Let It Snow (The Hope Falls Series) (30 page)

“Hey, girlie girl.” Tessa heard Amanda’s familiar perky voice beside her. “How are you doing?”

Tessa turned and looked into Amanda’s eyes, reveling in the warmth and concern she saw there. It was good to see a friendly face and be able to drop the plastic, professional façade for just a moment.

Tessa shook her head. “Well, I have to admit, it’s a bit exhausting pretending to be happy and bubbly,” she laughed.

Amanda enfolded her in a quick hug and then said, “Well, why don’t you take a little break from capturing the festivities for posterity and sit and have a glass of watered down wine from the open bar with me?”

Tessa nodded gratefully. “Honestly, the promise of weak booze has never been so welcomed.”

It took a while to make it through the crowded room. Especially with people stopping her every two feet either to tell her how great it was to see her again—which was nice to hear—or to comment on the fact that they thought she would be Jake’s date tonight—which was not so nice to hear.

When they did finally sit down together at one of the tables that had been placed around the perimeter of the dance floor, Tessa held up her glass of wine and said wryly, “I think I’m going to be needing more than one of these tonight.”

Amanda reached over and rubbed her shoulder in support, and Tessa appreciated it. However, that relief was short-lived, because at that instant she looked up and saw something that, even though she had been expecting to see something like it all evening, sent her into an emotional tailspin.

Jake and his beautiful blond date were out on the dance floor and she was clinging to him for all she was worth.

Tessa’s insides clenched. She knew it wasn’t real. She knew that Jake was only there because this was a professional function and the girl had won a raffle. It wasn’t
real
. And yet…

Tessa couldn’t help it. The emotional reaction she had to seeing Jake with his arms around another woman—to seeing Jake with another woman pressed tightly against his body—was horrible. It made Tessa feel as if she wanted to die—or more accurately, like she wanted the other woman to die.

When she looked at the picture they made out on the dance floor, it made her wonder,
Is that the kind of girl Jake is going to end up with?
Was that really what Tessa wanted for him? Would that girl, who was rubbing up against him like a cat in heat, be a good wife, a good mother? Would
she
love Jake like Tessa did? Would
she
be willing to sacrifice her own personal happiness for him?

“Hey, Levi!” Amanda’s voice pulled her out of her inner turmoil. “How are you tonight?”

“Great,” Levi answered with a smile. “Just wondering if I can interest either one of you lovely ladies in a dance?”

“Love to, boss,” Tessa immediately replied, surprising even herself as she shot to her feet. Both Amanda and Levi looked shocked at the speed and enthusiasm with which she had answered, but Tessa didn’t care. All she knew was that, right now, she needed to get her mind off of the incredibly sexy man and well-endowed blond she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from. Dancing seemed like a better solution than wallowing in a glass of wine.

Levi led her out to the dance floor and placed his hand loosely on her waist, standing about a foot and a half back from her and taking her hand in his free one. Clearly he knew that this was a purely platonic dance. Unlike big-boobed blondie.

She and Levi moved across the dance floor with an easy grace, and he even dipped her. Although Tessa had originally only agreed to dance with Levi as a distraction, it was actually turning out to be pretty fun. In fact, she would go as far as to say it was the highlight of her evening. Levi was a great dancer.

Just as she as really beginning to let go and enjoy herself, Levi spun her around and Jake came into view again. What she saw made her cringe just a little.

Jake was staring at her with laser-focused intensity, and he did not look happy. Nope. Not one little bit. In fact, if anything, that man looked jealous.

Tessa didn’t want Jake to be upset. She’d only been dancing with someone else to get her mind off of
him
. Shoot. She couldn’t just walk away from Levi mid-dance. It would be incredibly rude for one thing, not to mention ridiculous.

As the song played on and she and Levi glided around the dance floor, she could sense Jake’s eyes on her every single moment. She had always been attuned to his presence and his attention, ever since they had met as teenagers. If he entered a room, even if her back was turned, she could sense him. The small hairs on her arms and the nape of her back would stand up as if shocked by static electricity. Now, thirteen years later, that bond had not been severed. In fact, it had not even been weakened. She felt Jake’s eyes on her like a physical touch.

When the music slowly faded out and the couples on the dance floor, including herself and Levi, began to wander away back to their tables, Tessa smiled up at him and said sincerely, “Thank you for the dance. I really needed it.”

“No problem,” he said as they arrived at the table that now held not only Amanda, but Nikki, Amy, and Karina as well. “Ladies.” He nodded before walking away.

“Dang, Levi can really move,” Karina observed as she sipped a glass of white wine.

“I know, right?!” Amanda agreed.

Amy sat down, joining them and holding the firefighter calendar Tessa had shot last week. “Wow, these pictures are… Wow.”

Nikki looked over her shoulder as Amy flipped the page and immediately recoiled from what she saw. “Oh my god! I’m scarred for life. A sister should never see that expression on her brother’s face.”

“I agree,” Amy said, looking a tad horrified herself.

Tessa hadn’t seen the final product but she knew the proofs she’d sent to the printers and Jake’s photo had been, well…hot. For his shirtless pose, she’d chosen one where he’d been straddling the chair, looking down into the camera.

She felt a blush rising on her cheeks as she remembered how
hot
the entire session was—and more to the point—how hot the after session was too.

Amanda and Karina scooted around so they could see what all the fuss was about. As soon as their eyes landed on the photo, Amanda’s jaw dropped as her cheeks turned bright red while Karina’s mouth turned up in a mischievous smile and she fanned herself, saying, “Holy hot tamale.”

Tessa didn’t think it could be
that
bad. He wasn’t any more naked than any of the other guys in the calendar. “Can I see it?” Tessa asked, and Amy nodded, handing it over to her.

Oh my.

She must have gotten desensitized by seeing frame after frame of Jake in all of his sexy glory because looking at him now, not in the context of editing, her entire body was engulfed in tingles. It wasn’t just his muscular body, which was amazing. It was the look in his eye. That was how he looked at her when he was buried deep inside of her.

“Okay, you know it’s a hot pic when it even makes the photographer blush,” Karina teased.

Tessa shook her head, smiling. As her friends took back the calendar and flipped through the other pages, Tessa’s eyes automatically roamed the dance floor. Jake was still out there with the blond draped all over him.

He’d texted her earlier and told her he was coming over after he dropped off B.B.B. She’d been a little confused about the B.B.B. part, but the one thing she knew for sure was that he might be
here
with someone else, but he’d be with her later tonight. In bed. She could hardly wait.

‡

J
ake walked up the front walkway to his house. Tessa opened the front door before he reached the welcome mat.

“Hi,” she said softly.

“Hi,” he repeated as he stepped into the house, a bundle of pent-up nerves. He felt stretched tight and on the verge of snapping.

He and Tessa had not said one word to each other during the entire event, so he had no idea what she was feeling—but he knew that he was about to explode with a complicated mix of emotions that he could not even begin to unravel. He’d dropped off his date and drove straight here.

Watching her dancing with Levi was absolute torture, plain and simple. It had made an instinct well up in him to protect her, although he knew that was silly. Levi was one of his good friends and he knew, intellectually, that he posed no threat to Tessa. Still, his base instincts were not clued into his intellectual thought process, apparently. It also gave him a powerful urge to claim her as his possession, his territory.

He realized the idiocy of the jealousy he had felt because he had been watching her dance with Levi while he himself had been on the dance floor with another woman in his arms. The fact that he had been roped into being there with that woman and that she was the absolute last person he’d wanted to be dancing with notwithstanding—hell, the fact that he still didn’t even know that woman’s name—the truth was that he had been jealous of Tessa dancing with another man at the
exact
moment that he had been dancing with another woman.

Ridiculous.

That didn’t change the facts though. His emotions were running high and he felt as if they were about to boil over. He could feel the tension in the pit of his stomach. He usually only felt this kind of adrenaline buildup when he was about to go battle a fire. Hell, maybe that was actually a good analogy. His jealousy was like a metaphorical fire. The trick was that he needed to actually put it out or—just like the real thing—it would consume him.

Jealousy aside, he still did have his wits about him enough to realize that he didn’t want to say something to her that he would regret. Words can hurt, and sometimes words were something a person—or a relationship—could not come back from. He didn’t want to say anything to Tessa that would be impossible to come back from in the heat of anger—especially an anger he’d realized even in the midst of was unjustified. She had done absolutely nothing wrong.

He recognized that he needed to take a moment to cool off before engaging with her. He began to walk up the stairs towards his bedroom as he loosened his tie, not looking back at her. He knew that if he looked at her, it would all be over. He would not be able to keep himself from engaging, whether it was by touching her or talking to her, and he wasn’t in a frame of mind to be able to do either one of those things rationally at the moment.

“Where are you going?” He heard Tessa’s tight voice behind him.

“Shower,” was his clipped reply.

His stride didn’t stop until he reached his bathroom. He turned on the water in the shower, setting the temperature to as high as he could stand it. He then peeled off the layers of his formal clothing, dropping them onto the floor and not caring about the disarray or the condition of the clothes. He just needed to get his body underneath that steaming stream of water and let the physical sensation bring his head back down to earth. He instinctively knew that it was exactly what he needed to come back to himself. Even the simple act of breathing the steam the water had already generated as he’d undressed was beginning to calm him just a bit.

Jake climbed underneath the red-hot spray, letting the sting of the water penetrate his skin, breathing the steamy air deep into his lungs, and attempting to let it clear his mind.

Jake ducked his head under the stream coming from the showerhead, letting it drench his head and body. He did his best to lose himself in the pounding rhythm of the water hitting the ceramic floor and the pulsing needles where it landed on his skin.

He became so lost in the sound and sensation of the shower, in fact, that it was a complete surprise to him when he heard Tessa’s voice, less than an inch from his ear as she hissed, “Wow, you really like it
hot
, don’t you?”

Then, without giving him time to turn around, she pressed herself against his back. He felt the soft pillows of her breasts against the hard, rippling muscles of his back and felt the beads of her hard nipples as they slipped along his wet skin. She snaked her arms around his waist, sliding her hand down to grasp his engorged erection in her slick palm.

Every ounce of anger and jealousy dissolved and was replaced with desire and arousal. Tessa was magic like that. With her, he had absolutely no control. He saw her body, heard her voice, or felt her touch and sprang to life. Every single time, without fail.

He pressed his palms up against the tile walls of the shower as her hand moved faster and faster up and down his shaft. Her other hand ran up his chest. She spread her fingers out and held him tightly as she pumped him hard. He could feel himself growing larger and larger in her firm grip.

Then suddenly, she was in front of him, lowering to her knees in one fluid motion. He moaned in anticipation of her sweet lips on his shaft.

He dropped his gaze to her mouth as she encircled the tip of his sex with her lips and he felt her tongue swirling around it. Moaning again, this time from pleasure, he placed one hand on the back of her head to guide her and the other he pressed firmly back against the tile. He was definitely going to need some help maintaining his balance. This was one of the best feelings he had ever experienced. He was almost dizzy with desire.