Have Yourself a Curvy Little Christmas: A Perfect Fit Holiday Novella (A Perfect Fit Novel) (7 page)

“I like to watch him sleep too,” he heard from behind him. “I’m not sure why it isn’t creepy for people to sneak into rooms and watch babies sleep, but if I snuck into Daniel Craig’s bedroom to watch him sleep they would have me thrown in handcuffs faster than I could blink.”

He turned to look at Dina, who was dressed for bed again, only this time she wasn’t in a T-shirt. She wore a tiny baby blue cotton nighty with thin straps whose only purpose was to keep the dress on her body. She was braless. He could see her nipples through the fabric in the chilly room. Her hair was loose. Her long legs were bare and he felt more than attraction when he looked at her. He felt himself grow hard.

“Daniel Craig, huh? Personally, I could never get on board with a blond Bond, but I can see you have a type.”

“Type? My only specifications for a man are two hands and a p—”

“Dina!” he barked.

She grinned at him. “You couldn’t sleep?” She stepped forward and stood next to him, the scent of her shampoo making him want to get closer.

“No, what about you?”

“I’ve never slept more than five feet away from him. I kept thinking something bad was going to happen to him. And then I heard you on the baby monitor. You better be glad I couldn’t find a weapon and gladder that I recognized you, or your brains might be smeared on the carpet.”

“Bloodthirsty.”

“No, I’m a mother. It’s how we are.”

“He’s safe here, Dina. I promise you that. He’s safer here than anyplace else.”

“This place feels too big. I grew up in a tiny house. I couldn’t sleep unless I heard my little sister’s radio through the wall. I can’t sleep knowing he’s so far away.”

She was right. The house did feel too big. It felt isolating, but it was his home. “He’s a boy, Dina. He’s going to need to sleep in his own room eventually.”

“When he’s thirty.” She bent over the crib and kissed Dash’s cheek. “I’ll let him stay here. This room is too beautiful to go unused.” She leaned against Ben for a moment, her bare skin touching his. “He doesn’t seem to care about being away from me. Look at him. I’ve never seen him so peaceful.”

“That’s because you snore. It’s probably the first good night’s sleep he’s gotten since he was in the womb.”

“That’s not true. I don’t snore!” She gave him a sideways glance. “Do I?”

“No.” He smiled at her and she smiled back. For a moment they just looked at each other.

“Why don’t you sleep in your bedroom?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. Sometime in the past few years the room had stopped being functional for him. “I work in my office. I eat in my office. It just makes sense for me to sleep there.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to spend your entire life in your office. Because that’s no life at all.” She reached up and set her hand on his shoulder. “If there’s any chance that this is going to work, you have to be near us. I grew up in a family. I want Dash to have that. I took my family for granted and I lost them. But now it seems that we both have been given a chance to start over.”

“And me sleeping in my bedroom is going to accomplish that?”

“Yes. You want to be his father. I want you to eat with us and play with us and shop with us. I want you to have a life with us. It’s a lot to ask of you, I know, but you asked a lot of me too. You asked me to give up half of my son.”

“Okay, Dina.”

“Okay?” She looked into his eyes so hopefully. It was a very long time since he had seen hope in anyone’s eyes. He couldn’t have disappointed her if he wanted to.

“Okay.” He nodded.

“Thank you.” She stood on her toes and leaned in, giving him a lingering kiss on his jaw. “I know you don’t like hugs. Hopefully my kiss wasn’t too icky for you. Good night, Ben.” She walked away then and he watched her go, hips swaying all the way.

*   *   *

Dina woke up the next morning to the sun shining through her bedroom window. She had slept past 5:00 am, but she didn’t feel any more rested that she had the day before. She couldn’t sleep last night, at first because she was missing her baby and later because she was thinking about Ben. Ben who walked around at night shirtless. Ben who watched her little boy sleep. Ben who had asked her to marry him yesterday.

Was that just yesterday? It seemed like a million months ago. She knew her life was going to change when she had Dash, but she never expected this to happen. She never expected to be here. She got out of bed, grabbed the baby monitor and walked to the window to look at the snowy landscape below. Dash must still be asleep. She held the monitor to her ear and listened carefully. She thought she heard the sounds of the soft baby noises he sometimes made in his slumber, but she couldn’t be sure. In her mind she knew he was fine. She knew that Ben was probably right, that Dash needed space from her, but she was still his mother and she could peek at him if she wanted.

She opened her door ready to rush down the long hall to get to her baby, but there were boxes stacked in front of it. Boxes … Boxes with labels on them. Outside decorations. Lights. Ornaments. There must have been twenty of them there.

Ben. He did this for her and for a moment she was torn between going to her son and rushing to Ben’s room to thank him. First she went to her son, who was sleeping peacefully, and then she went to Ben, who was also sleeping peacefully. In the bedroom next to hers. Just like he promised.

She jumped onto his high bed and pressed a loud smacking kiss to his cheek. This time she didn’t linger. She remembered last night. The way her lips felt on his hard jaw. The way he still smelled like aftershave even hours after he last touched a razor to his face. “Thank you, you sweet mushy grouchy man.” He didn’t stir and this time she kissed him on his forehead. There was something sweet about him in his sleep that reminded her of Dash. And she was amazed that a man she had never been with could look so much like her son’s father. She was amazed that Ben would want to be Dash’s father.

Ben moaned a little, grabbing her arm and pulling her down on the bed. She yelped and before she had time to think or respond she was underneath his hard body. Underneath all that heavy, smooth, soap-scented muscle. “I missed you,” he murmured.

It was then she knew he was dreaming. He was thinking about his wife. Dina knew that was who was in the picture she had found yesterday. She knew he must still love her very much even so long after she had passed away.

“Um, Ben.” She lifted her hand to his shoulder to wake him, but he shifted her body, taking her legs and wrapping them around his waist.

“Ben?”

He buried his face in her neck. He touched his lips to her skin. His long fingers trailed up the back of her thigh, cupping her behind in his large, warm hands.

“Ben,” she said again, but this time it came out more like a moan than anything else.

“Mmm. You feel really good. Better than I thought.” He pressed a kiss in the soft spot behind her ear that made her melt. “You’re so damn beautiful.”

She was too stunned to speak, too turned on to stop him. Men weren’t like this with her. Sex wasn’t like this with her. It had been wild and adventurous and fast and emotionless. But he was so gentle, and slow and kind. She never thought the man she met just two days ago wearing a frown and a three-piece suit could be so—so damn sexy. But of course it wasn’t her he was thinking of. He could never think of her that way. It was her son he wanted, the continuation of the Rowe name. She only came as part of the bargain.

He moved his lips to the column of her throat and left a soft, hot, wet kiss behind just as clarity was about to fill her. A moan escaped her lips. Her body shook with sensation and that’s when he brought the lower half of his body right against hers, rubbing her through her underwear. She flooded, like a rainy day during monsoon season.

Holy freaking hell.

It was then she came to her senses. Not that she wanted to, but she had to. She couldn’t sleep with him. That was the last thing they needed. It was the last thing he wanted.

“Um, Ben?” She tapped on his head.

“Dina,” he mumbled, and then froze. “Dina?” He lifted his head and looked down at her, his expression horrified, and a little piece of her confidence died. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Um … I came to thank you for getting all the boxes from the attic. It must have taken you hours. You’re probably going to be sore. I know how sore I was when I moved, and I only had like three boxes. But I wanted to say thank you and then you pulled me down and then you were on top of me and I thought it would be rude to stop you so I didn’t, but then I did because I figured you would probably be mad when you realized it was me you were trying to have sex with, but for the record I wouldn’t have minded so much, because you really know how to work a girl into a pile of mushy jelly.”

“Stop talking,” he said, and rolled away from her.

She looked down into his tortured face. She hadn’t meant for this to happen. But just like always, disaster seemed to follow her wherever she went. “You don’t have to look so miserable. I know I’m not as gorgeous as some of the women you’ve been with, but I’m not a leper either. And I swear I got my cootie shot before I came here.”

“Dina, I need you to leave this room right now,” he said very calmly.

“Why? It’s no big deal.” She shook her head. “Are you mad at me? I didn’t—”

He pulled down the sheet that was covering him and revealed to her the tent that had sprouted in his boxer shorts. “I. Need. Time. Away from you. Now please.”

“Oh … Wow.” She felt herself blush. She never blushed. “That’s really impressive. I think I should be flattered.”

“Get out!”

“Okay. Okay.” She hopped out of his bed. “But if you ever need somebody to take a closer look at that thing, you know where to find me.”

*   *   *

Dina. She drove him crazy.

He had spent the better part of an hour in his bed waiting for his body to calm down. But it wouldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes and tried to focus on something else he kept thinking about her. About her curvy body beneath his, how good her skin smelled, how soft it felt beneath his lips and how she moaned when he kissed it and how she moved her body so it fit just right with his. She was the only person on the planet who had the power to make him feel uptight and comfortable at the same time.

What the hell was happening? Yes, he was attracted to her, any red-blooded man would be, but he had been attracted to women before and he had been able to control himself. He wished he could have blamed what happened between them that morning on him being in a deep sleep, on his dreaming, but he knew who he was touching when he touched her. It was her he was dreaming about when he dreamed.

Nine years had been too long to go without sex and he had made the mistake of inviting a woman into his home who could make a priest give up his vows.

Ben finally forced himself out of bed and into an icy shower. He had to face her. He had promised her he would spend time with her and be with Dash and act like part of the family she wanted. He had asked her to marry him. As crazy as that was, as much as a possible disaster as it could be, he still wanted to go through with it. He wanted a son. This was his last chance for it.

When he opened his door he found her sitting on the floor in the hallway between their bedrooms. Dovie sat near her in a rocking chair holding Dash. He gave her a silent hello before he turned his attention back to Dina, who was so engrossed in looking through the boxes that she didn’t notice he was there.

“Oh, Dovie, look at this.” Dina held up a silver and white antique glass house ornament that he had seen every year on their Christmas tree when his mother was alive. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so delicate.”

“It’s lovely, child.”

“You think Ben would mind it if we had more than one Christmas tree? I would like to put a little one in the nursery with some of these special ornaments. They are too nice to go on a big tree. They’ll get lost.”

“You can have whatever you want, Dina.”

She looked up at him, smiling happily as if she was glad to see him. There was no awkwardness coming from her, no shyness. “Come.” She held out her hand to him.

He hesitated for a moment. There was a world of memories locked inside of those boxes. Memories of his mother and Christmas days with his family and of good times. He should be eager to look through them with Dina, but if he let the memories flood the bad ones would come too and he would remember the first Christmas without his mother, and how life had changed so much for them after that and how the holiday had lost all meaning for him when he was so young.

“Bring Dash,” she prompted him softly.

“Yes, sir. Take him,” Dovie said, handing Dash to him. “I need to get you a cup of coffee. Ms. Gregory, would you like something?”

“Ms. Gregory?” Dina dramatically looked around the empty hallway. “I don’t see any Ms. Gregorys here. There’s a Dina here and a Ben and a Dash, but there are no Ms. Gregorys.”

“
Dina,
can I get you something?”

“Yes, Hugh Jackman on a bed of lettuce. No? You’re all out of that? Maybe a glass of water then.”

Ben watched Dovie walk away shaking her head, but she was smiling. It was something he hadn’t seen from her in a long time.

“Pop a squat.” Dina patted the floor beside her.

“Pop a squat?”

“That’s my low-class way of asking you to sit.” She blinked at him for a moment. “You are totally not going to want to marry me after Christmas. You can’t take me anywhere. I’m too much like my mother.”

That wasn’t true. If he didn’t marry Dina it wouldn’t be for that reason.

“Hi,” came from his arms. He looked down to see Dash staring up at him, a curious look in his eye.

“Did he just greet me?”

“Yes.” She smiled proudly. “He’s a genius. Sit down, Ben.”

He obeyed, setting the boy on his feet after he did so he could just look at him for a moment. He wore a tiny red sweater with a reindeer on it and little blue jeans. Ben was still so amazed that this little boy had come into his life. And at Christmastime. There was no better present. “Hello, son. You look very festive today.”