When he started working on tethering the tree to the wall, necessary thanks to Christmas trees bringing out Moxie’s inner kitten, Claire went to the kitchen to wash the sap off her hands. Unfortunately, the kitchen was more of an area than an actual room, which meant she could see him from the sink. Tethering the tree required a lot of leaning and stretching and the leaning and stretching kept making his T-shirt ride up, and she wondered how she’d never noticed how incredibly sexy the small of his back was.
And now that she was looking, that exposed strip of skin wasn’t the only thing sexy about him. There was the way he filled out his blue jeans. The way his broad shoulders moved under his T-shirt. The way his hair curled just a little at the base of his neck because he was overdue for a haircut. And when he turned and grinned at her, she went ahead and mentally penciled that in at the top of the list.
“Moxie would need a chainsaw to take this sucker down now.”
She tried, as a rule, never to compare Brendan and Justin, other than a natural curiosity at times as to how two such opposite men had been best friends for almost their entire lives.
Justin was worn jeans and faded T-shirts, usually with a hole at the back of the collar where the tag sometimes stuck out because rather than grab the hem, he took off his shirts by grabbing the back of the neck, bunching the fabric and hauling it over his head. If she needed a repair done, Justin would load the supplies in his truck, show up and get it done in exchange for food and all the iced tea she could pour. He liked country music and liked to watch movies at home, where he could pop the button on his jeans and put his feet on the coffee table.
Brendan was khakis and button-down shirts. He listened to classic rock and loved going to the movie theater to experience films the way the directors intended him to. If a repair needed doing, he would call somebody to fix it, write the check and then take Claire out someplace on the town so the construction wouldn’t bother her.
Such different guys with an unbreakable bond. And they both meant everything to her.
“You want me to hang that mistletoe?”
“No, thanks. I’ll hang it somewhere later.” If he hung it, then he’d end up standing under it and she might be tempted to kiss him.
“This is the part where you offer me food,” he reminded her.
“We’ll be at Cal’s party in a few hours and there’s always tables of food.”
“The keywords being in a few hours.”
She rolled her eyes and pulled open the refrigerator. “I don’t have much. Haven’t worked up the ambition to go grocery shopping in a while. Deli meat. A leftover chicken breast. It was a little dry the first time around, so I don’t think a microwave is going to help it any. I could slice it thin, maybe. Make a sandwich with lots of mayo.”
“You got any chocolate pudding?” His voice so close to her ear made her jump.
He was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder. With one hand on the open door and the other braced on the fridge itself, she was trapped by his body and awareness of it crackled through her like an August wildfire.
It had to be that stupid dream, she told herself. Now that she knew her body was thinking about sex again, she was fabricating desire where it didn’t exist. She didn’t feel that way about Justin.
He moved closer, trying to see around her, and when his hip bumped hers, it took every ounce of self-control she had not to react. Okay, so maybe she felt that way about Justin a little. But it would pass. As long as he didn’t catch on, things wouldn’t get weird and eventually her body would find somebody else to lust after.
She hoped.
“Next right,” Justin told the cab driver, who put on his turn signal and slowed the car. Then he sent a quick text to Claire to let her know they’d arrived.
Neither of them were big drinkers, but the booze flowed freely at Cal’s Christmas parties and Justin would have at least a couple of beers and Claire would have some kind of sparkly, fruity drink. Before Brendan’s accident, he would have risked it, telling himself two drinks was nothing. But, even though alcohol wasn’t a factor in the accident, Justin had been the one to visit the impound and collect any personal items from the mangled wreck that had been Brendan’s car. Since then, he did what he could to make sure his family wouldn’t have to do the same.
When the cab was in Park, Justin got out and walked around to open Claire’s door for her just in time to see her making her way carefully down the staircase in red high heels he’d never seen before. And, holy crap, her legs. He’d seen her legs before. Kicking around in shorts and flip-flops. Hell, he’d even seen them at the beach a time or two, when she wore nothing but a modest, one-piece suit.
But they looked different tonight. He’d never seen her long, curved-just-right legs going on for what looked like forever, from her short black skirt to those red high-heeled shoes that would make any hot-blooded male instantly hard just because they were red high-heeled shoes.
“You ready?” she asked, and he realized he’d watched those amazing legs walk right up to him and stop.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, thinking maybe being concerned for her health would sound like a legitimate excuse for the staring.
She hesitated, looking like she was going to say something but changed her mind. Then she shook her head. “Not really.”
“The dress code for Cal’s party’s pretty casual.”
“So I felt like dressing up a little.” Her hair was up in some sparkly red clip thing and she had on just enough makeup to keep his gaze bouncing between her gorgeous eyes and a mouth just begging to be kissed.
As she walked past him to get into the cab and he closed her door for her, he thought about that mouth and those legs and those shoes and swore softly, but very earnestly, under his breath. She looked like a woman who was hoping to find a man.
What the hell was he supposed to do if she found one? He wasn’t sure he had the willpower to watch her leave with some other guy.
Especially once he was in the cab and those legs were in his peripheral vision. The skirt wasn’t indecent by any means, but it had ridden up and when she shifted in her seat, he got a painfully delicious glimpse of her smooth, pale inner thigh. He turned his head to look out the window and was thankful it was only a ten-minute drive to the small resort hosting the party.
Cal Reading was a builder who specialized in building overpriced custom homes for people with way too much money and he threw one hell of a Christmas party every year. Justin’s invite was thanks to the occasional roof he’d do if the regular Reading Builders roofing crew was held up on a big job. Claire worked with a lot of the outfit’s subcontractors and Cal appreciated how well she coordinated with his big-city accountant.
They both knew pretty much everybody in the big banquet room, so it wasn’t long before they’d gone their separate ways, each with a drink in hand. It was only when he heard her laughter over the crowd and the music that he realized the men really outnumbered the women in the room. By a lot. And too many of them didn’t appear to have women to leave with.
No wonder Claire was practically surrounded. Okay, maybe not surrounded, but there were a few guys who seemed to be orbiting her like they were just looking for an opening to land their lunar modules. And the shimmery, flowing red blouse that matched her shoes and hugged her curves wasn’t helping any.