Kissing Under the Mistletoe

With just a handful of the most beautiful sentences she’d ever heard, he’d answered every question she had left about falling in love with her next-door neighbor and friend, and had erased every last doubt.

All Brooke had ever wanted was for someone to actually see her—and to love her—for who she really was. Finally, she’d found him. The first boy she’d ever loved would also be the last.

"Remember how I said that if you ever gave up being a P.I., you should consider short-order cooking?"

He cocked his head at her strange response to his incredibly sweet words. "You’ve got a hankering for eggs all of a sudden?"

"No, but I want you to know I’ve changed my mind. Plenty of people can make great scrambled eggs, but so few can be a poet."

"I’m no poet, Brooke."

"To me," she said as she laid her head against his shoulder, "you are."

Chapter Twenty-one

Rafe wanted to do anything he could to strip away the lingering pain in Brooke’s eyes from her phone call with her parents. But since more lovemaking would only put her more behind on her truffle-making schedule, he offered his two hands in whatever way she could use them to finish getting the rest of her orders made. She took him up on it with a big, happy smile that had him wasting a few more minutes of her tight deadline in his arms despite his best intentions to keep his hands off her until her work was done.

Earlier in the day, he’d been worried about being in her way, but as she quickly showed him what she needed him to do, he realized he should have given her enough credit to know exactly how to put him to work in such a way that he’d be a help rather than a hindrance.

He hated the thought of anyone harming her in any way. When he’d walked in after she’d gotten off the phone with her parents and she’d told him she’d needed him, he’d been desperate to heal the hurt in her eyes by replacing it with pleasure. Their lovemaking on the kitchen counter had been wild and hot, but more than that, it had been full of the sweetness that was at Brooke’s core.

Everything she did held that same beautiful contradiction. The combination of heat and coolness in her chocolates. The simple sundresses over naughty lace and silk...or nothing at all. Wicked and oh so good. A man would be a fool not to look deeper than the surface with Brooke.

Did that mean he’d also have to be an even bigger fool about the background check he’d ordered?

And yet, even though Rafe had meant every word he’d said to her in the bathtub, though he’d seen with his own eyes her beauty, her brains, and how big her heart was, what about all those years he hadn’t been with her? Could there be something he needed to know that was bigger than sneaking out at sixteen and getting drunk, something she would never admit even to him? Something that would tear them apart down the road?

"Rafe?" He didn’t realize he’d given voice to his frustration at the battle raging inside of him until she said his name. "You’ve already done so much to help. I’ll come to bed after I’ve made my deliveries."

He moved from the boxes he was putting together to wrap his arms around her from behind. He rested his chin on the top of her head and loved the way she immediately relaxed back into his arms and chest. "I’m not going anywhere."

She turned her face to his, and he caught her lips in a soft kiss. Before she could spin around in his arms and convince him to ruin their hard work by lifting her up onto the counter to take her again in another rush of unquenchable desire, he moved his hands to her shoulders and began to give her a massage.

"Oh God. Please don’t stop doing that."

He grinned as he dug his fingers just a little harder into her muscles. "I’m glad it feels good."

"So, so good." Her eyes had closed and her head fell forward as she let herself enjoy every second of the impromptu massage. "A short-order cook, a poet, and now a masseur. You’re so good at everything you do."

He pressed a kiss to her head. "You must inspire greatness in me."

She rubbed her hips against his groin. "I wonder what else I can inspire?"

"As soon as we get the rest of these chocolates made and out the door, we can find out," he promised her, before reluctantly lifting his hands and stepping away from her gorgeous, extremely inspiring curves to get back to work on filling truffle boxes.

The sky was dark, the moon only a sliver now. As they worked, its reflection on the surface of the water outside moved across the lake until it was replaced by the rising sun.

"No doubt about it," she said as they put together the last handful of boxes, "I’m officially too old for all-nighters. Thank you for helping. I couldn’t have even come close to pulling this off without you."

"You wouldn’t have been this far behind without me, either."

"We’re having another one of our silly arguments again," she said with a little smile. "Come on and let’s get these delivered so that we can get back to being inspired, instead."

People were going to wonder—and assume—when they saw him with Brooke this morning. It was a small, tight-knit town. He hadn’t been a part of it for the past eighteen years, but he hadn’t forgotten how it worked. Word had likely spread like wildfire that he’d bought the lake house his family used to own, and he doubted his dinner or motorcycle ride with Brooke had gone unnoticed, either.

The locals would wonder how on earth he’d gotten to be the luckiest bastard on the planet. But more than that, they’d want to know if he was even close to good enough for one of their own.