Christmas at Bravo Ridge. Christine Rimmer
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pillows out of their pillowcases. “Getting you fresh sheets. Bob stayed over last week and I never got around to changing them.”
It took him about five seconds to process that, but his fuzzy mind finally picked up her meaning. “Hold on. Pastor Bob slept in here?”
She had the blankets off and the sheets gathered up in her arms by then. “Yeah. So?”
He frowned in thought. “But you and Bob…you’re engaged.”
Her mouth was kind of pinched up. “Is there a point that you’re making?”
“Well, it’s only…I mean, why wasn’t he sleeping with you?”
She only looked at him. Her expression did not invite further comment.
He hit himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand and commented anyway. “Got it. You and Bob don’t sleep together. Right?”
Again, she said nothing.
So he asked, “Why not?” He couldn’t imagine being engaged to Corrie and not having sex with her. What would be the point?
Her chin hitched higher. “Not that it’s any of your business, but if you have to know, Bob has certain principles.”
“And by that you mean?”
She answered reluctantly. “We’re waiting.”
“Waiting.” He pondered the word. “For…Moses to part the waters? For the second coming of…”
She shut him up with a look. Corrie had a talent with the looks. “If you know what’s good for you, Matthew, you’ll stop mocking what I have with Bob.”
Okay, yeah. He was a little juiced. But he did know what was good for him and getting Corrie mad wasn’t it. “Okey-dokey,” he answered cheerfully. Then he slumped back in the chair, leaned his head against the wall and shut his eyes.
He heard her hustle off. A moment later, she was back and bustling around over by the bed. He let his eyes drift open just as she bent to smooth the elastic on the bottom sheet. It was a great view. She had a beautiful, heart-shaped ass. And also this incredibly sexy tattoo of red roses and black vines that curled diagonally up out of her jeans from the left, across her lower back and halfway around the right side of her waist. From where he sat he could only see a section of it, between the top of her jeans and where her sweater rode up. He hadn’t seen all of it in much too long…
Corrie had a sixth sense as to when a man was looking. Probably from dealing with an endless chain of horny, drunken fools at Armadillo Rose. She glanced back over her shoulder and caught him staring.
“Oops,” he said with a slow grin.
“You are hopeless, you know that?”
“Yep. I am. Completely hopeless.” He tried to look pitiful.
She fired the pillows and a pair of pillowcases at him. “Make yourself useful.”
He put the pillowcases on the pillows. That took about a minute. Then he got up and went to help her tuck the blankets in—just to prove he was more than willing to do his share.
Not that she needed any help. With swift efficiency, she folded and tucked and smoothed. He ended up kind of following her around the bed, tucking what she’d already smoothed, kidding her by bumping against her—with his shoulder and then with his hip.
“Will you cut it out?” She snorted the words through a half-stifled laugh.
He bumped her again. She made a sharp noise in her throat and straightened to fold her arms across her middle. He straightened with her.
“What am I going to do about you?” She was trying really hard to look disgusted.
They were very close—nose to nose. He found he was getting kind of lost in her eyes. “Blue, deep blue,” he heard himself murmur. “I’ve always loved your eyes. I’m glad Kira got them…”
“Cut it out, Matt.” The words said one thing, but the softness of her lips and her breathless tone said another.
He had the wildest feeling that if he tried to kiss her, she just might let him. It was probably no more than a drunken delusion. They didn’t kiss anymore, not ever, except for the occasional friends-only peck on the cheek.
And yet. As he looked in those jewel-blue eyes, he couldn’t help thinking that she was thinking the same thing he was thinking.
A kiss. What would a kiss hurt?
Soon she would marry Bob Thompson, who actually was a decent guy, damn it, and the possibility of Matt’s ever kissing her again—ever really kissing her—would diminish exponentially. Funny, but he hadn’t thought about that until right now, half-blitzed in her spare room in the middle of the night, staring into those eyes that his daughter had inherited. Those beautiful, crystal-clear, sapphire-blue eyes…
Never to kiss Corrie again.
Uh-uh. It wasn’t right. Wasn’t possible.
Possible. Yeah. That was the word, wasn’t it? That was the thing, the simple possibility. She was not only getting married, she was taking away all the possibilities between them. Just wiping their slate clean. Bare. Empty.
What they were now—good friends, co-parents—that would be the extent of it. If it ever might have been more again, it never would.
“Matt?” She whispered his name. She sounded even more breathless than a moment ago.
He decided not to answer her. Not with words anyway. He only had to bend his head and his lips touched hers.
“Matt…” She said his name against his mouth. There was tenderness in the way she said it. And confusion. And heat, too.
He focused on the heat. He reached out and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her, turning the brushing kiss into something deeper.
Something hotter.
It was so good, the heat. The wanting. He’d missed it more than he’d realized. For way too many years.
She put her hands against his chest, pulled her mouth from his. “Matt. No.”
No.
It was the word a man had zero right to ignore. But he did ignore it—at first. The bed was right there, freshly made, waiting for them. He took her down onto the softness. And he kissed her again, pressing her into the mattress, feeling the shape of her beneath him, so womanly and warm, so well-remembered.
And in spite of that “no,” she was kissing him back, sucking his tongue into her mouth, pushing her hips against him, running her hands up under the sweater he wore. She was acting like no was the last thing she was thinking.
He wanted to believe that. He wanted to believe her kiss and her curvy body moving against him, wanted to forget that a few moments ago, she had told him to stop.
But in the end, he couldn’t forget it. It was only right to make sure.
Yeah, he wanted her. Bad. But even half-plowed, he knew that her “no” couldn’t be allowed to stand. She had to admit she wanted him, too.
Either that, or they had to stop.
Somehow, he made himself break the hungry kiss. He braced up on his hands and he stared down at her, with her blond hair wild around her pretty face, her mouth wet and red and so damn tempting.
“No?” He dared her. “Did you say no?”
She called him a very bad word, fisted her fingers up into his hair and tried to yank his mouth down on hers again.
He winced as she pulled his hair, but he didn’t give in. “Answer the question, Corrie.”
She growled low in her throat and gave another yank. That time he let her pull him close. “Shut up,” she