Getting In the Spirit: a Sapphire Falls novella (8 page)

As he reached to turn the light off, she finally spoke. “I’ll call Adrianne in the morning to go over and check on them.”

Chapter Four

Hailey slid from Levi’s lap and he took her hand, making himself walk at a reasonable speed for high heels. Which was tough considering he wanted to run. Of course, he could throw her over his shoulder and still get a pretty good jog going.

“By the way,” she said as they passed the hot chocolate stand and crossed the street on their way back to the bar.

“Yeah?”

“This is already the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”

There was another thud near his heart. The poor thing hadn’t been used in so long every hard beat was a little painful. But it was a good pain. Like stretching a tight muscle before a hard workout.

Because he wanted to give it a hard workout with this woman.

And not only in the pounding-hard-during-hot-sex way. In the way that might stretch his heart muscle further than it had ever gone before.

Levi gave her what he hoped was a casual smile. No sense in scaring her off with a wanna-fall-in-love-this-weekend? He’d told Joe he was considering staying for a year. Nothing so far had made him want to shorten that time frame.

“You know, a smart man would be grateful that it would be almost impossible to make this Christmas
worse
than your others,” he said. “But no one ever accused me of being particularly bright.” He stopped next to his brother’s truck and turned to face her. “I don’t want this to be the best you’ve had so far. Hell, all I have to do is put up a tree and make you cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning to do that.”

She gasped softly. “Your mom made cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning?”

Well, their cook had. He took her hands. “I want to do even more than that. I want this to be everything you ever wanted Christmas to be.”

And he meant it. Maybe there was hope for him yet. So far the cheesy Christmas sentiments were rolling out of him.

Take that, Christmas ghosts.

“You said you don’t have a tree yet. Will you let me help with it?” she asked. The lighter, excited tone in her voice made a different type of desire shoot through him. The desire to make her happy.

Oh yeah, there was hope. Levi Spencer was going to make someone else happy, dammit. A guy who wanted to do that couldn’t have a cold, black soul.

It was dark gray at worst.

“Definitely,” he told her.

“And can we bake cookies?”

“Of course.”

“Tonight?”

He opened his mouth to give another enthusiastic affirmation but then realized what she’d said. “Tonight?”

He’d kind of hoped to take the quilt in the guest room for a spin tonight.

She nodded, grinning up at him in a way that made him want to buy her a puppy or something while at the same time made him want to run his hand up under her skirt.

Damn, that was weird.

Sweet and sexy at the same time? Happy and horny together?

That
had
to be the concussion.

“It’s almost ten at night,” he said.

“Is there a bad time for Christmas cookies?” she asked.

He opened his mouth again but could say nothing other than, “No, there’s not.” Because that was the God’s honest truth.

Besides, watching her bake was in no way going to diminish his desire for her. He’d always been easily influenced by food. He’d had a huge crush on their cook from age six to age fourteen when she’d left them. He could barely remember what she looked like, but he could still taste her macaroni and cheese.

The women he dated had no idea how to cook or bake, nor would any of them go within a hundred yards of a cookie.

Ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of Joe and Phoebe’s. Joe’s F150 pickup definitely made the roads and that driveway easier to navigate. Levi had put his rental car in the garage to keep any snow flurries or sleet off of it and resigned himself to driving the truck at least until Joe and Phoebe got back.

Hailey looked from the house to him and back. “I thought we were going to make out in the truck?”

He was going to get sugar in the truck
and
in the kitchen?

Oh, yeah, best Christmas ever for sure.

Kate had been disappointed when Tucker pulled up in front of Phoebe’s. She wasn’t ready to go in and end the night already. But things were definitely looking up when he reached over, grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his lap.

She didn’t know why, but there was something about the truck that made her feel like getting dirty. Not actually dirty, but
dirty
with a guy who got dirty for a living. She knew Tucker was a farmer, and that meant he knew a lot of stuff she had hardly a clue about.

The men she dated drove sports cars and stayed in shape by going to the gym and called other people to fix things that broke.

Tucker was a guy’s guy. He drove a truck that he actually used for work. His hands got dirty. He used his muscles to lift things and carry things and throw things. Of course, she wasn’t completely clear on what those
things
were, but she imagined there were hay bales and buckets and barrels of…stuff. Stuff that she was also fuzzy on. Oh, and tools. She was sure he had tools and things and that he fixed stuff. Engines and tires and…other stuff.

Okay, so most of her knowledge about life on the farm was from television and movies. She was an environmental engineer and a number of her colleagues worked in soil and water in the Midwest, but her specialty was climate change and the oceans. She’d never been to Nebraska before this trip.

The bottom line was, Tucker could use his hands in ways other men she knew could not, and she was very interested in him using those hands on her.

Sitting on his lap again was nice. Even with the multiple layers of clothing between them. Which she hadn’t really thought about. She was not willing to take too many off. She was still cold from sitting in the square and wasn’t sure she’d ever have feeling back in her toes. She wouldn’t have traded it though. The time sitting in the square had felt…magical. That was a fanciful word to use. Heck, it was a fanciful thing to
feel.
But it fit and, dammit, she was really going for magical and fanciful here. She didn’t mind that everything about Sapphire Falls, from Phoebe and Joe’s quaint old farm house to the hot chocolate stand in the town square, had felt otherworldly. That was what she was going for here. An escape. A vacation. Something to keep her daydreaming for the rest of the winter. Or more.

Tucker leaned into her, reaching to crank the heat.

“Don’t want anything freezing off.”

She laughed softly. “Very thoughtful.”

“Oh, I’m talking about
my
things freezing off. I intend to keep
your
things very warm.”

It seemed all he needed to do was talk and her core body temperature went up. She pulled off her cap. “I’m glad it’s dark so you can’t see my hair messed up.”

“Another secret about men—” he said, running a hand over her hair from the crown of her head to the ends that hit her just above the curve of her lower back, “—we like a woman’s hair messed up.”

“Is that right?” She pulled off her gloves and unwound the scarf from her neck, suddenly thinking she could actually overheat.

“Well, I do anyway,” he said. “If a woman leaves at the end of the night with her hair too perfect, I did something wrong.”

Even her feet started defrosting, something she hadn’t thought would happen until March.

“But my hair’s messed up from the hat.”

“Yeah. For now.”

Oh boy. That sounded good. She wanted that. Whatever it was. Whatever he meant. Whatever he wanted.

And maybe they should define making out. Maybe country boys made out differently than city boys. Or girls for that matter.

The way she was currently feeling, she was thinking the queen-sized four poster in the guest room was about right. She just needed to keep enough of her wits together to remember to take the quilt off. That thing was gorgeous and clearly handmade. She couldn’t have hot, sweaty country sex on top of it.

But then thinking became pretty secondary.

“Take your coat off. Let me get my hands on you,” he said gruffly.

A thrill shot through her. She’d imagined that small town guys were gentlemen who would take their time. There would be flirting and flowers and dates where they held hands and saw movies and kissed only if there was mistletoe involved.

Part of her had wanted that.

But now, in the truck with Tucker after hot chocolate and a kiss that had nothing to do with mistletoe, she wanted fast. Not just the sex—though she was a fan of hard and fast frankly—but the whole thing. She was being swept up in Sapphire Falls, in Christmas, in these things that she’d always thought were manufactured by the greeting-card companies but was delighted to find out actually existed somewhere.

She was giving in to all of it, floating on this cloud of Christmas as it should be. December twenty-sixth would come soon enough.

She wanted to be swept up in an affair where she felt an immediate connection with a guy and fall into bed with him the first night because what they were feeling was real and strong even within only a few hours of knowing one another.

She knew that wasn’t true. She knew that love at first sight wasn’t real. She knew that many a girl’s heart had been broken mistaking chemistry for true love. But she was going to go with it for a few days. Kind of like believing that Santa was going to find her in Hawaii every year even without a tree or chimney or cookies or a letter. In spite of her mother. Every December, her brain had tried to tell her it didn’t make sense, that it had never happened before so why now. But her heart had wanted to believe so badly she’d talked herself into it.

For a few days, she was going to let herself bask in the fantasy of true love found under a piece of mistletoe.

And the best sex of her life in the front of a pickup truck.

She unbuttoned the coat and started to shrug out of it, but Tucker helped sweep it from her without her even having to wiggle much.

“Want to feel you up against me.” He met her gaze as their chests rubbed against one another as he divested himself of his coat as well.

She was totally on board with that.

He tossed his coat into the seat next to them and then slid to the middle of the truck seat, taking them out from behind the steering wheel.

“The air warm enough?” he asked.

Was the air in the truck warm enough? Did Rudolph’s nose light up? She nodded. “I’m very warm.”

He grinned and put his hands on either of her hips and started bunching the material of her skirt higher and higher on her thighs. “You tell me if you need any more heat anywhere.”

“Will do.” She squirmed to help the process, and as soon as the tight skirt was high enough that she could get her knees apart—and it had to go pretty high for that to happen—she pivoted to straddle his lap.

The bulge behind his fly was evident, and she moaned softly as he pressed her against it, lifting his hips slightly to meet her. Heat was not going to be a problem.

She had to taste him, had to get her hands on as much of him as she could, had to feel him against her everywhere.

She ran her fingers into his hair, holding his head so she could kiss him deeply. But the minute his hands slid under the edge of her dress and cupped her ass—the cheeks bare because of the thong she wore—she knew she was in no way in control here.

He growled softly as his hands met the bare, still-cold-to-the-touch skin. He ripped his mouth away. “A thong in December in Nebraska? Aren’t you asking for trouble there?”

But it wasn’t trouble from the icy temperatures that first came to mind when she looked into his eyes. “I’m not too worried about that part of my body getting real cold with you around,” she told him.

He squeezed her flesh, causing tingles to shoot from his hands straight to her clit. “Damn right.”

Then he kissed her again. She was holding his head, sitting on top of him, but it was clear that Tucker was taking over.

His tongue was bold and hot and stroked along hers as one of his hands boldly stroked underneath the curve of her right butt cheek. He traced the pad of his finger over the string of the thong, following it forward to where she was hot and already wet.

He pulled his mouth away again, looking straight into her eyes as he stroked over the hot silk between her legs again. “If you don’t already taste like peppermint candy here, you’re going to,” he told her in a husky voice that made her even wetter.

She licked her lip, trying to figure out what to say other than holy shit,
yes
.

“Oh yeah, you’ll get a taste too,” he promised in a dark, deep voice.

Kate felt her inner muscles clench. Damn, the guy had bought her hot chocolate, cuddled her on a park bench and now was about to make her come just talking about the things he wanted to do.

Best Christmas ever.

“On second thought,” she said, nearly panting. “Maybe you should buy every candy cane in town.” She suddenly had some interesting holiday inspiration of her own.