Merry and Bright

by Jill Shalvis

  They toweled off. Hope bent for the pile of clothes, and several folded up papers fell out of his jacket pocket, papers he’d meant to show her after they shoveled off the roof. She gathered them up for him, going still as her eyes took in his research and the tentative offer he’d drawn up. He’d hoped to try to buy the lot from her, but that hadn’t felt right. This place was hers. So instead he’d planned to lend her the money she needed to pay off Edward.

  “What’s this?” she asked, a veil coming down over her face.

  “A way out of your problem.”

  “I’ve already told you I can handle this.”

  “You’re going to lose the B&B, Hope. And it’s wrong. You don’t need to—”

  “Did you have this planned all along?” she asked in a very quiet voice. “You and Edward?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I think you did.” She slapped the papers to his chest. “I think you planned this all along. Maybe you didn’t really quit.”

  He stared at her as what she said sank in. “I did quit, Hope. Do you really think I’d—”

  “Yes! God, I’m so stupid!” She slapped her own forehead. “Of course you didn’t really give up what must have been a solid six-figure salary to start over.”

  “Careful,” he said softly. “You’re sounding a lot like that rat bastard you hate so much.”

  “Is that right? And how exactly does Edward sound?”

  “Honestly? A bit pig-headed.”

  “Pig-headed,” she repeated on a mirthless laugh. “Oh, honey. I haven’t even gotten started.” Buck-ass naked, she walked to the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To call Ben so he can snowmobile you out to your car.”

  “Hope—”

  “Don’t.” And still buck-ass naked, she walked right out of his life.

  10

  “You’re a stubborn-ass fool, Hope.”

  Hope stared in disbelief at Lori. They stood in the kitchen, squared off at the island. “Um, excuse me,” she said very carefully. “But I don’t think you heard me correctly.”

  “Oh, I heard you. Danny came here to—”

  “—take my business.”

  “To check on his boss’s investment,” Lori corrected. “And instead of being a stubborn-ass fool—like a certain person I know—he adapted. He worked his tail off for us, even going over and beyond to help you research alternatives, including offering you a personal loan to buy you both time and financial freedom. You know what, Hope? You’re right. He’s a bastard.”

  Hope let out a breath and turned to Ben, who was suited up in his snow gear, with his snowmobile just out the door ready to take Danny back to his car.

  As she’d asked. “Maybe you could talk some sense into your wife, Ben.”

  And Ben, sweet, kind, wonderful Ben who always had Hope’s back, shook his head. “Not this time, baby. I’m sorry. But my wife has a point.”

  “Goddammit. You’re just saying that because you sleep with her.”

  He smiled, warm and sure. “Well, there is that. But face it, the guy hasn’t done a thing except try to help you, Hope.”

  “He came here—”

  “Because of his job. And yet once he arrived, in fact from the moment he arrived, he did nothing but try to help. Problem is, you don’t do help, do you?”

  He didn’t mean it as a jab. She knew that, but it felt like a red hot stab of poker in her gut just the same because dammit. Was she really that person? Was she that much like Edward? Since she didn’t like the answer to that question, she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, Danny had come into the room, jacket on, duffle bag over his shoulder. He moved to hug and kiss Lori good-bye, then turned to Hope. “January first,” he said solemnly. “And don’t mistake my softness for his. He won’t be soft if you don’t pay. You know that.”

  “You’re not soft,” she whispered.

  He looked at her for a long moment but said nothing, and then turned and nodded to Ben. They both went out into the dark, stormy night, where the wind and snow battled to come in until the kitchen door shut.

  Closing them out.

  The cold didn’t leave Hope, though, and she wrapped her arms around herself. She felt her eyes swim, and knew the truth. Danny was right. Lori and Ben were right. “Okay, fine. I’m a stubborn ass who’s far too much like the family I resent with all my heart.”

  “Yes,” Lori agreed mercilessly. “You are.”

  Hope choked out a laugh as outside she heard the snowmobile rev and take off. Her heart did the exact same. “No!” She went running out the door to stop Danny from leaving, and—

  Plowed him over into the snow.

  They landed hard with him on the bottom.

  “Oh, my God, I’m sorry!” she cried. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No—” He hissed out a breath when she cupped his face with her snowy hands. “Your hands are cold.”

  “I’m sorry.” But she didn’t take her hands off him. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to take her eyes off him, either. “You aren’t even gone, Danny, and I miss you.”

  His eyes seemed to glow behind his glasses. “You . . . miss me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But . . . you asked me to leave.”

  She sat up and pulled him up with her, keeping her hands on him, noticing with a heavy heart that he didn’t do the same. “You didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at her, his glasses fogged and wet with snow. “First tell me why you came running out of the kitchen like a bat out of hell when you thought I’d left.”

  Heart pounding in her ears, she gently pulled off his glasses and cleaned them on her sweatshirt, then replaced them, relieved to see his warm eyes were still warm.

  And on her.

  “I was wrong,” she whispered, glad Ben was gone and that Lori hadn’t followed her out. She wanted to be alone, no audience for this one. “Really wrong.”

  He nodded agreeably. “About anything in particular?”

  She stared at him and had to laugh. Wasn’t that just like him to sit there in the snowstorm patiently waiting for her to get her words together? “About getting scared and sending you away.”

  “So . . . now you’re not scared?”

  “I’ve taken my time letting a guy in before, and gotten royally screwed. Maybe the answer is in trying something different this time. Someone different.” She shook her head at his silence. “Okay, I’m not making sense. Look, the important thing to note here is . . . I’m over myself.”

  “Good. So when were you under yourself?”

  She looked into his smiling eyes and felt her own helpless smile curve her lips. “I’ve never been good with asking for help, Danny.”

  “You didn’t ask. I offered.”

  “Turning it down was instinctive,” she admitted. “I wanted to handle things on my own.”

  “Understandable.” He reached for her hand, and just like that, the fist around her heart, the one that had been there so long she’d forgotten what it was like to take a full breath, released. “So back to my change in tactic,” she whispered, her voice rough with emotion. “I want your help—not your money. I can’t take your money, but—”

  “Hope—”

  “I mean, I want you, Danny. Your brain, your sense of humor, your incredible roof-shoveling skills . . .”

  His next smile came slow and sure, and he pulled her in for a hug that warmed her from the inside out. “Seems fitting,” he said. “Since I want you, too, temperamental stubbornness and all.”

  She pulled back to look into his face, feeling her relieved-smile face. “So . . . I don’t suppose you get to Colorado often.”

  “There’s no CPA in town, did you know that?”

  “I guess I never noticed.” She found that her throat was tight, almost too tight to talk. “You’d really be happy here?”

  “I think it’s the company,” he said with a serious nod. “Though i
t might be the bears and frozen pipes.”

  God, his smile. “Danny.”

  “It’s you, Hope. It’s all you.” He squeezed her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles. “But there’s something you should know.” He brought her hand up to his mouth. “I’m falling for you. Hard and fast.”

  “You—” She let out a breath and touched his jaw. “Really?”

  “Yeah. So what do you say, are you going to go out with me when I move here?”

  A bone-deep warmth filled her. “I think I could clear my schedule now and again.”

  “Good.” He slid a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled into her eyes. “You asked why I didn’t leave. It’s because I asked you to accept my help, without first telling you how much you’ve helped me.”

  “Come on. I didn’t help you with anything.”

  “Yes, you did. You made me remember to feel for something other than just work, to feel something with my entire heart and soul.”

  Emotion welled up and threatened her air supply. “That’s convenient,” she managed. “Because my heart and soul seem to want to be with yours.”

  His eyes were shiny, so damn shiny she couldn’t look away. “The best Christmas present I’ve ever had,” he murmured, and leaned in and kissed her, giving her the best Christmas present she’d ever had—him.

  MS. HUMBUG

  1

  Three days before Christmas, City Planner Cami Bennett looked at her reflection in the Town Hall employee bathroom mirror and gave herself the silent pep talk. You can do this. You can do something besides work your tail off. In fact, having fun is just like work, only . . . better.

  Probably.

  Oh, who was she kidding? She liked the big O’s—order and organization.

  Orgasms would have been a nice addition to that list, but due to being a little uptight—and, okay, a lot anal—those kinds of O’s were few and far between.

  Now the big city hall annual Christmas party was later tonight, a masked ball where “fun would be had by all,” and she was required to go.

  Oh, goodie.

  It wasn’t that she was the female equivalent of Scrooge, but more that everyone at work always seemed to go on and on about the holiday ad nauseum—decorations, gifts, travel plans. Somehow, they’d all built themselves personal lives as well as careers, something Cami hadn’t managed to do, and Christmastime just emphasized the failure on her part. She hated the pressure of the parties, the expense of buying her family gifts they didn’t need or want, and, most especially, the loneliness.

  Until now she hadn’t had much time to think about it, not with the huge town shake-up that had involved the mayor and his very pretty boyfriend’s private sex tapes being stolen and posted on the Internet for perusal by anyone with $29.95. It’d been the biggest scandal Blue Eagle had seen in decades, and no one yet knew how the rest of the town’s staff was going to fare when all the cards finished falling.

  Especially since the now-ex-mayor’s boyfriend had turned out to be two weeks shy of legal age and the son of the D.A.

  Ouch.

  The front page of the Sierra Daily had showed a picture of Tom Roberts, stripped of his mayor’s title, being led out of his office in handcuffs.

  Talk about airing your dirty laundry in public.

  A couple of councilmen had been dragged through the mud as well, one with a paternity scandal and the other with a bank scandal. Both accusations looked false, but were ugly nevertheless.

  Morale had never been lower in Blue Eagle.

  A soft sound came from one of the bathroom stalls, a sort of . . . mewl. “Excuse me,” Cami said to the closed door. “Are you okay?”

  The only answer was a whimper.

  Concerned, Cami moved closer. “Do you need help?”

  “Oh, God. Yes!”

  Cami bent down and looked beneath the stall. She could see a pair of Jimmy Choo black toeless pumps, the ones Cami had drooled over in Nordstrom’s but had not bought, choosing instead to pay her mortgage for the month.

  Facing the opposite direction of the Choos was a pair of men’s black leather dress shoes, equally expensive, and Cami went still. She knew a man who wore shoes like that. Ned Kitridge. He was a city councilman, and her casual date for the past two months.

  Embarrassment warred with fury.

  Fury won.

  Before her eyes, the woman’s pumps lifted off the ground and vanished. There was a thunk against the stall door, and a long female sigh of pleasure.

  And then the sound of a zipper.

  In shock, Cami watched as an empty condom packet hit the floor.

  Steaming, horrified, she staggered back. Even the bathroom was seeing more action than she.

  And with Ned, Ned, a man who hadn’t made a move on her, not once in six dates!

  As her ego hit the floor next to the condom wrapper, Cami grabbed her purse and exited the bathroom, nearly blinded by an unhealthy mix of anger and mortification. But could she just slam out of the building? No. She couldn’t abandon her compulsive, organized, anal routine. Hating that she couldn’t, she meticulously shut off her adding machine and the light over her drawing board, glancing at the new sticky note on her computer.

  Cami,

  I need to talk to you before the ball. Meet me in the conference room at 7:45.

  Ned

  Yeah, she just bet he needed to talk to her! Only a few moments ago, she had assumed—hoped—he’d actually pick her up at her place so they could go to the ball together. For eight weeks now, he’d driven her crazy with his need to take things slow. Slower than a-snail’s-pace slow. Slower than icicles-melting slow. So-slow-she’d-been-losing-interest slow.

  And yet in that bathroom, he hadn’t seemed to be taking anything slow.

  Don’t think about it.

  The others on her planning team—Adam, Ed, and Lucy, usually all too happy when things were going bad for her—had told her to be patient with Ned because he was a great guy.

  Well, Ms. Choos apparently thought so, too. Damn it, even more than tearing Ned apart, she wanted some sexual action.

  She wanted the man-induced orgasm.

  As she left the building, steam coming out of her ears, she didn’t see another soul. This deep into the year, the nights fell early in the Sierras. In pitch blackness, she made her way through the parking lot, the icy air cooling her off. With a few hours before she had to be back for the dreaded Christmas ball, she should hit downtown and knock off the list of gifts she needed in order to make a showing at her parents’ house for Christmas dinner.

  After all, she hated an undone to-do list.

  But she was too shaken from the Ned-screwing-in-the-bathroom scene to stop. Plus, it was snowing lightly, just enough to dust all the windows on her car, hampering her vision. She pulled out her ice scraper from beneath her driver’s seat and attacked her windows, but the ice stuck stubbornly. Giving up, she got into her frozen car and cranked the heater, which fogged the windows, adding to the visibility challenge. Things kept getting better and better. Forced to roll down her window to see, she stuck out her head.

  But the falling snow blocked her view. So did her own iced-over car. Damn it. She put the car into reverse and slowly eased off the brake—wait.

  Had she seen movement back there?

  Again she stuck her head out the window, but all she could see was snow flurries. Hell. Luckily, she knew she was the only one in the lot, so with another light touch on the gas, she crept out of the parking space and—

  Crunch.

  Oh, God! Oh, damn! Jerking her car into park, she leapt out of the car with her heart in her throat and came nose to nose with a man—scratch that. Nose to broad chest. “I’m so sorry!” she said, trying to blink the white flakes from her eyes to see past the man’s long dark coat and hood. “I—”

  “You weren’t looking.”

  “I couldn’t see—”

  “I honked.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Are you i
n that much of a hurry to get to the Christmas ball?” he asked.

  It suddenly sank through her agitation that she knew that frustrated male voice. Craning her head back, she lifted her gaze past broad shoulders and stared up into a pair of slate-gray eyes filled with annoyance.

  Oh, no. No, no, no.

  Not him. Anyone else on the planet but him.

  The him in question pushed back his hood, his dark hair glistening with snowflakes, making him seem even more fiercely intense and devastatingly handsome, if that were possible. Cami imagined even the most hardened of women would sigh over those chiseled features and that rock-hard body.

  But not her. Nope, she was entirely unmoved.

  Because in addition to the fact that he stood on her last nerve, he was the newly appointed mayor.

  Her boss.

  Her nemesis, Councilman Matt Tarino. They’d worked together in planning for two years before he’d moved on to councilman six months ago, and in their time together, they’d done nothing but gone head-to-head. He was the bane of her existence.

  And now he was mayor. That he was tough as nails and cowed to no one when it came to getting fair share and equal housing for the lower-income population—her pet project—didn’t matter. Nor did the fact that he’d been an excellent city planner, an advocate for all that she herself fought for.

  Not when he was everything her orderly, organized, rule-loving brain couldn’t fathom. He had no patience for precedence, rules, or expectations, and adding insult to injury, he seemed like sin personified, possessing a charismatic presence that conquered worlds, parted seas—and women’s legs—with a simple smile.

  It drove her crazy.

  Logically she knew that these feelings were coming from the little fat kid inside of her, the one guys used to cruelly call Whale-Tail, but she didn’t care. He was just far too perfect. Everything about him made her want to gnash her teeth into powder.

  And now, Merry Christmas to her, because she’d crunched his front fender and taken out his right headlight, and quite possibly ruined her life and her career—which was her life. Closing her eyes briefly, she opened them again and looked anywhere but into Matt Tarino’s frustrated face. That’s when her gaze landed on his feet.