by Tinnean
Wills should be home beside me in about ten hours. I hoped he’d get not only a commendation for this, but a huge bonus.
I pulled his pillow into my arms. I’d sleep off my hangover, replace the bottle of Canadian Club, and then make a batch of cherry almond fudge—strictly as an early Christmas present for the ladies downstairs. In no way was it a bribe to keep quiet about what a fool I’d been last night.
I closed my eyes and waited for the Tylenol to start working. Shortly after the throbbing in my head eased off, I fell asleep.
And this time, if I had any dreams, I didn’t remember them.
TEN HOURS after I’d last spoken to him, Wills called to let me know his plane had landed.
“Wills… such a long flight!”
“Tell me about it.” He paused to rattle off an address, so I assumed he was in a cab. “The runway had to be deiced, then the jet’s wings. One of the passengers had a panic attack and bolted off the jet. Someone thought they heard him say ‘bomb,’ so everyone had to get off while bomb dogs sniffed the jet.”
My gut clenched. “Was there a bomb?”
“Nah. You know how cautious everyone has gotten since last year. Then we boarded again and had to wait while they got his luggage off. And by that time, the wings needed to be deiced again.”
“That sucks. I’m… I’m glad you’re back.”
“So am I.” He yawned. “Sorry. I’ve gotta get to work. I’ll see you later, babe.”
It was almost midnight when he came dragging through the door. The living room wasn’t lit, but it wasn’t in total darkness. The lights on the Christmas tree were blinking blue and red and green and white.
“I’m sorry, babe.” Wills yawned so widely I could almost feel the ache in my own jaw. “I really wanted to help you decorate the tree. Something burning? You didn’t have to call the fire department, did you? Remember the mess they made of Mr. Vincent’s apartment?”
“Uh….” Shit. I’d grown so accustomed to the lingering odor of the wood I’d burned in the fireplace the other night that I’d forgotten all about airing out the apartment.
Now, with Wills home early—relatively speaking—I had to scramble for an explanation that made sense.
“That’s just a new candle I was trying out. Not sure if I like it or not. What do you think?” I intended to block his view of the room, but then I realized it wasn’t necessary. His eyes were bleary with fatigue, and even without him having said anything about it, I could tell that job had been one of those that must have been especially rough.
“I like it.”
“I’ll keep it, then. Did you eat anything?”
“Ms. DiNois brought up a sandwich from the cafeteria… I’m pretty sure I ate it.” He shrugged. “I must have. I don’t feel hungry.”
“Why don’t you take a shower and hit the sack? You can take a shower without drowning yourself, can’t you?”
He swayed on his feet. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Theo.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I touched his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “Windburn?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Windburn.”
I brushed his hair off his forehead, to see it was burned too. Well, Minnesota. The wind coming off whatever Great Lake bordered Minnesota. “Go on, babe. I’ll turn off the lights.”
It didn’t take me long. I pulled the plug on the tree and toyed with the idea of opening a window to air out the rest of the smell, but I figured Wills would buy the candle story sooner than any reason I could come up with for an open window in December.
It had been a long ten days, and I’d missed having him in bed. The phone sex had been great, had been fun, but it wasn’t the same, and I was just glad he was home.
I went into the bedroom and stripped off my clothes. All I could hear from the bathroom was the sound of the shower running. Usually Wills sang in the shower.
I opened the door, turned off the water, and joined him in the shower. He was leaning against the tiles, his head bowed and his eyes closed. He was nearly asleep.
“You really are tired, aren’t you, babe?” I petted his arms, his chest, his hips.
“Oh, God!” he groaned. “I’ve been dreaming of this for the past ten days, and now you’re finally touching me, and my dick lays there like a lump. I’m dead. I must be dead. Why haven’t I been buried?” He managed to open his eyes enough to give me a halfhearted glare when I laughed at him.
“Come on, baby. I’ll dry you off and put you to bed.” The important thing was that he had returned.
He didn’t protest, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out cold, his breathing deep and even.
I wondered which had exhausted him more—the job or the flight home. I felt bad that he had to make those connections, but I was so glad to have him back in our bed.
He’d left his suit lying on the floor, and I picked it up. I’d just make sure the pockets were empty.
I’d learned Wills worked for Huntingdon, an international corporation with branches and subsidiaries throughout the world. He’d come home a couple of times with the colorful paper money of Mexico or Canada, and he’d told me, the time I’d found Loonies and Toonies in his pockets, that he’d been called to Canada—someone had opened a questionable e-mail and downloaded the attachment, a particularly annoying worm that had crashed the system, and he’d been required to clean up the mess. Another time something had come up in Mexico, and he’d had pesos in his pockets when he’d come home. I’d folded the bills and put them in a box where I kept the other currency I’d found in his pockets at various times.
Tonight there was only a handkerchief and his wallet.
I set the suit aside to go to the cleaners in the morning and got in bed beside him.
“Love you, Theo,” he mumbled as I arranged myself along his back.
I kissed the corner of his jaw. “Me too, babe.”
Chapter 7
’TWAS THE week before Christmas…. Okay, not funny, I told myself, but I was a nervous wreck, trying to think of ways to keep my lover out of the living room. I’d positioned the tree to block most of the view from the doorway, but if he walked even three steps into the room….
I called Vincent again.
“What is it this time, Theo?” He sounded cheerful, though. There had been a couple of weeks during the late fall when the few times I’d run into him, he’d been terse, and if he hadn’t been Mark Vincent, I would have said almost stressed. “A friend’s mother was in a car accident, but she’s doing better now,” he’d told me when I asked him about it. I’d been surprised he’d answered me at all, so when his expression told me he’d prefer to have the matter dropped, I’d dropped it.
“Any way you can have Wills working some extra hours on the weekend?” I was able to keep him distracted enough during the week, when he came home fairly late, but the weekend… forty-eight hours, and as much as I’d like, we couldn’t spend all of them in bed.
“Y’know, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were looking for reasons to keep him out of the house so you could cheat on him.”
“Vince! I’d never…. Oh, Jesus, do you think Wills might think the same thing?”
“No. I was kidding, Theo. Don’t have a cow, for crissake. As it turns out, Matheson is on the schedule to work this weekend anyway.”
That was a relief. “Cool. Listen, Vince. Since I’ve got you on the phone… I hate having to go to Wills’s boss.” I grinned to myself. Good thing his boss was my friend. “Can he have off Christmas and New Year’s Day? January first is….”
“Your birthday. Yeah, I’m aware. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks. By the way, how was your Thanksgiving?” I’d invited him over, since by that time he’d moved into his condo in Aspen Reach, but he’d declined because he was having company, kind of a housewarming/holiday celebration.
“Good. It was… good.”
And I could tell from the tone of his voice that surprised him.
“I’m glad t
o hear that. If you want to come over for Christmas—”
“No, that’s okay. I’ve got plans.”
Again? I was so pleased he was getting a social life! “Okay. But if they fall through….”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Is there anything else? Because some of us do have to work, y’know.”
“Right. Thanks again, Vince. Bye.”
“Yeah. Bye.”
FINALLY IT was Christmas Eve. Wills left for work, and I started cleaning the house. By the time I was done, had put bayberry, cinnamon, and pine-scented candles in crystal candleholders throughout the house, and had all the presents I was giving Wills—plus a few from Santa—under the tree and his stocking hanging, filled, from the mantel, I was too wiped to be in the mood to cook dinner.
I called the Pizza Place. “I’d like to place an order to go. Two large pizzas: scallops and bacon in cream sauce and bacon and pineapple.”
“Will that be pickup or delivery?”
I’d been in the house all day, and I needed to get out, if only for as long as it took to pick up dinner. “I’ll come pick them up.”
“Okay. That’s two large pies, one scallops and bacon in cream sauce, one bacon and pineapple. Anything else? Okay, they’ll be ready in about forty-five minutes. Name?”
“Bascopolis.” I gave her my phone number and hung up.
Like me, Wills usually preferred artichoke hearts and pepperoni, but I was willing to try other toppings, and he needed to expand his horizons a little too. Besides, he’d tried a slice of bacon and pineapple when we’d been helping Vince get settled in the attic apartment, and although he’d picked off the pineapple, he’d enjoyed it.
I took a shower, put on jeans and the fisherman knit sweater that always drove my lover wild—when he wasn’t wearing it himself—and went out to get dinner. I’d already made sure the kindling and wood were ready in the fireplace. When I got home, I’d light it.
The pies weren’t quite ready—everyone must have had the same idea, because the Pizza Place was really mobbed—and I hit traffic on the way home.
I lucked out, though. In spite of how long it took me to get home, Wills’s Dodge wasn’t parked in front of the house.
Blowing out a relieved breath, I garaged the Corvair and then went around to the front of the house and jogged up the stairs, balancing the two boxes. I let myself into our apartment and came to such an abrupt halt I almost tripped over my feet. I could hear Wills singing in the kitchen. What the hell? Had my plan to surprise him fallen apart?
I put the boxes down on the dining room table, hurried into the living room, lit the fire, and breathed a sigh of relief when it caught right away. Now the only light in the room was that cast by the fire.
I crossed my fingers that he hadn’t seen his Christmas present yet and plugged in the lights, then went back to the dining room and set out a couple of paper plates. Christmas Eve wasn’t a time to do dishes.
Wills was coming from the kitchen. He was talking to someone.
Shit. He must have brought a coworker home. Well, it was the season of good will toward men, and there should be enough pizza for all of us.
“Okay, let’s go into the living room, put on the tree lights—”
I blew out a relieved breath. He hadn’t been in there yet.
“—and….”
I scowled when I realized his voice was soft and low and filled with tenderness. I’d never heard that tone in his voice before—it was usually either relaxed and casual or hoarse with passion when he was with me. A stab of jealousy ripped through me. Who had he brought to our home?
“We definitely need to get a rug that feels like this, Miss Su, so Poppa and Daddy can roll around on….”
Miss Su? Poppa and Daddy?
Wills came to a halt when he saw me. He was wearing the pants of the black silk lounging pajamas I’d given him for his birthday, but his torso was bare. So were his feet.
“I hope you don’t mind, Wills. I didn’t feel like cooking, so I picked up a couple of pizzas.”
He looked from me to the table and back to me again. “I like the way you think.” He licked his lips.
He had something in his arms. I blinked when it raised its head and deep blue, slightly crossed eyes met mine.
I stared at the kitten.
He held it out to me. “Merry Christmas, Theo.”
“Wills! He’s mine?” I thought of Faster, the big black-and-white cat Wills had met when I’d brought him to Tarpon Springs to meet my mother. Poppa hadn’t approved of pets in the house, but somehow Ma had convinced him otherwise. It had been ages since I’d had a kitten, and he was a kitten, not more than three months old. We couldn’t have one because we never knew if a client was allergic or not.
“She’s yours.”
“Oh, Wills!” I took her and adjusted her so her hind legs were supported by one arm while her forelegs were braced on my other. I dropped a kiss on her head, hugged her close, and rubbed my cheek against her fur. She was so soft. Her small body vibrated with her purring. “She’s beautiful!”
“I… er… I saw how much you liked playing with the kittens the last time we were up in Cambridge.”
That had been Memorial Day weekend. “Yes.” Jill, his stepmom, raised American Bobtails, and she’d planned to give him the little female, Jasmine, for his birthday.
Wills’s gaze grew hard.
The neighbor’s pit bull, General Custer, had gotten loose and attacked the kitten. Princess Kimba and Jad-bal-Ja, Jasmine’s parents, had gone after the dog, doing so much damage that Hugh Herendon, the dog’s owner, had reported the Mathesons to Animal Care and Control. When the officers had seen what the dog had done to the kitten, the complaint had been dismissed, and they’d asked Jill if she wanted to file a complaint. Jill wanted to. While Jack had taken the kitten to the vet to see if anything could be done for her, Jill had taken Marti to the pediatrician. Marti’s chores involved helping Jill with the cats, and she loved them all. She’d seen what had happened and had been unable to stop crying.
Because it had been the dog’s first offense, all that had come of it, aside from a hundred-dollar fine, was that General Custer wasn’t allowed out of the house without a muzzle. When Wills had learned that, he’d gotten that cold, flat look on his face, and I’d tried to console him. He’d been rough in bed that night and left marks all over my body. The next morning he’d been aghast when he’d seen them and had apologized profusely. Not that I’d minded; I’d had worse.
A few days later, Jar had called. “General Custer is gone!” he’d told his brother with quite a bit of satisfaction. “Mr. Herendon says somebody must have stolen him, but Mom thinks they got rid of the dog themselves and are just saying that to save face.” Everyone in the neighborhood had given them the cold shoulder after the kitten’s death.
All Wills had said was, “Bad owners make bad dogs. Too bad it wasn’t Herendon who was stolen.”
He smiled at me now. “Princess Kimba surprised everyone with another litter in September, and I told Jill to make sure I had one to give you for Christmas.”
“What’s her name?”
“Marti’s been calling her Tiramisu, but you can change the name, babe.”
“She does look like tiramisu with her coloring and all. Hello, Tiramisu.” I rubbed the soft fur under her chin, and she slitted her eyes and purred louder. “Thank you, Wills.” I kissed him. “Let’s eat. Then I’ll give you your present.” I set the kitten down on the table, and she sniffed inquisitively at the pizzas. “Can she have some bacon?”
“No, Theo, not unless you want to spend the night sitting up with a kitty who has acid indigestion.”
“Sorry, Miss Su.” I’d much rather spend the night making love with Wills. “No bacon for you.”
“Beer, babe?”
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
Wills went into the kitchen, and I lit the candles on the table. We might just be having pizza for dinner, and we might be eating it off paper plate
s, but I still intended to make it festive.
He returned with two bottles of Budweiser. I popped the cap off mine and waited while he did the same, then tapped my bottle against his.
“Here’s to the first of many Christmases together,” I said.
“And may we have a hundred of them.” His eyes were a warm brown in the candlelight.
“Why limit ourselves?”
His smile was broad and happy, appropriate for Christmas Eve. “Then here’s to a forever of them.”
A WELL-BRED feline, Miss Su waited politely for us to finish eating, giving an occasional “mrrow” to remind us that she hadn’t yet dined.
“I think it should be okay to feed her now. The sedative seems to have worn off.”
“Sedative?”
“I had to fly down with her from Cambridge, and Jill gave her something so she wouldn’t cry the whole flight.”
“When did you get her, babe?”
“Today.”
“You flew there and back in one day?”
“Sure. I’ve done plenty of day trips. They’re no big deal. Get her, okay?”
I picked up the kitten and followed Wills into the kitchen. There was a small can of cat food on the counter, and he popped off the lid, put the food into a stainless steel bowl, and set it on the floor.
“We’ll have to get her name put on these.” Beside it was a bowl for water.
“Someone was hungry.” Miss Su was gobbling it down with dainty greed. Wills smiled at her, and I noticed a smear of red at the corner of his mouth. “You missed some sauce, babe.”
He would have taken a paper towel from the roll, but I stopped him from moving and licked it off. I ran my nose along his cheek. His skin was smooth, and I knew he must have taken the time to shave when he got home. I blew into his ear and nipped the lobe.
He shivered and gave a soft growl. “I want to fuck you, Theo.”
My jeans became snug. Usually he preferred to be fucked, but I loved the times when he wanted to take charge and top me. “We don’t want to shock Miss Su.”