A Match Made Under the Mistletoe

by Diana Palmer

  “You are being much too wonderful. You know that, right?”

  “It must be your civilizing influence.”

  “Okay, that’s a little too wonderful. Dial it back or I’ll start thinking you’re trying to manipulate me.”

  “But I am trying to manipulate you—to stay here with me for the rest of the night.”

  She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. “Well, guess what? I think it’s working.”

  He pressed his lips into her hair. “Excellent. And how about this? Why don’t we just play it by ear and not borrow trouble?”

  “But I’m always seeing all the ways things could go wrong. I can’t help it. Things have gone wrong for me and I just want to keep them from going wrong again.”

  He trailed his fingers up and down her bare arm. The slow caress soothed her. And excited her at the same time. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “Please.”

  She took his hand, laced their fingers together and rested them against her heart. Because she did want to stay. And clearly, he still wanted her here. Shyly, she admitted, “You’re amazingly convincing.”

  His fingers tightened on hers. “I’m going to consider that a yes.”

  She snuggled in a little closer. “So. I’m guessing you probably have your own bathtub in here…”

  * * *

  “Yours is bigger than mine,” she said with a pout ten minutes later, when they sat in his jetted tub with bubbles all around them.

  Jed sat behind her. He had her right where he wanted her, cradled between his legs. She’d piled her hair up and managed to twist it so it stayed on top of her head and she leaned back against him, so soft and sweet, every inch of her a blatant invitation to do more wicked things to her.

  “Yes, my tub is bigger,” he said. “And if you’re very, very nice to me, I will share it with you often.”

  She wiggled against him. He tried not to groan. “I get the feeling you really do like having me here.”

  “And soon, I intend to show you how much.”

  “Um.” She tipped her head back and looked up into his eyes. “A name came to me. For Jack’s girlfriend? I don’t expect you to use it, but I can’t resist telling you, anyway.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Sadika. Sadika Niles.”

  He liked it. “It’s good. I’m stealing it from you.”

  She giggled. “You can’t steal it. I’m giving it to you.”

  “Thank you—and you’re giving me ideas.”

  She wiggled again. “I can feel them.”

  “I’m talking about Sadika.”

  “Yeah. Sure you are.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and stroked his way down her bubble-covered arms to her hands. “Sadika Niles is in her thirties. She’s black, a surgeon. From a well-to-do family…or wait. A preacher.” He wrapped his hands around the back of hers.

  “She’s a preacher? That’s odd.” She spread her fingers and he eased his between them.

  “Not Sadika, her father. John Niles is a minister. In Biloxi, Mississippi. And Sadika is on duty in the ER at Manhattan General the night the one-handed man, whose name will turn out to be Vanko Tesler, is admitted, near death, after trying and failing to kill Jack. Sadika performs the extensive touch-and-go surgery that saves Tesler. But the next night, when she goes to check on her patient, she witnesses his execution by a hitman sent by K.” The mysterious K, an international arms dealer and general scumbag, had appeared in four McCannon books so far.

  “So the one-handed man dies?” Idly, she lifted their linked hands from the water. Bubbles slid off before she lowered their arms below the surface again.

  He bent close to press a kiss against the side of her neck. “Elise. It’s a Jack McCannon novel. A lot of people have to die.”

  “Mmm.” She tipped her head to the side, allowing him better access. He took total advantage of that and nipped gently at her smooth, damp flesh. “Watch it,” she warned, but in a low, throaty voice that contradicted her complaint. “I’ve already got one hickey. I don’t need another. Deirdre will wonder what we get up to when she’s not around.”

  He licked where he’d nipped her, caught a loose curl of dark hair and tugged on it with his teeth. “I don’t care what Deirdre thinks.”

  “Well, I do.” But then she turned her head enough that he could claim her mouth. They shared a long, lazy kiss, during which he eased his fingers from between hers and put his hands where they longed to be—over her wet, bubble-covered breasts.

  “Where was I?” he asked when she turned back around and settled against him again.

  She made a sweet little humming sound as he rubbed his thumbs across her hard little nipples. “Sadika witnesses the execution of the one-handed man in his hospital room.”

  “Right. And Jack finds out there’s a witness and he’s there in her apartment when she gets home just before dawn. K’s men come for her.”

  “Jack has to protect her.” She laughed in delight. “And they’re on the run together. You should have Jack get injured and she has to operate on him under less than optimal conditions.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And maybe Sadika eventually has to kill that sexy assassin, Lilias, in order to protect Jack.”

  “Hold on. I’m kind of fond of Lilias.”

  “Well, I’m not. Especially if she goes after Jack, she really needs to die.”

  He wanted her facing him. So he took her shoulders and floated her around until those glorious breasts were pressed to his chest and his aching erection nudged her belly. “You are a bloodthirsty creature.”

  Her mouth was a soft O, her eyes low and lazy. “You make me…different. You make me feel things I’ve never felt before.”

  “I don’t make you anything. You are what you are, Elise. Womanly. Sexy. Smart…” Beneath the bubbles and the cooling water, he traced a finger over the curve of her hip and inward, parting the soft, neatly trimmed hair between her lush thighs.

  A moan escaped her. “Again?”

  He dipped a finger inside. “Don’t pretend you’re surprised.” And then he claimed that mouth he couldn’t get enough of kissing.

  A few minutes later, he pulled her out of the tub and licked off the bubbles that cascaded down her luscious wet curves, going to his knees for a while to enjoy the taste of her, then rising, sliding on a condom, backing her to the wall and lifting her. She wrapped those beautiful legs around him and he eased her down onto him.

  After that, he kind of lost touch with reality for a while. Her soft heat surrounded him, her scent filled his head and he drank her sweet cries off those lips that whimpered his name as she reached her climax.

  A little later, he carried her back to bed, turned off the light and settled her in close to him, her round, soft bottom tucked just right in the cradle of his thighs. He waited until her breathing evened out in sleep before he allowed himself to join her there.

  * * *

  Elise opened her eyes to darkness and the scent of cinnamon: Jed. He was all around her, his huge, heavy arm in the crook of her waist, his big hand cupping one breast. She felt…engulfed by him.

  It was far too pleasant a sensation. Arousing, somehow. Her whole body ached. But in a good way. A well-used way.

  She could too easily get accustomed to this—to Jed holding her in sleep. To waking up beside him. To plotting his stories while lazing around with him in that giant tub of his.

  And to the sex.

  Oh, God. The sex. A pleasured flush swept through her just thinking about the things they’d done.

  Jed moved. His hand closed a little tighter on her breast. It felt delicious. She almost arched her back to press herself closer to his palm.

  But then he let go. His arm left her waist. He rolled away from her.

/>   She lay very still and listened to his breathing. Even and shallow. Sound asleep—and so far away now, turned on his other side across the wide expanse of the bed.

  The clock on the nightstand glowed at her—3:10 in the morning. She stared at it as a minute crawled by. And then another and another after that. As she watched the glowing numerals change, all the doubts he’d banished with his wonderfully flattering reassurances came creeping back.

  Now, really. Did she honestly want to be here naked in this bed with him when daylight came?

  It could be awkward. Awkward and strange and very likely embarrassing. And, well, she just didn’t want to deal with that. There was no reason to deal with that. She had a perfectly lovely bed of her own downstairs. She could wake up in the morning in the privacy of her room and pull herself together before having to look in Jed Walsh’s green eyes after he’d seen everything she had under her clothes. Seen it up close and from a whole lot of potentially unflattering angles.

  Nope. Waking up to daylight in Jed’s bed was not going to happen.

  Moving at a snail’s pace so as not to disturb him, she eased from under the covers, slid her feet to the floor and crept to the door. It opened for her without a sound.

  Wigs sat waiting on the other side. “Mrow?”

  “Shh, now.” She shut the door behind her. Scooping up the cat, she headed for the stairs.

  To get to her room, she had to pass the kitchen and the clothes all over the floor in there. Deirdre would be here tomorrow, sometime between eight and nine.

  It should be fine. Elise would set the alarm for six and have everything picked up and put away long before the housekeeper arrived.

  But after she and Wigs were safely in her room, well, those clothes just nagged at her. She kept flashing on images of Deirdre standing there in the kitchen, blinking in bewilderment at the bra tossed on the island counter, the torn panties on the floor.

  So she put on her robe and went back out there. She gathered up Jed’s clothes, folded them neatly and set them on the first step of the stairs, his boots beside them. Then she grabbed all of her stuff and took it back to her room.

  By then it was twenty minutes to four. She put on some comfy sleep shorts and a frayed racer-back T-shirt, climbed into her bed, pulled the covers over her head and assumed there was no way she would get back to sleep.

  But apparently, she dropped off rather quickly.

  The next thing she knew Jed was bending over her. Even in the darkness, she could see enough to realize that he didn’t have a stitch on. You’d think if he just had to break into her room in the middle of the night, he could have put some pants on first. “Elise. What the hell?”

  She blinked at her bedside clock. Ten after four. And then she grumbled, “What are you doing in here?”

  Apparently, Wigs didn’t get it, either. “Mrow?” he asked from the foot of the bed.

  Jed didn’t bother to answer either her or her cat. He just tossed back the covers, gathered her into his arms and carried her back up the stairs with Wigs following happily along behind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Elise slept in Jed’s bed from that night on. Jed made it perfectly clear he wanted her with him. Why try to escape him when she only wanted the same thing?

  She knew it wasn’t wise or the least bit professional of her, to be the boss’s plaything after working hours. She probably ought to be ashamed of herself.

  But she wasn’t.

  She felt much too happy to be ashamed. She loved every minute she spent in his bed. As it turned out, it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable in the least to wake up beside him every morning. He made it crystal clear that he liked waking up with her there. Opening her eyes to morning light with Jed wrapped all around her? She’d never had it so good.

  And making love with him just kept getting better. Every time she had sex with him, it was the best of her life.

  So far.

  With Jed, she shed her inhibitions along with her clothes. He made her feel like a goddess in bed. And after a lifetime of considering herself boring, fussy and repressed, seeing herself through Jed’s eyes was pretty darn fabulous. Whatever happened in the end, how could she regret spending her nights with a smoking hot man’s man who thought she was sex on a stick?

  She worried a little in the initial few days of being his lover that his writing might suffer and he would rethink the wisdom of boinking his assistant, that he would tell her they had to go back to how it had been before.

  But no. On the contrary, his book seemed to be going better than ever.

  He said she inspired him, that the story just flowed. He claimed it was a lot because of Sadika, whom he’d introduced the morning after that first night. Sadika was turning out to be strong, sharp-tongued and capable, a woman even the great Jack McCannon didn’t dare mess with. Jed thought Sadika brought out a whole other side of Jack—the dark side, where his heart lay hidden. Jed said he hadn’t realized that Jack was getting a little stale until Sadika showed up and Jack had skin in the game again, someone who mattered, someone worth fighting for.

  More than once in the two weeks after he first tore her panties off, Jed carried her upstairs during writing hours. She got lucky each time and Deirdre didn’t spot them. Elise knew it was cowardly of her, to want to keep the personal side of their relationship strictly between them. But so what? She just wasn’t ready for anyone else to know.

  And sex during working hours? With Jed, it was every bit as amazing as sex any other time. Just a little more urgent, somehow. They would make love hard and fast and then they would talk. About the story, about whatever element wasn’t quite working. He said she was a great sounding board. He liked to bounce ideas off her, find out what she thought of them, get her take on how he might resolve any problems that cropped up.

  She really liked hashing out story points. She could do that forever—unlike the typing, which she couldn’t be finished with soon enough. When Jed completed this book, she would miss a lot about being involved in his writing process. But typing? If she never typed another sentence, it would be much too soon.

  Nell and crew showed up the last Tuesday in July to begin construction on the catio. Elise took special care when her sister was there not to give Jed any smoldering looks, not to stand too close to him and definitely never to touch him. She did not want her sister to know that there was anything more than work going on between her and her boss. If Elise and Jed were still together when the book was through and she returned to her own life, that would be the time to let her family know that they were an item.

  Bravo Construction did good work and they did it quickly. A week later, Mr. Wiggles had his own personal backyard. He loved it. He climbed the cat runs and hid in the hidey-holes, basked in the August sun and stalked the birds that flitted beyond the wire fencing.

  Besides the fire pit and the Adirondack chairs, Jed had decided to add a comfy outdoor living room to the patio. He’d also had Nell install a fancy grill and a sink and counter space—essentially an outdoor kitchen. That way, after work, they could join Wigs outside.

  The first Friday in August, Jed grilled chicken out there and Elise baked potatoes and whipped up a salad. They sat down to eat at the cast-iron table not far from the fire pit.

  Elise was spooning sour cream onto her potato when he asked, “So what’s on your mind?”

  She plunked the spoon back in the tub of sour cream. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Just now you were biting your lip. And you keep shooting me glances when you think I’m not looking. You’re building up to hitting me with something and you’re not sure how to go about it.”

  How did he do it? He read her like a billboard. Sometimes that made her feel special and important to him. Sometimes, like now, she had to tamp down annoyance that he found her so transparent. “My half br
other Carter is getting married a week from Saturday.”

  “I know. You and Nell talked about the wedding that night she came for dinner.”

  “I need the afternoon off so that I can be there—and yes, when you hired me I agreed to work all day, every day, six days a week. I should have asked for my brother’s wedding day then, but I had a lot on my mind and I just didn’t think of it. Then, later, I kept putting off asking because I was afraid you’d say no and, given our agreement, you would be perfectly within your rights to say no and then I would have to decide whether or not to make some sort of stand about it. And then we made love and now I’m sleeping with you and I feel like I would be taking advantage of our intimate relationship to ask you—”

  “Enough.” He waved a chicken leg at her. “It’s not a problem. We’re ahead on the book. Take the whole day off.”

  She picked up her fork and set it down without using it. “Seriously? I’ve got the whole day? Just like that?”

  He nodded. She was about to leap up, run around the table and grab him in a grateful hug when he added, “Will I need to wear a tux, or what?” She sank back into her chair. Being Jed, he only had to look at her face to know what she was thinking. “So. You weren’t planning on taking me.”

  “Well, Jed, it’s only that I…” Ugh. Whatever she said next, it wouldn’t sound good.

  “I’m waiting, Elise. That sentence is never going to finish itself.”

  She let out a hard breath, sucked in another one and tried again. “If you go with me, my family will know that we’re seeing each other—I mean, you know, dating, or whatever. That I’m not just your assistant, you know?”

  “Yes, Elise. I do know. And you’re not just my assistant. You’re…” He let the word trail off as he drank from his water glass and set it back down with care. “What shall we call you? I don’t especially like the word girlfriend. It’s weak. Lover sounds vaguely reprehensible. And this isn’t just an added-benefits situation, either. It’s more.”

  “Well, yes, what we have is really good and I love it, Jed. I love being with you, I truly do, but—”