A smile curved her mouth. “Have you ever heard of delayed gratification?”
He took her arm. “Not a fan.”
They walked quickly, using the last segment to lower their heart rates. Unfortunately, being near Mazie kept his blood pressure and respiration perpetually in the red zone.
For the moment, he would sublimate with food.
Lolita’s was a hole-in-wall place. The kind of eatery the locals patronized and tourists rarely took the time to find. Not on the beach, but near enough the water to have the best seafood in Mount Pleasant.
Even better, the ambiance was definitely casual. He and Mazie didn’t look out of place in their running clothes.
The hostess led them to a scarred table beneath a huge stuffed tarpon wearing a Santa hat. She handed them plastic-coated menus. “Wreckfish is the special tonight. Two sides. Thirty-five bucks. It’s worth the price. Soup of the day is seafood gumbo. Let me grab you a couple of waters, and I’ll be back to take your order.”
Mazie yawned. “Sorry,” she said as the waitress walked away. “I didn’t sleep great last night. Jonathan and I had eggs and bacon late, and I drank half a cup of coffee. I was able to do that in college, but I guess I’m getting old.”
J.B. leaned back in his chair and chuckled. “Yeah. You’re ancient.” He glanced around the restaurant, noting the multiple strands of Christmas lights and the ubiquitous tinsel garlands. “I suppose I should confess something. My housekeeper decorated my place for the holidays. Garlands and lights and such. But I don’t have a tree. Seems kind of a waste for just me.”
“No worries,” she said. “We never have a tree up at our house.”
He frowned. “You’re kidding. I thought you were the one who loved Christmas. Jonathan jokes about it and how he has to hide his Scroogish tendencies when you’re around.”
“I do love Christmas,” she said. “But we haven’t decorated since my mom left. At first, we kids were too little, and by the time we were in high school, the moment had passed. The boys weren’t particularly interested, and I was self-conscious about tackling it on my own. Plus, I was afraid it would make my father sad. So we don’t deck the halls.” She shrugged. “There are enough decorations elsewhere for me to enjoy. It’s no big deal.”
But it was a big deal. He hated the thought of a little girl yearning for candles and ornaments and wreaths and a tree and having no one to get them for her.
Their meal arrived. Both of them cleaned their plates.
Mazie finished her last plump shrimp and her last crispy hush puppy. “This place is amazing. I’m glad you thought of it.”
The blissful appreciation on her face was aimed at the food, but J.B. was equally willing to accommodate any other appetites she might have. His body ached for her. The urgency of his desire was outrageous enough to slow him down for a moment.
Though he would like to take her straight back to the house and strip her naked, he needed to take a deep breath and get some perspective. Besides, she needed some pampering.
After taking care of the check, he ushered her outside. “I have a surprise,” he said.
As usual, Mazie’s response was laced with suspicion. “I hope it doesn’t involve bank vaults.”
Was she flirting with him? Or simply giving him a hard time? It baffled him that he still had difficulty understanding her. Usually he could read people like open books. Mazie was a whole damned library with the doors padlocked.
He opened the car door for her and tried to help her up into the passenger seat, but she waved him away. “I can do it.”
“Fine,” he muttered. He waited until she was settled and slammed the door. Loping around to the driver’s side, he quickly composed and discarded several versions of a plan to make her smile.
It was Christmas. The season of peace and goodwill. He and Mazie were mending fences, but he wanted more. He was tired of living in the shadows of his own failures.
Suddenly, he knew he had to give her the perfect, special holiday.
For a split second, he envisioned a year in the future with the two of them gathered around a fireplace reading books to a toddler. The image shocked him so much, he almost ran a red light. Tonight was about Mazie’s broken childhood. He didn’t want to examine his other motives too closely.
Mazie shot him a glance. “You okay?”
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yeah. Sorry. My mind was on something else.”
She patted his thigh. “I understand. You must be so worried about your mom. But she’s doing well, J.B. Honestly, she is. When you all were gone today, she told me she’s feeling stronger every day.”
“Yeah, I know.” His mother was definitely on his mind. But her condition was stable. This thing with Mazie was definitely not stable.
Up ahead, he finally spotted what he was looking for. He turned into a parking lot and shut off the engine.
Mazie looked through the windshield and then sideways at him. “What are we doing here?”
“What do you think?” He reached across the small space between them and caressed her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I think you’ve been a very good girl this year. Santa wants you to have all the trimmings.”
Fifteen
Mazie’s throat tightened. Tears stung her eyes. How dumb was this? She surely wasn’t going to get all emotional because a man was being sweet and kind and indulging her love of the holiday.
J.B. stared at her with a quizzical smile on his face. He had charisma in spades. No wonder he’d dated his way through half the women in Charleston. He was a young George Clooney. Charming. Funny. Hard to pin down.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Real Christmas trees shed needles everywhere. And they can be hard to set up.”
J.B. grinned. “Challenge accepted.”
“Okay, then. You asked for it.”
She hopped out of the car and inhaled a deep lungful of balsam-scented air. “Take a whiff,” she said. “No artificial tree can give you this.”
Though it had been dark now for several hours, the proprietor had strung up long swaths of colored lights among his offerings. Christmas carols played in the background from an old-fashioned boom box. Because it was getting closer to the main event, the Christmas-tree lot was crowded with browsers.
Moms and dads and excited children. Young couples. Families with teenagers.
For a split second, Mazie felt like a child again with all the anticipation and wonder and hope of innocence. And she owed it all to the man who had once broken her heart. But he had changed, she was sure of it. And now his sensual charm was irresistible.
J.B. tagged along behind her with an indulgent smile on his face as she walked through the rows of freshly cut trees. Half a dozen varieties were represented, but the Fraser firs were her favorites.
She bypassed the six-and seven-foot trees and headed for the bigger ones. J.B.’s living room had high ceilings. No need to skimp.
At her request, he held up one tree at a time, twirling them around so Mazie could inspect all sides. Finally, she found the one she wanted. It was perfectly symmetrical, and it was fat and healthy. It topped J.B. by almost two feet.
For the first time, he winced. “You sure about this? It’s gonna look bigger when we get it inside.”
“It’s the perfect tree,” she said. “You’ll see.”
While J.B. paid for the expensive fir, and the man tucked it in a mesh sleeve for the trip home, Mazie gave herself a stern lecture. She would not let herself be sucked into a fantasy where J.B. doted on her and actually cared about her. Everything about this weird December aberration was make-believe.
He liked having sex with her. And maybe he was also stringing her along so she would sell him her property, or he was worried about his mother and using Mazie’s sympathetic heart to help him get through these difficult days, or both.
That was all this was.
At the moment, he looked like a ruggedly sexy lumberjack. He had hefted the heavy tree on top of the car, and was now securing it with bungees.
She joined him and slid an arm around his waist, feeling his muscles strain as he worked.
“You’re my hero,” she said, only half joking.
He stepped back and wiped sap from his forehead. “You owe me for this. Just so you know, I plan to collect later tonight.”
His wicked grin curled her toes. “The tree was your idea,” she pointed out, leaning into him and inhaling the scent of warm male. “I merely went along with the adventure.”
“Smart woman.” He kissed her nose and then found her mouth with his. The second kiss started out lazy for five seconds and then hardened.
Mazie arched her neck, kissing him back. “You drive me crazy,” she muttered.
“The feeling is mutual.” He backed her against the side of the car, his lower body pinning hers to the vehicle. “I haven’t needed anyone like this in a very long time. You make me want to be sixteen again.”
“No,” she groaned, her arms tightening around his neck. “Not that. I want the J.B. who knows all the naughty secrets about women.”
He pulled back, his gaze oddly abashed and serious for the moment. “I don’t know all your secrets, Mazie.”
“I don’t have anything to hide,” she said lightly. The lie was both easy and disturbing.
He sucked in a sharp breath, his chest heaving, as he looked around at all the people keeping them from a private moment. “We still have to buy decorations,” he muttered.
“Then let’s go.”
They hit up a fancy department store nearby, cleaning out a huge percentage of their handblown ornaments and silvery tinsel. Mazie added box after box of multicolored lights to the haul.
When the cashier rang up the total, J.B. never flinched. He handed over his platinum card and scrawled his name on the credit slip, giving the poor woman a smile that made her blush from her throat to her hairline, though she was old enough to be his grandmother.
Mazie rolled her eyes. The man couldn’t help himself. His masculinity was electric and compelling.
Back in the car, she yawned. “It’s probably too late to decorate tonight.”
“I hope that means what I think it means.”
She fidgeted in her seat, trying to get comfortable, her breath coming faster. “I could be persuaded.”
“Oh, no,” he said, staring at the traffic and not at her, so that she saw only his profile. “You’re a guest in my home. I’ll need a firm, unequivocal invitation.”
There was a tongue-in-cheek tone to his voice, but what he said made sense. It would be cowardly on Mazie’s part to pretend reluctance when the truth was, she wanted him every bit as badly as he wanted her.
Sliding her hand across the leather bench seat, she placed it on his upper thigh, gripping the taut muscle beneath his pants. “I’d like to have sex with you, J.B. In a bed, in a chair, heck, even in your fancy kitchen.” She sighed. “You’re a very tempting man. And I’m in a mood to indulge.”
He shot her a sideways glance. “You sound like someone prepared to go off a diet. Am I really that bad for you?”
She pretended to mull it over. “Hmm. Let me see. A commitment-phobic bachelor. A relationship that will possibly hurt other people when it ends, including me. That’s a yes, J.B. I don’t think you’re my smartest choice, but I’m not going to run away. You’re exactly what I want for Christmas.”
They were parked in his narrow driveway now, with two houses looming on either side. The vehicle was dark. What was he thinking? Had she startled him with her plain speaking?
After a long, tense silence, he handed her his keys. “Unlock the front door. I’ll carry the tree in.”
She did as he requested, and then stood aside while he brought the large Fraser fir into the house. Immediately, the foyer filled with the fragrance of outdoors. Crisp, clean. If they invented a name for this particular scent, Mazie would call it mountain morning.
They had bought a tree stand, a fancy one that held a good supply of water but could be tilted carefully to straighten the trunk. Somehow, they had to unwrap the tree, lift it into the container and tighten the bolts.
Suddenly, Mazie realized that she should be the one to call the shots. J.B. was trying to give her a Christmas experience she had missed for many years. He wouldn’t stop until the whole damn tree was ablaze with lights and sparkling with expensive ornaments.
After he leaned the tree in a corner and dusted off his hands, she went to him and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m serious. I don’t want to decorate this tree tonight.”
She felt his body tense. “You’re sure?”
“I’d rather decorate you. Maybe a dab of whipping cream. A little chocolate. What do you say?”
His laugh sounded breathless. “Don’t toy with me, woman.”
It came to her in that moment that she was in over her head. She had wanted him forever, it seemed. But for years, she had been afraid to admit those feelings or to fight for what she needed and deserved.
In spite of the risks, she was all in now. When it came to a choice, she would always choose J.B. Maybe the aftermath of this little experiment was going to suck, but that was in the future. For now, she wanted him so much it left her breathless.
“No games,” she whispered. “But I think I’d like a quick shower first.”
He grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the stairs. “We’ll do it together and save time.”
“I can’t remember if I shaved my legs.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
His desperation might have been flattering if she hadn’t been so scared of letting him know how she felt. She had to keep this light and physical. No messy emotional connection.
That was hard to do when he was so damned cute.
In his bathroom, he released her only long enough to turn on the water in the shower enclosure and adjust the temperature. When he turned around, Mazie was naked from the waist up.
His cheeks flushed dark red. “I think you’re getting ahead of me,” he croaked.
“Maybe you should try harder.” She stripped his shirt over his head and kissed his nipples. They were flat and copper colored, and he hissed with pleasure when she licked them.
His running pants were thin nylon. They did little to disguise the fact that his sex was rising to the occasion rapidly, thick and eager.
By unspoken consent, they each removed the remainder of their own clothes. She was bashful, but not reluctant. The look in J.B.’s eyes made a woman feel invincible.
When they were both completely nude, he took her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed her fingers. “After you, my lady.”
Her hair was in a knot on top of her head, because they had been running earlier, so she didn’t have to worry about putting it up. It would be easy enough not to get it wet. At least that’s what she thought until J.B. joined her.
Even though his hedonistic shower was huge, the guy was big. He took up a lot of room.
Mazie backed against the corner, her heart beating far too fast.
“Face the other wall,” she said. “I’ll wash your back.” Anything to keep him from staring at her. When he turned away, she breathed a sigh of relief.
With shaking hands, she picked up the washcloth and soaped it. Then she started at the back of his neck and rubbed hard enough to make his skin pink. Next, his shoulders, his broad back and his narrow waist.
J.B. groaned as if she was torturing him...when all she was doing was playing the role of a bathhouse girl. She kneeled on the slick floor and soaped the backs of his legs...powerful thighs, muscular calves. Even his bare feet were sexy. Now that it was time for him to turn around, she nearly lost her nerve.
She ro
se to her feet and put both hands on his shoulders. “All done here.”
He spun slowly and stared at her. The heat in his blue-eyed gaze made her stomach clench with desire. “You gonna wash the rest of me?” he asked, a tiny smile tipping the corners of his mouth.
“I think you’re perfectly capable of handling that,” she said primly.
“Then I’ll do your back. You know...tit for tat.”
She tried not to laugh. “I don’t believe that word is politically correct anymore.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Tat?”
“You’re impossible.”
He put his wet hands on her shoulders and turned her away from him. Soon, the feel of his hands on her body made her legs shaky. Especially when one particular part of him kept bumping her bottom.
J.B. put a lot of effort into making sure she was clean from head to toe. He seemed particularly taken with her bottom. When he had soaped it up to his liking, he rested his erection in the cleft and slowly massaged her with his sex.
Oh, lordy.
He’d barely gotten started, and she was falling apart.
“J.B.?”
“Hmm?” He kissed the back of her neck, nibbling gently.
“We’re using an awful lot of water. Seems irresponsible.”
Without warning, his arms came around her from behind. “Let me finish this one part,” he muttered. “Then we’ll get out.”
He abandoned the washcloth. Instead, his big soapy hands caressed her breasts.
Her head fell back against his shoulder. “I don’t think my boobs are all that dirty,” she panted, trying not to beg him to take her then and there.
“Maybe not.” He tweaked her sensitive nipples. “But they’re so damned pretty when they’re wet and slick.”
She was wet and slick somewhere else. Embarrassingly so. But it seemed rude to mention it. Not when J.B. was doing such a bang-up job of bathing her. His hands were gentle and thorough. Much more of this and she would melt...maybe slide right down the drain.
When the water started to run cold, she seized the chance to move their interlude to somewhere less wet and more horizontal. After all, she didn’t want to be responsible for either one of them cracking their skull in the shower.
Blame It On Christmas (Southern Secrets Series Book 1) Page 14