Mistletoe and Holly (13 page)

She felt his hand pushing up the hem of her sweater and the tightness in her throat began to spread upward, too. “A person could catch cold without them, so maybe it’s wise.”

“Wise men never fall in love.” He began to sit up, bringing her with him.

For a second, she watched him take hold of the bottom of his smoke blue sweater to remove it. Then she pulled hers over her head, shaking her hair free and laying the sweater on the ottoman. When she turned back to Tagg, he was wearing a bemused look as he stared at her flesh-colored cotton camisole.

“What’s this?” he asked, touching a shoulder strap with the end of his finger.

“A camisole.”

“What happened to lacy brassieres with convenient hooks?” he complained as he searched for the camisole’s hem and found it, lifting the loose undergarment
over her head, and tossing it onto the ottoman.

Tagg gave her no time to become self-conscious with her partial nudity or his own. His arms were immediately around her and gently lowering her to the floor once again. The heat of his bare flesh was under her hands, the iron-solid muscles rippling with easy strength.

Their kisses became longer and hungrier while his roaming hands excited her with their touch. She was fast losing control over what she was doing. His teeth nibbled sensually at a white shoulder, sending quivers all through her nerve ends. Her fingers combed into the virile thickness of his hair as his mouth trailed up the slope of her breast to reach its hard peak. She felt herself slipping.

This was not turning out to be a simple necking and petting spree. It was becoming the preliminary to something infinitely more intimate. All the achings and longings of her flesh were seeking it but Leslie wasn’t sure if she was ready.

Abruptly she pulled away from him and sat up, breathing in deeply in her fight for a sanity beyond lust. “You’re going too fast for me,” she stated unevenly and pushed at her hair.

His hand slid to the front of her waist. “You’re
going too slow for me,” Tagg countered, and pressed his lips to the small of her back.

An exquisite shudder of raw pleasure ran through her, closing her eyes. “I can’t think clearly.” Especially now when his mouth was working its way up her spine. “And I don’t like decisions forced on me if I’m not ready to make them. And I’m not ready to make this one.” She felt him lifting the hair away from the nape of her neck and knew she had to stop his progress. Leslie half-turned and reached for her clothes. “It’s time I went home.”

His hand took the weight of her breast and pulled her back to him. Her sensitized skin felt the heat and solidness of his hair-roughened chest. She curled her fingers into her sweater and camisole, clutching them to her taut stomach.

“Honey, it’s cold outside,” Tagg murmured in a reasoning and persuasive tone. “Listen to that wind.”

Above the thundering of her racing heart, Leslie could hear the muffled howl of the north wind and realized the storm had intensified. “It’s just going to get worse out there. I might as well leave now.” But her voice trailed off on a weakening note as he nuzzled at the erotic pleasure point at the base of her neck.

“Why go out in the storm when you can stay the night here?” Tagg asked. “With me.”

“But that’s just it,” she protested and this time made a determined effort to escape both his touch and his kisses by twisting sideways and scooting backward out of his hold. “I don’t know if it’s what I want.” That wasn’t precisely true and Leslie shook her head in agitation. “It is what I want, but I’m not sure why.”

“Do you have to analyze it?” he challenged mildly, but made no attempt to physically bring her back into his arms.

“Yes,” she answered with a trace of impatience. “I don’t know if I’m feeling this way because I’m lonely and I want to be held by someone—whether I’ve merely become sexually aroused—or if I feel obligated to let you make love to me because I’ve willingly gone this far already and you expect me to go the rest of the way. I just don’t know.”

She tugged the camisole over her head and followed it with the sweater, not even bothering to check front from back. As she adjusted the sweater around her waist, Leslie finally looked at him. Tagg sat there, braced on one arm, the firelight bathing his wide shoulders and the ruffled mat of hair on his naked chest, the corded muscles of his flat stomach standing out tautly. But the flickering light cast shadows on his tanned and angular features, making their expression unreadable.

His hand reached out to her and Leslie managed
not to shy away from it. He lifted her sand-colored hair outside of the high collar of her turtleneck and let it lay about her shoulders.

“In all the reasons you mentioned, you left out an important one,” Tagg said quietly and shifted his position to rest both hands on her shoulders near the base of her neck. “Maybe you love me. Maybe I want you to stay because I love you.”

“It’s a possibility,” she whispered tightly, and felt pulled into the deep blue of his eyes.

“Leslie.” His head moved slightly from side to side in faint negative movement. “It’s more than a possibility that I love you.”

A tremor vibrated through her at his low, charged statement. It was more than possible she loved him but there were too many purely physical sensations that were controlling her.

“Tagg, I’m not sure.” It was imperative that there be no doubt in her mind. To her, love meant a lifetime commitment. It was too easy to be mistaken about emotions. How many people married someone they felt they loved only to discover their mistake in divorce courts? That wasn’t going to happen to her.

Tagg let her go, reaching for his sweater. “Then I’ll take you to your aunt’s.” His voice sounded gruff.

She guessed that she had inadvertently hurt him, but guilt was not sufficient reason to say something
she wasn’t absolutely sure about. She looked around for her crutches.

“Where are my crutches?” She didn’t see them by the ottoman where she thought she had put them.

“I hid them,” Tagg said dryly and reached under the coffee table to pull them out. “I said to myself, ‘How far could a classy lady with a broken leg get without her crutches?’ And I answered myself that she wouldn’t get away from me if I didn’t want to let her go.”

“That’s terrible to take advantage like that,” Leslie accused.

Anger flashed in his suddenly cold eyes. “I was only joking. I put them there so they’d be out of the way,” he snapped.

“Oh.” It was a small sound, tinged with guilt that she had been so quick to believe he might do that. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” he muttered and rolled to his feet, walking to the end table by the sofa to snap on the lamp.

There was a click, but no light came on. Leslie became instantly aware the only light in the room came from the fireplace.

“The tree lights are out,” she told Tagg.

He moved toward the wall, his figure becoming
partially obscured by the shadows. She heard the click of a switch, but the darkness remained.

“Stay there,” he ordered. “I’m going to get a flashlight and check the fuse box.”

Scooting along the carpet, dragging her leg with its cast, Leslie moved closer to the fire as the sound of his footsteps retreated toward the rear portion of the house. She stirred the glowing red embers with the brass poker. Flames shot up to throw more light into the room. Shadows eerily danced along the wall.

A long time seemed to pass before she saw a flashlight beam throwing a pool of moving light onto the floor and heard his footsteps behind it.

“The storm must have snapped a wire somewhere. There’s no electricity and no lights showing anywhere outside,” he stated grimly.

Switching off the flashlight to conserve the batteries, Tagg walked over and added another log to the fire. Sparks flew, lighting up his face. It took a minute for Leslie to realize he meant the power was out in her aunt’s house as well.

“Like it or not—” his glance swung to her, “—you’re going to have to spend the night here. Without electricity, there isn’t any heat, here or at your aunt’s house.”

“She uses oil to heat her house,” Leslie corrected him.

“Yes, but it takes electricity to operate the blower motor and the thermostat controls,” Tagg stated. “We’ll have to rely on the fireplace.”

“I’m going home.” She levered herself up using the arm of the chair until she could get her crutches under her. “With no heat over there, her water pipes will freeze and break.”

Tagg moved to block her way. “Leslie, I don’t want you spending the night over there by yourself.” He raked a hand through his hair in a gesture of agitated exasperation. “Listen, I don’t want to come on like a heavy-handed male who is determined to have things his way. But—dammit! I’m not going to spend the night here, worrying about you over there with that broken leg—wondering whether you’re warm enough—or if you’ve fallen. Whether you can take care of yourself or not, I’d worry.”

“But the water pipes—” She was swayed by his genuine concern and the phrasing of his appeal—not claiming that he was stronger, but simply in a better position to cope.

“I’ll go over there myself and turn the faucets on,” he promised. “For my own peace of mind, will you please spend the night here? I can’t leave Holly here by herself—and it would be foolish for all three of us to go traipsing over there.”

“I’ll stay,” Leslie agreed.

His mouth curved in a faintly relieved smile. “Okay, first things, first. I’ll go upstairs and bring Holly down. All three of us will have to sleep in front of the fireplace tonight.”

“We should close off the living room, too, so we can keep all the warmth we can confined in here,” Leslie suggested.

“Good idea.” He looked at her with approval. “I can hang a blanket across the opening. We should have enough extra blankets to spare for that.” He started for the stairs.

While he was gone, Leslie went over to the windows to draw the drapes and close out any drafts. She returned to the fireplace to wait.

Holly was certain it was an adventure as exciting as camping out when Tagg carried her down the stairs, wrapped up in her bed blankets. She wanted to get the candles from the kitchen so they could have lights, but Leslie convinced her there was more than enough light to see by from the fireplace and the candles should be saved for an emergency.

After Tagg brought down an armload of blankets, he nailed one of them across the living room arch-way. It immediately seemed warmer in the room. She and Holly spread the rest of the blankets on the floor in front of the fireplace to make one large bed.

“Are we going to have to cook breakfast in the
fireplace, too?” Holly asked, all wide-eyed at the idea.

“Hopefully the electricity will be back on when we wake up in the morning,” Leslie punctured that thought. “Climb under the blankets.”

“I bet we won’t have school tomorrow.” Now that she was awake, Holly wasn’t interested in going back to sleep and missing any more excitement. “It’s snowing like everything outside, isn’t it, Daddy?” She looked around, but he had disappeared behind the blanket curtain. “Where’s Daddy? Do you suppose something happened to him?”

“No—”

The blanket lifted as Tagg stepped into the living room, all bundled up in his coat and ski hat. “I’m going over to your aunt’s,” he told Leslie. “Both of you get under those blankets. If you get chilled, it isn’t going to be so easy to get warm again.”

Following his advice, Leslie slipped under the blankets with Holly, letting the girl lie close to the fire. After Tagg had left, Holly chattered away, not expecting lengthy responses from Leslie. Eventually the dancing flames and the warmth of the blankets made the pauses between Holly’s comments longer and longer.

In the quiet, Leslie listened to the creaking of the house and the wind prowling outside, occasionally
rattling the window panes. With the reassuring crackle of the fire’s warmth close by, she thought about Tagg, wondering whether he was still at her aunt’s or making his way back through the snowstorm. It seemed he had been gone an awfully long time.

The front door opened, and the curtain-blanket billowed with the sudden sweep of cold air. Relief shivered through her when she heard the door being pushed shut and the stamp of his feet. Holly stirred sleepily beside her.

“What’s that?” she murmured.

“Sssh. It’s just your daddy,” Leslie whispered.

Cold, cold air swirled into the room when the blanket was lifted aside and Tagg walked in, shuddering and rubbing his arms to get the circulation going. His glance ran first to Leslie, an attempt at a smile lifting his mouth, then to his sleeping daughter. Moving silently, he went to the fireplace and crouched in front of it.

“Is everything all right?” Leslie whispered.

He gave her an affirmative nod and stirred up the coals before adding another log to the fire. But he continued to shiver.

“You’d better get under the blankets,” she advised.

When he slipped under the covers beside her, his clothes felt ice-cold. Leslie put her arms around him
and cradled his head on her shoulder, absorbing the tremors shivering through him. His hair and skin were cold. As his body began stealing her heat, she felt the penetrating chill.

“I’m making you cold,” Tagg realized.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll both be warm soon,” she murmured, and held him more tightly.

In time, her statement came true. By then, all three of them were sleeping in the glow of the fireplace.