“With what?” Mrs. Healey, who had trailed after them, asked. “Like I said, Ambrose never had a tree, so what will you do for ornaments?”
Liss smiled at her. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Healey. I brought all of mine, and the boys made more at school.” She paused. “But even at that, with a tree so huge, we probably won’t have enough. Would you like to help us make popcorn and cranberry strings tonight?”
Mrs. Healey backed up a step or two. “Me?” She sounded appalled. “Why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Liss said. “Other than it’s Christmas and families normally do things together at this time of year. Kirk and the kids found the tree. The least you and I can do is make sure it’s decorated.” She felt Kirk’s startled gaze on her and couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Hmmph!” Mrs. Healey snorted. “Families! I could tell you a thing or two about families, miss. “
“I’m sure you could, and I could tell you a few things, too. But I’m certain my idea of family and yours are so far apart, we’d bore each other.” She took her children’s hands. “Come on, guys. Let’s eat so we can get at the tree.”
As they left the playroom Liss noticed that Mrs. Healey drew in a deep breath of the evergreen scent, and even looked slightly less austere for just a moment, maybe even a tad wistful. However, she took herself off to the office and her precious accounts after dinner, leaving the decorating of the tree to those who would enjoy it.
“Here,” Kirk said to Liss as he prepared to set up the tree, after sawing three feet off its trunk. “There’s mail. I forgot it earlier.” He handed her a sheaf of envelopes. She glanced at them idly, then pounced on one, ripping it open and letting out a shriek of pure joy.
“What’s wrong?” Kirk demanded, letting the tree crash to the floor as he hurried to her side.
“I did it! I did it!” she cried, spinning around. “Look! It’s a check!” She flung her arms high, then kissed the check. “Oh, Kirk! I did it! Graham’s sold some of my stuff. It’s like a miracle,” she said, subsiding onto the sofa. “I feel free again. I feel . . . like a real person. I feel as if I can do anything now, go anywhere, that there are no more limits!”
“I’m . . . happy for you, Liss,” he said, and she looked at him sharply.
He was smiling, but she knew he was not happy for her. He was lying through his teeth. Unbidden came the memory of Johnny looking exactly the same way when she’d made a particularly exciting sale, as if her talent, her success, somehow undermined him.
Kirk seemed to sense disappointment, for he sat down beside her and gave her a hug. “It’s great news, Liss,” he said, this time smiling genuinely, “and I’m very, very proud of you.”
She met his gaze for a moment, seeking reassurance, and to her pleasure, finding it. “Thank you,” she said, tucking the check back into its envelope. “It isn’t really all that spectacular a check;” she confessed. “Less than three thousand dollars, but . . .”
“But it’s yours and you earned it.” He dropped a kiss on her nose. “Congratulations, Liss.”
It was hers, she told herself, and she had earned it, and she wasn’t going to let his momentary sullenness detract from her joy in it. Returning his hug, she laughed up at him. “Don’t we have a tree to decorate tonight?”
Chapter Eight
Kirk took such great pains to get the tree exactly centered in the big window facing the highway, and then the strings of lights so perfectly balanced, Liss finally gave up and left him to it. “You’re a perfectionist,” she said, as she refilled their eggnog glasses from the jug on the coffee table. “What does it matter if there are two red lights side by side? It’s not as if we’re going to have tour buses stopping to view our display.”
He smiled at her over his shoulder. “I take Christmas seriously, city girl. Tour buses! Don’t we deserve perfection, too, even if the world isn’t going to be driven to our door to ooh and aah?”
“If you say so,” she murmured, sitting back down on the sofa to watch and to string popcorn between bright red cranberries. “As long as you don’t expect me to help you achieve that flawlessness and symmetry.”
He chuckled. “As if any mere woman could.”
She returned his smile. “If you’re trying to challenge me to help you, you’re out of luck.”
“You’re lazy,” he said.
She nodded happily, then sipped her spicy drink and got back to work on the popcorn and berries. Presently she set a completed string down and closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of a family Christmas—the children squabbling, the “daddy” grumbling at a recalcitrant string of lights, carols playing in the background while a fire crackled on the hearth. It was wonderful and dreamlike and completely unreal, but nobody had yet made fantasies illegal. Her first major sale in four years was simply a bonus, and she could weave fantastic dreams about what that would mean, too.
She opened her eyes when Kirk sat down beside her. “There now, isn’t that a fine-looking tree?” he asked, nodding in smug approval.
“It’s a beautiful tree,” she said. “Or it will be, when we hang the rest of the ornaments.”
“It’s a beautiful tree now,” he said as he snatched her pillow. He smacked her on the head with it, then stuffed it behind his own head. “The prettiest I’ve seen, and that’s because it has a couple of kids sprawled under it.”
She pulled up one leg and wrapped her arms around it, then rested her cheek on her knee. “Were you a lonely child, Kirk?”
He thought for a moment while he drank half his eggnog. “I never realized it until I saw those two together, but I guess so.” He toyed with the pink ribbon holding back Liss’s hair. “I had plenty of friends, so I wasn’t what you might call a solitary kid, but I guess I was a bit lonely at times. Were you?”
She nodded, and the ribbon pulled free, spilling her hair onto her back and shoulders. Kirk filtered his fingers through it, taking pleasure in the texture of it, admiring the way her silky black hair looked against her pink angora sweater.
“There’s a special relationship between siblings,” she said, “that only children miss out on no matter how many good friends they have. Maybe that’s why I was so eager to have two close together.”
Kirk lifted a handful of her hair and let it trickle slowly out of his fingers. “What you said earlier, about what `families’ do together at Christmas. I liked that. I felt . . . included, whether you meant me to or not.”
“I’m glad you didn’t mind. I regretted saying it,” she admitted softly. “I thought maybe you’d think I was being presumptuous.”
“Never.” He wrapped a lock of her hair around his right forefinger and smoothed it with his thumb, concentrating on it; then he glanced at her. “Liss, speaking of families . . .”
“What?”
“I know I should have told you this sooner, but I was afraid you’d object and . . . well, my mom is coming for Christmas.”
She met his gaze with surprise. “Object? Why would I? This is your home. If anybody raises a fuss, it’ll be you-know-who.” She frowned and shook her head to dislodge his hand from her hair. “I only hope your mother can look after herself when it comes to dealing with the Grinch.”
“She can.” He handed her ribbon to her as she bunched her hair back again. “She’ll probably even knock a few corners off the old bat.”
“We can but hope,” Liss said doubtfully. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was time for the children to be in bed. Jumping to her feet, she herded them upstairs. When she returned half an hour later, Kirk met her with a bowl of mandarin oranges, a plate of butter tarts she’d made, and a fresh glass of eggnog for each of them.
“Come and curl up here,” he said, patting the couch at his side. “Let’s get cozy.”
“Nope.” She grabbed a butter tart off the plate and evaded his hand by dancing away to pick up a box of ornaments. “No time for that. We have to get the tree finished so we can have this house looking as if we mean to celebra
te Christmas, or Lord knows what your mother will think about your new partners. Come on, lazybones, get that ladder in operation.”
Kirk laughed as he unfolded the stepladder for her. He held it while she climbed it, then handed her a box of glass balls, each one a different color. Tenderness softened his smile. She was nervous, he thought. About what? The thought of his mother coming? He wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her and tell her it would be all right. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, though. She kept busy, hanging one ornament after another, then asking for another box. All right, he decided. If this was the way she needed to handle her anxieties, he’d help her.
“I know what my mother’s going to think of one of my partners,” he said, handing her the star.
“Yeah?” She reached high, trying to put it on the top of the tree. He placed a hand in the small of her back for support.
“Liss, my mom’s going to like you,” he said, then blinked at the emphasis he’d put on the pronoun. It was, he told himself, only because he remembered the wounded look in her eyes when she’d said the McCalls didn’t like her because of her “mixed blood.” It was important that she know his mother wasn’t like that, but she pretended she wasn’t concerned.
“That’s good,” she said lightly. She tilted her face toward the ceiling, listening to the boys still fooling around in their beds, or more likely, not in their beds. “I only hope your mother likes kids.
“Those two aren’t going to settle down now until after the big day.”
“She does,” he said, moving to the other side of the tree to begin decorating there. Through the branches he noted the way the twinkling lights reflected in Liss’s eyes and put roses in her cheeks. “And she’s going to think your kids are as special as I do.”
“You know,” she said, parting some twigs to smile down at him, “I’ve never been more touched than I was when you said you were proud of my boys.”
“I was. I am. They looked so great up on that stage, so . . . beautiful.” His throat choked up, and he wanted to tell her he wasn’t going to let her take them away, any more than he was going to let her leave, no matter how ‘much she earned with her photography. But he didn’t have the right to say any of that. They were partners, as she so frequently reminded him, friends at best. If he was going crazy from wanting more than that from her, he couldn’t ask for it unless he asked for the whole ball of wax.
Sighing, he finished his box of ornaments, then turned to get another, but he got distracted by the butter tarts. Standing there eating them one after another, he watched Liss’s slender body stretch and reach as her dainty hands hung the ornaments; watched her head tilt to one side as she considered one position for a ball, then moved it to another. Then, when she reached too far, she teetered, one arm flailing, and cried out his name. He dived for her, shouting, “Liss!” He caught her and dragged her off the ladder into his arms.
“Oh, sweetheart, you’re all right, you’re safe, I caught you,” he said, his legs shaking so hard he had to sit down and cradle her on his lap.
“Of course I’m all right,” she said, gazing up at him, then staring intently. “How about that? I’ve never noticed before that you have freckles.”
He looked at her uncomprehendingly. “Freckles?” Lord almighty, didn’t she realize how close a call she’d had? If he hadn’t caught her, she’d have fallen and hit her head on the corner of that heavy oak coffee table. The thought made his stomach lurch, and he held her even closer, wanting to protect her, keep her from harm, slay all her dragons, and . . . Good Lord! It hit him then, smacked him between the eyes, stunned him, made his head reel. “Liss,” he croaked. “Oh, my God, Liss . . .”
“You do,” Liss said. “Across your nose and cheeks.” She touched them with her fingers, realizing as she did why she’d never seen them before. He was pale, as white as milk, and his hand trembled violently as he brushed her hair back from her face. “Darling, what is it?” she asked.
“You’re not going to leave!” he exclaimed. “I can’t let you leave! You’re going to stay right here, Liss Tremayne, and marry me if it’s the last thing I ever make anybody do and— What did you call me?”
“Darling.” She looked guilty and shocked. “What did you say?”
“Marry me.” He looked stunned, disbelieving. For a long moment they stared at each other, both caught in a myriad of swirling, conflicting emotions that clamored within them. Abruptly, though, everything became perfectly clear for Kirk, as if all the questions had been asked and all the answers given. Of course! he thought. It was so simple. He wondered why he had spent so much time arguing with himself, why he had bothered with the doubts and the fears and the confusion, the inner fighting against Brose’s apparent intentions for him and Liss. Brose, in spite of his high-handed manipulations, had known what he was doing after all!
He threw back his head and laughed as exultation flooded through him. Then, standing, he spun Liss around and around until she was dizzy and giddy and clinging to him, gasping for breath. He flopped back down on the couch with her, still laughing.
“What’s the joke?” Liss asked, still wondering if she had really called him “darling” as if she had the right. And had he really said “Marry me”?
“No joke,” he said, planting little kisses all over her face. “Or if there is one, it’s on me.” He took long enough to kiss her mouth, then looked into her eyes. He seemed bemused, she thought, still half disbelieving of something that was a whole lot clearer to him that it was to her. “He won,” he said. “I can’t believe it. The old son-of-a— Son-of-a-gun, he won!”
“Who?” Liss planted her hands on Kirk’s shoulders and tried to shake some sense into him. It was like trying to shake a concrete pillar. “Who are you talking about?”
“Brose!” he said, lying flat and holding her securely atop him. “I fell into his trap, and now I know it’s exactly where I want to be. He was right all along. I needed you in my home, I need you in my life. I need you, period.” He tightened his arms around her. “Oh, sweetheart, please say you’ll marry me!”
Before she could say anything, though, he rolled over, tucking her under him and then kissing her as if he never meant to stop. She grazed his face with her fingertips, his wonderful, beloved face, and knew there were no words for her to tell him what she felt. All she could do was kiss him back. “I love you,” she whispered. “I’ve known it since the night of the concert when you said you were proud of my kids. Do you know how important that is to me?”
He let out a long, agonized breath. “Do you have any idea how important you have become to me in three weeks?”
“No idea at all,” she teased. “So . . .show me.”
“Liss . . .”
He held himself up on one elbow, curving his hand around her face. Her insides curled and twisted in a spasm of hungry response as his mouth touched hers, skimming her lips, making her burn with need. Her hips thrust involuntarily against him as he slipped his hand up under her sweater and cupped her breast. His harshly rasping breath thrilled her before she stole it with a series of tiny, tantalizing kisses that covered his cheeks and throat and ears.
“Kirk,” she said, meeting the stormy need in his gaze. “Oh, Kirk, please . . .”
He rejoiced at her willing, giving response, in the hard thrust of her nipple into his palm, the unharnessed hammering of her pulse as his lips found it in her throat.
“Please, please . . .”
Her soft whispers filled him with enormous power and immense pleasure. When he lifted his head and looked down at her, he saw her through a haze of desire, and saw that desire reflected back at him. In that moment, the power went out, plunging the room into darkness.
Liss didn’t care. His lips were hard, his tongue was hot and firm as it thrust inside her mouth. His arms encircled her fiercely, dragging her tight against him. The electricity that had left the wires seemed to whip through her, making her shudder and stiffen into a quivering bow of sensation. Gasping,
she clung to Kirk, making soft little cries that only inflamed him more.
He kissed her deeply again and again, his hand moving from one breast to the other, fingering her nipples, then skimming down over her waist to the top of her jeans and lower, over her zipper, his fingers curling in between her thighs.
“I want you,” he whispered. “I want you right now. I want you to be all mine.”
“Yes,” she murmured, unbuttoning his shirt and sliding her hands across his chest. She moved again, thrusting against his hand, aching with a need she feared would never be adequately filled and driven by something beyond her control to seek that fulfillment.
The lights flashed on again. Moaning, Kirk sat up and rolled away from her, then dropped to his knees on the floor. Crouching by her side, he stroked her hair, her face, his eyes dark and serious. “No, love,” he said. “Stop. We’re both forgetting something—someone. I won’t put you or your kids at risk. We’ll wait, Liss. Wait until we’re married. “
Slowly she sat up, her eyes big and shocked as her gaze clung to his face. “Married?” she echoed, as if she’d never heard the word before, as if it had no meaning for her.
“Of course, married,” he said impatiently. “Didn’t you hear me asking you?”
She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “I heard,” she said, then nothing else.
He waited for as long as he could, holding her face between his hands, looking into her eyes and wishing he could see into her soul. “I didn’t hear your answer, Liss.”
“I didn’t give you one.”
“Then hurry up and do it.” He dropped his hands to her shoulders. “Liss, don’t refuse me, love, please. Marry me.”
“I . . . Kirk, why?”
“Why?” His gaze sharpened, but she lowered her eyes and hid her emotions. “Because that’s what a man and a woman do when they’re in love.”
“Is it? How many times have you thought you loved someone? How many times have you considered marriage?”
City Girl Page 14