Kissing Under The Mistletoe: The Sullivans (Contemporary Romance) (9 page)

Realizing she was rambling, Mary stopped
herself with a laugh that was a little bit hollow from speaking
about her mother. “See, here I go acting like a travel agent, just
like I said I would.”

“I could never tire of hearing you talk about
something that you love.”

He was right, she realized. Regardless of
what had happened between her and her mother, Mary only ever looked
back on her childhood, and the people who had made it so special,
with love.

Just as she had when she’d been speaking of
home in the diner the night before and emotion had threatened to
overwhelm her, she tried to dismiss it with a joke. “Next thing you
know, I’ll have you on a plane to Italy with an itinerary of the
best secret spots that no other tourist knows about.”

“I’d like that,” he said, and she could
suddenly see it so clearly, the two of them holding hands as they
flew across the Atlantic. She’d never taken a lover to her country,
had never stolen a kiss with someone in a shadowed alley that had
been there since medieval times while the bells of the church
chimed above them.

“Has your hometown changed much from when you
were nineteen?”

Mary slowly stirred their espresso with a
spoon in the pot before pouring it into two espresso cups. Coming
to sit beside Jack on a bar stool, she said, “I don’t know.”

He stopped with the cup halfway to his lips.
“You don’t?”

“No, I haven’t been back.”

She had never spoken about her family
situation with anyone outside her closest circle of friends and
confidants. A voice in the back of her head reminded her that it
wasn’t wise to reveal so much to Jack when they had met only a day
ago. Still, when he lowered his cup and reached for her hands, his
touch warmed her better than any cup of coffee could have.

“I truly loved my family, my friends, my
town, but I always knew I was different. Because when everyone else
was dreaming of wedding rings and babies, I was dreaming of
adventures and airplanes. My father understood, and he would tell
me about the places he’d seen in the war. But my mother—”

When she grew silent, Jack gently ran the
pads of his thumbs over the backs of her hands. As always, there
was a deep sensuality to his touch, but tonight she was more aware
of the empathy in the gesture.

“Your mother wanted you to stay.”

Mary nodded. “I was all she had, her only
child. And she was afraid for me, afraid that I’d be hurt. I
understand it better now that I’m watching over girls who are the
same age I was when I told her I’d met an agent who wanted to make
me a big star in New York City. I was so naive,” she said with a
laugh. “And very lucky that Randy—the talent scout—was honest and
legitimate.”

“That’s why you look out for the girls when
you could be living the high life in a penthouse. You want to make
sure they make it home to their mothers safe and sound.”

“Yes, and I’m not much for penthouse heights,
either,” she confessed. Though he smiled, she knew he hadn’t missed
the fact that she’d left out part of her explanation. “My mother
was angry with me for being headstrong and foolish. I was angry
with her for being stubborn and determined. We both said things we
didn’t mean.” Mary swallowed hard. “When I called home the night I
arrived in New York City, she refused to come to the phone. My
father made excuses, but I knew. I
knew.
She’d meant it when she said I was no longer her daughter.”

Mary couldn’t stop her tears from falling as
she wept for the mother who had never understood her daughter’s
need to open her wings and fly, if only to see how things looked
from new skies and not because she wanted to fly away forever.

“But she’s always been my mother. And I long
for her every single day.”

Jack drew her against him, his arms warm and
comforting as he stroked her back. He didn’t speak, didn’t try to
make everything better for her with simple platitudes. He simply
held her and let her cry out the tears she’d held back for too
long.

It wasn’t until she’d drained her well of
emotion dry that she realized he’d pressed his lips to her forehead
in the kind of kiss one friend gave to another.

No man had ever kissed her that way before.
As a friend.

And she’d never before slipped so easily into
a man’s arms, as if she’d finally found the place she was supposed
to be.

Taking a shaky breath, Mary pulled back
slightly and brushed a hand over the broad shoulder that she’d just
cried on. “Just when you were starting to dry off, I got you all
wet again.” It would have been easier to stand, to fiddle with
reheating their coffee, to talk about the ad campaign. Anything but
remain in Jack’s arms and meet his concerned gaze. “Thank you for
listening,” she said as she looked up into his eyes and was
immediately caught up in desire. Just that quickly.

Again, that voice in the back of her head
scolded her with reminders of caution. Maybe, she found herself
thinking as she reached up to stroke her fingertips over the dark
shadow across Jack’s jaw, she was still the same foolish and
headstrong girl now that she’d been at nineteen.

“You’ve already gone above and beyond
tonight, dancing with me in the rain, holding me while I cried. I
know I shouldn’t ask for more, but—”

Before she could say anything more, or ask
for all the things she shouldn’t allow herself to desire, his mouth
covered hers, hard and hungry.

Moments ago, Jack had kissed her as a
friend.

Now, he kissed her as a lover.

One hand threaded into her hair, the other
cupped her hip as he slid her from the seat to pull her against his
body. My God, he felt good. Hard and strong, his caresses just
wicked enough to make every nerve ending spike to life inside
her.

His tongue slid across her lips once, then
once again as if he hadn’t gotten nearly enough from the first
taste. And then, a moment later, she knew for sure that he hadn’t
because he was sucking her lower lip into his mouth and making her
moan with pleasure as he scored it gently with his teeth.

Their first kiss had been a shockingly sweet
press of lips that had sent pleasure humming through her. But this
kiss—and the sharp, hot, deep rush of being so close to him—was
setting off an entire fireworks show inside of her.

Both of them were breathing hard when he
finally drew back an inch. “I’ve never tasted anything as good as
you. Not even close.”

He dipped his mouth down for another taste
that had her toes curling in her boots, but too soon he pulled back
again. She could feel the tight rein he was trying to keep on
himself.

“I’m trying to be patient, Angel. I swear I
am. I should go before I forget everything except how much I want
you.”

She’d asked him to see their business
relationship through before asking for more. But that was when
she’d assumed she could hold on to her own control when being
around him.

“Please,” she found herself begging him now,
“before you go, give me one more kiss.”

She expected him to draw her close again, to
thread his hands roughly into her hair and devour her once more.
But Jack Sullivan had surprised her from the start, and though his
gaze ran hot with desire, the light brush of his fingertips over
her lips was so gentle, so sweet, that she was stunned by the force
of emotion that rocked through her as he touched her. She could
feel herself melting into him and knew that if he kissed her again
tonight, it wouldn’t end there.

“I think we’ve tested our restraint enough
for one night.”

She wanted to argue with him, wanted to wrap
herself around him and convince him with more kisses. She longed
for bare skin against bare skin and to forget the rules she’d laid
down.

But Mary sensed Jack wasn’t the kind of man
who second-guessed himself once he made up his mind. And she knew
he was putting on the brakes not because he didn’t want her, but
because he respected her too much to let a moment of heady passion
destroy the friendship growing between them.

A friendship that might, if treated with the
proper care, become the foundation for something much, much
bigger.

As a model, she’d learned how to exercise a
great deal of control over her body so she could hold difficult
poses for hours on end, sometimes in brutal heat, other times in
biting cold. It was that control she called upon now. She forced
herself to slip out of Jack’s arms and pick up his jacket from the
radiator across the room.

“Next time I invite you in,” she said with a
small smile as she gave him his coat and walked him to the front
door, “I’ll let you drink your coffee.”

He was standing on her front step when he
said, “Next time you invite me in, I’m going to make love to
you.”

He covered her gasp of surprise with that
last kiss she’d begged for. Before she had a chance to catch her
reeling heart, he was gone.

She didn’t know how long she stood at the
front door, staring out at the people walking on the sidewalk below
and watching the cars and taxis and buses move slowly through the
Friday-night traffic. Jack Sullivan was everything she’d ever
looked for in a man. Smart. Sexy. And with a heart full of so much
warmth it stunned her.

And yet, she realized as she finally closed
her front door with a soft click, instead of being calmed by that
realization, she was more frightened than she’d ever been
before.

Frightened and utterly enthralled.

Her heart still pounding hard, she headed for
the phone. “Gerry, it’s Mary. You know how you were saying you were
hoping to work together again? Is there any chance you might be
able to squeeze in a last-minute shoot this Monday for a really
interesting ad campaign?”

On Monday morning, Jack walked onto the set
where Mary would be shooting their first print ad. When he caught
sight of her dark hair swinging over her shoulders and her long,
toned legs that seemed to go on forever, for the very first time in
his life, Jack could not figure out how to remain rational. In all
honesty he couldn’t remember why he should even keep trying.

The speed with which his heart was racing
made him feel as if he were on a racetrack in one of the stock cars
he’d retooled over the years. Race cars, he’d discovered back in
high school, were the perfect antidote for the slow pace of
invention and engineering development. Jack’s experience on the
track had taught him how to embrace not only the rush and the
thrill…but the danger, as well. If you weren’t risking on the
track, you had no business being out there.

The risks he took on the racetrack seemed a
hell of lot more dangerous than the ones he took in the garage
working on his computers but, the truth was, it was the other way
around. Those risks were minuscule by comparison considering that
he’d already given up ten years of his life for a risky dream.

And yet, as Mary’s laughter moved through
him, Jack finally understood that the stakes had never been this
high.

Not only was his dream on the line…but it
seemed his heart was, too.

Jack had done some serious thinking over the
weekend. Thinking, after all, was what he’d always done best. He
should have been thinking about the launch of the Pocket Planner.
He should have been hunkered down over shipping schedules with
Larry. He should have been going over distribution and sales
outlets with Howie. He should have been approving final ad campaign
plans.

The very last thing that Jack should have
been focusing on when they were in the final lap of a dream that
had been ten years in the making was a woman.

He had always had to fit women and
relationships into the few spare slots of time and attention he had
available. He’d never even come close to thinking about “forever”
or love. He’d treated the women he’d taken out well, but work had
always come first.

But Mary was no ordinary woman.

Of course, it was perfectly natural to look
at a woman like her and want her. But was it natural to
only
be able to think of her? To remember
every flavor of sugar and spice on her lips as he’d kissed her? To
keep feeling the silky softness of her skin as he’d stroked her
cheek? To hear continued echoes of the sweet sound of pleasure
she’d made when he’d taken their kiss deeper?

What’s more, when she’d told him about her
severed relationship with her mother, he’d thought of his own
mother and how much she meant to him. He wished he could do
something to help Mary gain back what she was so sure she’d
lost.

As if she could hear his impassioned
thoughts, Mary suddenly looked over her shoulder and saw him. He
saw her eyes flare and her skin flush with what he hoped was a
desire that matched his own.

Jack hadn’t been able to forget the yearning
in Mary’s eyes when she’d asked him for one more kiss. Lord, all
he’d wanted was to lift her into his arms and take her back to her
bedroom and make love to her all night long. But she’d been so
earnest in the diner when she’d asked him to be patient, and he
intended to respect that which was so clearly important to her.
Still, that hadn’t stopped him from stealing one more kiss before
he’d made himself leave.

Now, Jack badly wanted to steal another kiss.
He wished they could forget all about business. He longed to pull
her into his arms and bury his hands in her hair as he drank in her
scent, her softness and the sweet sounds she made when she melted
against him.

But just as he’d been trying to remind
himself all weekend, this was neither the time nor the place for
wooing her.

“Gerry,” she said to the photographer, “come
meet Jack Sullivan.”

Mary looked perfectly poised, but he didn’t
think he’d imagined the slight hitch in her voice as she’d said his
name. Maybe he hadn’t been the only one tied up in knots this
weekend….