Kissing Under The Mistletoe: The Sullivans (Contemporary Romance) (12 page)

Instead, the most beautiful woman in the
world was standing right there.

* * *

Mary had expected to see Howie and Larry with
Jack but, obviously, something had held up the other two men. She
couldn’t ever remember being this nervous around a man, not even
when she’d been a young teenager with her first school crush.

Jack’s eyes were darker, even more intense,
than she remembered them being as he walked toward her. She worked
to keep her legs from trembling, or from running straight into his
arms.

It didn’t help one bit when Jack said, “I’ve
missed you, Mary.”

Her breath caught in her throat at how much
she wanted him at that moment. Oh God, why had she agreed to let
Gerry maneuver her into coming here? She knew he thought he was
doing what was best for her, probably thinking she’d been playing
it safe for too long, but surely that didn’t mean she should dive
headfirst into the most dangerous waters she’d ever known. Did
it?

Trying to break through the heated moment,
she said, “I can’t wait to finally see where the magic
happens.”

“I’m afraid there’s far more dust and a mess
of wires than magic,” he said as he reached down to unlock the
garage door.

The muscles in his arms and back flexed
beneath his cotton shirt as he pulled the heavy door open, and
though she knew it was rude to stare, she couldn’t have stopped
herself for the world. Especially when she knew firsthand just how
good those hard muscles felt pressed against her.

She caught her breath for a different reason
when he motioned for her to come inside. He was right about the
dust and wires, but what really made an impact on her was the
wonder of creation in every spare inch of the room.

“It’s amazing, Jack.” She had no idea how any
of it worked, but she wanted to. She pointed to a screen with a
bunch of knobs all around it. “What’s this for?”

“It’s an oscilloscope, which is a type of
electronic test instrument for looking at wave signals.”

She walked over to a group of similar,
smaller boxes. “And what about this?”

“This is a voltage generator. It’s what we
use to power up the prototype motherboards.”

She put her hand on his arm. “It really is
magic, isn’t it?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw as he stared down
at her. “I think you’d better show me the pictures you
brought.”

Suddenly realizing how close she was standing
to him, she took a step back. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be wasting
your time—”

“You don’t have a damn thing to be sorry
for,” he said, cutting her off before she could finish her apology.
“But I will be sorry in a moment if I don’t figure out how to gain
some self-control around you.”

She’d always thought she was a fair person,
and a strong one, too. But how could either of those things be true
when she was desperate for Jack to lose control and kiss her again
so that she could get lost in his arms and not have to make any
tough decisions at all?

He deserved her honesty at the very least, if
she couldn’t give him fairness or strength. “I missed you these
past few days, too. There’s no point in trying to pretend I
didn’t.”

But even that wasn’t nearly honest enough.
She needed to finally tell him why she was trying so hard to keep
things professional between them during the campaign.

“Remember how I told you about the mistake I
made a few years ago? His name was Romain. He owns a big Swiss
watch company, and I was the model they chose for a crucial
campaign. He was very charming, very persuasive and attentive, and
we began dating soon after I started working for his company. We
were seen everywhere together. He made sure of it so that his
profits would soar even higher. Until he decided profits would be
even higher without me.” She sighed, thinking how young, how
foolish she’d been. “He was about to inform me of my future
replacement on the day I decided to surprise him at his penthouse.”
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “All three of us were
surprised.”

“Three?”

“Me, Romain, and the model in his bed. She
was quite a bit younger than me, one of the up-and-coming girls who
was as naive as I used to be when I first started in the business.
Clearly, she’d been just as easily charmed by him as I’d been. I
broke things off with him, of course, but I had signed a contract,
and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I broke my promise to his
board and the investors. Those last few photo shoots were horribly
painful.”

“You would have been perfectly within your
rights to break a business promise, since he had done far worse by
breaking his personal promise with you.”

“No. I couldn’t let him know how badly he’d
hurt me, or admit to the world what a fool I’d been. I was just as
foolish as my mother accused me of being all those years ago.” She
took a breath to try to shake it all off and come back to Jack and
his garage full of magic. “Since then, I’ve always been careful not
to blend my work life with my personal life.”

“I would tell you I’m not like him, but you
already know that, don’t you?”

“I do, but—”

How could she explain that it wasn’t Jack she
didn’t trust, but herself? The biggest mistakes she’d made in her
life had been about giving and losing love.

“Every day I had to work with him shattered
another little piece of me. It’s taken a long time to heal those
cracks.”

He reached for her hands and threaded their
fingers together. “I promised to try to be patient, and I couldn’t
live with myself if I broke my promise to you.”

She’d never met anyone like Jack. He had such
respect for the meaning of a promise…not to mention such respect
for her as the model that so many people had discounted over the
years as nothing more than just a pretty face.

“You know what you want and what you need to
do to get it,” she said softly, “but you never compromise your
values—or your word—to get there. How do you do it?”

“I could ask you the same question. You’re so
beautiful that you could have anything you want, but you earn
everything through hard work.”

“You make me sound better than I am.
Especially when I know it’s not fair to want so badly to kiss you
after I’ve just laid down the rules again…but I can’t figure out a
way to stop myself from asking.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” he said with a smile that
didn’t do a thing to mask his desire.

It was just the right thing to say after the
pressures she’d faced while building a career based on perfection.
“In that case, I hope that means you’ll forgive me for what I’m
about to ask.” She moved closer again, putting her hands on his
chest and slowly sliding them up to wind around his neck.

“Ask me anything, Angel.”

Her insides turned to liquid heat at his
endearment. “Kiss me, Jack.”

She was still saying his name when his mouth
covered hers in a kiss that stole her breath away entirely. Both of
them fed greedily from each other’s lips, their days apart having
fueled their hunger for each other and bringing it to new
heights.

Mary had been kissed at the top of the Eiffel
Tower. She’d been kissed in a horse-drawn carriage in the middle of
Prague. She’d been kissed on the Copacabana Beach in Rio de
Janeiro. But this kiss with Jack, in his garage surrounded by
cables and machines and stale cups of coffee, was the most
romantic, most thrilling kiss she’d ever shared…and one she knew
she’d remember forever, regardless of how things turned out between
them.

He backed her up into one of the tables, and
the next thing she knew, he’d lifted her up onto it so that she
could wrap her legs around his waist. Again, she felt like a
naughty teenager making out with her off-limits boyfriend as she
locked her ankles together behind his hips and pulled him even
closer.

The fireworks sparking off inside her were on
the opposite scale from
fine,
from
content
. On the contrary, she felt as if
she wasn’t just on the edge of Jack’s worktable, but teetering on
the edge of something deliciously dangerous. Shockingly wicked.

And absolutely
wonderful.

For all of her protests that they needed to
keep business strictly business, yet again it was Jack who retained
enough sense to lift his mouth from hers. Not once had she been the
one to stop their kisses. If he had been any other man, they would
already be stripping off each other’s clothes, promises be
damned.

But as desperate as she was physically to
take things to the next level, Mary knew in her heart of hearts
that though her body was ready, her heart wasn’t.

Forehead to forehead, they each worked to
catch their breath. As a new rush of longing swept through her,
Mary closed her eyes tight. Reminding herself that his partners
could walk in at any moment, she took a deep breath, then lifted
her lids to find Jack’s dark gaze on her.

His eyes were extraordinarily beautiful, a
deep brown with flecks of green and blue throughout. He also had
naturally thick eyelashes, the kind that women spent too much time
and money trying to replicate with makeup. Up close like this,
finally letting herself look her fill, she realized he had a small
scar just at the top of his left cheekbone, and his nose looked as
if it had been broken a long time ago.

As he’d said, no one was perfect, and his
imperfections only made him more beautiful to her. He had the
dangerously good looks of a heartbreaker, but the more time she
spent with him, the less she believed that he could ever break
anything, let alone someone’s heart.

Mary had told Jack the truth about Romain,
but what she hadn’t admitted was that she’d been trying to put the
pieces of her broken heart back together ever since the day her
mother had disowned her.

When, she wanted to know, would she be ready
to let the broken pieces go so that she could finally start over
and be whole again?

As Jack gently helped her down from his
worktable, he said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Not sure she could yet trust her voice, she
simply nodded for him to continue.

“I like you.” He brushed a lock of hair away
from her cheek, tucking it gently behind her ear. “More than I’ve
ever liked anyone else. Much, much more.”

Many times over the years men had declared
their love for her, but Jack’s simple statement that he
liked
her was a million times sweeter.

When they’d been kissing on his desk, she’d
felt like a naughty teenager. Her parents had been protective
enough that she’d been an untouched virgin when she’d left Italy.
Being with Jack made her feel giddy, as if she were having her
first truly important crush with a boy she couldn’t stop thinking
about.

Smiling, she said, “I like you, too.” Needing
to touch him again, she gently ran her fingertip over his left
cheekbone. “Where did you get this scar?”

“My brother Max and I were playing hockey. He
ended up switching to tennis after this.”

“Is he the one who broke your nose, too?”

On a laugh that easily could have warmed her
on the coldest night, he shook his head. “That was all me. You have
to promise me you won’t laugh before I tell you how it
happened.”

She made a cross over her heart. “I
promise.”

“I walked into a wall.”

She had to bite her lip to stop the laughter
from bubbling out. When she was fairly sure she could speak without
giggling, she asked, “How?”

One eyebrow raised, humor in his eyes, he
said, “I was in college and had my first breakthrough with
understanding how the Shockley Diode worked. I’d been up all night,
and when I went to brag to Howie about my amazing accomplishment, I
somehow missed the doorway.”

It was either laugh or kiss him, and since
she’d made a promise not to do the first, she happily gave in to
the second. But before their kiss could turn to more, she made
herself take a step back.

“Pictures.” The word came out of Mary’s mouth
slightly high-pitched and breathless. “I should show you the
photos. Especially since Howie and Jack will probably be here soon,
and I—” Oh, how she hated the way the words would sound, even
though she knew she had to say them “—I wouldn’t want them to catch
us kissing the way Gerry did.”

When, she asked herself again, would all
those broken pieces inside her finally begin to heal?

She also hated seeing the flash of hurt that
moved across Jack’s face before he quickly erased it and said,
“Right, we should look at the pictures. How do you feel about
pepperoni and black olives on your pizza?”

Her stomach growled before she’d so much as
opened her mouth to tell him she’d love that. Larry and Howie
pulled up outside a few minutes later, and as the four of them ate
pizza and drank beer straight from the bottles, they began making
decisions about which pictures to use in the ad campaign. With
Jack’s passionate kisses tingling on her lips all the while, Mary
didn’t envy the three of them their easy camaraderie…because they
made her feel she was one of them.

And she loved every second of being part of
their team.

Jack had nearly walked into half-a-dozen
walls after Mary left his house last night. He’d simply been too
preoccupied thinking about her to pay attention to anything around
him. The kiss they’d shared in his garage had blown his mind, but
so had the cute way she’d valiantly tried not to laugh at him when
he’d confessed how his nose had been broken. And then she’d amazed
him all over again when she’d settled into pizza and beer with his
partners as if she’d been hanging out with them since college.

At the same time, his chest ached a little
bit when he thought about the way she was so intent on hiding their
budding relationship. He understood why she was still wary of being
with him, especially publicly, and why she continued to ask him to
be patient with her. But all that didn’t stop him from wishing for
more.