Holiday Man (13 page)

Wasn’t she?

Bram convinced himself that, yes, she sure was.

Then he spotted her. Finally. A vision in wisps of blue tulle that matched her eyes. A silver fairy wand in her hand. Long, elegant wings fluttering behind her as she walked across the floor. Petite ballet slippers on her feet.

And Jake the Prick by her side.

Bram clenched his jaw and increased his pace.

Jake, dressed appropriately as a court jester, raised a brow at him when he approached the two. “Well, well,
Tinkerbell
,” Jake muttered to Shannon, though loud enough for Bram to overhear. “The Phantom is crashing our Masquerade Ball. How original.”

The Prick’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Bram.

Shannon’s eyes widened as she took in his Phantom costume. “I’m impressed,” she whispered, but he’d had to read faces at international business meetings for too many years to be fooled. He got the distinct sense that some other, less enchanted reaction lay behind her words. He tried to dismiss the thought as paranoia, but he couldn’t.

“I hoped you’d like it,” he told her anyway, ignoring Jake but not quite able to block him out of his consciousness. The assistant edged his way closer to Shannon. To retaliate, Bram reached for her hand and tugged her toward him. “You look beautiful,
Tinkerbell
.”

A small grin played along the curve of her lips. “Thanks.”

Bram saw Jake grimace, tap her shoulder and motion her close to him again. She took a step in Jake’s direction, and The Prick pulled her the rest of the way.

“We still need to decide when to announce the winners,” Jake said. He shook his head so the bells on the pointed ends of his jester’s hat jingled. The guy looked bloody ridiculous but, for some reason, Shannon laughed at his antics.

Bram hadn’t thought it possible, but he now hated Jake even more.

“There’ll be prizes for Best Costume tonight,” Shannon explained to Bram, “in the categories of Scariest, Cutest and Most Authentic.”

He nodded and made a show of glancing around the room. “Well, you’ve got a lot good outfits to choose from. Who’ll be doing the judging?”

“The Bakers.” She pointed to the older couple he remembered from the Easter Egg Hunt back in the spring, and he was flooded with memories of the desire that came to a head between him and Shannon that day.

He looked her in the eye as best he could, given the constraints of his mask, and projected his most smoldering gaze her way. He wasn’t sure why it felt so necessary tonight, but he needed to remind her of the passion they’d shared. And, yes, on an admittedly primitive level, to remind her that she was
his
woman. Not Jake’s.

Jake, of course, refused to take the hint and just bug off the way a second-place loser-man should. Instead, he draped his arm—
his arm!
—around Shannon, leaned in close, as if making a pretense of discretion, and said, “Shall we say ten o’clock?” He looked beyond where Bram was standing and nodded in the Bakers’ direction. “That should give them plenty of time to make their final selections.”

“Okay,” Shannon said to her assistant. “Why don’t you let them know and—”

“Oh, hey,” Jake replied, too quickly. “We should go talk to them together. They’ll probably have questions for you about the prizes or the—”

“Can’t handle it on your own, Jake?” Bram interrupted, forcing a grin and a light laugh. Shannon may well put up with Jake’s obnoxious and overtly needy behavior, but Bram couldn’t take another nanosecond of it. Enough crap.

Shannon shot him a dark look before turning her attention to her assistant. “Go ahead and let the Bakers know, Jake, but tell them I’ll find them in twenty minutes or so, just in case any questions arise.”

Jake pulled his arm away from her shoulder but let his fingertips trickle along the edge of the blue tulle for a moment too long. The guy was contemptible. “Okay, babe,” he said with that damned smirk. Then he pivoted on the heel of one of his pointy jester shoes and strode away.

The second Jake was out of earshot, Shannon faced him, one hand on her hip, the other grasping her fairy wand so tight her knuckles were pale. “What are you trying to do, Bram? Jake’s a friend of mine and my employee. Your rudeness toward him is inexcusable.”

“My
rudeness!
” Fury burned his lungs. “Jesus, Shannon, the jerk was practically feeling you up right in front of me. How do you expect me to react?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, he was
not
, and what I
expect
is for you to act like a man who’s confident in my affections, not like an insecure teenage boy.” She tightened her lips and glanced away.

Bram took a step back. Literally. And his jaw actually dropped. An insecure teenage boy?
Him?
What the hell…

“That’s what you think of me?” he managed to say.

“You know, Bram, I don’t know what to think. You come here acting all eager to see me, but maybe it’s the
place
, not me, that you’re excited about… Then you mock me with your costume and get all possessive and Neanderthal in front of my assistant. I’ve got to say, I wonder if I’m a person you actually
like
or just one you want to
acquire
.”

He was rendered so speechless by this that, not only did zero words leave his mouth for a full minute, but they didn’t even form in his brain. The only thing he was aware of was an absolutely disturbing paring of emotions—anger laced with hurt—and the certainty that she was wrong.
Wrong
. He shook his head but couldn’t seem to communicate any of this to her.

She crossed her arms and glared at him, eyeing his costume with an expression of suspicion and fury. What had she said? That she thought he was
mocking
her with it? She couldn’t have been more off target. He’d thought it would please her.

“You’re wrong,” he whispered.

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m wrong? That’s all you have to say about this?”

“Yes.”

She threw her hands in the air, swiveled on her slipped toes and rocketed down the hall, out of the ballroom and into some “Employees Only” area. Away from him.

He left, too.

It took Bram almost an hour of sitting on the edge of his bed and mindlessly staring into space before he got his temper in check and recovered the use of his complete vocabulary again.

By the time he finally returned to the party, the Masquerade Ball was in full swing. The “Monster Mash” blared from the speakers as a collection of shirtless handymen with tool belts, naughty nurses and the usual variety of witches and ghouls danced around him.

He heard Shannon before he saw her.

“There are so many places I want to visit,” she said enthusiastically to somebody nearby. “London. Venice. Seville. Zurich. And that’s just in Europe.”

“Don’t forget romantic cities like Paris and Rome,” Jake the Jester Prick replied in a silky, seductive tone that made Bram want to slug him.

But he held himself back. He did not march over to them. Did not punch the not-remotely-humorous jester in the jaw. Did not tell Shannon what he really thought about her colleague.

He knew how to play corporate games better than this. She’d already defended Jake once that night and made the jerk seem like some kind of victim. Bram wouldn’t give her an excuse to do it again. Still, having to witness another man putting the moves on her stung.

He got himself a large glass of some dark reddish concoction from the refreshments table labeled “Potent Potions” and proceeded to drink two of them. He identified vodka and tequila as a couple of ingredients in the mix, but decided he needed a third glass to figure out the rest. He’d just poured it when Shannon came up beside him.

“I could probably use one of those, too,” she said.

He handed her a glass. “It’s good.” He didn’t know what else to add. Maybe he hadn’t gotten as much of his vocabulary back as he’d thought.

She took it from him, drank about half of it, then studied him carefully and sighed.

“Bram,” she said, touching his forearm and making his heart almost stop from the desire to hold her. “I was angry, but I shouldn’t have yelled at you, and I shouldn’t have run away from you like that. I’m sorry.”

He felt a surge of hopefulness and nodded, silently accepting her apology, even though he hadn’t understood her outburst earlier. “Your fiery Irish temper got the best of you, huh?”

She half smiled. “Something like that.”

“I wasn’t trying to ‘acquire’ you, Shannon. And I wasn’t ‘mocking’ you with my costume. I thought you’d like it, but I guess I should’ve stuck with my original idea—Dracula.”

She smiled the rest of the way. “Really? You have vampire teeth back in your room?”

“In the garbage can, but yes.” He paused. “I don’t need them to bite your neck, though.”

At this, she chuckled. To Bram’s ears, it was like hearing the Vienna Symphony Orchestra playing Mozart.

She nudged him with her elbow. “Let’s go up there. You can show me.”

He didn’t need to be asked twice. He hustled her out of the ballroom before she could change her mind and, when they got to his suite, he hastily removed every stitch of her flowing costume…from the blue tulle dress to the delicate wings to the soft ballet slippers.

She responded by hurriedly tugging off his mask, untying his cape—which dropped to the floor with a swish of fabric—and pulling off his black shirt, black slacks and pumpkin-orange boxers until he was standing bare in front of her.

His cock rose to meet her, trying oh so hard to bury itself within her.

But Shannon insisted on playing with him first, running her fingertips up and down his shaft, kissing his chest with her lips—still cool and red from the spiked “potion”—and making these breathy, moaning sounds every time he touched her breasts, her ass, her legs.

Bram just couldn’t take it anymore. He lifted her off the floor long enough to half lay/half toss her onto the middle of the king-sized bed. Then he sank into her at the same time as he bit the tender area of skin on the left side of her throat…alternating rocking deep within her and sucking hard on her neck until he finally got the Halloween scream he’d been waiting to hear from her lips.

***

The next morning brought a harsh ray of sunlight, invading the room through a window blind he’d stupidly neglected to close all the way.

Shannon stirred beside him. “I should go downstairs soon,” she said, her voice sexy and low with the huskiness of sleep.

“Why? Can’t Jake be responsible for another hour or two?”

Bram knew he shouldn’t bring up the name of that other guy but,
dammit
, couldn’t The Prick do something useful for a change? Anything besides playing tug-o-war with him over Shannon’s attention?

She exhaled heavily. “I left the party early to be with
you
,” she reminded him. “I need to make it up to Jake today.”

He all but growled at the thought of Shannon owing Jake
anything
, but he was proud of himself for dropping the subject. Instead, he tried to distract her. He ran his fingers down her back, holding her in place and reaching for the new body lotion he’d set on the bedside table. “
Apricocious
.”

“
Mmm
. Smells like apricots and cream,” she murmured, as the scent of the lotion filled the air. “It’s making me hungry.”

He warmed up a dollop of it in his hands and began massaging her shoulder blades, then her lower back, then the firm rounded cheeks of her delectable bottom. They’d had two rounds of flaming-hot sex during the night but, already, he wanted her again.

“It would be perfect if I could spend all day making you feel hungry. Right here in this room. So cozy, so relaxing, so far away from everything stressful,” he mused.

She shifted, moving a tad closer to him, and laughed lightly. “Not for me. It would be
more
perfect if we were on the Côte d’Azur or the
Amalfi
Coast. Somewhere so much more interesting and exotic than…Wisconsin.”

He tried to explain that she wasn’t appreciating enough of the beauty of her own home. “I’ve been to both of those other places, Shannon. They’re really pretty, sure, but not as special as you make them seem. The coastal view out this window is gorgeous, too. You’ve got this perfect location right here in Door County. You don’t have to travel the world to find it.”

He hoped he was getting across to her that she didn’t need to change a single thing about her life or her experiences to impress him. But, instead of snuggling even closer to him so he could continue her backrub, she abruptly pulled away. She all but leaped out of bed and started gathering up her clothes.

What did he do wrong now?

“That’s, perhaps, easier for you to say because you’ve already done it.” Her words came out in a chilly, clipped tone. “I’d like it if, for a change, someone didn’t try to tell me what I should want or not want. What I should try or not try.”

She slipped on her blue
Tinkerbell
dress and shot an accusing glare at him. “You’ve got this image of me stuck here at Holiday Quinn—a little domestic haven tailor-made for you to retreat to from the real world—but you don’t seem to be as interested in being around me when we’re away from here.” She crossed her arms, clutching her fairy wings to her chest. “I was right last night, wasn’t I? It’s this
place
you’re excited about and attracted to…not
me
.”