Kissing Under The Mistletoe: The Sullivans (Contemporary Romance) (7 page)

Or was she right to feel that every word he’d
spoken had rung with sincerity?

She couldn’t forget the shocking offer he’d
made in the boardroom to give her half his royalty share. It was
completely crazy, and she could never take him up on it. He’d
worked on his invention for ten years, whereas she would only be
promoting it for a short while. But, still, the gesture said a lot
about him as a man.

At quitting time on a Friday night, the
popular piano bar was just coming to life. Some things, Mary mused,
were the same all over the world. The bars in her hometown in Italy
would be full of friends and family members greeting each other
with kisses on the cheek and sighs of relief that they had a
weekend of relaxation ahead of them. The only difference was that
the men in her hometown would be coming from ancient palazzos
wearing work clothes rather than from high-rise buildings wearing
three-piece suits. And the women would be nursing a glass of wine
while keeping one eye on their children playing tag out by the
fountain rather than sipping cosmopolitans before deciding where to
go dancing for the evening.

A sudden pang of homesickness for all that
she’d left behind twisted inside her as she thought about the old
friends she hadn’t seen in over a decade.

“Mary?” Jack’s eyes were concerned. “Is
everything all right?”

She forced her lips up into a smile. “Of
course it is. We’re here to celebrate, after all.”

Before he could probe further, she followed
his partners into the bar and slid onto an open stool. Howie’s
girlfriend Layla came in, then, and after several minutes of
nonstop gushing about how excited she was to meet a world-famous
model, Mary was extremely grateful when Larry appeared with a
bottle of champagne.

“To the fabulous, amazing, lifesaving woman
who saved our business singlehandedly!”

Mary laughed at his obvious hyperbole and
held her glass up even higher. “To the three fabulous, amazing men
who invented the Pocket Planner!”

The five of them clinked glasses and toasted
to the hopes of continued success. Mary had always enjoyed
champagne, but with Jack beside her, all of her senses were on
especially high alert. The bubbles felt crisper, the wine sweeter,
the effect of the fizzy liquor headier.

When she noticed that Larry had pulled out a
pen and was making notes on a napkin, Jack leaned over and said,
“His brain rarely shuts off. Even,” Jack said pointedly, “when
we're here to celebrate rather than work.”

“That’s one of the things I like about the
three of you. You’re all so committed to what you’re doing. So
passionate about it. And,” she said as she looked at how
comfortable they were with each other after so many years of
working closely together, “you seem more like brothers than
business partners.”

Larry held up the list he’d made. “These are
our highest level action items.” He pointed to the first one with
the tip of his pen. “Do you think you’ll be able to get that great
photographer you worked with in Union Square to work on this
campaign with us?”

“I hope so. I’m sure Gerry will be as excited
about it as I am, and even if he’s busy, I’ll do my best to
convince him to squeeze us in.”

Continuing to ignore the warning looks Jack
was shooting him across the table, Larry said, “If we’re going to
get the word out by Christmas, we need to shoot the first ad by
Monday, so—”

“Don’t worry,” she promised him, “I’ll make
sure we either have Gerry or another top photographer scheduled by
Monday morning.” With Jack so near her like this, Mary decided it
would be a very good idea to keep herself wholly focused on
business rather than how good he smelled, or how deep and dark
brown his eyes were. “In fact, while we’re here, why don’t we do
some brainstorming about how you’d like to set up the ads?”

For the next thirty minutes, she had a great
time throwing out ideas from what she’d learned in her shoots over
the past decade, most of which were very well received by Jack and
his partners.

“I honestly don’t know what we would have
done without you,” Howie said, when they’d put together a fairly
comprehensive starting plan. “You’re not just a model who’s going
to make our device look a heck of a lot prettier—you’re like a
whole ad agency wrapped into one person.”

Jack nodded his agreement. “Walter Industries
has connected us with a couple of ad agencies during the past year,
but nothing they came up with was anywhere near as fresh as
this.”

“We’ve got some brilliant ideas here,” Larry
murmured almost to himself as he made a few additional notes on his
stack of napkins before shoving them into the front pocket of his
jacket.

So many times during her career, Mary had
been treated as if she couldn’t possibly have anything between her
pretty ears. And, since she’d started modeling in her late teens,
she’d never had time to get any degrees to prove that she did,
indeed, have brains. Clearly, these three men with their Ph.D.’s
from Stanford University were geniuses. For them to call her ideas
brilliant meant a great deal to Mary.

“Look,” Layla suddenly said as she pointed up
to the ceiling above Mary and Jack, “the two of you are sitting
under the mistletoe.”

Mary looked up and confirmed that there was a
fresh green sprig of mistletoe hanging directly over her and Jack.
After a quick scan of the rest of the room, she realized it was the
only one in the entire bar.

What were the odds that she and Jack would
end up sitting under it?

Larry, Howie and Layla were already happily
making their way through a second bottle of champagne. Clearly, the
bubbly had gone to their heads, because when Layla said, “I’ve
heard it’s bad luck not to kiss under the mistletoe,” in an earnest
voice, Jack’s two partners nodded their heads, eyes bright from
success and the drink.

Mary’s heart hammered and the stem of her
glass slipped beneath her suddenly clammy fingers. Jack had said he
wanted to kiss her, but she’d made it perfectly clear that he’d
have to wait until the campaign had wrapped.

But, she asked herself now, what harm could
there be in one teeny-tiny little kiss under the mistletoe in a
downtown bar in front of his friends?

And wouldn’t it almost be stranger if they
didn’t share a playful smooch?

“In that case,” she said slowly as she
shifted in her seat to face Jack, “hopefully it will be
good
luck if we do.”

Any other man would have already claimed his
kiss, or at least pressured her to give him one. But Jack wasn’t
like any other man. Because, despite the obvious desire she could
read in his eyes, he said, “Mary, you don’t have to—”

Oh, but she
did.

She leaned closer, but before she could press
her lips to his, his mouth found hers.

Their kiss was gentle and sweeter than any
she’d shared in recent memory, little more than a split-second
brush of mouth against mouth. But, oh, from the sparks that lit off
all through her system, it was much, much more than one simple kiss
under the mistletoe. Jack’s lips tasted like champagne and she
wanted to reach up to thread her fingers through his dark hair and
pull him closer so that she could get an even better taste.

Stunned by her strong feelings for a man
she’d met less than twenty-four hours ago, Mary instinctively
pulled back. In the span of one short kiss, she’d forgotten not
only that his partners were sitting at the table with them but that
they were in the middle of a crowded bar. As a public figure, she’d
long ago learned to be aware of her behavior in public, especially
as her fame had grown larger and larger. Over the years she would
often find her name and picture in the papers after a night
out.

More than a little worried that she was going
to do something to embarrass herself soon, she scooted off her
seat. “Thank you for the champagne.” She tried to smile at everyone
as though everything was fine, but her lips were still tingling
from the sweet pressure of Jack’s mouth against hers. “I’m sorry to
have to leave already, but I’ll be in touch with the photographer’s
information and location for Monday’s shoot by Sunday night at the
very latest.”

Larry and Howie were loose enough from the
drink now that they gave her one-armed hugs goodbye. Layla also
hugged her and whispered, “Thank you again for saving the boys. I
don’t know what they would have done without you.”

Jack had gotten up from his seat, too, but
instead of saying goodbye, he said, “I’ll take you home.”

Mary was having enough trouble controlling
herself around him in a crowded bar. She could only imagine how
little self-control she’d be able to muster up if they went to a
more private location. Besides, at this point she desperately
needed a cool and breezy walk back to her place to help clear her
mind, a walk that was long enough for her to systematically rewind
through each of the reasons why getting involved with Jack now—when
their promotional campaign had barely begun—was a bad idea.

“You should stay to celebrate, Jack.”

But he was already slipping her jacket on
over her shoulders. “I’ll call you both tomorrow morning to
coordinate our schedules for next week,” he told Larry and Howie as
he reached for his coat. After kissing Layla on the cheek, he put
his hand on the small of Mary’s back and walked to the entrance
with her.

Despite his presence behind her, she felt
unsteady in her heels for the first time since being a teenager on
her first catwalk. Not because of the champagne, which she’d barely
sipped, but because Jack’s nearness affected her so powerfully.

Out on the curb he started to hail a cab, but
Mary put her hand on his arm. “I’d much rather walk, if you don’t
mind.”

He covered her hand with his to keep them
connected. “Which way?”

She nodded in the direction of the Bay. “Nob
Hill.”

“That’s a half-dozen blocks.” He looked down
at the heels on her boots. “You can walk that far in those?”

It had been a long time since she’d been with
someone who didn’t know the ins and outs of her world. Despite all
of her warnings to herself to stop being charmed by every little
thing Jack said and did, she found it really refreshing.

“When I’m working, I spend all day in heels,
most higher than these. The first few months,” she admitted, “I
would hobble home at night from a shoot or runway show and soak my
feet in an ice bath.” And cry for her mother, who she knew would
have called her crazy for sticking with a career that tore her feet
to shreds like that. “Eventually, I got used to the pain.” From the
shoes, anyway.

“Well, if they do start to hurt, you should
know I give a mean piggyback ride,” he said with an adorable grin.
“At least, according to my little nephew Ian.”

Sexy she could deal with. Kind and
intelligent certainly upped the ante and tested her mettle in a
serious way.

But adorable?

How was she supposed to resist adorable?

Just then, a teenage girl waiting for the
traffic light to change asked her for an autograph. Mary signed it,
and after they’d crossed the street, Jack said, “If I had known you
were this famous, I’m not sure I’d have gotten up the nerve to talk
to you yesterday.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t strike me
as a man who lets nerves or doubts rule him.”

“I never have before,” he said, “but you’re
making me feel a lot of things I’ve never felt before.”

Mary was used to men who practically rented
out an orchestral hall and filled it from floor to ceiling with
roses to set the stage for declaring themselves to her. Jack, on
the other hand, simply said the most shockingly delicious things
without any fanfare at all.

“Does it ever bother you to have people
constantly looking at you? The way they all want to talk to you and
ask for autographs?”

“Ninety-nine percent of the strangers who
approach me for an autograph are lovely, polite people. Honestly,
the only thing that bothers me about any of it is that I haven’t
done anything extraordinary enough for them to be so
starstruck.”

The sidewalk was crowded, but Jack didn’t
seem to care as he turned her to face him in the middle of it. “You
were born with incredible blue eyes. Your mouth drives a guy crazy
just looking at it. And you have a figure that Michelangelo could
have spent a lifetime trying to set into stone and never done
justice to it. But I’ve seen how hard you work during photo shoots
and I’ve just heard you come up with a half-dozen fantastic ideas
for the ads we’re going to shoot together. I’m certain that there
are plenty of beautiful women who couldn’t do what you do anywhere
near as well, or make it seem as effortless.”

“I know I’m good at my job,” she agreed, “but
I’m not a doctor curing cancer. I’m not an activist changing
history. I’m not a mother with children who need me, either.” She’d
rarely voiced these doubts aloud, but for some reason, with Jack
she couldn’t stop them all from pouring out.

He reached over to gently stroke his fingers
across her cheek, the heat of his touch in sharp contrast to the
coolness of her skin. “You make people happy, Mary, and that’s an
extraordinary thing.”

Jack’s words warmed her, just as his
touch—and his kiss—had. So when they began to walk again and a damp
wind whipped up around them, she let herself hold his arm a little
more tightly and move just a little bit closer, too.

* * *

Jack had never had any problems with the
opposite sex. Girls and then women had always seemed to like his
looks, and he’d never been nervous or fumbling around them. But
with Mary?

He could barely think a straight
thought…especially after that kiss under the mistletoe.

The kiss had been two sets of lips barely
touching. They hadn’t even held hands. And yet, she’d completely
knocked his socks off to the point where his heart was still
pounding hard and his veins were still buzzing with desire as they
walked down the crowded street.