Kissing Under The Mistletoe: The Sullivans (Contemporary Romance) (11 page)

And yet, all weekend—and then all day today
during the shoot—she’d been replaying his sinfully sexy words:
Next time you invite me in, I’m going to make love
to you.

She didn’t think he had said it to shock her
or even to turn her on.

He’d simply said what he was feeling…and what
he clearly believed would happen the next time they were alone
together in her house.

When she and Gerry finally wrapped the shoot,
Howie and Larry got up out of their chairs and showered her with
compliments. She tried to be gracious as she thanked them, but at
the same time, she wondered where Jack was. Would they think it was
strange if she asked about him?

Fortunately, before she could make a lovesick
fool out of herself, Howie said, “Jack had to take care of some
urgent business back at the garage.” He turned red as he realized
what he’d just admitted to her about where they worked. “I mean,
our office. But he said for you to call him if you need anything at
all.”

Despite the fact that Mary had been reminding
herself again and again all afternoon that she and Jack needed to
keep their distance, disappointment came swift and strong.

“We’re going to help Gerry get his equipment
loaded into his van,” Larry said. “Can we give you a lift anywhere
after that?”

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ve got
some errands to run. I’ll see you both at the commercial shoot in a
few days.”

After kissing Gerry goodbye on the cheek, she
wound her scarf tightly around her neck and shoved on her hat.
Yesterday she’d needed a brisk walk through the city to try to walk
off her attraction to Jack. Today, she needed to try to burn
through her irritation with herself…and to keep herself away from
the phone so that she wouldn’t give in to the temptation to take
him up on his offer to call if she needed anything.

Because, Lord help her, she needed
him.

* * *

By the time Mary arrived home her feet were
killing her, and all she wanted to do was collapse into a bubble
bath with a glass of wine and a good book.

So what if kissing Jack again sounded a
thousand times better than the bath-wine-book combo? She’d just
have to get over it.

It was incredibly comforting to come home to
a house full of voices. She was going to miss the girls a great
deal when they headed to their respective homes for the
holidays.

The scent in the air was one that always
reminded her of Italy at Christmas. “You bought a tree,” she
exclaimed as she walked into the living room.

Yvette grinned down at her from her perch on
top of the ladder. “Surprise!”

Janeen put on a Christmas record and pulled
Mary into an impromptu jig that made her momentarily forget that
she wished she were somewhere else, with someone else.

“We’ve got cookies and eggnog, too,” Susan
said from the kitchen.

After Mary went into her room to put down her
things and take off her heels, Susan handed her a glass so that
they could toast each other. “To you, Mary, for taking all of us in
and giving us a home away from home.”

Mary hadn’t spent Christmas with her family
for the past thirteen years, but tonight she felt as if she was
finally part of a family again. As they clinked their glasses
together, she was afraid she would spoil the moment by crying, but
then Yvette said, “We’re dying to find out how your shoot went
today with the gorgeous Mr. Sullivan.”

“It went fine,” she said in her primmest
voice.

“Ooh,” Janeen said, not fooled in the least,
“you’re blushing.”

Mary lifted her free hand to her face and
felt how hot it was. “We’re just business associates,” she
protested.

“From the way the two of you look at each
other,” Susan noted, “it sure seems like more than just
business.”

Mary hadn’t realized they’d been that obvious
when she’d invited him inside the other night. But she had just
finished dancing with him in the rain, and it had been so
wonderful, how could she not have stars in her eyes?

“He kissed me.”

Everyone’s eyes grew big—including Mary’s—at
what she’d just admitted.

She was supposed to be setting a good example
for the young models, which meant teaching them that it was a bad
idea to get involved with a business associate. But her long walk
home through the city hadn’t done a darn thing to push away the
memory of how it had felt to have Jack’s hands in her hair, his
hard heat against her, his delicious mouth pressing against
hers.

“I’ll bet he’s a great kisser, isn’t he?”
Yvette said with a dreamy look on her pretty face.

This was Mary’s chance to explain to them
what a mistake the kisses she’d shared with Jack had been. Instead,
she nodded and said, “The best.”

As a group, the girls spontaneously hugged
her. “When are you going to see him again?”

“I’ll be shooting a TV commercial for his new
invention in a few days. I’m sure he’ll be there.” She hoped her
voice sounded more nonchalant than she felt. How on earth was she
going to make it through a handful of days without seeing Jack?
Especially when he was all she could think about…

“Or, you could call him now and invite him
over tonight,” Janeen suggested. “We wouldn’t mind having a
gorgeous man in our midst, would we, girls?”

Needing to do something with her hands so
that she didn’t pick up the phone and call him right that very
second, Mary lifted a sparkly ornament and walked over to the tree
to hang it on a branch. “We’ve agreed to keep things professional
between us until the campaign wraps up.”

Susan gave her a very knowing look for a
nineteen-year-old. “Stolen kisses are the best kind, aren’t
they?”

“They weren’t—” she began, before admitting,
“Okay, they
were
stolen.” And Susan was
right—his kisses were the very best of Mary’s life. “But they were
the last ones I’m going to let him steal until after we wrap up the
campaign.”

From the doubtful looks on their faces, Mary
knew she looked even less convincing than she sounded.

“Personally,” Yvette said as she lifted her
drink to her lips, “I prefer forbidden kisses.”

Mary had been intent on letting the
conversation peter out, but now she turned from the tree and pinned
Yvette with a laser-sharp gaze. “Who are you having forbidden
kisses with?”

Yvette reached into the box of ornaments so
that Mary couldn’t see her face as she muttered, “No one,” but it
hadn’t been
that
long since Mary was
nineteen, and she knew better than most about being headstrong and
foolish. Maybe, she thought, she should tell them about her
mistakes. But with the Christmas carols playing and their laughter
ringing out, she didn’t want to ruin the evening with what would
surely sound like a lecture.

Not for the first time since the three models
had moved in with her, Mary realized what her mother must have gone
through. How did you give advice to someone you cared about without
ruining your relationship? And what could you possibly say to get a
young woman with the entire world at her feet to listen to your
advice without storming out in a huff?

Hopefully, one day when Mary had children of
her own, she’d have some of the answers.

Over the course of the next few days, Mary
not only gave dozens of radio, print and TV interviews about the
Pocket Planner, but she and Gerry traveled all through San
Francisco taking pictures of her using it in different parts of the
city. After the handful of kisses Jack had stolen from her—and
especially given how quickly her resistance had fallen both
times—Mary knew she should be glad for this break from seeing him
to regain her sanity. Before Jack Sullivan had walked into her
life, she’d been perfectly fine. Content. Comfortable.

Mary frowned. Was that what her supposedly
glamorous, jet-setting life had turned into?
Fine,
content, comfortable?
If that was all she had to show for
her adventurous life, had it really been worth turning her back on
her old life? After all, she could have stayed in Italy and gotten
married to the first boy who proposed and ended up with
fine, content
and
comfortable
.

She was so lost in her turbulent thoughts
that she walked right into Gerry’s studio and opened the door to
his darkroom without paying attention to the red light above the
door.

“Shut the door!”

Some photographers were yellers, but not
Gerry. In fact, she couldn’t ever remember him raising his
voice…until now. Mary slammed the door shut behind her, but Gerry
was already swearing over the print he’d lost because of her stupid
mistake.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, even though her
apology couldn’t fix a thing. “I don’t know what I was
thinking.”

But she knew perfectly well what she’d been
thinking. She’d been trying to convince herself that not being
tempted by Jack was a good thing. Yet she had as little restraint
when it came to thinking about him as she did to kissing him.

The harder she tried to push him from her
mind, the deeper he stuck.

Dropping the ruined photo into the trash,
Gerry turned to face her. “I take it Jack hasn’t called?”

The room was dark, but not dark enough that
her friend couldn’t see the truth in her eyes. “He’s just doing
what I asked him to do.”

“I’ve known you for more than a decade, and
I’ve never seen you like this.” Gerry cocked his head and pinned
her with his deep photographer’s gaze. “That’s why you agreed to
take on this campaign, isn’t it, and why you’re working so hard on
it? You’ve fallen for the brilliant—and gorgeous—engineer.”

Allen had commented before one of her
interviews that she was going to be very glad she’d given up her
fee in favor of a portion of the profits. Of course, she didn’t
tell the chairman that it was all for Jack, that on their first
night together in the diner she’d fallen head over heels for him
before realizing he wanted more from her than pie and conversation.
Gerry, on the other hand, had seen right through her.

“I’ve tried so hard to keep my head on my
shoulders around Jack, but…”

She found it extremely difficult to put into
words what she was feeling. If it were simply attraction, it would
be easy. But the emotion rolling through her was something much
deeper than that.

She knew better than to want this much or
feel so strongly when every time she’d given her heart to someone,
they’d tossed it aside without a care. And yet, she hadn’t been
able to stop herself where Jack was concerned.

“I’ve never known anyone so driven by a
dream, or so passionate about making it become reality.”

“I have,” Gerry said. “You.”

Mary couldn’t contain her surprise. “Me?”

“I’ll never forget that first day you walked
into my studio. You were as green and inexperienced as they came,
but Randy had promised me there was something special about you,
something that went beyond your outward beauty. You stepped in
front of my camera and even though you weren’t polished, or had any
clue whatsoever about what you were doing, I saw exactly what Randy
had been talking about. Your passion for life, and all those dreams
you wanted to make real, were right there in your eyes.” He put his
hand on her arm. “I know the business hasn’t always been easy on
you and that you’ve been through tough times with your family and
with men who didn’t deserve you, but can’t you see it’s only made
you stronger?”

From the line above his head he pulled a few
prints that had dried and slipped them into an envelope. “Jack and
his partners need to see these tonight so that they can pull their
favorites to present to the board. I’ve got to leave right now for
another meeting. Their address is on the front of the
envelope.”

* * *

Jack followed the Realtor through the large
building on Page Mill Road with Howie and Larry. Now that Mary was
working to support the Pocket Planner, retailers were starting to
come on board in big numbers. Allen wanted to make sure they had
their offices ready and new employees in place immediately after
the Christmas boom so they could begin R & D on new products.
The past few days had gone at warp speed and Jack shouldn’t have
had a spare moment for anything but the production demands and
planning the future of his company.

But as Jack worked to focus on what the
Realtor was saying about manufacturing floors and office space, all
he could think about was how Mary had felt in his arms. How soft
her skin was beneath his fingertips. The sweet taste of her lips.
The surprise in her eyes when he’d talked about waking up next to
her in two years. And how he’d barely been able to stop himself
from calling her or, worse, showing up on her doorstep.

“How does that sound to you, Jack?”

Howie’s question knocked Jack back into the
present. “Sorry, what was the question?”

“We’re supposed to meet Gerry back at the
garage in a few minutes to look over the pictures he and Mary have
taken over the past few days. You’ve got the best eye for the ads
anyway, so we were thinking we’d finish up here and let you take
that meeting.”

Knowing he wasn’t being any help here anyway,
Jack quickly agreed. During the drive back to their
soon-to-be-closed office in his garage, he thought up another dozen
excuses for calling Mary and meeting with her. But, damn it, no
matter how badly he wanted to see her, he knew better.

Jack and his brothers had been raised to
honor and respect everyone, especially women. And yet, the few
times he and Mary had been together, he’d had a hell of a time
trying to respect her wishes by not letting their kisses spiral off
into more.

He was just pulling up the driveway when he
realized he’d have to figure out how to get a grip on himself, and
fast. Because Gerry wasn’t there waiting for him with the photos
for the campaign.