in doing more than renewing old friendships and frankly, that made her nervous.
She was glad that Rae-Anne was here because she didn’t want to be alone with Tad.
Her weary soul said no more guys with buff bodies and yet she’d always been drawn to them. Marcus had been a marathon runner who’d spent hours in the gym. Even her dad had been a high school football coach.
“I’ll make the coffee,” she suddenly blurted.
And for some reason being around Tad seemed to reduce her normally quick tongue to banal small talk. More and more she was slipping back into the old Cathy Jane, joke of Auburndale high school.
“I’ll make it,” Rae-Anne said.
“No offense, Rae-Anne, but you have yet to make a pot of coffee that anyone would drink.”
Rae-Anne threw back her head and laughed. “Madon’, this woman thing is making me crazy.”
“What woman thing?” Tad asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rae-Anne said. Turning to a battered box she pulled out a tangled mess of Christmas lights.
“We’ve got our work cut out, my friend.”
“I think I can handle it.”
CJ left them to sort out the lights telling herself there was nothing wrong with escaping to the kitchen. Not long ago she’d vowed to never let a man make her cower again and here she was hiding out in her kitchen. She boiled water in her teakettle and made coffee in her French press. She had a box of cookies in the cupboard and she arranged them on a Christmas plate from the set her mother had given her the year before she’d died.
There was a part of CJ that really hated the holidays. Marcus had broken up with her on Christmas Eve five years ago and he’d changed something inside her when he left.
She’d hoped to marry him and become his wife. She’d had visions of a shared future where they had their own small ad agency and they worked together. But Marcus had needed something else in a wife. He’d been using her to get a promotion and once he had obtained it, he’d dumped her for the right woman. A corporate wife who’d put her husband first instead of her career.
Her father had run off just after Thanksgiving the year she was eleven with an eighteen-year-old cheerleader. And her mom had been diagnosed with cancer two days after Christmas when CJ was nineteen. So, the holidays always represented not just joy in a season of giving, but also sadness and a sense of loss at what could never be again.
“Rae-Anne sent me to help you.”
CJ made a mental note to talk to Rae-Anne. That woman was entirely too bossy for her own good. “I think I can handle coffee and a plate of cookies.”
Tad stepped into her “step-saver” kitchen and CJ backed up a pace.
“Did I suddenly develop some communicable disease?” he asked.
She flushed. “No, why?”
“Because you keep dancing away from me. What’s up, Cathy Jane?”
She forced herself to stand her ground when Tad came closer to her. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. It was her reactions that made her leery. Not even Marcus who she’d contemplated marrying had made her skin tingle, her pulse pound and her body ache the way Tad did.
“Nothing.”
He reached out and caressed her face. Drew his large callused forefinger down the side of her cheek. His wizard green eyes watched her carefully and she struggled to keep any sign of what she was feeling from her face. Marcus had taught her that men wouldn’t hesitate to use a woman’s body against her.
“I know you better than that.”
She shivered again as he took his hand from her face and turned to the plate of cookies. God, she hoped he didn’t really know her. Didn’t realize that her feminine instincts were stronger than her control. And that at this moment she wanted nothing more than to order Rae-Anne from the condo and beg Tad to touch her once again.
“Not anymore, you don’t,” she said quietly. The only element in her favor was that Tad was a stranger.
“The other day in your office you weren’t like this.”
“Well, we were in my office. You were a client, not a guy in clinging sweatpants lifting heavy things with one hand.”
“Did I impress you?” he asked, pivoting back toward her, pinning her between the kitchen cabinet and him.
She had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze and when she did, she wished she’d hadn’t. There was a heat there that mirrored the longing in her soul. Nervously she licked her lips. His eyes tracked the movement and he leaned the tiniest bit toward her before stopping.
“Do you want to?” she asked.
“Hell, yeah.”
Her blood ran heavier in her veins and she knew that what she wanted—really wanted—was for him to notice her as a woman. No matter how dangerous that attraction would be, she wanted it.
But she hadn’t lost her mind. This new Tad was too big. Too “large and in charge” as her ten-year-old niece, Courtney would say.
“I’m not in the ego-building business.”
“Cathy Jane, this has nothing to do with ego,” he said. He settled his hands on her hips and drew her closer to him.
“Tad, I really don’t think…”
“That’s right, don’t think.”
He lowered his head toward hers. Her hands rose to his shoulders and instead of doing the prudent thing and pushing him away, she kneaded his shoulders, leaned up on tiptoe and met his hungry mouth with her own. Oh, my God, she thought, Tad Randolph is kissing me.
Tad wouldn’t have guessed that her mouth would taste so sweet. She was shy and hesitant and he coaxed her gently into opening her mouth wider and letting him explore her hidden secrets. Ah, yes, this was what he’d been searching for.
She didn’t lie passively in his embrace. But she didn’t take charge either as he’d expected her to do. At work she was a modern-day Amazon but in his arms he realized there was still a lot of the shy, sweet girl he used to know.
Her touches were tentative on his shoulders and back. Her mouth under his was soft. Her curves were pliant against him. He pulled her more fully into his body and held her for a minute. His mouth pressed against hers in the chaste embrace she seemed to need.
He lifted his head and dropped light kisses on her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were the remembered dark brown today instead of the blue-green contacts she’d worn that day in her office. She watched him warily and he wanted to reassure her. To promise her that he didn’t want to hurt her only show her a passion that he suspected would be Heaven on earth.
“Relax, CJ, let me in. I promise it’ll feel good.”
“We
