by Lori Wilde
Guilt zinged through Edie. What would he think if he knew she was doing a case study on him?
His face, glistening in the lamplight, hovered so close to hers.
His strong hands spanned her waist, and he pulled her into his lap. “I’ve been fighting my desire for you,” he whispered. “I know it’s wrong. You deserve someone better. Someone college-educated who can give you the moon.”
“You’re as good as any man alive, Jonah Stevenson; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And I don’t want the moon.”
“What do you want?” His breath smelled like peppermint, and his eyes shone with a fevered gleam.
At his question, a profound heat built between her legs, a heat so vehement she lost all words for speech.
“Do you want me to kiss you?”
“I can’t.” She shook her head.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Shouldn’t.”
“Then why did you come back here with me tonight?”
“To make sure you were going to be okay.”
“Is that the only reason?” He tilted his head and brushed his lips lightly against the nape of her neck.
Edie moaned low in her throat. A low guttural sound she couldn’t believe she had uttered.
Oh, how she wanted him.
Wanting him wasn’t smart or rational. Not only was he a coworker, and possibly a thief, but he was her dissertation project. Dr. Braddick had warned her about getting involved with him.
But common sense didn’t figure in where passion was concerned. The novelty of her emotions made Edie desperate to explore him while at the same time afraid of moving forward.
Jonah sensed her dilemma. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
She loved the way he said that word. His soft intonation made her feel special in a way no man ever had. She had never allowed anyone to get this close to her before. She’d always been too busy with her studies and her efforts to help others. For many years, her own needs had been put on the back burner. Now she was blindsided by the depth of her desire. She wanted him to make love to her. So very much.
But she could not.
Jonah began to nibble on her earlobe; right and wrong muddled into a beguiling stew of hungry, aching need.
When Jonah ran his tongue against the underside of her chin, caution leapt out the window, leaving her shaken to the core. She didn’t care about her dissertation or her job. Tomorrow loomed far in the hazy distance.
What mattered was now.
Jonah’s arms tightened around her, and his fingers began to explore, unbuttoning the coat and running his rough, calloused fingers over her smooth silky skin.
He seemed to know exactly where to touch—stroking and rubbing, licking and caressing. The living room spilled into a kaleidoscope of sensation—the sight of his Christmas tree in the corner, lights merrily winking. The feel of the leather couch beneath them, the scent of Jonah’s hair, the taste of sin in her mouth.
With him, she danced on the wild side. Excited and exciting. Letting loose. Letting herself go free. Letting the flow take her into uncharted territory.
His coat fell away from her shoulders. His teeth nipped lightly at her exposed flesh. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled sharply.
“You smell so good,” he murmured softly. “Like a Christmas angel.”
His hands were at her breasts, covered only by the gauzy thin strip of material she’d worn while dancing onstage. He flicked the material out of the way with his thumbs, then bent his head to draw one perky nipple into his mouth.
His tongue was liquid fire. She writhed beneath him.
He raised his head. Their eyes met, melding into something deep and ancient.
His mouth captured hers, stealing all her senses. Shivering, Edie surrendered to temptation.
HE TOOK HER TO THE living room rug, laid her down, and gazed upon her with marvel in his heart.
The gauzy material around her breasts clung wetly to her nipples where he had just suckled. Her skin glowed in the sparkling of Christmas tree lights.
Jonah caught his breath. She was so beautiful that he ached whenever he looked at her.
He held her, caressed her, kissed her. She was the rarest treasure, and he wanted their first lovemaking to last a long luxurious time.
Edie came alive beneath his fingers. Her responsiveness stirred him. Her little moans sent shafts of pure desire lancing through him.
He drowned in the scent of her, exalted in her womanhood. She was the most incredible creature he’d ever met.
“Open your eyes, Edie,” he murmured in her ear. “Open your eyes and see what you’re doing to me.”
Her eyes flew open then and widened with wonder.
Slowly, gently, he touched her between her legs, working her to a fevered pitch.
She arched her back, called his name repeatedly.
“Do you want me, Edie? Do you want the real me, faults and all? I’m not an enchanted frog waiting for your kiss in order to turn into a prince. I can’t be changed, or healed by your love,” he whispered into her ear. “But tell me it doesn’t matter. Tell me that you want me and me alone. Tell me that I’m enough for you.”
Edie stopped moving. He propped himself up on his elbow and peered down at her. A serious expression eclipsed her previous pleasure.
“Jonah.” She reached a hand for him, but he shied from her touch.
“You can’t promise me those things, can you?” A heavy sensation dropped into his gut. She couldn’t promise to take him as he was because she was just like Dawanda. She wanted him to be something he wasn’t. She couldn’t love him for himself.
“It’s not that, Jonah.” She sat up, pushing a mop of curls from her eyes.
“What is it then?”
She snagged her bottom lip between her teeth. “I can’t...there’s something...it’s just that I don’t know the real Jonah Stevenson.”
“No.” He had to acknowledge the truth. “You don’t.”
How could he expect her to give him the answer he so badly needed to hear when she suspected he was a petty criminal serving out a community service sentence?
“But you could talk to me.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “You could tell me all about yourself.”
He wasn’t some puzzle for her to piece together. Nor was he an outlaw to be reformed, but a flesh-and-blood man with both strengths and weaknesses.
But he could not tell her these things. Because of his job, he’d been forced to lie. About himself. About his motives. This was wrong. No matter how right it might feel.
He shook his head and draped his elbow across his knee. “Maybe it would be best if you went home.” She stared at him a moment, then drew in a long breath. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“Just because we have this animal magnetism going on between us doesn’t mean we have to act on it.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
He got to his feet, then held out a hand to her. “I’ll call you a car.”
EDIE STARED OUT THE rear window as the Uber pulled away from Jonah’s house, her heart wrenching in emotional pain, her body still aching with suppressed need.
He stood bare-chested in the doorway, waving goodbye, a sad expression on his face. Edie watched until the car went around the corner, then she turned to face forward.
She pulled his coat tightly around her shoulders, brought the collar to her nose, inhaled the scent of him, and very quietly started to cry.
She shouldn’t have been so disappointed in the way things had turned out, but she was. Miraculously, Jonah had saved her from making a terrible mistake, rather than taking advantage of her during a vulnerable moment. If she had made love to him, she would not only have irrevocably ruined her dissertation, but she would have lost her power to help Jonah.
For in her heart, Edie knew that if they had consummated their simmering attraction, she would have lost what shred of objectivity s
he had left.
She would have lost her head as well as her heart.
It was better this way.
Much better.
She had chosen the correct course. She’d done what was expected of her. She had been a good girl. She hadn’t completely sacrificed her dissertation. She’d done the right thing.
If that was true, why did she feel so empty inside? Nothing made sense anymore. Not her education or her job. Not her need to help others.
The only thing in her life that made sense was back there in that house on Sylvan Street. The one thing that she could not have.
Chapter Twelve
He had fallen in love with her. That realization shook Jonah to his very essence.
A week had passed since they had almost made love at his house. A week filled with tortured thoughts and sleepless nights. A week of struggling to focus on his job with miserable results.
He could not stop thinking about her, no matter how hard he tried.
When he sat in his kitchen, he could see her bent over the table, her fanny in the air, her blue jeans ripped. When he went to the drugstore to pick up prescriptions for Aunt Polly, he saw her sprawled out on the floor covered in condoms. When he sat on the couch and pressed the sofa pillows to his nose, he could smell her sweet, lovely scent.
And at work, his eyes followed her around the room like a lost puppy dog.
Somewhere, somehow, despite his best intentions to the contrary, he’d fallen for her.
Did he dare trust his feelings? He thought he’d been in love before, but Dawanda had only loved him when he did what she wanted.
Being in love again was the last thing he needed.
Especially with Edie. They were an impossible match. The bad boy and the crusader. The cynic and Miss Merry Sunshine.
Except he wasn’t all that bad anymore and hadn’t been for a long time. Not counting wrecking the mayor’s car.
But too many women had tried to change him in the past, seeking to mold him into the image they wanted. First Aunt Polly, then Beth Ann Pulaski, and finally Dawanda Beaman. In the end, he’d resented their interference.
He never wanted to resent Edie.
Every time he looked at her, his heart melted a little.
Give it a try.
But he was afraid. The little boy who’d had to fend for himself on the street was still buried inside him. The child who’d never experienced unconditional love and wasn’t even sure such a thing existed.
He wasn’t ready for this. Not while he was still playing Santa. Not while he was under strict orders not to reveal his identity to anyone.
Chief West had no idea how grueling a punishment this assignment had become.
There had been no more thefts, and he’d managed to rule Carl and Kyle out as suspects. After talking with them, he’d discovered they both had airtight alibis for each time something had turned up missing from the store.
Harry, however, was another story. As was Jules. Neither of them could adequately account for their whereabouts during several crucial incidents, and Harry’s lie detector test had been inconclusive.
And there’d been that night when Jonah had seen Harry in the mall parking lot. The same night Jules and Edie had broken into the store.
In the back of his mind, however, Jonah was beginning to suspect someone else entirely. Someone previously beyond reproach. His suspicion had started that night in the department store. The night he’d heard someone in Trotter’s office.
While he weighed the evidence and plotted his next course of action, Jonah still worked side by side with Edie, playing Santa to her elf.
She kept her distance from him, and she’d lost that familiar sparkle in her eyes. It hurt him to know he was the cause of her sadness.
But there was no way he could redeem himself. Not now. Not yet. Not until he knew for sure who was involved with the robberies. Once the case was solved, once she knew his true identity, maybe then they could start over.
TEARS WELLED IN EDIE’S eyes as she repositioned the camera. It took her a minute to collect herself before she could look up and tell the next mother in line to put her child on Santa’s lap.
She was tired of the silence between her and Jonah. Ever since that night at his house, things had been strained. He barely spoke more than he had to throughout the course of the day, and he spent a lot of time away from the sleigh. She no longer believed he was slipping off in search of booze or pills, but she couldn’t help wondering where he went.
Edie glanced at Jonah, but he avoided her gaze as he had all day long.
Now she wished she had not pleaded with Dr. Braddick to let her do a case study on him. She was involved. She was hooked, addicted, enslaved by his kisses, desperate for more.
So what if he was working out his community service obligation as a store Santa? So what if he carried a concealed weapon in his boot? Obviously, the stolen car incident had been a fluke, a one-time thing. And as far as her suspicions about his being involved with the store thefts—ludicrous! But it was almost Christmas, and if she didn’t do something soon, she’d probably never see him again.
Jonah wasn’t a thief. She’d bet her life on it.
That left her with one course of action. She’d tell him how foolish she’d been. How she’d been spying on him for her dissertation. She’d come clean. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be too angry with her. Hopefully, this wouldn’t get in the way of their budding relationship.
Tonight. She’d tell him tonight.
And let the chips fall where they may.
“MAYBE WE COULD GRAB a cup of coffee, Jonah. I really need to talk to you,” Edie said when the operator announced over the PA system that the store was closing in ten minutes.
“Uh, I have business with Mr. Trotter,” he said. “I’ll catch you later.”
Her face fell, and he knew he’d hurt her yet again. Damn. This wasn’t what he wanted. Not at all.
Edie gave a brave little shrug to show she didn’t care, but the wounded expression in her eyes branded him with guilt.
“Sure. Later.” Then quickly, before he could say something to smooth things over, she scurried away.
A notebook fell from her pocket.
“Wait,” he called to her, but apparently she didn’t hear him for she just kept walking. Jonah bent to retrieve the notebook.
He never meant to read it, but it lay open on the floor, and when he looked down, his name leapt out at him.
Case Study—Jonah Stevenson Observation—December 23
He is not a bad boy at all. It’s just a persona he hides behind to protect himself. He is good and kind and caring. He is tender and just and concerned about the feelings of others. This observer is certain he is not involved in the recent thefts at Carmichael’s Department Store. Problem— Due to inappropriate behavior on the part of this observer, the case study has been compromised. Dissertation subject will have to be changed. Approval pending Dr. Braddick.
Jonah’s hands felt at once fiery hot and icy cold. He flipped the pages, started at the beginning, and read how Edie had followed him, studied him.
Betrayed him.
He was her dissertation project.
Hard, bitter anger rose inside him. Edie was no different from Aunt Polly or Beth Ann Pulaski or Dawanda Beaman. He was nothing to her but a case study.
And to think he’d thought he was falling in love with her!
Anger, hurt, and resignation ran through him. He tucked her notebook in his pocket. Well, that would teach him to care about someone.
Jonah plunked down in the sleigh, too stunned to move. Then, from the corner of his eye, something caught his attention.
Freddie the Fish.
Again.
In the luggage aisle. The same place he’d been the first time Jonah had kissed Edie.
Freddie was pushing past shoppers, his gaze scanning the room. Then from a side door, Mr. Trotter appeared and motioned Freddie over. They talked together for a moment, heads bent, then Freddie fo
llowed Trotter back through the closed door that led to the warehouse.
Jonah narrowed his eyes and ducked down behind the sleigh. His instincts told him something was up.
What was Freddie the Fish doing with Trotter? The suspicions he’d been entertaining grew.
He climbed down from the dais and stalked through the crowd.
Children called to him. Shoppers waved as they lined up at the checkout stands. Jonah forced a smile and walked faster. A few beard hairs flew into his mouth. His artificial belly shifted, throwing him off balance.
Jonah waddled to the door Trotter and Freddie had disappeared through. He lay his ear against the door and listened.
Nothing.
Taking a deep breath, he pried the door open and stepped through.
Except for the usual boxes of merchandise, this section of the storeroom was empty.
He cocked his head and listened intently.
No voices.
He squeezed past the boxes and turned a corner. His boots echoed in the hollow stillness.
They had disappeared awfully fast.
He kept walking.
Trotter and Freddie could have gone down any corridor, disappeared behind any door.
Damn.
Frustrated, he stopped, sank his hands on his hips, and turned around.
He was in the main part of the warehouse now. The loading dock was a hundred yards to his left. It was after closing time, and the place was deserted.
Jonah scratched his head and leaned against a packing crate labeled Waste Materials.
What was happening to him? He was losing his edge. So what if Trotter was talking to Freddie? They could be related. Just because Trotter was consorting with a known thief, that didn’t mean the man was crooked.
He was letting Edie get to him. She was blowing his mind, messing with his head. She and her case study.
Jonah kicked the crate.
The wood cracked, tearing the plastic wrapping beneath.
And revealing a box of brand-new electronic equipment that didn’t look anything like waste materials.