Father Christmas (25 page)

Molly glanced at him, and then lifted her
gaze back to John. His left hand fisted with tension; he rested it
against a chair and tried to will it to relax. He didn’t want her
to leave. Whether or not it was right, whether or not he had any
rights when it came to her...

If she left, he would go crazy.

“
Do you think you’ll need
help getting him ready for bed?” she asked, gesturing toward
Mike.

“
No.”
Damn.
He could have kept her at the
house for as long as it took to get Mike through his nightly
routine if he’d pretended he couldn’t handle it alone. But he
didn’t want to lie to Molly. And he didn’t want her to stay for
Mike’s sake. He wanted her to stay for
him
.

Her gaze locked with his, direct and brave,
even as her mouth wavered between a smile and a frown. “John?” she
murmured hesitantly.

“
Don’t leave.”

She searched his face. He hoped she saw the
truth in his eyes. He hoped she knew what he really wanted to say,
what he couldn’t bring himself to come right out and ask.

Her mouth settled on an ambiguous smile, and
she lowered her gaze to her hands, dabbing a stray bead of water
from her wrist with the paper towel. “I guess I could stay a little
while longer,” she conceded. “I don’t mind giving Mike a bath.”

She was staying for Mike, then. She was
staying to help out the floundering father. And she was staying
only a little while longer.

She had understood exactly what John was
asking of her, and she’d given him her answer. He couldn’t blame
her. She’d made the smart, sensible choice. He ought to count his
blessings that she didn’t demand, right then and there, that he
call her a cab.

He didn’t want to count his blessings. Given
the way he felt, he doubled he would be able to count much past
zero.

He opened his mouth to offer her a lift
home. No sense delaying the inevitable. If he drove her home now,
while Mike was still awake, the kid could come along for the ride.
Molly would love that. Mike was the only reason she’d sacrificed
this day for John.

But before he could speak, Mike had grabbed
her hand and was dragging her down the hall toward the bathroom.
“Molly gives me a bath,” he declared. “Make the fish, okay? Molly,
you make the fish and I don’t splash.”

“
Okay, Michael,” she
agreed, following him out of the kitchen. “I’ll make the
fish.”

John had no idea what the hell they were
talking about. All he knew was that he was left in the kitchen,
alone.

And he wanted Molly even more. He wanted her
because she was kind, and she was generous, and she was beautiful,
and on a Saturday night when she could be doing a million other
things, she was going to make the fish for his son.

MICHAEL WAS ASLEEP.

After his bath, he swore he wasn’t the least
bit sleepy. He jogged several laps up and down the hall, screeching
and giggling, until John snagged him and hauled him off to his room
with the promise that they would read a book together only if
Michael got into bed.

Smart move. Two pages
into
Curious George
, Michael was
out cold.

Molly watched from the doorway as John
turned off the bedside lamp, kissed his son’s forehead, and picked
his way across the toy-strewn floor to her side. Without speaking,
they tiptoed down the hallway. His face remained hidden in shadow,
his gaze straight ahead as they arrived at the entry to the living
room.

What now? she wondered. She’d done
everything she could do to help John with his son and his errands
today. Surely he must have run out of favors to ask of her.

Not that she felt as if he had taken
advantage of her. Everything she’d done for him she’d done
willingly, and she’d enjoyed it. In all honestly, she didn’t think
John had needed her for anything other than her expertise in
choosing appropriate Christmas gifts for his son. He could have
done everything else himself.

The irony, she realized,
was that
she’d
been the one who
couldn’t have accomplished any of the afternoon’s pleasures
without
him
. Without John, she
couldn’t have decorated a tree. She couldn’t have shopped for
tinsel and lights, and spent hours draping them across the boughs
of a fresh, fragrant pine. She couldn’t have twisted pipe-cleaners
into colorful Christmas shapes and perched them on the
branches.

Standing now at the entry to the living
room, she admired the tree, which occupied the corner between the
window and the fireplace, its small white lights twinkling like
stars and causing the garlands of tinsel to sparkle. Once she went
home she wouldn’t have this. She wouldn’t have a tree, or someone
who loved her enough to leave presents beneath it the way John
would leave presents for Michael. She wouldn’t have a family to
celebrate with her.

She’d stayed with the Russos all afternoon
and evening because she’d needed this—the family, the tree, the joy
of sharing the holiday with someone. But John and Michael weren’t
about to include her in their family. She shouldn’t even want such
a thing. She ought to leave before the wanting started to hurt.

“
I’d better go,” she
muttered, risking a glance at John.

The tree’s silvery lights danced along the
lines and angles of his face, catching on the corner of his lip
when he turned to her. His eyes were achingly dark as they searched
her face. His gaze probed, questioned, pleaded—but she wasn’t sure
what he was asking, what he was pleading for.

“
Will you call me a cab?”
she asked.

“
No.”

He couldn’t drive her home himself, not
without first hiring a baby-sitter to stay with Michael. And
finding an available baby-sitter on such short notice on a Saturday
night would be impossible. A cab was the only sensible solution.
“John, I think—”

“
Don’t go.” He lifted his
good hand to her cheek, his fingers digging into her hair. Sliding
his hand around to the nape of her neck, he pulled her toward him
and touched his lips to her brow. “Stay, Molly,” he whispered. “For
me.”

For me.
Not for
Michael. Not for running errands, not for lending her assistance to
a shopping expedition or helping out with the evening routines. For
John. Just for John.

The heat of his kiss seeped slowly down
through her, caressing her mind, halting her breath, making her
breasts tingle and her heart surge and her belly grow tight. She
understood now what his gaze had been asking her. He wanted her to
stay for the night, for sex.

But if she stayed, it would be for something
more, something he hadn’t offered: that sense of belonging, finding
her place in John’s world, in a house with a Christmas tree, a home
and a family that stood firm in the face of abandonment and
loss.

That wasn’t any part of his kiss. Molly
shouldn’t want it. She had a fine family of her own, and perhaps
someday she would have a husband and children and a nice, cozy
house. Ideally, she would have a husband whose line of work was
safe and didn’t launch her sister into paroxysms of rage. With
luck, Molly would find a man who didn’t carry the baggage of a
failed marriage and an emotionally fragile son.

But she didn’t want to think so far into the
future. She wanted to think only about tonight, this minute, with
John.

“
Yes,” she murmured,
tilting her face up to him as he leaned down to her. His mouth
found hers, and her kiss answered
yes
as well.

He kissed her gently. Deeply. Slowly.
Thoroughly. His arms enveloped her, warming her, making her want to
arch against him. She no longer could think of the holiday
atmosphere she’d helped to create in his home, or the special
closeness between him and his son. All that mattered was John, a
man so reserved in most things, but not now. When he kissed her he
held nothing back.

His tongue swept her
mouth, slid along her teeth, teased her lips. His fingers twined
through her hair, massaged the nape of her neck, dipped beneath the
collar of her shirt while his other hand, constricted by gauze and
tape, came to rest at the small of her back, urging her against
him. The heat he’d ignited with his first kiss grew brighter and
fiercer, exerting a pressure so unbearably sweet she wanted to sigh
and weep and beg for more. More kisses. More heat.
More
.

“
Come,” he
said.

Stunned that he could command her
response—and even more stunned that she could be so close to
meeting that demand—she pulled back and blinked up at him. He slid
his hand down her arm to weave his fingers through hers, and
motioned with his head toward the hallway.

Oh. He meant he wanted her to come down the
hall with him. Abashed by her X-rated interpretation of his
statement, she accompanied him to the door across from Michael’s
bedroom. He opened it, led her inside, and closed it firmly behind
him.

She considered briefly the room across the
hall, and the child asleep inside it. Did John expect her to spend
the whole night with him? If so, what would Michael think if he
found her there in the morning?

Probably not much, she decided. At two and a
half years old, he wouldn’t understand what a woman might do with
his father overnight. He would simply think Molly didn’t feel like
going home—which was true. After the way John had just kissed her,
the last thing she wanted was to go home.

Once she had assured herself that Michael
wouldn’t have a problem with her staying, she surveyed her
surroundings. John’s room was relatively neat, the closet shut, the
bed made, the dresser devoid of clutter until John emptied the
pockets of his jeans, removing his wallet, his keys and a handful
of coins and tossing them onto the polished maple surface.

Watching a man empty his pockets like that
seemed so domestic. So personal. So...intimate.

Turning from the dresser, he removed his
sweater, easing the right sleeve past his bandages and withdrawing
his arm, then whipping the sweater over his head and off his left
arm. Molly’s gaze lingered for a moment on wide strip of gauze
wrapped around his forearm It stirred memories of the night she’d
brought Michael to the emergency room in search of John, the
gut-wrenching fear she’d suffered at the thought of him hurt. But
just as that fear had mingled with an awareness of the man apart
from his wounds then, so she felt that awareness now, much more
keenly. Beneath his T-shirt, she discerned the contours of his
torso. Her gaze journeyed from his broad shoulders down his lean,
sleek chest to the waistband of his jeans. Below the buckle of his
belt, the denim was slightly faded along his fly.

Once again she felt embarrassed. She wasn’t
in the habit of staring men’s flies, any more than she was in the
habit of imagining orgasms at the mere mention of the word “come.”
She might have agreed to spend the night with John for more than
one reason, but right now the most important reason seemed to be
that John Russo turned her on in a crazy way.

He took a step toward her, his left arm
outstretched, and she approached him. Compared to his virile,
beautifully proportioned height she felt short and dumpy. She had
always wanted to be tall like her best friend Allison—and never
more than now, facing such a tall man.

But then his hand closed around hers,
pulling her into his arms for another ravenous kiss, and she forgot
about her physical imperfections. John obviously didn’t think she
was too short. His kiss indicated that he approved of her
appearance quite heartily.

He loosened his hold on her and fingered the
top button of her shirt. Fumbling with his left hand, he lifted his
right to the button. But his thumb and index finger couldn’t meet
over the thick bandage.

She covered her hands with his and drew them
away. “I’ll do it,” she said.

He inched back from her, saying nothing,
only gazing at her. His eyes glowed.

She felt a blush rise to her cheeks, and for
a moment she fumbled with the top button as badly as he had. But
then it came undone, and when she glanced up at him his smile shook
her to her soul. It was both amused and aroused, daring her to
continue.

She pushed aside her nervousness. Let him
dare her; she’d never been one to back away from a challenge.
Taking a deep breath, she unfastened the next button and the next,
and the next, until she reached the belt of her jeans. She
unbuckled it and heard him sigh. Peering up again, she found his
smile gone and his eyes dark with hunger.

She was not a particularly bold woman, and
her experience with men couldn’t fill more than a few pages of a
dime-store diary. But John made her feel reckless. She wasn’t sure
why—he was a cop, for heaven’s sake, and a responsible father, two
of the most un-reckless things a man could be. But the way he
looked at her, the way he’d kissed her, the way he was standing
before her, his hair rumpled and his head cocked slightly, and his
thumbs hooked on the pockets of his jeans...

Well, damn it, if he was going to dare her,
she would be daring. “I guess I’ll have to undress you, too,” she
said, her voice quivering only a little bit.

He sighed again, although there was a hint
of a groan in the sound. “I guess you’ll have to,” he agreed, still
watching her, his chest moving in slow, deep breaths as she closed
the distance between them.

She gathered the fabric of his T-shirt in
her hands and tugged it free of his jeans. Her knees felt shaky,
but she kept going, lifting the shirt up, baring his stomach, his
rib cage, the smooth, golden-hued skin of his chest, the subtle
curves of his muscles. He obediently lifted his hands over his
head, but she couldn’t reach high enough to pull the shirt over his
head. He bent his knees, enabling her to yank off the shirt. As
soon as his hands were through the sleeves, he lowered them to her
waist, shoving back the unbuttoned edges of her blouse, and
pressing his lips to the skin below her collarbone.