by Jessie Lane
She snorted. “Oh yeah? What kind of thoughts are you having, then, that are worth so much?”
Holding his hand out toward her, he silently implored for her to come to him. After a few silent seconds waiting, she sighed in resignation and walked forward to take his hand. Joe pulled her down on the couch beside him and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Nikki gave him a skeptical look. “That sounds more like a line than a well paid for thought.”
Shrugging, he told her exactly how he felt. “You can think whatever you want about it. Only thing that matters is that it’s the truth.”
Joe watched as Nikki blushed again, only this time, he gave into his urge to touch the warm skin of her face. Lifting his hand, he ran his pointer finger over her flushed cheek, relishing the feel of her velvet softness. It made him wonder how she would feel in other places.
Nikki trembled under his touch and Joe could tell she was just as nervous as she was turned on. Funny enough, so was he. In fact, he hadn’t been this nervous about anything since the first time he’d seen a battlefield in the military. But here was his mate, tying him up in knots. She was a war all in herself, and it was a war he was determined to win. It mattered. She mattered. There was too much riding on the final outcome for him to rush through it like some horny teenager.
“Why are you so dead set on not having a mate? It is just me or any man?” He hadn’t meant to ask the question, but it was out there regardless. It wasn’t about his ego or about fishing for compliments. He knew what he looked like and he knew how women responded to him. So did she. This was about whatever baggage that wouldn’t let her be happy.
She shrugged, a nonchalant gesture that did nothing to dispel the tension between them. “We just lost our parents six months ago. It’s still fresh and raw. Too many things have changed in Sarah’s life for me to go bringing someone else into it.”
“Seems to me,” he pointed out, “that having a mate, someone else stable and constant in her life, would be good for her.”
“And are you? Stable and constant? Or are you that jealous and possessive shifter who will resent any time taken from you to care for a kid that’s not even your own?”
Joe knew what she was talking about. By and large, shifter mates were healthy, happy, and loving pairs who always had room for their cubs. His parents had been. But he’d seen others—couples that were almost obsessed with one another to the point that their own children became an afterthought. Had her parents been like that? Was that why she was so adamantly opposed to the idea of being mated?
He didn’t poke at that wound. It wasn’t the time and from her crossed arms, it was clear she wasn’t in the mood. So he said, “Sarah’s a great kid. She’s funny and sweet. And her heart’s bigger than this whole damn house. Anyone would be lucky to get to be a part of her little world.”
Their gazes met and without warning, her face crumpled and she started to cry. “Damn you,” she muttered.
Maybe it was because she was his mate—maybe it was because there was still a little kid inside of him that knew exactly where she was and how hard it was to let go—but Joe didn’t respond to her the way he normally did to crying women. There was no running. Instead, he just grabbed her and held her close, letting her sob against his shoulder while he stroked her back and muttered nonsense into the sweet-smelling silk of her hair.
His mate might be crying, but inside Joe felt like something good had finally started to snap in place for them.
Chapter Ten
Nikki had never been more humiliated in her life. She’d tried so hard to be tough and strong, to hold it all together. He’d said one nice thing about her baby sister and she’d turned into a blubbering mess. If she’d been worried about him wanting to stick it out with her, that had probably sealed the deal on his walking papers. What guy wanted to get tangled up with a hot ass emotional mess?
She pushed herself off him, but stopped in the circle of his arms. Mostly because he’d tightened his grip and didn’t seem inclined to let her go any further. “I’m sorry about all that,” she said quietly. “I don’t really… I’m not a crier. I don’t do that.”
“You do. Not often, and probably not enough, but you do,” he stated firmly. “We all do. And seems like you needed it.”
She hadn’t let herself cry since the day they’d buried her parents. “There hasn’t been time for it. I had to get their stuff packed up, sold off, or stored. I had to take care of their bills, the funeral, the life insurance, getting Sarah’s stuff packed and moved in here with me, finding a preschool, a babysitter. It’s just been one thing after another… And now you. It’s just more change that I’m not ready for.”
“Change happens, baby, whether we’re ready for it or not. I was crashing at a friend’s house during the holidays because I didn’t have anywhere else or anyone else to go to. And then you walked in. I wasn’t looking for it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll walk away from it.”
Nikki started to protest, but before the words could even escape her lips, he was there. He kissed her in a way that no one ever had. There was heat, but there was a tenderness with it that she hadn’t expected. He didn’t push, he didn’t try to get into her pants or even cop a feel. Instead, he just kissed her like his life depended on it. His tongue moved against hers slow and easy, like they had all the time in the world and there was no reason to rush.
She felt herself sinking into it, feeling the tension drain from her body as he held her. Her hands came up and tangled in his hair, wrapping the silken strands around her fingers. She wanted more from him—for him to take, to demand, to make it about the heat and the sweat and not this achingly gentle thing he was building between them.
Breaking the kiss, she pulled back from him. “What is it that you want from me?” she asked.
He smiled at her, sweet and maybe even a little sad. “Everything. That’s what I want from you and that’s what I want to give you.”
Nikki shook her head a little as if trying to clear it. “You almost seem too good to be true, and that scares me.”
Joe moved his hands up so that they cupped her face. “I could say the same thing about you, sweetheart.” She started to protest, but he didn’t let her. “All that sass and fire, it turns me on. Your determination to protect your sister, I respect that. Best of all, you guys are like the ready-made family I never knew I needed. I haven’t had a family in so fucking long it’s not funny. But here you two are, and now I realize you and Sarah are exactly what I was missing. And now that I’ve found you, I’m damn sure going to do whatever it is I have to do to keep you.”
He dropped his forehead to hers and she felt that connection all the way to her soul. Her doubts started to melt away, just a little bit, and hope bloomed in her heart. Maybe this could work. Maybe Joe was just what she and Sarah needed.
Only time would tell… And he had three days to prove it to her.
She just hoped that at the end of three days both she and Sarah weren’t suffering from broken hearts on Christmas.
Pulling back, Nikki took a chance and snuggled into his side, loving the way he wrapped himself around her as if to keep her warm. “Tell me about you,” she whispered.
He ran a hand through her hair and she almost purred at the sensation. Both Nikki and her cat were in agreement that Joe could just keep petting her, and it wouldn’t hurt if he called her pretty, too.
His voice rumbled in his chest as he started to talk and Nikki loved feeling the vibration of it against her face. “I grew up in Arizona in a lion pride-run community. As the only cub of two lion shifters I had a normal happy childhood with two parents who loved the hell out of me until I was ten years old. That year, my parents went out to do some last-minute Christmas shopping and were in a fatal car accident on Christmas Eve. I haven’t really had a family since then.”
Nikki felt sad for the little boy he must have been. “Did no one adopt you?”
<
br /> Shifters were all about their kids. She couldn’t believe that a shifter-run community would actually let a cub be orphaned.
Joe kept running his hands through her hair as he spoke. “The family of a friend stepped up and took me in, but it wasn’t the same, you know? I wanted my mom and dad growing up and they were gone. The Andersons, that’s who took me in, they were great. Treated me like one of their own cubs, and as much as I appreciate them for doing that, it still didn’t matter to the little boy who had lost his family. I just couldn’t feel that connection with them that I had before. After I graduated high school, I joined the Marine Corps. It gave me a chance to get away from there and see the world. Bury my past and my pain.”
Sensing the need to change the subject, she asked another question. “What did you do in the military?”
“I was a mechanic.”
Picking up her head to look at him, she inquired, “Were you deployed?”
Joe shrugged. “Show me a man or woman in the military that hasn’t deployed sometime in the past ten years.”
Nikki could see in his eyes that he was holding things back from her. There were shadows there—dark, ugly, and painful. “Was it dangerous?” she whispered. It was a stupid question, of course. He’d been sent to a war zone. What she’d really wanted to ask was how he’d survived it, had he been injured, did it haunt him still—but the answer to that was evident in the way he’d just glossed over it. There were some wounds you just didn’t poke.
Joe smoothed a hand over her cheek. “At times, but I’m here now, and isn’t that all that matters?”
She let it go at that, sensing just how uncomfortable talk of his past service was. Propping an elbow on the back of the couch, Nikki’s curiosity couldn’t stop her from asking even more questions. “What will you do now that you’re out of the military?”
“Probably get a job as a diesel mechanic.”
“What’s wrong, don’t want to be Santa for the rest of your life?” she teased him.
Joe was shaking his head before Nikki finished her sentence. “Hell no. Kids like Sarah are sweet, but I’ve been farted on, cried at, and had my fake beard pulled on too many times to count these past couple of days. This Santa gig is a one-time deal as a favor to my buddy, Sam. After that, never again. I guess that makes me a bad Santa, but oh well.”
Nikki looked at the adamant horror on Joe’s face and couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of all those kids driving him nuts was sort of hysterical. She didn’t necessarily think he was a bad Santa though. Maybe just a mediocre Santa with good intentions. That was okay—they didn’t need a perfect Santa to make this work between them.
Maybe just a small Christmas miracle instead.
Chapter Eleven
Joe grunted as he loaded the large Christmas tree into the back of Sam’s truck. He couldn’t wait to surprise the girls with it. He had a long day playing Santa ahead of him and he was excited to show up at Nikki and Sarah’s house with this big tree for them to decorate. Joe had even bought a thing of mistletoe to hang up in their house in the hopes of kissing Nikki underneath it tonight.
“Dude, you are so sunk,” Sam muttered as he shoved the giant tree up against the side of the truck bed. The damn tree was so big they were still gonna have to prop it up over the tailgate. “Will this thing even fit in her damn house?”
Joe considered that. “We may have to do some trimming.”
“You,” Sam corrected. “You may have to do some trimming. What about ornaments and all that sparkly shit?”
Joe blinked at him. “You mean tinsel? Do you or do you not operate a lodge in the Christmas capital of the south?”
“I operate the lodge,” Sam agreed. “I don’t fucking decorate it. I leave that shit to Logan and Barrett. I’ll let them get in touch with their feminine sides. I prefer getting in touch with the feline sides of whatever hot, sexy, and single tourists are at the tavern tonight.”
That had been him, Joe realized. Just months ago, whenever he’d been on leave, whatever town he’d happened to find himself in, he’d hit up the bar looking for an escape. He wouldn’t even call it companionship because when he’d slipped out of their beds in the middle of the night, he’d been just as lonely as before he’d met them. Whatever happened with Nikki, and he’d pray to any god that would listen that it all went the way he wanted, he wouldn’t go back to that. He needed to have something in his life that mattered at least.
“That gets old eventually,” he said.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Don’t start that shit with me. We’re shifters, waiting on fate to throw the right woman in our path. Until the right one comes along, I’m going to continue enjoying the hell out of the wrong ones. That’s all it is.”
“We’ve all got demons, buddy. No one comes out of the places we did without ’em. And you can drink till they’re quiet or you can distract yourself with women until they ease up the claws enough for you to breathe, but that doesn’t make them go away.”
Sam was quiet for a second, then he cocked his eyebrow and twisted his mouth. “Thanks for the news flash, Dr. Phil. If fixing cars doesn’t work out for you then maybe you can start shrinking heads at the veteran’s hospital. Now, give me the key to your bike. And you take my truck, but you park it at the back of the lot, and so help me, if a bird even shits near it, you will wash it before you bring it back. Understood?”
Joe laughed. “It’s a done deal, man. Thanks for this. That kid is gonna lose her mind when she sees this tree.”
Sam smiled. “I guess it was worth getting covered in sap and pine needles, then.”
Joe climbed into the truck and headed for the mall. He had a day of having poorly potty trained kids on his lap. At least, he thought, glancing at the tree in the rearview mirror, he’d have something to look forward to when it was all said and done.
Chapter Twelve
“Is he here yet?”
The question was a jumbled mess because it was uttered around Sarah’s thumb.
“No, baby. Not yet. He just got off work at eight. It still takes time for him to change clothes and ride over here on his motorcycle.” Just the thought made her shiver. It wasn’t the danger, although that was a concern. It was the temperature. It had been dropping all day. He had to be freezing.
A quick glance out the window and she noticed the tiniest of flakes beginning to fall. There was no point in getting excited about it. There hadn’t been a white Christmas in their part of Tennessee in her lifetime.
The loud rumble of a vehicle drew her eye toward the end of the street. The big pickup truck was moving slow. The headlights illuminating the falling flakes and the fact that more than a few had already settled on the cold ground. When the truck eased to a stop in front of their small house, Nikki frowned. Her panther went on alert, looking for danger. Most of her friends had bailed once Sarah had come into her life. It wasn’t fun to hang out with a toddler, they’d said. So the odds of someone just stopping by were pretty slim. Who was this?
Sarah came running out of the bedroom then, her latest artwork clutched in fingers that were suspiciously coated in glitter. “He’s here! He’s here! And he’s got my supwise!”
“What exactly did Joe say to you when he asked to speak to you on the phone earlier?” Nikki asked with trepidation.
“That he was bringing me something and it was too big to fit on his bike so he had to borrow a truck!”
Nikki marched toward the door, ready to give him a piece of her mind. Maybe her stance had softened toward him a little but that didn’t mean she was going to let him buy his way into her life through Sarah. Flinging open the door, she found herself face-to-face with the rather prickly branches of a huge pine tree. From behind it, she heard the muffled words, “Merry Christmas, baby.”
And there went her heart melting all over again. The damn man had brought them a Christmas tree! Her panther was purring, wanting to get out and let her mate know how much the gesture meant. She wasn’t ready for Joe to know what a
mush she was becoming, so she pulled her shit together. Stepping back, she moved out of the way as the large pine tree started to make its way into her house.
Propping her hands on her hips, she did her best to take a stern tone. “Joe—dammit, I don’t even know your last name!”
A grunted, “Miller,” came from behind the moving tree.
With renewed fury, Nikki started again, “Joe Miller, what on earth have you done?”
He propped the tree up against her large living room window. Stepping out from behind it to speak to her, Joe kept one hand on the tree so it didn’t fall. “I got Sarah a Christmas tree. Give me a few minutes to go grab the tree stand out of the truck and then I’ll get this baby set up. We can decorate it tonight.”
Joe gave one last look to the tree, presumably to make sure that it wasn’t going to move, and then looked down to the bouncing Sarah. “Step back from the tree, sweetling. It’s not safe for you to be around until I get it set in the tree stand.”
Nikki watched as the three-year-old threw herself at Joe’s legs and wrapped herself around them like a little monkey. “Thank you, Joe! It’s the best supwise ever!”
Joe ran his hand over her head in a loving caress. He gave her sister a wink, “You’re welcome. Besides, it was totally worth it because that’s the best hug I’ve ever gotten.” Nikki tried not to choke on her emotions as Joe said, “Guess we’re even now.”
Standing there, unsure of what to say or do, Nikki watched as Sarah climbed on the couch and kept bouncing while Joe went back for the aforementioned tree stand. She kept standing there, just like that, as Joe set up the tree. Her sister jumped around as if she were fueled by a pound of sugar Nikki knew she hadn’t consumed.
“Do you see it? Do you see it? It’s so big!” Sarah squealed in delight with wonder and fascination in her eyes. Nikki gave her sister a bemused look. She hadn’t heard the girl squeal and laugh so much since before their parents had passed. Looking back to Joe, she stifled a giggle when she saw the smudges of glitter on his jeans. She’d wait to point that out later.