“Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” he teased.
She didn’t want to seem ungrateful. He’d transformed the night before into a fun memory…at least the parts she remembered had been fun. He’d not taken advantage when she’d been at his mercy. He’d been gracious and kind, offering to take her to dinner and to get her car. He made her smile. Whether she wanted to or not, she liked the man.
“Sorry, I guess I get a little cranky when I get hungry.”
Pulling into a parking spot, he turned off the ignition and reached across the car to take her hand. “If it’s okay, I’ll do a quick run for the lights while you grab us some sandwiches from the place there.” He handed her a couple of twenties and pointed to a sandwich shop. “I’ll make it up to you by taking you to my place so you can help decorate my tree. Deal?”
Before she could tell him that decorating his tree would be more like punishment, he got out of the car. “I’ll take a club loaded with everything…hold the onions.”
A sinking feeling in her gut, Trinity watched him rush toward a seasonal store in the strip mall.
Dinner and decorating a tree? Not what she’d signed up for, but apparently what she’d be doing, all the same, with a forced smile for Riley’s sake.
Trinity had to admit the sandwiches were delicious or she really had been hungrier than she’d thought. The tree decorating, well, she was still holding back her opinion on that.
Not that she enjoyed the decorating but she’d have to be blind not to appreciate the view. Standing on a stepladder, Riley leaned and made another snip from the live blue spruce tree that towered several feet over her head. After clipping a few more twigs, he inspected the tree to see if it met with his approval.
From where she stood at the bottom of the ladder, she had to admit he definitely met her visual approval. The man was hot.
“What do you think? Look good?”
Did he have a crystal ball to see into her mind or what? “Oh, yeah.”
“Now, that’s the enthusiasm I’ve wanted to see all evening. To think, if you’d had your car you’d have found some excuse to say no.”
Trinity closed her eyes and winced. He’d meant the tree, not his rear end. Duh. Of course he hadn’t meant his rear end.
“I did say no,” she reminded him. The man was persuasive. She’d better be careful or he’d have her agreeing to dress up in a red suit and climb down a chimney proclaiming, ho, ho, ho and a merry Christmas to all.
“You have to admit this is more fun than going home alone.” His forehead wrinkled as he inspected the tree and stretched to straighten a branch, giving her another great view of his rear end. “You think I need to take a little more off the top? I want this tree to look amazing when we’re done.”
What she thought was that no amount of trimming was going to make the tree come anywhere near to how amazing his bottom was. Someone should stick him at the top of the tree and her views on Christmas might brighten more than a little. Definitely, she could get into unwrapping his package.
Urgh. What was wrong with her? Perhaps Riley had placed a spell on her beneath the mistletoe because she’d really like him to climb down that stepladder, take her in his arms and kiss her until her lungs were so deprived of oxygen she had to pull away just to keep from losing consciousness.
Then she wanted him to kiss her some more. More. More. More.
Crazy. She wanted to be kissed right now. And not because of some silly song coming over his surround-sound system about a kid seeing momma kissing Santa either. Riley’s belly could never be compared to a bowl full of jelly and the dusky five o’clock shadow gracing the strong lines of his jaw were sexy, not fluffy white tufts that would tickle her face.
“Are you hanging mistletoe?” Oops. Had she really just asked that out loud? Who needed the cozy fire that he must have also turned on to keep the room temperature comfortable? Her face had to have just sped up global warming with a single embarrassing moment.
He glanced down at her, his grin positively lethal. “Would you like me to hang mistletoe, princess?”
How did any good girl in her right mind answer that?
“Um, no, I was just wondering if you were going to, not suggesting you do so, snowflake. I mean, if you were going to that would be okay, but if not…” Okay, time to zip her lips because she was rambling and just fanning the flames.
The dimple in his left cheek dug deeper. “You know, I’m a traditional kind of guy so I do have mistletoe. It’s in that box over by the sofa if you want to dig it out.”
Just to have an excuse to move away from his gaze, she went to the plastic storage container and searched through the labeled boxes inside. When she lifted the lid off the properly labeled one she wrinkled her nose. “You insist on a live tree but have plastic mistletoe?”