A Yowling Yuletide (2 page)

“
We’re just here to pick
up my last paycheck,” Rachel assured him, with a discreet attempt
to keep herself between Matt and the tall blue eyed man behind her.
She knew that her brother still held a grudge against Tyson and
she’d done a fairly good job of keeping them apart over the past
month.

So why had she brought him here? Matt was
instantly suspicious.

Then he saw the way that Tyson and Miranda
were staring at each other, as if they were lovers long separated
and eager to reunite. Although he’d only just met the girl, and had
no right to claim her, a possessive jealously flared up hot and
fierce inside him.

He actually considered telling Miranda to go
wait in his office until Tyson was gone, but that would have
confirmed what the girl must already suspect. That he had
absolutely gone crazy.

So he clenched his teeth and turned his back
on the others. The checks were stored in a locked drawer in his
desk. Although he trusted his sister not to investigate any of the
confidential and potentially volatile papers also secured in that
drawer, it was against company policy for anyone but him to open
it.

As he headed down the hall to his office, he
heard the soft murmur of voices behind him and felt a silent snarl
curl his lips. He didn’t even want to consider what they might be
talking about.

Unlocking the drawer, he yanked it open with
more force than necessary, nearly ripping it from its sliders.
Reaching in for the check, he heard a noise at the door and looked
up to see Rachel standing there, watching him.

His first reaction was a bone-chilling
panic. If his sister was here, that meant Tyson and Miranda were
alone at the front desk. Then he was filled with a blinding fury.
With the little slip of paper crushed within one hand, he slammed
the drawer shut so hard it rattled everything seated on his desk
and nearly toppled a small receptacle filled with pens.

Marching back towards the door, he felt only
a vague sense of regret as Rachel cringed away from him. She knew
that he’d never hurt her, but she hadn’t seen him in this black a
mood since they were small children.

Grabbing her wrist, he plopped the crumbled
check down onto her palm.

“
There’s your check, now
get that guy out of here before I do something we’re both going to
regret.”

Miranda’s lighthearted laughter was echoing
down to him from the entry and it about made him insane to hear it.
He wanted to punch Tyson just for making her that happy. The man
obviously knew no boundaries.

Well, maybe it was time for Matt to teach
him a few things. But Rachel caught his arm as he attempted to move
past her and back down the hall.

“
You broke Mom’s heart
when you refused to come to Thanksgiving dinner with the family,”
she murmured the one thing capable of derailing his murderous
rampage.

The moment she mentioned their mother,
Matt’s rage was swallowed up by a tidal wave of guilt.

His chin dropped slightly as he paused,
sighing with regret.

“
I know. I talked to her
later,” he admitted. The day after Thanksgiving, his mother had
piled up a big plate full of leftovers and hiked through the snowy
pasture that separated their houses, so that she could tell him how
much she loved him and had missed him.

He’d rather walk through fire naked than see
that worry and sadness in his mother’s eyes again.

“
She asked me to come
today, to plead with you to forgive me and to come spend time with
us on Christmas Eve,” Rachel explained. “She said she’s going to
make all of your favorites, including the pumpkin spice rolls that
you overdosed on last year. You know, the one with the cream cheese
filling?”

He groaned miserably. He knew all right,
he’d practically crawled away from the table after eating so many.
Those rolls were sinfully good.

“
I don’t know,” he
wavered, not wanting to hurt his mother’s feelings, but desperately
needing to keep a safe distance from the man that was currently
standing in the office reception area, speaking to a woman that
Matt was feeling unusually possessive of. “Will your boyfriend be
there?”

Rachel gave him a reproachful look.

“
At some point, you’re
going to have to get over this irrational dislike for him,” she
pointed out. “He wasn’t the one that made Tanya leave. You know
that. Besides, Tyson cares about me and we’ve been talking about a
more permanent future together. If I marry him, I won’t allow any
more of this hostile attitude from you. You’ll have to at least
learn how to tolerate him at family dinners.”

Not more than a month ago, Matt had given
his sister a similar lecture about Tanya. The two women had never
gotten along. Now he was the one alone and bitter, while she was
the one envisioning wedding bells.

It made his gut clench.

“
I’ll think about it,” he
growled, looking down the hall toward the sound of Miranda’s
lighthearted voice. What the heck was she talking to Tyson about?
She sure hadn’t sounded that happy when she’d been talking to Matt
earlier.

“
Bring her,” Rachel
abruptly suggested, startling him into hesitating a moment
longer.

“
What?”

“
Bring Miranda to the
Christmas dinner. She’s sweet and fun, and you obviously have a
thing for her. You should see your face right now. You look as if
you could eat nails for just being a room apart.”

He snarled something rude under his breath
and turned his back on her, marching furiously back out into the
waiting room.

The moment Matt entered, Tyson straightened
from where he’d been leaning on the desk, completely wrapped up in
whatever the petite redhead had been telling him. Rachel quickly
hurried to his side, offering both men a warning look that
suggested she would not put up with any further behavior from
either of them.

“
Shall we go?” She asked
Tyson, looping her hand through his elbow and half dragging him
toward the door without waiting for an answer. “We’ll see you at
Christmas dinner, Miranda. Six o’clock at our mom’s house. Matt can
pick you up.”

Matt nearly choked on his tongue, horror
making him mute when he should have been challenging the
invitation.

“
Oh,” the redhead beamed a
smile, looking from Rachel to Matt, and then back to Rachel. “Okay,
that sounds great. Thank you!”

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Over the following week, Matt tried to avoid
Miranda whenever possible. Yet he couldn't stop thinking about her.
Worse, he couldn't stop dreaming about her. The kind of dreams
which required an adult-only warning label and made him feel like a
naughty boy at Confession every time she looked at him.

Aspire was experiencing blizzard conditions,
so there weren't a lot of clients scheduling appointments this
week, which allowed him some reprieve, but gave him far too much
time to dwell on his problem.

Christmas was coming up fast and Miranda
hadn't once mentioned the invitation Rachel had extended. He was
hoping she'd forgotten, but that hope was destroyed Friday morning
as she stepped into his office.

A violent twist of dread and excitement
raced through his body as the door clicked shut behind her. He was
trapped.

"You shouldn't leave the front desk," he
growled, trying not to look up from the file he'd been studying. It
was much easier to be callous when he didn't have to see the
resulting confusion or hurt on her beautiful face.

"It's almost five," she pointed out. "You
may not have noticed, but we're practically snowed in. We haven't
had a walk-in client all week."

"The phones are still working, aren't
they?"

"Yes, but unless you've unplugged yours, I
don't think we'll miss a call."

He sighed and finally dragged his gaze up to
look at her.

"What do you want, Miranda?" Saying her name
was almost painfully sweet. He couldn't begin to count how many
times he'd awakened to the sound of it on his lips.

Rather than answer right away, she walked
over and sat on the edge of his desk. He doubted she meant it to
look so damned sexy, but in that little skirt, he was treated to a
fantastic view of her legs.

Her sweet citrusy scent filled his nostrils
and made his mouth water for a taste of her. Having her this close
was destroying his ability to think or reason clearly.

"Did you know that my grandmother was really
into genetics?" She asked.

He couldn't answer, so he just shook his
head.

"She loved to sit with my great-grandfather
as he was planning which of his sows should be bred to which boars
in order to produce pigs that had exceptionally fine tasting, lean
meat."

"I'm not following how this related to me,"
Matt interjected.

"Be patient," she commanded, nonplussed by
his surly attitude.

"It turns out that our grandmothers were
both a part of the secret group. I asked Rachel about it and she
told me she had no idea. She also warned me not to talk to you
about it because it would make you angry."

"What group?" He asked, hoping Rachel was
right. He could use a hefty dose of anger right now to counteract
his lust.

Miranda leaned forward conspiratorially and
lowered her voice to a sensual purr that just about knocked him
senseless and stupid.

"They were witches," she murmured with a
smile.

Rachel was right, that topic was a hot
button for him. Especially after his sister admitted to practicing
Wicca with her friends. But for some reason he just couldn't bring
himself to care right now. He was far to consumed by the woman
seated in front of him.

When he appeared too tongue-tied to reply,
Miranda continued with her story.

"Rachel told me about her friend Morgan's
grandmother's Book of Shadows, and that they've practiced a few of
the rituals inside."

The redhead leaned even closer and Matt
nearly whimpered as the move revealed a sneak peek down her blouse.
Was she intentionally trying to kill him? The muscles in his chest
and stomach were already so tense he could hardly breathe.

"Well, my grandmother also kept a Grimoire,"
she revealed in an excited whisper. "But she wrote more than just
spells and rituals inside. She also recorded all of the witches,
who they married, and…um, unique traits that appeared in some of
the children."

"It was her fascination in genetics, do you
see?" Miranda beamed at him.

Matt was too spellbound by the woman to
notice that she was waiting for some kind of response from him.

"That's why you fell in love with me so
quickly," she added, shocking Matt out of his state of mute
captivation.

Straightening abruptly, he shoved his chair
back from the desk and quickly stood. Striding to the other side of
the small office, he shook his head to clear it, before turning
back to face her.

"I think you should leave," he suggested
with more severity than he actually felt. "This is not a work place
appropriate conversion."

"Stop talking like a lawyer and just think
about it for a second,” she chastised. “Have you ever fallen in
love so quickly, or so completely?”

“
You’re assuming a lot,”
he growled, not ready to admit anything, especially to
her.

She shrugged and actually managed to look a
little shy.

“
Well, I know that I’ve
never felt this way about anyone before you.”

The world bucked like a monstrous bull
beneath him, nearly throwing him off. He thrust out one hand to
grab the bookshelf beside him, desperately seeking to regain his
balance, and nearly succeeded in toppling the heavy piece of
furniture over instead.

He turned on her with a stunned snarl, ready
to shake the truth out of her if necessary. But the demand died
unspoken on his lips, because her emotions were glowing bright and
beautiful in those golden eyes.

Miranda didn’t give him time to recover.
Sliding off from the desk, she came to stand just in front of him.
She was so short, the top of her head barely reached his shoulder,
so she had to tilt her face way up to look into his eyes.

When she placed her open palms upon his
chest, his entire body trembled. It was like being touched by raw
electricity. A crackling energy flowed between them, tensing every
muscle and making him ache for what he’d tried so hard to deny.

His arms instinctively moved up to embrace
her, pulling her closer when he should have been pushing her
away.

Surprise and hope flashed through her golden
eyes as they flickered down to rest upon his mouth, then the tip of
her pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips. That gesture had
nearly destroyed him the first day they’d worked together and it
had an equally devastating effect upon his libido now.