Healed Under the Mistletoe

by Amalie Berlin

  Belle had spent two days mentally preparing for the dinner. Making lists when she had a moment to spare, working out the order she’d need to make the dishes to get them done in the shortest time.

  Out of work at three, she walked into her apartment at almost five, carrying two bags of groceries, and didn’t stop moving until the main entrance to the building buzzed at eight, announcing Lyons’s arrival. Because she’d gone overboard.

  It was as if her desire to make the dinner had made her forget what time meant: cooking that massive a Natal dinner took two days. It just did. She had to whittle like crazy to get the menu down to something manageable that would still tick the boxes.

  She was just glad she’d managed to sneak in a lightning-fast shower to rid herself of that just-dipped-in-antiseptic hospital smell, and allowed a whirlwind through the still-packed box of underthings to find the sexiest scrap of lace she owned. Stuff she’d never worn. Stuff she’d managed to purchase in honor of Noelle last Christmas, which was probably really psychologically wrong, but which had remained packed up until this evening.

  Just-in-case underwear.

  The man kissed like a five-alarm fire, and even when she’d been upset with him, that kiss, and all the rest of it, had kept creeping into her thoughts. If things got sexy after dinner, she could only pray she could steal five minutes to tidy up before he saw the mess.

  Hold that thought, big boy. I have to tidy my room before we can do The Thing.

  Or what was probably more likely: he’d eat in a very cool and efficient manner, dodge all questions except those pertaining to work and then go home. But a girl had to have hope.

  Because no matter what she felt about establishing long-term relationships with anyone, she needed closeness. The whole point of keeping from diving in with her whole heart was to avoid suffering, not to switch one suffering out for another form.

  It was the second ring at her apartment door; she shuffled down the hallway, tugging on her top and tossing the last curler from her bangs into the hall closet—the last mad scramble of a Nervous Nelly to become presentable.

  “Sorry!” she blurted out as she swung the door open.

  She was used to seeing him in scrubs, and, although she had seen him half changed before, seeing him in well-fitting jeans, black leather coat, and the gray hat and scarf set she’d knitted him just about knocked her flat.

  “I was going to give you one more ring before calling the police.” He had a bottle of wine in hand and a grumpy look on his face, but he did step through the door she held open wide.

  “Well, thank you for the lengths you considered going to for my safety, but I probably couldn’t have gotten into too much trouble between buzzing you in and opening the door.” She helped him out of his coat and the woolies she’d made, and hung them in the closet.

  “You must have done something—you’re pink-cheeked and breathless.” He handed her the wine, and, before she could answer, turned his back to her so he could engage every lock on the door and then give the thing a vigorous rattle. “I don’t like your door. It’s not very sturdy.”

  “Lyons?” When he looked back in response to hearing his name, she caught him by the cheek and stood on tiptoe to press her lips to his. Distraction, delightful distraction, and a reminder what he was there for: spend time with her, not inspect her door.

  And it worked. He turned more fully toward her, hands settling on her hips to tug her to him, then wound his arms around her.

  Unlike their first kiss, which had exploded like a match in an oxygen tent, this time when he took control and kissed her back, it was slowly. His arms held her tight to him, solid, warm and strong enough to cause silly romantic images to spin to life in her mind about what it’d be like to be carried by him. Her arms around his neck, she could feel his restraint; he held tight and kissed slowly, as if he had all the time in the world and this wasn’t a simple kiss for greeting.

  The other kiss was driven by lust and need. This one, she felt more. Not just need to block out something painful. Kissed because he wanted her, not just relief to his pain.

  She’d kissed him because she’d really wanted to, not only because he’d worn the woolies she’d made him and that showed appreciation, they meant something to him, but also because she’d wanted to distract him from the door.

  She clutched tighter at his shoulders, wanting closer still, so aware in that second of how terribly lonely the past year had been. Like the difference in reading about the ocean and wading in the surf. His touch, his presence, the sound of his breathing, the heat of his skin—the life pulsing through him was a spotlight, making clear how much of her life she’d been spending in darkness.

  And she didn’t know the fix for that without making herself one bad day away from losing everything again. It happened, and, no matter how superstitious she knew it sounded, if he wasn’t hers, she couldn’t lose him.

  There was no arguing with heartbreak. Logic and reason caved to the internal echo of “What if?” What if it happened to every person she ever had the audacity to love?

  Her lower lip quivered against his kiss and he drew back immediately. She pulled her arms free and dropped her eyes so he wouldn’t see it.

  “Hey...”

  Not seeing didn’t help. She could hear the concern in his voice.

  She gestured toward the kitchen. “I need to check dinner.”

  “Wait.” He snagged her hand and kept her in place. “Are you crying?”

  “No,” she said. A lie, because if she explained what had just happened it would completely ruin the whole evening. She danced around the subject of Noelle because she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Pretended Noelle was just away—that was how she got through her days.

  God, she was a terrible date.

  She wiggled her hand free. “I’m sorry. The manicotti will be done soon. I just need a minute. Unless you want to hang out with a woman who is suddenly crying.”

  “Crying when I kissed her,” he corrected, but there was no censure in his voice. He just gave a tug and wrapped his arms around her again, leaving her arms folded against his chest and her face tucked under that immaculate jaw.

  “It’s not that. And I started the kissing,” she whispered. “I just got a little overwhelmed suddenly.”

  Another lie. Not a terrible one—she did get overwhelmed—she just couldn’t explain why.

  “You don’t want to tell me?” he asked, but his arms didn’t waver. He didn’t thrust her away, even when she shook her head.

  “But you want me to talk to you.”

  Not a question but loaded all the same.

  “Yes, but you don’t have to.”

  “I know Wolfe asked you to get me to talk.”

  “He didn’t.” She leaned back then, just enough to look him in the eye.

  His eyebrows called her a liar.

  “He didn’t exactly say that,” she corrected. “He just said he hoped that you were able to talk to someone, but he’d rather it was him, you know.”

  He made some sound of affirmation, rubbed her back a little, then let go. “Where’s the fire escape?”

  Subject change. Whatever, she’d take it.

  She gestured toward the living room, and he let go of her to go prowling in that direction.

  “Why do you need the fire escape?” she asked, then she remembered the manicotti, which she’d die if she burned.

  She rushed into the kitchen in time to see the last seven seconds on her timer, shut it off, pulled the dish from the oven and rejoined Lyons at the fire escape.

  The busyness helped settle her thoughts and tear ducts too. His sudden fixation on her fire escape also helped.

  She found him rattling the window and checking the lock. “Also not as sturdy as I’d like.”

  “They’re plenty sturdy.” She covered his window-rattlin
g hand with hers and tried to slide between him and the window.

  “It’s not the best neighborhood.”

  “It’s a perfectly fine neighborhood. Is your neighborhood so much better? I mean, I know you’re a doctor and that means you do well, but, really, this is a solidly higher-end middle-class neighborhood. It’s just an older building.”

  He turned toward her, his brows halfway up his forehead. For the first time since she’d known him, he looked completely shocked. He always looked as if the world both conformed to his expectations and entirely disappointed him. “You don’t know where I live?”

  “I leave presents at your locker. I’m not a stalker who followed you home to leave them at your front door.”

  This silly, teasing way of answering didn’t remove the look or the incredulity in his voice.

  “Yes, but, no one told you? Conley?”

  “Angel,” she corrected. “Her name is Angel.”

  “Fine. Didn’t Angel tell you?”

  “Why would Angel, or anyone, tell me where you live?” That said, this whole thing was starting to feel ominous. “Why? Where do you live?”

  “I live on Park. In a large, modern building.”

  “Park Avenue?” she asked, unable to keep her own incredulity out. Even she knew what Park meant.

  “Our family has some businesses.”

  “What kind of businesses?”

  “Show me the other windows,” he said instead. “Because I’m clearly going to have to barter information with you. You show me the rest of the apartment, answer my questions, and I will answer your questions.”

  The tears. That was the question he wanted. But if he had information to barter, she didn’t know the whole story about his lousy Christmas.

  “All my questions?”

  He hesitated for only a second, then nodded.

  Dammit.

  “The only other windows are in the bedroom.”

  Where it looked as if a lingerie shop had exploded. And a yarn shop. And possibly a hair salon—she wasn’t sure where all those curlers had landed in her mad rush to finish dressing between the entry-door buzzer and her doorbell.

  “Lead the way.”

  With a flap of her arms, she headed to the other room in her small apartment. “It’s kind of messy.”

  “Messy?”

  “Well, I had a gift card.”

  Which she’d bought for her sister because Noelle loved lingerie, but had then felt compelled to use because she clearly had no idea how to handle grief like an adult.

  His footfalls behind her stopped, at the door, prompting her to look over her shoulder at him. He was smiling. Not just a small grin, as they’d shared when joking about furious bunnies, but a big, toothy smile. “Did you have a lingerie shopping spree?”

  “Last year. It was all boxed up. And I’m not done moving.”

  “But you felt compelled to unpack that box tonight.”

  If he was handsome under the worst conditions, smiling that broadly with his eyes full of mischief, he was devastating. She felt it like lightning down her spine, melting in her belly.

  “Maybe.” She grabbed a bra and the matching panties she’d tried on and dropped on the floor, then another. And the baby-doll nightie, she stuffed that right up her shirt. Out of sight! Obviously, she was insane and her stealth and subtlety education lacking—he watched her doing it.

  Because he was right behind her. Laughing.

  “I’m getting laid. That’s what you brought me to your lair for, you she-wolf.”

  “Shut up!” She grabbed a bra she hadn’t tried on and flung it at his face.

  He caught it easily, and his laughter only slowed as he examined the lacy red cups on the way to the first window, and casually handed it to her as he passed by.

  She left him with the windows to stash the lingerie in drawers.

  Like the living room, he opened the drapes, opened and closed the locks, opened and closed the windows too—for reasons she couldn’t even pretend to understand—and then locked back up again.

  “What businesses are your people in?” she asked, moving over to nudge him toward the door.

  “Many different businesses over the decades, but most recently aviation and aerospace.”

  His answer could have flattened her if she hadn’t been held up and animated by complete mortification of the bra room. The boredom she heard in his voice somehow made it more fantastical, as if aerospace were the most mundane, trivial thing ever. He and Wolfe were doctors, but their family apparently built...spaceships! Or probably more like satellites. And planes. Winged things.

  Park Avenue son, and maybe heir to some aerospace company. She was really glad she’d got the panettone, even if she’d had no time to make the bread pudding she’d planned. This was not what she’d been picturing when she’d agreed to a date. Not that they had a future together, but, still, it was nice to know what you were getting before you decided whether to get it or not. She’d just thought he was a sexy, talented doctor with terrible people skills.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re going to be disappointed by dinner.” She stopped attempting to plow him out of the room and glanced down the hallway to where she’d placed the wine before this tour of windows had started. “Because it’s good, but a five-star chef I am not.”

  He took the hint and guided her back down the hall, plucking the wine from the table as they moved past it to the kitchen.

  What else was she supposed to be doing? Felt like a weird gear shift to go directly from some inexplicable home inspection to eating.

  “Hey?” His voice came from the other room.

  She grabbed the corkscrew and came back from the kitchen to find him staring at a portrait Noelle had drawn of the two of them, replicated from a tropical Christmas selfie from a couple of years ago, in colored pencil on a golden-brown paper so the light leads would pop. The last one Noelle had given her.

  “You’re a twin.”

  “Yeah. Noelle, Ysabelle. I thought that was pretty obvious.” She knew she looked like the make-up-free version of her sister. They could be...could’ve been... Before and After makeover photos.

  “You never told me her name is Noelle.”

  Was.

  She couldn’t get her thinking right tonight, screwing up verb tenses.

  “I didn’t?” She actually hadn’t realized that. “Well, yeah. Twins. She was the pretty one.” There were several of Noelle’s portraits lining the living room, all drawn from photos when she was away, and running in age from apple-cheeked toddlers to the one he’d started with.

  He’d moved to another portrait, the unopened wine still in his hand. She hadn’t unpacked all her things, but she had gotten her portraits and photos on the walls and had done before she’d even unpacked her kitchen. The rest of the apartment was relatively spartan—she moved with the smallest effort possible—but her walls were alive with memories.

  “I can’t tell which one is you.”

  Was.

  She didn’t correct him aloud, the word just shot through her, impossible to ignore.

  “Left.” She’d always stood on the same side. “Dinner is done. Can you open the wine?”

  He had moved on to a picture of them with their grandmother from more than a decade ago. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  He shook his head. “In this picture?”

  She tilted her head at the photo. It had been a few months before Nanna had passed. “Twenty-one.”

  He took the corkscrew she held out to him and having something to do did get him moving. She gestured for him to follow, and didn’t stop moving until they were seated, the table was loaded and the wine poured.

  “I’m trying to imagine why Noelle isn’t here this Christmas,” Lyons said, his voice sober. “And I think it’s part of wh
y you get so upset about Wolfe and me not being close. You two are fighting about something?”

  He spoke, and then finally took a bite of the manicotti, skipping right over the other courses in favor of the star attraction. The look on his face made it easier to pretend he hadn’t just said something completely insane. And to avoid answering. She didn’t want to talk about her sister.

  “Good?”

  “Five-star.” He took another bite and watched her the whole time.

  As if that was going to make her crumble. She’d seen him cold and shouting. Eyeing her while he enjoyed her family recipes? Nothing intimidating in that.

  On second thought, that was not the look in his eyes. He might genuinely be enjoying the food, but was already thinking ahead to her lingerie bomb and dessert.

  Dessert was easy to think of when he watched her through those half-lowered lids, eyes gleaming with intent.

  Belle’s breath sped up just from the way he watched her. Every other time he’d felt attracted, she’d known it by the intent looks being followed by a glare. She knew how to deal with that reaction. But this made her overly hurried and graceless; every bite came with the strong possibility she’d accidentally choke to death if he didn’t stop.

  “Did you talk to Wolfe?” Smooth subject change, score even.

  “I told him I’d come for dinner when they got back from their holiday,” he answered.

  That brought her smile back.

  “Where’s Noelle?”

  And there went her smile, along with her appetite.

  “Still not going to talk, eh?”

  “I just want to enjoy dinner with you.”

  “Then eat, because this food is too good to waste, and I have questions.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  UNTIL SHE’D ASKED about Wolfe, Lyons had been planning a different route through the evening—one that ended, in his head, with him convincing her to model the lingerie strewn all over her room.

  Then, despite dinner being delicious, and the possibility of all the other delicacies she had to sample, he forced his focus on the conversation they needed to have. “Are you done?”

  “Tasted better in my memory.”