12 Gifts for Christmas

by Various

  Her eyelids lowered as his lips closed over her bare breast and sparks of pleasure shot through her. After giving the same attention to her other breast, he moved down farther, his lips trailing over her bare midriff and then lower, divesting her of clothes as he went.

  He nuzzled the curls at the apex of her thighs, then kissed her intimately.

  Liquid fire poured through her, and she opened her eyes and watched him.

  A feeling of unreality settled over her. This was Ryder.

  Her former high school classmate. Her former neighbor’s son. Mrs. McPhee’s boy.

  Her knees weakened and bent.

  He stood quickly then and picked her up, sliding one arm below her knees. Striding to the bed, he laid her out on it and came down beside her.

  He smiled into her eyes—a wicked, intimate smile—as he stroked her bent leg, which was still encased in a thigh-high black stocking. “I used to wonder what was beneath the layers you wore.”

  “Now you know,” she said, and couldn’t prevent a tinge of uncertainty from coloring her voice. She tried to keep in shape with exercise, but she knew her willowy frame had more to do with good genes than with any real effort on her part.

  His gaze traveled over her before he gave her a wolfish look. “Yeah. Now I do.”

  “You like?”

  “Yeah, I like,” he drawled.

  The look he gave her then was so hot, it obliterated the last of her uncertainty. She raked a hand through his hair and pulled him down for a full-bodied kiss.

  When she finally pulled away, she whispered against his lips, “You’re still wearing too many clothes.”

  “Easily corrected.”

  She raised herself up on her elbows and watched as he stood up. He reached over to a shaving kit on the bedside table and pulled out a small foil packet that he placed beside the bed. Then, his gaze locked on hers, he unbuckled his belt and began to undress.

  When he was naked, she said throatily, “I like.”

  He flashed her a smile. “I aim to please.”

  “Now that remains to be seen.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?” His hand closed over her ankle and he pulled her toward the foot of the bed. “Let’s see how much you like this… .”

  She squealed as he came down beside her again, nuzzling her neck with his mouth, his hands moving over her.

  He stroked her everywhere, arousing her and bringing her to a fever pitch. In return, she caressed the lean muscles of his chest and back, then moved lower, stroking his sculpted thighs and the evidence of his arousal.

  Eventually, he gave a helpless half laugh and moved himself away from her. “I want this to last,” he said, his voice not quite steady.

  Chloe watched as he sat up and donned protection, then turned back to her. Gathering her close, he said, “Now where were we?”

  She nibbled at his lips. “Mmm … somewhere between wonderful and fantastic?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I remember, too.”

  He cupped her face and kissed her deeply, and she gave herself up to the gathering passion between them.

  When he positioned her, settling himself in the cradle of her thighs and arranging her silkily clad legs around him, she welcomed him into her embrace. It seemed the most natural thing in the world when he finally entered her.

  “Oh, Ryder,” she gasped, her hands fisting into the bedcover below her.

  “So good,” he said, his eyes closed, his expression rapt. “So tight, so hot, so sweet …”

  She followed his rhythm, knowing intuitively how to match him and fuel the gathering storm. Eventually, he moved to her side and pumped into her, their bodies facing each other.

  The tightness within her grew more and more taut … until all at once it snapped, and she went spiraling free. He swallowed her gasp as he took her up, following her so they went over the precipice together.

  Afterward, he loosened his hold, and she lay relaxed and replete. He smoothed the hair away from her forehead, and she turned her face into the palm of his hand.

  Their eyes caught and held.

  “What just happened?” she asked.

  He gave her his lopsided smile, and she grasped at that piece of the familiar because it gave her comfort in a world that was suddenly topsy-turvy. She’d had sex with Ryder!

  “What happened?” he repeated musingly. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and then joked, “If you have to ask, I must be losing my touch.”

  No, you’re not, she almost said.

  She searched his gaze and found it unfathomable. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that if I’d known we’d be this good together, I’d have had an even bigger crush on you in high school.”

  “You had a crush on me? You were obnoxious!”

  “Yeah to both,” he confirmed solemnly. His head was propped up by the hand of one bent arm, and he was using his other hand to trace circles on her bare upper breast. “Until tonight, though, I thought I was cured of at least one of those two afflictions.”

  “Which one?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RYDER arched an eyebrow. He had to play this right. Now that reality had intruded, she looked as if she was contemplating bolting from his hotel room. But it was important she know tonight was the culmination of a long history—at least for him. “Which one do you think?”

  She looked coy for a moment. “I don’t know. You were rather obnoxious tonight… .”

  He pretended to wince. “You still don’t pull any punches, do you? So, the crush, it is.” He kept his hand moving on her bare flesh, soothing her even as he strove to keep his voice light. “I had a whopper of a crush on you in high school.”

  “You had a funny way of showing it.”

  “What? You didn’t like my obnoxious-gets-the-girl technique? Should I have pulled your pigtails?”

  “In the first place, I didn’t have pigtails. In the second, pardon me for not thinking more of your technique, but since it didn’t get you the girl—”

  She stopped in midsentence as he surveyed her naked body.

  His eyes came back to hers. “Didn’t get me the girl, huh? Are you sure about that? Seems to me I’ve had you in the best way possible.”

  She flushed.

  “The question is,” he said slowly, “where do we go from here?”

  She stiffened under his hand. “Does it have to go anywhere, Ryder? Don’t worry that I expect anything from you, or that you have some sort of obligation just because our families sort of know each other.”

  He never imagined he’d be the one offended at being dismissed as a one-night stand after glorious sex. Judging from Chloe’s matter-of-fact reaction, though, he wasn’t the first guy she’d attempted to dispatch this way. It looked as if Fab Dav’s man-killer skills had only grown since high school.

  She seemed guarded with him, and he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised if she was. After all, most of her memories of him were from high school … when he’d teased her mercilessly and in general been an all-around jerk toward her. During one memorable Saturday night party, they’d both landed in the pool after she’d tried to shove past him and he’d grabbed her as he was thrown off balance. She’d been angry and upset, not least because she’d been trying to make an impression on a buddy of his that she had a not-so-secret crush on—a guy that Ryder had therefore wanted to take apart.

  But he was only at the beginning of his campaign to get her to see him in a new light. Tonight had been spectacular, better even than he’d imagined—and he’d imagined for a long time.

  When Chloe returned to work, she was still trying to grasp what had happened on New Year’s Eve.

  Making copies in the photocopy room, she thought again, I slept with Ryder. She still couldn’t believe it. Had she become so desperate she’d just fall into bed with an old high school classmate?

  The answer apparently was yes.

  And yet, Ryder—the present-day Ryder—was nothing like what
she remembered. He had the power to turn her insides to mush with just a look, to leave her weak-kneed with a touch and to slay her with a kiss.

  That’s what scared her. That more than anything was what had sent her scurrying for cover after she’d floated back down to ground after hot-and-heavy sex in his hotel room. Sure she’d been bemoaning her lack of a date. But she hadn’t expected Ryder. Hadn’t expected someone who left her feeling fragile and shaky.

  Sleeping with Ryder was further proof that her navigational compass was off when it came to men. Way off.

  She’d been looking around for a prospective date, but she couldn’t bring Ryder to her parents’ postholiday party. What if things didn’t work out between them? News would get back to his mother. To her mother. There’d be complications. Ryder was someone her family already knew and about whom they’d make a whole host of assumptions, particularly about the long-term prospects of his relationship with her.

  If she was honest with herself, she’d also admit Ryder unsettled her for other reasons, too. These days the cloak of sophistication and worldliness clung to him like a second skin. He was obviously doing well. She only had to look at the car he drove to determine that.

  She, on the other hand, was basically a secretary who’d been inching her way up the corporate ladder since college. If the corporate world were an old luxury liner, she’d be steerage and he’d be first class. He had no reason to be interested in her for other than casual sex and maybe to satisfy some lingering curiosity about a girl he remembered from high school.

  Consequently, she’d decided to inform him on Saturday night that she didn’t expect great sex to lead to anything more. After all, he’d admitted he’d gotten over his crush on her a long time ago, and then he’d gone on to adopt a teasing attitude when they’d been lying in bed together. When he’d asked her about where they’d “go from here,” she’d seen all the signs of a man waiting to be let off the hook.

  Let him think she was blasé and sophisticated. Better that than knowing she’d never had a one-night stand in her life—

  that is, until he’d come along again. Which all went to show just how much Ryder had disconcerted her.

  Sighing, she picked up her photocopies and headed back to her desk, bumping into one of the Elliott twins on the way.

  “Oops! Careful!”

  “Sorry, Summer. I didn’t see you.”

  “That much was obvious,” Summer said easily. “You seemed lost in space.”

  “You could say that,” she hedged. Then she added, “Here to see Scarlet?”

  The twenty-five-year-old Elliott twins both worked at EPH, Summer as a copy editor for The Buzz and Scarlet as an assistant fashion editor at Charisma. When Chloe had started working at EPH, she’d had some trouble telling the twins apart, but she’d eventually learned to distinguish them by their different styles. Scarlet was the flamboyant one who often dressed in bright colors, while Summer was positively retro, sometimes wearing 1950s-style sweater sets and pearls.

  “I’m meeting Scarlet for lunch,” Summer said. “Want to join us?”

  Chloe shook her head. “Sorry, too much to do. I’ll probably just eat at my desk.”

  “It’s started already with Aunt Finny, huh?”

  “Don’t ask,” Chloe advised lightly.

  Usually, she enjoyed socializing with the Elliott twins, but today work served as a convenient excuse. If she had lunch with Summer and Scarlet, she’d be tempted to spill the beans about Ryder, and the last thing she wanted to do was expose how much she’d thrown her nonexistent social life into upheaval in the past few days. She had no doubt Summer would be sympathetic, but in contrast to her own present state, everything in Summer’s life was neat and tidy. Summer had a steady relationship with her advertising executive boyfriend, and Chloe wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them became engaged soon.

  “Okay, your call,” Summer said, “but you’re showing all the signs of someone who’s come back to work on Monday morning shell-shocked by the events of the weekend. I promise I’d make a good listener if you need one.”

  “Thanks.”

  After they’d parted, Chloe sighed inwardly. Summer wasn’t dense, nor were any of the other Elliotts, for that matter. She wondered how many of them had seen her leave the Elliott mansion with Ryder and drawn their own conclusions.

  As Chloe approached her desk, she heard the phone ringing. She reached for the receiver and said automatically, “Charisma. This is Chloe Davenport.”

  “Hello, Chloe.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHLOE’S stomach did a flip-flop at the sound of the rich male voice at the other end of the phone. “Ryder, hi.” She sat down. “How are you?”

  “Good, but I’d be better if I saw you.”

  Well, that was direct, she thought. It appeared she wasn’t the only one who could be forthright. Out loud, she tried for lighthearted flirtation. “Well, that’s what I like. A man who knows what he wants.”

  His laugh sounded from the receiver. “Honey, if I really told you what I wanted, we’d be breaking the decency code for a corporate phone line.”

  A thrill ran through her. He was calling her—pursuing her. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”

  “I’m thinking,” he said, his voice dipping, “that we shouldn’t have waited more than ten years to sleep together.”

  His words sent a shiver through her … and that was just the beginning.

  The flowers arrived later that day. A large arrangement of pink-and-red roses. Chloe found herself having to peek around them to address people who approached her desk at work.

  And there were plenty who did stop by. The curious, the inquisitive and the frankly nosy. The steady procession of people finally led Jessie Clayton, one of Charisma’s young interns, to tease, “Wow, Chloe, you really have people talking today.”

  Chloe playfully rolled her eyes at the pretty auburn-haired intern. “Believe me, I’d prefer not to be the number-one topic of conversation.”

  Jessie nodded understandingly, and Chloe thought that if anyone could sympathize with her situation at the moment, it was Charisma’s intern. Jessie’s sweet country-girl attitude made it impossible not to like her, but Chloe had immediately been struck by the fact that the intern seemed to like her privacy—which put her in the minority at the fashion magazine.

  At Charisma—where people breathed a rarified air of high fashion married to sophisticated society—guessing how someone had spent the weekend was an office pastime. The magazine staff was littered with fashionistas whose social lives were so hectic, they were like second full-time jobs.

  Chloe supposed she’d be considered a fashionista, too, but then she made a conscious effort to fit in. She loved to shop, and she tried never to repeat an outfit at work. It also helped that Charisma was inundated with free samples from designers hoping to get a glowing mention in the magazine about their clothes and newest products. It helped even more that Chloe was the editor-in-chief’s executive assistant, and Fin got more free stuff than any woman could expect to use in a lifetime.

  The next two weeks passed quickly. After Ryder’s phone call and flowers, Chloe found herself caving in to the urge to see him again … aided by Ryder’s persistent pursuit of her.

  She and Ryder had dinner, attended a Broadway show, went ice skating in Central Park and caught an invitation-only showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  Ryder made no pretense of being cool and detached. He wanted her and he was pursuing her. Chloe found it a refreshing change from many of the men she came into contact with. There was no elaborate ritual to follow, no waiting by the phone until Wednesday for a Saturday night date, no guessing whether he’d call at all.

  Instead, Ryder made her feel feminine, pursued and desired. If she had lingering concerns about where their involvement was heading, Ryder’s constant attention drowned them out.

  Inevitably, their evenings would end at her apartment or Ryder’s, which, Chloe soo
n discovered, was a huge and airy penthouse loft in the trendy TriBeCa section of Manhattan.

  If she’d had any doubts about how successful Ryder had become since high school, they were erased the first time she stepped into his apartment.

  Yet, when she questioned him about his career, he would only say, “I got involved with an internet company, like a lot of people did in the late nineties, except mine didn’t go bust along with the dot-com boom and I was able to do well as one of the higher-ups.”

  As they walked along West Broadway near his apartment one wintry evening, she reflected on his words … until he suggested they take a ski trip together during the upcoming weekend.

  “Actually,” she confessed, “I’m expected at a family gathering on Saturday.”

  He arched a brow. “What sort of family gathering?”

  “The annual Davenport family postholiday bash at my parents’ house,” she said quickly, making sure her tone didn’t attach any special importance to the event. Then because she knew her mother and Ryder’s kept in occasional contact, mostly through chance encounters while out and about, and she remembered seeing Mrs. McPhee at her parents’ party a couple of times over the years, she added, “Your parents might have received an invitation.”

  “My parents have gone to Florida to visit friends and relatives, so they won’t be making it.”

  Chloe felt a wave of relief. At least she wouldn’t have to face Ryder’s parents and determine whether or not they were aware of her recent involvement with their son … or decide whether or not she should mention it herself. She couldn’t very well blurt, I’ve started sleeping with Ryder. Even for her, that would be a little too candid.

  Ryder looked at her squarely. “Invite me.”

  He didn’t mince words, and she found herself agreeing with a simple “Okay.”

  As they continued walking toward his apartment, she convinced herself that bringing him home to the Davenport gathering wasn’t such a big deal. Yes, there’d be questions, as Ryder was a known quantity to her family and someone from her past, but he was also exactly what she’d been looking for in a date: successful and handsome, and someone she was wildly attracted to.