It Must Have Been the Mistletoe(30)

She nodded, seeming to mull that over. “And what do you do when he’s not touring?”

Frankly, given his salary with Clint, he didn’t have to do anything. He could do whatever he wanted. But that had never been his style. Bryant liked to be busy. Idle hands, the devil’s playground and all of that. Even on the bus, he had to have something to do.

While touring he liked to whittle, loved the feel of wood beneath his fingers, watching it take form, then worked on his bigger metal sculptures when he was at home. Nothing gave him more satisfaction than firing up his blowtorch and getting to work, making something beautiful out of old parts and discarded metals. Gratifyingly, he’d sold several pieces and was beginning to make a name for himself. He’d also cast a few personal pieces of jewelry, most notably a pewter tree set he was quite proud of.

“I’ve got a studio at home and do a little sculpting,” he told her.

From the corner of his eye, he watched her expression go from bored disinterest to surprised astonishment. “What?” he asked, chuckling low under his breath. “Is it so hard to believe?”

“Not hard to believe,” she said. “Just hard to reconcile. Badass security agent turned sculptor is a bit of a stretch. What’s your medium?”

“Metal.”

She aahed knowingly and inclined her head. “Not so much of a stretch then.”

Badass? Bryant thought, secretly pleased with her assessment, then berated himself. It didn’t matter what she thought, dammit. She was off-limits. She was trouble. Layla Cole wasn’t someone he could fool around with and walk away unscathed. He’d known that since the first moment he’d wandered into her orbit and had been fighting her emotional gravity ever since.

The monstrous physical attraction only complicated things further.

He could feel her, was keenly aware of every breath that traveled in and out of her lungs, every minuscule shift of her body. The scent of her invaded the car and twined around his senses. It was something vaguely floral with warm undertones, reminiscent of lotus petals and sandalwood. It made him want to slide his nose along her shoulder and up her neck, bury his hands in her hair and taste the plum softness of her mouth. His hands and balls tightened simultaneously, making him shift in his seat.

“Clint didn’t elaborate about the schedule when he called. Will we be traveling by bus on to the next location tonight, or will we spend the night in Atlanta?”

“We always build enough time into the schedule for overnight stops. Clint doesn’t like to sleep on the bus. We’re booked into a hotel downtown this evening, then we’ll start making our way down to Fort Lauderdale. A day on the road, then a day to set up. You’ll do the final show, then we’ll fly home.”

“Just in time for Christmas,” she said, a wistful note in her voice.

Christmas. Woo-hoo, Bryant thought. Another holiday spent alone. An only child with his father and grandparents gone—who knew where his mother was?—Bryant was officially an orphan. He hated the holidays. Everything closed on Christmas, even Wal-Mart. He’d be eating takeout from a truck stop, parked in front of the television with a nice bottle of wine and his ritual Christmas gift to himself.

On the plus side, he never had to return anything.

Still, there was something quite pathetic about being alone on Christmas, and though he had plenty of friends who pitied him and routinely invited him to their houses for the festivities, Bryant always declined. He didn’t want to intrude and he’d rather be home and alone than surrounded by other people and feeling awkwardly out of place.

In the spirit of Charlie Brown, Bryant didn’t have a Christmas tree, but a Christmas branch, and he roasted chestnuts in his fireplace. It was the one thing his father used to do and was the only “family tradition” he could recall. In honor of that, he’d planted a small grove of chestnut trees on his place and looked forward to harvesting them in a few years.

Bryant had never known his mother. She’d split when he was barely six months old and he hadn’t seen or heard from her since. To his knowledge, his father never had either. For reasons he didn’t care to examine, he carried a frayed photo of her in his wallet. She was pretty, his mother. Long blond hair, big pansy-blue eyes. She looked like your average girl-next-door, not at all like the type of person who would abandon her child.

But she had.

“Are you looking forward to Christmas?” Layla asked when the silence between them lengthened past comfortable. Her pale buttery-blond hair glowed silver in the dash lights and there was something strangely endearing about the profile of her small, up-turned nose.