Mistletoe Madness

Chapter 8

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“You know, you could give a guy a complex. I told Elle I’d drop off your Secret Santa gift,” Cole admitted stepping into her apartment. At work she was the cool snark. At dinner she was engaging. And more than once he’d imagined her naked or nearly naked. But this was a version of Tatiana Allen he’d never imagined. In her boxers and tank top with thick socks and a pink robe, her hair pinned up with a giant clip, she looked cute. Adorably sexy.

“You really shouldn’t have.”

“Well, it’s a lousy time to be sick.” Except she didn’t look very sick to him. In fact, right now he’d peg her for looking extremely guilty. He hefted the bag in his right hand. “I stopped by Lemwitz Deli and picked you up some chicken soup. Mrs. Lemwitz makes it fresh every day, including her own noodles. Nothing’s better than chicken soup when you’re sick.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot. I’ll just take these and you can be on your way. I don’t want to tie up your time.”

Hmm. She looked a little flushed, but he didn’t see any watery eyes, red nose or signs of a cough. And her voice didn’t sound scratchy. Not to mention that she was trying to hustle him out of there faster than a two-bit pimp.

“I’ve got plenty of time. Remember, I was planning to spend my evening with you anyway. So I’ll just put these in the kitchen. I’m not going anywhere until I’m sure you’re okay.” More like until he was sure she’d faked being sick, which seemed increasingly likely. “You sit down and I’ll warm up a bowl of chicken soup.”

He stepped around her and into what was obviously the kitchen. She followed behind him. “You don’t listen very well. I don’t need to be taken care of.”

“You obviously don’t listen well either since you’re not sitting on the couch like a good girl waiting on me to nurse you back to health.”

“I don’t need to be nursed. I’m feeling better. Do you ever listen?”

“Huh?” He laughed at her flash of irritation. “I do listen, but sometimes my other senses distract me. Like my sense of sight, which happens frequently when I’m around you. By the way, you look adorably sexy in that outfit and not nearly as intimidating as you do at the office.”

“There’s nothing adorable about me in general. And as for sexy in this outfit, you obviously think I’ve developed a brain flu if I’m buying that.”

Cole laughed and shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter whether you buy it or not as long as it’s what I think.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“Am I?” He brushed the back of his hand down the length of her neck. “Hmm. No fever.” He bent his head and breathed in the scent of her skin, her heat. “Well, you’re enchanting even when you’re at your snarkiest.”

“You’re sick.”

“Very possibly. I’m feeling rather lightheaded now.” He nuzzled the length of her neck.

“I might be contagious,” Tatiana protested but didn’t pull away. Instead she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I’m sure you are and I’m sure I’ve already got a pretty bad case. I’ve got a theory.”

“I can tell by your voice it’s going to be something gnat-brained.”

“Maybe I have a masochistic streak, because I love it when you talk like that.” Her fingers in his hair, against his neck, caused heat to sizzle through him. “I think you bagged work today because you’ve got the same thing I’ve got.”

“Mere supposition on your part.” She leaned back and looked at him, but didn’t let him go. Desire rolled off her in waves. They were so right together. Her eyes sparkled with wickedness, but he didn’t miss the caution lurking in them as well. “What do you have?”

He knew what he had. What he wanted. Caution be damned. “I’m besotted, infatuated, tied up in knots over you. It’s as if I’ve walked by the same bakery every day for almost a year wanting the pastry in the window, but the shop’s always closed. And the more I pass it, the more I want it. It whets my appetite until nothing else appeals and all I can think about is sampling that pastry that I can’t have.”

“That sounds obsessive.”

“Hmm. It is. Obsessive.Disquieting.”

“You don’t need me to tell you that chances are the pastry won’t live up to expectation.”

“I beg to differ. I’ve just had a sample of the pastry and found it even more addictive than I thought.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

She wouldn’t be Tatiana if she didn’t argue with him.

“It makes perfect sense. Are you really sick?”

She quirked that sexy mouth and pretended to consider his question. “I believe I am. I believe I’ve come down with a bad case of infatuation.” She smoothed her hands over his chest. “I thought if I stayed home today I’d get over it soon enough.”

He slid his hands beneath her T-shirt and cupped the fullness of her breasts. They fit perfectly in his hands, but then, that was no surprise because he now knew she was the perfect woman for him. “I’ve got just the cure.” He brushed his thumbs over her nipples and they sprang to attention, which in turn brought him to full attention.

She pressed her breasts against him and pressed her thighs against his erection. She licked a path from his neck to his ear and nipped the lobe, the sensation arrowing straight to his arousal.

“I’m thinking it’s more of a vaccination,” she murmured into his ear while she pulled his shirt out of his pants.

“Look at it this way-either way we’ll be cured. But the first thing we need to do is get you to bed.”

Tatiana fell onto the bed and Cole followed. They’d lost their clothes on the short trip from her den to her bedroom and a rush of sexual energy shot through her at the slide of his bare skin and heat against hers.

He drove her into the mattress, the comforter cool against the back of her while she was burning up from the inside out.

He scattered kisses down her neck, wreaking havoc to her central nervous system. “That day in Melvin’s office-”

Her laugh came out breathless. “When you were in la-la land-”

“No la-la land. I was thinking about this.” He flicked his tongue against her nipple and she arched up off the bed at the jolt that ran through her.

“Really? You were thinking about licking my nipples until I couldn’t stand it any longer and had my evil way with you?”

“Technically, I was thinking about how you’d taste…” He slid down her body, trailing kisses down her belly followed by an occasional lick. Oh, she liked where she thought this was heading. She opened her legs farther and he obligingly ventured farther, his cheek, with its faint stubble, scraping against her thigh. “Everywhere.” He dipped his tongue into her slick channel. Sensation rocked her and she fisted her hand in the coverlet and moaned aloud.

“Delicious appetizer.”

On a bad day, when Cole grinned it was spine-tingling wicked, but this was a good day and he’d never been sexier than now when he flashed her an I’m-going-to-eat-you-up hot look from between her thighs.

“Far be it from me to interrupt your dining pleasure but it seems unfair that my plate’s empty.”

She slid to the edge of the bed and pulled a flavored condom from her night stand. Changing direction, careful not to kick him, she brought his masculine thighs, flat belly and hard cock into mouth-watering proximity. She sheathed him, then nibbled her way along his thigh, inhaling his heady scent. Surprise flashed in his eyes only to be replaced by the glitter of hot sexual arousal. He rolled to his side to face her and wrapped his big masculine hand around her thigh, continuing his nuzzling between her legs.

Tatiana had never been so intimate so quickly with anyone, but she and Cole had been engaged in a pas de deux for nearly a year and after denying the attraction, resisting it, there was an inevitability to being here with him akin to the sun rising every morning.

“Appetizer for two,” she murmured and licked the length of his impressive erection. He groaned against her wet folds and pleasure radiated through her.

She’d thought she was hot before, now she was gripped by a fever of want. He lapped at her while she took him in her mouth and lavished attention on his cock.

“Baby, if we don’t stop now I’m never going to make it to the main course.”

She was nearly mindless with want. She rolled onto her back and Cole rolled off the bed. He stood by the edge of the mattress. He was big and aroused and looked at her with a mixture of pure lust, adoration and possessiveness that intensified the ache between her thighs. She quivered with the need to feel his hard length inside her.

She eyed his jutting penis with a reciprocal measure of admiring lust. “I know exactly what I want for a main course.”

Cole laughed, low and wicked. He grasped her behind her knees and dragged her across the bed until her bottom was even with the edge of the mattress. Oh, baby. He hooked his arms beneath her knees and entered her in one smooth, long stroke. She cried out and rose up to take him as deep and hard as possible.

Buried to the hilt, he paused, “You don’t know how many times I’ve fantasized about you. You’re even hotter than I thought.”

Talk about the right thing to say. She clenched her muscles around him, lifting her bottom, nudging him even deeper. “I’ve had a few fantasies of my own about you, but they never felt this good.”

He set a pace of hard and fast then slow and gentle, bringing her close to an orgasm and then backing off until she was writhing frantically. His jaw was clenched with the effort not to come too quickly.

“Please…” She sank her nails into the bulge of his biceps.

“Dessert…together.”

Tremors started at her core, from somewhere deep inside her soul, something she’d never offered to any other man, and rolled through her until she was too much for herself. She screamed her release as Cole exploded inside her.

“Thank you for the cookies.” Cole’s warm breath stirred the hair at her temple.

Tatiana didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Cole had returned from a quick bathroom trip and had stretched out on the bed, pulling her on top of him…was it two minutes ago? Five?A lifetime? She was still sprawled on top of him, boneless with satisfaction. She smiled against his warm, naked, just-the-right-amount-of-hair-on-it chest and murmured, “What cookies?”

“The almond cookies that I smelled when I came into your house earlier.The ones sitting in the canister on your counter.”

“Oh, those.” She rolled off him with a grin and pulled the sheet up over them both. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

“You’re cute in that pink robe, but I didn’t miss the food.”

She smiled. She was so not cute-especially in that robe, but apparently cute was in the eye of the blinded-by-lust beholder. “Did you know when you opened them?”

“No. With the bib and the spoon I had sort of pegged you. But the cookies were too nice. I thought it must be someone else.” She threw a pillow and hit him in the head. He laughed and pinned her to the bed. “You’re never nice to me.”

She bit him on the shoulder. “Because I don’t like you.” She loved him. For better or for worse. For whatever he was or wasn’t, she loved him.

“You liked me well enough a few minutes ago.”

“I wouldn’t say actively liked. More along the lines of tolerated.”

“If you screamed that loud when you were merely tolerating me, I’m not sure my ears could stand it if you actually liked me.”

“Just imagine how deaf you’d be if I was idiot-brained enough to fancy that I loved you.”

He traced the line of her bare shoulder, his touch sending tingles through her. “Umm.Terrifying. All these years I thought I could make the decision not to care about people, not to let them close to my heart. And then you came along and I found out free choice doesn’t exist when it comes to love. The only control we have over it is what we decide to do about it.”

“Excuse me, but did you just bumble your way around a declaration of love?”

“Ladies first. Did you just snark your way through an admission of being idiot-brained?”

“I think I may have.”

“Coward.”

“I am not a coward. Ducking out of work and ditching dinner wasn’t cowardice, it was an inept attempt at self-preservation. Okay, I have a feeling you’re going to shamelessly use this against me, but, yes, I do love you. Satisfied?”

“I’m getting there.” She suddenly saw what made much more sense than where she’d been going all along. Cole obviously wasn’t on the best terms with this family. He spent Christmas with his sister but not his father or his mother. He’d worked at Connoisseur for almost a year, and never in that time had she heard of his father revisiting Mr. Creighton. “Your father didn’t get you the job at Connoisseur, did he?”

He shifted to his back, one arm beneath his head, seemingly at ease except for his wary eyes. “What makes you say that? And what difference does it make?”

“All this time I thought you’d just waltzed into a job the rest of us had to work our butts off to get.”

“Yours came back. And very nicely, if I do say so.”

“Oh, no, you’re not going to sidetrack me. Your father didn’t get you the job, but he was there and he did meet with Mr. Creighton.” She considered the type of man who would let his new wife-or, as was apparently the case, wives-allow his children to feel unwanted. “He didn’t want you to have this job, did he? That’s why he met with Mr. Creighton-to try to keep you from getting the job-isn’t it?”

He sighed. “No, he didn’t want me to have the job. And, yes, he’d told me if I insisted on working in publishing, it could at least be for a publication that he thought worthy. He had connections and he’d make sure I had a position with the Wall Street Journal or a job as a foreign correspondent if I wanted the travel aspect. I didn’t want to work for the Journal. So he paid Douglas Creighton a visit to try to dissuade him from hiring me. Luckily Creighton thinks every man succeeds or fails on his own merit.”

“You let us all think…”

“No. You thought what you wanted to think.”

“But you could’ve told us…”

“No. I learned a long time ago, people either know me and like me for who I am or they don’t.”

“Your stepmothers?”

“Yep. And stepfathers.”

She recalled his attitude toward Parker Longrehn. He wouldn’t give Parker the satisfaction of knowing he could affect his life. There were many more layers to laid-back, devil-may-care Cole Mitchell than she’d ever suspected. Or maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe she’d suspected it but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. Maybe she’d hidden behind resenting his job because it had kept her safe from the attraction she’d felt from their first encounter. If she didn’t like him, then she couldn’t possibly fall in love with him, right?

Except she had.

“I would insist on dragging you along to Connie’s house, except her munchkin has the chicken pox. Since we seem to be stuck with one another for Christmas, why don’t we go to Corfu?”

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s there and we can. I want to go there with you. Christmas in Corfu has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”

“But…” She couldn’t come up with the rest, she just knew it didn’t feel right. “I hadn’t planned to go to Corfu.”

“Neither had I. But then again, I didn’t plan to fall in love with you, but it strikes me as a very good thing.”

“I love to travel. But, you know, it’s always scheduled. Anticipated.Part of business. I’m not packed. It’d cost a fortune. And who would watch for Mrs. Abramonoff’s pears?”

He smiled, and if she hadn’t been watching so closely she might’ve missed the flash of disappointment in his eyes. He leaned over and kissed her on her nose. “It’s fine, babe. I don’t really care where we are as long as I’m with you. And at the risk of coming across as an insensitive man, I’m kind of hungry. I missed lunch today and my dinner date stood me up.” He grinned at her. “Mind if I heat up that chicken soup? Considering you’re ill, I’ll be glad to bring you a bowl in bed.”

“Works for me.”

Cole padded out of her bedroom and she heard him rustling around in the kitchen. She should be ecstatic…well, she would be ecstatic if she hadn’t seen that quickly masked moment of disappointment in his eyes.

She had a lifetime of warm holiday memories surrounded by a family that adored her. Cole had been shuffled from one parent to another, and wanted by neither. Had anyone ever asked him what he’d like to do for Christmas? She’d bet her last dollar that had never happened. But he, who never got too close to anyone, had just told her what he wanted, and she’d shot it down for a host of ridiculous reasons that all went back to one thing-she didn’t know how to have fun outside of work.

But by God she was about to learn. It was time for her to start building a Christmas tradition of her own and time for his Christmas tradition to take a step up.

She stood and pulled on her pink chenille robe-he’d seen her in it and out of it, so what the heck. She padded into the kitchen and found him testing the soup in a pan on the stove.

She wrapped her arms around him from behind and pressed a kiss to his naked back. He turned and nuzzled the sensitive spot beneath her ear. A delicate shiver chased over her skin. Of course, she seemed to have a multitude of sensitive spots with him.

“Sorry it’s taking so long, but a microwave ruins the noodles,” he said.

“Well, this sucks, but I’m sick.”

He leaned back and peered at her. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve got the travel bug.”

“What?”

“Someone mentioned Christmas in Corfu, and at first I thought it was crazy. But now I’ve caught the travel bug and I think there’s only one cure for it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

He picked her up and swung her around in a circle, looking for all the world like an elated little boy who’d just been presented a gift from a Santa he didn’t believe in anymore.

Which reminded her…“When you came earlier, you had a present. Was that for me?” It wasn’t as if she had a whole lot of gifts to look forward to.

Cole grinned at her. “It was your last Secret Santa gift. I volunteered to bring it over and check on you. It gave me a good reason to come by.”

“Okay. At least it got you over here. Let me fire up my laptop and we’ll book our tickets while we eat.”

“Aren’t you going to open your present?”

“Yeah.Later. I want to get the tickets booked first.”

He picked up the box on the counter wrapped in Santa Claus paper topped with a big red bow and handed it to her. “Go ahead and open it now. Might as well get it out of the way.”

She tore off the wrapping and lifted the box top. Nestled in white tissue paper was a pair of sheer red bikini panties…with a sprig of mistletoe embroidered on the front.

She looked up, laughing. “You. You’re my Secret Santa.”

He spread his hands, palms up. “Hey, you don’t always have a sprig of mistletoe handy when you need it.”

“I believe I’ll have to pack this along with my massage oil for Corfu.”

“Why don’t you come sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what else you’d like for Christmas.”

“Well, Santa, I’ve been a very good girl all year-except maybe I’ve been a little testy with this guy at work.” She nuzzled his neck. “But I can’t lie, Santa. I think I’m about to be very naughty and I think I deserve to get Cole in my stocking this year.”