“Oh, that’s pretty obvious. To the whole town,” Tucker said.
“What do you mean?” Phoebe asked him.
“I’m standing here on the steps to city hall watching her have a good time.”
Phoebe frowned. “What do you mean? Shouldn’t you be with her?”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure her date would appreciate that,” Tucker said, his tone dry.
“Her date?” Phoebe repeated. “You’re her date.”
“Uh, no, I believe that would be Levi,” Hailey said. “And from the way she’s kissing him right now, they’re getting along great.”
Kate and Levi were kissing?
Joe and Phoebe met each other’s gaze, their eyes wide.
“They’re kissing?” Phoebe asked.
“Yes. And Kate looks almost as good in her red dress as I do in mine,” Hailey said.
So Levi had met the wrong gorgeous blonde in a red dress.
“This is okay.”
“This is horrible.”
Joe and Phoebe spoke at the same time.
They frowned at each other.
“Okay?” Phoebe asked.
“Horrible?”
“Yes, horrible,” Phoebe told him.
“Why? Kate’s a nice girl, but she’s more like the girls he normally dates.” She was from the city, she had money, she knew about good wine and tipping doormen and things like that. “Except she’s…nice,” he finished.
“Well, Levi will be terrible for Kate,” Phoebe said. “Because he’s like the guys she normally dates.”
“Except that he’s…” Joe prompted.
“Worse.”
“Worse?” Joe asked. “How?” But Joe kind of knew what she meant.
“His relationships are all about him. He collects women like…” Phoebe sighed. “Like you used to.”
Joe couldn’t argue with that. But it wasn’t like the women had really ever complained. “And I turned out well because a nice girl from Sapphire Falls finally got a hold of me,” he said. “This could be exactly what Levi needs.”
“Kate isn’t from Sapphire Falls.”
Oh…yeah.
“And she wanted a sweet, traditional, romantic Christmas with a nice guy. That’s why I picked Tucker,” Phoebe said.
“Thanks, Phoeb,” Tucker said. “I even showed up with flowers.”
“And they really are gorgeous,” Hailey said. “Deep-crimson roses with white baby’s breath and evergreen branches.”
Phoebe smiled. “See? That’s so nice. And Tucker will buy her hot chocolate in the town square and they’ll drive around and look at Christmas-light displays. They can decorate his tree and make cookies and maybe ice skate and then go to the formal. Simple, nice stuff.”
“Levi could take her to look at Christmas light displays,” Joe protested.
“Sure,” Phoebe agreed. “In Paris. Right after he whisks her off on his private jet to have hot cocoa in Belgium or something.”
Unfortunately, Joe couldn’t deny that those things were possible. It was more his style—or had been—to overdo the dramatic gestures to impress women, but Levi wasn’t above throwing money around to romance a woman.
“Wow, what a jerk,” Hailey muttered sarcastically.
“So you guys need to go tell them who you are,” Phoebe said to the phones. “Obviously things got mixed up. I told her dark hair, blue eyes and great smile.”
“Thanks again,” Tucker said.
“Levi’s got all of that,” Hailey pointed out. “And Kate’s blonde.”
“And gorgeous,” Tucker added. “And if she wasn’t on Levi’s lap right now in the middle of the square, I might go over and insist we go on our date.”
“She’s on his lap?” Phoebe said. She looked at the clock. “Already?”
“Spencer charm,” Joe said with a grin. “You know it’s irresistible.”
Phoebe looked grim as she said, “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Hey.”
Phoebe focused on him. “She can’t get her heart broken this Christmas, Joe. She’s had three bad ones in a row. This was supposed to be different. Better. Special.”
“It will be fine,” Joe insisted. He really hoped that was true.
“And meanwhile,” Tucker said. “I’m now without a date to the formal. What do you think, Hails? You and me?”
“No.” Hailey didn’t even hesitate.
“Why not?” Tucker sounded amused.
“I don’t date guys from Sapphire Falls. And don’t call me Hails.”
“Ty calls you Hails,” Tucker pointed out.
“That’s…different,” Hailey said tightly.
“Uh, huh,” Tucker said. “Why don’t I buy you a hot chocolate and you tell me all about that.”
“Yes to the hot chocolate, no to the spilling my guts.”
“So there is something to spill,” Tucker said.
There was something going on with Hailey and Tyler Bennett. Everyone suspected it, speculated about it, but no one seemed to know anything for sure.
“Hailey—” Phoebe started.
But Joe grabbed both phones, shaking his head. “Gotta go guys.”
He disconnected both phones and looked at his wife. There was no time to get into anything with Hailey right now. Hailey Conner could talk about herself for hours.
And Joe didn’t want to hear it. He worked with politicians for a living—he had enough drama in his life.
Phoebe was chewing on her bottom lip.
“Should we call or text Levi and Kate?” she asked. “Make sure they’re okay?”
“She’s on his lap, kissing in the square,” Joe said, setting the phones both on his bedside table, out of Phoebe’s reach. “They’re more than okay.”
“Yeah, and they have to have figured out who they are by now right?” Phoebe asked.
“There is no way they still think they are with Tucker and Hailey,” Joe said, certain about at least that one thing.
Phoebe nodded and let him pull her down and flip the comforter over both of them. She was quiet for several seconds, but Joe knew she wasn’t completely done meddling.
As he reached to turn the light off, she finally spoke. “I’ll call Adrianne in the morning to go over and check on them.”
4
Hailey slid from Levi’s lap and he took her hand, making himself walk at a reasonable speed for high heels. Which was tough considering he wanted to run. Of course, he could throw her over his shoulder and still get a pretty good jog going.
“By the way,” she said as they passed the hot chocolate stand and crossed the street on their way back to the bar.
“Yeah?”
“This is already the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”
There was another thud near his heart. The poor thing hadn’t been used in so long every hard beat was a little painful. But it was a good pain. Like stretching a tight muscle before a hard workout.
Because he wanted to give it a hard workout with this woman.
And not only in the pounding-hard-during-hot-sex way. In the way that might stretch his heart muscle further than it had ever gone before.
Levi gave her what he hoped was a casual smile. No sense in scaring her off with a wanna-fall-in-love-this-weekend? He’d told Joe he was considering staying for a year. Nothing so far had made him want to shorten that time frame.
“You know, a smart man would be grateful that it would be almost impossible to make this Christmas worse than your others,” he said. “But no one ever accused me of being particularly bright.” He stopped next to his brother’s truck and turned to face her. “I don’t want this to be the best you’ve had so far. Hell, all I have to do is put up a tree and make you cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning to do that.”
She gasped softly. “Your mom made cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning?”
Well, their cook had. He took her hands. “I want to do even more than that. I want this to be everything you ever wanted Christmas to be.”
/>
And he meant it. Maybe there was hope for him yet. So far the cheesy Christmas sentiments were rolling out of him.
Take that, Christmas ghosts.
“You said you don’t have a tree yet. Will you let me help with it?” she asked. The lighter, excited tone in her voice made a different type of desire shoot through him. The desire to make her happy.
Oh yeah, there was hope. Levi Spencer was going to make someone else happy, dammit. A guy who wanted to do that couldn’t have a cold, black soul.
It was dark gray at worst.
“Definitely,” he told her.
“And can we bake cookies?”
“Of course.”
“Tonight?”
He opened his mouth to give another enthusiastic affirmation but then realized what she’d said. “Tonight?”
He’d kind of hoped to take the quilt in the guest room for a spin tonight.
She nodded, grinning up at him in a way that made him want to buy her a puppy or something while at the same time made him want to run his hand up under her skirt.
Damn, that was weird.
Sweet and sexy at the same time? Happy and horny together?
That had to be the concussion.
“It’s almost ten at night,” he said.
“Is there a bad time for Christmas cookies?” she asked.
He opened his mouth again but could say nothing other than, “No, there’s not.” Because that was the God’s honest truth.
Besides, watching her bake was in no way going to diminish his desire for her. He’d always been easily influenced by food. He’d had a huge crush on their cook from age six to age fourteen when she’d left them. He could barely remember what she looked like, but he could still taste her macaroni and cheese.
The women he dated had no idea how to cook or bake, nor would any of them go within a hundred yards of a cookie.
Ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of Joe and Phoebe’s. Joe’s F150 pickup definitely made the roads and that driveway easier to navigate. Levi had put his rental car in the garage to keep any snow flurries or sleet off of it and resigned himself to driving the truck at least until Joe and Phoebe got back.
Hailey looked from the house to him and back. “I thought we were going to make out in the truck?”
He was going to get sugar in the truck and in the kitchen?
Oh, yeah, best Christmas ever for sure.
Kate had been disappointed when Tucker pulled up in front of Phoebe’s. She wasn’t ready to go in and end the night already. But things were definitely looking up when he reached over, grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his lap.
She didn’t know why, but there was something about the truck that made her feel like getting dirty. Not actually dirty, but dirty with a guy who got dirty for a living. She knew Tucker was a farmer, and that meant he knew a lot of stuff she had hardly a clue about.
The men she dated drove sports cars and stayed in shape by going to the gym and called other people to fix things that broke.
Tucker was a guy’s guy. He drove a truck that he actually used for work. His hands got dirty. He used his muscles to lift things and carry things and throw things. Of course, she wasn’t completely clear on what those things were, but she imagined there were hay bales and buckets and barrels of…stuff. Stuff that she was also fuzzy on. Oh, and tools. She was sure he had tools and things and that he fixed stuff. Engines and tires and…other stuff.
Okay, so most of her knowledge about life on the farm was from television and movies. She was an environmental engineer and a number of her colleagues worked in soil and water in the Midwest, but her specialty was climate change and the oceans. She’d never been to Nebraska before this trip.
The bottom line was, Tucker could use his hands in ways other men she knew could not, and she was very interested in him using those hands on her.
Sitting on his lap again was nice. Even with the multiple layers of clothing between them. Which she hadn’t really thought about. She was not willing to take too many off. She was still cold from sitting in the square and wasn’t sure she’d ever have feeling back in her toes. She wouldn’t have traded it though. The time sitting in the square had felt…magical. That was a fanciful word to use. Heck, it was a fanciful thing to feel. But it fit and, dammit, she was really going for magical and fanciful here. She didn’t mind that everything about Sapphire Falls, from Phoebe and Joe’s quaint old farm house to the hot chocolate stand in the town square, had felt otherworldly. That was what she was going for here. An escape. A vacation. Something to keep her daydreaming for the rest of the winter. Or more.
Tucker leaned into her, reaching to crank the heat.
“Don’t want anything freezing off.”
She laughed softly. “Very thoughtful.”
“Oh, I’m talking about my things freezing off. I intend to keep your things very warm.”
It seemed all he needed to do was talk and her core body temperature went up. She pulled off her cap. “I’m glad it’s dark so you can’t see my hair messed up.”
“Another secret about men—” he said, running a hand over her hair from the crown of her head to the ends that hit her just above the curve of her lower back, “—we like a woman’s hair messed up.”
“Is that right?” She pulled off her gloves and unwound the scarf from her neck, suddenly thinking she could actually overheat.
“Well, I do anyway,” he said. “If a woman leaves at the end of the night with her hair too perfect, I did something wrong.”
Even her feet started defrosting, something she hadn’t thought would happen until March.
“But my hair’s messed up from the hat.”
“Yeah. For now.”
Oh boy. That sounded good. She wanted that. Whatever it was. Whatever he meant. Whatever he wanted.
And maybe they should define making out. Maybe country boys made out differently than city boys. Or girls for that matter.
The way she was currently feeling, she was thinking the queen-sized four poster in the guest room was about right. She just needed to keep enough of her wits together to remember to take the quilt off. That thing was gorgeous and clearly handmade. She couldn’t have hot, sweaty country sex on top of it.
But then thinking became pretty secondary.
“Take your coat off. Let me get my hands on you,” he said gruffly.
A thrill shot through her. She’d imagined that small town guys were gentlemen who would take their time. There would be flirting and flowers and dates where they held hands and saw movies and kissed only if there was mistletoe involved.
Part of her had wanted that.
But now, in the truck with Tucker after hot chocolate and a kiss that had nothing to do with mistletoe, she wanted fast. Not just the sex—though she was a fan of hard and fast frankly—but the whole thing. She was being swept up in Sapphire Falls, in Christmas, in these things that she’d always thought were manufactured by the greeting-card companies but was delighted to find out actually existed somewhere.
She was giving in to all of it, floating on this cloud of Christmas as it should be. December twenty-sixth would come soon enough.
She wanted to be swept up in an affair where she felt an immediate connection with a guy and fall into bed with him the first night because what they were feeling was real and strong even within only a few hours of knowing one another.
She knew that wasn’t true. She knew that love at first sight wasn’t real. She knew that many a girl’s heart had been broken mistaking chemistry for true love. But she was going to go with it for a few days. Kind of like believing that Santa was going to find her in Hawaii every year even without a tree or chimney or cookies or a letter. In spite of her mother. Every December, her brain had tried to tell her it didn’t make sense, that it had never happened before so why now. But her heart had wanted to believe so badly she’d talked herself into it.
For a few days, she was going to let herself bask in the fantasy of true love f
ound under a piece of mistletoe.
And the best sex of her life in the front of a pickup truck.
She unbuttoned the coat and started to shrug out of it, but Tucker helped sweep it from her without her even having to wiggle much.
“Want to feel you up against me.” He met her gaze as their chests rubbed against one another as he divested himself of his coat as well.
She was totally on board with that.
He tossed his coat into the seat next to them and then slid to the middle of the truck seat, taking them out from behind the steering wheel.
“The air warm enough?” he asked.
Was the air in the truck warm enough? Did Rudolph’s nose light up? She nodded. “I’m very warm.”
He grinned and put his hands on either of her hips and started bunching the material of her skirt higher and higher on her thighs. “You tell me if you need any more heat anywhere.”
“Will do.” She squirmed to help the process, and as soon as the tight skirt was high enough that she could get her knees apart—and it had to go pretty high for that to happen—she pivoted to straddle his lap.
The bulge behind his fly was evident, and she moaned softly as he pressed her against it, lifting his hips slightly to meet her. Heat was not going to be a problem.
She had to taste him, had to get her hands on as much of him as she could, had to feel him against her everywhere.
She ran her fingers into his hair, holding his head so she could kiss him deeply. But the minute his hands slid under the edge of her dress and cupped her ass—the cheeks bare because of the thong she wore—she knew she was in no way in control here.
He growled softly as his hands met the bare, still-cold-to-the-touch skin. He ripped his mouth away. “A thong in December in Nebraska? Aren’t you asking for trouble there?”
But it wasn’t trouble from the icy temperatures that first came to mind when she looked into his eyes. “I’m not too worried about that part of my body getting real cold with you around,” she told him.
He squeezed her flesh, causing tingles to shoot from his hands straight to her clit. “Damn right.”
Then he kissed her again. She was holding his head, sitting on top of him, but it was clear that Tucker was taking over.
Home for the Holidays: A Contemporary Romance Anthology Page 44