The ranchers bride, p.25
Wrapped with a Beau, page 25
“Well, I hadn’t intended to,” says Ves. “I live in New York.”
“But the two of you are together?”
Ves glances at Elisha, feeling horribly put on the spot.
“Only until he leaves,” she says finally.
“Sounds like me and Maeve. She couldn’t leave, I didn’t want to stay.” Damian loses himself in thought for a moment before coming back to himself. “The prerogative of youth, I suppose.” He gives Ves a speculative look. “So, it would appear you’re in need of a buyer. I’d like to make you an offer. Some of the best moments in my life were in that house, with Maeve, and I don’t think I could bear for new owners to move in and make changes. Not so soon.”
And then in the next breath Damian quotes a price so extraordinarily high, well over market value, that Ves is sure his eyes bug out. Elisha’s certainly do.
“I don’t know what to say,” says Ves.
“Say you’ll sell.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ves
On Monday morning when Damian leaves, pre-production photography all wrapped, Ves goes back home. It’s strange, but until the moment he shook Damian’s hand and promised to sell it to him, the Christmas House didn’t feel like home.
As he crosses the threshold now, it does. The sense of belonging sinks into his bones as soon as he’s through the door and his overnight bag thumps to the hardwood floor. So does the hard pit in his stomach that makes him think he’s made a dreadful mistake in selling what’s become his to someone else.
“Hey, don’t dawdle!” Elisha scuttles through the door behind him. “Did you forget you promised to come to the Chocolate Mouse today for the cookie decorating workshop? This is one of my favorite Winter Festival activities!”
“I think we’ve established that I’m a hazard in the kitchen,” he says dryly.
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” She winks. “We achieved some pretty good results last time.”
He laughs and puts an arm around her. “I guess that’s true. Do we have time for some more of those ‘good results’ before the workshop? The one I don’t remember signing up for?”
She has the grace to look sheepish. “Grandpa Dave strikes again. You know he considers you family when he starts volunteering you to do things at the emporium.”
Like I’m another of the man’s grandkids, Ves thinks, pleasantly surprised at the fondness that sweeps through him. Maybe a few weeks ago the meddling would have bugged him. No, no maybe about it. The intrusion of a perfect stranger, however well intentioned, would have grated like sandpaper. But now, it just makes him feel a sense of belonging to this place, these people.
As it turns out, when Ves and Elisha arrive at the Chocolate Mouse, their presence seems surplus. It’s a full house, with cookie-making stations set up across the shop floor. All the decorations from the holiday party are still up—snowy clumps, shiny ornaments gleaming reflections back at them, tinsel and string lights strewn everywhere—lending to the impression that they’re contestants on a fancy holiday baking show.
Momentarily mesmerized, Ves tunes back just in time to catch the end of Elisha’s conversation with her grandfather. “Nonsense,” Dave insists, “I’ve saved you a spot and you’re here now. Come on, get those coats off and stand at your station.”
“But Grandpa, you said you only needed us to make up numbers if there weren’t enough sign-ups and there are, just take a look around, oh my god even Bentley’s here—”
“You can’t let Ves down! Look at him, he’s so excited.”
He is? Ves blinks when Dave gestures at him with a pastry bag filled with a hideous green icing.
Elisha sighs. “Fine, but we’re not going to have fun.” She casts an irritated look over at her ex-fiancé. “Especially since the only station left is right next to his.”
“The early bird gets the cookie,” says Dave.
“Not how the saying goes, but fine.” Elisha grabs Ves’s arm and leads him to their station. Pre-made shortbread cookies in the shape of boxy sweaters are already laid out, along with several icing bags and edible decorations to make buttons and patterns.
“Hi, Elisha,” says a woman who must be Bentley’s wife. She’s pretty, with a genuine smile and excitement in her face as she picks up a dish of snowflake sprinkles. “These are so cute. You’re so lucky to have this place year-round. My parents put all the decorations up the day after Thanksgiving and take them down right after New Year’s. If it were up to me, I’d at least have the lights up every day of the year.”
“Thankfully for our electricity bill, it’s not up to Victoria,” says Bentley. He’s the only one to laugh.
When his wife flushes with embarrassment, Elisha says, “I know exactly what you mean, Tori. This is my favorite place in the entire world, except maybe for my grandparents’ beach home in Goa. Whenever you need a dose of Christmas injected straight in your veins, stop by. Mom runs an awesome candle-making class in January, and we do a Cowboy Christmas during summer, which is always a great excuse to dig out the boots and fringe.” She grins. “It’s so extra, but I love it. I can give you the details, if you want?”
Tori’s enthusiasm, for some reason, makes Bentley bristle. Ves studies the other man under the guise of familiarizing himself with everything on their station. Why did they even move to this town if Ben isn’t keen to throw himself into local activities? The way Bentley’s eyes dart to Elisha with an odd frown of disappointment confirms Ves’s suspicion that he’s still trying to get some kind of reaction out of her. Jealousy, maybe. Does he want her to be a bitch to Tori or something? The opposite is happening here.
Elisha and Tori chat about upcoming events until Dave takes center stage to walk them through the best tips and flavor combinations for their cookie decoration.
“And don’t forget!” he says with the biggest of grins. “As a couple, you must make at least one Ugly Christmas Sweater cookie to enter the contest! This is one of our most popular Winter Festival activities, and the prize is a doozy! Winners get their choice of their very own solid chocolate mouse! Brain fillings range from sweet to salty to plain disgusting.” He winks.
“He’s talking about the bubble gum flavor,” Elisha whispers in Ves’s ear. “I actually designed it to look like a veiny brain, but it has the consistency of a Tootsie Roll. The kids love it, but uh, it didn’t go over super well with the grown-ups.”
“Ellie’s always been a kid at heart. Christmas year-round at the emporium, this obsession with Sleighbells . . .” Bentley chuckles like he finds it ridiculous, shaking his head at the pastry bag Tori offers him. He even goes so far as to cross his arms like he doesn’t want to be here and is definitely not planning on participating. “It’s cute how she never sees things how they really are, but how she wants them to be.”
“You mean like when I was too naïve to realize you were never going to move here?”
The words fly out of Elisha so fast that Ves doubts she meant to do it.
“What?” Tori looks between her husband and his ex. Finally, she turns to Elisha. “He’s never going to give me a straight answer, so I hope you will. I know you two dated, but he planned to move here for you?”
“That’s debatable, actually,” Elisha says at the same moment Bentley snaps, “I did mean it at the time!”
Elisha’s glare softens when she looks at Tori. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I really don’t want to rehash the past, but it’s hard when it’s walking and talking right in front of me.” She waves a disgusted hand in Bentley’s direction. “We had plans to live here together after we graduated, but he got a better job offer, so he took it and didn’t tell me until I was already back in town.”
“Ellie, this is exactly what I meant when I said you live in a fantasy world,” Bentley says, condescension dripping from every word. “Did you really think this place would be enough for me?”
Tori’s mouth drops in obvious outrage. “Excuse me? I grew up around this area.”
“I didn’t mean it like—” Bentley massages his forehead.
“So why did we move back here?” Tori demands. “If it’s so beneath you.”
At this, a few people around them glance over.
Ves thinks this is the moment. When he’ll finally discover whether Bentley just wanted to rub his new life in Elisha’s face or whether he wants her back. Either option is as distasteful as the man himself.
“It doesn’t matter to me whatever the reason is,” Elisha says quickly, as though the same idea has occurred to her and she doesn’t want anything admitted in front of Tori. “The fact is, I’ve moved on and while I generally like to stay on good terms with my exes, I’m willing to make an exception for you, Bentley. You treated me like shit and if that wasn’t enough, not only did you never apologize for it, but you showed up back here and keep acting like you and I are friends. Let me be very clear: we aren’t.”
With an open-mouthed choking sound, Bentley starts to say, “Ellie—”
“I hate when you call me that. It’s Elisha. We’ve had this argument a dozen times.”
“Sure, sorry.” He doesn’t look like it.
Ves tenses his jaw, aching to call the asshole out, but knows it’s the last thing Elisha wants to happen while Dave is running the workshop. Instead, he calmly selects a piping bag and creates a hot-pink outline around the cookie to corral all the icing. He floods it with lime green that reminds him of Shrek and then picks out matching sprinkles to create a border on the bottom.
“Look, I think I just need to say this. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but clearly it is.” Elisha takes a deep, bracing breath. “It’s not Piney Peaks that’s beneath you. It’s you who is unworthy of our town and everyone in it.”
Pride fireworks in Ves’s chest at her firm, no-nonsense delivery.
Bentley gives them all hard stares. “Victoria, we’re leaving.” When she doesn’t move, his expression turns ugly. “Victoria?”
A bottle of sprinkles slams down hard. “It’s Tori!”
Bentley storms out without another word, nearly crashing into another cookie station on the way.
Tori releases an uneven, choked exhale.
“Are you okay?” asks Elisha.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Here,” says Grandpa Dave in a gentle voice, heading over to join Tori, who looks at him with visible gratitude. “Why don’t you try these?” He holds out a packet of popping candy. “Let’s do some stripes on your Ugly Christmas Sweater cookie. Grab some of that icing, sweetheart. Do you like yellow and purple?”
Ves isn’t sure how much he’s overheard, but is once again struck by the older man’s ability to get right to the heart of every hard situation. With Tori under Dave’s wing, he gives all his attention back to Elisha. “I’m proud of you,” he says, kissing her forehead. “I know it would have been much easier to ignore him.”
“I’m glad I gave him a piece of my mind,” she admits, relaxing into him. “I probably shouldn’t have forced the issue right now, but I can’t quite bring myself to regret it. I hope the scales have fallen from Tori’s eyes way faster than they fell from mine. And that she realizes she deserves better.”
With one last look at Tori, who’s in good hands with Dave, Elisha aims a high-wattage smile at Ves. “Now, are you going to wow me with some truly horrible sweater designs or am I going to win this on my own?”
“Hey, I’ve been carrying us so far. It’s your turn,” Ves says, snaking one arm around her waist while the other taps his chin. “Now, how ugly can we make this?”
He’s one hundred percent positive he doesn’t want to put this much food coloring into his body, but if she keeps looking at him like he’s Christmas come early, he just might be convinced. As Elisha pros and cons the technical difficulties of using licorice bits to make reindeer antlers and a cinnamon Red Hot as its nose versus using icing, a feeling of contentment steals over Ves.
He didn’t want to come, could certainly think of far more pleasurable activities to spend their time doing. But as he watches her brush her hair out of her face, getting a smear of icing on her cheekbone that he wishes he could lick off, he realizes there’s nowhere else that he would rather be.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Elisha
In her dream, someone’s calling her love. Someone with a laugh like silver bells, like waiting for winter all summer long, to finally wake up to the first frost spiderwebbing across the window and knowing that at last it was here, welcoming you home.
“Elisha, it’s time to wake up. We’re almost here, love.”
Love. There it is again. It feels nice, as nice as the warm arm securely around her. One eye blearily opens as she recalibrates, taking stock of where they are. It isn’t the glamorous view of midtown Manhattan’s skyline she loves or the exciting whizz of every geographically impossible tourist attraction jam-packed into the travel montage of a movie. Instead, she’s greeted with the gray-and-brown concrete walls of a bus terminal and a sore neck.
She stretches the stiffness out of her legs and cracks her neck before grabbing her suitcase, a tan carry-on size that was perfect for taking the bus on the two-hour journey from Piney Peaks to Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. Ves handles the subway with ease, like he knows it like the back of his hand. Which, she supposes, he probably does. After disembarking from the train, they walk three blocks until arriving at Ves’s East 2nd Street apartment. By the time they get there, she’s thankful her mom insisted she wear the heavy peacoat.
She lets him remove it after they make the three-flight walk up. “I know we just got here,” she says around a yawn. “And what I’m about to say makes me a terrible tourist, but please let me just crawl into your bed and stay there until Arun’s party?”
As much as she’s looking forward to tonight, they have a packed schedule full of sightseeing and a catch-up lunch with her old boss, Veronica.
Ves huffs a laugh, buries his face in her neck. “Now why would I have any problem with that? I hear that terrible tourists make excellent girlfriends.”
Is he sniffing her? He does that a lot. Nuzzles his nose against her skin and inhales like he can’t get enough. No man has ever craved her the way that Ves does. She arches her back, teases him with her ass right up against his growing hardness. “Hmm, nope. I don’t think I’ve heard that.”
“Well, you do come from a really tiny town . . .”
“Fuck you,” she says with a sigh, wriggling to give him better access.
“Where do you think I’m going with this?” he mumbles into that shivery spot where her neck meets her shoulder. The sensation springs her from eighty percent awake to a full one hundred percent, especially when his breath and body heat starts to warm her up.
“I’ve been away from home for so long,” Ves continues, wrapping both arms around her waist, squeezing her flush against him. “I miss my bed. My sheets. And I have this image of you rolling around on them wearing that black lingerie I like, or maybe nothing at all, wrinkling my perfectly ironed sheets into sheer fucking devastation.”
“Thank god you’re hot, otherwise the fact you iron your sheets would be a real turn-off.”
His lips brush the back of her neck. “Smart mouth.”
Without breaking his embrace, she twists to face him. “Put it to better use, then,” she says breathlessly.
Ves doesn’t wait a second longer. His mouth crashes down on hers, hungry and seeking. His large hands frame her face, tilting her chin to better meet the angle of his kiss. Every lean, muscled inch of him presses into her, one thigh nudging hers apart so her denim-clad pelvis rubs tantalizingly against his leg.
She always thinks he’s sexy, but when he takes control like this, she grows wet for him.
He kisses her the way she loves, hands weaving into her hair, then slipping free to trail down her back and cup each of her buttocks. Kneading like the bread she’s positive he’s never made in his life.
She winds her arms about his neck, gasping when her breasts make delicious friction against his chest. He growls in reply, deepening the kiss. His tongue coaxes hers to give way to him, stroking just right. With a low moan, she digs her fingers into his shoulders. Each one begs for more, more, more. The vibration rocks through her, heat pooling low in her abdomen.
Kissing her the entire time, he walks her backward, presumably toward his bedroom. At this point, her eyes are fluttering shut in desire every two seconds, but she still tries to get a good look at the living room. It’s sun-flooded, with tall bookshelves lining white walls and neutral rugs against parquet floors. A collection of nice black-and-white abstract prints above a gray sofa.
A few more steps and the back of her knees hit the bed. His mouth applies the perfect pressure, firm and insistent, but still tender. When he tugs at her bottom lip with his teeth, she goes boneless in his arms. If Ves weren’t holding her up, she would have collapsed in a heap on the bed, all tightly coiled desire and trembling legs.
She likes kisses like this, without too much tongue. Just flurries of pecks, darting tongues, a little biting, and his hands exploring everywhere.
“Undress me?” she whispers against his mouth, core clenching with want.
She doesn’t have to ask him twice. His hands work the large tortoiseshell buttons on her chunky cardigan while hers move to his trousers. A few tugs and they’re off. He makes a bitten-off sound when she kicks them aside.
“You didn’t really want me to stop to fold those neatly, did you?” she asks sweetly, sinking to her knees and peeling off her camisole to reveal her black La Perla bra.
He smolders down at her, clearly liking what he sees. In addition to being her most expensive lingerie, it’s also the skimpiest. It has just enough lace to cup her breasts and cover the nipples, but it’s sheer everywhere else. “Trust me, love, I have swiftly reprioritized,” he says with a rough laugh. His hands curl into her hair for just a second, and it feels like a kiss.
“But the two of you are together?”
Ves glances at Elisha, feeling horribly put on the spot.
“Only until he leaves,” she says finally.
“Sounds like me and Maeve. She couldn’t leave, I didn’t want to stay.” Damian loses himself in thought for a moment before coming back to himself. “The prerogative of youth, I suppose.” He gives Ves a speculative look. “So, it would appear you’re in need of a buyer. I’d like to make you an offer. Some of the best moments in my life were in that house, with Maeve, and I don’t think I could bear for new owners to move in and make changes. Not so soon.”
And then in the next breath Damian quotes a price so extraordinarily high, well over market value, that Ves is sure his eyes bug out. Elisha’s certainly do.
“I don’t know what to say,” says Ves.
“Say you’ll sell.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ves
On Monday morning when Damian leaves, pre-production photography all wrapped, Ves goes back home. It’s strange, but until the moment he shook Damian’s hand and promised to sell it to him, the Christmas House didn’t feel like home.
As he crosses the threshold now, it does. The sense of belonging sinks into his bones as soon as he’s through the door and his overnight bag thumps to the hardwood floor. So does the hard pit in his stomach that makes him think he’s made a dreadful mistake in selling what’s become his to someone else.
“Hey, don’t dawdle!” Elisha scuttles through the door behind him. “Did you forget you promised to come to the Chocolate Mouse today for the cookie decorating workshop? This is one of my favorite Winter Festival activities!”
“I think we’ve established that I’m a hazard in the kitchen,” he says dryly.
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” She winks. “We achieved some pretty good results last time.”
He laughs and puts an arm around her. “I guess that’s true. Do we have time for some more of those ‘good results’ before the workshop? The one I don’t remember signing up for?”
She has the grace to look sheepish. “Grandpa Dave strikes again. You know he considers you family when he starts volunteering you to do things at the emporium.”
Like I’m another of the man’s grandkids, Ves thinks, pleasantly surprised at the fondness that sweeps through him. Maybe a few weeks ago the meddling would have bugged him. No, no maybe about it. The intrusion of a perfect stranger, however well intentioned, would have grated like sandpaper. But now, it just makes him feel a sense of belonging to this place, these people.
As it turns out, when Ves and Elisha arrive at the Chocolate Mouse, their presence seems surplus. It’s a full house, with cookie-making stations set up across the shop floor. All the decorations from the holiday party are still up—snowy clumps, shiny ornaments gleaming reflections back at them, tinsel and string lights strewn everywhere—lending to the impression that they’re contestants on a fancy holiday baking show.
Momentarily mesmerized, Ves tunes back just in time to catch the end of Elisha’s conversation with her grandfather. “Nonsense,” Dave insists, “I’ve saved you a spot and you’re here now. Come on, get those coats off and stand at your station.”
“But Grandpa, you said you only needed us to make up numbers if there weren’t enough sign-ups and there are, just take a look around, oh my god even Bentley’s here—”
“You can’t let Ves down! Look at him, he’s so excited.”
He is? Ves blinks when Dave gestures at him with a pastry bag filled with a hideous green icing.
Elisha sighs. “Fine, but we’re not going to have fun.” She casts an irritated look over at her ex-fiancé. “Especially since the only station left is right next to his.”
“The early bird gets the cookie,” says Dave.
“Not how the saying goes, but fine.” Elisha grabs Ves’s arm and leads him to their station. Pre-made shortbread cookies in the shape of boxy sweaters are already laid out, along with several icing bags and edible decorations to make buttons and patterns.
“Hi, Elisha,” says a woman who must be Bentley’s wife. She’s pretty, with a genuine smile and excitement in her face as she picks up a dish of snowflake sprinkles. “These are so cute. You’re so lucky to have this place year-round. My parents put all the decorations up the day after Thanksgiving and take them down right after New Year’s. If it were up to me, I’d at least have the lights up every day of the year.”
“Thankfully for our electricity bill, it’s not up to Victoria,” says Bentley. He’s the only one to laugh.
When his wife flushes with embarrassment, Elisha says, “I know exactly what you mean, Tori. This is my favorite place in the entire world, except maybe for my grandparents’ beach home in Goa. Whenever you need a dose of Christmas injected straight in your veins, stop by. Mom runs an awesome candle-making class in January, and we do a Cowboy Christmas during summer, which is always a great excuse to dig out the boots and fringe.” She grins. “It’s so extra, but I love it. I can give you the details, if you want?”
Tori’s enthusiasm, for some reason, makes Bentley bristle. Ves studies the other man under the guise of familiarizing himself with everything on their station. Why did they even move to this town if Ben isn’t keen to throw himself into local activities? The way Bentley’s eyes dart to Elisha with an odd frown of disappointment confirms Ves’s suspicion that he’s still trying to get some kind of reaction out of her. Jealousy, maybe. Does he want her to be a bitch to Tori or something? The opposite is happening here.
Elisha and Tori chat about upcoming events until Dave takes center stage to walk them through the best tips and flavor combinations for their cookie decoration.
“And don’t forget!” he says with the biggest of grins. “As a couple, you must make at least one Ugly Christmas Sweater cookie to enter the contest! This is one of our most popular Winter Festival activities, and the prize is a doozy! Winners get their choice of their very own solid chocolate mouse! Brain fillings range from sweet to salty to plain disgusting.” He winks.
“He’s talking about the bubble gum flavor,” Elisha whispers in Ves’s ear. “I actually designed it to look like a veiny brain, but it has the consistency of a Tootsie Roll. The kids love it, but uh, it didn’t go over super well with the grown-ups.”
“Ellie’s always been a kid at heart. Christmas year-round at the emporium, this obsession with Sleighbells . . .” Bentley chuckles like he finds it ridiculous, shaking his head at the pastry bag Tori offers him. He even goes so far as to cross his arms like he doesn’t want to be here and is definitely not planning on participating. “It’s cute how she never sees things how they really are, but how she wants them to be.”
“You mean like when I was too naïve to realize you were never going to move here?”
The words fly out of Elisha so fast that Ves doubts she meant to do it.
“What?” Tori looks between her husband and his ex. Finally, she turns to Elisha. “He’s never going to give me a straight answer, so I hope you will. I know you two dated, but he planned to move here for you?”
“That’s debatable, actually,” Elisha says at the same moment Bentley snaps, “I did mean it at the time!”
Elisha’s glare softens when she looks at Tori. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I really don’t want to rehash the past, but it’s hard when it’s walking and talking right in front of me.” She waves a disgusted hand in Bentley’s direction. “We had plans to live here together after we graduated, but he got a better job offer, so he took it and didn’t tell me until I was already back in town.”
“Ellie, this is exactly what I meant when I said you live in a fantasy world,” Bentley says, condescension dripping from every word. “Did you really think this place would be enough for me?”
Tori’s mouth drops in obvious outrage. “Excuse me? I grew up around this area.”
“I didn’t mean it like—” Bentley massages his forehead.
“So why did we move back here?” Tori demands. “If it’s so beneath you.”
At this, a few people around them glance over.
Ves thinks this is the moment. When he’ll finally discover whether Bentley just wanted to rub his new life in Elisha’s face or whether he wants her back. Either option is as distasteful as the man himself.
“It doesn’t matter to me whatever the reason is,” Elisha says quickly, as though the same idea has occurred to her and she doesn’t want anything admitted in front of Tori. “The fact is, I’ve moved on and while I generally like to stay on good terms with my exes, I’m willing to make an exception for you, Bentley. You treated me like shit and if that wasn’t enough, not only did you never apologize for it, but you showed up back here and keep acting like you and I are friends. Let me be very clear: we aren’t.”
With an open-mouthed choking sound, Bentley starts to say, “Ellie—”
“I hate when you call me that. It’s Elisha. We’ve had this argument a dozen times.”
“Sure, sorry.” He doesn’t look like it.
Ves tenses his jaw, aching to call the asshole out, but knows it’s the last thing Elisha wants to happen while Dave is running the workshop. Instead, he calmly selects a piping bag and creates a hot-pink outline around the cookie to corral all the icing. He floods it with lime green that reminds him of Shrek and then picks out matching sprinkles to create a border on the bottom.
“Look, I think I just need to say this. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but clearly it is.” Elisha takes a deep, bracing breath. “It’s not Piney Peaks that’s beneath you. It’s you who is unworthy of our town and everyone in it.”
Pride fireworks in Ves’s chest at her firm, no-nonsense delivery.
Bentley gives them all hard stares. “Victoria, we’re leaving.” When she doesn’t move, his expression turns ugly. “Victoria?”
A bottle of sprinkles slams down hard. “It’s Tori!”
Bentley storms out without another word, nearly crashing into another cookie station on the way.
Tori releases an uneven, choked exhale.
“Are you okay?” asks Elisha.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Here,” says Grandpa Dave in a gentle voice, heading over to join Tori, who looks at him with visible gratitude. “Why don’t you try these?” He holds out a packet of popping candy. “Let’s do some stripes on your Ugly Christmas Sweater cookie. Grab some of that icing, sweetheart. Do you like yellow and purple?”
Ves isn’t sure how much he’s overheard, but is once again struck by the older man’s ability to get right to the heart of every hard situation. With Tori under Dave’s wing, he gives all his attention back to Elisha. “I’m proud of you,” he says, kissing her forehead. “I know it would have been much easier to ignore him.”
“I’m glad I gave him a piece of my mind,” she admits, relaxing into him. “I probably shouldn’t have forced the issue right now, but I can’t quite bring myself to regret it. I hope the scales have fallen from Tori’s eyes way faster than they fell from mine. And that she realizes she deserves better.”
With one last look at Tori, who’s in good hands with Dave, Elisha aims a high-wattage smile at Ves. “Now, are you going to wow me with some truly horrible sweater designs or am I going to win this on my own?”
“Hey, I’ve been carrying us so far. It’s your turn,” Ves says, snaking one arm around her waist while the other taps his chin. “Now, how ugly can we make this?”
He’s one hundred percent positive he doesn’t want to put this much food coloring into his body, but if she keeps looking at him like he’s Christmas come early, he just might be convinced. As Elisha pros and cons the technical difficulties of using licorice bits to make reindeer antlers and a cinnamon Red Hot as its nose versus using icing, a feeling of contentment steals over Ves.
He didn’t want to come, could certainly think of far more pleasurable activities to spend their time doing. But as he watches her brush her hair out of her face, getting a smear of icing on her cheekbone that he wishes he could lick off, he realizes there’s nowhere else that he would rather be.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Elisha
In her dream, someone’s calling her love. Someone with a laugh like silver bells, like waiting for winter all summer long, to finally wake up to the first frost spiderwebbing across the window and knowing that at last it was here, welcoming you home.
“Elisha, it’s time to wake up. We’re almost here, love.”
Love. There it is again. It feels nice, as nice as the warm arm securely around her. One eye blearily opens as she recalibrates, taking stock of where they are. It isn’t the glamorous view of midtown Manhattan’s skyline she loves or the exciting whizz of every geographically impossible tourist attraction jam-packed into the travel montage of a movie. Instead, she’s greeted with the gray-and-brown concrete walls of a bus terminal and a sore neck.
She stretches the stiffness out of her legs and cracks her neck before grabbing her suitcase, a tan carry-on size that was perfect for taking the bus on the two-hour journey from Piney Peaks to Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. Ves handles the subway with ease, like he knows it like the back of his hand. Which, she supposes, he probably does. After disembarking from the train, they walk three blocks until arriving at Ves’s East 2nd Street apartment. By the time they get there, she’s thankful her mom insisted she wear the heavy peacoat.
She lets him remove it after they make the three-flight walk up. “I know we just got here,” she says around a yawn. “And what I’m about to say makes me a terrible tourist, but please let me just crawl into your bed and stay there until Arun’s party?”
As much as she’s looking forward to tonight, they have a packed schedule full of sightseeing and a catch-up lunch with her old boss, Veronica.
Ves huffs a laugh, buries his face in her neck. “Now why would I have any problem with that? I hear that terrible tourists make excellent girlfriends.”
Is he sniffing her? He does that a lot. Nuzzles his nose against her skin and inhales like he can’t get enough. No man has ever craved her the way that Ves does. She arches her back, teases him with her ass right up against his growing hardness. “Hmm, nope. I don’t think I’ve heard that.”
“Well, you do come from a really tiny town . . .”
“Fuck you,” she says with a sigh, wriggling to give him better access.
“Where do you think I’m going with this?” he mumbles into that shivery spot where her neck meets her shoulder. The sensation springs her from eighty percent awake to a full one hundred percent, especially when his breath and body heat starts to warm her up.
“I’ve been away from home for so long,” Ves continues, wrapping both arms around her waist, squeezing her flush against him. “I miss my bed. My sheets. And I have this image of you rolling around on them wearing that black lingerie I like, or maybe nothing at all, wrinkling my perfectly ironed sheets into sheer fucking devastation.”
“Thank god you’re hot, otherwise the fact you iron your sheets would be a real turn-off.”
His lips brush the back of her neck. “Smart mouth.”
Without breaking his embrace, she twists to face him. “Put it to better use, then,” she says breathlessly.
Ves doesn’t wait a second longer. His mouth crashes down on hers, hungry and seeking. His large hands frame her face, tilting her chin to better meet the angle of his kiss. Every lean, muscled inch of him presses into her, one thigh nudging hers apart so her denim-clad pelvis rubs tantalizingly against his leg.
She always thinks he’s sexy, but when he takes control like this, she grows wet for him.
He kisses her the way she loves, hands weaving into her hair, then slipping free to trail down her back and cup each of her buttocks. Kneading like the bread she’s positive he’s never made in his life.
She winds her arms about his neck, gasping when her breasts make delicious friction against his chest. He growls in reply, deepening the kiss. His tongue coaxes hers to give way to him, stroking just right. With a low moan, she digs her fingers into his shoulders. Each one begs for more, more, more. The vibration rocks through her, heat pooling low in her abdomen.
Kissing her the entire time, he walks her backward, presumably toward his bedroom. At this point, her eyes are fluttering shut in desire every two seconds, but she still tries to get a good look at the living room. It’s sun-flooded, with tall bookshelves lining white walls and neutral rugs against parquet floors. A collection of nice black-and-white abstract prints above a gray sofa.
A few more steps and the back of her knees hit the bed. His mouth applies the perfect pressure, firm and insistent, but still tender. When he tugs at her bottom lip with his teeth, she goes boneless in his arms. If Ves weren’t holding her up, she would have collapsed in a heap on the bed, all tightly coiled desire and trembling legs.
She likes kisses like this, without too much tongue. Just flurries of pecks, darting tongues, a little biting, and his hands exploring everywhere.
“Undress me?” she whispers against his mouth, core clenching with want.
She doesn’t have to ask him twice. His hands work the large tortoiseshell buttons on her chunky cardigan while hers move to his trousers. A few tugs and they’re off. He makes a bitten-off sound when she kicks them aside.
“You didn’t really want me to stop to fold those neatly, did you?” she asks sweetly, sinking to her knees and peeling off her camisole to reveal her black La Perla bra.
He smolders down at her, clearly liking what he sees. In addition to being her most expensive lingerie, it’s also the skimpiest. It has just enough lace to cup her breasts and cover the nipples, but it’s sheer everywhere else. “Trust me, love, I have swiftly reprioritized,” he says with a rough laugh. His hands curl into her hair for just a second, and it feels like a kiss.
