by Melody Anne
Weird. She sounded strong but still defeated. At the same time.
The boy tucked in at her side couldn’t have been more than three or four. He was wearing warm clothes and good shoes. It was obvious that all she had went into caring for the young lad.
“I’m sorry,” Tanner said. He hoped he didn’t look as foolish as he felt.
“I’m used to it now. All of that began a year ago. We recently ran out of money and lost the house. My husband was a good man, but he didn’t make a lot of money and our savings were small. I tried to make what we had last, but it could only go so far. I won’t stay down for long, though. I have my son to worry about.”
Before Tanner could say anything more, she moved on, and the line continued. When the last of the people got their plates, Tanner found himself gazing at the empty trays and the smiling faces of the patrons.
Though some were obviously disheartened to be in this situation, they were still grateful to be in a warm room with a bunch of people who, for this night at least, were their family. Even though they were strangers.
Tanner found it humbling.
Kyla went out among the people, taking them extra biscuits and filling their glasses with water. Other workers were passing out candy to the children and small items such as new toothbrushes and toothpaste.
The people’s eyes lit up as if they were receiving priceless gifts. How long had Tanner taken everything he had for granted? He’d grown up wealthy, never having a thing to worry about. He knew that he’d always get his next meal, that there would always be a warm bed for him to crawl into. His life had been easy.
Well, it had been tough since the beginning of the month. And what if it became like one of those lives he was seeing now, and for the long term — what if his luck suddenly ran out, and fate just kept throwing him curve ball after curve ball? He’d been thrown a few in his life, but never to this extent, never to the point that he had to worry about keeping a roof over his head or food in his stomach.
Wandering around the tables set up for people he was only beginning to understand, he didn’t take long to find the woman and her small child. She was smiling as she unwrapped a chocolate bar for her son and handed it to him. The boy took a bite and grinned so sweetly that it took Tanner a moment to clear the lump in his throat.
“What’s your name?” he asked when he could finally speak. Then he sat next to her.
“Morgan,” she said somewhat warily.
“What did you do for the law firm, Morgan?”
She looked in his eyes, as if assessing his motives for asking. Tanner wondered how many people had tried to take advantage of her since she’d been on her own. He probably didn’t want to know.
“I’m a paralegal, so just about everything. I miss the hustle and bustle of the business world, but I try to look at the positives. I have a so much one-on-one time with my son, after all, even if it has to be done in a shelter.”
Tanner recognized that gleam in her eyes, that desire to be at the top of your game. Without any hesitation, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and retrieved a business card.
“My name is Tanner Storm and my father has a company in downtown Seattle. Tell him that I sent you and want you to come in for a job interview on Monday. No, in case you’re worried, there are no strings attached to this offer.”
“Why would you do this?” Morgan asked, her expression changing to complete shock and her voice choking up. Her hand shook slightly as she took the card he’d just written his father’s number on.
“Because I don’t intimidate easily and I think what your former bosses did to you is horrific. If you want a good job, I’ll help you get your foot in the door. The rest will be up to you.” He rose to leave her and her son to their holiday.
Her hand shot out and she gripped his arm. She was silent for a minute while she tried to pull herself together. Tanner waited, unaware that Kyla was watching the exchange from across the room, though she couldn’t hear what was being said.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Storm,” Morgan told him. “Thank you for this. You have given me and my son the best gift anyone has ever given us. Even if I’m not hired, your kindness has touched me deeply. You’re a good man,” she said as a tear escaped.
Her last sentence rang in his head. Was he a good man?
“Morgan, I can’t begin to tell you what you have given me tonight,” he said through strained vocal cords. He put his hand over hers and nodded to underline his sincerity.
He turned and walked away, a heaviness in his chest. How wrong he’d been about people. He’d always just assumed that those who were homeless were there of their own free will. He’d never taken the time to understand that maybe, just maybe, they hadn’t chosen their circumstances.
“What was that all about?”
Tanner turned to find Kyla looking at him suspiciously.
“Merry Christmas, Kyla.”
Looking up, he noticed the mistletoe right above their heads. He hauled her against him without any delay and kissed her, a sweet and relatively short kiss that still showed her how much he needed her. When he released her, the two of them heard a few chuckles, and several people clapped, but his eyes were for her only.
“Let’s go home,” he said, and the look he gave her left no doubt of his meaning.
“I would like that,” she murmured.
For a moment, Tanner thought he’d misunderstood, but as her hand slipped into his, he knew what she was agreeing to. His heart kicking into high gear, he led her through the dining room and to the kitchen, where he grabbed their coats and then quickly led her outside.
He needed to get her back to the apartment building before she changed her mind. This was looking to be the merriest Christmas he’d ever had, broken pipes, Santa suit and all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kyla held tightly to Tanner’s hand. She was a nervous wreck now. Was this a wise path for her to be going down? Should she climb back into this bed? The clock was counting down on their time. No, he hadn’t told her he was leaving, but she knew he was. Tanner was not a man who lived in the trenches.
She’d told herself she wouldn’t regret their night together, and she didn’t. It had been too wonderful for her ever to have regrets. However, she’d also told herself she wouldn’t join him in his bed again. To do so, she feared, would lock her to him emotionally in a way that she couldn’t reverse.
But Tanner had been so kind to the people at the shelter and to her earlier this evening; it was like seeing a different man, and it had made her heart swell, knocked down the last of her defenses. Was it because it was Christmas Eve and she was tired of being left with nothing but ghosts and memories? Had her thoughts about how alone in the world she was ramped up her vulnerability to an all-time high? Whatever the reason, she didn’t want to change her mind.
As she and Tanner sped down the hall of their apartment building, her nerves were shot, yes, but her heart was thundering. She wanted this, wanted it desperately. And there was no doubt that Tanner wanted it even more. He unlocked his apartment door and opened it wide for her to step through. When he shut it again and put his hands on her shoulders, she jumped and then laughed as he removed her jacket and hung it on the hook by the door. Not one word had been said since she’d agreed to come back to his apartment, agreed to make love to him again.
“Sorry. I guess I’m a bit tense.” She looked up and boldly met his gaze, though every instinct in her made her want to look away and hide from what she was feeling.
“I’m not going to attack…though I want to,” he said. “And I’m good at handling tension.”
Somehow the need she heard in his voice calmed her. Her muscles relaxed and she even managed to smile. They were both consenting adults, and they’d already done this once, proved they were more than suited to climb into bed together. She had nothing to be nervous about, nothing to fear — well, except for the utter loneliness she was sure to feel after being with a man like Tanner and the
n being alone all over again when he inevitably disappeared.
The smell of food filled her nose, distracting her from her morose thoughts and making her stomach rumble. Though she’d spent a few hours serving dinner, she’d been too busy all night to eat so much as a single morsel of bread, and she realized that she was famished. She turned around to see Tanner’s table covered with a lovely and festive red tablecloth, and expertly set with gleaming china and silver.
“When did you have time to do this?” she asked. Going in closer, she found a wonderful Christmas dinner with all the trimmings sitting on top of warmers on the kitchen counter.
“Why not think of this as a sort of holiday magic? Maybe I really am Santa Claus.” Tanner smiled and held out a chair.
Maybe he was. She hadn’t cried this holiday season, and she’d decorated a tree, and made gingerbread cookies. Had Tanner come into her life to help heal her? She didn’t know the answers and she wasn’t sure she needed to know. One thing that she had no doubt about was that there was far more to Tanner than initially met the eye.
“You’re not the type of guy who ever would normally live in a place like this.” It wasn’t a question, and she was afraid of what he would say next, but why should she? She’d known almost since the beginning that Tanner didn’t fit in here. This wasn’t some great revelation.
He paused and looked at her almost guiltily — but that made no sense. What could he possibly feel guilty for? That he was slumming it? That he was playing games with the down-on-her-luck girl?
“I just want a piece of mystery between us,” he told her. “We’re two strangers who happened to fall into each other’s path, and tonight is all about how we make each other feel, not about who we are. I think you realize that we don’t have a future together. I don’t want to lie to you about that. But we’re two people who need each other now — tonight. We should take wonder where we find it.”
Two lost souls on the highway of life? She knew she should try to learn something real, something legitimate about this man before giving him her body for a second time, but she couldn’t seem to look away, couldn’t seem to break the spell that he’d woven around her. Should she keep fighting this? Which would bring her more regrets than she already had — if she walked away right now, or if she stayed? Ugh! She just didn’t know.
What she did know, though, was that even if she did end up regretting anything she’d done, she’d also have the good memories to counteract the bad ones from that horrific Christmastime two years before. They’d made love once, and it had been magnificent. Yes, her time with Tanner was coming to a close. She felt that in the air, knew he would soon be gone — he’d said so openly from the first moment sparks had flown between them. Like any good magical being, he’d be off in a poof of smoke.
Silence stretched on between them, but it wasn’t awkward, wasn’t unbearable. Tanner poured her a glass of wine, and she looked into his mesmerizing eyes before allowing a nervous giggle to escape.
“Wow, if you knew the thoughts running through my mind, you might try to run as fast as you can,” she said when he raised an eyebrow at her little burst of laughter. She sipped her wine and prayed that her nerves would calm down.
“I don’t think a bulldozer crashing through the walls of this building could make me run from you,” he said, his eyes boring into her.
“If the owner of this building gets his way, Tanner, a bulldozer putting a damper on the mood could just happen.”
He flinched and turned away, but she didn’t take any offense. She was actually relieved to be released from the intense look in his eyes.
“Sometimes things happen for a reason, Kyla. Maybe you were meant to be in these apartments to take the next step in your life,” he said, and she couldn’t disagree with that. “And maybe by being forced to leave, it will help you take another step in your life.” This last part seemed to be spoken in an almost desperate way.
“Is that what you want, Tanner? Do you want someone else to force you to make a decision?”
His body tensed and her eyes were locked on his back as she waited for him to turn back around. Talk about dampers. This conversation was doing a real number on them and their mood, killing the eagerness they’d felt earlier to get back here and tear each other’s clothes off. But at the same time, it was actually making it easier for her to fall back into his bed. She felt she was getting to know him just a tiny bit.
“I’ve always made my own decisions,” he said before letting out a sigh and turning back toward her. “I didn’t choose to be here, but I’m grateful for this moment, grateful to be standing in this exact place with you right in front of me. Sometimes we’re pushed to do something we normally would never do, and we might fight it, and we might look back and still be angry about it, but there’s a reason for everything, and I have no doubt that I was meant to be here with you right here and right now. ‘To everything, turn, turn, turn…’”
He stepped toward her and cupped her cheek, and Kyla found herself on the verge of tears.
“So we quit fighting this, right?” she said, nuzzling against his hand.
“We quit fighting what has been inevitable from the moment I laid eyes on you, from the first moment our lips connected, from the magical instant our bodies became one. We don’t worry about tomorrow; we only appreciate what we have right now.”
“Do you practice these lines, Tanner?” She was desperately trying to break the intensity of the moment.
“I’ve never said anything like this to another woman. Ever. I don’t lie, and I won’t make promises that I can’t or won’t keep, but when I look at you, I can’t look away. When I’m away from you, I want to rush to your arms. You have been messing with my head from the very first moment you stole into my apartment.”
“Well, then, Tanner, I’m glad to be guilty of my one and only instance of breaking and entering.”
“I’m glad, too.” He leaned forward and captured her lips in a sweet kiss that had her head spinning. Who needed wine?
But just when she was ready to grab hold of him, he let her go, kissing her quickly one more time before moving away. “I need to feed you,” he said. She leaned back while she watched him fill her plate.
The atmosphere, the food, the wine. And the perfection of it all. More than anything else in the past two years, it made her miss her parents. Each and every holiday, her mother would be in charge of a beautiful production, laying the table with their finest china, crafting desserts for days and putting together the best dinner a person could manage.
Not much that Tanner was serving looked like her mother’s dishes — Kyla didn’t recognize some of the food at all — but the setting, the holiday decorations on the table, all of it…it made her miss “home.” Maybe it was time to go back there, to walk through the halls and see what she’d cut herself off from two years ago. Instead of confronting this constant emptiness, maybe she would feel as if her family were with her.
“After you.” Tanner pulled her from her thoughts once again when he set her plate down and held her chair out for her.
“Thank you.”
Dinner proceeded quietly as Kyla tried to push out thoughts of her lost family from her mind. She was with a striking man who had gone all out to give her a beautiful holiday. She was determined to enjoy this moment to its fullest.
Needing the ache to go away, she set down her fork, two glasses of wine giving her the extra boost of courage she desperately needed. Rising with purpose, she moved slowly around the table to where Tanner was sitting. With a smile, he pushed back his chair and waited for her to make the next move. Straddling his legs, she sat down on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Make love to me,” she whispered, and she connected their mouths.
Tanner hesitated no longer. He returned her embrace, deepened the kiss, and, as he let his hands travel beneath her sweater, scorched her skin with his touch.
“Yes, Tanner,” she moaned as he cupped her breasts, sendi
ng flames shooting straight to her core. This was the magic only he seemed able to bring, and she was a fool to even think one time in his arms had been enough. Why fight the inevitable? Why fight what her body needed? There was no reason, and she was a fool for even considering it.
Tanner broke away from her, making her whimper until she realized he was holding the bottom of her sweater. With a quick motion, he tugged it over her head and threw it somewhere behind them, then pulled her back against him and let his hands roam across the skin of her back.
She felt him unclasp her bra as he continued to worship her mouth, driving her loneliness away and replacing it with excitement and pleasure. Yes, this is exactly what she needed. This was the best Christmas gift he could possibly give her. When he removed her bra and then his shirt, she delighted to feel her straining nipples rub against the smooth skin of his broad chest.
“Please, Tanner, I want more.” He trailed his mouth down her throat, licking her skin, soothing one ache only to cause another.
“I’ll give you everything,” he promised, and moved her from his lap so they both could stand up.
Lifting her into his arms, he carried her to the kitchen, much to her surprise, and set her down in front of the counter. She looked at him with a question in her eyes, but he just smiled as he undid her jeans and peeled them from her legs, his eyes lighting up at the sight of her panties.
A full-on blush suffused her cheeks when she remembered her impulsive buy. She squirmed in front of him. Obviously, she hadn’t been expecting to make love this beautiful Christmas Eve.