by Naima Simone
Jenna beamed at him while Olivia practically glowed, her eyes lighting up at his greeting. “You, too, Wolf.”
And no, Nessa’s belly did not tighten at that look of obvious affection.
“Nessa.” A nudge to her shoulder, and she couldn’t avoid glancing at him any longer. “You good?” he murmured.
“All good.” She rummaged up a smile, but when he arched an eyebrow, she abandoned the effort. Apparently, it’d been a fail.
“All right, people, we’re about to get started,” a melodic yet authoritative voice boomed. Nessa glanced toward the front of the gymnasium and spotted a lean, older Black woman with a cap of gray curls. Though clothed in a lilac sweater set and black slacks, she carried the same don’t-mess-with-me air in her slender frame that vibrated in her voice. “Let’s hop to, people. We’re starting this contest on time. You have five minutes to grab your partners and get to your tables. You have two hours to decorate your trees. At seven o’clock sharp, back away from the trees and judging starts.”
“I don’t know her, but she reminds me of my charge nurse in the ER. And I have the urge to say, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and not backtalk or fear getting my ass handed to me.”
“You’re not far off.” Sydney laughed. “And I’m not getting on her bad side. I’m going to find Cole so we don’t get Ms. Eva’s side-eye.”
“I promised my father I’d be his partner since Mother couldn’t make it this year,” Jenna announced. Then with a sly smile, she turned to Wolf. “You and Olivia should team up. Just like old times. It’ll be so much fun.” As if remembering Nessa stood there, the redhead waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the tables. “I’m sure there will be others here without partners. Didn’t you have a sister here? You should grab her.”
Olivia smiled at Nessa, and she had to give it to the other woman. Olivia had the grace to appear apologetic on behalf of her rude-ass friend. Yet she still turned to Wolf, with what Nessa could only describe as hopeful delight glistening in her pretty eyes.
“What do you say, Wolf? I’d love to partner with you again.”
Was “partner with you” a euphemism for “do the nasty beast with two backs”?
Oh, girl, you got to stop. Nessa mentally face-palmed herself. Somebody had to. She was officially getting out of hand.
“Awesome.” Jenna grinned and clapped her hands together. “That’s settled—”
“Actually,” Wolf said, gently clasping Nessa’s hand, sending a current of electricity zipping from her fingers, up her arm and arcing to all points north...and south, “Nessa is my partner. We can’t have our guests to Rose Bend feeling unwelcome. Since you know more people here than Nessa, I’m sure you can find someone to pair up with much more easily than she can, Olivia,” he said, his tone gentle, but the underlying thread of steel running through it brooking no argument.
Olivia’s lips parted, her gaze dropping to their linked hands before lifting to his face. Nessa barely managed to smother her flinch at the hurt glinting in the other woman’s eyes, because no woman wanted to be pitied or to have her pain witnessed by someone she considered the competition—even if she wasn’t. And Olivia deserved that respect from her.
Jenna, on the other hand...
The redhead glared at Nessa. “I’m sure Neecy doesn’t mind finding someone else. That’s how a person meets new people, after all. And she should understand two...friends wanting to get reacquainted.”
“Her name is Nessa. And, Jenna?” Wolf murmured, his voice almost pleasant. Almost. “Mind your business.”
He didn’t wait for Jenna’s reply and ignored her outraged gasp. Nessa couldn’t do anything but stare at the middle of his wide shoulders as he led her over to a table that hadn’t been claimed yet. Two clear containers filled with an assortment of decorations and lights sat on top, and other bows, garland and tape lay scattered across the rest of the surface. A stepladder and two folding chairs rounded out their supplies, and Nessa examined each and every item as if the success of this tree depended on her careful analysis.
“Are the teams ready?” Eva Wright asked into the mic, arm raised in the air. When a chorus of cheers met her question, she lowered her arm and ordered, “Commence decorating!”
Nessa peeled off her coat and dropped it on the back of one of the chairs and propped her fists on her hips. Tilting her head back, she squinted up into the dark green branches of the six-foot tree. Could she get through this without looking him directly in the eye? Because each time she did, things happened.
She entered Santa Runs.
She cried.
She admitted secrets.
She imagined him naked.
No, for her sanity she had to avoid his face.
“Lights first, right? Isn’t that a rule? The lights are supposed to go on first?”
“I don’t know about a rule, but Moe would argue you down that it’s true.” Behind her, he rustled through the box and moments later appeared next to her with a coil in each hand. “Okay, here’s the first and most important decision. What’s the theme?”
“Theme?” She frowned, still staring at the lights and managing not to look at his face. But even his hands were distracting. Because they were just so damn...big. And sexy.
So, eyes back on the tree, since apparently she couldn’t look at his hands either without her thoughts going to bad, bad places.
“Oh yeah,” he continued, oblivious to her carnal dilemma. “Theme is key. Look around you.” He waited until she shifted her gaze to the rest of the gym. “Some people are going with all gold. Or all white. Someone will undoubtedly choose the classic icicles and stars. Then there’s bows. This is a contest, after all. Theme determines the winner.”
She blinked. “Um. Okay.” Risking glancing at him, she shrugged. “What do you suggest?”
“Me? I would go with an oldie but goodie.”
“And that is?”
“Throw shit on it until it starts to lean, then stop.”
The bark of laughter exploded from her before she could trap it inside. Clapping her hands over her mouth, she snickered, drawing amused glances from people at surrounding tables.
“Okay.” She bit the inside of her cheek to contain her grin. “That sounds like a winner to me.” She took the first rope of lights from him and studied it. “Let’s do the white first, then follow up with the blinking lights.”
“Gaudy.” Wolf grinned. “I like it.”
They worked in companionable silence for the first few minutes, winding the chain of bulbs and connecting them. Next, they threaded the red tinsel through the branches, and when Wolf paused, shoving the sleeves of his black sweater up his forearms, she briefly closed her eyes. But it didn’t help. She could still see the strong tendons and thin veins in those muscular arms. God, a man shoving up his sleeves notched just below chest porn.
Once they were finished, she stared up at the dark branches and the lights, seeing other trees. Hearing distant laughter. Smelling the faded memories of popcorn.
“Where are you?” The question rumbled against her back, and his fresh, skin-warmed scent wrapped around her.
She continued to study the tree for another few moments, gathering her thoughts before answering. “You know how when you’re angry, it overshadows everything? Makes the bad overshadow the good and you forget that there ever was any good?”
“Yeah.”
Just that word, but God, such a wealth of emotion in it. What did Wolf hide? And how deep did it go?
“Well, I was just remembering Christmases with me, Mom and Isaac before they divorced. We were...happy. He used to pop popcorn and string it for the tree. She’d play all her Motown Christmas CDs, especially the Jackson 5, because they were her favorites. She’d bake cookies and we would spend all night decorating the tree. Those were some of my favorite times. My best memories of us as a family. I guess I block
ed them out. Until now.”
His hands slid over her waist and down to cradle her hips. She inhaled, briefly closing her eyes at the strength in those big palms. Heat melted in her veins, pooling between her thighs, and she struggled not to shift, not to betray the effect he had on her.
“When we were kids, we would all lie down, crowd under the Christmas tree and stare up at the branches when it was all decorated and lit up. It seemed like an alternate world from under there. That’s one of my happiest memories. And it’s why I love this event so much.” He squeezed her hips, and his lips grazed the top of her ear. A shiver raced down her spine, but she didn’t move away. No, she savored the sensation. “Embrace those memories, Nessie. Don’t feel any guilt for having forgotten them for a time or enjoying them now. They’re gifts from two people who loved you.”
Oh damn. She couldn’t do this. Not here. Not now.
“So—” she cleared her throat “—what do you do with all these trees once they’ve been decorated and judged?”
He squeezed her hips in understanding, then stepped back and released her.
“Not everyone in Rose Bend lives in a certain tax bracket,” he said quietly, taking the garland from her, his fingertips brushing hers. The tingle that trekked up her arm took a back seat to his tone and words. She paused, mid-decorating, and looked at him. “I know how blessed my family and I are, but that’s a privilege everyone doesn’t have. Some people can’t afford the shopping, the gifts and even the trees that others can. Ms. Eva makes it her mission to ensure that every family that wants a tree has one. I don’t know how she does it. I don’t know how she finds the families. But by this time tomorrow when the kids pile into this gym for class, every tree will be gone and delivered to a home.”
“Wow.” She shook her head, huffing out a disbelieving chuckle. She searched the gym for the woman under discussion, finding her near the front of the gym, talking to a small group of people. “It’s almost like the people here are unreal. Working in an ER, where I always see not just people’s pain but also the suffering they can inflict on each other, I can forget how...kind the world can be, too.”
“Which makes me wonder if you haven’t had enough people in your world being kind to you. Or maybe it’s you who hasn’t been gentle with yourself.”
Nessa jerked her head back to him. What the hell did that mean? Anger flared inside her, a quick burst that flickered out as quickly as it appeared, leaving her oddly vulnerable. Naked.
How did he see inside her as if she were a black-and-white X-ray when the man she’d been with for two years hadn’t been able to—or hadn’t bothered to?
It was true; she’d faced abandonment, rejection and hurt in her life from Isaac, men she’d dated as recently as Jeremy. But if she were brutally, deep down, dirty honest—the kind of honesty that only came in the darkest hours of the morning when sleep eluded a person—she blamed herself for their defection.
If the man who was supposed to love her unconditionally could leave her so easily, there must be something innately wrong with her. It was her fault. She was too independent. Too mouthy. Too closed off. Too...too...
Just too.
And never enough.
“You’re finally looking at me.” He cocked his head. “Are you through avoiding me now?”
The protest was poised on her tongue, but when she spoke, “Yes” came out.
A smile flirted with his full lips. “Good. Your profile is beautiful, but so is the rest of your face.” He paused, his gaze dropping from her eyes to her mouth, lingering, then lifting. “And I like looking at it.”
Silence pulsed between them, a molten heartbeat that heated the air and throbbed with the desire that darkened his eyes and pounded in her veins.
She wasn’t a stranger to lust and didn’t pretend to be one of those women who denied her body’s needs. Sex was a pleasure, a release, and one she enjoyed sharing with a man who wanted her. And Wolf... Damn, she wanted him to want her. Was it her own desire or did she really see hunger shadowing those green depths? A fine tension coiling his muscular body? A faint flush staining his sharp cheekbones...?
A spasm wrenched inside her. Deep inside where she needed to be filled, branded by him, his fingers, his cock. She’d take whatever part of him she could...
Sucking in a breath, she blinked. Took a step back.
“What’s next?” she whispered, voice hoarse.
From unsatisfied lust. From the effort of imprisoning the demand that he walk her out of this gym and defile her in the back seat of his truck.
Damn, the part of her that cried out to be touched, held, fucked, insisted she grab him by the hand and carry this through. But the other, logical, sane side of her acknowledged her reasons for being here in Rose Bend might have shifted, but her priorities hadn’t.
Emotional entanglements had only left her battered and alone.
She needed the truth about her father and to get back to Boston and her job, hopefully with her and Ivy’s relationship not damaged more than when they’d left home. Hopefully, she’d return capable of not breaking down while in the middle of tending to her patients. She’d already lost her identity, it seemed, when she’d discovered Isaac wasn’t her father. She couldn’t lose being a nurse, too. Not who she was.
What she didn’t need was a fling with a hot carpenter whose body was a religious experience and whose eyes could make her heart weep.
And could apparently turn her into a poet.
“Next, you stop being awkward and pass me those ornaments that look like homicidal elves.”
God, she was making this awkward. So what if he found her attractive or even desired her. He hadn’t made a move on her. Other than hugging her when she’d basically come apart in front of him, he hadn’t given her any indication that he wanted anything other than friendship with the guest visiting his family’s inn.
Projecting much, Nessa?
Before she had a chance to slap it down, disappointment swarmed inside her like angry bees. But slap it down she did. Yes, just glancing at the masculine perfection of his face caused an empty ache to yawn low in her belly, but she didn’t need to have sex with Wolf Dennison to know it would be a huge mistake.
Because it wouldn’t just be great sex. Call it a sixth sense or woman’s intuition or ESP—whatever. She didn’t need the gift of premonition to guess that he would leave her wide open and more emotionally tangled than five-o’clock traffic on I-95.
Not to mention changed. And not in a good way.
She couldn’t afford to leave any pieces of herself behind when she left Rose Bend at the end of the month.
“Right,” she finally said, turning to the table. “Homicidal elves. Coming up.”
She pushed aside more garland and dug around in the crate until she came across a cardboard box of eight ornaments of... Shit. With those maniacal grins, crossed eyes and really sharp candy canes in their hands, they did look bloodthirsty. Hopefully, Santa left these little motherfuckers at the North Pole. Locked up.
She opened the box and passed it to him, then grabbed another carton of angels slightly less deranged looking.
“Any progress with your search?” Wolf glanced at her, hanging the ornaments on the top branches.
“I really just started today.” She shrugged a shoulder. “I emailed my mom’s best friend and asked her to send a box of Mom’s things to me that I haven’t had a chance to go through since the funeral. Wait, that’s a lie.” She loosed a short, dry laugh. “It’s been eight months. I’ve had plenty of time. I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. But now...” She shrugged again.
“Now when you open it, you’ll have a whole inn of Dennisons to be with you if that’s what you need. Things happen for a reason, when they’re supposed to happen, Nessie.”
She paused, briefly closing her eyes. A moment later, she opened them and continued ha
nging the ornament, focusing on the task and not the beautiful man next to her.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she murmured.
He arched an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific.”
I wish you didn’t offer me your support like it’s the simplest thing in the world instead of everything.
I wish you didn’t offer your family to a woman who has none left.
I wish you weren’t...you.
“Do that wise-old-man, Yoda thing.” She waved a hand at him and frowned, summoning a nonchalance she far from felt. “It’s disconcerting. Especially when you’re wearing a man bun.”
Wolf tsked. “Bun shaming. I thought you were better than that, Nessie.”
“You thought wrong.”
She teased him, but damn how she wished that thick, dark brown hair pulled back into a knot at the nape of his neck was a turnoff. On other men, it could come across as pretentious and a bit douchey. But not on him. On Wolf, it was simply him—practical, simple and sexy as hell.
“Is Ivy still angry with you?”
His low murmur pulled her from her introspection on his grooming style, and she sighed. Flicking a glance across the room, she watched Ivy talk and laugh at Cher’s antics as the twin teetered on the stepladder to loop an ornament on a high branch. As Ivy turned to grab another decoration from the table, her smile suddenly dropped and sadness crossed her expression.
An answering sorrow gripped Nessa, and her fingers tightened around the tiny angel in her hand, the wings pinching her palm. This was Ivy’s first Christmas without her father, and it had to be tough on her. A wild helplessness welled inside Nessa. The need to go to her, comfort her, tell her she understood because this would be her first without her mom—it almost propelled her forward.
