Baby, It's Cold Outside (14 page)

Luke didn’t bother to look at the portrait of him and Georgia that he knew hung on the wall to his right. He just jerked his thumb toward it and waited patiently for the penny to drop. The woman blinked at the picture as if she was having trouble seeing it. She peered at him, then back at the wall, then back at him, squinting and scrutinizing it carefully, as if she’d been asked to pick him out of a lineup.

The picture had been taken a few years back on his return from his first tour to Afghanistan, but he hadn’t changed that much.

Not anywhere that was visible, anyway.

And then he heard her gasp and watched as her face fell. Yep. Now she was with the program.

“Oh God,” she groaned as she lurched away, heading for the low table next to the couch, picking up a glass, and taking a hefty swig before facing him again. “I’m so,
so
sorry. I thought you were a looter...or a burglar...or at the very least up to no good. I didn’t know you were home. Georgia was so disappointed you were going to miss her thirtieth birthday party and if I had known, I would never have yelled and attacked you with a golf club. I teach kindergarten...we use our inside voices, we keep our hands to ourselves...”

Luke folded his arms across his chest, amused at the horror on her face. She obviously wasn’t a violent person. Which only made her actions at defending his family cabin that much more endearing. “You’re Tamara, aren’t you?”

The pixie raised her glass in salute. “That would be me.”

“Pleased to meet, you ma’am,” he said.

She nodded then stopped abruptly. “Wait.” She frowned. “How do you know about me? Georgia and I haven’t known each other that long.”

He shrugged, noting the way her gaze traveled over the contours of his shoulders.
Interesting
. “Georgia writes a lot of newsy e-mails.”

“Ah,” she said and swayed a little.

Luke reached out a hand. “Ma’am?” he asked, looking at her a little closer. Pink cheeks. Red nose. Unsteady on her feet. A waft of …eggnog? “Are you...drunk?”

She held up her index finger and thumb and tried to narrow the distance between them to indicate just a smidgeon. But, with those eggnog goggles firmly in place, she didn’t seem to have the ability to get them close enough without meeting. “Maybe just a little,” she eventually said, giving up her attempts at demonstration.

He quirked an eyebrow. “Starting early?”

She shook her head. “It’s the middle of the night in Australia.”

“I suppose it is.” Luke rubbed at his jaw. He needed a shave. And a shower. He needed to sleep for a week. But suddenly he didn’t feel so tired. With the adrenaline now settled, something else permeated. He looked around and rubbed his hands. “It’s freezing in here!” He looked at the logs stacked up around the fireplace—there was enough wood for a week. “Why haven’t you started a fire?”

“Can’t find the matches,” she said miserably. “I’ve looked everywhere.”

He laughed. “So you were just going to sit here and freeze?”

“No. Why else would I be dressed in every piece of clothing in my suitcase and be drinking eggnog for breakfast?”

She looked indignant and cranky again. “So...bundling up and drinking was your plan?”

“It was a temporary plan. Just until I thought of something better.”

It was just as well he’d arrived when he did. In a few hours, she’d either be a Popsicle or have drunk every bottle of booze in the cabin. “Alrighty then. Step aside, ma’am, and I’ll get this sucker fired up.”

Luke was conscious of Tamara curled up on the couch behind him, watching as he gathered wood and retrieved the matches from a small, carved wooden box that sat on the mantel. He had no idea what she looked like beneath all those layers, but she’d made him laugh and there’d been precious little of that these last few months. He’d planned on being alone but maybe some company wouldn’t be so bad.

In no time he was crouching beside a roaring fire, its heat warming his cold face. He sensed rather than felt her being drawn to his side like some pixie Eskimo.

“Ah,” she murmured, crouching beside him, her hands extended toward the flames. She smelled like nutmeg and Jamaican rum, reminding him of home and Christmas. It had been a long while since he’d smelled anything quite as sweet. “You have the gift of fire, oh wizard.”

He laughed at her reverence. Fake and drunken as it was. “Yes, ma’am. Although I think my mother would put it down to borderline pyromania.”

“Luke, do you think you could do me a favor?” she asked. He turned his head just in time to watch her fall back inelegantly on her ass.

“Easy, ma’am.” He reached out his hand to steady her but she waved him away, drawing her knees up until she was sitting cross-legged, eyes shut, a little sigh of pleasure escaping her slightly parted mouth as the fire glowed warm and yellow across her delicate features.

“A favor, ma’am?” he prompted with a smile when it looked like she may just have fallen asleep in her fire-worshipping position.

She opened drowsy eyes and his breath hitched as two luminous gray pools sucked him into their sexy shimmer. He had a sudden urge to peel her hood back so he could see the rest of her face.

“Do you think you could not call me
ma’am
? I know that thirty must seem ancient to someone like you, but I’m spending New Year’s Eve alone and thinking it’s perfectly okay to drink eggnog for breakfast for a reason, you know? Please don’t make me feel any older than I do.”

Luke held her gaze. “I don’t think thirty is ancient.”

She sighed again as she looked back at the fire. “Wait ’til you get here.”

Chapter Two

Fourteen hours, thirty minutes ’til midnight

Ten minutes later the cabin was toasty warm. Not surprising, given it was the tiniest cabin Tamara had ever seen. There was a small living area with a compact kitchen attached, an elegant arched entrance to an alcove dominated by a massive feather bed, and a bathroom made for hobbits. It wasn’t exactly the family-sized cabin she’d been expecting. More honeymoon retreat or lover’s hideaway. But she was grateful to Georgia anyway for offering it as a place to hide from the frivolity and temptation of New Year’s Eve.

“So what’s the reason?”

Tamara opened her eyes when he nudged her shoulder. She looked up—all the way up—at temptation personified.
No
. She couldn’t think like that. She’d only known Georgia for six months, but they’d become quite close, which made Luke—
her friend’s little brother—
a no-go zone. Not that she would call the hot man standing in front of her
little
. But, the point was, he was off-limits.

So what if he’d shed his hoodie to reveal a white T-shirt that clung to flat abs and nice pecs? So what if he had the most fascinating number one buzz cut in all of existence and a face that belonged on a Calvin Klein billboard? So what if his faded jeans clung to legs that could tempt a perfectly good girl to turn bad? So what if she was so horny every cell in her body was drowning in lust? It wasn’t terminal
.

The fire’s glow danced across his tanned biceps as he handed her another glass of eggnog. He smiled, displaying a very sexy cleft in his chin that made Tamara’s nipples scrunch into tight little balls. Luckily they’d been rendered almost extinct from the layers pressing down upon them.

“What’s what reason?” she asked as she took the drink. She should probably refuse—she’d already had way too much and God knew her inhibitions had fled at the sight of all those muscles.

He sat beside her again, their knees almost touching. She noticed he had a beer so she didn’t feel like she was one step away from a park bench so much. “Why aren’t you in Times Square watching the ball drop with Georgia?”

Tamara stared at the nutmeg floating on top of her drink. She could have told him it was the weather. The roads were treacherous—she’d barely made it to the cabin this morning before the blizzard had landed. But it wasn’t the truth.

She pressed the chilled glass to her flushed cheek. “There’ll be kissing,” she said.

Luke laughed. “That’s bad?”

Had there been one infinitesimal part of her where the heat from the fire and the burn from the rum had not reached, his laughter took care of it, licking warmth into every last cell. She set the glass down so she could strip off her gloves and push the hoodie and knit cap off her head. “It’s been so long, I may just get arrested for public indecency.”

It wasn’t the real reason, although it had been a while, but she doubted a fine piece of man-flesh like Luke would understand how depressing New Year’s Eve could be with no one special to kiss.

He laughed again and took a sip of his beer. Tamara was aware of the long tanned ridge of his throat and the press of his pulse as his head tipped back. He swallowed and his eyes twinkled—yes, twinkled!—at her. “I’ve got nine months, the length of my deployment. How long you got?”

Tamara snorted. “Piece of cake, soldier boy. Try twelve.”

He whistled. “Okay,” he conceded. “You win.”

“Great,” she huffed into her drink, then took a sip. “I excel at abstinence. The nuns at my all-girls’ school would be
so
proud.”

He frowned. “If it’s been so long, wouldn’t New Year’s Eve in New York City be the perfect place to be?”

Tamara knew twenty-something men did not understand the powerful dictates of biology. That traipsing from one relationship to another got very old very quickly and that at some stage, commitment stopped being a dirty word. That being with one person was more exciting than playing the field. That the yearning for a home and a family could hit you out of the blue.

Twenty-something men had it easy
.

And with him looking at her like that, with a puzzled look and the confidence of a male in his prime, her temperature soared from hot to smoking and her hormones whispered
him
.

So she stood to deliver herself from temptation.
Another win for the nuns.

The room spun a little as heat, alcohol, and sexual deprivation played havoc with her equilibrium.

When it righted itself he was looking at her expectantly with that blue, blue gaze, looking fit and vital and so damn muscle-y and male she wanted to gnaw on his perfectly delineated, denim-clad quad. More heat flowed through her at the thought and she tried to remember what they’d been talking about but God, she was so freaking hot now she felt like her brain was boiling.

She unzipped her parka. Where were they? Oh yes...

“I made a resolution last New Year’s Eve”—she shrugged out of her puffy coat and slung it on the lounge—“after waking up with some guy who seemed so with it and together the night before...”

His gaze dropped to her body and roved around for a bit and the heat inside her turned to flame, her clothes seemingly catching on fire. She started to pace as she pulled at the layers, trying to get them off.

Luke couldn’t believe his eyes as the heavy woolen sweater hit the couch, revealing another sweater of a finer knit and weave.

“...And this guy ran like there’d been some zombie apocalypse overnight and I’d been infected...”

The next sweater also hit the couch as she paced back and forth. Luke’s mouth went dry and he took a quick swig of the beer. The peeling away of her layers down to some kind of dark gray turtleneck was slowly revealing the petite body that went with her cute pixie nose and her funky blond hairstyle. Granted, she was suffering badly from hat hair but somehow that just made her even more appealing.

There was an intriguing bounce to her breasts as she paced and, being an expert in this department, he was pretty damn sure she wasn’t wearing a bra.

It was probably wrong to be this turned on.

“Well, no more,” she said, stopping and turning to face him, her hands on her hips. “I want a serious relationship. Something more permanent, damn it. And a guy who wants the same thing. Is that so wrong?”

Luke shook his head and tried to focus on what she was saying. She wanted to settle down. After two overseas tours he understood the urge for roots. “Absolutely not.”

She narrowed her eyes for a moment like she didn’t believe him but quickly resumed her pacing. Her track pants were next in line for the treatment as she pulled at the waist cord.

“Right. So I decided. No sex until I meet a guy who has the potential to be Mr. Right.”

She stepped out of them and kicked them aside without breaking stride. A pair of black skinny jeans clung to thighs that would have done any ballerina proud. Luke dragged his gaze from them as she turned and glared at him again.

“Ten dates. That’s the rule. No putting out until date eleven. You’d think that wouldn’t be too much to ask, right?”

Luke nodded, forcing himself to look at her face. Her cheeks were flushed and it conjured up thoughts of other ways to get her all hot and bothered.

“Wrong,” she said, and her voice dripped with disgust.

She unzipped her jeans and peeled them off to reveal a pair of very tight, nothing-left-to-the-imagination long johns. Luke had never thought long johns were sexy. Which just went to show, you could get to twenty-five and
still
know jack shit.

“I mean, at a date a week, that’s only ten weeks, right? And two dates a week is only five weeks. Is that so freaking hard? Can men not
go
five weeks without sex?”

The angry pixie was demanding an answer from him but it took a moment to drag his thoughts back from wondering if female long johns had the opening at the front like their male counterparts.

“They’re jerks, Tamara,” he said, feeling like a complete hypocrite as he wondered if she was going commando. “Any man worth his salt would wait five lousy weeks for you.”

Tamara nodded her head vigorously. “Damn straight I’m worth waiting five weeks for,” she muttered, and he smiled as she returned to her pacing. “I mean, I think I still look pretty good—for someone who’s thirty. I look after myself, I did ballet for years, and I still do Pilates five times a week.”

She stopped and grabbed at her shirt. Luke was caught between trying not to think about how flexible Tamara might be and the awful feeling that maybe she was already down to her last layer and the alcohol was playing havoc with her memory.