“Like why you hate Christmas.”
He turned, just his head, nothing else, toward her. “I don’t talk about that.”
“Oh, come on. After the stuff I told you?”
He sighed. “Actually, it’s pretty similar. Eerily similar. But purely coincidental,” he added, with a lift of his brows and a nod of his head. “My dad died the day before Thanksgiving. The holidays have never been my favorite time since.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve,” he said.
“How did he die?”
“Heart attack.”
“So that left just you and your mom and your sister.”
“Yeah.”
“She younger or older, your sis?”
“Younger.”
She nodded. “So how did you celebrate Christmas that year?” she asked.
He frowned at her. “You’re a nosy little thing, you know that?”
She shrugged. “I already told you, I like you, Matthew,” she said. “I’m starting to think I like you very much.”
“Uh…yeah, well…”
“And I think maybe Mom knew I would. And I don’t think there’s any such thing as coincidence.”
“Look, Holly, don’t go getting any…ideas…you know about…you and me. This is just a couple of strangers stranded in a snowstorm.”
“Yeah. I know.” She moved closer; he didn’t move away. She said, “Can I just try something? Just to make sure?”
“Try…what?” he asked.
“This,” she said, and she closed her eyes and pressed her mouth to his.
Bernie wore the hat into the diner, and found himself a seat at the counter, not wanting to take up space in a booth. After all, he wasn’t a paying customer. He was there in search of handouts, though his favorite lady never made him feel as if he was.
There she was now, coming right up to him, wiping her hands on a crisp white towel as she did. She was sick, he knew, but he wasn’t sure exactly how. Only that she got more lame by degrees. She used a cane now, and he’d heard someone say she would be in a wheelchair before long. Her little niece sure had stepped up to the plate, though.
“Now, honey, you can’t even imagine how glad I am to see you,” she said. “I just had a fellow come in here—you wouldn’t believe the manners. Ordered a full-blown breakfast fit to feed a lumberjack, then got all huffy ’cause I didn’t get it to him fast enough and took his business elsewhere. I been back here wringing my hands thinking of all that food going to waste. I don’t suppose you might have room for it, would you?”
He shrugged. “I’d be glad of it, Sheila.”
Her pretty face broke into a full-blown smile. “Oh, thank you, hon. Now, listen, it’s gonna take a bit to warm it up for you. Why don’t you head on back to that booth right there? It’s next to the register. Gets too warm for most folks. And I’ll bring it on back when it’s ready. You want coffee or cocoa with that?”
“Cocoa would be good,” he said. “If it’s not too much trouble, I mean.”
“No trouble at all.” She had already hauled a heavy white mug from beneath the counter, and she turned to a big steaming pot that smelled like heaven, and poured frothy chocolate from it. She handed the mug to him and patted his hands. “My goodness, your hands are cold.”
“Oh, they’ll warm soon enough,” he said, hugging them around the mug. “Thanks to you.”
“Don’t be silly, you’re doing me the favor. Go on, go sit. I’ll bring your food along presently.”
Nodding, he got up off the stool and made his way back to the booth she’d indicated. He slid into it, grateful for the soft, cushioned seat, and the room to lean back and stretch out his legs underneath the table, and just soak up the heat wafting up from the register nearby. It felt good.
That Sheila, she was one in a million.
He took the felt hat off his head, and set it on the table beside him, remembering his manners late, but at least remembering them.
He wanted to give her something to thank her. But he didn’t have much to give. Then again, he thought, glancing down at the hat, it would be no great loss to give her the hat. It was just the sort of thing she would appreciate, and he would be no more without it than he had been a few hours ago.
That was it, then. He’d give her the hat. He had a feeling it was the right thing to do. Odd, that. But there it was.
Nine
HE DID NOT EXPECT HOLLY TO KISS HIM. HELL, THAT WAS the last thing he expected. And his initial reaction was a sudden, desperate urge to jump out of that bed and run for the door.
He didn’t act on it quickly enough, though, and so the second urge stepped up to the plate. And that one was to wrap his arms around her and pull her close and kiss her right back.
Which was totally idiotic.
And yet, he did it. He rolled toward her, twisted his arms around her tiny waist, pulled her close to him, so her chest was pressed to his, and opened his mouth to feed from hers. And she opened hers, too, and he let his tongue caress those lips and she opened farther to welcome it inside. Damn. Damn, he was on fire all of the sudden. And it was dumb and made no sense whatsoever.
Finally, he lifted his head back a little, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. “I, um…this isn’t a good idea, Holly.”
“I think it’s a really good idea,” she said. “Life’s too short not to embrace gifts like this. And this is a gift, Matthew. Don’t think for one minute it’s anything less.”
“I don’t even know you.”
She shrugged. “You’re about to.”
He was tempted. Sorely tempted. This was like some fantasy out of the Penthouse Forum. But it wasn’t a fantasy. It was real, and she was real, and there were real reasons not to sleep with someone you didn’t know. Particularly without protection.
And that, he thought, was the one argument that might save him. Both from her persistence and his own weakness.
“We don’t have any—”
“Yes, we do.”
He blinked at her. She smiled at him, her head resting on the pillow, her eyes sparkling with firelight. “You know how I was saying before that it always pays to be prepared?”
“Uh-huh.” It was a croak.
“Well?”
“I, um…I’m not looking for—”
“Let’s not question this, okay? Let’s not analyze it or talk about it or, God forbid, waste it. Let’s just enjoy it. Right now. In the moment. Can we do that?”
He had yet to meet a woman capable of any such thing. Then again, he thought, he had yet to meet a woman quite like this one.
“I can do that,” he said softly. And now he got a little braver, reached out with his fingers to stroke a wisp of a blond curl from her cheek. And then he paused with that curl in his fingers, rubbing it. So soft. And her cheek, even softer. “Can you?”
“I’ve spent my entire life living in the moment. It’s the only way I got through, sometimes.”
He felt the surprise rinse through him at that admission—the admission that she had ever been less than perfectly happy. It was something he didn’t imagine she let a lot of people see. And then he looked at her, really looked at her, and he saw beyond the happy, new age, positive-energy-spouting hippie. He saw a woman who’d been gutted, just like he had been. She was empty, and searching for something to fill that emptiness. She was vulnerable and needier than she knew. And right now, what she needed was him.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t handle being quite that needed.
He stroked her cheek once more, then leaned closer, and pressed his lips to it. “I can’t, Holly. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes slammed closed. White teeth bit down on her lower lip. She rolled onto her back and flung a forearm over her face, probably to hide it from him. “It’s okay. I understand.”