Heating up the Holidays Read online

  5

  T ONI WATCHED heat flare in Brad’s eyes as he pressed another kiss against her palm, liquefying her insides. Whoa. His mouth felt reeeally good against her skin. And looked reeeally good there, too. And…oh, God, had he just touched her palm with his tongue?

  Oooh, yes. He had. Mama mia. Good thing she was sitting down, because that single tongue flick left her legs feeling like melted wax. It left her spine feeling that way, too. So much so that she’d like to lie down. With Brad. Right now.

  He brushed his lips against her inner wrist and she actually felt her eyes glaze over. When the hell had that little bit of skin become so sensitive? And who had run the electric circuit from her wrist straight to her nipples-which were now hard and aching? Clearly her six-months-long sexless state had screwed up her internal wiring.

  His gaze dipped and he stilled at what she assumed was the sight of her erect nipples pressing against the velvet of her dress. When he raised his gaze back to hers, his eyes all but breathed smoke. “Toni,” he said softly.

  Just the way he said her name rippled a heated shiver down her spine. Good grief, how had she resisted this man for three months? She was either insane or deserved a medal of fortitude. How could she hope to resist him tonight?

  You can’t, her inner voice flatly informed her.

  Her inner voice was right.

  Sure, she could try to lie to herself, but what was the point? She might as well face it. The guy was hot, sexy, gorgeous, funny, romantic, smart and totally into her. He oozed sex appeal and sex sounded so incredibly…appealing. In a word, he was irresistible.

  Exactly, agreed her triumphant inner voice. So stop trying to resist!

  Sex on a first date wasn’t normally her style, but hey-they’d agreed this wasn’t a date. It was just one little dinner. One little dinner that would lead to one little bout of sex. One little dinner during which it was now time to turn the tables and make him suffer for a while. Heh, heh, heh.

  He appeared about to say something else, but just then the waiter appeared bearing their salads. After pressing another quick kiss to her palm, Brad released her hand and Toni curled her fingers inward to keep the warmth of his mouth against her skin. After topping off their wineglasses, the waiter faded away. She reached for her fork and speared a bit of radicchio, watching him do the same. She waited until Brad had taken a bite then slipped her foot from her shoe.

  “Tell me about your family,” she said. Under the cover of the long tablecloth, she slid her bare foot against his calf.

  He stopped in midchew. Went perfectly still while she slowly rubbed her instep along his shin. For several seconds his hot gaze bored into hers. Then he chewed twice and swallowed. “Huh?”

  “Your family. Any more at home like you…Elf?”

  She had to fight to hide her smile when his face colored slightly. He groaned and shook his head. “Who told you?”

  “Word gets around. I saw your picture, Mr. December. Very nice.”

  “You mean, embarrassing. I’ll never live that down.”

  “Believe me, you have nothing to be embarrassed about.” Her foot snaked up to his knee.

  He set his fork down so quickly it clanged against his salad plate. He shifted slightly, and she felt him stretch out his leg. “Thanks. Glad you approve.”

  Her gaze flicked to his chest. “I liked your tat. Did it hurt when you got it?”

  “Not a bit, thanks to an overindulgence of…” He sucked in a quick breath as her toes brushed against his hard thigh.

  Several long seconds of silence passed during which he looked at her as if she were a glittering diamond and he was a jewel thief. Finally she prompted, “You were saying?”

  “Saying?”

  “About your tattoo.”

  “Oh. Right.” He shook his head and gave a short laugh. “Sweetheart, if you want to make conversation and touch me, you’ll need to expect some lulls.”

  She popped a bit of cucumber into her mouth. “Turnabout is fair play.”

  “Believe me, I wasn’t complaining.” He picked up his fork and stabbed a bite of tomato. “Tequila,” he said to finish his sentence. “A well-documented tattoo-painkiller.”

  “You mentioned a brother-is it just the two of you?”

  He nodded, somewhat jerkily as she continued to stroke his leg with her foot. “Greg’s two years older and got married this past summer. Never seen a guy so happy.”

  Toni sighed. “I wish my brothers would get married. Then maybe they’d concentrate on their own love lives rather than mine. I love them and they’re good guys, but ridiculously overprotective. They can’t seem to grasp that I’m not twelve years old any longer.”

  “Is that why you put some miles between you?”

  “Yes. I love my family, but we clash. I guess I’m something of a rebel and the black sheep. My mother literally took to her bed when I said I wanted to be a firefighter. You’d have thought I’d announced a plan to blow up a major city. I’m the first one not to work in the family business.”

  “But you did for a while.”

  She took a sip of wine, then said, “Yes. But I found it impossible to live my own life. Mom and my sister-who’s married-were always trying to fix me up, and Mom constantly poured on the guilt that I wasn’t married and giving her grandbabies. Yet she hated every guy I dated. And believe me, dating wasn’t easy with three overprotective brothers scowling at anything with a penis that came within ten feet of me.

  “Then, last year, my Nana Rose moved in with Mom and Dad. She’s exactly the same as my mom, only feistier. I like peace. Quiet. But there’s practically this glowing ring of nitpicking tumult surrounding all of them. And when they form groups…” She shook her head. “Run for the hills. I truly do love them and I know they mean well, but I can only handle them in small doses. Sometimes I think even fifty miles isn’t enough distance between us. Five hundred might have been smarter.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “The calm eye in the storm. He just smiles and goes to work and enjoys his hobbies and lets all the chaos roll off him like water off a duck’s back. I think he’s the only one not hoping I’ll fail.”

  “Fail at what?”

  “My business. Even though they haven’t said so out loud, I strongly suspect the rest of the family secretly hopes Blooming Pails will go belly-up, thus making it necessary-in their minds-for me to move back home and work again at the family nursery.”

  “Any chance that’ll happen?”

  “The business going belly-up or me moving back home?”

  “Both.”

  “Absolutely not to moving back home. I’ve fought too hard for my independence. As for Blooming Pails not making it…a lot depends on what happens in the next three months.” She gave him a brief overview of her loan situation and the bank evaluation coming up at the end of the next quarter. “If my interest rate goes up, I’m afraid that will be the beginning of the end, so this is really make-it-or-break-it time for me. Which is why I’m devoting all my time and attention to work. Which is why I don’t date.” She didn’t bother to add especially not firefighters.

  “No problem, since we’ve agreed this isn’t a date-it’s just one little dinner.”

  “Right.” She skimmed her foot beneath his pant leg, brushing her toes over his sock until she encountered warm, firm skin. “Now that you know all about my crazy family, what about yours?”

  The way his eyes smoldered made her feel as if she’d stepped into a furnace. “My folks are great. Very little nitpicking and tumult. Like you, I like peace. My job is stressful enough-I’m lucky I don’t have any extra because of my family.”

  “Very lucky. Is your dad a firefighter?”

  “Nope. Schoolteacher. So are my mom and brother. Right in Ocean Harbor Beach, where I was born and raised. I might have followed that path except the summer I was fourteen I worked on my uncle’s ranch in Wyoming.”

  “Where you learned your cowboy wisdom.”

  �