“Then, last year, my Nana Rose moved in with Mom and Dad. She’s exactly the same as my mom, only feistier. I like peace. Quiet. But there’s practically this glowing ring of nitpicking tumult surrounding all of them. And when they form groups…” She shook her head. “Run for the hills. I truly do love them and I know they mean well, but I can only handle them in small doses. Sometimes I think even fifty miles isn’t enough distance between us. Five hundred might have been smarter.”
“What about your dad?”
“The calm eye in the storm. He just smiles and goes to work and enjoys his hobbies and lets all the chaos roll off him like water off a duck’s back. I think he’s the only one not hoping I’ll fail.”
“Fail at what?”
“My business. Even though they haven’t said so out loud, I strongly suspect the rest of the family secretly hopes Blooming Pails will go belly-up, thus making it necessary-in their minds-for me to move back home and work again at the family nursery.”
“Any chance that’ll happen?”
“The business going belly-up or me moving back home?”
“Both.”
“Absolutely not to moving back home. I’ve fought too hard for my independence. As for Blooming Pails not making it…a lot depends on what happens in the next three months.” She gave him a brief overview of her loan situation and the bank evaluation coming up at the end of the next quarter. “If my interest rate goes up, I’m afraid that will be the beginning of the end, so this is really make-it-or-break-it time for me. Which is why I’m devoting all my time and attention to work. Which is why I don’t date.” She didn’t bother to add especially not firefighters.
“No problem, since we’ve agreed this isn’t a date-it’s just one little dinner.”
“Right.” She skimmed her foot beneath his pant leg, brushing her toes over his sock until she encountered warm, firm skin. “Now that you know all about my crazy family, what about yours?”
The way his eyes smoldered made her feel as if she’d stepped into a furnace. “My folks are great. Very little nitpicking and tumult. Like you, I like peace. My job is stressful enough-I’m lucky I don’t have any extra because of my family.”
“Very lucky. Is your dad a firefighter?”
“Nope. Schoolteacher. So are my mom and brother. Right in Ocean Harbor Beach, where I was born and raised. I might have followed that path except the summer I was fourteen I worked on my uncle’s ranch in Wyoming.”
“Where you learned your cowboy wisdom.”
“Right. There was a drought that year and a brush fire broke out on some back acres. It quickly spread, and if not for the fast work of the firefighters, my uncle might have lost everything. Watching those guys work…the die was cast right then and there. Made me the rebel who broke with the tradition in my family.”
“Well, not completely-you’re still a teacher.”
“True. I guess it’s in the blood. Still…” He raised his wineglass. “Here’s to rebellion.”
She touched her glass to his. Then slipped her toes from beneath his pant leg to shimmy her foot along the top of his thigh. “Right. To doing things we probably shouldn’t.”
He briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them, the fire in their depths scorched her. There was no doubt he wanted her. And God help her, she wanted him. More than she’d expected to. Certainly more than she wanted to. But no way she was willing to stop now. She shifted her foot to slowly caress his inner thigh, stopping just short of touching him where she was most tempted to touch.
“You’re driving me crazy,” he said in a strained voice.
“Just like you did to me. Want me to stop?”
“Hell, no.”
“Good.” She enjoyed another taste of her salad, chewing slowly, still stroking him, watching him watch her. After she swallowed, she asked, “So what do you like to do when you’re not fighting fires or teaching classes?”
“Take beautiful florists to dinner.”
“Thank you. Besides that.”
“Surf. Swim. Hike. Kayak. Fish. Kick back and watch TV. Take beautiful florists to dinner.”
She shifted her foot a hair higher on his leg. “You said that last one already.”
“Did I? I’m afraid I’m…distracted. But at any rate, it bears repeating.” He cleared his throat and took another bite of his salad. “So, what else do you like to do besides arrange flowers and play a wicked game of footsie?”
She smiled. “Swim. Run. Hike. Read. Cook. Play tennis. Fix up old cars.”
“Fix up old cars? Seriously?”
She nodded. “Something I inherited from my dad who’s an automotive genius. I drive a ’64 Mustang convertible that I rebuilt. Took me six years to do it, but I love that car.”
He leaned forward. “That’s my dream car.”
She glided her foot a bit higher, until it just brushed his groin. He sucked in a sharp breath. “Maybe you’d like me to take you for a ride.”
With his eyes burning into hers, he set down his fork, reached beneath the table, and lightly clasped her foot. Then he shifted a little lower in his chair and pressed her instep against his erection. “There’s no maybe about it.”
Oh, my. Whoever had nicknamed this man Elf didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.
“The question is,” he said in a low, husky voice, “are we still talking about cars?”
“What if I said we weren’t?”
He rolled his hips slightly forward, a gesture that set up an insistent throb between her legs and made her yearn to touch that lovely hard, male flesh with more than her foot. “I’d say you’d been peeking at my Christmas list.” Then he did something exquisite with his hands on her arch that brought a gasp of pleasure to her lips.
“Ohhh…that feels…hmmmmm. If you don’t stop that in about three or four hours, I’m going to get really angry.”
“Did you just give me permission to touch you for the next three or four hours? It sounds like you’ve been peeking at my Christmas list again.”
“I thought only children made Christmas lists.”
“Clearly not, as I have one. And you’re all over it. And there’s nothing childish about it.”
Good God, Toni was ready to slither to the floor. She loved having her feet rubbed and he had very talented hands. Hands that she wanted on more than her feet. As quickly as possible. Summoning the remnants of her wilted strength, she slid her foot from his grasp and slipped it back into her shoe.
“You didn’t like?” he asked.
She pushed back her hair from her overheated face. “Oh, I liked. But if you kept doing whatever glorious thing you were doing to my foot, I was going to have an orgasm.”
His eyes darkened. He pushed aside his forgotten salad and reached for her hand. “I wouldn’t have minded that one bit. Seems to me that when you reach boil…well, that’s a bad time to turn down the heat.”
A breathless laugh escaped her as his fingers entwined with hers. “I think Santa needs to know that you’re naughty.”
He gave her a slow smile that melted what was left of her spine. “And that you’re nice. And that I really like you.”
The unsettling realization hit her that she liked him, too. Which she hadn’t counted on. And wasn’t particularly happy about. In an effort to lighten up a moment that suddenly felt way too serious, she said, “You don’t know me.”
“Aside from the obvious fact that you’re gorgeous, I’ve managed to pick up quite a bit over the last three months during my visits to your shop. I know you’re creative, talented, independent, smart, hardworking and have the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. And now I know a lot more than I did an hour ago. And I like everything I’ve seen. And heard.” He drew her hand to his mouth and touched his tongue to the center of her palm. “And touched.”