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Sex was, admittedly, a distant and foggy memory. But every detail of that kiss under the mistletoe was still seared into her brain despite all of her efforts to forget about it, tempting her with the unspoken promise of so much more.
“Oh. My. God.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You’ve been holding out on me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mentioned the word kiss and your eyes got this totally dreamy look and your cheeks actually flushed.”
Allison’s cheeks burned hotter. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” her friend decided. “When? Where? And who?”
Because she knew Chelsea wouldn’t be dissuaded, she answered her questions in order. “Before Christmas, at a party. It was just one kiss, and no way am I telling you who.”
“Before Christmas? And I’m only hearing about this now?”
“It wasn’t a big deal.” Which was a big fat lie, but she mentally crossed her fingers in the hope that her friend might believe it.
“Just one kiss?”
She nodded.
“Honey, if you’re still blushing over one kiss more than three weeks later, it isn’t just a big deal, it must have been one helluva kiss.”
“I haven’t been kissed like that in...” Allison tried to think back to a time when another man had touched her the way Nathan had touched her, kissed her as if he wanted nothing more than to go on kissing her, and her mind came up blank “...ever.”
“Ty—” Chelsea called out to the man working the other end of the bar. “Can you cover for me for a few minutes?”
He winked at her. “Your wish is my command.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes as she came around to the other side of the bar and slid onto the empty stool beside her friend, so they could talk without their conversation being overheard.
“Tell me about your holidays,” Allison suggested, hoping to redirect her friend’s focus.
Chelsea shook her head. “Uh-uh. This is about you, not me.”
“But your life is so much interesting.”
“Not this time.”
Allison traced the base of her wineglass with a fingertip. “It really was just one kiss, and it’s not going any further than that.”
“Why not?” her friend demanded.
“Because it was the office Christmas party.”
“It was someone you work with?”
She nodded.
“How closely?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.”
“Too closely.”
Chelsea sighed. “Can’t you give me at least a hint?”
She wished she could. In fact, she wished she could tell her friend everything. But Chelsea was a die-hard romantic, and the last thing Allison wanted or needed was any encouragement. Because even knowing all of the reasons that getting involved with Nathan Garrett would be a mistake, even knowing he’d been with Melanie Hedley in Colorado, she couldn’t help wishing he would kiss her again.
“No, because you’ll encourage me to do something crazy, and anything more than that one kiss would be totally crazy.”
“He really has you flustered,” Chelsea mused.
“It looks like Ty could use a hand behind the bar.”
“He’s fine.” Then her attention shifted, and her lips curved. “Although maybe I should vacate this stool for a customer—because there’s one headed in this direction who should be able to make you forget the mystery kisser and probably your own name.”
Allison turned her head to follow her friend’s gaze and sucked in a breath when her eyes locked with Nathan Garrett’s cool gray ones.
She immediately turned back to Chelsea. “Are you crazy? He’s practically my boss.”
She didn’t know if it was the words or the heat that she could feel infusing her cheeks, but somehow her response magically tied all of the loose threads together for her friend.
“It was him,” Chelsea stated. “You kissed Nathan Garrett.”
“He kissed me,” she clarified. “And it was only because of the mistletoe.”
“If he’d kissed me, I wouldn’t have let it end there.”
“You mean he hasn’t kissed you?”
Her friend’s brows lifted. “I know he has a reputation, but it isn’t all bad. In fact—” she grinned “—most of it is very good. And if he’s half as good a kisser as his brother Daniel, I can understand why your pulse is still racing.”
“My pulse isn’t still racing,” she denied.
Chelsea just smiled, rising from her stool as the soon-to-be CFO slid onto the vacant seat on Allison’s opposite side.
“What can I get for you, Nate?” Chelsea asked, returning to her position behind the bar.
“I’ll have a Pepsi.”
“Straight up or on the rocks?”
He smiled. “On the rocks.”
The bartender stepped away to pour his soda, and Nate turned to Allison. “You skipped out early today.”
She shook her head. “I only take a half-hour lunch each day so I can finish at four on Fridays.”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Is that going to be a problem, Mr. Garrett?”
“I don’t see why it would.”
Allison picked up her wine, set it down again. Dammit—Chelsea was right. Her pulse was racing and her knees were weak, and there was no way she could sit here beside him, sharing a drink and conversation and not think about the fact that her tongue had tangled with his.
“I think I’m going to call it a night.”
“You haven’t finished your wine,” he pointed out.
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Stay,” he said.
She lifted her brows. “I don’t take orders from you outside of the office, Mr. Garrett.”
“Sorry—your insistence on calling me ‘Mr. Garrett’ made me forget that we weren’t at the office,” he told her. “Please, will you keep me company for a little while?”
“I’m sure there are any number of other women here who will happily keep you company when I’m gone.”
“I don’t want anyone else’s company,” he told her.
“Mr. Garrett—”
“Nate.”
She sighed. “Why?”
“Because it’s my name.”
“I meant, why do you want my company?”
“Because I like you,” he said simply.
“You don’t even know me.”
His gaze skimmed down to her mouth, lingered, and she knew he was thinking about the kiss they’d shared. The kiss she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.
“So give me a chance to get to know you,” he suggested.
“You’ll have that chance when you’re in the CFO’s office.”
She frowned at the plate of pita bread and spinach dip that Chelsea slid onto the bar in front of her. “I didn’t order this.”
“But you want it,” her friend said, and the wink that followed suggested she was referring to more than the appetizer.
“Actually, I want my bill. It’s getting late and...” But her friend had already turned away.
She was tempted to walk out and leave Chelsea to pick up the tab, but the small salad she’d made for her own dinner after Dylan had gone was a distant memory and she had no willpower when it came to the Bar Down’s three-cheese spinach dip.
Allison blew out a breath and picked up a grilled pita triangle. “The service here sucks.”
“I’ve always found that the company of a beautiful woman makes up for many deficiencies.”
It was, she was sure, just one of a thousand similar lines that tripped easily off of his tongue. And while she wanted to believe that she was immune to such an obvious flirtatious ploy, the heat pulsing through her veins proved otherwise.
Then he smiled—that slow, sexy smile that never failed to make her skin tingle. It had been a long time since she’d been an active participant in the games men and women played—so long, in fact, that she wasn’t sure she even knew the rules anymore.
What she did know was that Nathan Garrett was way out of her league.
Chapter Three
Nate didn’t usually have any trouble reading a woman’s signals, but while Allison’s words were denying any interest, the visible racing of her pulse beneath her ear said something completely different.
She didn’t want to want him, but she did. That wasn’t arrogance but fact, and one that was supported by the memory of the kiss they’d shared. A kiss that, for some inexplicable reason, she was pretending had never happened. He was tempted to ask her why, but he decided it wasn’t the time or the place. Because he knew if he pushed, she’d just walk away—and he didn’t want her to walk away.
So he picked up his glass and gestured to the plate in front of her. “Are you going to share that?”
She took her time chewing, as if thinking about his request. Then she shrugged and nudged the plate so that it was between them.
He’d eaten dinner with his brother, but she didn’t know that, so he selected a piece of bread and dunked it. He was usually a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, but the grilled bread in the warm cheesy spinach dip was surprisingly tasty. “This is good,” he said.
“And addictive,” Allison agreed, popping another piece into her mouth. “Which is why I rarely come here.”
“Not because of the poor service?”
Her lips curved, just a little. “That, too.”
Her smile, reluctant though it was, stirred something low in his belly.
She was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way, her sexiness tempered by sweet. Definitely attractive, just not his type. Or so he’d always thought. He’d had countless conversations with her, sat in numerous meetings beside her, and never felt anything more than mild interest.
Until the Christmas party.
When Allison walked into the ballroom that night, it was as if a switch had flicked inside him, causing awareness to course through his blood like a high-voltage electrical current. And he didn’t even know why. Sure, she looked different—but not drastically different.
Her hair, always tied in a knot at the back of her head at the office, was similarly styled, but the effect was softer somehow, with a few strands escaping to frame her face, emphasizing her delicate bone structure and creamy skin. Her eyes seemed bigger and darker, and her lips were glossy and pink, and deliciously tempting.
He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen her in a dress before. Certainly he’d never seen her in a dark green off-the-shoulder style that hugged her slender torso and flared out into a flirty little skirt that skimmed a few inches above her knees. Or in three-inch heels that emphasized shapely legs and actually made his mouth water.
She sat with a group of coworkers from the finance department for the meal, and he found himself sneaking glances in her direction—trying to figure out why he was so suddenly and inexplicably captivated by a woman he’d known for four years. He saw her dancing a couple of times early in the evening. She seemed to be pretty tight with Skylar Lockwood, his cousin’s office administrator, and they looked to be enjoying themselves. The music was mostly fast and upbeat, with the occasional slow song thrown in to give the dancers a chance to catch their collective breath.
During one of those times, he watched his dad lead his mom to the dance floor. Even after more than forty years of marriage, they had eyes only for each other, and the obvious closeness and affection between them warmed something inside him. He’d never wanted what they had—and what each of his brothers had found with their respective spouses. And yet, he’d recently found himself considering that he might be ready for something more than the admittedly shallow relationships that had been the norm in his life for so long. Not that he was looking to put a ring on any woman’s finger, but maybe a toothbrush in her bathroom wouldn’t be so bad.
The vibration of his phone against his hip had him moving out of the ballroom to respond to the call. The name on the display gave him pause. Mallory was definitely not a woman with whom he would ever have something more, although there had been a time when he’d believed otherwise. Then he’d found out that his flight attendant girlfriend had also been dating a pilot she worked with, an Australian entrepreneur and a French banker during the time they were together.
More than a year after their final breakup, he had to wonder why she was reaching out to him now. And because he was curious, he answered the call. The connection wasn’t great, so he moved into the cloakroom—where it was a little bit quieter and more private—to talk to her. While her claims of missing him had soothed his bruised ego, he wasn’t at all tempted by her explicit offer to reconnect when she passed through town again.
He’d just tucked the phone back into his pocket when Allison had come in to get her coat. And in that moment, he completely forgot about Mallory and every other woman he’d ever dated. In that moment, he wanted only Allison.
And when he noticed that someone had pinned a sprig of mistletoe in the center of the arched entranceway, he couldn’t resist using it to his advantage.
“Refill?”
The question jarred him back to the present. He glanced up at Chelsea, who was pointing to his empty glass.
“Sure.”
The bartender nodded, then shifted her attention to Allison. “One more?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m going to head home.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone,” she said firmly, definitively.
“But it’s late,” Chelsea protested, looking pointedly in Nate’s direction.
“I live down the street,” Allison reminded her.
“Down a dark street.”
She shook her head. “Could I have my bill, please?”
Her friend looked at Nate again before she moved to the cash register to calculate the tab.
He knew how to take a hint—and he appreciated the opportunity the bartender had given to him. “I can give you a lift home,” he told Allison.
“I really do live just down the street—it’s not even far enough to drive.”
“Then I’ll walk with you,” he said.
“I appreciate the offer,” she said. “But it’s not necessary.”
“Chelsea thinks it is.”
“I don’t think that’s what Chelsea’s thinking,” she admitted to him.
His brows lifted at that; Allison just shook her head.
When Chelsea returned with the bill, Nate passed her his credit card. “Add my drink and put it on that.”
“I can pay my own bill,” Allison protested, but her friend had already walked away again.
“You shared your spinach dip with me,” Nate reminded her.
“I wouldn’t have eaten the whole thing by myself—or shouldn’t have, anyway.” But when he signed his name to the credit card receipt Chelsea put in front of him, she accepted that it was an argument that she wasn’t going to win. “Thank you, Mr. Garrett.”
“Nate,” he reminded her.
She slid off of her stool and picked up her coat. He rose to his feet, intending to walk her to her door.
“I’m just going to the ladies’ room,” she told him.
“Oh.” He sat down again, and watched out of the corner of his eye as she headed toward the alcove with the restrooms.
Chelsea finished serving another patron at the bar, then came back to him, shaking her head. “You’re too accustomed to women falling at your feet, aren’t you?”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that you just let Allison slip out the door.”
“She just went to the ladies’ room.”
“With her coat?”
He swore under his breath as he reached for his own.
Chelsea put her hand on his arm, shaking her head. “If you chase after her now, you’re not only going to look pathetic, you’re going to scare her away.”
He scowled at that.
“I thought you’d appreciate the opportunity to walk her home,” she continued. “But maybe you’re not as interested as I thought.”
“Just because you once dated my brother for a few weeks doesn’t give you the right to pry into my personal life.”
“No,” she agreed. “But the fact that I’m Allison’s best friend gives me the right to pry into hers.”
“Then why aren’t you talking to her?”
“I tried,” she admitted. “But she doesn’t kiss and tell.”
However, the twinkle in her eye in conjunction with her word choice suggested that she knew more than she was letting on.
“Neither do I,” he said.
“So don’t talk,” she said. “Just listen.”
He picked up his soda and sipped.
“She doesn’t date—or hardly ever, and she definitely doesn’t sleep around. So if you’re not looking for anything more than a good time, you should look elsewhere.”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he admitted.
“Then you better figure it out. And if you decide you want Allison, be prepared for the obstacles she’ll put in your path every step of the way.”
“Is that supposed to be a challenge or a warning?”
“That depends entirely on you,” Chelsea said.
Nate considered what she’d said as he walked out of the bar. She was right—he could take her words as a warning and decide to forget about the sexy executive assistant, and that was probably the smart thing to do. On the other hand, he was more intrigued by Allison Caldwell than he’d been by any other woman in a very long time—and he never turned away from a challenge.
* * *
“Come on, Dylan. Your breakfast is on the table.”
It was the third time she’d called to him, and finally he wandered out of his bedroom, still in his pajamas, his hair sticking up in various directions. She looked at her sleepy-eyed son and felt the familiar rush of affection.
She hadn’t thought too much about getting married or having a baby before she found herself pregnant at twenty-one, but she’d never believed her son was anything but a gift. He wasn’t always an easy child—there were times when he challenged and frustrated and infuriated her, but she loved him with every ounce of her being.
As he passed her on the way to the table, she gave him a quick hug and dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “Good morning.”
“Mornin’,” was his sleepy reply. He settled into his usual chair at the table and scowled at the box of cereal on the table. “Can’t I have waffles?”
“Not this morning,” she told him.
His scowl deepened as he poured the Fruity O’s into his bowl, then added milk. “Can I have pizza in my lunch?”
“We don’t have any pizza.” She cut the sandwich she’d made in half diagonally and put it in a snap-lock container.
He responded with something that sounded like, “Idon’wannasan’ich,” but the words were garbled through a mouthful of cereal.
“It’s ham and cheese,” she told him. “Your favorite.”
“M’favrit’spza.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
He swallowed. “My favorite’s pizza.”
“We don’t have any pizza,” she said again, adding grapes and cookies to his lunch box.
“Can we have pizza for dinner?”
“You’re going to be at your dad’s for dinner,” she reminded him.
He shoveled another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. “I’sThursdy.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Joslynsgot—”
“Chew and swallow, please.”
He did so. “Jocelyn’s got piano and Jillian’s got dance.”
“Lucky for them.”
“Not for me,” he grumbled. “’Cause I get dragged everywhere with them.”
She wasn’t without sympathy. She could only imagine how painful it was for an almost-nine-year-old boy to sit around while his younger sisters were involved in their own activities.
“Take your 3DS,” she suggested, expecting him to jump at the offer.
“We’re not s’posed to have ’lectronics at school,” he told her.
She held back a sigh as she zipped up his lunch box and slid it into the front pocket of his backpack, double-checking to ensure that his rescue inhaler was where it was supposed to be. “Keep it in your locker.”
He shoved more Fruity O’s into his mouth, but he chewed and swallowed before speaking again. “Where’s St. Louis, anyway?”
She opened the atlas she kept on hand to assist with his geography homework and pointed out Missouri. “Right there.”
He studied the map. “It’s a lot farther than Washington.”
She knew he meant Washington, DC, which they’d visited the previous summer. “Yes, it is,” she confirmed.
“Why do you hafta go there?”
“It’s a business trip,” she said, trying not to sound impatient as she glanced—again—at the clock.
“When are you gonna be home?”
“Tonight,” she said. “And I’ll pick you up straight from the airport.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
He pushed back his chair and started to carry his empty bowl and juice cup to the dishwasher. She was trying to teach him to pick up after himself—an uphill battle, to be sure—but she decided that today wasn’t a day for lessons. Not if she wanted to get Dylan to school and herself to the airport on time.
“I’ll do that.” She took the dishes from him. “You go brush your teeth and get dressed.”
Thankfully, he didn’t drag his heels too much while doing so, and they were only three minutes behind schedule when they walked out the door. If the traffic lights cooperated, she might be able to make up that time on the way. But before Dylan climbed into the backseat of her car, she took the time to give him a hug and a kiss, because she knew he wouldn’t accept any outward displays of affection when she dropped him off in front of the school.
He didn’t say too much on the drive, and she knew that his mind was already shifting its focus to the day ahead. She was pleased that he did well in school, and frustrated by the realization that his success hadn’t led to enjoyment. She thought he might like it more—or at least hate it less—if he made some friends, but he didn’t choose to interact with many of the other students, except if the teacher forced them to work in groups, and even then, he didn’t say much as he quietly did the work that was assigned.
She pulled up in front of the school as the bell rang and watched as he walked up the front steps to the main doors. It seemed like only yesterday that he’d refused to let go of her hand on his first day in kindergarten. The years had gone so fast, and so much had changed since then. Now he was in third grade, and she was lucky if he bothered to wave goodbye when she dropped him off.
He did today, lifting his hand as he glanced over his shoulder before he pulled open the door and disappeared inside, and the casual gesture tugged at her heart.
Then she pulled away from the school and turned toward the airport.
* * *
The acting CFO was already at the gate when Allison arrived.
Nate offered her a smile and a large coffee. “Cream only.”
She didn’t ask how he knew, she just accepted it gratefully. “Thanks.”
As she sipped her coffee, she tried to focus on what she’d told her son—that this was a business trip, not unlike so many other business trips she’d made with John Garrett in the past. Except that this time she was traveling with her boss’s nephew, and the memory of that one stolen kiss was still far too vivid in her mind.
When they boarded the plane, she was grateful that flying business class meant they wouldn’t be sitting as close together as they would if they were in coach. Although Nathan didn’t have the same girth across his belly as his uncle, he was a couple inches taller, his shoulders were broader and his legs were longer.
He paused at the aisle to let her precede him.
“You don’t want the window seat?”
“No, I like the aisle.”
“Oh. Okay.” She slipped past him and into her seat.
He settled beside her and buckled his belt.
His choice of aisle over window wasn’t a big deal, except that she couldn’t help feeling as if she was trapped between the wall and Nate’s body. Nate’s long, lean and delicious-smelling body.
She tried to ignore his proximity, but every time she drew in a breath, she inhaled his scent and felt a little quiver low in her belly.
Seriously, the man was dangerous to her peace of mind.
While everyone else was boarding, she kept her attention focused on her tablet, checking her calendar for the dates and times of meetings in the next couple of weeks. Nate, she noted, was reading a newspaper, but he tucked it away when the flight attendant began to review the safety procedures of the aircraft.