The Christmas Dare

by Lori Wilde

  And when Tasha spilled the beans about Kelsey getting stood up at the altar, his initial impulse had been vengeful smugness—Karma’s a bitch, babe. After her mother had dragged her back to Dallas, she’d never answered his letters. Never texted. Never called. Even when he’d gone after her . . .

  But that was just hurt feelings and unfair to Kelsey. She’d been seventeen with an aggressive, controlling mother. In total honesty, his youthful expectations that love conquers all had been totally unreasonable.

  Love did not conquer all.

  He felt ashamed for thinking that karma thing.

  Forgive and forget.

  That was ten years ago. He’d gotten past it. He no longer nursed a grudge over Filomena’s threats or Kelsey’s ghosting. She’d just been protecting herself.

  He got it.

  And until he’d come back to Twilight, bought Christmas Island, and saw Camp Hope every time he stepped out onto the deck of the Rockabye, he rarely thought about Kelsey.

  But deep down inside, a tiny bit of his heart was still scarred from what had happened between them. In some small way, he was still that boy from the wrong side of the tracks that had dared to love Filomena James’s daughter.

  He wasn’t proud of that scar, but it was part of him. Noah was who he was. Good and bad. That didn’t mean he didn’t try his best to be a better person. It just meant that some days, he didn’t succeed. And some days he felt like that vulnerable, motherless teenage boy who didn’t quite understand why he wasn’t good enough for Kelsey.

  The old inferiority complex reared its ugly head. In every other corner of his life, it didn’t bother him one bit that he came from a lower-middle-class family. But when it came to Kelsey . . . well, it seemed he was seventeen all over again. Self-conscious that her family had money and his did not.

  You got money now, Budweiser. He heard his twin brother Joel’s voice in his head. Yeah, but nouveau riche didn’t count to the likes of Filomena James. She’d called him poor white trash and told him to stay away from her daughter.

  The memory was a grass burr in his gut, poking him hard.

  All the more reason to steer clear of Kelsey. From what Tasha had said, Kelsey was still tightly tied to her mother’s apron strings. Noah did not need that kind of hassle, thank you very much.

  No matter how hot Kelsey might be.

  Keep your hands to yourself, MacGregor.

  It was a solid plan, but then a final thought popped into his mind as he stood on the dock staring down into Kelsey’s sapphire eyes—a thought which was strictly from his animal brain.

  How do I get her between the sheets?

  As he looked deep inside her, sudden realization hammered through him. You still don’t know who you are, do you, Firefly?

  Neither in bed nor out of it.

  He could see how lost she was in the twitching of the muscles around her eye. She hadn’t changed. She was still allowing her mother to call the shots. Telling her who to marry, running her life.

  Kelsey was still hiding from herself. Terrified, for some reason, of grabbing life with both hands.

  Noah could see it in the way she held herself, rigid and uncertain. How she slanted her eyes downward and glanced away. How she caught her breath whenever things got emotionally intense the way they were right now.

  “Breathe,” he whispered.

  “What?” She blinked.

  “You’re holding your breath.”

  “No, I’m not.” She exhaled.

  He recalled the first time they’d met at summer camp. Two eleven-year-olds processing a lot of damn grief. He’d lost his mom to ALS that Christmas and Kelsey’s twin sister had drowned the previous summer. As a twin himself, he understood the bond. He couldn’t imagine life without Joel, leading him to wonder if pity was part of the reason he’d been drawn to her.

  Joel had been at camp too, but Kelsey, unlike most everyone, never got them mixed up, not even when they’d tried pranking her by getting Joel to pretend he was Noah.

  She’d been swinging in a hammock reading a book when Joel had approached her and said, “Hey, you wanna go fishing with Joel and me?”

  She hadn’t even put her book down, simply yawned, turned the page and said, “Joel, you’re not fooling anyone. Tell Noah if he wants me to go fishing with him he’s got to come ask me himself.”

  “How did you know?” Joel asked.

  “I was a twin,” Kelsey said. “I understand the trading places game.”

  “Noah,” Joel had called over his shoulder where Noah had been hiding behind a tree. “C’mon out. We’re busted.”

  He’d come forward, scuffing the toes of his shoes in the dirt, crushing on her even then. She’d smiled, and his heart tripped, and she’d closed her book and said, “I’ll come fishing if you bait my hook.”

  And that was that.

  Their first date.

  She had no idea how strong she was. How she was the glue that held her mother’s world together. He’d seen the depth of her strength from the moment he’d met her at camp, even if she couldn’t see it in herself.

  He saw a glimmer of it now. How she straightened her spine and lifted her chin and ironed her features into a cool expression of indifference. But at the same time, her hands were trembling, and he saw the quick throb of the pulse at the hollow of her throat. She was unnerved by him but determined not to show it.

  Hell, Firefly, I’m plenty unnerved too.

  He recalled the summer where everything changed. When they’d returned to Camp Hope as junior counselors, and she’d stepped out of her mother’s Cadillac wearing a crisp short-sleeved white blouse, a knee-length denim skirt, and leather sandals. Her sleek long blond hair was pulled back into a tidy low ponytail at the nape of her neck. Modest gold jewelry. A tennis bracelet, stud earrings, a teardrop necklace. Simple, understated, elegant.

  Just like Kelsey herself.

  She looked so different from the other girls in their brightly colored T-shirts, short shorts, and flip-flops. It really hit him then that she came from money.

  And he did not.

  But the gap was gone now, and he had money of his own. He was her equal.

  The beautiful woman, who’d once seemed so off-limits, was standing in front of him, just as ripe and sexy as she’d been at seventeen, if not more so. All sensuous curves and provocative lips. She walked with a sexy roll of her hips that could drive a sane man crazy. She might look dignified and restrained on the surface, but underneath she was hungering to be set free.

  His eyes met hers.

  She inhaled softly but audibly.

  He could smell the female pheromones radiating off her soft skin. Could see her need in the slow, alluring way she flicked out the tip of her pink tongue to moisten her lips when his gaze strayed to her mouth. And there was that telltale twitch of her eye.

  His nearness stressed her, but she was excited about it.

  Damn, so was he.

  He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her until neither one of them could breathe. He yearned to run his tongue over every inch of her body and discover exactly what made her sigh and wriggle. He longed to scoop her into his arms, carry her to his bedroom, and show her precisely what they’d both been missing out on for the last ten years.

  Great sexual chemistry.

  His pulse hammered, and his belly tightened, and below his belt he got hard in a way he hadn’t been hard since he was a teenager. It was scary how much he wanted her body.

  “Is the stress getting to you?” he said.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Your eye.” He touched her temple with the flat of his thumb. “It hasn’t stopped twitching since you climbed into my golf cart.”

  “I . . . I . . .” She seemed to have lost her voice.

  He dipped his head lower. “Yes?”

  “Tasha talked me into coming, against my better judgment. I don’t want to be here. I don’t like Christmas and Twilight is a Christmassy place, and I don’t like
the water and we’re staying on a damned boat, and . . . and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “And then . . .” She licked her lips again. “There’s you.”

  Amused, he canted his head. “What about me?”

  “Coming here was not my idea. I want you to understand that.”

  “So why don’t you just call the Uber to come back?”

  She hesitated, bit down on her bottom lip. “You really want to know why?”

  “I want to know everything there is to know about you.”

  “Because I got a job offer to go work for my mother’s competition.”

  “Oh ho.” Hmm, this was intriguing. “And you’re considering it?”

  Kelsey chuffed out a big sigh. “It would be like declaring war on Filomena, so no. But it does have me thinking . . .”

  “Aww, that’s what’s got your eye going wonky.”

  She touched the corner of her eye. “Stop noticing.”

  “You’re still gorgeous. The wonky eye is not a deal breaker.”

  “Noah . . . stop it.” Kelsey spun on her heels.

  Noah grabbed her wrist and stopped her in her tracks. Felt her pulse kick up.

  She stilled beneath his touch.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Her gaze met his, and she arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow. How well he remembered that lady-of-the-manor expression she trotted out whenever she was displeased with him.

  “I was teasing. It was a joke. When did you lose your sense of humor?”

  “I didn’t—” She snapped her jaw closed.

  He meant to tell her she needed to learn how to relax and find the real Kelsey lurking behind the good girl who kowtowed to her mother. To let down her hair and just be. But she needed something stronger than mere words to jolt her from her cocoon. “Why did you kiss me?”

  “Oh, that.” Kelsey shrugged. “That was nothing. Tasha—” She waved a hand. “Never mind. You were standing under the mistletoe. I was happy to see you, and I kissed you. That’s all it was.”

  Noah rubbed his jaw. Ah, either the kiss hadn’t rattled her world the way it had rattled his or she was lying up a storm. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So, you wouldn’t be interested in—”

  “God no!”

  “Okay, just checking.” He raised both palms. Apparently, he’d misread the signals. “Sometimes sex can clear the cobwebs. I was just throwing it out there.”

  “I’m out of my head, okay? Can you overlook my outrageous behavior?”

  “If you can overlook mine.” Noah leaned down and kissed her again. This time, unlike before, she did not respond.

  Feeling like a dope, he let her go, stepped back. “Really? Nothing?” Then he finished with the one word that had always made her smile. “Firefly.”

  Hamburger.

  Beneath Noah’s enigmatic stare and his whispered, Firefly, Kelsey’s heart shredded to hamburger. He was a steamroller, and she was . . .

  Squashed hamburger.

  Cover it up! Quick!

  She schooled her features, making herself impervious. She was a master at hiding her real emotions. You couldn’t live with, and work for, Filomena James, and not perfect that skill. If she let him see how much he had affected her, he could crush her safe little world to dust.

  Um . . . maybe he already has, murmured a voice in her head. And maybe that’s a damn good thing.

  She’d kissed him on a dare, and that’s all there was to it. They were not going to date or have sex.

  “I should go inside,” she said, dropping her gaze to her luggage that was still in the golf cart. “I’m sure Tasha’s wondering where I’ve gotten off to.” Kelsey started for her suitcase.

  But Noah put out a hand to stop her. His fingers slid around her elbow. “Wait.”

  She straightened and met his gaze even though she really didn’t want to. “What is it?”

  “I’ll bring in the suitcase in a minute, but first I think we should talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About what’s going on between you and me.”

  She tossed her head, and her braid bounced off her spine. “I don’t know what you mean. Nothing is going on.”

  He laughed heartily. A booming sound that echoed out over the water.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You. Set yourself free, Firefly.”

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  “Why? Because it reminds you of who you used to be?”

  Exactly. “I’m not that girl anymore.”

  “No.” His dark eyes lost their luster. Nuts. She felt as if she’d kicked a puppy. “You’re not. You got lost along the way.”

  “We were young,” she said, ignoring the last part of what he’d said.

  “We hurt each other.”

  “I . . . I . . .” She cleared her throat to swallow back the jitters.

  “Things were left unfinished,” Noah said, giving voice to her thoughts. “Your kisses . . .” He rubbed his mouth. “Wow, they brought it all back.”

  She kept her spine rigid and did her best to ignore the longing blazing inside her.

  “We could finish those things,” he said. “Get our closure so we can move on.”

  “Wh-what do you mean?”

  “I mean . . .” He hooked his thumb under her chin and lifted her face up, so she had to look him squarely in the eyes.

  His hand was dry and warm despite the cold, damp afternoon. How easy it would be to melt into his arms and stay forever.

  “What I’m trying to say is that if you want to set yourself free, Firefly, I’d love to be the one to take the lid off the jar.”

  She heard a gasp, the sound coming from somewhere dark inside her. She could see the tattoo on his wrist.

  Dare.

  Just jump in. Just do it. Just take a risk. She took a deep breath to say no or laugh it off. Anything to stave off the fear.

  Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. A welcome relief from the starkness of Noah’s stare. Kelsey took out her phone. Glanced at the screen. Groaned.

  “Filomena?” Noah guessed.

  “Shh, shh.” She put a finger to her lips as if her mother could hear him before Kelsey even accepted the call.

  He grimaced, shook his head, and walked away to the golf cart.

  Wincing, Kelsey answered. “Hello.”

  “Where are you?” her mother demanded.

  “On vacation. We had this discussion, remember?”

  “I know that,” her mother snapped. “Where are you on vacation? Have you arrived at your destination?”

  Kelsey turned her back to Noah and walked several paces up the deck away from where he was taking her suitcase from the golf cart and lowered her voice. She didn’t want him to hear this. Especially since her mother sounded as if she were gearing up for a fight.

  “We’re still in transit.” It wasn’t a complete lie. She hadn’t stepped onto the Rockabye yet. Still, it wasn’t completely honest either, and a ping of guilt plucked her ribs, but she wasn’t about to let her mother know she was in Twilight.

  With Noah.

  If Filomena knew that, her head would spin around like the little girl in The Exorcist and she’d spew angry word vomit all over Kelsey.

  “Forget your plans, turn around, come back, come home now, I insist,” Filomena said all on one long breath.

  Kelsey got an immediate ache in her stomach and a sour taste in her mouth. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Lionel Berg is running for governor.”

  “So?” Kelsey held her breath. Did her mother also know that Berg had offered her a job?

  “I can beat him.”

  No, Filomena must not know about Berg’s offer. She would have let Kelsey have it with both barrels if she did. Unless . . . she was plotting something. “Mom, you just got elected mayor. It’s not your time to be governor.”

  “We need to start planning now.”

  “Your time
for the governor’s race is at least four years away.”

  “We need to talk strategy, get a solid plan in motion—”

  “It’ll keep until after the holidays. I need some time to myself, Mom.”

  Filomena huffed like a fire-breathing dragon. Kelsey knew that sound. She was gathering her emotional armor, preparing to fight and fight hard. “Darling, let’s not quibble. Come home. All is forgiven.”

  Kelsey fisted her hand. Her eye twitched so hard it hurt. “Excuse me? I’ve done nothing to be forgiven for.”

  “I’m your mother. You ran off and left me all alone when I needed you most. Reporters have been hounding me about that disaster of a wedding.”

  “You’re blaming Clive’s leaving on me?” Kelsey’s jaw dropped. Gaped. Yes, her mother was self-centered. She always had been, but this was beyond the pale.

  “You could have kept him from running off with the best man. If only you’d—”

  “Wait, wait.” Kelsey’s head was spinning, and her eye was jerking so hard she couldn’t keep her eyelid open.

  But her mother did not wait. “Come back and give your story to the media. You can say you knew all along that he was gay, and you were just trying to help him find himself.”

  “Mother! Listen to yourself. Just stop it!”

  “Do not speak to me like that, Kelsey Anne James!”

  “I am not coming home. I am on vacation for the next two weeks. I will see you then.”

  There was a long, cold, hard silence.

  Kelsey didn’t dare breathe as she waited for the other shoe to drop.

  Then it came.

  The fury.

  The roar.

  The rage.

  Kelsey had been avoiding her mother’s foul moods for twenty-seven years, and now she was in the midst of the hurricane.

  Filomena let loose, howled. “You will get back here. Right now. You have to put on a good face for the media. Running makes you look like a coward. And if you look like a coward, I look like a coward.”

  Kelsey bit down on her bottom lip. Outrage trembled through her. How many years had she catered and kowtowed to her mother? Why had she put up with her mother’s abuse for so long? How come she hadn’t been able to see the abuse for what it was?