He’d never been involved with a woman who had such long hair. It was hard not to reach out and test its thick, silky length as it curled around her breasts...and to explore the feminine curves beneath.
Luke shifted the position of Carlie’s feet on his thighs to keep her from noticing the way his body had responded. It was normal, he argued. He hadn’t been with a woman in well over a year and she was extraordinarily desirable.
He looked down. Even Carlie’s feet were attractive. She had nice ankles, neatly proportioned toes and high, slender arches that begged to be caressed. Tiny flecks of pale pink polish suggested she painted her toenails when she had time, which she obviously didn’t during the holiday season.
Damn. It was bad when a practical man started getting hot over a woman’s feet and it definitely wasn’t helping to clear his head. He ought to be checking what Nicole and the girls wanted to do for dinner, but rational thought wasn’t easy when a warm, desirable woman was so close.
“Carlie?”
She didn’t answer and Luke was disconcerted to realize she’d fallen asleep. In the middle of his struggle with erotic images, the trigger for those images had drifted into dreamland.
Yet he smiled as he thought about it. Carlie didn’t try to impress him. She wasn’t like so many of the single women he’d met since his business had become successful—women who seemed as interested in the size of his portfolio as in him. Carlie and Erika were complete opposites as women, but that was one trait they shared—Carlie didn’t give a hang about his money, either. In fact, he was fairly certain that it was a strike against him.
Luke debated what to do. He couldn’t leave Carlie asleep in her office, but he hated to wake her.
Perhaps she sensed his tension because she opened her eyes and yawned. “Did I drift off?”
“’Fraid so. It’s a good thing I have a healthy self-image or I’d be terribly wounded.”
“Ha.” She swung her feet to the floor, stretching in a way that made his mouth go dry. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter that he had things to sort out.
He leaned closer and cupped the nape of Carlie’s neck. “For the record,” he whispered, “that ex-fiancé of yours was a fool.”
Her breathing quickened. “It all depends on what a man wants. What do you want?”
“A kiss.”
* * *
ANOTHER KISS?
Carlie wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but she wasn’t sure it was a terrible idea, either. Even if Luke hadn’t thought about that quick, hot embrace on the porch of the John Muir Cottage, she’d given it endless consideration, both waking and sleeping.
“How about it, Carlie? We barely got a chance to taste each other the last time.”
No longer drowsy, she leaned toward him, the thought flitting through her mind that she’d always wanted to make love by the light of a Christmas tree. This isn’t sex—it’s a kiss, she reminded herself.
Luke’s arms drew her against him and he dropped kisses at the corners of her mouth. Her lips opened and he deepened the embrace.
His fingers moved over her hips, leisurely exploring there before tugging her blouse from the waistband of her skirt. When he stroked her bare skin, it was as if electricity sparked between them.
She dragged Luke’s shirt over his head. His powerful body matched his gorgeous face, belying his status as a man who worked behind a desk.
“Nice,” she whispered, stroking the hard muscles in his arms before flattening her fingers over his chest.
Luke’s eyes darkened and the bulge in his jeans grew more demanding against her thigh.
He buried his face in her shoulder, kissing, nibbling, tasting her skin, finding the pulse in her neck, resting his tongue against it as though counting her pounding heartbeats. As if reading her mind, he unfastened her bra and drew one of her nipples into his mouth, teasing with his tongue.
In the back of Carlie’s mind a small, insecure voice asked whether he was comparing her to the incomparable Erika, but the thought shattered as he brushed his thumb over her other nipple, teasing and coaxing.
She gulped.
This was a whole lot more than getting a better taste, but it was hard to object with the blood pounding through her head, discouraging coherent thought.
* * *
LUKE GROANED AS Carlie’s fingers traveled over his back, knowing he’d felt like a cocky adolescent when she’d admired his muscles. Since when had he felt the need to strut his stuff? Yet her approval had undeniably excited him.
Even in the low light, he could see the flush of desire on her breasts and belly and it was driving him crazy.
Between kisses, he dispensed with her skirt and panties while she got busy with his zipper, easing it down and cupping his erection through his boxers.
Luke drew back long enough to shove his clothes away and search for his wallet, grateful the old habit of carrying a condom hadn’t failed him. A moment later, he’d sheathed himself.
Carlie put her fingers around him again, tugging, guiding, and a second later he was buried in her warmth. For a moment he remained motionless, then withdrew and thrust again, the pace rising with each lift of her hips.
She climaxed a second after him.
They were both still gasping when Carlie abruptly pushed on his shoulders.
“What?”
“We’re in my office,” she hissed.
“You closed the door and your staff left for the day, remember?” Luke still felt too relaxed and satisfied to worry.
“They could have come back for something.”
He craned his neck to look at the crack under her door. “You’re safe—the lights are off out there.”
Carlie made a sound of pure exasperation and Luke reluctantly sat up.
He’d never been big on afterglow, but it would have been nice to enjoy a minute or two before dealing with regret and recriminations. And when he thought about it, afterglow might be nice with Carlie; she was a lovely armful.
She hastily fastened her bra and hunted for the rest of her clothes while he reluctantly did the same. The condom was a problem—she wouldn’t want it discarded in her trash can—so he stuffed it inside a few tissues and dropped the bundle in his pocket.
Carlie was dressed by then, but for some reason she was on her stomach, fishing under the couch with her hand.
“Something missing?”
She finally straightened, face flushed, and held up the condom wrapper. “Yeah, this. Half the employees at Poppy Gold are related to me. I don’t want whoever cleans my office this week to guess what happened tonight.”
* * *
CARLIE WAS READY to die with embarrassment. She’d made love with a guest on her office couch? It was such a cliché.
It would be easy to blame their actions on the storm of emotion from their mutual revelations, but that wasn’t good enough for her.
Her office, for cripes’ sake?
It wasn’t even late. Employees were still coming and going. And that wasn’t counting all the Poppy Gold guests who might have wandered into the back of the building, exploring.
Carlie tried to clamp down on her racing thoughts and bring her breathing under control.
It wasn’t just where she’d been intimate with someone...it was with who. How many times had she warned herself about Luke?
“Uh, I think...” She swallowed and glanced at the clock and it was as if she’d been thrown a lifeline. “Heavens, you’re going on the stargazing hayride tonight with Nicole and the girls. You’ve got less than half an hour to get to the parade staging area.”
“Damn. I forgot about it. We’ll talk later.”
He rushed out, not waiting for an answer. Carlie locked the outer door of the activities area behind him and sagged briefly against its supportive
surface.
She was quite sure he would have backed off if she’d suggested going to her apartment. He would have looked at her, realized she didn’t come close to Erika in either beauty or sex appeal and made a polite excuse.
Carlie clenched her teeth. She hated doubting herself. Maybe it would be different if Luke had been divorced, instead of widowed. How could she compete with a memory that was as perfect and unique as Erika Forrester?
Carlie sank onto her office chair and looked at the condom wrapper still clutched in her fingers. The compulsion to find it hadn’t been entirely to keep their activities from the cleaning staff. She’d also wanted to check the date on it. According to Nicole, Luke hadn’t socialized much since his wife’s death, so how old was the thing?
Carlie’s pulse jumped when she saw that the condom had expired more than five months ago. As much as she’d love to have a baby, she didn’t need the complication of getting pregnant under these circumstances.
They’d both been scrambling to get dressed, but she thought hard and seemed to remember Luke checking the condom to be sure it hadn’t broken. Guys did that. They didn’t like surprises, so even if she did get pregnant, he probably wouldn’t believe the baby was his.
Belatedly she flipped the pages of her desk calendar and relaxed; the likelihood of anything happening was extremely low. So now she just needed to get rid of the remaining evidence. In the restroom, she watched the wrapper go down the drain and flushed a couple of extra times to make sure.
There.
Now they could pretend nothing had happened. Again. She just had to avoid being alone with him from now on.
* * *
NICOLE WAS LATE visiting Bandit at the clinic because of the hayride and she smiled when Gideon answered the intercom, rather than Allie or Peter. Initially things had gotten weird after they’d made love. She hadn’t wanted to spend the night, so she’d left around midnight...only to have Gideon grumpily suggest she was acting like a guilty teenager.
“You’re the one acting like a kid,” she’d snapped at him. “A selfish one, at that. Or would you care to explain to my six-year-old nieces why Aunt Nicole was out all night?”
The next day, Gideon had called to apologize and they’d made up over lunch. She still felt proud when she stood up for herself. She was tired of being “timid Nicole Forrester.” It was how she’d once overheard two women describing her at work; the sorriest part was that she hadn’t faced them down. She might have enjoyed turning the corner and asking, “Timid who?”
She was changing and she liked it. Large animals still made her nervous, but the thrill of challenging herself was getting stronger. The process might have started by wanting to prove something to Gideon; now it had become important not to be so nervous and afraid.
“Hey,” Gideon said as he opened the side door.
“Hey. Sorry I’m later tonight, but we—” A cat suddenly squalled loudly from down the hall, interrupting her explanation. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Gideon looked sheepish. “That is, I think Bandit recognized your voice and he’s anxious to see you.”
Nicole headed straight for the feline care area. Bandit was watching anxiously as she appeared. “Silly thing,” she scolded affectionately. He began purring and leaped into her arms as soon as the kennel door was opened.
“I see you’ve dispensed with the cone,” she commented to Gideon. Once Bandit had gotten strong enough to begin cleaning himself, they’d put one of the cone-like collars on him to prevent him from fussing at his wound.
“It was stressing him more than it was helping, but the abscess is still healing well. He’s going to be a gorgeous cat.”
“He’s already gorgeous.”
She cuddled the kitten and walked him around the room. Part of her was anxious for Bandit to be released with a clean bill of health; the other part wondered if it would end whatever this was with Gideon. Neither one of them had said anything about the future, though she’d been giving it a lot of thought.
Moving to Glimmer Creek was a possibility, regardless of what happened between them, though it was difficult to think about leaving Luke and her nieces in Austin without a compelling reason. Basically, it would look to everyone, including her, that she’d moved there hoping Gideon would change his mind about them being together.
“Would you like to go out with me tomorrow evening?” Gideon asked, breaking into her thoughts.
Nicole pretended to consider the invitation, but inside she was thrilled. “Nothing fancy.”
“There isn’t anything fancy in Glimmer Creek. I was thinking about the steak house.”
Nicole put a protesting Bandit back into his kennel. “That sounds nice, but I’d better go now. I told Luke I would only be gone a few minutes.”
* * *
GIDEON SAW NICOLE out to her car.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her, but didn’t know what to do about it. He’d never earn an extravagant living as a country veterinarian and she plainly liked nice things. In his marriage, he’d tried to be “modern” and not object to the frequent gifts Renee had received from her parents, including expensive vacations and housekeeping services, but it had stung.
Now he was crazy about another woman whose brother was generous and fabulously wealthy.
Would Nicole consider staying in Glimmer Creek, particularly if he asked her not to accept so much support from Luke? She’d admitted she enjoyed the city, but that she wasn’t opposed to small towns. On the other hand, Glimmer Creek was a really small community. Poppy Gold was the only reason they had as many services as they did. Then there was the question of Nicole’s career—she was a computer programmer and Glimmer Creek didn’t even have a computer store.
Frustrated with the circles turning endlessly in his brain, Gideon went back into the clinic and checked on his various patients, still thinking about Nicole. She was sweet, loving and trying to overcome her fears with a courage that astounded him. When she put her chin up and that look came into her eyes...
He groaned.
What if she fell in love with him, but didn’t want to live in such an isolated place? Was staying in Glimmer Creek so important to him that he could give her up? He looked at Bandit, who was sulking because his favorite human had left him behind.
“You don’t care where you live, do you, as long as Nicole is there. Right? You think I’m an idiot to even wonder what I’d do if she fell in love with me.”
The kitten lifted a hind leg over his head and began licking the base of his tail. Though the gesture meant nothing—cats had to clean down there at some point—it still seemed to convey a measure of contempt.
“Right,” Gideon muttered.
He was an idiot. Nevertheless, he’d seen how a marriage could fall apart when the partners were just too different.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I DON’T WANT to talk, Luke,” Carlie said. She’d deliberately stayed away from Old City Hall the next morning, hoping to be hard to find, but he’d found her, anyway, near the sledding hill. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?”
He shook his head. “Nothing at the moment. We need to discuss last night, but not around so many people. Stop procrastinating.”
What was wrong with him? Women were supposed to be the ones who analyzed everything to death.
She tried to think of a place they could speak in relative privacy. Poppy Gold was such a hub of activity that aside from her office she couldn’t think of anywhere, and they weren’t going to her office or apartment.
“Fine. Let’s go to the creek.”
They walked silently toward the stream that had given her hometown its name. Frost still lay thick and white in places shaded by trees. Though it was beautiful, Carlie shivered. She’d wanted to help make Christmas wonderful again for Annie and Bet
h, but didn’t know if she’d ever feel the same about it herself. The message of the day remained sacred, but would everything else just be a reminder of the mistakes she’d made?
“Okay, we’re alone,” she said when nothing else could be heard except the gurgling of water flowing over rocks.
“This is nice.”
Carlie briefly closed her eyes, praying for patience. Why had he insisted on going someplace private if he wasn’t going to actually start talking? “A lot of gold came out of this creek, once upon a time. Do you want to start panning for some?”
“There must be easier ways to make money.”
“I doubt making money is something you need to worry about, but you’re welcome to go for it.”
He seemed to measure her expression and may have guessed she’d love to see him in the frigid creek as repayment for insisting they discuss something she would rather avoid.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I’ll pass.”
“So, what did you want to talk about?”
Luke hiked an eyebrow at her. “We made love last night—what do you think?”
“We didn’t make love. We had sex.”
He looked taken aback. “Okay, we had sex. I’m concerned about mixed messages. With the way things are with the girls, I just can’t think about any kind of relationship.”
“And I’m trying to make it clear there aren’t any mixed messages,” Carlie shot back, exasperated. “Honestly, I know we aren’t compatible. Not to mention the whole thing with your wife.”
Luke rubbed his face. “My wife?”
Carlie had regretted mentioning Erika the moment the words came out, but it was too late to take them back. “I don’t want to come second to a memory. Besides, your wife wasn’t just average beautiful—she was gorgeous.”
He gave her a dark look. “I have a feeling this is one of those situations where I can’t win, but I’m still going to try. You’re beautiful, too, and I’ve never compared you to Erika.”
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