The Trouble with Mistletoe Read online

  wanted to go with. I was new there so I didn’t have friends to talk any sense into me. I caught you coming out of one of your football practices and I thought . . . Well, never mind what I thought. You were in a hurry, which I didn’t realize until I stopped you.” She squeezed her eyes shut as remembered humiliation washed over her. “I spoke too fast then too. Way too fast. You had to ask me to repeat the question. Twice.”

  He let out a breath, closed his eyes, and dropped his forehead to hers. “Tell me I was nice about it. Tell me I wasn’t a complete eighteen-year-old dick.”

  “You don’t get to ask that of me,” she said and gave him another push. “Because I was so forgettable that you don’t even remember me.”

  “Yeah, so I was a complete eighteen-year-old dick,” he muttered. “Shit.” He tightened his grip on her when she tried to break free. “Listen to me, Willa, because I want to make something perfectly clear here.” He opened his eyes and held hers prisoner. “You’re the most unforgettable person I’ve ever met.”

  She let out a soft sigh of unintentional need because pathetic as it was, the words felt like a balm on her raw soul. “Don’t—”

  “Tell me what I said to you that day.”

  “You said ‘sounds cool.’” She dropped her forehead to his chest. “And I practically floated home. I didn’t have a dress. Or shoes. Or money to get into the dance. I had to beg, borrow, and steal, but I managed to do it, to get myself together enough that I’d be worthy of a date with Keane Winters.”

  A rough sound of regret escaped him. “I had a real problem with girls back then,” he said. “I didn’t know how to say no.”

  “Cue the violins.”

  He grimaced. “I know. But there were these sports groupies and—”

  “Oh my God.” She covered her ears. “Stop talking! I don’t want to know any of this.”

  “I’m just saying that they used to hang around outside of practice and then jump us when we left the locker room. If you were there, I probably thought you were one of them.”

  Willing to concede that this might actually be true, she lifted a shoulder but managed to hold on to most of her mad. “You should have known by taking one look at me that I wasn’t a damn groupie.”

  “You’d think. But eighteen-year-old guys are assholes.” He looked genuinely regretful. “Tell me the rest.”

  “Nothing more to tell. You didn’t show. And you never so much as looked at me again.”

  “Willa—”

  “End of story,” she said. “Both back then and now.” She ducked beneath his arms and fumbled for her keys, practically falling into her apartment. She shut the door harder than was strictly necessary and didn’t know if she was disappointed or relieved when he didn’t even attempt to follow her.

  Chapter 7

  #FallenAndCantGetUp

  Keane woke up to a heavy pressure on his chest that felt like a heart attack—no doubt the result of wracking his brain all night long, trying to remember Willa from high school.

  To his chagrin, he still couldn’t.

  He’d been telling her the utter truth when he’d said that a lot of girls had waited on the players after practices. He’d ignored most of them and when they’d refused to be ignored, he’d flashed a smile and done his best to flirt his way to the parking lot rather than hurt anyone’s feelings.

  So it killed him that he’d hurt Willa.

  But the truth was, he hadn’t given a lot of thought to how any of those girls had taken his ridiculous and stupid comments designed to help him escape. It hadn’t been until he’d gotten to college that he’d lost some of his shyness around women.

  Okay, all of it.

  He’d met his first real girlfriend—Julie Carmen—his freshman year and they’d gotten serious fast, fueled by the sheer, mind-numbing hunger of eighteen-year-old lust.

  By the end of that first year, he was no longer thinking with his head, at least not the one on top of his shoulders. For the first time in his life he had someone so into him that she wanted to spend every waking moment with him, and he’d gotten off on that. He’d wanted to marry her, ridiculous as that sounded now. He’d told himself to play it cool, to hold back, but he had no real experience with that and ended up blurting it out at a football game over hot dogs and beer.

  Real smooth.

  Julie had been cool about it and he’d been . . . happy, truly happy for the first time in his life. That had lasted two weeks until she’d dumped him, saying she’d only been in it for a good time and because he had a hot body, and she was sorry but he wanted way more from her than she could give.

  He hadn’t reverted to his shyness around women. Instead he’d accepted that he wasn’t good with or made for long term, a fact made easy to back up since he had no desire to give his heart away again.

  But one-night stands . . . he’d gone on to excel there, for quite a few tumble-filled years. Until now, in fact. Willa was unlike any woman he’d ever met. She was passionate, smart, sexy . . . and she made him laugh.

  And her smile could light up his entire day.

  He wasn’t actually sure what to do with that, but he knew he wanted to do something.

  The weight on his chest got heavier. Yep, probably a heart attack. Well, hey, he’d nearly made it to thirty and it’d been a pretty good run too.

  No regrets.

  Well maybe one—that he wouldn’t get to kiss Willa again or see that soft and dazed look on her face after he did, the one that said she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.

  The pressure on his chest shifted, getting even heavier now. He opened his eyes and nearly had a stroke instead of a heart attack.

  Pita was sitting on his ribcage, her head bent to his, nose to nose, staring at him.

  “Meow,” she said in a tone suggesting not only that she was starving, but that he was in danger of having his face eaten off if he didn’t get up and feed her.

  Remembering Willa’s admonishment that he hadn’t tried to connect with the damn thing, he lifted a hand and patted her on the head.

  Pita’s eyes narrowed.

  “Right, you’re a cat not a dog.” He stroked a hand down her back instead and she lifted into his touch, her eyes half closed in what he hoped was pleasure.

  “You like that?” he murmured, thinking middle ground! So he did it again, stroked her along her spindly spine for a second time.

  A rumble came from Pita’s throat, rough and uneven, like a motor starting up for the first time in a decade.

  “Wow,” he said. “Is that an actual purr? Better be careful, you might start to almost like me.”

  On his third stroke down her back, she bit him. Hard. Not enough to break the skin but she sank her teeth in a bit and held there, her eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Still not friends,” he gritted out. “Noted. Now let go.” When she didn’t, he sat up and dislodged her, and with an irritated chirp, she leapt to the end of the bed, turning her back on him and lifting her hind leg, going to work cleaning her lady town.

  He looked down at his hand. No blood, good sign. He slid out of bed and . . .

  Stepped in something disgustingly runny and still warm. Cat yak. He hopped around and swore the air blue for a while and then managed to clean up without yakking himself.

  Barely.

  He found the little antichrist sitting up high on the unfinished loft floor, peeking over the edge down at where he stood in the kitchen.

  “Are you kidding me?” he asked.

  “Mew.”

  Shit, she was stuck. There was a ladder against the wall because Mason had been working up there this week. Keane, hating heights, had avoided going up there at all and had absolutely no idea how she’d managed to climb the construction ladder in the first place.

  Blowing out a sigh, he climbed up halfway and held out his arms. “Come on then.”

  Pita lifted a paw and began to wash her face.

  He dropped his head and laughed. What else could he do? Clearl