Red Hot Holiday Bundle

by Alison Kent

  Wild, sassy, party-girl shoes.

  The kind of shoes a spontaneous, exciting, confident woman would wear. The kind of shoes Arianne would wear if she were to sneak off with Rafe Monticello in the middle of a party after telling him she wanted to make love with him.

  A tiny smile lit her face. The kind of woman she’d been for a couple of hours tonight. Before she’d so stupidly tumbled into love.

  She eased one shoe, then the other out of the box. They were her size, but still she was convinced that there’d been a mistake, or that they’d run out of black shoes and had to substitute red.

  She pulled out the enclosed card, expecting the preprinted Happy New Year’s card from the whole Monticello family, but instead there was a handwritten card on Rafe’s own stationery—the stuff he brought in at an exorbitant price from Europe.

  Darling Arianne,

  Take a chance and follow your heart. Have dinner with me. I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock.

  Love, Rafe.

  She flapped the stiff handmade paper under her chin trying to dispel the rush of heat that suffused her.

  She read the note again. While she’d been inventing thank-you-for-the-sex notes in her head and signing them “cordially, Arianne,” he’d been penning a real in-his-own-writing-on-his-special-paper note and he’d signed it Love, Rafe.

  And he wanted to see her again tomorrow.

  She slipped the shoes on and tightened the straps. Then she tottered to her full-length mirror and hoisted up her pajama pant legs and turned this way and that, inspecting the shoes from every angle.

  No matter how she looked at them, they were still red high heels that sent out all sorts of messages about her.

  A woman wearing shoes like this wasn’t cautious. A woman in shoes like these wasn’t sensible. A woman in shoes like this was…insane.

  Oh, God. What had she done? What was she going to do?

  Could she plunge into an affair with the most exciting man she’d ever known? A man who would show her a wonderful time, treat her with charm and generosity and then tire of her? Could she do that with a man she loved?

  Fortunately, she’d clung to just enough sanity to reach for the one lifeline she knew she could count on.

  Still wearing the shoes, she danced across the room to her phone and left the same message on two machines.

  “It’s me, Arianne. Huge emergency. We have to move brunch up to eleven.”

  They had to meet earlier because depending on Natalie and Isabel’s verdict on the shoes and the dinner invitation, Arianne had to go shopping.

  She gulped as she stared down at the shoes, winking at her like a promise.

  She wasn’t going to go picking through last season’s leftovers, either. She raised her head and pulled back her shoulders. She was heading for the full-price racks of the newest trends.

  8

  THE SKIRT OF the ridiculous red dress Iz had lent her was flirting with Arianne’s thighs.

  It teased, caressed, tickled and generally reminded her that there were a couple of miles of leg between the soft chiffon-silk dress and her new Monticellos. And, in case anyone missed that fact, the dress, like the shoes, was in head-turning red.

  It was the silliest, most impractical outfit Arianne had ever owned. It matched the silliest, most impractical pair of shoes she’d ever owned, and she loved them both.

  She’d been mildly horrified when Nat and Isabel had bullied and manhandled her into trying on clothes—making her feel like a well-played-with fashion doll—until they were satisfied with the results.

  Once she’d explained about last night and the camisole, Isabel—after suggesting Rafe might be a cross-dresser—had jumped in with enthusiasm. And, once she got into the spirit of things, Arianne had to admit the three of them had had fun playing dress-up.

  She only wished the others were here now to give her a few more laughs and build up her confidence.

  She’d left her hair down so it swung softly against her jawline. Not content with the dress, she’d even given herself a manicure and pedicure so her nails gleamed bold red.

  Now she waited, for once cursing her habit of being so punctual. It was only five to eight.

  She picked up a magazine and had to resist gnawing off the crimson nail polish. She tugged the dress down a little, wishing her stomach wasn’t a knot of nerves. Wishing she’d had more sleep last night. Wishing she knew what the hell she was going to say when Rafe arrived.

  When her intercom buzzed she was no closer to knowing what she wanted to say to him than she had been before.

  Follow your heart, his note had suggested. Follow it where? To Paris for the weekend? To the chichi clubs he frequented? The parties? The restaurants? To the final Tiffany-boxed goodbye?

  She opened the door, and he stood before her, dark and sexy and altogether wonderful.

  He blinked.

  Oh, God. She never should have listened to Natalie. It was too much red. “I know,” she said, pulling the hem down to hide a bit more leg. “I look like a fire engine.”

  “You look,” he said, “incredible. I fantasized about you in those shoes.”

  “You did?” She licked her lips, knowing in that moment she’d follow him to the broken heart stage because she couldn’t help herself. “What were we doing in your fantasy?”

  He stepped forward until their bodies touched. “I’ll show you.”

  The door banged shut behind him and she didn’t even notice. She was in his arms and they were kissing as though they’d been separated for months. She couldn’t get close enough, touch enough, hug enough of him to her.

  His hands were everywhere, skimming the red silk, trailing warm fingers over every bit of her skin he could reach, tracing the hem of her skirt until she giggled. And kissing her. Always kissing her.

  “Dinner later?” he managed to say, when she’d dragged his jacket off and tossed it on her couch. Her dress was askew and only one barely-there spaghetti strap kept it from falling to the floor.

  “Dinner, later,” she agreed.

  While she worked at his shirt buttons, he pulled out a cell phone and punched a key. “Raoul, move the dinner reservation to ten-thirty, will you? Come back for us at ten.”

  He pocketed the phone and then reached for the spaghetti strap.

  How nice to have a limo driver at your beck and call, she thought. Then her dress floated to the ground like a stripper’s scarf, and she forgot to think at all.

  “Red panties, too. Nice.”

  “I like my outfits to match,” she explained in a voice that trembled slightly with need and nerves.

  She’d never made love with a man she loved this deeply before. She wasn’t sure what it would do to her.

  “These come off,” he said, hooking his thumbs in her panties. “But these,” he indicated the absurd shoes, “stay on.”

  They never made it to the bedroom.

  Rafe turned her, and she took one step before lust slammed into him. There was no way he could walk as far as the bedroom with that naked ass, pushed higher than normal by the red heels, swaying in front of him without doing himself permanent injury.

  One step, two, three…He let her go, imprinting the sight on his brain, then came up behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her back against his body. Her round butt pushed against his erection and he felt sweat break out on his forehead.

  “Stay.” He managed to croak the word. “Here.”

  He was out of his clothes in record time, then holding her again to feel her lush, bare ass against him. He reached round and cupped her breasts, playing with them.

  She pushed against him and rubbed her butt cheeks back and forth across his cock. More sweat broke out and he stifled a moan.

  He was so desperate for her he was losing control.

  Slipping one hand down her belly to cup her heat, he found she was already slick, the folds of her sex swollen.

  Excitement surged through him. She was as close as he was. Even
as his fingers started to play with her, she panted and her butt started to wiggle against him.

  Because he’d had such high hopes for tonight, there was a condom in his wallet. In seconds he had it on.

  Then he bent her over the side of the couch and thrust, deep and hard into that incredible, wet woman’s place he’d been obsessing about revisiting.

  She cried out with surprise, and he held very still for a moment, enjoying the way she clung to him. Tight and hot inside, much hotter than her cool exterior would have led him to believe.

  Once more he reached round and slipped his hand between the couch arm and her body, rubbing that perfect spot as he started to thrust. Almost all the way out and then in again. With each movement his hips slapped her soft round cheeks. The muscles of her back danced and flexed as she pushed mindlessly with her arms, arching her back each time he entered her.

  He held himself tightly in check until he heard those magic words. “Oh, yes. Rafe. Yes. Yes, Rafe, yes…”

  Then he let himself go, exploding deep inside her body until he saw stars, telling her his love in words as well as with his body. “Dio, come cazzo ti amo.”

  With the last of his strength, he dragged both of them onto the couch where they flopped, him on the bottom, her sprawled on top of him.

  As they floated back to earth he became aware that rivulets of water were running down his chest.

  Not even a jog up Everest could produce that much sweat, and he didn’t think she’d scratched an artery and he was bleeding, so he had to go with the most unpleasant possibility.

  “Are you crying?”

  She sniffled in reply, too broken up to speak.

  “Happy tears?” he asked hopefully.

  The blond head shook. A definite no.

  He cursed softly and fluently in Italian. “You have the damnedest responses to great sex. I can’t imagine what you do if it’s bad.”

  “It’s not that,” she sobbed. “It’s not the sex.”

  He sure hoped not. Although he’d been pretty raunchy, borderline rough, it felt as if she’d been with him all the way. Right down to the stunning home stretch. Still, he had to consider the possibility.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  Again she shook her head. “The sex was fantastic,” she sobbed.

  Okay. Whatever was going on here wasn’t physical. It was emotional.

  He didn’t mind emotion. Hell, he was Italian. He had a few of his own, but she had to tell him what he was dealing with. Was that too much to ask?

  Not happy. “Are you sad?”

  Louder sobbing. Great, fantastic. The woman turned earth-shattering sex into a tragedy. Wasn’t anything ever simple with Arianne?

  “Talk to me, why are you sad?”

  She buried her face in his neck and mumbled, “Because I’m so stupid. I can’t be one of your women. I can’t.” The way she wailed the last word it seemed to echo.

  “What do you mean one of my women?” He’d barely got his breath back, and she was throwing out emotional zingers.

  “The ice-blue camisole in your wardrobe. Who’s that for?”

  He was distracted by the pale shoulder hunched so protectively against him. He thought he’d never seen anything so sad as that one shoulder.

  “Ice-blue camisole?” She was sobbing over underwear?

  “In your wardrobe.” She sniffled. “Could you pass me a tissue please?” He plucked a couple from the box on her side table and gave them to her. She muttered her thanks without turning her head.

  “What camisole?”

  “I didn’t snoop, but I opened the wrong door looking for towels and there were your socks and underwear and this camisole. Three thousand dollars. You told me you bought it for Anita, way back in September.”

  He remembered now, and his own foolishness amazed him.

  “I never told you I bought it for Anita. I may have let you assume that, but it wasn’t true.”

  He didn’t often feel embarrassed, but he did now. Why hadn’t he given the stupid thing to one of his sisters?

  “Who did you buy it for?”

  He’d never felt a bigger fool in his life. “You,” he admitted grumpily. “I bought it for you.”

  She sniffed again, louder. “But you didn’t know I’d…you didn’t know we’d…”

  He couldn’t just sit here like a fool while the woman he loved turned a truly cold shoulder on him. He had to tell her the truth.

  “I was in L.A. and saw it. I thought it would look great on you…so I bought it. I don’t know, I guess I thought that even if you were always bugging me about my dates, you were thinking of me in that way and maybe one day you’d think of us together in that way.” He almost winced with humiliation. What an ass he’d been.

  Well, he’d gone this far. The evening was, to date, mostly a replay of the night before. Great sex followed by profound misery. Might as well get it all out in the open.

  He rolled off the couch, leaned down to pick up his jacket off the floor and pulled out the box. He laid it on a feminine floral pillow beside her head, which was currently turned into the back of the couch. “I brought you something.”

  Once more her sobs increased. If she cried any harder she was going to burst something. “Is it a T-T-Tiffany’s box?”

  Dread clenched his chest. She wanted Tiffany’s? Maybe he’d been wrong about Arianne. Maybe…

  “Could you just open it? Please?”

  She flapped her hand behind her and said, “Tissue.”

  He obliged. She wiped her eyes and sat up, so naked and so beautiful, her face pale but calm. “I’d like to see the box.”

  He passed it to her. The velvet was worn and had once been royal blue, he suspected, but was now the color of faded denim.

  She blinked and frowned when she saw it, running a finger over a bald patch on the velvet. “This isn’t from Tiffany’s,” she said in amazement.

  “No.” His throat was clogged with all the things he wanted to say and didn’t know how, with all the things he was beginning to fear.

  She flipped it open and didn’t say a single word.

  He started to babble. “We can get something from Tiffany’s or anywhere else you like. But that was my grandmother’s ring. She gave it to me for my wife. It would mean a lot to me if you’d wear—”

  “Your wife?” she asked as though it were a word with which she was unfamiliar.

  Oh, he was botching this, and badly. “I’m doing a piss-poor job of it, but I am asking you to marry me.”

  The single ruby, rich and red, glowed in the simple gold setting. Most women wore diamonds on their engagement fingers. He knew that. He didn’t care. He’d fill her fingers with diamonds, he just wanted Arianne.

  “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it.”

  “I love it.” She sniffed again and another tear tracked down her face.

  “Then why are you crying now?”

  “These,” she said, pointing, “are happy tears.”

  The pressure on his chest eased. “Happy tears are good, right?”

  She nodded, spilling a whole bucketful of happy down her face.

  “So you’ll marry me?”

  She nodded, too choked to speak, and he felt happiness sting his own eyes.

  He dropped his gaze to the ring and withdrew it from the box. “My grandparents were married for sixty-three years,” he told her as he slipped the ring onto her left hand.

  “That sounds like a good number,” she said, sinking into his arms for a kiss. “What about children?”

  His heart swelled as he pictured Arianne pregnant with their child.

  “I’m Italian, male and Catholic. What do you think?”

  She smiled a prim smile that went wicked at the corners. “I think we’d better get married very soon.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “Rafe?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You’ve never told me you loved me.”

  He turned to stare at he
r. “I’ve told you twice and both times you started sobbing. You scared me off.”

  “You did not. You’ve never said the words to me.”

  “Ti amo,” he said, nice and loud, putting his all into it.

  Her blue eyes blinked wide. “You never said that before.”

  He tried to remember what he’d shouted out in passion. He was sure he’d said he loved her. He’d certainly been thinking it. “What did I say?”

  She blushed a little and dropped her gaze. “Something with cazzo in it. I know because it’s what you say when you’re cursing.”

  “Curses?” He started to laugh. “I was telling you I love you in a very earthy way. I do. I love your mind, who you are, and I definitely love your body.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “You’ve never said the words, either. In any language.”

  “I said them in my head, the first time we made love. That’s when I realized I was in love with you.”

  “Is that why you started crying?”

  She nodded.

  “I still want to hear them.”

  “Jag älskar dej. I love you, Rafe.”

  What to Wear

  Carrie Alexander, Jamie Denton and Nancy Warren

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter One

  To: Natalie Trent; Isabel Parisi

  From: ArianneSorenson@Monticello.com

  Date: December 23

  Subject: What to Wear

  Okay, prom queens. This on the sly. I made sure we’re all on the guest list again for the big Monticello Ball on New Year’s Eve. Let’s travel together. I’ll book the cab now, because it will be a nightmare otherwise, and three of us riding together will cut costs.

  Speaking of which, I polished the Monticello shoes I got at last year’s ball and am still trying to decide what to wear, unless I stick with the black dress I found at the Christmas sales last year. The Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit is definitely out. I went window-shopping on my lunch hour yesterday, but, God, anything I remotely liked cost more than the rest of my entire wardrobe put together. Help! Nat, are there any sample sales coming up?