“Humph.”
“Now you sound like Scrooge.”
“I feel like Scrooge, man, but I’m trying to fight it. This is my first Christmas back home in over five years, between deployments and other tours. For the first time, I’m alone.” Max knew about the disastrous Christmas Jonas had spent with Joy. They’d taken a cruise to sunnier weather. Both he and Joy had regretted it—they would’ve preferred to be with their own families, not together.
“You dating anyone since you came back?”
“Me? Nope. And that’s okay—not to say I wouldn’t mind a companion, but I’m not ready for the baggage that comes with it.” Jonas looked at Max’s baby girl.
Max gave him the stink eye.
“Hey, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean anything by that. You know I’m happy for you.”
Max smiled. “I get it, Jonas, more than you realize. But be forewarned—the minute I gave up on ever having a lifelong relationship, gave up on finding the woman of my dreams, she showed up.”
“I remember.” Jonas nodded.
Max had found out long after the fact that he’d fathered his and Winnie’s middle girl during a one-night affair before he’d left on an extended deployment.
“Weren’t you angry at Winnie for not telling you sooner, Max?”
“Of course I was. But what can I say? I couldn’t change the past. I figured out that if I wanted to live my life to its fullest, I had to let go of whatever had happened before, whatever my expectations had been.”
“You’re one of the lucky ones.”
“Yeah, I’m lucky. But Winnie and I do the groundwork, believe me.” Max hoisted his little girl higher in his arms and sniffed. “You need a diaper change, don’t you, sweetie pie?”
She giggled, her cherubic cheeks rosy from the warmth of the fire and being in her dad’s arms.
Some visceral emotion hit Jonas. He was sure it was just post-deployment letdown. He’d always thought he’d have a family and kids...someday. “Someday” hadn’t come yet. Although he had to admit he envied Max’s certainty that his family was the source of his happiness.
“Excuse me, Jonas, but this little lady needs to freshen up. Help yourself to the buffet—Winnie went all out and had her friend Ro bake up some of her delicious desserts.”
“Will do. Thanks, Max.”
Jonas turned around and leaned against the mantel. The heat of the fire made him uncomfortably warm, so he wasn’t going to be able to hang out here long, but he wanted to take it all in.
Stop kidding yourself at least.
He wanted to take her in.
Serena leaned against a far wall of the great room as she spoke to Winnie, Max’s wife. She laughed at something Winnie said and took a sip from her flute of champagne.
Champagne. He’d have to file that away.
Why? Why was he torturing himself like this? He wasn’t going to charm her. But he sure as hell could try.
The fact that his need to talk to her right now had nothing to do with the farmhouse was something he’d examine later.
He dropped his empty beer bottle into a pop-up bin placed strategically near the kitchen counter and walked over to Serena.
She looked over Winnie’s shoulder and made eye contact with him. The sizzle in their shared glance made him grateful he was a man, grateful he was back on terra firma, U.S.A., grateful he could still feel this kind of interest in another human being.
Winnie smiled as she turned toward him. Was that a wink?
“Hey, Jonas. I’m so glad you made it tonight.” She tilted her face toward him and he placed a quick peck on her cheek.
“Thanks for having me.”
“Welcome home! I heard you’re working in the Peds unit on base?”
He nodded. “Nothing I volunteered for, believe me. My specialty is trauma, as you know. But Peds needs the help and who am I to complain? For the first time in forever I have regular hours.”
“With regular grumpy parents and sick kids,” Serena chimed in, and he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face.
“Touché. Hello, Serena.”
She gave him a small smile. “Jonas.”
He looked into her eyes a beat longer than he probably needed to before he turned back to their hostess.
“Serena’s still sore from overhearing my inappropriate comments at the base clinic. She caught me at my worst, I’m afraid.”
Winnie laughed. “Well, I hope we don’t see you very often at the hospital, but with the girls being out of school for the holidays and the older two so active with gymnastics practice, we may.”
“We’re there if you need us. And don’t ever hesitate to call me at home if it’s after hours and something comes up. Kids are unpredictable.”
“Thanks, Jonas. You may live to regret your offer.” Winnie glanced past their small group. “Where was Max heading? I saw you talking to him.”
“Your little girl needed a diaper change. Max is a great father.”
“Yes, he is. Our marriage, the girls—we’re so blessed.”
Winnie smiled at him, then at Serena. It was painfully clear that “blessed” meant “in love.” What was it with the Fords? Why did they see romance everywhere they looked?
“Will you two excuse me? I have to make sure the beef isn’t overcooked.” Winnie walked off and Jonas felt like he and Serena were the only two people in the room.
As if she was the only woman in the universe who mattered to him.
CHAPTER TEN
“I DIDN’T KNOW you were friends with the Fords.” Serena licked her upper lip after she spoke, spinning the stem of her glass between her fingers.
Did he make her nervous?
Or maybe she was feeling the same sexual crackle he did.
Good.
“We haven’t exactly spent time comparing our mutual acquaintances, have we?” He angled his body closer to her warmth, her sizzle.
“No, I suppose we haven’t, Jonas.” She pursed her lips as if deep in thought and Jonas ignored the urge to tell her she had the most luscious mouth. He shook his head.
“Everyone’s friends with the Fords. They’re a great couple, a wonderful family. Max and I go way back, and Winnie is friends with my sister-in-law, who’s a rabid knitter.”
Serena giggled and it produced a feeling of warmth in his chest.
“I like to knit, too, but I don’t consider myself ‘rabid’ about it. I let it go for a while right after...after Phil died, but lately I’ve been at it again. Whidbey is the perfect place to knit, and Winnie’s shop is fabulous. In fact, she’s convinced me to...to—”
She cut herself off abruptly and sipped her drink. “Convinced you to...?”
Guilt, maybe apology, flashed across her expression. “Have my own alpacas.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know anything about alpacas, or sheep, but the farm used to have dairy cows, back in the day.”
“Yes, I know. I’m not interested in the work cows would need, and I don’t want to clear the area needed for sheep, but there are other fiber animals, like alpacas, that could be very happy there. Will be happy there. At the farm. Not that it’s a full-fledged farm. I’m not a farmer, per se.”
His gut tightened. “Go on.”
“I don’t suppose you noticed the barn upgrades I had done? The new addition on the other side?”
He had. The piles of lumber and new coat of paint, along with a new door to the stone foundation building, had caught his eye as he left yesterday, but he wasn’t about to go back and ask her about it. Not after he’d almost kissed her in the upstairs room.
“Let me guess—not just for show or for aesthetics? You’re not planning on using the barn as a storage unit for your hobbies, your yarn?”
She gave him a
soft smile. He wondered if Serena knew how pretty, how damned attractive, she was.
Sexy was more like it.
“Not yarn in skeins. I’ve agreed to keep two alpacas on the property for a trial period. Winnie’s helping me, as is her friend I’m purchasing the animals from.”
“You’re purchasing trial animals?” His incredulity at this made him smile. Serena’s smile widened into a grin.
“Okay, I’ve bought the animals, but I can always give them back.”
“Like a rental car?”
“All I’m doing is taking care of them. Winnie’s friend will handle the shearing and cleaning, and the rest of the fiber processing. It’s a good thing for Pepé, too, to give him a sense of belonging, a connection to his roots with the farmhouse. His biological family farmed on Whidbey almost a century before he was born.”
“Alpacas, eh?” He didn’t give a darn if she put emus in the barn. All he wanted to do was watch her lips form words, see her tongue lick them, sneak looks at her breasts.
He should walk. Away. Now.
“It’s my responsibility to restore and maintain the property, Jonas. I’m not going to restore it to the kind of farm it once was, but I do hope to keep it the way my great-grandfather intended—a place to raise a family and provide a small income.”
His conscience urged him to open up and tell her what he’d been holding back. Still, he waited.
Not yet.
“Do you ever wonder what this could be like—” he motioned between them “—if you hadn’t got Dottie’s house, if we weren’t related, if we’d just met?”
“First, we’re not related. Second, I did get Dottie’s house. Third, I’m not ready to date yet.” Serena didn’t pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. He liked her direct frankness.
“Aren’t you?” He was still mesmerized by her lips. Like a sixteen-year-old with his first girlfriend, he couldn’t stop thinking about how soft they must be. How pliant they’d feel under his. And her tongue— He groaned.
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
He didn’t want to explain his uncontrollable attraction to her.
“Have you been out here before, during the day?”
She nodded. “Yes, but only out front. I usually see Winnie at her shop.”
“So you haven’t seen their Christmas lights for the kids?”
“No, not yet.”
She blinked and he knew he was moving too fast, into territory he had no business entering. But like a riptide, his need to be with her, be alone with her, propelled him to make the gutsiest, stupidest, most thrilling decision of the season.
“Let me show you.” He clasped her elbow and nodded toward the tall French doors that led to the large deck.
“It’s freezing out!”
“We won’t be there that long. Drink up the rest of your bubbly and when we’re back inside you can get a warm-up.”
She did, all the while eyeing him with a suspicious gleam. After she put the empty flute on a side table, she tilted her head toward the doors.
“Make it quick, Jonas.”
Jonas nodded and ushered her out onto the deck. The shock of the cold air hit his cheeks and he saw her shiver. Still, he couldn’t pull her in his arms.
He shouldn’t.
“Is that a tree fort?” She laughed at the sight of the miniature house trimmed with twinkling multicolored lights. Through the tiny window a small Christmas tree winked with white lights.
“Yes, Max goes all out for his girls.”
“It’s so beautiful here.”
She’d wrapped both arms around her, and he watched her profile as she gazed at the darkness, the lights, the stars, the water in the distance, reflecting the crescent moon.
“No matter where I go in the world, when it’s time to settle down, be it for a nap or a decent four hours of sleep, I never fail to see Whidbey in my mind.”
“This is your home. Of course you should see it in your dreams.”
“Is it going to be your home, Serena? How can you be so sure you’ll want to stay here with Pepé, that you won’t change your mind?”
The moonlight caught her expression and he saw her search for the right words to match her feelings.
When a sharp shiver went through her, he instinctively pulled her against him, rubbing her back to warm her.
She opened her arms and pushed her hands against his chest. Looking up into his face, she opened her mouth, no doubt to protest his bold actions.
Jonas allowed his years of medical and military training to carry him to the next indicated task. He had a beautiful woman in his arms and they both needed to stay warm.
He kissed her.
* * *
SERENA KNEW HE was going to kiss her. Knew she was going to let him. Knew, or at least assumed, that she’d like it. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come out here with him.
What she didn’t expect was that Jonas’s lips on hers was going to release her inner vixen and make her want to jump him right here on the deck, to hell with the partygoers inside.
Her sex life with Phil had been loving, warm, at times exciting. Jonas’s kiss was hot, sexy, sinfully wonderful. And his tongue—Dios mio, his tongue was doing things to her mouth that immediately made her wish he’d use it on other parts of her anatomy, pronto.
She grasped the back of his neck and pulled his head closer while she angled her hips into his.
Who was she? Where was her composure?
Was that her groan or his?
He lowered his hands to her waist, turned her around and pushed her against the side of the house. The cold wood siding dug into her back through her sweater and grounded her in the moment. The crisp, cold air on her cheeks. Jonas’s hot, hot mouth. Her gulps for air when he lifted his lips from hers and buried his face in the side of her neck, his tongue seeking contact with the sensitive skin at the base of her throat.
She grabbed either side of his head and pulled him back up to her lips.
If only she’d kept her eyes closed, the moment might have turned into more.
When she looked up into his eyes, begging him for another kiss, she saw...
Confusion? Guilt?
“What, Jonas?”
One kiss and she was complete mush. She fought through the brain fog her lust had induced.
“Serena, I have to tell you something.”
Her skin cooled and the reality of being outside in subfreezing temperatures with Jonas— Jonas, who wanted her to give her house to him— sobered her.
“Oh, God, you’re married!”
“No, not married.”
She knew he wasn’t. Winnie would have said something. So would Dottie.
He put his fingers to her lips. The struggle that played out in his expression wasn’t odd to her—he wanted to kiss her again, too. She saw it in the way he stared at her, at her lips, and then licked his own. How could such masculine lips be so sensual?
“Serena, I’ve bought the land lots next to and behind the farmhouse.”
Rejection put an immediate end to her bliss and strangled her newfound sexual attraction to him.
She shivered and tried to steady herself against the cold.
The land lots she’d hoped to eventually purchase, to restore the farmhouse back to its original parameters.
To fulfill her silent promise to Dottie.
“When did you do this?”
“I’d placed bids on the lots while I was still on deployment—I gave my brother power of attorney. When I first got back I went ahead and signed the initial paperwork. Because of the slow real estate market the Realtor was able to make closing happen quickly.”
“It’s a done deal?”
“As of four o’clock today, yes.”
She lowered her hands from around his neck, leaving them with the lightest touch on his chest.
“Awkward.”
She was not going to let him see her disappointment. She still had her pride, for heaven’s sake.
“That means this is out of the question, doesn’t it?” Thank God for her attorney voice.
“It doesn’t have to, Serena. We’re both adults.”
“I’m not ready for anything like this, Jonas, and certainly not with the man who wants to choke me out of my rightful property.”
“Serena—”
She shoved against his chest and he took a step back.
“I’m cold, Jonas.”
Serena walked back into the party and headed for the bathroom. She had to sidestep several conversations, but she made it into the powder room off the main foyer without being dragged into any cocktail-party chatter. Fortunately, the bathroom wasn’t occupied and she was able to put a closed door between her and Jonas.
She flipped down the lid on the toilet and sat on it. It was covered with a fuzzy snowman’s face with a matching rug at the base. Only Winnie would have something so whimsical in her guest bathroom.
Serena felt anything but whimsy as she went over what Jonas had revealed, while trying to ignore her throbbing lips.
So he’d bought the land that surrounded the house? So what? She still had the property that included a good stretch of woods, and the front meadow that rolled down toward the shore almost a mile away.
If he builds, no, when he builds, he’ll be in full view of you. Every day. Every time you drive up to your house.
The land had never been built on. It had originally been purchased by Dottie’s grandparents when the land was cheap and their dreams big. When Dottie inherited the house from her parents, she’d had to sell off some of the land to buy out her brother for her half of the house. She’d sold it to a local farmer with the promise she’d be able to buy it back when she wanted.
By the time Dottie met Jonas’s father, her concerns about the land became less important than raising four boys and enjoying being a mother and wife after years of living alone. She’d mentioned the land one of the times she’d had Serena and Pepé over for Sunday dinner.
Harlequin Superromance November 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Christmas at the CoveNavy ChristmasUntil She Met Daniel Page 37