The Trouble with Mistletoe

Keane’s dark eyes were on her, intense and yet steady. God, she loved that. Her axis was tilted and she was in danger of losing her grip, but he had her. And just looking at him, she calmed. “So, that was . . . something.”

His low chuckle reverberated from his chest to hers. She smiled. “Was that a good enough distraction for you?”

His answering smile was slow and lazy and incredibly sexy. “If I say no, will you try to distract me again?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought I’d seen and done it all,” he said, “but this was a first for me.”

She let out a low laugh and tried to right her clothing. “I can bring out the best or the worst in just about anyone.”

“What would you call this?”

She didn’t need to even think about it. “The best.” She was failing at putting herself back together. Keane took over while she sat on his lap like a limp rag doll. Since she couldn’t resist his delicious mouth, she leaned in, lingering—just for another moment, she told herself—kissing him one last time. But before she could break it off and get up, he banded his arms around her tightly and took over, kissing her long and deep and hard until she was back to a panting, needy mess.

When he slowly pulled back, she let out an unhappy moan of protest and her mouth chased after his.

This had him letting out a low laugh. The warm look in his eyes made her remember that she wanted things for herself. Things she’d never wanted before. Things she’d set aside because she knew he didn’t want them. Suddenly more confused than ever, about the night, the holiday season, her damn life, everything, she crawled off of him and went back to her original pose, sitting, hugging her knees close to her chest.

He seemed happy to hold the silence as well, there in the dark beneath the half-ass moon.

“I could use some popcorn,” he finally said.

She laughed a little and met his gaze. “That was some animal magnetism.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “It was.” He pressed a single soft kiss along her jaw. His breath was warm against her skin, sending a shiver through her, and she found herself leaning into him, closer to that calm aura that always surrounded him. “So. You kicked Santa out of the bar for me.”

“How did you know?”

She smiled wryly and patted the phone tucked into her pocket. “A text came in from Elle before you got up here.” Turning her head, she met his gaze. “You’re a good guy, you know that?”

“Just don’t let it get out.” He took her hand and brought it up to his mouth, brushing his lips over her knuckles. “I’m not really much of a talker,” he said quietly. “But you are.”

She snorted. “Tell me something everyone doesn’t already know.”

“Exactly what I was hoping you’d say. So talk to me, Willa. Tell me about the Santa thing.”

Well, she’d walked right into that one. She tried to pull her hand free of his but he held on, doing the same with her gaze. “Look,” she said. “Just because we . . . did that,” she said with a vague wave of her hand to the rooftop behind them, “doesn’t mean we have make to small talk.”

“What I want to talk about has nothing to do with that.” He gave her a small smile. “Also known as the hottest rooftop sex I’ve ever had. Not to mention, the only rooftop sex I’ve ever had.”

She let out a low laugh, but looked away.

With a hand to her jaw, he brought her face back to his.

“Okay,” she said. “I agree the rooftop sex was very hot. But as per our previous agreement, we don’t have to do this. I mean there’s a me, and there’s a you. And sometimes there’s this crazy, stupid”—she waved her hand vaguely again—“thing. But it was just a one-time thing. And it’s probably out of our systems now.” She met his gaze with difficulty. “So really, you don’t have to do the whole awkward-after with me.”

“Maybe I’m a sucker for the awkward-after.”

With a laugh, she dropped her head to her knees. “I’m trying to give you an out here, Keane.” Hell, she was trying to give herself an out. Her heart needed it, bad.

Because she got it: he didn’t get attached. But she sure did, and hard. And she was going to have to be very careful to protect herself.

“Humor me,” Keane said. “Pretend I’m irritable to talk to.”

Not much pretending required there . . .

“Tell me what happened tonight,” he said.

“Well,” she quipped in a last-ditch effort to lighten up this conversation. “It’s about the birds and the bees—”

“You know what I want to know, smartass.”

She sighed. Yeah, she did. He wanted to know why, if she was afraid of Santa, she celebrated Christmas like she was still five years old, and he wasn’t going to accept the nonanswer she’d already given him.

But she rarely allowed herself to think about it, much less talk about it.

After a long beat of silence, he spoke. “When I was little, I was sent to a Catholic military boarding school one year, run by nuns and ex-marines.”

She looked at him. “You were? How old were you?”

“Five. Actually, not quite five. But by the time I turned ten, I was back at home in the public school system. Let’s just say, I didn’t fit in at the private school.”

She gasped, almost unable to fathom this, even though she’d gone into the childcare system at the same young age. “Your parents sent a four-year-old away? And then left you there until you were ten?”

He shrugged. “I was a pain in the ass. I did pay for that though.”

“The school punished the kids?” she asked in horror.

“Only if you were an asshole punk.” He tipped his face up to the dark night, a small smile on his lips. “I still twitch if I see a nun.”

She fell quiet, mulling over the reason he’d shared the story. He’d wanted to be open so she would. Dammit. “I didn’t twitch when I saw Santa,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. “You didn’t twitch. You had a full-on seizure.”

Keane watched as Willa fidgeted. He knew she wanted to move on from this subject, and she wanted that badly too. But he felt like they were on the precipice of something, something deeper than even their sheer physical animal attraction. He also knew that this was the point where he should be running for the hills, but he didn’t want to end this here.