“Wow,” she said after he lifted his head. “Whoever said the romance fizzles out after you get married obviously knew diddly-squat. And speaking of romance…” She gently nudged his ribs and nodded toward the lounge area where Kelley and Marc sat at a table in the corner, heads close together, talking and laughing. “Can you believe how happy they look? I’ve never seen Marc look at any woman like that.”
Eric nodded. “Good. That’s how Kelley deserves to be looked at.”
“I’m glad she took our decision to get married today in stride. Marc, too.”
“I basically had the same talk with them that you had with your mom. I know she was disappointed not to have a fancy wedding to plan, but in the end she just wants us to be happy.”
She smiled. “Mission accomplished.”
“Agreed. My only regret is that we didn’t do this four months ago.”
“Actually, looking back, I think those four months were good for us. My mom finally understands I’m no longer a child and you and I are stronger together for surviving The Family Feud.”
“Can’t argue with that. Of course, we might have a front-row seat to Family Feud, Round Two, courtesy of Kelley and Marc.” He shot a meaningful glance toward the corner of the lounge area.
Jessica nodded. “I think you’re right. I spoke to Marc earlier about Kelley. He told me he felt like he’d been struck by lightning the first time he saw her.”
“He’s a goner.” Eric touched his lips to hers in a slow, soft kiss. “I know exactly how he feels.”
“Good to know.” She chuckled. “Can you imagine Kelley and my mom clashing over that wedding? Fun times ahead there.”
“Right. If by ‘fun’ you mean ‘migraine-inducing.’ But hey—that’s their problem. They’ll have to figure it out just like we did.”
“Amen to that. Although, by the time any actual wedding planning rolls around, Mom might have other things to occupy her time. Have you noticed the way Steve the bartender has been looking at her? And the way she’s been looking back?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s definitely a mutual admiration happening.”
Jessica smiled into his eyes and saw all the love and passion she’d ever dreamed of looking right back at her. “Looks like we have a candidate for our ‘get Mom a man’ campaign.”
“Sure does. Between her and Steve and Kelley and Marc, I’d say our work here is done. And that being the case, how about we say our goodbyes and get our honeymoon started?” He leaned down and nuzzled the sensitive skin behind her ear.
With a pleasure-filled sigh, Jessica tilted her neck to afford him better access. His teeth lightly grazed her earlobe, eliciting a barrage of tingles. “Are you trying to get me to say yes?”
“Absolutely. Is it working?”
She gave a happy laugh. “Absolutely.”
JOANNE ROCK
His For The Holidays
A Blazing Little Christmas Part 2
Chapter 1
Find moose-shaped form for holiday lights. Finish invitations. Hang Christmas cards in foyer. Test new cocktail recipes (ask Trish when she’s free so I don’t get toasted alone). On and on it went. Heather Dillinger’s preholiday party to-do list covered four single-spaced pages on her computer screen, her schedule of expectations and obligations as vast as her mother’s guest list. Not that her mother had asked for Heather’s help, but she certainly expected it the same way she’d assumed her Type A daughter would jump in and help every year since she’d turned—what, twelve years old?
The problem that came with a lot of competence—and perhaps taking a smidge of pride in the fact—was that Heather had snowballed into the family workhorse.
Which reminded her. She needed to find a recipe for a drink called a snowball. It would be pretty to serve a white concoction on a silver tray full of prism-like snowflakes—the closest she’d ever come to the real thing in Savannah, Georgia.
“Have you mentioned the party to Gary, dear?” Loralei Dillinger-Digby floated into Heather’s home office on a cloud of White Linen perfume, her arms full of the lemon-yellow tulle she insisted Heather use on her summer collection of household furnishings. Heather’s start-up fabric company, The Attic, was enjoying its second year in the black and her mother was working hard to put her creative stamp on that success, not realizing she influenced Heather’s designs without lifting a finger. Loralei Dillinger-Digby had that effect on people.
“Mother, I’m not inviting my former fiancé.” The list in front of Heather’s eyes seemed to stretch and grow as she anticipated the inevitable next ten suggestions for the annual event that had morphed from a family celebration into a neighborhood open house, into an opportunity to showcase her mother’s coveted historic house on one of the city’s oldest thoroughfares.
The thought reminded Heather she needed to hunt down that snowball recipe very soon. The party was next week and it was already Tuesday. Sampling each attempt at the recipe beforehand would definitely be in order if she expected to make it through this planning with her sanity in check.
“Gary is a wonderful catch, Heather, and if he’s not to your liking we might as well at least steer him toward someone we know.”
“We won’t be steering him anywhere.” She clicked closed her to-do list to face her mother, only to discover Mom pulling samples out of Heather’s swatch books faster than she scooped up sales at Neiman’s. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to find a color that would complement Trish’s eyes so you can whip her up something suitable to wear for the party. Don’t you think Gary would just love her?” Her mother turned to wave a scrap of ice-blue silk and a roll of silver piping. “How about something along this line?”
Heather’s heart squeezed tight at the suggestion—for so many reasons she could barely untangle them all to address every facet that bothered her. She’d broken off an engagement with a wonderful guy three months ago and her family couldn’t let it go. They’d loved Gary—a golf pro with a summer home on Hilton Head that had her mother planning vacations a decade in advance—and Heather’s realization that she didn’t love the man had caused a huge family uproar. Bad enough she’d been personally devastated to realize she didn’t feel as deeply about him as she should. But having to defend the choice every day while trying to run a business and planning the party had been seriously draining.
Screw the snowball recipe. She’d head directly to the bourbon.
“Mom, Trish is my sister—”
“Half sister.”
“—and she’d never go out with my ex-fiancé, even if he wasn’t totally wrong for her. He’s a golfer. She’s in a rock-and-roll band.”
Her mother’s grip on the silk tightened.
“You never learned that opposites attract?”
An image of a tall, dark and killer-looking military man sprang immediately to mind along with one hot weekend Heather had never been able to forget. Seductive memories swamped her in a fast-forward scroll the second she let thoughts stray to that man. She’d tried her damnedest to forget Lieutenant Jared Tyler Murphy since he’d left for a stint overseas without even waking her to say goodbye…
Hell yes, she understood exactly how much opposites could attract and it pissed her off to no end when she’d never been able to settle the score with him. She found herself thinking of him more recently since she’d broken up with Gary. Part of her blamed her inability to settle down on the fact that she’d never put her past to rest with Jared.
“You’re right, Mom.” She spoke through clenched teeth, unwilling to release her jaw for fear a year’s worth of stress would come flying out of her mouth and Heather’s workaholic tendencies truly weren’t her mother’s fault. “I wish Trish all the best if she’d like to date Gary, but I don’t have the time to make a dress before the party.”
Trish could handle their mother’s insane suggestion in a minute with one withering look, so Heather didn’t need to borrow stress over nothing. It was just the party and the family expectations that we
re getting to her, especially with Heather’s canceled wedding date looming.
While her mother launched into a tirade about the need for a good dress, Heather turned to check her e-mail after the chime of a note arriving in her in-box. She didn’t recognize the sender—NiteStalker12—but she figured it had to be spam since she didn’t know anyone with that screen name. Still, the subject line intrigued her.
Have you seen snow yet? Probably an ad pitch for a ski weekend up north, something that was worth a read considering the alternative entertainment was her mother’s wheedling attempts to interest Heather in the dress project. Didn’t she know Trish would rather wear distressed denim and leopard print than blue silk?
But all thoughts of the dress, the party and her mother dissipated as she read the contents of the note.
Heather,
After our first snowfall this year, I got thinking about you. I hope I’m not out of line contacting you after all this time, but according to the articles I found on you and your business—congratulations on that, by the way—it sounds like you’ve remained unattached. If that’s true and you want to see a snowfall firsthand, I’d really appreciate the chance to see you again this Christmas. No strings attached, obviously. I live close to a nice bed-and-breakfast and I can get you a room there so it’s not awkward. I know this is out of the blue, Heather, but it is the season for making peace and I never could forget you….
Jared
At the end of the note, he included a few details—a phone number for a place called the Timberline Lodge and some flight times out of Savannah if she wanted to make the trek to Lake Placid, New York, to see him.
Her heart was beating so fast she thought she’d launch into cardiac arrest. Jared wanted to see her again? Well, déjà vu, since she’d just been thinking about him. But maybe that wasn’t such a coincidence since they’d met during the holiday season.
“So I assume from the long, drawn-out silence that you’re coming around to my way of thinking?” Her mother laid the blue silk on Heather’s keyboard before she could close the e-mail, but thankfully, her mother didn’t take any notice of the invitation from the One-Who-Got-Away.
The only man to ever leave her wanting more. Maybe that’s what had upset her most about Jared’s hasty exit from her life. He’d gotten to her the way no other man ever had and it hurt to think he’d been able to walk away without looking back. Until now…
“Actually, I am.” Heather didn’t need to compare her four-page to-do list to Jared Tyler Murphy’s sparse invitation five years too late. She’d already made up her mind that spending time with the ghost of her Christmas past would be too interesting to pass up. Especially in light of her former fiancé’s inevitable appearance at the family holiday festivities. “I was thinking that you seem to have a lot of great ideas for the party and it is your party after all.”
Her mother nodded, a smile curving lips carefully drawn in fuchsia pencil.
“I’m so glad you agree—”
“So I think it’s only right you take the reins this year and do it all the way you’d like.” Heather knew most of the work was done anyhow—her four-page list had been more than double that last week—but still she savored her mother’s moment of obvious dismay at the possibility of being outmaneuvered.
“Honestly, Heather, I’m sure—”
“I just got an invitation to the mountains this weekend, Mom.” She grinned, enticed by the prospect of escape from obligation and lovingly pushy relatives for a few days. And the idea of settling an old score tantalized her more than it should.
Loralei appeared ready to breathe fire as she drew her shoulders back and pursed her lips tight, but Heather fully acknowledged she might be exaggerating the moment. Trouble was, she had one-upped her mom so few times in her life she had to make the most of it.
“You’re not serious.”
Heather’s gaze flicked back to the screen and the promise of a little sensual revenge on her partner from the best weekend fling imaginable. A weekend fling that had pretty much ruined her for all other men from a sex point of view since he’d never given her the chance to take the relationship to its natural burn-out conclusion.
“Mom, I’m very serious. I’m going to Lake Placid to watch a real live snowfall.”
And, with any luck, she’d come home next week with a little of that northern ice on her heart where a very real wound used to be.
* * *
Jared Murphy’s breath whooshed out of his lungs and he could have sworn someone took a crowbar to the backs of his knees when he spotted Heather Dillinger. Five years had passed since he’d last seen her asleep in her bed, naked and spooned against him at five-thirty in the morning before he left for a yearlong stint in Afghanistan. But she still had the same effect on him even after all this time, a powerful surge of primal interest that left him struggling for a rational thought.
Five years ago, he had tried convincing himself it was the beer goggles that had made him think she was the hottest woman he’d ever seen. Now, stone-cold sober and freezing his ass off outside the small municipal airport, he knew better.
“Heather.” He wasn’t sure if he spoke her name or just thought it, but she looked his way as she cleared the fence, tugging a small overnight bag on wheels behind her.
His Georgia peach. And yes, he’d actually called her that in those shared forty-eight hours that had burned hot in his brain for months and then years afterward. Her hair was longer than he remembered, the wavy chestnut mass tied close to the ends with a green velvet ribbon that trailed over her shoulder. Her dark wool coat grazed her calves, the tie cinching her small waist and accentuating her curves even through layers of winter clothes.
“This is incredible.” She pulled off a pair of oversize amber shades and smiled in a way that would have warmed any man’s heart.
Except that, as he watched her peer around in wonder at the small parking lot in the middle of the woods, he realized she wasn’t talking about their reunion being incredible.
She only had eyes for the snow.
He definitely had to get his head out of the past if he wanted any chance with this woman. They’d fallen into bed together too fast last time, unsettling all the traditional rules of dating. He wouldn’t make the same mistake this weekend.
“You like it?” He took the suitcase from her as she watched a handful of new flakes land on her palm.
“It’s fluffier than I imagined.” She brushed the melting snow away and met his gaze for the first time. “Nice to see you again, Lieutenant Murphy.”
Her blue eyes remained straightforward, but he thought he heard something a bit “off” in her tone. Did she have mixed feelings about seeing him again? Or maybe she just thought he had appalling manners since she was standing in a snow squall without a hat or gloves.
“It’s Captain now, actually. And it’s good to see you, too. Let me walk you to the truck before you freeze.” He nodded toward a silver 4x4 he used around town and they made their way through a handful of other vehicles toward it. Seeing how many cars had miniature wreaths attached to their front grills next to his bare fender reminded him how little he’d celebrated the season in recent years.
Stowing her suitcase in the extended cab, he helped her into the passenger seat and figured this had to be the most awkward reunion of his life. They were strangers who’d slept together, people from totally different walks of life. But—bottom line—he had to see her again.
“So you live up here now?” She craned her neck to see the peak of Whiteface as he pulled out of the lot and onto the main route. Holiday tunes filled the cab.
“I’m from downstate originally, but the scenery is nice up here. My uncle had a cabin in the mountains when I was a kid and I always liked it. He left it to me last year and I’ve been finding local work so I can stay.”
He still had family downstate, but he didn’t have all that much in common with his sisters who were all married with kids. He’d sort of disconnected in his yea
rs overseas. This place now felt more like him and his first investment was already paying off nicely with the demand for ski properties increasing. He’d been purchasing plots around town to build new or refurbish old cabins.
“You’re out of the military?” Her voice carried that cryptic tone again, the odd note he couldn’t identify earlier when she’d said it was good to see him.
“Yes.” He was proud of his time served, but he could definitely understand the high burn-out factor. The stuff he’d seen would stay with him his whole life. “I still fly a little. I’m on standby for a Medivac copter and I do some rescue work on the mountains.”
“So you’ve been out of the service for a while?” She kept her eyes trained out the windshield, as if mesmerized by the miles of pine trees drooping under the weight of snow. They passed a handful of houses with inflatable snowmen in the front yard and decorated trees on their porches.
“One year.” It had been strange adjusting to his life after he got out, but he didn’t plan to share the sleepless nights and a sort of survivor’s guilt he sometimes experienced. That wouldn’t exactly launch this reunion in the right direction.
“It’s been a long time since we saw each other,” she observed lightly, folding her hands in her lap. The backs of her knuckles were red from the cold. “I was surprised to hear from you.”
Jared sensed the need to tread carefully, unsure of the emotional undercurrents he suspected were at work between them.
“No more surprised than I was that you agreed to come up here.” He still couldn’t believe she’d said yes after the way they’d parted with virtually no goodbye. All these years he’d wondered if she’d held a grudge about that, but she seemed genuinely pleased to be here if a little distant. Reserved.
“The timing turned out to be fortuitous.” She rubbed her hands together. “I only wish I brought gloves.”
He steered the truck onto the long driveway that would take them to the Timberline Lodge, a five-star property that drew guests from all over the world.
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