A Little Bit of Christmas

by Juliana Stone

  “What about you, Chess? What’s your favorite Christmas memory?” Joely watched her expectantly, along with Ted. Cash looked down at his boots because he knew how crappy her eighth Christmas had been. But it hadn’t always been like that. There was a time when her parents were in love and happy—before his affair with the office temp and her affair with booze.

  “When I was five or six, I was infatuated with Sleeping Beauty. I don’t know what it is about her story that I loved so much. Maybe it was the three fairies looking out for her or maybe it was because, to me, she looked like my mother. I dressed like her and watched the movie any chance I could. So much so that I could quote dialogue. One Christmas morning, I woke up, and there was a snow globe on the nightstand beside my bed. It was beautiful. Inside the globe was the prince kissing Sleeping Beauty, and to me, it was everything. I ran to my parents’ bedroom and, God, my dad laughed when I jumped on their bed and told him that Santa had left it for me. That Santa had actually been in my room. I was young and still believed in fairy tales and magic and hope.”

  Ted leaned close to her and said quietly, “The older we get, all the good stuff gets buried beneath all the bad stuff, and we forget about magic and hope. Sometimes it’s easier to forget it existed than to remember something you don’t have anymore. But if you look inside yourself, it’s there. Trust me on that.”

  Steve brought out warm pie for everyone, Ted’s with grated cheddar cheese melted on top, and they sat together and enjoyed their dessert, while outside, the wind still blew and the snow still fell. When they were done and the plates had been cleared and stacked in the large industrial washer, Joely held up her wineglass.

  “Cheers, everyone. I know most of you probably wish you were somewhere else, but I’m glad we’re together. I’m blessed to spend this night with all of you. Merry Christmas.”

  Chess sipped from her water, aware that Cash’s gaze rested on her. She turned slightly, unnerved as Ted finished his glass of whiskey and set it down.

  “I’m an old fart, and being on the wrong end of eighty gives a man a certain leeway when it comes to imparting advice. Christmas is a state of mind, and some lucky sons of bitches have it every single day of their lives.” He filled his glass once more and raised a toast. “I don’t begrudge anyone that. But we don’t need it every day. All we need is a little bit of Christmas now and then to remind us what love feels like and to know we’re not alone.”

  Chess raised her glass to one of the sweetest men she’d ever met. Ted winked at her, and she smiled in return, turning as Cash moved closer. The look in his eyes was unreadable. It was dark and intense. It touched something inside Chess she thought was long dead, and she was stunned to realized what it was. Hope. Maybe Cash Bodine was her little bit of Christmas. Maybe he was the reminder that all was not lost.

  He leaned closer, and she held her breath in anticipation, thinking he might kiss her. Thinking she kinda wanted it. Thinking a kiss from Cash would be like touching fire.

  But then the lights flickered.

  “Well, shit,” Ted exclaimed. “That’s not good.”

  Then they went out.

  Chapter Eight

  They waited a good hour by candlelight for the hydro to come back on, and when it was apparent it wasn’t happening anytime soon, the Christmas Eve celebration at the Crystal Lake Motel Diner came to an end.

  Joely and Steve locked up and headed to his suite, which was double the size of a regular room, along with Ted, who Joely insisted stay with them because no hydro meant no heat. Cash and Chess walked the elderly couple back to their room and then stomped through two-foot drifts until they reached theirs.

  The snow seemed to pull what little light there was from the surrounding darkness, making Chess look ethereal in its reflection. He snuck a look at her as she fumbled in her coat pocket for her room key. “We’d have a better chance of keeping warm if we stay together.” It wasn’t a line or anything like that. It was the truth.

  She paused and exhaled, twin plumes of air billowing around them. “You’re probably right,” she said softly. She fingered the key. “I’ll just change into warmer clothes first and come over.”

  He got the feeling she was about to bolt or, worse, shut down, so he backed away and headed to his own room. “The door will be unlocked. Let yourself in.”

  He’d grabbed a couple of candles from the diner and now lit them, placing them on the dresser. It wasn’t much, but they filled the room with a warm glow. A part of him thought Chess would bail, and he didn’t realize how much he wanted her in his room until he heard the door open behind him.

  She closed the door, arms laden with extra blankets, and he took them from her, tossing them onto the bed and moving aside to give her some room.

  “You want a drink?” he asked casually. Why the hell did everything feel different? Hadn’t they just had a nice evening at the diner? Hadn’t they had some laughs and nice moments with ease?

  “I’ve got beer and…” He flashed a smile. “Beer.”

  She accepted a can of Bud Light and sat on the edge of the bed. They made small talk as if they were strangers getting to know each other. Which, in a way, they were.

  “So,” he said watching her closely. “Your name.”

  She frowned and looked confused. “Yes?”

  “I’m going to assume Chess is short for something.”

  A small smile drifted across her face, and in that moment, Cash thought he could watch that smile all day long. And then some. It changed everything, and if anything, the bruises that were still visible gave her a touch of frailty that called to him.

  I want her.

  And not in a one-night-stand kind of way; he wanted more, and that surprised the hell out of him. Cash wasn’t that guy. He was a loner, and this situation was complicated.

  “Francesca.”

  “What was that?” He blinked away thoughts of her naked and tangled up with him in bed.

  “I was named after my dad’s great-grandmother, Francesca Davis Somers. She was a pilot in World War II, if you can believe it. A total badass. She taught men how to fly fighter planes. I met her once. I was young, maybe four? But I remember how soft her skin was and that she smelled like cinnamon. She used to keep a bag of those hard cinnamon heart candies in her pocket.” Her smile drifted away. “I wish I was more like her.” Chess sipped from the beer. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” Cash kept his tone light, but already, tension crept along his shoulders and neck. He wasn’t the kind to share. So what was it about this woman that tore down all his walls?

  “I don’t know anything about you.”

  He stared down at his boots and then thought, what the hell. Cash looked up and shrugged. “I’m from the South. Louisiana, to be exact. My parents split when I was a kid. My mom remarried a couple of times, always to assholes, though the worst is the guy she’s still with, Pete. They’re still in Louisiana, my dad is in Florida, and I haven’t spoken to either one of them in years. Blue and I, we’re tight. She lives here with her husband, Cam, and they have two girls.”

  “Cam Booker?”

  Cash nodded. “You know him?”

  “It’s Crystal Lake. Everybody knows everybody.” She eyed him up, her expression unreadable. “You’ve never been married?”

  “Not the marrying kind.”

  “So, no kids.”

  He shook his head. “None that I know of, anyway.” At the look on her face, he laughed. “I’m kidding. I definitely have no kids. I went into the military as soon as I graduated, and then I…” He paused. Was he going to lay everything out? He considered this for all of two seconds. “I did a stint in prison.” He watched closely for her reaction. When that bit of information didn’t faze her, he continued. “I got into it with someone who’d hurt my sister, and I paid the price. When I got out, I traveled a lot, cleared my head, and decided the nomad life wasn’t for me, though I haven’t exactly laid down roots anywhere. A friend of mine from my military da
ys is a PI, and I helped him out with a few cases. I discovered I like that sort of thing, and now I’ve got my own license and make a decent living doing something I enjoy.” He tipped his head back and took a long swig of beer. “That’s more than I can say for most folks.”

  Curious, he had to ask. “What about you? What’s your passion?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Come on. I don’t believe that. You wanted to be an actress.”

  “And I told you I sucked at that.”

  “There has to be something.”

  She averted her gaze. “If I told you, you’d probably laugh, considering…”

  “Considering what?”

  She didn’t reply.

  Cash stood up. “I would never make light of anyone’s dreams.” He was dead serious.

  Chess played with the tab on her beer can, twisting it until it snapped off. She didn’t say anything, and just when Cash thought she was going to ignore him, she let out this small sound like a sigh.

  “I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write words that mean something, like Toni Morrison or Tennessee Williams. I loved Emily Dickinson. I won a competition in junior high, and when I brought home my award to show my mother, she took it from me and threw it in the garbage. She told me that girls who look like me don’t become writers. She told me that the only way I’d get ahead in life was to use my looks, to aim for the popular boys, the ones headed somewhere.” Her voice wavered. “I believed her. I stopped writing. I stopped reading. I stopped doing anything that brought me joy, and I wallowed in her self-pity. I let it cover me like a shroud, and it didn’t take long for me to forget my dreams. And now…”

  Cash moved closer. “Now?” he prodded gently.

  “It’s too late.”

  Cash moved closer yet. So close, the toes of his boots touched hers. “It’s never too late, Chess. If that’s your dream, if that’s your passion, then do something about it.” He smiled when she looked up at him. “Look at me. An ex-con living the dream, or at least my kind of dream.” He held her gaze until his entire body was awash in heat. Until his breath came faster and his heart was a roar in his ears.

  “Do you ever wish you’d done things differently?”

  He thought about that for a bit. “I wish my parents hadn’t been assholes. I wish my sister hadn’t been caught up in their shit. I wish I hadn’t left her behind, and I wish I hadn’t used my fists to right a wrong, because that landed me in a dark place.” He frowned. “I guess there’s a lot of things I wish I’d done differently, but I also think that all these things we’ve done, even the ones we regret, well, they make us who we are. It’s up to us what we do with all that baggage. Do we sink beneath the weight? Or do we use it to make us stronger?”

  “Do you ever get lonely?” she asked quietly.

  “Not often,” he admitted. “It hits home when I meet someone like you.”

  “Like me?” She made no effort to hide her surprise.

  Cash sat beside her and slid his hand along her jaw until she was forced to look him in the eye.

  “You make me think of things I shouldn’t consider.”

  “Like what?” Her breath was warm on his face, and damned if her eyes didn’t pull at him something fierce.

  “Like sticking around when I know I can’t.”

  Cash had had enough of this dance. He slid his mouth over hers and finally took what he wanted. What he needed.

  Chess opened beneath him. There were no coy moments, no retreat and then advance. There was just two people who’d been drawn to each other in spite of their circumstances, or maybe because of them. Cash didn’t want to think about any of that stuff. His only thoughts were of the woman in his arms.

  He could have used all the finesse and skill he’d amassed in his career of kissing women, but he didn’t need to. Their kiss was action and reaction. It was fluid and hot and instinctual. She tasted even better than he thought possible, and as she snuggled closer to him and her arms crept up behind his neck, Cash’s world spun off its axis.

  He kissed Chess until he damn near lost his mind. Until his cock was hard and uncomfortable and he knew that if he didn’t get his shit together, he was going to lose it. When she groaned and pressed her softness against him, he nearly did. Cash couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman the way he wanted this one in his arms.

  And if he had? The old Cash would have had her naked, and he’d already be inside her. No questions asked, no discussion about feelings or consequence.

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He wasn’t the old Cash, and Chess Somers touched something inside him he never knew he possessed. It was that something that drove him to break the kiss and very carefully extract himself from her. He needed a moment and ran his hand through his hair. If they were going to do this, he had to get this right. She needed to know the truth.

  Chess deserved that.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered, licking her bottom lip, the one bruised from his own. She looked sexy as hell with her hair all over the place, her soft skin flushed with desire. Shifting painfully, he tried to get himself to a place where he could talk coherently.

  After a few moments, he cupped her chin. This woman had been hurt by a lot of men in her life, and he didn’t want to add his name to that long list.

  “Normally when I meet women, they’re not the kind I have conversations with before hitting the sack. It’s just the way I’ve always rolled. I don’t like complications. I take them to bed, we have a good time, and I leave in the morning without saying goodbye.”

  Her expression was unreadable. “I get it,” she replied.

  Cash exhaled and shook his head. “No, I don’t think you do. You’re different, Chess. You’re not a woman I’ll easily forget. Your face won’t disappear like the others. I need for you to understand a few things, though. Then how we proceed is up to you. If you want to get under those covers and keep warm and do nothing more than sleep, I’m okay with that. If you want more, well, I’m pretty sure you can see my answer.” Her eyes dipped to the bulge in his pants. “But the thing is that once I see my family, I’m outta here, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m not the prince who kisses sleeping beauties. I’m just a man who wants a woman so bad, it hurts.”

  Damn but he was making a mess of this. He opened his mouth, no doubt to make things worse than they already were, but she put her finger against his lips.

  “I already told you I don’t believe in Prince Charming.”

  Her finger fell away, and she reached for the edge of the big sweatshirt. It was so cold, her breath hung in the air between them.

  And then she slowly pulled it over her head.

  Chapter Nine

  Chess’s heart was beating so hard, she felt it in her bones. She’d done some crazy stuff in the past, but getting naked with Cash Bodine was probably the craziest, because this would bite her in the ass. Of course it would.

  But it didn’t matter, did it? Not when her blood was hot and the need to be held so strong, she could taste it.

  When she tossed her top, the look in his eyes started more fires than she could handle. She decided to think about the consequences later, because right now, she was burning up with desire for a man who was like Halley’s Comet. Here today, gone tomorrow.

  Next came her sweatpants, until she stood in nothing but her birthday suit. The look in his eyes darkened, and he made a sound that was like an animal. Clearly, he was more than a little shocked at the no-underwear thing. She felt wicked, powerful, sexual.

  “Jesus, Chess.” His voice was rough, like whiskey straight from the bottle. “Are you sure about this?”

  “No more talking,” she said. “Take off your clothes.” Her breath hung in the air because without hydro, his room was cold. Goose bumps covered her skin, and her nipples were hard and pebbled. Yet inside, she was a raging fire of need fed by molten blood that her fast-beating heart pumped everywhere.

  Chess had had her share of lovers. There w
as no way around that. But she’d never wanted a man the way she wanted Cash Bodine right now. And if she took the time to think about it, she might have done a full stop, because deep down, she knew she was going to end up hurt. She could tell herself not to hope or dream, but the reality was that Cash was leaving in the morning to see his family, and then he’d be gone for good.

  Which meant she only had tonight. And Chess wanted tonight to be memorable.

  He was naked and big and so damn beautiful, it hurt. Chess pushed him back onto the bed and then climbed over him, straddling him so she could kiss him senseless. She took her time there, kissing and rubbing her breasts against his chest, loving the friction of his maleness against her soft skin.

  When she began to move lower, he swore.

  She smiled.

  She kissed her way down his chest to his abdomen, encouraging him to play with her breasts until she moved lower yet. His body was tense, she saw it and felt it, and when she took the straining length of him into her mouth, he grabbed her head and swore like a trucker.

  “You like that?” she whispered, blowing hot air against him.

  “What do you think?” he managed to say.

  “I think you want more.” Chess took all of him as deep as she could go. She massaged him, she licked and sucked until his body strained and he jerked.

  “Jesus, Chess, I can’t hold back…”

  She continued her ministrations and murmured, “Then don’t.”

  Cash came so hard, the entire bed shook, and he’d barely finished when she moved up over him, her hands seeking, her mouth kissing. He was touching her between her legs, his mouth at her breasts, and it didn’t take long for him to get hard and ready.

  “Condoms?” she whispered, leaning back and spreading her legs slightly because she enjoyed when he looked at her. Cash pointed to his duffel, and she grabbed a foil packet, opening it and expertly covering him.

  She didn’t give him a chance to say or do anything. Chess climbed on top of him and groaned as she slowly sank down. He was big, long and wide, and filled her whole. She started slow and then increased the tempo until they were both slick with sweat. She rode him until her body came apart with an orgasm that shook her to her core. Then fell onto the bed beside him, struggling to breathe.