less definable. Shattering sweetness gave way to confusion. She craved the feel of this man’s arms, his strength, his self-possession. She just hated how needy she felt, and how badly she wanted him to make all the hurts and the doubts go away.
The pressure of her nails pressing into her palm suddenly registered. So did the realization that all that kept them from cutting into her flesh was the fabric wadded in her fists.
Beneath his own hands, Erik felt tension tightening the slender muscles of her entire enticing body. Before he could ease back himself, she’d released her death grip on his sweater and ducked her head.
Her quiet “I’m sorry” sounded like an apology for everything from the desperation he’d felt building in her to the way she’d bunched the front of his pullover. To remove any possible wrinkle she might have left, she hurriedly smoothed the fabric with the palm of her hand.
As if suddenly conscious of her palm on his chest, or possibly the heavy beat of his heart, she jerked back her hand and stepped away.
Erik moved with her, canceling that negligible distance. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he’d just added to the chaos of all she was struggling with. That hadn’t been his intent at all. Not totally sure what his intention had been, feeling a little conflicted himself, he lifted her face to his.
“Hey. It was just a kiss,” he murmured, attempting to absolve them both. Just a kiss that had done a number on his nervous system, he qualified, but her decidedly physical effect on him was beside the point. “No apology necessary. Okay?”
Unlike her unease, her nod was barely perceptible.
“I’ll call you in a couple of days.” Aware of how she barely met his eyes, he consciously lowered his hand. He shouldn’t be touching her at all. “Can you finish the inventory by Friday afternoon?”
As segues went, he knew his was positively graceless. All he wanted at the moment, though, was to get past the awkwardness that had her protectively crossing her arms as she pulled composure into place.
“I’ll have it finished.”
A wisp of her shiny bangs had fallen near the corner of one eye. Instincts that still wanted physical contact with her had him starting to nudge it aside. More prudent senses had him dropping his hand an instant before the small voice coming from the top of the stairs would have had him dropping it anyway.
“I’m ready to tuck in, Mom.”
She took another step away. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she called toward the stairs. Brushing at the taunting wisp, she looked back with an uncomfortable smile. “He has to be up early in the morning.”
“Then I’ll get out of your way so you can take care of him. I’ll let myself out,” he said, stopping her as she started for the door. “Just say good-night to him for me.”
His jacket lay on the stool behind her. Reaching around her, careful not to touch, he snagged it and backed up. “Thanks for dinner,” he added, and walked out the mudroom door, wondering what in the hell he thought he’d been doing when he’d reached for her in the first place.
He had no one but himself to blame for the tension that had his entire body feeling as tight as a trip wire. He was messing where he had no business going. Even if she wasn’t so obviously not the sort of woman a man could have a brief, casual affair with, she was just now moving on from a loss that had affected her in ways that went far beyond anything she’d shared with him.
He couldn’t even pretend to understand how she felt, or to know what she needed. Whatever it was, he couldn’t give it to her anyway. He didn’t know how. Even if he did, he suspected she wouldn’t let him close enough to try. She didn’t want to rely on anyone she didn’t absolutely have to. He could appreciate that. He’d been there himself. As it was there were only a handful of people he truly trusted—and not one of them was a female he wasn’t related to or who wasn’t in his employ. He suspected, though, that her walls weren’t nearly as thick as those he’d erected around his heart. There was no denying how vulnerable she was right now.
He wasn’t about to take advantage of that, either. He also wasn’t going to do anything else to potentially screw up his relationship with her as her mentor and jeopardize his agreement with Cornelia.
That was why he’d told his lovely protégée that he’d call in a couple of days instead of meeting with her. If he wasn’t near her, he wouldn’t be tempted to touch.
That didn’t stop him from being touched by her, though. Or by the little boy who’d strung Christmas tinsel on his toy boat.
He knew Rory wanted her son to have traditions. Knowing how tight her money was, and how badly she wanted this season to be special for the child, he decided there was no reason he couldn’t give them one of the traditions that had long belonged there anyway.
She never should have said she’d have the inventory finished by Friday. She should have asked for another day at least. As much as she required his expertise, she’d just made it a point to accommodate Erik’s schedule any way she could.
Had she been thinking, she would have realized how impossible that deadline was. But she’d been too rattled by the needs she’d felt in his arms and the kiss he’d dismissed as inconsequential to consider everything else she’d committed to do before Friday—which happened to be Tyler’s last day at his current school.
Given the occasion, guilt over not having kept her word to Erik would have to wait. Her little boy was not taking this latest transition well at all.
The familiar faces and routines at Pine Ridge Day School were the last constants in the life they were leaving behind. As a child, she’d had considerable practice dealing with such separations. Her parents’ nomadic lifestyle had made a new school or two every year her norm, and they’d tried to ease those transitions. But her little boy had never known that sort of instability. Even after his father had died, she’d managed to protect him from the biggest upheavals and keep his routine as consistent as possible. Until they’d had to move, anyway.
As she’d feared he would, he started missing his playmates the minute he’d fastened himself into his car seat in the back of their car and they’d pulled out from the portico.
A quick glance in her rearview mirror caught his pensive expression. He looked the way he had driving away from their old house a couple of weeks ago. Solemn and a little uncertain.
“We can always come back for a visit, Ty,” she assured him, heading for the freeway and the ferry. “Just because you’ll be going to a new school doesn’t mean you won’t ever see your old teachers or classmates again.”
“They’ll still be there?”
“They’ll still be there,” she promised. It wouldn’t be like when he’d lost his dad. There wasn’t that sort of finality to this parting. She needed him to understand that. “We can come back after the holiday to say hi, if you want.”
“Will the tree be there, too?”
The tree. Ten feet of pine studded with a thousand white lights and draped with paper chains and cutouts of students’
