have to remember for the future if this lips-slightly-parted and eyes-glued-to-his reaction was going to be her standard response. “The truth is, you coming here to see me, and my being able to hold you finally…frankly, it all has me operating on very little blood up north.”

  She bit her lip, a now amused smile threatening to reveal itself at his confession.

  Progress.