Baby, It's Cold Outside

by Cathy Yardley

  Should he be waiting naked? That seemed crass—and even though it was obvious they were going to have sex, for whatever reason he didn’t want her to think that was the only thing he wanted from her. He genuinely liked her as a person, though what he knew of her was limited to what he’d gleaned from a distance—they had lived separate lives growing up here. She’d always seemed unapproachable: the heiress apparent, the mayor’s niece, the golden girl of Tall Pines. He couldn’t understand her fascination with the small town. Or how she could manage to please so many people by doing everything so damned perfectly.

  But he was starting to discover just how pleasing that perfection could be, Colin thought with a grin. Because last night and this morning—and this evening in the boiler room—she’d been, indeed, perfect. The thing that delighted him was that it had been so unexpected. He’d been reluctantly attracted to her for years, but now that he’d had her, the constant surprise of her, the hidden depths, kept intriguing him.

  When she walked in, he was still grinning. “Hi, dear,” he joked. “How was the rest of the—humph.”

  His sentence was cut off as Emily launched herself into his arms, pressing her heated, mobile mouth to his. Her tongue quickly darted out, tracing his lips before coaxing his own into some serious sensual fencing. His cock went from semihard to rock hard in a nanosecond. He pulled back, staring at her in amazement.

  Her violet-blue eyes were like crushed wet velvet, deep and dark. She smiled at him. “I’m glad to be home,” she said around a sigh.

  “I’m glad you’re home myself,” he said, forgetting for a second that this wasn’t actually his home.

  Her responding look of happiness was like staring into the sun, and for a second he was blinded by her radiance. Then, without hesitation, she took off her glasses and started to strip, letting clothes drop to the floor.

  “Whoa,” he said, halting her as she had her blouse unbuttoned and was hastily moving to her jeans. “No rush here.”

  “I know,” she murmured, “but the boiler room…well, let’s just say it got my appetite going.”

  He knew how she felt. It had been quick and furtive and intense…and it made him want to do it again, only more slowly and thoroughly. Still, he hadn’t thought that she’d simply walk in and they’d pick up where they left off. Not that he ought to be protesting. Maybe he was too tired. Hell, maybe he was getting too old.

  Maybe you want to try talking to her. Figure out why she’s different.

  Colin ignored his conscience’s low, insistent promptings. “Maybe I need a little breather.” He then cursed himself mentally when her face fell. “Not from you. I’m working on about an hour’s sleep and I want to make sure that I do a good job.”

  Her face eased into a comfortable smile. “Trust me, you’re doing absolutely fine.”

  His muscles bunched eagerly, and he forced himself to sit and calm down. He patted the sofa cushion next to him. “Come on. Why don’t we talk for a bit? Ease into it.”

  Emily looked surprised but sat as he requested. She did leave her blouse open, though, revealing the delicate white lace bra he’d snacked on a mere hour ago. Her cleavage hung temptingly just a touch below eye level. She leaned against his shoulder, presenting her breasts like a display as her eyes gleamed innocently. “What did you want to talk about?”

  Now? His mind went blank. “Uh…what have you been doing since I’ve been out of town?” he asked finally. “I mean, besides the hotel.”

  “I went to college,” she murmured, moving sinuously so her body pressed against his. She placed a slow, delicate kiss in the hollow of his collarbone. “Got my degree in English Lit.”

  That schoolgirl thing again. He could picture her in the library, her hair pulled back, glasses low on her nose as she pored over a book…legs crossed in a short plaid skirt. His cock throbbed at the mere thought of it.

  Easy, he chastised himself. “Couldn’t wait to get back to Tall Pines, huh?” he asked, closing his eyes and reveling in the feel of her hand creeping under his sweater, her mouth brushing a lazy line of kisses along his jaw. He couldn’t help it. His arm went around her shoulders, holding him to her, his hand smoothing down the tangled silk of her hair.

  She paused in her sensual exploration, and he leaned down, nuzzling her neck in return. “Actually, I really liked college,” she said slowly. “I even thought about going to grad school in England.”

  That stopped him. “Really?” The Tall Pines poster girl going off to Europe? “Why didn’t you?”

  Her eyes grew clouded. “My father got sick. Mom needed help. I knew where my responsibility was.”

  She sounded so sad. He cursed himself for bringing up the subject out of sheer ignorance. Still, it brought up another issue, and as long as the mood was already serious…“Then your father died,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “So was I,” she said, and with that Emily pulled away, closing her blouse with one hand, obviously not realizing what she was doing. Now he really felt like a heel. “Before he died, he reminded me that I was the last Stanfield in the line. I was with him in the hospital when he passed. My mother remarried two months later to a man named Ray, a longtime family friend. They moved to Florida. I’m sure your mother probably told you all about that.”

  His eyes rounded and he shook his head.

  “It was a big scandal at the time,” she explained, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them to her. “She wanted to sell the house and get the hell out of Tall Pines. Dad loved Tall Pines, and it meant so much to him for the mansion to stay in the family…. Anyway, I kept the house, made it a hotel and, well, here we are.”

  She shrugged, the sentence succinct and deliberately casual—and obviously covering a world of pain. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Suddenly I don’t feel like talking.” She put her head against his shoulder.

  They sat that way, silent, for a moment. For all their sexual interplay, he’d never felt anything as disturbingly intimate as this moment, with a woman in his arms, quietly embracing him in front of a cheerful crackling fire on a snowy night. It was as if they were the only two people in the world.

  Colin didn’t know what it was about this woman—and suddenly he didn’t care. All he knew was she was special and he was going to stop analyzing and start enjoying.

  He tilted her head back, kissing her sweetly. “We were far too rushed there in the town hall,” he pointed out.

  She giggled, then looked at him solemnly. “Definitely.”

  “I don’t think I can go five times again tonight,” he said, “but I think I can make one time really, really memorable.”

  She pursed her lips, teasing. “I suppose the least I could do is let you try.”

  He tugged her blouse the rest of the way off, then opened the front clasp of her bra, freeing her lovely breasts. Despite the warmth of the fire, her nipples were puckered and pointed. Topless, she undid the button of his fly, unzipping it and moving her nimble fingers through the gap in his boxers, releasing his cock. Her fingers circled him, and he groaned, pressing forward lightly as a drop of moisture escaped the tip in anticipation.

  She leaned down, licking around the head in a tantalizing gesture, then stroked the shaft with steady, gliding pressure. His hips arched again against her palm. “Damn, woman,” he breathed. “What are you doing to me?”

  “If you don’t know, maybe I’m not doing it right.”

  “Oh, you’re doing it fine,” he said. “Let’s see if I can’t catch you up.”

  He eased off the rest of her clothes, leaving them on a heap on the floor, then rested her against the smooth suedelike fabric of her sofa. “We’ve already done the floor,” he explained, and she laughed. Colin stripped off his clothes and stood naked in front of her, as she parted her legs and waited expectantly.

  He shook his head. “Not so fast, remember?” He positioned himself between her thighs but didn’t move to enter her. Instead he teased her breasts with his
tongue, tracing a wet, winding path around her rib cage and belly button, stroking her nipples with his fingertips. He felt Emily’s fingers wind through his hair, heard the way her breathing grew short and choppy. He moved lower, heading for her moist heat, and she tightened her thighs against him.

  Slowly he used his fingertips to gently coax her legs apart. She was already wet and ready for him, but her eyes looked nervous. Obviously this wasn’t something she’d done very often, and he felt anger on her behalf. She deserved to be lavished over.

  He was going to rectify that situation.

  He dipped his tongue in, licking at her clit, gently at first, then with growing insistence. Her breathing went ragged and hoarse, her hands bunching into fists against the sofa. She moved against him in jerky, reflexive motions, as if the sheer sensation of what he was doing was more than she could control. Keeping his tongue in motion, he deliberately pressed one finger inside her, then another, searching for the corresponding spot inside.

  He knew when he found it. She cried out, a sound of joyous surprise, and she lifted her body to meet his seeking mouth.

  He kept up the pace, feeling her pressing against him, tasting the honeyed wash of her response. She was panting, short gasps of sexual exertion. She smoothed her hands over her breasts, exciting him as he watched her obvious enjoyment of her own flesh as well as his tender ministrations.

  “Colin,” she breathed. “Colin!”

  He felt her body clench against his fingers, and he almost came on the spot.

  When the shudders finished, he clumsily put on a condom, intent on entering her, but before he could, she pressed against his shoulders, surprising him enough to push him on his back. Slick and smooth from her release, she impaled herself on him, and he felt the taut snugness of her envelop him, creating an almost unbearable friction.

  Then she started to move, rocking against him with the slightest twist to her hips. Caressing him and carrying him to a frenzy of sensation.

  He lost control, plunging into her as she rode him with abandon. He clutched at her hips, drawing her to him, and she pushed back with answering intensity. Before he knew it, the climax roared through him like a wildfire. He sat up, holding her to him even as he buried himself in her welcoming warmth, and she wrapped her legs and arms around him in response.

  In the aftermath, they were both breathing hard, clinging to each other like the survivors of a storm…and it was a sort of storm, he realized.

  “You do the strangest things to me,” he said when he could at last find his voice.

  “This is a week I’ll certainly never forget.” She laughed unsteadily.

  And that’s when it hit him.

  He’d stopped thinking of it as simply a few nights. He was thinking forever. Colin didn’t know why or how, but there it was.

  I’m supposed to go to Paris, he thought. I’ve got a career I love, a building project that’s starting, people counting on me. I’ve got a life that suits me perfectly.

  The last thing he needed was a relationship with a woman who had dedicated her life to a town that he’d spent years trying to escape. Especially when he had no idea how his life and her life could possibly fit together…

  THE OTTER LODGE annual gift exchange was a running joke and one of Emily’s favorite town traditions—and considering the buffet of traditions the town of Tall Pines had to choose from, that was saying something. It had all started about twenty years ago—which was recent for a tradition, by Tall Pines standards—when the men of the Otter Lodge had complained to each other about several of the gifts they’d received for Christmas. Seeing that “one man’s trash was another man’s treasure,” they’d devised a “gift exchange” where people could swap, steal, and otherwise have a great deal of fun with small gift items. It was a way of prolonging the holiday and also of celebrating Christmas with friends rather than the small family gatherings that typically prevailed. It was also usually rowdy, liberally doused with the infamous and heavily alcohol-laced Otter punch and, all in all, a rousing good time.

  Emily’s father hadn’t approved of the gift exchange initially, thinking it lacked decorum. It was the one tradition above all others that her mother had refused to attend—even though she’d made a point of bowing to Emily’s father’s wishes and was a central figure of all the other town functions. But from the first time she was allowed to go, at sixteen years old, Emily had reveled wide-eyed in the spectacle.She was wearing a pair of black jeans, a burgundy turtleneck sweater and a large paper top hat festooned with a flower.

  “What are you exchanging?” the head of the Otter Lodge, John Lambert, asked with a wink.

  Emily held up her gift, grinning broadly. Actually, it hadn’t been a gift—at this point, people tended to buy the most outrageous “gifts” and concoct stories about them, and that, too, was part of the tradition.

  “What have we here?” Phil crowed into the microphone, causing people to pause momentarily in their carousing. “An adult-size set of full-body pajamas with feet!”

  There was a resounding drunken cheer at this. He opened the package, holding it up. Much like an infant’s “footie” pajamas, it buttoned up from the crotch to the neck and had slip-resistant rubber soles on the feet. It was baby-blue and looked as if it could fit a six-foot man easily.

  “It’s even got a back door, folks!” Phil pointed out, unbuttoning the flap that covered the backside. This brought an even louder round of applause. “Now who’s going to want this beauty?”

  Emily grinned as several venerable members of the Otter Lodge quickly went to work bargaining for the pajamas, offering her their awful gifts: a battery-powered egg sheller, chocolate-covered ants and, finally, edible boxers.

  “I’ll go with the boxers,” she said, tucking her exchanged gift under her arm as the seventy-year-old man promptly started to try the pajamas on over his regular clothes, to much hilarity. People started catcalling about her choice, and she made comments back. “Hey! You never know. I might need them!”

  “Woo-hoo! Better watch it, Tim!” Phil said. “That Emily Stanfield’s a live one!”

  Emily blushed, as usual, but more because he’d mentioned Tim than because of the gift. This was why her parents had hated the gift exchange. It was classless, tasteless and often a bit risqué.

  In short, it was everything a Stanfield wasn’t supposed to be.

  I wonder if that’s why I like it so much?

  Emily frowned. Strange, she’d never really thought about it in that light before.

  She blamed this latest epiphany on Colin. She felt as though she’d been living on autopilot for the past few years, going through the motions of being a Tall Pines Stanfield without ever really looking at why she was doing what she was doing. She was discomfited now to discover that, even after studying it carefully, she still didn’t know why she was doing some of the things she was doing. Other than Stanfield duty, of course.

  Ordinarily that was enough.

  You’re just feeling restless.

  She smiled. She blamed that sensation on Colin, as well. And thanked him for it.

  Her ex-fiancé, Rick, a man of exceptional breeding if not much imagination, had been a nice enough guy but, comparatively speaking, a lousy lover. And her high school boyfriend, Billy Rothchild, had been a virgin, just as she had. What they’d lacked in finesse they’d made up for in sheer enthusiasm…and now that she knew the difference, Emily realized enthusiasm didn’t count for a whole lot.

  She wasn’t in high school anymore. While she liked sex a great deal, she’d managed to go without for two whole years.

  I’m glad I waited. It made her experience with Colin that much sweeter.

  Of course, he might be leaving any day. The roads were cleared, the blizzard was over. He could be gone by tonight.

  Don’t think about it. She focused instead on the edible underwear, made out of what looked like pressed dried fruit leather. She would have a great time trying it out on Colin when she got home.

>   “Emily!”

  She looked up to see Mayor Tim flagging her down, with the Reeses in tow. “Hi, Tim,” she replied, then hugged Ava and Harry Reese, feeling guilty.

  Hi, I’ve been sleeping with your son.

  “Thank you so much for taking care of our son,” Ava said without preamble.

  Emily blinked. “Sorry?”

  “In your hotel,” Ava clarified, and Emily felt her heart start beating again. For a brief second she’d thought that Ava had found out about exactly where Colin was staying in the hotel—specifically their sleeping arrangements. “Especially when you had to put up so many other people. I hate to admit it, but the hotel really has been a success.”

  Emily laughed. Ava went red-faced.

  “That sounded awful, didn’t it?” she fussed. “I didn’t mean that I wanted you to fail. I just…I mean…”

  “It’s hard to see things change, I know,” Emily said gently. Despite Ava’s relentless tenacity, she really was a sweet woman.

  “You live in a town like this because it doesn’t change. Not really,” Ava said, holding her husband’s hand and giving it a squeeze. He kissed her temple. For a second Emily was struck by their tenderness toward each other. They seemed like polar opposites—she was talkative and outgoing, he was retiring and wry—but somehow they made a perfect match. “We love it here. We always thought we’d settle down, raise our kids here, watch our grandkids grow around us.”

  It did sound nice, Emily thought.

  “If only Colin saw things the same way,” Ava finished with a frustrated gesture. “He didn’t stay with that blond woman, did he? That friend of yours?”

  “No,” Emily reassured her. “I know for a fact that he didn’t.”

  “Has she gone home?”

  “No, she’s here through the New Year at least,” Emily said. Joy had extended her reservation, she was having such a good time.

  “Did Colin tell you he’s moving to Paris?”

  “It did come up,” Emily demurred.