It Must Have Been the Mistletoe(65)

The truck? Sleep? So mad she could barely connect one thought to another, Rita glared. But she didn’t slow her packing.

“Don’t blow this out of proportion,” he ordered.

She wouldn’t be surprised if her head exploded. Damned if she shouldn’t have stuck with admiring the pretty packaging. An empty box would have been so much better than this miserable mess she’d so gleefully unwrapped.

Rita slung her bag over her shoulder and grabbed her purse, then headed for the door.

“Where the hell are you going?” he demanded.

Hand on the doorknob, Rita stopped. She turned to face him, staring through tear-filled eyes. All sexy and still love-mussed, Tyler stood, hands fisted on hips covered with the draped bedsheet.

“I’m going home,” she told him. “You can drop my stuff at my parents’. Or at Benny’s. Or wherever.”

“Don’t be…” Finally catching a clue, Tyler bit off the rest of his admonishment with a quick shake of his head. “Look, you’re pissed. I get that. I screwed up, got stuck in the past. Don’t let that ruin this.”

Ruin what? What the hell was this, other than a lie on his part and pure wishful thinking on hers? How stupid was she to actually believe Tyler might see more in her than a sexy body and a pretty face.

“You know what, you’re right,” she forced herself to admit, although she’d much rather be able to call him an all-around liar. “I did hurt Randy. When I was seventeen. I was careless and selfish. And just as responsible for my actions as you were with Alison.”

He frowned. Whether at her confession or the hurt she knew was probably showing on her face, Rita wasn’t sure.

“But you, Tyler? You broke my heart on purpose.”

“The hell I did.” He scowled now and wrapped his sheet tighter. Like she was going to, what? Dive in and get her revenge on his bare boy parts?

“You kissed me in the bar. Why?”

Anger flashed bright in his eyes and he opened his mouth. Then shut it.

God. Even though she’d suspected, confirmation still hurt like crazy. But all she had left was her pride.

So Rita nodded, smirking through the pain. “Exactly.”

She yanked the door open, then stopped. Necessity as much as habit had her posing, hip shot out with a sexy toss of her hair as she looked back.

Calling on every ounce of pride she had, Rita lifted her chin and hid the pain ripping through her heart.

With a smile she hoped he saw in his dreams for years to come, she tossed a “Merry freaking Christmas” over her shoulder, then waltzed out.





8




“TYLER MICHAEL RAMSEY, what’s wrong with you?”

Tyler winced, slowly lowering the milk carton from his mouth to see his mom glaring from the doorway.

“I’m home,” he said, offering up his most charming smile instead of an excuse. Excuses never mattered with Elizabeth Ramsey. A petite, dark-haired firecracker, the woman saw through bullshit like she had X-ray vision or something.

“And you decided to come over to my place for a refresher course in table manners?”

“Well, you have food.” He lifted his other hand to show the huge, glittery green, tree-shaped sugar cookie he’d been washing down.

“Put that away,” she ordered with a roll of her eyes. “If you want to eat, you’ll eat real food.”

Pretending that hadn’t been his goal all along, Tyler put the cookie on the counter and poured the rest of the milk into the glass his mom handed him. He filled her in on his trip, sans mention of Rita, as he watched her whip up her special blueberry pancakes.

“Where’d Randy go?” he asked as she set the first few in front of him along with the syrup. “He was in a mood when I called, but he wouldn’t say why.”

“Tyler, you have to stop worrying about your brother. Randy’s a big boy. He doesn’t need you riding to his rescue.” She flipped two more pancakes onto his plate and followed up with a gentle swat to the back of his head. “He especially doesn’t need you doing anything stupid like getting into yet another bar fight, beating up some poor guy or doing anything else that makes the ladies I lunch with whisper in outrage.”

“I don’t—”

“Three months ago, Randy was home for summer break and some bruiser cut him off. What’d you do?” Elizabeth went back to the stove, tossing a glare at Tyler. “You went to the guy’s work and called him out on it.”

“He dented Randy’s car,” Tyler defended around a mouthful of rich blueberry pancake.

“You punched him in the church parking lot where he was doing yardwork.”

Tyler winced.