Mistletoe & Margaritas

Chapter Three

Having the garage door open let in the morning chill, but it let out the four-stroke exhaust as Justin revved the engine of his snowmobile, warming it up so he could transfer it to the trailer for the riding season. When he could sneak a free day, all he had to do was hook the trailer up to the truck and drive to a trailhead.

Once he’d loaded his machine up, he pulled back the cover on the sled in the back corner of his garage. It wouldn’t go on the trailer and the registration sticker was long expired, but Justin set the choke and fired it up anyway.

It was Brendan’s sled and he couldn’t bring himself to sell it, but he couldn’t let it sit and gather dust, either. So he kept it covered, did the maintenance it really didn’t need and ran the engine every so often. Now, listening to his best friend’s pride and joy, he wondered if it was time to let it go. If Claire could take off her wedding ring, he could pass the sled on to a new owner.

He’d have to talk to her about it, of course. Technically, she owned it. But she had no interest in snowmobiling and, since her apartment didn’t come with any garage space, she’d asked Justin to hold on to it. So that’s what he’d done.

The cell phone vibrated in his pocket, so he hit the kill switch on the sled and pulled it out, thankful for any distraction right now. He smiled at the name on the screen and flipped the phone open. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetie. Are you busy?”

“Never too busy for you. Where are you?”

“I don’t know. Del, where are we?” Justin heard the low rumble of his father’s voice. “He says we’re about four hours away from Branson, Missouri. We’re going to spend a few days there and then head down to Texas.”

“You guys don’t even like country music,” he said as he put a red thumbtack into Branson on the huge map hung on the garage wall. Then he took a fine-tipped permanent marker and wrote in the date.

“I know, but your father heard there’s a Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum there, so off we go.”

That had been their motto-Off We Go-since they’d sold the house to Justin, bought an RV and hit the road a year and a half before. After decades of hard work and accumulating stuff, they’d made the decision to have the mother of all yard sales, gave away what was left over and became nomads.

At the time, Justin had been sharing an apartment with a guy he didn’t like and that was so small most of his stuff was still at his parents’. Since he didn’t seem any closer to finding a wife or starting a family, buying the house he’d grown up in seemed like a good idea. And they’d given him a helluva deal on it, too.

“How’s Claire?” his mother asked as he walked through the mudroom that connected the garage to the kitchen.

“She’s good. I’m taking her to get her Christmas tree in a while.”

“Give her our best, of course. Anything else interesting going on? The house okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Ma. I can’t think of anything that’s changed since the last time I talked to you.”

Except Claire’s newly bare ring finger, of course, but he was trying to convince himself it didn’t mean anything and therefore wasn’t newsworthy.

“Your father’s pulling into a gas station and you know how he is. He makes me turn off the cell phone while he pumps gas, even when I stay in the RV.”

“Better safe than sorry.” He rolled his eyes, thankful she couldn’t see him do it. “Tell Dad I said hi and I love you both.”

“We love you, too, sweetie. I’ll talk to you soon.”

After they hung up, he dropped a couple slices of bread into the toaster, then smeared the popped toast with peanut butter. He’d need the protein to survive Christmas tree shopping with Claire. Her taste in decorations ran to Better Homes and Gardens. Her budget and her apartment didn’t.

If there was one thing he knew for sure, it was that the first tree she tried to buy would be at least eight feet tall.

Claire took one look at the Douglas fir and fell in love. “This is my Christmas tree.”

“No, it’s not.” Justin nudged her, but she planted her feet. “Keep walking.”

“What’s the matter with this one?”

“It’s too big.”

“There’s no such thing as a too-big Christmas tree.”

He eyeballed the fir, then shook his head. “Even trimmed up, this is at least an eight-foot tree.”

“I have an eight-foot ceiling.” She folded her arms, determined to be stubborn about it, but he laughed at her.

“You have sloped ceilings. The only place it’s eight feet is smack dab in the center of the living room.”

“Then I’ll put it there.”

“And when you call me because you couldn’t tether it and Moxie pulled it over swinging from the branches, I’ll laugh before I hang up on you.”

“But-”

“Keep walking, Rutledge.”

“Maybe I could tether it-”

“No, you can’t tether it to the ceiling.”

“Grinch,” Claire muttered. After a final, mournful glance at the Christmas tree of her dreams, she kept walking.

After fifteen minutes, he’d vetoed several more trees and Claire’s holiday mood was slipping like a thirty-year-old transmission. “What’s the matter with this one?”

“When you touched it, half the needles fell off. It must have been cut in an earlier batch because it’s not going to last and you’ll end up with lights hanging off naked branches.”

She flicked one of the branches and watched the needles flit to the ground, hating when he was right. “So my friend Penny was asking about you.”

“Not interested.”

That was as far as she usually would have taken it, but she hated the way his expression closed off and felt an urge to poke at him a little. Plus, maybe if he was seeing a friend of hers she’d stop having decidedly nonplatonic thoughts about him. “You could ask her to Cal’s Christmas party tonight. It’s last minute, but pretty casual.”

“You’re going with me to Cal’s. Like always.”

And he’d crash on her couch, like always. The problem was the fact she didn’t always have hot, sweaty dreams about him. She didn’t always toss and turn thinking thoughts she had no business thinking about him.

“Whatever,” she said. “I told her I liked her too much to hook her up with you, anyway.”

He turned to scowl at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I like Penny. Why would I set her up with a guy that’s going to take her out a few times and then dump her?”

“What makes you think I’d do that?”

“It’s what you always do.”

“That’s a pretty rotten thing to say.”

“It’s the truth, and you know it.”

He turned his back on her, then walked to a stand of four-foot trees, which made her sigh. She knew he was being practical-he did practical so well-but these trees weren’t going to be gracing the pages of magazines any time soon. “This one’s good.”

What it lacked in height, the tree made up for with full, symmetrical branches and needles that didn’t scatter when she breathed on them. “At least I won’t need a stepladder to put the star on top.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Leaving the lot attendant to wrap the tree in netting, Claire and Justin made their way through the crowd to the cashier at the back of the lot. Pinned to the stack of wooden crates serving as a makeshift stand for the cash box were sprigs of mistletoe bound by red string. On impulse, Claire grabbed one and added it to her total.

“What’s that for?” Justin demanded as she shoved her change in her pocket.

“It’s mistletoe.”

“I know what it is. Why did you buy it?”

“Because it’s a Christmas decoration and because it’s fun. Same reason you have a snow globe with a picture of your snowmobile in it.”

“I have a snow globe with a picture of my sled in it because you gave it to me last Christmas. And I don’t kiss a girl every time I shake it and make the snow fly. You’re supposed to kiss somebody under the mistletoe.”

That was true, which meant she really needed to have a talk with her subconscious. First sex dreams and now an excuse to kiss a guy in her apartment. “I thought it would look cute. Stop overanalyzing my impulse buy.”

“Who are you planning to kiss?”

“Moxie,” she snapped, just to shut him up.

They found her wrapped tree and, after showing the attendant her receipt, she took the light end-careful not to bend the top branch where the star would rest-and Justin took the heavier base end and they carried it to his truck. He probably could have just swung the thing over his shoulder and carried it alone, but she liked to at least pretend to do her share. He took the heavy end again to carry it up the stairs to her apartment and then helped her center it in the stand she already had waiting.

When he started working on tethering the tree to the wall, necessary thanks to Christmas trees bringing out Moxie’s inner kitten, Claire went to the kitchen to wash the sap off her hands. Unfortunately, the kitchen was more of an area than an actual room, which meant she could see him from the sink. Tethering the tree required a lot of leaning and stretching and the leaning and stretching kept making his T-shirt ride up, and she wondered how she’d never noticed how incredibly sexy the small of his back was.

And now that she was looking, that exposed strip of skin wasn’t the only thing sexy about him. There was the way he filled out his blue jeans. The way his broad shoulders moved under his T-shirt. The way his hair curled just a little at the base of his neck because he was overdue for a haircut. And when he turned and grinned at her, she went ahead and mentally penciled that in at the top of the list.

“Moxie would need a chainsaw to take this sucker down now.”

She tried, as a rule, never to compare Brendan and Justin, other than a natural curiosity at times as to how two such opposite men had been best friends for almost their entire lives.

Justin was worn jeans and faded T-shirts, usually with a hole at the back of the collar where the tag sometimes stuck out because rather than grab the hem, he took off his shirts by grabbing the back of the neck, bunching the fabric and hauling it over his head. If she needed a repair done, Justin would load the supplies in his truck, show up and get it done in exchange for food and all the iced tea she could pour. He liked country music and liked to watch movies at home, where he could pop the button on his jeans and put his feet on the coffee table.

Brendan was khakis and button-down shirts. He listened to classic rock and loved going to the movie theater to experience films the way the directors intended him to. If a repair needed doing, he would call somebody to fix it, write the check and then take Claire out someplace on the town so the construction wouldn’t bother her.

Such different guys with an unbreakable bond. And they both meant everything to her.

“You want me to hang that mistletoe?”

“No, thanks. I’ll hang it somewhere later.” If he hung it, then he’d end up standing under it and she might be tempted to kiss him.

“This is the part where you offer me food,” he reminded her.

“We’ll be at Cal’s party in a few hours and there’s always tables of food.”

“The keywords being in a few hours.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled open the refrigerator. “I don’t have much. Haven’t worked up the ambition to go grocery shopping in a while. Deli meat. A leftover chicken breast. It was a little dry the first time around, so I don’t think a microwave is going to help it any. I could slice it thin, maybe. Make a sandwich with lots of mayo.”

“You got any chocolate pudding?” His voice so close to her ear made her jump.

He was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder. With one hand on the open door and the other braced on the fridge itself, she was trapped by his body and awareness of it crackled through her like an August wildfire.

It had to be that stupid dream, she told herself. Now that she knew her body was thinking about sex again, she was fabricating desire where it didn’t exist. She didn’t feel that way about Justin.

He moved closer, trying to see around her, and when his hip bumped hers, it took every ounce of self-control she had not to react. Okay, so maybe she felt that way about Justin a little. But it would pass. As long as he didn’t catch on, things wouldn’t get weird and eventually her body would find somebody else to lust after.

She hoped.

“Next right,” Justin told the cab driver, who put on his turn signal and slowed the car. Then he sent a quick text to Claire to let her know they’d arrived.

Neither of them were big drinkers, but the booze flowed freely at Cal’s Christmas parties and Justin would have at least a couple of beers and Claire would have some kind of sparkly, fruity drink. Before Brendan’s accident, he would have risked it, telling himself two drinks was nothing. But, even though alcohol wasn’t a factor in the accident, Justin had been the one to visit the impound and collect any personal items from the mangled wreck that had been Brendan’s car. Since then, he did what he could to make sure his family wouldn’t have to do the same.

When the cab was in Park, Justin got out and walked around to open Claire’s door for her just in time to see her making her way carefully down the staircase in red high heels he’d never seen before. And, holy crap, her legs. He’d seen her legs before. Kicking around in shorts and flip-flops. Hell, he’d even seen them at the beach a time or two, when she wore nothing but a modest, one-piece suit.

But they looked different tonight. He’d never seen her long, curved-just-right legs going on for what looked like forever, from her short black skirt to those red high-heeled shoes that would make any hot-blooded male instantly hard just because they were red high-heeled shoes.

“You ready?” she asked, and he realized he’d watched those amazing legs walk right up to him and stop.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, thinking maybe being concerned for her health would sound like a legitimate excuse for the staring.

She hesitated, looking like she was going to say something but changed her mind. Then she shook her head. “Not really.”

“The dress code for Cal’s party’s pretty casual.”

“So I felt like dressing up a little.” Her hair was up in some sparkly red clip thing and she had on just enough makeup to keep his gaze bouncing between her gorgeous eyes and a mouth just begging to be kissed.

As she walked past him to get into the cab and he closed her door for her, he thought about that mouth and those legs and those shoes and swore softly, but very earnestly, under his breath. She looked like a woman who was hoping to find a man.

What the hell was he supposed to do if she found one? He wasn’t sure he had the willpower to watch her leave with some other guy.

Especially once he was in the cab and those legs were in his peripheral vision. The skirt wasn’t indecent by any means, but it had ridden up and when she shifted in her seat, he got a painfully delicious glimpse of her smooth, pale inner thigh. He turned his head to look out the window and was thankful it was only a ten-minute drive to the small resort hosting the party.

Cal Reading was a builder who specialized in building overpriced custom homes for people with way too much money and he threw one hell of a Christmas party every year. Justin’s invite was thanks to the occasional roof he’d do if the regular Reading Builders roofing crew was held up on a big job. Claire worked with a lot of the outfit’s subcontractors and Cal appreciated how well she coordinated with his big-city accountant.

They both knew pretty much everybody in the big banquet room, so it wasn’t long before they’d gone their separate ways, each with a drink in hand. It was only when he heard her laughter over the crowd and the music that he realized the men really outnumbered the women in the room. By a lot. And too many of them didn’t appear to have women to leave with.

No wonder Claire was practically surrounded. Okay, maybe not surrounded, but there were a few guys who seemed to be orbiting her like they were just looking for an opening to land their lunar modules. And the shimmery, flowing red blouse that matched her shoes and hugged her curves wasn’t helping any.

“Hey, Justin.” A woman slid up next to him at the cash bar and it took him a few seconds to place her. She ran the contractor desk at the local home-improvement store and he was pretty sure her name was Jen. Usually she had a name tag on pinned to her work vest, but tonight her dark hair was teased and hairsprayed to what looked like its breaking point and her V-neck sweater was a little more V-necked than it should have been.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Not bad. Running empty, though.” She set an empty glass on the counter and waved to the bartender.

“Next one’s on me,” Justin said, because he wasn’t sure if she was fishing for him to buy her a drink or not, but he thought she might be. It seemed the polite thing to do, plus she always took good care of him at the store, so he pulled out his wallet.

Jen was smiling at him over the rim of a fresh rum-and-Coke, when it belatedly dawned on him she might be looking for some extra-curricular company, so he looked around the room until he spotted Claire again.

This time, she wasn’t laughing at something one of her clingy male satellites had said. She was looking at him. Or rather, she was looking at Jen. And she looked annoyed, which wasn’t like her. Then a tall plumber who’d once screwed up one of Justin’s roofs with a bad venting job walked up and handed her a glass of something red, and she smiled up at him.

“I think you have to have a claim on the lady before you can beat the crap out of the guy hitting on her,” Jen said and he scowled at her, which made her laugh. “Don’t bother denying it. You looked like you were mentally ripping his head off his shoulders.”

“He hacked up a roof I did once.”

“And then he bought a drink for the woman you arrived with.”

“We’re just friends.”

“Sure. Hey, I see somebody I want to say hi to. Thanks for the drink.”

“No problem. See you around.” He took a sip of his beer and looked around for somebody-anybody but Claire-to talk to and spotted a few guys he knew standing around in the corner shooting the bull.

On his way over, he caught sight of Claire through the corner of his eye. She was still talking to the idiot plumber, but she was watching Justin. And her expression looked a lot like Jen’s expression before she caught on she wasn’t holding his interest, but he told himself it was just his imagination.

Just friends. That was all they were.