He nestled against her, letting his hard shaft nudge at the space between her legs. “You could say that.”
She laughed. God, he loved that sound.
“You’re insatiable, Mr. Hartwick,” she murmured, but she didn’t pull away. One of her hands snaked around his hips and began to trace patterns on his butt cheeks. He felt himself getting even harder.
He moaned, but another involuntary sound competed for attention in their bed. The distinctive rumbled of his stomach. He hadn’t eaten in hours.
“Hey, you’re hungry,” Shannon said, pulling back. “We should get you some food.”
He tried to protest so he could keep her next to him. “Oh, no. You’re plenty delicious, Miss Quinn.” He sent her a wolfish grin and licked his lips. “I’ll make a meal out of you.”
She chuckled in return but, nevertheless, managed to escape his grasp. He watched as she slipped out of bed and padded naked across the room to the place she’d left her basket. Retrieving something from it, she returned, glanced at the clock and then offered him the wrapped object.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
He took the proffered gift. “Thank you.”
Shannon motioned for him to open it. “It’s part one of your present. The edible part.”
He made quick work of ripping off the pretty gold paper and uncovered a sturdy cake box. When he opened the box, he found it contained a dense but delicious-looking confection. Familiar somehow, but in the dark he couldn’t easily place it.
“It’s from that Eastern European bakery we went to when we were in Madison,” she explained. “I special ordered it for you. Maybe you’ve had something like it before, but I thought it was interesting. It’s called Cesnica—the Serbian Christmas or ‘Money’ bread. There’s a silver coin baked inside, and it’s considered good luck to whoever finds it.”
Bram unwrapped the bread, broke off a piece with his fingers and took a healthy bite, chewing carefully to make sure he didn’t swallow a coin if he should happen to come across one. “Mmm,” he murmured. “It’s good.”
Then he broke off a bite-sized piece for Shannon and trailed it along her lower lip until she opened up for him. The look of delight on her face as she chewed was too much for him. He had to do this again.
He fed her another bite and another. She finally responded by pushing him down on the bed and dropping soft bread morsels into his mouth as she kissed his face, his jaw, his neck.
Then he got the brilliant idea of scattering breadcrumbs on her chest and devouring them one at a time—“I’m Hansel, you’re Gretel,” he murmured, “and this is the breadcrumb trail in the deep, dark forest”—but she returned the favor with such devilish enthusiasm that it made him pant with a different kind of hunger.
Her clever tongue caught bits of bread on its way to licking his torso clean. But he wasn’t done feasting on her yet, and it was he who finally found the lucky silver coin in a hunk of crumbled bread, somewhere in the region of her bellybutton.
He laid the coin on her heart. “I don’t need a token to tell me I’m a lucky man, Shannon. I already know.” Then he dipped his head to taste more of her—a part of her body that looked inviting enough for a banquet.
And so they played.
Bram thought if he could just keep her right here, in this very spot, he could make her happy forever. Was it too much to hope she’d want that, too?
***
Christmas morning was off to a rushed start as Bram watched Shannon hastily put on her clothes from the day before and smooth down her auburn hair with a grimace.
“The brunch begins in about an hour,” she told him. “I have to run back to my room to shower and dress, but I hope we can spend some time talking later today.”
“Hey, I’ll be here relaxing all week long,” he said with a contented grin, brushing away a few breadcrumbs still hiding between the sheets. “I’ll look forward to having you to myself again soon, but I’m not sure if I’ll make it down to the brunch. I’m still full from eating all of that Christmas bread.”
She laughed and sat beside him for a moment at the edge of the bed. “There’s another gift for you over there.” She waved her palm toward the basket. “You can open it up this morning, if you’d like. Sorry I have to leave so soon.”
“Don’t worry about it. I know it’s your job.”
A look of sadness crossed her face that Bram didn’t quite understand.
“I have something for you, too, before you go, and I’d really like to give it to you now,” he added, reaching across the bed to the table on the other side. He plucked up the wrapped package and handed it to her.
She pulled off the paper to reveal a full Lathericious gift set—shower gel, refreshing body mist, luxurious hand lotion and scented soap.
He waited and watched as she read the name of the fragrance, her eyes widening. “Bram, it says—” She pointed to the label.
“Shannon’s Gift,” he supplied for her. “Yes, that’s what it’s called. It’s our brand-new bath and body line, named specifically for someone I know…” And love, he almost added, but he stopped himself just in time.
Her eyes grew even bigger. “Oh, Bram! You mean this wasn’t just a special label you put on these four items. That there’s more of them? And other people can order them, too?”
He got out of bed, hunted down his briefcase and pulled out the December Lathericious catalog. The “Shannon’s Gift” line was featured prominently on the cover. He handed it to her.
“I’ve been working on this for about six months, Shannon. And, yes, other people can order these specialized products. In fact, about 500,000 units shipped internationally just last week.”
She looked stunned but impressed. He grinned as she squirted some of the body mist into the air and inhaled deeply, taking in the aromatic citrus-ginger scent that had been the special blend he’d requested.
“Mmm…thank you. I love it,” she said.
“And I love you,” he whispered. He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud but, somehow, they slipped out anyway.
She stared at him with those huge blue eyes. Never had his heart been on pause like it was in that instant. He’d been in countless tense business situations—where one word would make the difference between sealing a multimillion-dollar deal or losing it—but this single silent moment was harder on his nerves than any of those had ever been.
Then he heard her voice.
“I love you, too,” she murmured, but she looked more melancholy about it than thrilled.
Never mind. He could be happy for the both of them. He pulled her into his arms, kissed her passionately—his heart finally beating again—and said, “That’s good news, right?”
She shot him a weak smile. “Right.” Then, “I should really go—”
But he didn’t want to let her go. Not now. Not yet.
“How about I open up your second present real quick? Then I’ll let you leave me to my quiet room and my breadcrumbs,” he joked. “There’s still forty minutes before the brunch.”
She nodded but eyed him apprehensively as he tore off the wrapping paper and unearthed a box beneath. The words “fragile” were written in big letters on each side of the box.
“I remember getting the edible gift last night, so I’m guessing this one is not edible, eh?” he asked with a laugh, opening up the top of the box and studying its contents with some puzzlement.
It was a vase. A very familiar-looking one.
He pulled it out in surprise and delight. It looked just like that beautiful, curvy, stained-glass vase that was in the inn’s display cabinet downstairs. “You found another one,” he exclaimed. “Did you have to go to an antique shop in New York to get this one, too?”
She shook her head. “It’s not a different vase. It’s the same one my parents bought. You said you thought it belonged elsewhere, in a private home. Maybe above the fireplace. Somewhere more personal than the hallway of an inn,” she reminded him. “I loved your idea, and
I wanted you to do that with this vase.”
Bram didn’t entirely understand. “But this is special to you. You can’t just give it to me—”
“Of course I can,” she said with a gentle smile. “What else could I give the man who has everything?” She paused. “Besides, I want it to have a good home. The Bakers are going to be putting other items in the display case soon, so the vase had to come out anyway.”
He was getting more confused by the second. “The Bakers? Why are they decorating the case now?”
He saw Shannon take a shaky breath.
“They’re the new owners of the inn, Bram.” She squeezed his hand but, then, abruptly stepped back. “I sold Holiday Quinn to them. They’re officially taking over by the end of next month…and I’m leaving.”
The ground seemed to drop from beneath Bram’s feet and the air whooshed out of his lungs. He opened his mouth to speak but was unable to utter a syllable.
Shannon was already standing by the door. “I need to go, but I’ll be back. We’ll talk later, okay?” she promised.
He thought he nodded at her, but he was in such shock that he couldn’t be sure.
When she left, he carefully set the gorgeous, colorful vase back inside the safety of its box so it wouldn’t break, but he didn’t have any similar protective measures for his heart.
He could almost hear it shattering inside his chest.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
New Year’s
The week that followed was a special kind of torture for Bram.
Despite the post-Christmas/pre-New Year’s Eve festivities taking place at the in and around the scenic Door County peninsula, he couldn’t have felt less like celebrating.
He was losing her. Not to another man—although Jake was certainly putting up a persuasive fight—but to an idea. To her conviction that the grass was always greener somewhere else and that it was greenest of all halfway around the world.
Case in point, Bram walked into Shannon’s office the day after Christmas only to find The Prick already there. From what Bram gathered, based on the gift bags and wrapping paper lying about, the two of them had exchanged presents. An intense jealousy shot through Bram’s body, strong enough to almost paralyze him.
Cagey Jake didn’t reveal what Shannon had given him (he stuffed whatever gift it was back into its bag the second he spotted Bram), but Bram did see what Jake gave her: a thick travel guidebook entitled “The Marvels of the Mediterranean.” Shannon was flipping through it and staring at the images like a teen boy might look at a particularly descriptive page from the Kama Sutra.
Bram scowled. “Thinking of taking a trip?”
Shannon responded with a laugh. “Who wouldn’t? Just look at these pictures of Mykonos.” She pointed to several alluring shots of the famed Greek isle before oohing and ahhing over some resort town on the coast of Turkey.
Jake looked too smug for his own good. What did her jerk of an assistant even know about foreign travel? What a poser. If The Prick was involved, it would be more like “Mediterranean Misadventures” than marvels of any kind.
Jake didn’t bother speaking to him. The assistant just gave him one of those smirky looks, edged with a sense of triumph. Then he said cryptically to Shannon, “Just think about what I said, okay?”
She glanced up from the book and nodded. They did some kind of eye-contact thing before The Prick finally strode out of the room.
Bram wanted to say, What the hell was that about? But he knew he didn’t have the right. If Shannon wanted to explain, she would. He didn’t want her claiming that he was jealous or didn’t trust her.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Is that where you’re headed next? The Mediterranean?”
She’d told him the day before that she was leaving the inn. When they talked at length last night, she confessed that the only thing she knew for sure was that she was moving out of Wisconsin, but she still didn’t know where in the big wide world she was going yet.
Bram’s head had been spinning as she spoke, but he remembered her saying something about that Margaret Ashland woman, who was her boss and her friend, as well as the owner of a hotel chain that spanned the globe. And that, after Shannon had a chance to see some of her dream destinations, Margaret would give her a position at whichever Ashland Hotel she wanted. There was no reason why Shannon couldn’t live anywhere in the world that she damn well pleased.
Shannon closed the guidebook thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” she said, in answer to his question. “Maybe, I’ll go there. It’s sure beautiful.”
He nodded. He wouldn’t deny it. And, hell, he would’ve offered to take her there himself and show her the sites the right way, but then she’d probably think he was only doing it to show up Jake. Which, admittedly, would have been at least partly true.
Instead, he said, “Do you have time for that walk we were going to take?”
“I could slip away for a half hour or so. Let me just get my coat.”
When they were outside—the late December chill ziplining through Bram’s thick leather jacket and heading deep into his bones—he finally reached for her hand. His glove grasped her mitten and held tight. To him, this felt as intimate as anything they’d done while naked in the Astaire Suite. The two of them were connected. Bonded together. A unified front as they faced the winter wonderland.
For the longest time, they didn’t speak.
“I owe you an apology for Halloween,” she said, squeezing his fingers a bit tighter. “Because I was reacting to the things you were saying and doing as if you knew everything I’d been secretly thinking about and struggling against. And you didn’t know. You couldn’t have known. I realize that now.”
He was afraid to speak, but he mumbled a barely audible, “Mm-hmm.”
It was enough to get her to continue. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it, though, and I can see now that what happened was really simple—we both wanted to experience what we didn’t have. You’d already traveled the world, so you craved being in a place that was calm and remote. Somewhere quaint and in the middle of nowhere, like Holiday Quinn, right?”
She smiled kindly at him and, somehow, he managed to nod. She was, in fact, one-hundred percent right. Holiday Quinn was like an oasis of peace from the normal chaos of his life.
“But, see, for me, Bram, quaint, calm and remote is all I’ve ever known. And I really want…really need something else right now. Some of those amazing foreign adventures you always speak so casually about having experienced. The day has finally come when I have both the time and the money to be able to do a little of that.”
“The grass is always greener, huh?” he murmured, saying aloud what he’d been thinking for the past twenty-four hours.
“Maybe,” she replied. “But, for once, I’d like to go to a place with no grass at all. Just ancient stones. Or miles of concrete. Or tropical sand as far as the eye can see.”
Her wistfulness made him smile in spite of the sense of loss he felt.
“Then you really should go.” He paused. “But there’s nothing wrong with having a home base. Shannon, I love you. And you said you loved me, too. Is there any reason we can’t still see each other when you’re back in the Midwest? You’re not going to be away indefinitely, are you?”
“The thing is, I just don’t know that. I care about you too much to want you to have to put your life or plans on hold for me… And, maybe, for you, being able to relax at the inn is what you really want. Think about it, Bram. You may have just connected those feelings of happiness and peacefulness to me because I was always here, but I know the Bakers will do a wonderful job continuing all of the traditions. And Margaret’s going to help them. Even if I weren’t here, there’s a whole lot you might still love about Holiday Quinn and this little corner of the state.”
She hesitated, as if mentally weighing her words, before she finally continued. “To be honest, I’m not sure how long we’d stay together in a different environment. How intere
sting I’d be to you on some average weekday when you’re caught up in your job and your responsibilities back at home. Our time together has always been vacation time for you.”
He took a steadying breath and, because he wanted to do her the honor of seriously considering her thoughts on the subject, he refrained from answering right away, although he desperately wanted to contradict her.
To himself, he acknowledged that, yes, he did love being with Shannon in the calm, carefree environment of Holiday Quinn best of all.
But he could also imagine spending time with her elsewhere—like in Minneapolis. The mental image of the two of them living together day after day, and the thought of having her to come home to after the long hours at work, brought a sense of longing he couldn’t deny.
Did she not feel similarly, though? Was she simply not ready for that yet? Perhaps that was the real problem.
“I don’t think there’s any way to know that until we try it, Shannon.” Bram wasn’t able to suppress a sigh that fought its way out of him. “But I respect your need to travel the world and see new things. I know that’s important to you. If you get back someday and want to look me up…”
He didn’t finish that sentence, though, because she had tears in her eyes, and he realized, whether she’d gotten at the heart of things or not, she was hurting and struggling. For him to argue with her or try to convince her to stay with him would only add to the turmoil of her emotions and the difficulty of her decision. So he backed off.
They parted soon after that, if only for the afternoon. Shannon went inside the inn to oversee some paper-snowflake-making competition or something, while Bram found himself unable to stop walking outside, despite the frigid temps.
He ambled down the lengthy drive and along several back roads—for how long, he wasn’t sure—but he tried to imagine coming to Holiday Quinn without Shannon being there. It would still be peaceful and a beautiful getaway, sure, but would he care? Weren’t there other quaint and quiet resorts a helluva lot closer to him?
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