Kissing Under the Mistletoe

"I love you." He whispered the words again and again into her hair. "I love you so much."

She was lifting her face from his chest to tell him she loved him, too, when she realized her grandmother’s recipe book was lying on the table in her grandfather’s workshop. She’d been so worried when she’d returned at 10 p.m. and Rafe hadn’t been in either house that when she’d seen the light through the trees, she hadn’t walked along the path to the workshop, she’d run as fast as her legs could carry her.

Her hands were shaking as she reached for her grandmother’s recipe book. "It’s fixed." She looked up at the beautiful man she’d loved her whole life. "You fixed the broken heart."

Brooke ran trembling fingers over the wooden cover, which looked as perfect as it had the first time she’d seen it as a little girl. There was no crack anymore, not even the slightest sign that the heart had ever been split in two. She pressed her palm over the heart, and when she closed her eyes, she swore she could feel her grandfather and grandmother with them in that moment.

Oh, how happy they would have been to see her and Rafe together, and to know that there would be many, many more summers of love between the Sullivans and the Jansens.

"I love you." Rafe caught Brooke as she threw herself into his arms. "You promised you would prove to me that you could change, and you couldn’t have proved it to me any better than this."

"Actually," he said as he drew back slightly, "there’s more."

She had to reach out to caress his jaw with her fingertips. "I don’t need anything more than this. Than you."

"You deserve more, Brooke. You deserve everything." He picked up the cookbook cover with one hand, and took hers with the other.

Walking through the woods through the fog that was hovering over the lake felt like being in a dream. One day, she wanted to make love to Rafe right here, in the dark surrounded by the scent of Douglas fir, while the rest of the world slept.

He took her inside her house, and when he closed the front door and deliberately stepped out of the way, she finally saw what she’d missed in her earlier panic at not finding him in the house. The ugly deadbolt was gone. He hadn’t put the rusted old lock back on, but while the new lock wasn’t tiny, at least it looked like it fit the door.

"I know how difficult it must have been for you to remove the deadbolt." She went up on her tippy-toes to press a soft kiss to his lips. "Thank you."

"Maybe in a few weeks, I’ll be able to switch this one out again for an even smaller one."

She laughed out loud at his honesty. It was only natural that the changes he was making would have to come in stages. "I can live with this one."

He put down the wooden recipe book cover, then pulled the shiny lock pick out of his pocket. "Let’s see how long it takes you to pick it."

She couldn’t stop smiling as he gestured for her to come back outside with him. She knelt next to him as he showed her the tricks of the P.I. trade. She was amazed he remembered she’d asked to learn how to pick a lock on their first night together.

When he’d said no back then, it was clear that he hadn’t wanted to "corrupt" her. So did this mean even more corruption was on the menu?

She really, really hoped it did...

"Your turn now," he said as he handed her the pick.

It was difficult to concentrate with Rafe’s thigh pressed against hers and his mouth just inches away, but she forced her brain to focus on the task. Her lower lip between her teeth, she concentrated on each of the steps he’d just run her through.

Less than thirty seconds later, she was amazed when the lock slid open. "Look! I picked the lock on my first try."

Rafe looked between her and the open lock, clearly stunned. "That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen a beginner get a lock open. If I had known how bad my good girl could be..."

She thrilled at the desire beneath his words, but before she could tackle him and show him exactly how good being bad with her could be, he was tugging her to her feet and into the kitchen.

"There’s more?" It was like following a scavenger hunt where love was the ultimate prize.

He shot her a grin over his shoulder, but she could see that he was a little nervous about whatever he was going to show her next. Rafe brought her to a stop at the edge of the kitchen counter. Two days earlier, they’d made love right in that spot, in the chocolate, and her skin was flushing with remembered heat when she realized there was a blindfold sitting on the counter.

"I’m ready to do that taste test for you now," Rafe told her.

If she didn’t already love him, if she hadn’t already forgiven him for his mistake, she would have been a goner as he picked up the blindfold and handed it to her. Especially when she could see how hard it was for him to let her take away one of his senses like this.

With trembling hands, she lifted the blindfold up over his head. She kissed him as she slid it in front of his eyes. Fortunately, a batch of her new Summer’s Pleasures recipe was within reach, so she didn’t have to move away from him to take one out and put it to his lips. The scrape of his teeth and tongue against her fingertips as he took a bite had her pressing closer to him.

"Delicious."

She couldn’t resist licking the chocolate off his lips as she put the rest of the truffle down and took the blindfold off. "So are you."

There was such sweetness to everything he’d done to prove his love to her. Brooke had thought she’d need endless apologies and groveling after the way he’d screwed up. Now she knew that the only thing she needed was Rafe Sullivan exactly as he was—fun and dangerous, light and dark, sweet and sexy, supportive and overprotective, too.