Sean thinking it over and deciding she had a point: You’re right. I’m wildly popular. I’ll have to come back before skiing in the morning
Amber: It’s dark and cold. I don’t know how slick the roads are. I want to see you, but I don’t want you to go to that trouble for me
Sean, without hesitation: You’re worth it. You’re SO worth it. See you soon
With that, he sent her a kiss emoji —
“Hey! Down front!” yelled Isaiah from the back. “What the hell? Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s rude to pull your phone out during the movie? It’s like a spotlight, moron.”
“Sorry,” Sean said sheepishly, putting his phone away. “Didn’t mean to—”
“It’s also rude to talk during the movie,” James said sourly, triggering giggling and whispering from the twins. Bobsy took James’s distraction as an opportunity to help himself to the remainder the Yule log slice on James’s plate, much to his outrage. “Hey! Bad dog!”
Chuckling, Sean got up and, keeping his head low, hurried over to Ada, who was already buried deep beneath her fluffy throw and drowsing against Nigel’s shoulder.
Nigel looked around, brows raised.
“Mama Ada,” Sean said quietly.
Ada startled awake and regarded Sean blearily. “What is it, honey?”
Sean hesitated, glad the dim lighting hid his burning cheeks and knowing this wasn’t going to go over well with Mrs. Christmas here.
“I’m going to, ah, go back to Journey’s End.”
She put a hand to her neck, aghast. “At this hour?”
“It’s only eight fifteen.”
“In the snow? Is there an emergency?”
“Not exactly,” he said sheepishly.
With that, Ada snapped to full attention, tossed her throw aside, stood, grabbed Sean’s elbow and frog-marched him toward the kitchen.
“Hey!” called Isaiah. “Down front!”
Ada stopped dead and glared in Isaiah’s direction. “You had best settle down and hope I don’t come back there to deal with you.”
“Ma’am,” Isaiah said with a great deal more humility.
Ada and Sean continued on their way, Ada’s grip surprisingly viselike for such a petite woman. She turned him loose when they got to the far corner of the kitchen, leaving Sean to rub his abused arm and try to control his wince.
“What do you mean you’re leaving, Sean Baldwin?” she said in a furious whisper. “We are spending Christmas here, together, as a family. I told you this was important to me. And you can’t even stay a night? What’s this all about?”
“I’ll be back in time for skiing tomorrow,” he said quickly, startled by this level of ferocity from her. He’d seen it directed at all her sons numerous other times since he arrived on the scene, but it was a whole new world of scary when she directed it at him. “I just want to spend some time with Amber.”
If he’d thought his romantic mission might soften her heart, he was sadly mistaken.
“Amber is not a booty call kind of girl! She deserves better than that from you!”
Sean stared her in the face, vaguely insulted by the implication, but reminding himself that she no doubt felt extremely protective of Amber after Edward’s treatment of her.
“You think I don’t know that?”
Something in his direct gaze and deadly serious tone seemed to pierce her anger and disappointment. She took a deep breath and a closer look at him.
“I want to tell her about my new job,” he said, deciding to lay it all out there no matter how lovesick it made him look. The Mama Ada he knew would surely understand. “I’m excited about it. I just…Wanted to see her.”
That seemed to do the trick.
“Wow. I see.” The corners of her eyes crinkled with unmistakable affection as she patted his cheek. “You’re a good boy, Sean. I’m proud of you. I hope you know that.”
Funny how those few sentences had the power to knock him on his emotional ass. She couldn’t know how seldom he’d heard those sentiments from his own mother in the wake of all his various screwups over the years, or how touched he was to hear them from Ada now. And he didn’t for a moment think that he had the words to tell her.
Instead, he pressed his lips together and nodded, hoping for the grace not to cry in front of her. Whereupon she did the exact wrong thing.
The exact right thing.
She opened her arms. Pulled him in for the bearhug of his life.
He clung to her, ashamed to discover that he was still so desperate for parental approval at this late stage of the game. He was a grown man in his thirties, for crying out loud. When would he ever get over this?
The answer: not today. Clearly.
He held on as long as he dared, until the tears collecting in his throat threatened to erupt. Then he pulled free and firmly pushed her back a step, punctuating the end of the hug with a kiss on her soft cheek.
“Love you, Mama Ada,” he said gruffly.
“Love you, too,” she said, hastily wiping her eyes.
“I’ll be back in time for skiing tomorrow.”
“See that you are. Matter of fact, why don’t you bring Amber with you?”
He froze, startled to hear such a suggestion coming from her lips, startled to discover how much the gesture meant to him and startled to realize how ferociously he wanted that very thing: Amber there at the lodge with him and everyone else. Reeve had mentioned the possibility earlier, of course, but the idea had been so thrilling that he hadn’t dared look at it head-on. Kind of the way he would never dare look directly at an eclipse; the risk of getting burned was far too great.
But now…
“Don’t look so surprised,” Ada said. “We all love Amber. She was part of the family for years before you got here. Now you’re part of the family. We want to see you both happy. We don’t judge.”
“What about Edward?” he said, trying to envision his discomfort if Sean showed up at the breakfast table tomorrow morning with Amber in tow.
She flapped a hand. “Edward made his choice. He did what he needed to do to be happy. You and Amber are allowed to do the same. With the family’s support.”
For the life of him, Sean couldn’t believe his ears. He didn’t get this lucky. It just didn’t happen.
“You’re amazing,” he said helplessly.
“Oh, I know, dear,” she said, making a show of tipping up her chin and primping her hair. “People tell me that all the time. Now get out of here. Godspeed.”
Chapter Fifteen
You’re worth it. You’re so worth it.
The words ran through Amber’s mind in an endless loop as she finished baking and filling her last couple batches of macarons. She thought about them as she cleaned up her wonderful new kitchen. She thought about them when she showered and slipped into her red silk kimono, then tossed another log onto her blazing fire and lit the evergreen candle on the mantel.
She tried not to let the words thrill her quite so much, but that horse was already long out of the barn.
Most of all, she compared the way Sean’s words made her feel (like a woman to be worshiped and adored) to the way she’d felt during a large chunk of her relationship with Edward (like an obligation).
Her head spun with the implications of it all.
Even factoring in the newness of their relationship and the strong probability that Sean was really horny tonight and just wanted to get laid, the words seemed to have enormous significance. The thing was, he could’ve gotten laid last night. She’d certainly been up for it. But he wanted to see her tonight. He was making the effort to drive all that way to come back and see her tonight. He’d said he missed her. And maybe she was the biggest fool who’d ever lived—her relationship with Edward certainly bore that out—but she believed Sean.
She grabbed a glass of wine and settled on the sofa to wait for him, a memory chiming in her mind.
What had Edward told her shortly after their breakup? That day she’d caved and
asked him one of the most humiliating questions a woman could ask a man:
Why not me?
Oh, yeah. Now she remembered.
He’d told her to think about all the times they didn’t see each other all week and should have been dying to get together on Friday night but instead opted to hang out with their individual friends instead. He’d wondered why that was okay with them as a couple. Why they’d settled for that. Why they’d had to work so hard with each other.
And he’d said… Oh, God, she remembered this next part clear as day:
Don’t you want to be with someone who thinks the best part of his day is seeing your smile? Who can’t wait to be with you again and doesn’t care if he has to drive all night to get to you?
Amber’s heart thumped as she thought about Sean, who made her laugh. Who made her skin leap, couldn’t wait to see her and was willing to undertake an inconvenient drive to do it.
It was too early to be thinking thoughts like this. Way too early. She knew that.
But what if Sean was her someone?
She sipped again, rubbing her forehead as more of Edward’s words tiptoed through her brain.
Think of all the times we didn’t hang out together on a Saturday afternoon because we have no hobbies in common…All the times we ordered in and ate in front of the TV without really talking to each other…Why was that okay?
Why was that okay? Those things added up to something that mattered, didn’t they? Of course they did. So why had she ignored the obvious for so long?
She searched her heart, trying to come up with answers.
And the truth was, it wasn’t okay. Had never been okay, despite all her pretending that it was.
Oh, sure, she’d told herself that it was enough that Edward was smart, handsome and reliable. He showed up when he said he would. As a veterinarian, he had a great career with huge financial potential, which was a lot more than several of her friends’ partners could say. If he’d never seemed all that passionate about her or that eager to come see her on the weekends, wasn’t that a small price to pay? No woman had everything, did she?
But it had hurt. All the silent dinners and weekends apart and lukewarm sex had killed their relationship with a thousand tiny cuts. And, if she was being honest with herself, Edward had simply acknowledged what she’d been thinking for years during that painful talk. She’d been on autopilot, neither particularly happy nor unhappy. Maybe she’d stuck with him for so long because he’d remained aloof and somehow untouchable, both qualities that were irresistible catnip to women everywhere. Maybe she’d seen getting him to finally marry her as a challenge. Maybe she’d viewed that as winning in the end. Maybe she wanted to show the world that she wasn’t a fool who’d wasted her time as much as she’d wanted to create a legal family for Ella, who deserved nothing less.
Whatever. Her relationship with Edward had been untenable in the long term. She’d known it intuitively even if she’d never been smart enough to put it into words.
The unforgivable thing was that Edward had pulled the trigger first, denying her the opportunity to save face by splitting with a man who’d never loved her the way she deserved. The fact that he’d then found the apparent love of his life ten minutes later only added insult to injury—
Her buzzer buzzed. She hurried over to the intercom, her heart already in her throat as she hit the button. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Sean said.
“Come on up.”
She flew to the mirror over the console in the foyer. Checked her face and her hair, which she’d piled on top of her head for the shower and forgotten to take down—
He knocked quietly.
She took a steadying breath before swinging the door open and there he was, bearing his overnight bag and a shopping bag. Tall and handsome, wearing a black knit cap, a green ski parka, plaid flannel Christmas pajama bottoms and an indecipherable expression, except for the veiled heat as he checked out her kimono. And were those…Yes, they were, in fact, shearling slippers on his feet.
“Hey,” she said, astonished, as he came inside and she shut the door behind him. “You made it.”
“Yeah,” he said, setting his bags down before taking his cap off and tossing it on the console. He took the parka off next and hung it on the rack next to the door. “Roads weren’t bad.”
“It’s a good thing,” she said, eyeballing his pajama bottoms and slippers. “Didn’t you think you should put your clothes and boots on before you hit the road?”
His cheeks colored as he shook his head. “There wasn’t time for all that.”
There wasn’t time for that.
Her heart slipped into a skittering beat that would make her light-headed in a minute.
“No time for you to be safe?”
Another head shake. He opened his mouth. Hesitated.
“It was a great lodge. Great food. Great company. I enjoy them more than my own family, sadly.” Disbelieving laugh. “It’s shaping up to be the best Christmas I’ve had in years. But it didn’t feel quite right.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice unexpectedly hoarse.
Another long pause made her think that he didn’t want to tell her.
But he did.
“I kept thinking about you.”
Something inside her soared, resisting all her attempts to grab its tail and hang on to it while keeping her feet on the ground.
“Yeah, but we’re going to see each other next week. I’m not going anywhere.”
He shrugged helplessly.
“That doesn’t help me tonight.”
And there went a large chunk of her resistance, slipping through her fingers like the string of a runaway kite on a strong wind. Still, she tried to keep it real. They’d just met. This was no fairy tale.
“Sean—”
“I got a job. My dream job, actually. I wanted to tell you. I couldn’t wait.”
“Oh, my God, you did?” She pressed a hand to her heart, unable to stop herself from giving a little hop of joy for him. “Where? What happened?”
He seemed shell-shocked by his sudden luck, but managed a quick grin.
“At Harper Rose. Isaiah’s becoming an angel investor. He told his folks that he’d give them the money to rebuild the place better than ever, but he wanted them to hire me as the executive chef. So they did.”
“What? That’s amazing!”
“I know,” he said, still looking dazed. “They’ve given me carte blanche. Who knows whether Pops will stick to that once this whole thing gets rolling, but I’m really excited. They said I could do it my way from the ground up.”
“Congratulations! You deserve it!”
His expression turned wary. Maybe even a little skeptical.
“I’m not sure. Isn’t this an example of nepotism at its finest? I mean, I’ll take it if it is, but—”
“No,” she said sharply, not liking this sudden turn. At all. “It’s an example of the Harpers needing the right chef to rebuild their restaurant and realizing that the perfect candidate has been under their noses this whole time.”
He brightened, the corners of his mouth attempting a smile that never quite took off.
“You think so?”
“Do I think so? Sean, I looked up your old restaurant online. It was gorgeous. The food looked amazing. I can’t wait to take you up on your offer to cook for me. The reviews were all glowing. If you had anything at all to do with that, then you did a great job. And you’ll do a great job here. Probably a better job because this is your baby and you want to do your best for the Harpers. They clearly don’t have any doubts about it. Neither do I.”
Shaky laugh from Sean that did nothing to hide the glimmer of vulnerability in his eyes. “Sounds like you believe in me.”
“I do believe in you, you silly goose. Why don’t you stick around and see if some of my confidence in you rubs off on you?”
This time he couldn’t keep his wide smile from emerging in all its blinding glory, like a Tah
itian sunrise.
“Did you say rub?” he said, the husky new note in his voice sending a delicious shiver across her skin.
“I sure did.” Took a step closer, opening her arms. “Why don’t you come over here so we can discuss it further?”
“In a minute,” he said, the heat in his gaze not quite so veiled now. “I’m dying to see what’s under that kimono—”
She had to laugh. “Points for knowing the difference between a robe and a kimono.”
“Never underestimate my knowledge of clothes.”
“I won’t. And there’s nothing under it, by the way.”
A breathless moment passed during which Sean gave her a thorough once-over and visually ripped the kimono off her body, his breath hitching.
She cocked one of her hips for full effect. Put a hand on it and struck one of her runway poses just to really mess with his brain.
“But don’t let me get you sidetracked.” He went completely still while the simmering heat in his gaze intensified, leaving her to marvel at his responsiveness to every little thing she did. And what a refreshing change that was. “You were saying…?”
His attention, which seemed to have snagged on where her beaded nipples rubbed against the front of the kimono, flicked back to her face. He swallowed hard. Took a beat or two gather his wits.
“Couple things,” he said huskily, never looking away as he leaned sideways and picked up his bags. “Mind if we get a little more comfortable?”
“If I were any more comfortable, I’d be asleep,” she said, fascinated by the way those eyes of his glittered when they focused on her. “You like my kimono?”
“I love your kimono. As I’m sure you noticed. I love it so much I plan to rip it off you in about three more minutes.”
“Why wait?”
He flashed a grin of unmitigated male excitement and delight, but just as quickly reined it back in.
“Because we have a couple more things to discuss and you were about to invite me inside to get a little more comfortable. Stop trying to get me sidetracked.”
Why deny it?
“Sorry.” She eased closer, savoring his helpless shudder as she gave him a gentle kiss with just a hint of tongue in it. “Not sorry.”
Somebody to Love Page 15