The awkwardness didn’t fade when she found her feet and moved closer to him. With a barely perceptible movement, he shifted back, away from her.
She dropped to the cot next to him and sighed.
Any second now he’d fire her. She’d take it like a man.
Probably.
“Katie?” He sounded wary but concerned, which made her sigh again.
Mr. Perfect was a gentleman, right to the end. Except that he was watching her as one would a poisonous spider. She supposed she couldn’t really blame him; in his eyes she’d been acting pretty strange since the party.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I’m driving you home.” She attempted a friendly, don’t-worry-I’m-sane smile. “I’ll have you there in five minutes tops.”
He looked as if five minutes were a lifetime. Or maybe he was just worried she’d knock him down again and really injure him this time.
Well, that was her own fault, she supposed. And she still wasn’t any closer to the truth. He was so handsome, and so darn right for her!
Why couldn’t this be simple?
Slowly she lifted a hand toward him, hoping he’d take it. He didn’t, instead stared down at her fingers as if he expected them to separate from her body and yell Boo! “We really need to go,” she said.
“Just checking…” He gingerly took her fingers, studying them intently. Then he slowly craned his neck and stared at the ceiling, and then the walls around him. “For mistletoe.” He shot her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, it’s just that you seem so obsessed…”
She tightened her grip on his hand and gently tugged him up because she was obsessed. And she wasn’t finished; she had to know. She had to put the wild, unpredictable and far too sexy Bryan out of her head. “I have to try this one last time,” she whispered, more to herself than him. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.” Going up on her tiptoes, she lightly pressed her mouth to his.
He stiffened at the connection, and she thought, Yes! because she’d felt the same reaction from him, at the party. But that night his hands had tightened on her, he’d made a rough sound of helpless arousal, and had immediately taken over the kiss until she couldn’t so much as remember her name.
Not this time.
No fireworks, no heat barreling through her veins, nothing except the short, dry, chaste kiss.
Matt immediately pulled back and frowned at her. “What was that for?”
“Yes, Katie. Do tell.”
Katie jerked around. Bryan! What? Was her good karma on vacation?
Bryan lifted a mocking eyebrow, darn him, and sent her a knowing smile.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Me?”
“Yes, you!”
“Matt asked me to drive him home.” Bryan’s eyes sparkled, his mouth quivered suspiciously. “Unless of course, you’re going to do it.”
“No!” Matt said quickly, too quickly, then sent Katie an apologetic but terrified glance.
Katie could only sigh. Bryan’s eyes were still on her, she could feel them, but she’d streak naked through the hospital before she’d look at him again.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” he said lightly, turning her, forcing her to face him.
Oh, yes, given that smug expression, he knew exactly what he’d interrupted, and she’d never live it down.
His cocky, wicked grin only reinforced the knowledge.
6
WELL, AT LEAST she had Tic and Toc, her cats. They’d never abandon her. They’d never look at her with soft reproach as Matt had, wondering why she was trying to ruin his life.
Darn him for giving her a complex anyway. All she’d wanted was one little kiss; it wouldn’t have hurt him to cooperate.
Much.
“Meow.”
Katie let out a long, shaky breath. “Well, I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she told the cat. “But really, now that I think about it, that concussion was his own fault. If he would’ve just stayed still, we wouldn’t have fallen.”
She sat on her porch, both cats heavy in her lap as she watched the sunset and sighed. “I’m still Christmas cursed, apparently. Big surprise there.”
“I’ve heard you say that twice now.”
She nearly dumped Tic and Toc to the floor at the unexpected sound of his voice.
Bryan stood below the bottom step.
In the growing dark, she couldn’t see his expression clearly, and told herself it wasn’t necessary. She didn’t care. More than that, he didn’t care. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she muttered, trying to soothe the two orange tabbies as they both lifted their heads and stared with reproach at this newcomer.
Bryan stepped onto the porch and sent her his trademark crooked grin, the one that did funny things to her stomach in spite of the fact that she’d refused to acknowledge those things.
And not for the first time, she acknowledged somewhere deep down that Bryan was acting far more “mature” than she. Darn him.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I looked up your address in the computer.”
“I mind.”
His lips curved, but he said nothing to that, simply sat on the bench right next to her. “So. What’s this about a Christmas curse?”
“It means I have yet to successfully manage a smooth holiday season.”
“Ever?”
She didn’t, couldn’t, answer. Not when their thighs brushed, their arms touched, and his face, when he turned it toward her, was completely void of the laughter she’d been silently groaning over ever since he caught her trying to kiss Matt.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” he said, reading her mind with horrifying ease.
“Which? Nearly killing our vice president, or having him now be afraid of me?”
“That you didn’t believe me the first time.”
“Oh. That.”
“Yeah.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “That. Katie, is it so hard to believe? That you and I could have shared a kiss?”
“It wasn’t just a kiss.”
“No,” he agreed with a rueful laugh. “It sure wasn’t. And if I hadn’t had that ridiculous costume on, if we hadn’t been surrounded by dressed up, drunken fools, if…” His eyes gleamed with heat. “Well. Maybe it was for the best.”
She was certain somehow his statement should make her feel better. It didn’t.
“So…are you going to admit it?”
“Admit what?”
He let out a short laugh and shook his head. “You can’t fool me, you know. I’m the master of avoidance techniques.”
“You don’t avoid anything. You jump into every single day with your eyes wide-open, one-hundred-percent ready for anything and everything. Don’t tell me you know anything about avoidance techniques.”
“Ah, but the adventure and excitement of my job, that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”
“And what are you talking about?”
“Heart stuff. Emotion stuff. That’s what I’m the master of avoidance at.”
She stared at him, and he stared right back, his eyes clear and open and honest.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because maybe I’m a big fake,” he whispered back. Slowly, as if he were afraid to frighten her off, he lifted a hand. His fingers brushed her cheek in a soft, barely there caress. “When it comes right down to it, I’ve never taken the biggest risk of all. I’ve never opened my heart all the way to a woman.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Was that her voice, all whispery and light? Good Lord, she sounded as if she were having an attack of the vapors. But then he shifted a little closer and those long fingers cupped her jaw, and she became much more seriously breathing challenged. Her pulse raced. Her heart pounded. Her palms went clammy.