Christie Ridgway (19 page)

He turned his face to press a swift kiss on her palm. “I had no right…”

She tried to rub his burning kiss away on her thigh. “Damn straight, you didn’t,” she agreed, doing her best to sound brisk instead of broken-down as she tugged him in the direction they’d been going. “But let

’s get it over with.”

He waited until they were hailed by an older couple in the waiting area of a trendy steak-and-seafood place to drop the next bombshell.

His mouth touched her ear.

Goose bumps raced down her neck.

“I meant,” Finn said, his breath hot and smelling faintly of cinnamon. “I had no right to tell them you’re my fiancée.”

Later she would kill him, she decided. Later when she didn’t notice that his entire body had turned to steel and that the grimacelike smile he gave to Ayesha Spencer’s parents looked as if it would crack open his face.

Her mother, a beautiful black woman with skin as supple as a teenager’s, touched the temple beside Finn

’s eye patch and blinked away tears. Her father, a tall, spare man with red hair going gray and pale blue eyes, hung onto Finn’s outstretched hand as if it could rescue him from dangerous, deep waters.

Then they turned to Bailey. She was hugged by them both. Exclaimed over as a “beauty” with “such a lovely smile.” Ayesha’s parents were effusively glad to know that Finn had found someone “new.”

That was her first hint.

Throughout the rest of the meal other clues couldn’t be ignored. They shared with her pictures of their daughter, and Bailey realized among the photographs Mrs. Spencer carried in her wallet was one of Finn and Ayesha. It looked to be a picnic setting and they were in swimsuits, his arm around her shoulders, her face turned up to his.

The older couple told Finn in detail about the marble headstone they’d placed on her grave and the memorial scholarship they’d set up at Ayesha’s high school. From his jacket pocket, Mr. Spencer pulled out a folded Orioles baseball cap.

“It was hers,” he said, fondling it as he would a child’s hair. “I thought you might like to have it, but not if…” His gaze moved from Finn’s face to Bailey’s.

Her “fiancé” took the hat, mumbled something, and signaled the waiter for another round.

None of them ate very much. Finn drank.

Three-quarters through the saddest evening of her life, Bailey got desperate enough to redirect the conversation and start talking about The Perfect Christmas. They actually ended up the evening laughing

—well, she laughed and so did Ayesha’s parents—when she told them about the surf-crazy sales help, this year’s piratical Santa, her Retired Citizen Service Patrol buddy who met her at the door of the shop when she closed each night and walked her to her car, watching her drive away only after he checked her for parking infractions with his official measuring stick.

It was closing in on midnight when the two couples went through a round of fragile hugs on the sidewalk.

Then Bailey and Finn headed off in the opposite direction from the Spencers.

Nothing was said between them. After a few minutes, she took a peek at him, trying to gauge his sobriety. Throughout the evening he’d been drinking steadily, but tonight there was none of the sloppy-drunk St. Nick in the Finn that was keeping pace beside her.

Tension continued to radiate from him. His hands in his pockets, he walked with his head down, apparently oblivious to the other people on the crowded sidewalk. They gave him a wide berth, his dark mood sending out clear warning beacons. A young guy traveling in the opposite direction tapped Bailey’s shoulder as he passed, and Finn snarled at him, shooting out a hand to pull her close to his side.

Her stomach jumped at the viselike grip of his hand on her upper arm. He left it there, keeping her near as he towed her along, his knuckles pressing into the soft side of her breast. She tried pulling away, but he drew her close again, his fingers just that much tighter.

And then, despite every reason why not, her nipples reacted to the firm touch, stiffening against the fabric of her push-up bra. A pulse started beating low in her belly. As goose bumps broke out over her skin, she tried sucking in a calming breath, but that only expanded her chest, pushing her flesh more insistently against his fingers.

They tightened again on her arm, then…pressed back?

No. It had to be an accident. But another round of prickly heat washed over her flesh. Her thin shawl was caught on her elbows and she wished she’d worn something heavier, a sweater, a coat—thick wool to smother all her suddenly leaping nerve endings.

As they continued walking, one of the fingers circling her arm straightened, then stroked against the side of her breast.

Bailey’s breath caught in her lungs.

That wasn’t a mistake. He did it again.

She flicked him a sideways glance. His expression was closed, and she was on his left side so couldn’t read anything in the patch that covered his eye. He caressed her once more.

Her knees melted.

“Okay?”

His tense, low-voiced question shivered down her spine. Okay? She was simmering like soup in a pan and he wanted it that way. He couldn’t pretend not to know what he was wreaking with those secret strokes.

“Bailey? Okay?”

What was she supposed to say?
I sat through a dinner that made me want to cry and now I’m
walking down the street and needing you and that makes me want to cry too.

Honesty didn’t seem the right way to go, but she had to come up with
something
. She looked down at her bare hands for inspiration and said the first dumb thing that popped into her dizzy brain. “I’m thinking I don’t have so much as a promise ring, let alone one that proclaims we’re engaged.”

Finn’s step hitched. His jaw hardened.

Bailey felt like an idiot. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Then she sighed, knowing there was no joke, no laugh, nothing that would make walking down the street with this elephant between them possible Sighing, she stopped short to turn and grip the lapels of his coat.

“I’m confused, Finn.”

“About?”

The dinner we just had? And now your hand teasing my breast?
“You and Ayesha,” she said. “The two of you…” Stupid how hard those words were to say. But of course he’d moved on with his life. She cleared her throat. “The two of you were in love, right?”

He was staring down at her fingers on his coat. “What makes you say that?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Spencer couldn’t have made it any clearer without taking out an ad.”

There was a long silence, then he dropped her arm.

“You’re wrong. They’re wrong. Sort of.” His gaze focused over her head, down the dark street. “She had feelings for me. Maybe…” He shrugged. “But we worked together and I didn’t think it was a good idea to take things in that direction.”

“So you
didn’t
have feelings for her?”

“Damn it!” The barked words caused a passing couple to give them a startled glance, then hurry off. His fingers curled into fists. “Do we have to do this? Do we have to talk
now
?”

But Bailey wouldn’t back down, ironic as it was that at the start of the evening she’d been dreading a personal conversation. “No. We can go back to Coronado, leaving forever the mystery of why you brought
me
tonight and why—”

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up on her tiptoes so they were face-to-face. “Why I want you so bad I’m walking with a flagpole in my pants? Why your nipples are so hard it looks like you stuffed cherries in your bra?”

She jerked back in his grasp. “Finn—”

Her bad boy kissed her quiet. Fierce, demanding, all hot lips and needy tongue, and the only things swept clean were the sensible objections from her head.

Bailey Sullivan’s Vintage Christmas

Facts & Fun Calendar

December 13

Bell ringing at Christmas is a holdover from pagan times when noisemakers were sounded to frighten away evil spirits during winter solstice festivals.

Towing Bailey in the direction of his loft, Finn knew he’d had too much to drink—though he wasn’t anywhere near binge drunk. Christ, that would be easier. Then he’d be on his way to passing out and feeling nothing, not the grinding loss of Ayesha or the greedy hunger for the woman beside him. There was disaster in the offing, he could feel it, smell it like cordite in the air, but he didn’t give a flying fuck about his sixth sense this time.

“What are we doing? Where are we going?”

He shut her up again by hauling her close for another kiss, thrusting his tongue in her mouth to ensure she kept quiet. There’d been enough of talking tonight and now every cell and fiber of him craved action.

For days, months, hell, it felt like
years
, he’d been living in the past. Tonight he needed something more than memories and regrets. Something that was
now
.

The rest of the world might wait until December 31. For Finn, this was the moment to usher out the old and bring in the new.

He set Bailey back on her heels. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth was wet. She licked at his taste on her bottom lip, and at the sight of her pink, velvety tongue, his cock jerked against the hot skin of his belly.

“I’m going home,” he told her, his voice hoarse. Dark, like his mood. “To my loft. Are you with me?”

Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed her hand and pulled her into the lobby of the next building.

“Why do I hear an ‘or against me’ in the air?” she asked, even as he gave a nod at the security guard and pushed her into the waiting elevator.

When the doors shushed shut, he backed her into a corner and circled her waist with his hands. Desire was pumping like a steady back rhythm in his blood, a beat on two, a beat on four, driving up his temperature. Driving up his desperation.

“I’m not playing word games, GND. I want to touch you. Feel you.” She started to say something, but his right fingers pressed briefly against her lips. “In silence.”

She blinked. “Silence?”

He slid his hands up the bumps of her ribs to stop just below her breasts. Her short, fast breaths pushed the edge of his fingers closer to their soft rise. “Near silence, then. You’re allowed ‘like that,’ ‘there,’ ‘

please,’ ‘more.’ Nothing else.”

Bailey had never asked for his touch in her life, but he needed to be sure tonight was without words.

Without emotions.

With only that insistent thump of blood in his veins.

She swallowed, a flush rising on her throat. “Finn—”

His hands cupped her breasts, squeezed. “Decide.”

The elevator doors opened before she had a chance to reply. He tugged her through them and then to his front door. It opened, then shut with a firm click, leaving them alone in the locked privacy of his loft.

He pushed her against the gunmetal gray paint, staring her down in the dim glow of the one lamp he’d left on in the living area. “Sex, or no?”

She wanted him, he didn’t doubt that, but she could still roll her heaven-blue eyes. “Oh gee, stop with the hearts and flowers, will ya?”

He wouldn’t tell her he’d broken the bank in the hearts and flowers department ten years ago and she’d run away before he could prove it to her. That was then; this was now. “Why are you complaining? From what I can tell your bed’s been empty lately.”

She stiffened. “You really investigated me?”

“Didn’t have to. I know you, remember?” Action. Bending his head, he tongued the curve where her jaw met her throat. “You’re picky.”

She shivered under his hands. “I…I picked you, didn’t I?” The words sounded shaky. “Wh-what does that say?”

He feathered kisses from her ear to her mouth. “That you’re talking too much.
We’re
talking too much.”

Without words, remember? Without emotion. His teeth nipped her bottom lip.

She arched against him, and he heard that telltale swallowed moan that was the muted sound of Bailey turned on.

Just like that, the two and four rhythmic pound of his blood expanded to a heavy metal–band blast beat.

In music production it could create a wall of sound. In Finn it created an explosion of want.

He pressed his erection against her soft mons. “Decide.”

“Finn…Is this smart?”

“Talking too much. Thinking too much.” His mouth moved to her ear and he licked the lobe. “It’s simple.

Sex, or no?”

“Neither…one…” Her head tilted to give him better access to her neck.

“Neither one what?” He licked along the pale column.

“A word…you said I could use.”

He smiled against her lips as he kissed her. “Add ‘sex’ to the short list.”

A heartbeat passed. A second one. Then her arms slid up his chest as she offered her mouth to him again. “Oh, fine. It’s Christmas, isn’t it? Please, Finn. More.”

So many words when only a single would do. Wasn’t that just like a woman? But as he went lip-to-lip, need exploded inside him again like sound inside an echo chamber, reverberating like another pulse.

Reminding him this wasn’t just any woman in his arms. This was Bailey.

Her mouth opened under the pressure of his and he swept his tongue along the slick surface of her teeth.

He tickled the underside of her upper lip and she crowded closer to him. His hands fell to her ass and he tilted her hips against his, grinding against her with no more finesse than a teenager dry-humping his way through a slow dance. His cock pulsed. Ready to go. Ready to go off.

He groaned, pushing her away. “I need air.”

Her palms flat against the door, she leaned back, her mouth red, her breasts heaving in that pretty dress.

And just like that, touching her was imperative again.

There was a wide belt at her waist. He pretended not to notice his shaking fingers and her shuddering breaths as he unfastened it. When he peeled it back, it took the sides of the Bailey-blue dress with it, unwrapping the garment like the petals of a flower.

Underneath the fabric she was wearing a strapless, black lace bra, matching panties, thigh-high stockings that clung to the sweet inner flesh of her legs.