by Jill Shalvis
If only she’d let him.
And for that moment in time, she did let him, let herself. She completely gave in to it, letting herself soar, content to be in his arms for as long as he’d hold her.
Or at least as long as she could stand it before the doubts and fears overtook her again.
H OURS LATER , Dustin stirred and reached for Cristina, knowing when he felt the cold sheets that he was alone in her bed.
Rolling to his back, he sighed, not bothering to call himself a fool for believing that this time it would be different. He should know better by now.
It was never going to be different, nothing was ever going to change.
Except him.
He could change.
He could grow up and get over her and not give her the power to do this to him.
Not ever again.
5
W HEN C RISTINA came back from her punishingly long hard run, Dustin was gone. Which was perfect, she told herself. Excellent. She didn’t need round two or an after-sex cuddle.
Nope, she was good.
Walking through the apartment she’d lived in for several years now, lived in and been content in, she found herself taking a good look around as Dustin had. When she’d first moved in, she hadn’t been able to afford a west-facing apartment so she couldn’t see the beach, but it was there, only two blocks away, and when she opened the windows, she could smell the salty ocean air.
She had minimal furniture but she didn’t spend a lot of time here, so she hadn’t found it necessary to fill the place up with stuff she would never use.
In fact, she hadn’t filled much of it at all, and as she took the place in, saw the half-empty, clean rooms, she came to the uncomfortable realization that Dustin might be right.
She had nothing Christmasy out, no decorations, nothing personal at all.
She’d never cared before. It hadn’t mattered, the holiday hadn’t mattered. In fact, little did beside her work.
So when had that stopped being enough? When Blake had gone through such hell this year? When she’d thought he was dead and that she’d lost one of the few people she’d let herself care about?
Or when two others on her team, Aidan and Zach, had each found their respective soul mates in Brooke and Kenzie? Yeah, that had shocked her to the core, two staunch bachelors, both falling so hard.
With a sigh, she gathered her laundry, telling herself she didn’t care that she didn’t have a damn Christmas tree or some stupid decorations, and she sure as hell didn’t care that she didn’t have a soul mate, because if she had, then she might be doing laundry for two right now and that would suck.
Besides, she didn’t even know if she believed in soul mates. The idea of it, that there was one person in all the persons of the world, one, that was meant for her, seemed crazy. With those odds, it was no wonder that she’d decided not to look.
And yet…and yet a small part of her thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be doing two loads of laundry instead of one, if she had company while she was doing them. She dumped the first load into her washing machine, and, hearing the crinkle of paper, stuck her hands into her pockets. It was the red envelope, the one that had cost her twenty-five bucks on a whim.
For charity. There. See? She’d made a contribution to Christmas, and somehow, ridiculously, the thought cheered her slightly. Until she opened the envelope and remembered what her twenty-five bucks had gotten her.
That one-night romantic getaway. She and Dustin could have rocked that one night.
She should just throw the card away and chalk it up as a tax write-off. There was no reason even to keep it around…
But as she passed the trash can, she slipped the card back into her pocket instead.
D USTIN WALKED IN the front door of his house and found his brother slouched on his couch, feet up, remote in hand, game on the television, as if he lived there.
Jason nodded a greeting, taking a few seconds to tear his gaze off the game, but once he did, he blinked at Dustin’s disheveled appearance. “Either you got your ass kicked by the job, or you just got laid.”
Dustin kicked off his shoes and dropped his keys and wallet, then sank to the couch next to his brother, whom he was damn happy to see. “You got off on leave a few days early.”
“Yeah.” Jason wasn’t in his National Guard uniform, but wearing jeans and a vintage Van Halen T-shirt. “Thought I’d hang here, and we’d go up to Mom’s for Christmas Eve together. Nice change of subject, by the way.”
“I haven’t seen you in six months, you don’t want to talk about my job.”
“Okay, let’s talk about you getting laid.”
Dustin rolled his eyes and leaned in to hug his brother, who met him halfway and pulled him in tight. “Missed your ugly mug a little.”
“Same goes, bro. Same goes.” Jason offered him a soda and the chips, both of which had come from Dustin’s stash. “The house is coming along.”
Dustin looked around him. They’d bought it together several years back, right before Jason had reenlisted in the National Guard. It was an investment over and above their usual renovation projects, and as a major fixer-upper, the investment part had been mostly faith.
But with Jason’s down payment and Dustin’s physical labor, the place really was coming along. They could sell, put the profits into another house and start over again. Their sister wanted them to do that and hire her part-time as a cash laborer, which would be both a blessing since she was a hard worker, and a damned headache because she was also a pain in the ass.
But it would be a nice transition out of his job, which Dustin had been restless at for far too long now.
“Shelly called me,” Jason said, reading his mind about their baby sister. “She’s seeing some guy named Chewy. I told her I was going to have to kick his ass for no reason other than he lets people call him Chewy.”
Dustin laughed. “He’s all right. And they’re not serious.”
“You checked him out?”
“Yeah. He’s in college like she is, and a good kid, despite the unfortunate name.”
“All right then.” Jason stared at the game. Drank. Ate a few chips.
Dustin looked him over. Still the same dark hair, cut militarily short, and light gray eyes which could warm with a quick laugh or turn to steel. Jason had always been a big guy, nearly six foot four, and beefy, like the football player he’d once been, but over the past years in the military, he’d honed his body into a much rangier form, looking more like a lean boxer now than a high-school football star. Their mom had been worried about him ever since he’d gotten back from being in the South, working in and near New Orleans on clean-up and rebuilding, going out on search-and-rescue calls as his orders dictated. And indeed, as their mom had said, there was something different about Jason, something less easily accessible and definitely introspective.
“You could take a picture, it lasts longer.”
Dustin didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m just wondering if you’re okay.”
“Ah, and here I thought I looked so pretty today.”
“Seriously, Jase.”
“Seriously?” Jason set down his soda and hit Mute on the game, turning to face him. “Seriously, I was going to ask you the same thing. You look like shit. What’s up?”
“I asked you first.”
“Okay, what’s wrong with me is that the big bad world out there sucks right now.” Jason lifted a shoulder. “I work my ass off to do my part to fix it, but I can’t, and if I think about it too much it seems stupid even to be trying, so I am not going to think about it. Not for at least the next two weeks before I have to head out again. Now you.”
“Me what?”
“You might as well tell me before I knock it out of you.”
Given Jason’s new physical prowess, he could do it, too.
“Is it the job putting that look of misery on your face. Or a girl?”
Dustin let out a breath. “Both.”
“S
o there is a girl.”
“I don’t think so, no.”
Jason blinked. “A guy?”
“Jesus!”
“Well, use your words, dude.”
Dustin rolled his eyes and ate some more chips.
“Come on, Dus. You’re the middle child. You’re the talker.”
“Fine.” Dustin pushed the chips aside. “I’m in a job that was supposed to be just a phase, a little fun before we got our renovation business going.”
“Don’t look now, but our renovation business is going. We’ve got good equity in this place.”
“Sort of my point. We could be doing more and yet here I am, still driving an ambulance…”
“So quit and get a move on. I’m game. Let’s sell the house. We can use my portion of the profit for a new down payment on another fixer-upper, and your labor. And I say we go big this time and do it right. Bigger house, bigger profit margin. If you’re serious about being done as an EMT, you’d have the time to put in.”
True.
“So…the girl,” Jason said, leaning back to close his eyes. “Get to the girl.”
Right. The girl. How to say that he was more than halfway in love with a woman who wasn’t ever going to love him back? “She’s a coworker, which is colossally stupid.”
“Only if you intend to repeat.”
“Last night was a repeat.”
At this, Jason opened his eyes and turned his head to eyeball Dustin. “Is it that firefighter chick you’ve been hung up on since day one? The hot one who looks like…what do they call her? Kick-Ass Barbie. Cathleen?”
“Cristina.”
“Ah, Christ,” Jason said with a groan. “It is. Man, you’re going straight down the path to Heartbreak City with that one. She’s out of your league.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Look, life’s too short to get kicked in the balls or the heart, and with Cristina, you’ll get both.”
D USTIN DIDN’T REALIZE exactly how true that statement was until his next shift. He got to the station, and found Cristina in the kitchen with everyone else. She was doing her usual dig through the refrigerator-she was the most notorious food thief in the entire station. “You stealing someone’s lunch again?” he asked lightly, as if she hadn’t dumped him.
Well, actually, you had to have a relationship with someone to be dumped. They didn’t have a relationship, they had a thing. A sex thing. That was all.
At his question, Eddie and Sam, both at the table eating cereal, went still, swiveling wary gazes to Cristina. Blake, drinking coffee at the sink next to Aidan and Zach, raised a brow. It was unlike Dustin to start the bickering but what the hell. It was time for a new thing.
Cristina slowly turned to face him, her eyes unreadable. She hadn’t changed into her uniform yet and wore army-green cargoes and a snug long-sleeved T-shirt that fitted her curves like a glove, curves he knew intimately. Curves he’d kissed every single inch of. “No, smart-ass,” she responded. “I made cookies.”
“Made them? Or bought them?”
It was a long-standing joke that the only girl in the station couldn’t cook, but still, the entire room held their breath and swiveled their gazes to Cristina as if watching a tennis match.
“I baked them myself,” Cristina said. Stiffly. “I’m actually leaving them in people’s lunches to make up for all the stuff I’ve…borrowed.”
“Wow.” Dustin leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms so that he couldn’t reach for her, which is what he suddenly wanted to do, even surrounded by everyone else. She looked good, he thought, rested, with color in her cheeks. She had gloss on her lips, her only makeup. Her hair was loose, which made him remember how it’d felt brushing his chest.
He wanted both to touch her and to strangle her. “I’m impressed.”
“That’s because whatever we women do, we have to do it twice as good as a guy to be thought of as half as good. Luckily, that’s not difficult.” She shut the refrigerator, and avoiding looking at him, headed across the kitchen.
“She’s escaping, man,” Blake said to Dustin out of the side of his mouth.
“They must have slept together again,” Sam whispered to Eddie as if Dustin was deaf. “She’s looking relaxed and he’s not.”
“You doing it wrong?” Eddie asked Dustin.
Dustin sighed. “Cristina.” He watched her stop and go a little stiff in the shoulders. “Are we going to talk about it at all?”
“What, the orgasms?” She didn’t turn to face him. “That’s a little too risqué a topic for the workplace, don’t you think?”
Eddie snickered, only to be silenced by Sam’s elbow in his gut.
Dustin took a step toward Cristina. “Maybe we could discuss this in-”
The alarm bell interrupted him, then dispatch, calling for Dustin and James’s unit. No firefighters required.
“-private,” Dustin finished on a sigh, grinding his back teeth together in frustration as he was forced to head out. He brushed past her, making sure to touch her as he did, getting some satisfaction when her breath caught at the contact.
Which didn’t change the fact that they were back at square one-her holding him at bay with her sarcasm and sharp wit, and him nursing an aching heart.
6
T HE MOMENT Dustin was out of sight, Cristina sagged to a kitchen chair. “I’m such an idiot.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, patting her knee. “You are.”
Sam nodded.
Blake lifted a shoulder in silent agreement.
Cristina looked at Aidan and Zach, two of the most logical men she knew, hoping…but they also nodded.
It was unanimous. She was an idiot.
“I know you don’t like to clutter your plate with relationships,” Blake said tactfully. “Because you have to be free for…What is it exactly that you have to be free for?”
“Well…” Everyone waited for her sage, intelligent response. “I have to be free for…” Jeez. She suddenly had no idea. It’d started out because she’d spent so many years watching her mother never be free, always trapped in a bad relationship with one man or another, over and over again.
Trapping Cristina, as well, so she’d learned to gather her mistrust close to her like a cape. Once she’d gotten out on her own, she’d gone the opposite route, always staying on her own. She was, after all, nothing if not a creature of her own habits. But that all seemed short-sighted and a bit pathetic now. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and thunked her head to the table. “I guess I don’t know how to do things differently.”
“You can fix this,” Blake said so calmly, she raised her head.
He nodded.
The others nodded, too.
“All you have to do is stop running scared,” he said gently, rubbing her back.
“Whoa. I’m not scared.”
Five patient but amused faces just looked at her.
Okay, so she was scared. Oh, damn. “But what if I mess it up?”
“Well, you probably will,” Zach said.
“Gee, thanks.”
“No, everyone does once or twice, at least.”
“You can still turn this around,” Blake promised. “If you want it bad enough.”
She looked at the door through which Dustin, her mild-mannered best friend by day-big, bad, confident, sexy lover by night-had vanished. There’d been something different in his eyes just now.
Distance.
Her fault. He thought he’d been ditched. She knew that now. She’d pretended to want distance, but that wasn’t really what she wanted at all. She knew that now. “I want it bad enough,” she whispered. “What do I do?”
“You could tell him you love him,” Blake said.
“What?” She nearly choked. “I’m not-I can’t-I can’t say that-I mean, it’s not…that.” She grabbed Blake by the lapels. “There has to be something else.”
“Well, for one thing, you relax,” Aidan said as Blake pried her hands off him. “Ask him out. Sh
ow him you’re in this. Plan something fun. Take him jet-skiing, or something he wouldn’t do for himself. You know, show him you know what he likes.”
“Feed him,” Zach suggested, patting his belly. “Food always works.”
“You don’t have to cook it,” Aidan said quickly. “In fact, you shouldn’t cook it. Go out to a restaurant, or make a picnic.”
“But if you do the picnic,” Eddie interjected. “Make sure it’s not silly little finger food. Bring real food.”
“And try smiling,” Zach said. “You have a great smile, on the rare occasions you use it. He’ll be so stunned, you’ll have time to spit out the fact that yes, you’re an idiot, but you’re working on it.”
“It would help if you took off all your clothes first,” Eddie said.
“Guys like that,” Sam agreed.
“You could practice here,” Eddie suggested, nearly falling over when Sam shoved him.
Blake was shaking his head. “Just tell him you love him.”
No. No, she liked the other ideas much better. She’d just ask him out, that’s what she’d do. Plan that picnic. Smile. Bring food. Maybe wear some sexy outfit and let things take their course. She’d show him how much he meant to her.
Yeah. She was going to turn this around. Time was on her side.
D USTIN’S UNIT was run ragged for the rest of the day, one call after another. So it was inevitable that one of his calls would bump up against one of Cristina’s. He’d been brooding all damn day, and braced for the awkwardness of seeing her, given that she kept sleeping with him and then breaking his heart. But if she felt weird, she didn’t let on. In fact, she smiled at him.
Dazzled the brood right out of him.
She was working a small fire caused by a toaster while Dustin treated the young woman who’d attempted to put it out by herself only to fall on her butt, knocking the air out of her.
“I can’t be in a cast for Christmas,” she wailed, holding her bottom in both hands. “Not this year.”
“I don’t think they cast your ass,” Cristina said helpfully from where she stood near the toaster. She winked at Dustin.
Winked.