“Do you mind? I just don’t want you to fall again. It’s getting dark fast.”
“Maybe we should go back.”
“Soon. But I think we’re going to come out on a ledge in a minute that will give us a really cool view.”
“Oh, Okay.”
Kate tried to relax, to tell herself that this meant nothing. But she couldn’t. She’d dreamed for too long of having Chris alone like this, of having him touch her like she mattered to him somehow.
A few yards further down the path, Chris moved his hand from her back and slid it down her arm, feeling his way to her hand. His fingers threaded through hers and gripped them tightly. “Let’s be careful. We don’t want to go stumbling off a cliff in the dark.”
Kate sort of felt like she already had.
He pulled a flashlight out of his pocket.
She blinked. “A flashlight. Good idea. You’re so smart.”
“I have my moments.”
He guided her forward, weaving around the trees until they opened up on a breathtaking view of the valley. The cabin was to their right, looking homey and warm with its windows lit up against the night. But directly in front of them, the full moon floated in a sea of stars. They looked as icy and fragile as snowflakes. From the deck last night, there had been too much light to see this many stars, but from here, the whole sky was awash with them.
“It’s so beautiful,” Kate said, her voice no more than a whisper.
Chris’s hand clenched around hers. “I have to admit that I was disappointed at first that you hadn’t taken us to some tropical location. But I’ve never experienced anything like this. It’s so stark and rugged, but at the same time it’s…”
“Like fairyland.”
His smile glinted in the moonlight as he turned toward her. He dropped his hands onto her shoulders. “And you look like a fairy queen.”
She scoffed and shook her head. “Sure I do. In my beanie and fuzzy scarf.”
Grinning, Chris shrugged. “Well, maybe you look more like a Christmas elf. But you’re still lovely.”
A hot blush warmed Kate’s chilled face. “What is this, Chris?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, holding my hand, giving me compliments, the candles and music when we ate.”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
A horrible thought occurred to her. “Is it just that I’m the only female around?”
He clenched his jaw and almost glared down at her. “You know I’m not like that. Things just feel different between us. Don’t you feel it?”
“It’s just the setting. If we were back at the office, it would be the same as it always was.”
“No, it wouldn’t. It hasn’t been the same since that night at your apartment. It opened my eyes to who you really are.”
“And who am I?”
“Feminine and feisty and…tempting.”
His eyes searched her face, lingering on her lips. She knew he wanted to kiss her as surely as she knew it was a really bad idea. She didn’t think she could come back from that. Right now, her heart ached for him, but it was still whole. If she let him kiss her, she might never be whole again.
“Don’t, Chris. We can’t do this.”
“Then stop looking at me like you want to.”
Kate took a deep breath, steeling herself against the inclinations of her body, and stepped back.
“Careful!” He grabbed her arms and pulled her against him. “There is a cliff behind you, remember.”
“Let’s go back,” she said and headed back into the trees. In a flash, Chris was beside her, lighting the way ahead with his flashlight.
“Okay, so first order of business,” he said with a note of humor in his voice. “Let’s fix this before it gets awkward.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure you are. So to recap, I wanted to kiss you. You did not, at this time, want to kiss me. No big deal. And no reason we can’t go on just like we were before.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Warren.”
He grabbed her hand then and pulled her to a stop. “No, don’t go back to that again. You use it like a weapon.”
“More like a shield,” she corrected him. But it revealed too much. Closing her eyes in frustration, she said, “Look, it hasn’t exactly been easy working for such an attractive man. Especially in such a close, intimate way. I know your shoe size, your favorite cologne, and what kind of shampoo you prefer.”
“Nevertheless, I want you to call me Chris now. And if it means you can’t keep all these walls up, all the better.”
Chapter Twelve
Kate had practically confessed that she was attracted to him. His pulse hammered in his veins. He felt an irrational and dangerous sense of victory and relief. The problem was, if that was her reason for not working for him, he wasn’t about to try to talk her out of it anymore. Examining his own growing feelings, he agreed that working together would only be disaster. But that realization didn’t mean that he was going to let her just walk out of his life.
With all of his past failures at building and sustaining any kind of relationship with a woman, he needed to tread carefully before he took another step with her. It was going to be hard when every instinct was driving him towards her and stealing all his logic and reason.
When they got back to the house from the short walk, he was stupid enough to say, “You mentioned the hot tub earlier. Want to join me?”
“No thanks,” Kate said, taking off her coat. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you?”
“Um, I think it’s a great idea.”
She glared at him. “Well, I’m going to bake cookies, but go ahead if you want to.”
But the idea didn’t appeal to him without her. So, needing to clear his thoughts and decide what to do, he left his coat on and went outside. Remembering the pine cones, he went to the garage and found a bucket. With his flashlight in hand, he walked slowly back up the trail, picking up pine cones as he walked. When the bucket was full, he had to stop and laugh at himself. How exactly had he, Christopher Sterling Warren the Third, ended up on some remote mountain in the dark, tossing pine cones in a bucket?
He had certainly never done anything even remotely similar for anyone else. So why? Why for her?
The answer wasn’t hard to come by. Because it was going to make her happy, and somehow, that made him happy. A wave of affection swept through him. He was well-acquainted with physical attraction, but this was new. This is what he’d been missing. Never before had he felt such a strong desire to make someone else smile.
Walking back along the path, he didn’t only return with the pine cones, but with a new resolve. He was going to take a chance one more time, and see if he could persuade Kate to give him a shot. He was certain that this time he’d do everything he could not to break her heart, but it scared him that he might actually be the one to get hurt for once.
Leaving the pine cones on the porch outside, Chris went in and found Shaun and Kate working together in the kitchen. Because of his newly understood feelings, he felt a surge of jealousy for a split second when he saw how close they stood at the counter. But he took a moment to calm down and think logically. Shaun was young and good-looking, but he was in a committed relationship and neither he nor Kate had shown any signs of interest in each other. He was sure he would have noticed.
Still, he wouldn’t mind getting rid of the other man just so he could have some time alone with Kate.
As he walked in and took his coat off, she looked up at him. He knew, because he hadn’t once taken his eyes off her.
“Where have you been?”
“Just took a walk?”
“Another one?”
Chris smiled and put his hands in his pockets as he walked into the kitchen. “I consider it to be part of the same walk. I just had to drop you off half-way through because you were too much of a wuss to keep going.”
“That’s not why,” she argued. Then she pressed her lips t
ogether as if she was angry with herself for saying so much and turned her back on him to put a pan of gingerbread men into the oven.
Moving closer, he asked in low, teasing voice, “Oh yeah? Then why was it?”
“Because I was afraid of falling in the dark.”
Chris smiled and stood between her and the counter where they were working on cookies. “Yes, you were definitely in danger of falling. I’m glad you realize it.”
Kate pressed her hands on his chest and pushed him back, trying to shift him out of her way. Chris turned and let her by, but she still brushed lightly against him. He was pretty sure she’d done it on purpose.”
“Man, how much dough is there?” Shaun asked. “I didn’t volunteer to make a million cookies.”
“Anxious to get back to your sappy Christmas romances?” Kate asked.
“Maybe. Mostly though, Marissa is going to call me as soon as she’s off work, and that will be any minute now.”
“Oh, well, don’t worry about this,” Kate said. “I’ll finish up.”
“Okay.” Shaun turned and washed the flour off his hand at the sink. “But don’t think I’m going to miss out on eating a few of these warm.” He dried his hands and left.
Only then did Chris say, “Can I help?”
Kate looked at him warily but nodded. “I’d be happy to get the help. Thanks.”
He walked over to the sink and began washing his hands. “You’ll have to show me what to do. I don’t have a clue.”
As he dried his hands off with a paper towel, Kate was working to roll out the dough. She handed him a cookie cutter. “Here you go. Just press the cutter into the dough as many times as you can.”
Cutting out cookies became an engineering puzzle as Chris tried to figure out how to cut as many cookies as possible into the dough without wasting any. He had never tried to impress a woman in the kitchen before, and secretly, he was amused at his eagerness.
When Kate looked over his shoulder and burst out laughing, he wrinkled his brow. “What?”
“You really took me seriously, didn’t you? I can just roll out the leftover dough again, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Moving up beside him, Kate took the cookie cutter from his hand and wedged herself in front of him. “Well, we need to move this along because I’m ready to put the next pan in. We haven’t even thought about dinner yet, and I don’t want to be up all night.”
Chris could have stepped back to give her room to work, but he didn’t. This was exactly where he wanted to be. Instead, he shifted so he could brace his arms against the counter on either side of her. She tilted her head to look up at him, revealing the pale column of her white neck. He resisted the urge to kiss it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Watching. I need to learn how to do this right.”
“You were doing it fine, just really slowly. But, that’s okay. It’s not like you’re going to become a baker any time soon.”
“Unlikely,” he agreed.
“Can you give me that spatula over there?”
Chris reached out and grasped a handing looking tool. “This.”
Kate cracked up laughing. “Okay, wow. Yes, that.”
She took it from him and transferred the soft dough to the waiting cookie sheet, easing each gingerbread man onto the pan and delicately fixing any spots where it got warped out of shape.
The timer went off on the oven, so Kate switched out the pans. The baked cookies were thicker, less glossy, and tinted a darker shade. And they smelled amazing.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten gingerbread,” Chris said.
“What? Oh my gosh. Hold on.” Kate picked up the spatula and moved each of the baked cookies onto a rack. Then with unexpected brutality, she broke the head off one of them. “Here you go. Try it.”
Chris took it from her but juggled it back and forth between his hands since it was too hot. Kate caught hold of his hand and blew on the cookie. He stared down at her like a man at once frozen in place and turned into lava. She couldn’t have any idea the effect her touch was having on him. “That’s enough,” he said. Hearing how rough it sounded, he cleared his throat, and popped the gingerbread head in his mouth.
“Well?” she asked.
Christopher nodded. “Okay, that was amazing. Do I get the rest of the body now?”
Kate chuckled and picked up the decapitated cookie. “You can have half. I want the rest.” She broke it in half, straight up the middle and handed his part over to him. “There’s just one problem.”
“What?”
“How in the world are the three of us going to eat so many cookies?”
Chris picked up another one and bit the leg off. “I can safely promise I’ll do my share.”
Chapter Thirteen
Too much. There had just been too much of everything for Kate. Too much sugar. Too much accidental touching. Too many half-revelations, and way too much temptation. When the cookie mess was all cleaned up and the gingerbread men, complete with icing details, were stored away, she was glad to escape to her room. They’d been too full of cookies to want dinner anyway, so she was done working in the kitchen for the evening.
She just needed to shut the door on Chris and get a chance to take stock of what was going on.
If the powerful and remote billionaire had been easy to fall for, this new version of him was a whole new kind of threat. He’d been so sweet about helping her, even staying to clean up until the kitchen was pristine, even though it was clear he’d never had to clean anything in his life. As they’d worked, it was so obvious that he was feeling things between them. The very air between them vibrated with attraction.
Kate flopped down on her bed with her phone in hand, determined to lose herself in something mind-numbing and distracting. Surely there was something on the internet that could keep her focus off of Chris. But she didn’t have any service. She groaned. For the most part, they’d had good luck with the internet, but it looked like she was out of luck for the night.
Restless, she got up and wandered around her room. She stripped out of her clothes to change into pajamas. Her shirt smelled like gingerbread, making her chuckle. Hopefully, Chris’s would too. She looked at the deep soaking tub and considered taking a bath, but it would probably take ages to fill. Since all she wanted to do was relax in hot water, she might as well just go out to the hot tub.
Changing quickly into her red swimsuit again, she pulled on her robe and a pair of slippers and went to the sliding door. After bracing herself for the cold, she threw it open and dashed outside. She came to an abrupt halt after only a few steps when she saw that the lights and jets were already going and that Chris was in the hot tub. He was leaning back with his arms up along the side and his eyes closed.
He was so perfect, just such a splendid specimen of masculine beauty that she stared in spellbound appreciation. She should turn right around and go back inside. She should definitely not take another step toward that hot tub.
But she did.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked softly.
Chris’s eyes jerked open. He straightened and pulled his arms back down into the water. “Of course not.”
Kate took her robe off and kicked off her shoes and hurried into the hot water because it was even colder outside now than it had been the night before. As she sank into the water, she kept her eyes focused on Chris. With the way he was watching her, she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to. Which she didn’t. “I’m really tired, but I was having a hard time going to sleep.”
“Me too.” He moved around the hot tub to sit beside her. “No matter what I do, I can’t seem to stop thinking about you.”
“That’s new,” Kate said, just a hint of bitterness in her tone. “You’ve been able to look right past me for years.”
“Not true. I always saw you. How beautiful you are. How intelligent and competent. But as your boss, that was all I could do.”
&
nbsp; “I was no more than a cog in the clockwork.”
“Believe me, I regret all the lost opportunities to know the people who work for me better. I wish I would have taken the time to build relationships with them. You helped me see that. But Kate, if I had always seen you the way I do now, well, it wouldn’t have worked. I would have spent all my time wanting to kiss you.”
Her breathing grew shallow as she listened to him. She turned to face him better and their knees met beneath the water. She couldn’t help but chuckle softly. “Maybe I should have quit a long time ago.”
“Kate, will you tell me the real reason you’re quitting?”
Her stomach scrambled with panic. “You ask it like you think you already know.”
“Is it because you have feelings for me?”
Taking her courage in both hands, Kate said, “I told you it was hard to work with such an attractive man, but mostly it was hard because I knew you’d never look at me like that. I was tired of being alone.”
Chris leaned toward her and slid his arms around her waist. With his eyes locked on hers, he pulled her onto his lap. “Well, you’re not alone now.”
Kate couldn’t believe this was happening. That he was holding her, looking at her like she was some prized masterpiece. But then his lips touched hers and disbelief fell away. Everything about the kiss was so real. The slight scrape of his stubble against her skin, his warm breath fanning across her cheek, the cold prickle of an icy breeze on her back, and the spicy-sweet taste of gingerbread.
Chris pulled back, searching her eyes as if trying to judge her reaction. She knew it was time to open herself up, to stop holding back. Running her hands around his neck, she brought her lips back to his, and this time, she kissed him with every ounce of suppressed longing. He met the fierce urgency of her kiss with a hunger that swept her away. His hands roamed her back and sides as she pressed closer to him, gripping his shoulders to pull him as near as possible so that there was nothing between them, not even water. She reveled in it because as long as she’d known him, there had been so much between them that kept her from ever really imagining this scenario. His money, the fact that he was her boss, the string of women he dated.
A Tree for the Billionaire (Southern Billionaire Romance Book 4) Page 7
