“You don’t want to remember this Christmas?”
There was no way she was ever going to forget this Christmas. “It’s just that it implies there will be other Christmases.”
“You don’t think there will be?” Lauren asked.
Kate definitely remembered that Lauren was a straight shooter.
“I know there won’t be,” she said, though her voice sounded funny. “This was only supposed to be a date for the formal anyway. And it was supposed to be with Tucker. Levi and I don’t live in the same place and we’ll both be going home after Christmas.”
“Long distance sucks,” Lauren said. “But it’s not impossible. There’s the phone, texting, email, Skype. Sexting. Sex-Skyping.” She grinned.
“You’ve sex-Skyped?” Kate asked.
“Of course. Travis travels with me when he can, but it’s not always possible.”
Kate knew all about Lauren’s company that she owned with her best friend, Mason Riley. Lauren traveled between Sapphire Falls, Chicago, DC and Haiti—where their primary growing program was flourishing in some of the poorest villages in the country—and to some of their newer program locations in Africa.
“But you guys make it work.” Kate couldn’t deny that her heart thumped at the thought of seeing Levi again after Christmas was over.
“We sure do,” Lauren said with a grin. “Married and expecting a baby.”
Kate’s eyes widened and her gaze dropped to Lauren’s stomach. “Really? Congratulations.” The stunning brunette wasn’t showing a bit and looked positively radiant.
Lauren’s hand went to her lower abdomen. “Thanks. It’s terrifying but wonderful.”
“You moved here to Sapphire Falls from Chicago, right?” Kate asked. “And you love it here?”
“Even when I tried not to love it here.” She laughed. “I didn’t want to be stuck here, tied down.”
“Why not?” Kate asked before she could stop herself. “This seems like such a great place.” Part of her wanted Lauren to tell her that her impression of Sapphire Falls wasn’t real, that it wasn’t nearly as wonderful as it seemed. Part of her also wanted Lauren to confirm that it was, indeed, everything that it seemed to be.
Lauren’s smile was full of affection. “Their coffee sucks and I have to shop online for almost everything. Heaven forbid you need an ingredient for a recipe after six p.m. I’ve had to teach them to make a decent appletini and you can’t keep a secret—like, I don’t know, being pregnant—for more than three seconds. You end up spending all your time with the same people over and over again and hearing the same stories over and over again and going the same places over and over again.” She sighed happily. “And it’s awesome.”
Kate felt choked up.
It was the stupidest thing to desire, but part of her wanted to be in a place where everyone knew everything about her—and loved her anyway.
That was the key, of course. Being accepted. She was accepted with her colleagues and friends in San Francisco, but she also kept a lot of herself hidden.
She had a feeling the people in Sapphire Falls could get her to spill her secrets.
Her gaze landed on an ornament. It was a ceramic depiction of the Sapphire Falls town square, hand painted in blues and whites and silvers. The gazebo was there, the hot chocolate stand, the four big trees…everything.
“I think this is the one I want.” She lifted it from the box.
Lauren nodded. “Definitely.”
They paid for their purchases, including more Christmas cookies and some fudge from Scott’s Sweets.
“Think the guys are done with the tree?” Kate asked. She took a bite of fudge and moaned.
Lauren laughed. “Yes, I’m sure they’re done.”
“Really? I have no idea how long it takes to cut a tree down.”
“Yeah, well, longer than this, but they’re not cutting it down.”
“They’re not?”
Lauren shook her head. “I’m sure Travis talked Levi into getting an already-cut one. But play along. It makes them feel manly to have us think that they did it.”
Kate laughed. “You guys showed up because Phoebe and Joe called and told you they were concerned about our safety out here with a chainsaw, right?”
“Actually, Adrianne called us after she stopped by this morning and heard the plan.”
Kate was amazed. “You all really do take care of each other, huh?”
Lauren linked her arm with Kate’s. “Some call it meddling. We like to refer to it as semi-forced love.”
Kate felt her eyes sting and had to blink rapidly. Only one thought was on her mind—they wouldn’t have to even semi force the love here on her.
It took Kate and Levi far longer than it should have to haul their tree from the truck to the porch, through the front door and into the perfect corner in the living room.
Of course, it also took a while to rearrange Joe and Phoebe’s living room to make that corner perfect.
Still, Kate could not deny that it was everything she’d imagined as she stepped back and took in the sight of the evergreen towering to the ceiling in the corner between the staircase and the fireplace. It would be the first thing seen when someone stepped in the front door.
She felt Levi move in behind her. When he wrapped his arms around her, she leaned into him and wished that this Christmas could last for a year. Or ten.
And to think that only a few days ago, she’d been planning to skip Christmas entirely.
She turned in his arms and went up on tiptoe to kiss him.
Levi didn’t even hesitate. He tunneled his fingers into her hair, pulled her closer with a hand on her ass, and deepened the kiss.
Fire seemed to lick through her, and Kate wrapped a leg around one of his. She pulled her lips away only enough to say, “We have candy canes.”
“We also have decorating and movies and cuddling to do.”
She pulled back farther. “You don’t want to have candy cane sex now?”
“I do. You have no idea how much.”
“I don’t see the problem.”
“Once I get you naked, that’s all I’ll be able to concentrate on. Until possibly January twenty-something.”
That was sweet…and frustrating as hell.
“Should I tell you how I plan to use my candy cane?” she asked.
He flexed the hand on her butt but shook his head. “Please don’t.”
“It’s really good. There’s licking and sucking involved.”
He groaned. “Decorating, movies, cuddling. Decorating, movies, cuddling,” he muttered. “Decorating, movies, cuddling.”
She laughed. “Repeating it will help?”
“I sure as fuck hope so.”
She wanted him. There had been chemistry from minute one, but the intensity of her desire for him now was amazing. She’d never felt anything like it. And she knew it had a lot to do with Christmas cookies and tree farms and the fact that she’d caught him Googling how to string Christmas lights on his phone. She also knew it was about falling in love with the little town of Sapphire Falls that had turned out to be all she’d imagined and more.
And it had a lot to do with the realization that they had an expiration date.
This Christmas wonderland wouldn’t last. The holiday would end, the snow would melt, Levi would go back to Vegas and she’d go back to San Francisco and all she’d have left was the ornament and her memories. The deadline, the ticking countdown, was also making this all feel so much more bittersweet. It was part of the whole illusion. Like a dream that she knew she had to eventually wake from. She wanted to pack as much as she could into their time together while it lasted.
“Maybe we could—”
“I’m trying to get to a light dove-gray here,” he said.
She had no idea what that meant. “What?”
“My cold, black soul is coming back from the dead. I think I’m in the middle-gray tones now versus black. If I can sit on that couch and cuddle with you
for an entire movie, I think I can make it a light gray.”
She laughed. “Cold, black soul, huh?”
“I was this close to a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future, I swear.”
He had a tiny grin partially curling one corner of his mouth, but she could see that there was some truth behind his words.
“That bad, huh?”
“Let’s just say that whatever Christmas movie we decide on, I would appreciate it not be any retelling of A Christmas Carol.”
She pretended to pout. “I love Scrooged.”
“Let’s put it this way—” He pulled her up more securely against the erection behind his fly. “If I watch one of those, I might not be able to perform later.”
She wiggled against him and enjoyed his quick, sharp intake of air. “Oh, we can’t have that. I have some Christmas wishes that still need to come true.”
“And I’ll make them all even better than you imagined,” he said, squeezing her ass. “As long as there are no ghosts.”
If she hadn’t seen the bit of truth in his eyes when he talked about trying to turn his black soul light gray she would have teased him further, and maybe even cajoled him into watching the original A Christmas Carol. Or maybe the Muppets version. But he was trying to be a good guy here. The least she could do was let him. For a while.
“How about Elf?” she suggested.
“Buddy the Elf?” he asked.
“You know the movie?”
“I’ve been living in Vegas, not under a rock.”
They pulled the tree decorations from the attic, along with three boxes of decorations for the windows, mantel and pretty much every other available space in the house. Phoebe had either inherited a bunch of stuff from family or she was a Christmas hoarder.
The lights went onto the tree with only two start-overs—and Levi only consulted his phone six or seven times and used the F word three or four—and they eagerly covered the branches with ornaments.
However, there were a handful that Kate felt they should leave. One was a Baby’s-First-Christmas with a photo of Kaelyn, another was an Our-First-Christmas ornament, not unlike the one Lauren had showed her. There was no photo, but the date painted on it was the first Christmas Joe and Phoebe would have been married. There were a few others from trips, including their honeymoon, that Kate left in the boxes next to the tree for when Phoebe and Joe got home.
She hoped they hadn’t taken anything away from Phoebe and Joe by not letting them decorate the tree this year.
“Damn,” Kate said quietly.
“What’s wrong?” Again Levi moved in behind her and wrapped her in his arms.
She really liked it there.
“Kaelyn. And Phoebe and Joe. This is their tree. They should decorate it together as a family,” she said.
Levi was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “You’re absolutely right.”
Kate sighed. “We screwed up.”
“Nope,” he said. “We put up a tree for us. And we’ll enjoy it tonight and then we’ll take it all down in the morning and they can decorate it together another day. We’ll tell them we got them the tree as a hospitality gift.”
“But the lights…” She stopped right there. He’d done it. It didn’t matter that it had clearly frustrated the crap out of him. It was something new to him, but he’d tackled it for her. “And we hauled all this down.” She looked up into his eyes. “You’d do that?”
“Of course.”
She turned and put her arms around him. “Your soul is so light gray it’s almost white.”
“Well, worrying about all of these people having a perfect Christmas isn’t hurting, I’m sure,” he agreed with a grin. “But let’s not get crazy. I passed white without a chance of going back when I was about sixteen.”
“I want to hear these stories.”
“Someday. Maybe.” He kissed her on the nose.
Someday. That word held so much…promise.
But someday was far beyond Christmas. Far beyond when she was back in the real world in California.
“So next we need a fire, some wine and the movie,” she said, keeping her tone light.
“Yes, okay. I’ll work on the fire. You find the wine.”
“Great.” Some space would be nice. At the moment, she was pretty equally torn between the urge to just strip and see what he did and the urge to get in her rental car and speed out of town without a look in the rearview mirror. This Christmas wasn’t supposed to be like the others—no heartbreak, no regrets.
The thing was, she was now in too deep to not miss him like crazy when it was over anyway. But she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to work up actual regret about any of this.
Her mind shifted through her thoughts and feelings faster than she could keep up. She went to the fridge, then the cupboards and the pantry but came up empty handed in the wine department.
“All I could find was this jar labeled Booze,” she said, coming back into the living room several minutes later. The glass quart jar was full, the top sealed and a big red ribbon around it with a tag that read “Cranberry”. That sounded Christmassy.
“Booze sounds good to me,” Levi muttered, sitting back on his heels in front of the hearth. He sighed and looked up at her. “The fireplace doesn’t work.”
“Really? That’s weird.” She hid her grin. It was not a gas fireplace. There was no on switch. It was clearly a real wood-burning fireplace and it obviously worked. There were blackened logs in it and tools that were clearly not for show.
Kate was willing to bet that Levi hadn’t ever lit a real fire in his life. Hell, she only knew it was possible because she’d read about it in books and seen it in movies. It wasn’t like the guys she hung out with regularly went around building fires all the time. Nor did any of them have a need to do such a thing.
Levi wasn’t the outdoorsy type and she didn’t care a bit.
Was Travis Bennett sexy in his work boots and gloves? Sure. But Travis would have been sexy in a burlap bag. It was the guy, not what he wore or did that could push Kate’s yum button.
And Levi pushed it. Hard.
Levi was a guy more used to ties than denim, and that was just fine with her. A guy who could fix and build things from scratch with his own two hands was nice. Even sexy in some ways. But she could hire someone to get all of that done.
Give her a guy who could make her laugh, who wanted her to be happy and would do everything he could to make that happen, who could make her tingle right down to her pinky toes and kissed her like he’d never get enough.
She wanted Levi exactly as he was. She didn’t think he was perfect, but she was as interested in his imperfections as she was in everything else.
“There are other ways to keep warm.” She set the Booze down on the coffee table and went to grab a blanket from the seat of the rocking chair.
“I could call Travis,” Levi said. Though he didn’t sound thrilled with the idea. “Maybe he could come over. Or he could send Tucker. I’m sure they know how to light a fire.”
Kate giggled before she could swallow it. She did refrain from saying, I’m sure they can.
Levi narrowed his eyes anyway.
“Sorry,” she said with a grin. “Seriously. It’s fine. Don’t call anyone. We’ve got blankets and body heat. And Booze. It’s all good.”
He was willing to call in another guy to do something he couldn’t. That lack of ego to give her what he thought she wanted was amazing. How could she not want him? She couldn’t remember another time when someone had been so about her. Everything growing up had really been about her mom and, at least so far, Kate had consistently chosen men who were pretty into themselves.
Levi got to his feet. “But it’s not perfect.”
Kate turned on the TV, got into the Netflix account and pulled up the movie Elf. She stopped it on the opening scene and turned to face him. “It’s not what we planned. But I’m learning that sometimes the stuff we don’t plan is perfect.”
It took a second, but finally he smiled and she could tell he’d really heard her. “Okay.”
“And we’ll be plenty warm, because we’re not just going to be watching Elf.”
“We’re not?”
“No.” She shook her head and took a step closer to him. “We’re playing a game.”
His eyes darkened slightly and he took a step toward her too. “A game?”
She nodded. “It’s called strip Elf.”
7
Levi thought about her answer for all of one second. “I love this game.” He came closer to her and Kate had to tip her head back to look up at him.
She laughed. “Want to know the rules?”
“If it results you in fewer clothes, then it doesn’t matter.”
His voice alone was warming her right up. That low, husky tone made little flares of heat dance along her nerves from head to toe.
“Every time someone in the movie says Santa, I take something off. Every time someone says Christmas, you take something off.”
“Kate,” Levi said, low and husky and hot.
“Yeah?”
“Push play.”
She did.
Within only a few scenes of the movie, they were both down to their underwear and were a third of the way through the jar of cranberry Booze.
Kate didn’t know what was in the stuff for sure, but every drink was like swallowing cranberry-flavored liquid fire.
And still she found herself reaching for the jar again and again.
Levi reached over and hit pause on the movie as Santa was again uttered. It was time for Kate’s bra to come off.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
They were cuddled together on the couch. Between the blanket around them, the Booze and Levi’s hot body, she felt like she was basking in the sun on a beach in Florida. The Booze was probably contributing to her feeling loopy, but she knew that a lot of her warm, fuzzy feelings were about the man next to her.
He shifted so he could see her better, but she tipped over when he moved. He chuckled and put her upright again. “You’re down to panties and bra, and I want to be sure I’m paying complete attention when these come off.”
Home for the Holidays: A Contemporary Romance Anthology Page 48