by Dani Collins
“Oh, look. Leave it to Meg to just march up to a prince and introduce herself.” Liz nodded at Blake’s sister, who was nodding at something the prince was saying, her husband Linc beside her. They’d been at Piper’s as well, dropping off their twins, before they all came here.
“I think she was talking to Rowan,” Blake said with a nod at the dark-haired woman with the big blue eyes. “She’s one of the Courier’s reporters. She and Meg went to school together, and Meg has started freelancing with the Courier. She used to be in broadcasting in Chicago and misses the news,” he explained to Quincy and Nicki.
“I don’t know how she finds time around the twins, but let’s seize the day, Nicki. This is our moment to brush elbows.”
Nicki let Liz drag her across the room. Meg quickly drew them into an introduction. The prince—“Call me Theo,”—was the most down-to-earth royalty she was ever likely to meet, chatting easily with all of them for a few minutes.
When they walked away, Nicki excused herself to the powder room, coming back to scan for Quincy. She happened to be standing in the same place they’d stood when they arrived. He quickly appeared at her side.
“Dance?” he suggested.
“Sure.”
Before they could move, one of their hostesses stopped in front of them. She pointed above Quincy’s head. “That’s the second time you’ve stood under the mistletoe. This time, you have to kiss.”
We’re not—
Nicki thought it, but couldn’t make her voice work. Not when Quincy’s hand had just curled around her arm and subtly firmed. He wore his visor. His emotions were firmly masked, but that wasn’t refusal or rejection in his eyes. It was a question.
Do you want to?
Her heart went into palpitations. She couldn’t breathe.
She did want to. She couldn’t hide the way her shoulders softened in acceptance, but it was so wrong. So not a good idea. So…
She didn’t know if he turned her or her own feet moved. Did he draw her in? Or did she crowd close? Her hands went up to his chest, but only to rest there. His shirt felt crisp. The warmth of his chest seeped through to burn her palm.
She found herself lifting her mouth and closing her eyes, blocking out the mistletoe and misgivings, letting him lead and trusting him—
Oh.
It was brief. Way too brief. The light brush of his mouth, framed in an even lighter brush of soft beard, was the most mysterious and entrancing thing she’d ever felt. Spicy, dark, masculine. Way too brief. Her lips clung to his as he drew away before they’d kissed the way she wanted to. Deeply. Passionately.
She swallowed and couldn’t look at him, the woman, or anything but the floor. What if they realized how hungry she was?
“Dance?” he said again. His voice sounded thicker.
She nodded, reacting on reflex. Somehow, her clumsy feet took her to the floor, but when he drew her against him this time, it was closer. His hand was not at her waist, but in the small of her back. His beard grazed her temple. Their thighs brushed as they moved.
She felt otherworldly after that. Ethereal. Like a spell had been cast. They moved as one, but it was an out-of-body experience. He held her soul—carefully, but it was still the most defenseless, vulnerable feeling she’d ever experienced.
She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or dejected when it was time to go home.
*
He shouldn’t have kissed her.
Quincy drove her home before picking up Atlas, even though it meant doubling back to get him. He needed the privacy to talk to her, to make sure he hadn’t overstepped and ruined everything.
God, he hated talking. It wasn’t just the struggles of his childhood. It was this kind of talking he hated most, where he had to wade through the mire of feelings. He had to sort out his own thoughts and articulate the meaning of things he couldn’t even define.
“Do I need to apologize?” he asked as he turned into the Tierney’s driveway.
She didn’t play dumb. She knew what he meant.
“That woman put us on the spot. It’s totally fine.” She didn’t sound fine. She’d been really quiet since they’d kissed, which wasn’t like her.
“I don’t do things I don’t want to do, Nicki.”
Silence.
He heard her swallow and glanced over to see her searching his face.
“I’m your employer. I realize—”
“Quincy. It’s fine. I don’t think you’re the kind of man who would take advantage like that. I’m just… confused. I mean, obviously I find you very attractive, but… This is temporary. My being here, I mean.”
Obviously. His brain hung up on that word. He worked the steering wheel with his palms, letting the burn of friction ground him. Obviously, he found her very attractive, too, but he didn’t think either of them had made that obvious.
“Can I ask you something? It’s really personal.”
He tensed, but hitched a shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Did you love Karen?”
He bit back a soft curse. Feelings. It didn’t escape him that he’d told her earlier that people tended to hate what they weren’t good at. Guilty. He had never figured out how to love.
“I’m just wondering if that’s why you’re… closed off.”
She wasn’t being intrusive for the sake of it. He knew her well enough to know she was asking as a friend, trying to understand him. Trying to understand how hurt he’d been by Karen’s rejection.
He drew a breath that burned his lungs and let it out, then just let the thoughts that had been swirling in his mind for weeks spill out.
“Karen was adopted. Her relationship with her parents wasn’t great. They’re good people, but she told me she never felt like she fit with them. I’ve thought about it a lot since finding out about Atlas, read a few things about being adopted. I think, if she did set me up to get her pregnant, if she did want to have a baby on her own, then I’m sure it’s because she felt like she was missing a blood relation. She wanted a connection that was hers, if that makes sense. But I don’t know that for certain because she wasn’t any more forthcoming than I am.”
He thought about his quiet evenings with Karen, their low-key dates, their silent walks.
“I think I was most attracted to the fact she didn’t demand a lot from me, conversation wise. There was no drama. I thought we were a good fit because we both kept our thoughts and feelings to ourselves. In retrospect, I wonder how I thought that was even a relationship when we really didn’t connect beyond the surface stuff. What to eat, what movie to see, that kind of thing.”
He glanced at Nicki and saw he had her full attention. It was like staring down a train, putting his heart in his throat, but he made himself keep talking. “I’ve confided more to you in these two weeks than I did in the four months Karen and I were seeing each other.”
He looked straight ahead again, thumbs working the steering wheel while his inner cogs continued to grind out hard truths. “Did I love her? Not the way she probably wanted to be loved. I didn’t see that then, and I feel more for her now. Gratitude, weirdly. I’m so sorry Atlas lost her. I’m still angry that she didn’t tell me about him. I’m just glad I know now. I’m glad he’s mine. I keep thinking that whether it was accidental or on purpose, either way, she had him. That means she saw something in me worth… I don’t know. Replicating? She must have thought I was worth making a child with. That’s something, right?”
“It is.” Her voice was soft and tender.
He ignored the unsteadiness that went through him, pushed aside his angst, and concentrated on what really mattered. His son.
“I think you were right the other day, when you told him he had a good mom. She clearly loved him. I just hope I don’t screw him up.”
“You won’t. I promise you, you won’t.”
He wasn’t so sure, but when she smiled sweetly at him like that, he believed her. “Thanks. I mean for listening. I don’t feel like I can tell Pops all that.�
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He couldn’t think of anyone he could have told. He ought to feel exposed after revealing so much, but he felt lighter. Like he was coming back onto an even keel after the storm of first learning about Atlas.
There was a sense of incompletion in him, though. A need to keep this closeness going. He wanted to hold her. Kiss her again. Properly.
“Can I walk you up?”
*
Nicki knew what it meant when he asked to walk her up. As his feet hit the treads behind her, her pulse thrummed. Her fingers were clumsy with the key, but when she started to push in, he held back.
“Oh, I—?” She had thought she knew what he was asking. Now her lungs squeezed and her face stung.
“Better out here, I think.” He pushed a hand into his pocket. “Where it’s cold enough I can keep my head.” His breath fogged.
It sounded like he was saying he found her so desirable he didn’t trust himself to come inside. She felt the same, except she wanted him to come inside. She didn’t want this night to end. She wanted to touch him. Be naked with him. Wake with him.
Yearning drew her toward him. It was a still night. The layer of snow on the ground cast a pale blue over the world. The sense of occupying an enchanted land returned.
He flicked open the button on his suit jacket, opening the edges, then tucked her into the warmth of his body as he wound his arms around her.
She didn’t need his body heat to fend off the cold. She was oblivious to it, but it was still deliciously nice to snug her arms against his firm sides and slide her palms into the furnace between his crisp shirt and the slippery liner of his jacket.
His arm tightened, inviting her to lean into him. His other hand slid up between her shoulder blades to tunnel beneath her hair, settling against the back of her neck.
She felt like she was melting. Delicious, swirling sensations coiled in her middle as she offered her mouth and he settled his onto it.
A helpless noise left her throat. The contact felt that good. It was so intense it almost hurt, even though he only rubbed his lips gently against hers, getting to know her, coaxing her to open, then slowly, painfully slowly, firming into a real kiss.
This was the kiss she had longed for under the mistletoe. It was sweet and heady as molasses, sharp, yet rich, his beard grazing lightly against her jaw, emphasizing their difference. Man and woman.
She opened her mouth further, wanting more of his controlled, hungry feasting.
Time stopped. They were the only two people who existed.
She moaned again, deeper, arching into him, needing the pressure of his hard chest against her breasts, hands digging into his back, trying to meld them into one being.
He broke away, just long enough for their gasps to cloud the air, then he angled his head to plunder again. They kissed for a long time. Like it was the only kiss they would ever have.
Maybe it was.
The thought brought a burn to the backs of her closed eyes. She dug her nails into his back and kissed him harder. Kissed him with all the want in her.
His breath hissed as he finally lifted his head. He breathed a stark curse at the sky, while she tried to find her balance on her own feet.
He was hard. She was aroused.
Please come inside. She wanted him to, but she didn’t know how to ask. Her boss. Temporary.
Was he satisfied with that?
“You should go in.” His voice was graveled and low.
She tried to catch his gaze, tried to read his face, but he only showed her his profile, the granite expression that was impossible to penetrate.
“Okay. I had a really nice time tonight. Thank you.”
“Yeah.” He dug in his pocket for his keys. “Me, too.” His other hand started to reach out, but he made a frustrated noise and turned to the stairs, tossing back, “Good night,” as he descended.
December 18th
Nicki didn’t get a chance to feel awkward when she arrived for work the next morning. She was greeted by a sopping, milky tea towel sprinkled with O-shaped cereal puddled in the sink. A little boy who appeared to have dressed himself because his shirt was on backward blinked at her. Maury was in a suit and tie, hair still damp and face freshly shaved.
“Joan asked me to go to church with her today. It’s an outreach thing they do this time of year. I didn’t invite you because I knew you two would be out late last night. Although, you weren’t that late. I heard Quincy come in. Did you have a nice time?”
“Very nice.” She waxed poetic about the decorations, the music, what people wore, and the history of the courthouse. The part where they danced and kissed? Shhh.
Quincy came in as she was helping Atlas switch his shirt around. The man of her dreams was looking particularly rugged, hair ruffled by his fingers, wearing faded jeans and a cable-knit sweater that hugged the contours of his shoulders and chest.
“Sorry about that,” he said with a wave at the towel. “I got an email, then had to make a call. I told Atlas he could pour his own milk. He said you let him do that?”
“From a cup.”
“Oh. Right. Better. Anyway, he’s eaten, but I haven’t had time to clean up. I have to run Pops out to the church, then I have another call. They want me to fly to Pittsburg tomorrow.” He jangled his keys off the hook and kicked into his loafers. “Vandals broke into a job site, stole all the copper wire.”
“It’s almost Christmas!”
“That’s what I said, but I’m on contract now. They figure they can buy my time. I’m pretty sure I can push it into the new year, but I have to try to sort it out from here. On a Sunday.” He sighed. “Ready, Pops?”
“Oh, Maury,” Nicki said as he rose off the chair from tying his shoes. “Ask Joan if she would like to spend the afternoon with us. Atlas and I are going to finish wrapping the presents. I thought we could have a picnic in front of the tree when we’re done.”
“What a nice idea. I will.” Maury nodded, and the men left.
As she and Atlas were left alone, she glanced from him to the sink and back to him. “Was your dad mad about the milk?” She didn’t think Quincy would yell at his son, but…
Atlas shook his head. “He sayed, Don’t cwy ovah spid mick.”
“Of course he did.” She went across to press her smile into his soft hair. “Let me rinse out the towel and start the laundry, then you can tell me if you had fun with the kids last night.”
*
“Pittsburg?” Pops said before they’d left the garage.
“I know.”
“Son, I don’t think you do.”
“No, Pops. I do. It’s too soon to leave Atlas. I know that.” A scored sensation ran across the interior of Quincy’s chest. Maybe he was slow on the uptake, but he was starting to understand what it meant to be a father. It hurt that his own father didn’t see how far he’d come. “I’m trying to get out of it.”
“On the other hand, now might be the better week to go, since Nicki is still here. Do you really have to let her go at the end of the month?”
“Her last day is Christmas Eve. She’s going to spend Christmas with her family.” But he had thought about asking her to come back for the days between Christmas and New Year. For January and into the foreseeable future.
There was a very big problem with that. He sighed, glancing over at his father—who was dating, as if Quincy didn’t have enough to adjust to. He didn’t resent it. His mother had been gone a long time. His father deserved some companionship. He hoped this Joan woman did come over today, so he could meet her, but he wasn’t ready to give a lot of thought to his father’s love life.
Not yet. Not when he was so confused about his own.
“I don’t want Nicki to be my employee,” he admitted. “I don’t want my son to get too attached to her if we’re not going to turn into anything, but I don’t know how to keep her in this town to find out what could happen between us. I don’t know what to do, Pops.”
He had barely slept last night, menta
lly walking around the knotted issue, trying to untangle it. He had relived their kiss over and over, thinking she was the most exciting woman he’d ever met—which surely meant she was completely wrong for him. She was outgoing, leaned into life, and started conversations with strangers just to be friendly. She was like a helium balloon, her buoyed personality and optimism irrepressible. He altered between thinking he needed to grab her string and keep her from floating away, then worried he would hold her back. What the hell could she possibly see in him, a man with a son from another woman? A reticent nerd who lived inside a computer.
“That was the church,” his father said as Quincy drove right past the entrance.
Quincy swore.
“In front of the church, son?” Pops admonished good-naturedly.
“I’m trying to do what’s right for Atlas.” He turned around and went back to the church driveway. “I realize she’s really good for him, but I can’t start something with her for his sake. That wouldn’t be fair for any of us.”
As he parked to let his father out, Pops hitched around to face him.
“My greatest regret as a father is that I didn’t see clearly enough what you needed. I didn’t take action when I should have. You see too much, but you let that paralyze you. Don’t let her get away if she’s The One. He who hesitates sleeps alone.”
“Tell Joan I’m happy to drive her home if she wants to come over for our picnic by the tree. And no, I can’t believe we’re doing that,” he added, shaking his head at the frivolity while kind of looking forward to it.
“She’s good for you, son. That’s all I’m saying.” Pops winked and opened his door, waving as he spotted his girlfriend.
*
Joan was a retired nurse, plump and friendly, widowed with a grown son and daughter, both living in the area. She was so easy to talk with, she quickly eased Atlas past any shyness and spoke shop with Nicki, mentioning she thought there might be an opening at a local group home for adults with mental disabilities.
“I hadn’t thought of staying here,” Nicki said. It was a bit of a lie. She had glanced at the online job boards and read through the classifieds, but saw more opportunities in bigger centers. “My arrangement with the Tierneys was only until Christmas. I’m not sure they want a renter full time, so I thought I’d move back in with my dad and figure things out from there.”