Snow Angel (5 page)

“Who was it smooching the pooches earlier?” Danny asked.

“Whatever,” Melinda interrupted, “as long as you guys don’t start trying to head-shrink me.”

“Noting wrong with a good shrinking now and again,” put in Jacob’s mom, Lois, who was herself a psychologist. She winked at Melinda.

“It’s a shame you weren’t able to do more for your own son, Mama Lois,” said Wendell sorrowfully, rubbing an imaginary tear from his eye.

Bill snorted into his wine glass, but Lois nodded in agreement, her lips twitching. “Yes, it’s a tragedy, but even the most talented therapists have a checkmark or two in the loss column.” She smoothed a graceful hand over her hair and shrugged regretfully.

“Thanks, Ma. Dad. Appreciate it,” Jacob said, aiming a look at his parents.

Lois blew him a kiss in return, and Melinda giggled, drawing a frown from Jacob.

“Anyway, you’re beyond anyone’s scope, Mel, don’t worry,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his body to block the elbow she tried to land in his belly. “I’ve already got your checkmark in the loss column. Been there for years.”

“Too right.” Rick grinned around a mouthful of bread as his cell phone went off.

“Richard,” Aunt Pat said reprovingly. Her blond brows drew into a pointed frown. “No phones at the dinner table.”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said, standing with an air of suppressed excitement, “it’s the one I’ve been waiting for.”

Rick excused himself to take the call in the other room, fist-bumping Eddie and smiling when Eddie’s mom squeezed his arm and whispered, “Good luck,” as he hustled past.

Moments later, a loud
Whoohooo!
from the family room drew everyone’s attention, and Rick came dashing back to the table, his handsome face flushed, blond curls bouncing.

“I got it!” he crowed, fairly dancing as he took his seat. “I got it! I got
Hamlet!
”

Congratulations flew, and Aunt Pat stood to toast her son, echoed by everyone at both tables.

The guys, his brothers especially, might tease Rick about his career aspirations unmercifully, but when it came down to it for real, they were behind him a thousand percent, his greatest supporters.

It was one of the things she loved best about her cousins.

Uncle Allan stood to give Rick a hug, and for a second, her middle cousin looked like he might actually tear up. He paused and took a deep breath to control himself.

“Thanks, Mom, Dad, everyone,” Rick said, taking a big drink of his wine. “It’s off-off-
off
Broadway, but this is a big one for me, and the director’s a genius. You all have to come!”

Wendell leaned up from his seat so he could reach across to the big table, his hand raised to high-five Rick. “Dude, red carpet!”

Her mom brought out another bottle of wine, and her dad helped carry in the serving bowls full of spaghetti and meatballs, along with more baskets of garlic bread. People dove in as though they hadn’t eaten in months, reminding Melinda of the unruly savages she’d envisioned earlier.

Dinner continued, a festive affair with plenty of laughter. When they weren’t discussing Rick’s new play, they ribbed each other’s skills, or lack thereof, on the ski slopes. Melinda heaved a mental sigh of relief that Mitch’s name never came up.

As the meal wound down, they got back to finalizing trip plans. Her mom went over the driving arrangements for the next day, and her dad ran down the schedule and the list of everything that still needed to be done.

“Eddie, be sure your phone’s charged, please,” Nancy Thomas said to her son, and everyone snorted in unison while the tips of Eddie’s ears reddened. He had a well-earned reputation for porting around a useless rectangle of constantly dead phone.

“I don’t have your suitcase, Mel,” her dad said, leveling a look at her down the length of the table.

“Working on it,” she answered around a last mouthful of spaghetti.

Stan gave her his stern-daddy-general look. “Hop to it, Sunshine,” he said, then turned to her mother. “Where are we on the cold stuff?”

“All set except for the spaghetti sauce, I have to freeze it overnight,” Karen answered.

“More meatballs, anyone?” Aunt Pat asked.

From the kid’s table, all four guys raised their hands.

When everyone had finished, Melinda rose with the rest of the women to begin clearing, while the guys prepared to finish loading the cars.

“No, not you,” Karen said to Melinda. “Go pack. Jakey, go with her and see that she finishes, please, then take her suitcase straight down to Stan. Rick, you and Eddie take the dogs to the sitter’s and pick up the rest of the ice.”

Everyone moved to comply with their marching orders, and the noise level rose to roar once again.

Jacob pointed one long finger at her and sent her an evil grin.

“Ready, Brussels sprout? Race you!” he shouted, and took off, laughing like a loon.

CHAPTER FOUR

Melinda ran, hot on Jacob’s heels, though she had no hope of overtaking his extra-long stride. He took the stairs three at a time, his endless legs gifting him with a totally unfair advantage.

She grabbed one of the dogs’ toys on the fly and chucked it at his feet, hoping to slow him down, but he only laughed when her missile sailed harmlessly past his left knee.

“Nice try, apple seed!” he yelled over his shoulder as he cleared the final step.

Instead of continuing down the hall to her room, Jacob stopped abruptly at the top of the staircase, whirling to face her and tapping his foot.

“My God, you’re slow,” he said in a snooty French accent, then grabbed her around the waist before she could respond and whirled her into a fast dance step.

Tangoing the two of them through her bedroom door, he dropped her into a deep dip over the threshold, making her squeal and clutch at his arms.

Jacob raised her partway up one-handed, both of them laughing, and for a moment their faces brushed close together, their breaths mingling, his sparkling topaz eyes staring deeply into hers.

Everything went quiet.

Melinda’s smile faded. Her lungs stilled. Her heart rolled over with a heavy thud, then picked up its pace, pounding frantically, and something at the base of her spine snapped like an electric jolt.

Whoa,
her brain stuttered.
Sexy much?

The relaxed camaraderie from dinner vanished as her whole being thrummed with a sudden, outrageous burst of lust.

She licked her lips. Swallowed. Her pulse scrambled.

If the house hadn’t been brimful of people, she might have leapt up, might have pounced on him right there in the doorway. Might have ripped her best friend’s clothes off in a fever and had her way with his luscious body, never mind their friendship or their impossibly divergent goals.

Or the consequences.

“Good to know you haven’t lost your moves,” Jacob said into the throbbing silence, the heat pumping from his muscular body enveloping her, their clasped hands still raised above their heads.

The pulse points on her inner wrists, inside her elbows, and at the base of her neck beat a wild rhythm.

“You, too,” she managed. She’d meant it to be teasing, but the words came out all breathy and flirtatious, not at all like her normal voice.

Poised in their half-dipped position, with Jacob looming above her, surrounding her, his chest almost—not quite—touching her aching breasts, every muscle in her body melted like warm wax.

She couldn’t have raised herself up if she’d wanted to.

And she didn’t want to.

Gaze intent, Jacob’s eyes swept along her flushed cheeks, up to her forehead, then slowly down to her chin, with a long, potent pause on her mouth that robbed her already starving lungs of oxygen entirely.

He said, “You’re so pretty,” in a musing sort of way. Almost as if he were talking to himself.

“I am?” She said it stupidly, and could only marvel at her own ridiculousness.

Her brain fogged over, the intensity of the need rocketing through her body turning her mind to sexually charged mush.

She couldn’t think clearly.

It wasn’t as if he’d never called her pretty before. Only there was something different in the way he’d said it. In the way his eyes traveled over her face.

As if...

“Jake?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Her voice, light, wavery, softened to a hush.

Jacob’s gaze dipped to her mouth, then slowly, ever so slowly back to her eyes.

“Like what?” His words rumbled in her ear, a low timbre that shivered through her body.

Like you’re about to kiss me.

“Like that,” she whispered, unable to articulate the dreamy wonder stealing over her, breathless desire mixed with a tiny drop of nervousness.

Her eyelids slid half-closed, heavy and slow, like blinking through syrup. Her lips parted. Went soft.

Oh, God, please kiss me…

Jacob blinked, as though waking from a dream. Shaking his head and straightening, he pulled her upright with him and flashed a sudden smile, his dimples winking into view. He seemed to throw off whatever mood had taken them both for a spin in a single heartbeat, while Melinda struggled to stand on her own, to silence the screaming need, to force air back into her empty lungs.

“All part of the dance,
ma cherie
,” he said, eminently casual. He drew her hand to his mouth and gave her a friendly kiss on its back.

She had no breath to reply.

Jacob grasped her shoulders, turned her in the general direction of her closet, and with both hands on her ass, pushed her forward, all business now.

“Pack,” he directed, mimicking her mother.

Pack. Right. I’ll just—

“You don’t want your mom to come back up here.”

That got through the daze, and gave her the impetus she needed to snap back from the edge of the sexual cliff she’d almost plummeted right over.

Clearing her throat, she said, “Yeah, yeah,” forcing herself to go casual when all she wanted was to drag him over that cliff with her, the consequences be damned. She gave thanks for the nearly normal quality of her voice.

Had she seriously just been swept under by a wave of molten lust for her best friend?

Melinda counted the beats of her frenzied pulse, still banging away at the base of her throat, and her body answered,
Oh, yeah
.

Giving herself a shake, she grabbed for inner control. If Jacob could act like nothing had happened, so could she.

Probably.

She had to consciously resist the urge to fan her heated cheeks.

Ordering herself to calm down, to throw off the deep pang of disappointment now that the moment had ended, Melinda focused on her clothing. She pulled jeans off hangers and obediently tossed them next to the suitcase still yawning open and empty on her bedroom floor.

She stared straight ahead and tried to ignore the still-sparking nerves tingling all over her body. She’d never experienced such a powerful response to anyone in her life, not even Mitch.

It had to be a rebound thing. Like those people who had crazy sex after a funeral. Because it was life affirming or something.

A breakup was a type of death, really. The demise of a relationship.

Sexual energy was just a release.

Purely physical.

With relief, she latched onto the explanation her spinning brain had supplied.

Rebounding.

Yes, of course.

Jacob was a handsome guy. Hot, even. She might be heartbroken, but she wasn’t dead. He was a man who’d flip any woman’s switch. Especially one feeling a little lost and needy, one who’d just been dumped.

It was just physical.

So there was that issue settled.

Whew.

Behind her, Jacob prowled her room. He came into her peripheral vision and toed the pile of Christmas presents she’d yet to put away. They sat on the floor beside her small artificial tree and included the gorgeous floral necklace-and-earring set her brother had sent her from Japan, and her prized new camera, a gift from her dad for their shared passion in photography.

She put the silly little tree up every year and decorated it with ornaments she’d made out of family photos and friends’ school pictures. Instead of a star or an angel on top of the tree, she always perched her favorite cuddly animal—a fuzzy black-and-white stuffed kitten Jacob had given her for her tenth birthday. She’d added a tiny Santa hat to its head for a festive touch.

Jacob flipped idly through the ornaments, taking one off and holding it up for her inspection, a lopsided smirk on his face.

“Really?” he said.

“What? I like that picture.”

The photo had been taken on a camping weekend at the Thomas’ horse ranch when they were seven. Eddie’s folks had hosted a pie-eating contest that year. She, Jacob, and Seth sprawled side-by-side on the summer-green grass, hands tied behind their backs, faces covered in blueberry pie, and identical, gap-toothed grins stretching from ear to ear.

“I had such a belly ache after that,” Jacob said with a chuckle. “And Seth hurled all over.”

“God, me, too. And we didn’t even win.”

“No one can beat Wendell’s big mouth.”

They smiled at each other, the happy memory shining between them. Melinda went back to packing, relieved to feel her system finally leveling out. He was just Jacob once again. Her best friend, nothing more.

Jacob continued to wander her room, rifling through her books or picking up and setting down random knickknacks he’d seen a thousand times. He told her the latest jokes he’d heard or ones he’d come up with himself, until she begged him to stop. Her stomach hurt from laughing so hard.

She’d missed him over the last two weeks.

Lifting a framed photo from her dresser, he said, “I like this one,” turning it so she could see which one he held. “You looked very pretty that night.”

Melinda stared at him. He seemed sincere, not like he was teasing her, but… “Are you drunk?”

It was a photo from the night of their eighth-grade winter formal, with her dad carefully pinning a corsage he’d bought for her to the shoulder strap of her dress. She’d framed it because it was one of her favorites of the two of them together, but she’d looked like a chubby chipmunk covered in melting pink icing. That shiny satin had not been a wise choice.

“No, I mean it,” Jacob insisted. “My dad thought so, too. I remember he said something about how you’d become a young lady all of a sudden. I thought he was crazy because you were just Mel to me, but he was right. That was the beginning.”

“Of what?”

“Of you turning into a girl,” he said with a shrug, as though it were obvious.

“I was always a girl, lamebrain,” Melinda answered with a laugh.

“Yeah, but I’d never really noticed it before. Or thought about it. After that you were a
girl
. A girl-girl, not just a kid. It took some getting used to.”

Canting her head, she considered her friend. “Was it a problem?”

Still looking at the photo, Jacob shook his head. “No. Just weird for a while. Then you pushed me off the swings and it pretty much went back to normal.”

Melinda huffed. “I didn’t push you, I nudged you. It’s not my fault you weren’t holding on.”

“Uh-huh,” he scoffed, the gold flecks in his eyes dancing.

“Anyway,” she continued over his laugh, “you were hogging them. It was my turn.”

Jacob looked back at the photo in his hand. “We should’ve gone together,” he said, changing track. “It would’ve been a lot more fun.”

“You seemed to have a good enough time with Sherry Simpson,” Melinda said tartly, remembering the pangs of jealousy she’d suffered, especially since she’d gone to the dance alone.

“Sherry Simpson,” he said with a heartfelt groan and a devilish grin. “I only took her ‘cuz she promised to teach me how to French kiss, and none of the other girls would come near me.”

“Yeah, well, you got what you wanted, typical man that you are, so don’t complain.”

“Eh,” he said, lifting his shoulders in a casual shrug. “She wasn’t as good at it as she claimed. Not that I had a point of reference at the time.”

Melinda, who’d heard that story more times than she cared to remember, sniffed disdainfully. “Ungrateful.”

“Never say so,” Jacob protested, smiling widely. He placed a hand over his heart. “I’ll always hold a special spot for her right here. Everyone’s got to have a first kiss, right?”

Not for all the fresh, powdery snow in Utah would she ever confess the way she’d fantasized about him being her first kiss during one of her Jacob-crush periods.

Instead, she’d gotten her first real kiss from Kenny, who’d slobbered all over her like a Saint Bernard.

Studying Jacob’s cheesy grin, Melinda said, “You’re in an exceptionally good mood.”

“It’s Christmas. Good food, good friends, good memories. That equals good mood to me.”

Tweaking her nose, he set the photo back on her dresser, then flopped his big body down in the middle of her messy bed. He stretched out on his side, his head propped in one hand while he watched her go back to sorting through her closet.

It really was unnerving how handsome he’d gotten, and his perma-tan made her look pasty-white by comparison. If she didn’t know better, she’d suspect him of a membership at a tanning salon, but like his dad, he was an active guy, always outside.

The ski bunnies at the resort would probably be all over him again this year.

Because the idea suddenly irritated her, she twitched her shoulder blades and sidetracked herself with more conversation.

“Speaking of Christmas, how was yours?” she asked.

“Well, no coal this year, so, you know. Can’t complain. You?”