“I understand.” Maybe. A little...
She stuck her needle in the antler and neatly pulled the thread through. “All right, then. Let’s have a look at our options.”
He spoke into the remote and several choices came up on the big screen mounted above the fireplace.
She pointed at an image of a teenage blonde clutching a bloody knife standing in front of a Christmas tree. “That’s the one. It’s got Christmas and babysitting and home invasion, too.”
He wanted to whip the plush antlers out of her hands and kiss that full mouth of hers. “You’re a bloodthirsty thing, aren’t you?”
And she laughed. “You’d better believe it.” She instructed, “Keep the sound down low and turn on the subtitles.”
“Why?”
“We don’t want the kids waking up and hearing screams downstairs.”
“Bloodthirsty, but thoughtful. It’s an intriguing combination...”
“Give me that.” She reached over and tried to whip the remote from his hand.
He yanked it away, up over his head, and faked a horrified expression. “What are you doing?”
She laughed again—a full-throated laugh this time. The sound echoed through him, leaving shimmers of happiness in its wake. “You’re such a man,” she accused. “Heaven forbid, you should lose control of the remote.”
He lowered the device, pressed it close to his heart and solemnly intoned, “Never, ever try to come between a man and his remote.”
She grabbed for it again. He let her get hold of it—that brought her in good and close. The scent of her taunted him.
And then he whipped the remote free of her grip, threw it over the back of the sofa and grabbed for her, smashing the plush antlers between their bodies, making her laugh all the harder.
She let out a yelp followed by more laughter and wriggled against him, trying to tickle him back as he tickled her.
Tickled her. When in his whole life had he ever tickled anyone—not including Megan, back when they were kids? When had he ever had fun with a woman, just being silly and playful, wrestling for the remote?
He realized at that moment that he’d never had a lot of silliness in his life and he needed more of it. More of her.
She squealed and shoved at him. He rolled, taking her with him. They fell to the rug between the sofa and coffee table, him on the bottom, her on top. She felt like heaven, so soft and curvy, round in all the right places, and she smelled so good. Her unbound hair fell all around them, a waterfall of wheat-colored silk.
A funny little sound escaped her—a hitch of breath on a tiny moan as she craned her upper body away to stare down at him through those enormous pale blue eyes. “We’re crushing my antlers.” She lifted up enough to pull the smashed headpiece from between their bodies. He stifled a groan as her movement rubbed him where it mattered.
“Here.” He took the antlers from her. Reaching across her body, he slid them onto the coffee table next to the untouched bowl of popcorn.
“Thanks.” She relaxed on top of him, lowering her head so their noses were only a few inches apart, bringing that mouth he couldn’t wait to taste again so excitingly close. He was lost in those eyes of hers. They had a rim of darker blue around the iris. From inches away, he could see gold flecks fanning out from the midnight of her pupils.
She looked like an angel and she felt like everything he’d ever needed without even knowing it, all softness and the promise of some brighter, better future ahead, where there would be laughter and long talks about his day and her day—and in the morning, kids in the kitchen demanding blueberry pancakes.
He needed to kiss her. But first, he had to be sure that he wasn’t overstepping or misreading the situation. He asked in a voice rough with desire, “Yes or no?”
The minute he asked the question, he felt ridiculous. Yes or no? The question made no sense—not even to him, and he was the one who had asked it.
But she understood. She understood exactly. Lifting a hand, she guided a heavy lock of hair behind her ear. It only fell down again and brushed against his cheek, smelling of lemons, satiny and warm. “I want to...”
She wants to! He resisted the urge to let out a shout of elation and instead asked quietly, “But?”
“Well, I mean, yes, if we’re agreed it’s just for now...nights, you know? When the kids are in bed?”
“A secret?” He didn’t want to put boundaries on anything he might share with her. But he didn’t want to scare her off again, either.
“Not exactly. I mean, really, I don’t care who knows. I like you. You like me. There’s nothing to sneak around about—except for the kids. If they see us all over each other, they’ll get ideas. They’ll start to think we might end up together in a more permanent way, begin to expect that I will be around after New Year’s.”
So? he almost asked. After all, the way he saw it, keeping her around after New Year’s was pretty much the goal.
And who was to say his niece and nephew didn’t already think of Harper as part of their lives? Of course, they would miss her when he took them back home to Portland.
Unless she came with them.
She went on, “It would confuse them, Jayden especially. Maya’s a little young to get what it might mean if she saw us kissing or whatever. But we would definitely have to be discreet around Jayden.”
He stroked her velvety cheek and then guided that misbehaving lock of hair back over her shoulder. “I’ll make that deal. For now. Subject to change, though, if we realize it could be more.”
“But that’s my point. It really can’t be more.”
“Wrong. You don’t know what will—”
“Shh.” She put two soft fingers against his mouth.
He wanted to suck them inside, to scrape them with his teeth. “Now you’re shushing me?” He said it gently, teasing her.
But she didn’t smile. She gazed down at him, all seriousness. “You run your own company, Linc. You have two beautiful children to raise. Your life going forward is clear to you. You know who you are. I still have things to figure out. About myself. About my life. I’m not in a place to start building a lasting relationship. For me, right now, there really can’t be more. It would have to end at New Year’s when you and the kids go back to Portland.”
He took her sweet face between his hands. “You don’t know what will happen in a month. I’m just asking you not to close the door on the very real possibility that we both might want more.”
She pushed away from him. He made himself let her go and stifled a pained groan when she rocked back off his groin. They both sat up and stared blankly at the big screen above the mantel. Finally, she said in a resigned little voice, “I’m still uncomfortable about your engagement.”
Defensiveness tightened his gut. “What’s to be uncomfortable about? I told you it’s over. She broke it off and it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t working, and we wouldn’t have been happy together.”
“But you were going to get married. When you love someone, you don’t just stop. It’s a...process, isn’t it? It takes time to work through the loss and the unmet expectations and the changes in your life.”
He pushed the coffee table away enough that he could draw his legs up and wrap his arms loosely around his knees. The bald, ugly truth probably wouldn’t help him much here. But it was all he had to give her. “I didn’t love Imogen—her name is Imogen Whitman. I never loved her.”
Harper’s mouth formed a perfect O.
“Now I’ve shocked you.”
She fiddled with her hair, rolling a curl around a finger, easing it back behind her ear. “Yeah. I mean, why would you ask someone to marry you if you didn’t love them?”
“I was almost thirty.” When she started to speak, he put up a hand. “Let me finish?”
She gave a slow nod. “Sorry. Of course.”
He stared into the fire as he tried to figure out how to explain himself. “I was approaching the big three-O. I was doing well running Stryker Marine. I wasn’t seeing anyone steadily, but I wanted to get married, to have a family. I saw it as the next step for me. Imogen and I had grown up together. We went to the same schools. Her mother and mine are lifelong friends. Imogen and I knew the same people. I thought all that meant we had a lot in common, that we would make a good match. Eventually, I found out I was wrong.”
Harper drew her own legs up and rested her cheek on her knees. Her gaze probed his. “What made you realize that?”
“Megan and Kevin died.”
She seemed to be waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, she prompted, “Yeah, and...?”
He hung his head. “You really want the details?”
“What I want is to understand. And I don’t. Not yet.”
He tried again. “My sister and her husband died the week of my wedding.”
“How awful.”
“Yeah. It was a big deal, the wedding. Imogen had been planning it forever, a lavish destination event on St. Bart’s, two hundred guests. We had to cancel.”
She thought about that. “Well, really. What else could you do?”
He almost smiled. “See? You get it. Imogen didn’t—I mean, yes, she knew there was no getting around it, with my sister dying the same week as our big day. But we could’ve just gotten married quietly.”
“But you didn’t want that?”
“At that point I did, yes. I suggested it, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted a killer wedding.”
“That’s not unusual, Linc. Most women do.”
He had to ask. “Do you want a killer wedding?”
“I don’t really think about my wedding yet. Right now, I’m all about finding the right job, getting my life on track.”
“You’re just trying to be fair to my ex.”
“I suppose I am. I can see how it would have been hard for her. She had you all to herself and then suddenly, her beautiful wedding was on hold and you had two children to bring up.”
“True. And she was bitter about it. She didn’t like that I moved Kevin’s parents into my house, either. The kids, taking custody of them, having them in my life—they changed everything. For me. Not for Imogen. She felt cheated. She said so, and she kept after me to reschedule the wedding. I put her off. Then, she decided we needed a romantic getaway, over Christmas, just her and me. I told her I couldn’t do that. I needed to bring the kids here, to the cottage, give them what I could of the Christmas they would have had if we hadn’t lost Megan and Kevin. And I needed to send Jean and Alan on the cruise of their dreams as a thank-you for everything they’d done.”
She was watching him so closely. “I’m guessing from your expression that your fiancée wasn’t going for it?”
“You guessed right. Imogen hit the roof and delivered an ultimatum. I was to forget sending the grandparents on a cruise—Jean and Alan could easily do that sometime after New Year’s, she said. For Christmas, the grandparents would stay home with the kids. I would go away with her for the holidays, just the two of us. If I said no to her plans, she and I were through.”
“And you said no.”
“Yes, I did. She broke our engagement. End of story.” He should probably tell her about Imogen’s call last week.
Then again, no. Really. He was done with Imogen. And hadn’t he said enough about the whole depressing situation already?
Her expression thoughtful, Harper regarded him steadily. “You were relieved when she broke it off with you?”
“I was, yeah.”
“You really didn’t love her, did you?”
He felt like crap at the moment. “I just told you I didn’t.” He sounded pissed off to his own ears.
And maybe he was, a little.
She said, “I’m not getting on your case—I’m really not. I can see your position. But, well, I do sympathize with her.”
“Terrific,” he grumbled.
“You’re defensive about this.”
He bit back a harsh response. Because she was right. “Yeah, maybe. A little. Or a lot...”
“What I’m trying to say is, if you had loved her, I think you would have been more understanding of how she felt. You would have realized that you needed to put her first at least some of the time, to reassure her that she was a high priority for you.”
It really annoyed him how right she was. What else could he do but admit it? “You do have a point. I should have been more understanding. I thought I was happy with her. I really did. It’s embarrassing to me now, but I honestly didn’t know any better. Until my sister died and left the kids with me, until Jean and Alan moved in to help me out and I saw what a happy marriage was—up till then, I had no idea of the path I was on.”
“What path was that?” Her voice was gentle, her eyes warm. She really didn’t seem to be passing judgment on him. And yet he felt like he was messing everything up, telling her all this.
He admitted, “I was on the road to being just like my father. A first wife who was everything everyone I knew expected me to marry. And then a trophy wife. And then a third wife half my age.”
A wistful smile curved her lips. “I’ve been wondering about your parents.”
“That they’re nowhere in sight, you mean, at Christmas, when their grandchildren have been orphaned and families are supposed to be together?”
“No, more that I pictured them as loving and supportive. Apparently, I got that wrong?”
“Well, they tried, when Megan and I were kids. But they were never what you would call happy together. They were two people from ‘good’ families who did what was expected of them—until my dad decided life was passing him by and the way to fix that was to trade my mom in on a younger model.”
“So...” She let the word trail off, her gaze locked on his.
Had he blown it completely? Was she about to leap up and run out the door again? “What?”
“We’re both at a place of change in our lives. You aren’t getting married, after all, and you’ve got two kids to take care of for the next twenty years or so. As for me, I’m trying to figure out the whole career thing.”
He wanted to touch her, to trail his fingers over her cheek, smooth her hair. Anything to make contact. To reassure himself and her that everything was right between them.
Because as soon as he’d started in about Imogen, everything started to feel all wrong.
He kept his hands to himself.
“Back to my original question...” She frowned.
He teased, “After that grim trip down memory lane, who can remember the original question?”
She giggled, and the knot of tension in his belly eased. “About you and me, till New Year’s?”
“Right. I remember now. And I want that, Harper. I want to be with you till New Year’s. Do you want to be with me?”
She faced him directly. “I do. Yes.”
His heart bounced around in his chest again, doing fist pumps and cartwheels. “Whew. I really thought I’d blown it.”
She bit her lip again and slowly shook her head. “I think you were honest. I appreciate that.”
He did dare then, to reach out and touch her. Slowly, he traced a finger along the fine, pure line of her jaw. “And will you keep an open mind about the two of us, about what will happen after the holidays...?”
“Hmm.” She chewed on her bottom lip.
He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close to him. She went willingly, even leaning her head on his shoulder with the sweetest little sigh. He pressed a kiss to the tender flesh at her temple. “Well?”
She snuggled even closer. “Okay. I will. I’ll keep an open mind about the future.” She looked up at him then. Her big eyes were so
serious, so very determined. “As long as you know where I stand. I need to go to Seattle. First and foremost, I need to make my own life and feel good about it. If we take this any further, it should be just for fun, with the understanding that it ends when you return to Portland.”
“An understanding that we can revisit before we say goodbye.”
She gave a quick dip of her pretty chin. “Yes.”
He knew he couldn’t push for more. She wouldn’t go there. But at least, she’d promised to reconsider a possible next step for them when the holidays were over. “All right.”
She tucked her head under his chin, and he tightened his arm around her. “Now what?” she asked.
Easing his fingers beneath the fall of her hair, he cradled the back of her neck and waited for her to look up at him again.
When she did, he lowered his mouth to hers.
She accepted his kiss with an urgent little sound. He drank that sound into him and deepened the contact as she raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck.
Still kissing her, savoring the taste of her, he pushed the coffee table away enough to turn fully toward her and rise to his knees. She stretched her body up to him, chasing the kiss, her thick yellow hair tumbling down her back. He caught her face between his hands and then raked his fingers backward into the warm, satiny strands.
She let out a sweet, hot growl from low in her throat. He drank it down.
Satisfied that she seemed to want him as much as he wanted her, he guided her to her back again. It wasn’t really a comfortable spot, between the table and the sofa. And now that he was on top, he worried that he might be crushing her.
But she was beautifully willing, wrapping her soft arms around his neck as her tongue played with his, bringing a rough, needful groan from him, one that echoed inside his head.
Had he ever felt like this? Full of urgency and longing, overexcited, burning for more?
As a kid, maybe? His first time?
Yeah—but then again, no.
There’d been nothing like this in his life, nothing like Harper, in his arms, saying yes to him with every hitch of breath, every tender sigh, every slide of her naughty tongue against his...
A Temporary Christmas Arrangement Page 10