Emilie's Christmas Love (15 page)

"The last time we ate in here was the week before my parents died," she told him, recalling the event. "There was a house party that weekend with over fifty people."

Graceful cobwebs shrouded the elegant chandelier and festooned the ceiling. The whole room had the aura of a haunted house in a movie.

Nick shuddered, despite himself. "You and your aunt stopped entertaining?"

"My parents were the party people of the family," Emilie explained as they walked through the room to the door on the opposite wall. "I think they were truly the last of the Ferrier family. Aunt Joda and I rattle around in the house like a couple of little mice, afraid to make too much noise or turn on too many lights."

"Sad to be rich and live in a mansion and not know what to do with it," he quipped. "What happened to your parents?"

Emilie switched off the light and closed the door behind them as they entered a smaller sitting room. "They died indulging their latest hobby. They'd built their own plane and were racing it when they crashed into the side of a mountain."

"Here?" He imagined the plane hitting the mountainside behind the house.

"No. In Switzerland. They found the wreckage of the plane, but never recovered their bodies."

"I'm sorry. He was sorry, too, that he'd made light of her position. Emilie Ferrier was more a tragic figure than one of rich caricature.

She faced him with eyes bright with unshed tears. "Don't be. They died as they'd always wanted to die. Together." She walked on ahead of him. "This is the bride's parlor. I think Aunt Joda uses it sometimes." She went on, with a glance at the lamps on the tables. "No cobwebs."

The little room was white, accented with lemon yellow and green. It faced a small courtyard that opened into the formal garden at the rear of the house.

"How do you keep up with all of this?" He’d been surprised to find that there was no staff at the big house.

"We don't. That's why the dining room looks that way. We only keep up with the parts we live in. Well," she amended quickly, "I only keep up with the parts
I
live in. Aunt Joda spends time in every room, but she doesn't like to clean. She was raised when there were servants here who did everything for her."

"And you weren't?"

"There was a small staff when I was growing up. A cook, a gardener and a housekeeper." She smiled self-consciously. "And a chauffeur and a butler and—"

He laughed. "I get the idea. Why not now? Loss of personal fortune?"

"I'm not good at handling staff. My mother gave up on me when she saw me cleaning my own bathroom once. It's just easier to do it myself."

They'd walked through the bride's parlor and into another hallway, past two more sitting rooms.

Nick listened to her tell him about the servant's quarters in the back of the house. He was really trying to understand
her
.

She had more money than he would see in three lifetimes. Yet she washed her dishes by hand. She lived in a thirty-six-room mansion and taught a class for misfits at a public school. If eccentric had a name in the dictionary, he felt certain it would be Emilie Ferrier.

Yet, she had a childlike wonder at everything around her that made him want to see through her eyes. There was an innocence about her, he'd almost mistaken for arrogance, which he found immensely appealing. Sadness hung over her the way the cobwebs had festooned the dining room, heavy and thick. Still, there was no mistaking the defiant emerald glint in her eyes or the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth.

An enigma and a paradox at once.
He followed her through the dark, musty-smelling rooms. She was a beautiful, intelligent puzzle that he wished he could piece together, though he’d probably have to walk through fire to do it.

If he was younger. If Renee hadn’t left him with her children. If he hadn’t learned about life the hard way in the military. So many ifs.

He realized that he was too cynical for Emilie. She deserved better.

"And this was Jacque's favorite room." She opened a door into another small parlor.

Nick took one look at the flagrantly sexual statues and paintings that filled the room and closed his eyes. A little voice in his ear, his bad angel, hissed, "Too late!"

Chapter Nine

Nick followed her into the small room. The walls were a vivid shade of red with ornate, gilded moldings along the ceiling and floor. The furniture, two ruby red love seats with gilt arms and legs, were old, but not old enough to have been used in Jacque Ferrier's time.

"Someone else must like this room.” He stroked his finger across the shiny flat surface of marble table and brought it away clean. "Someone more recent than your great-grandfather."

Emilie shrugged uneasily. Why had she brought him here? Every orgiastic painting was exquisitely done, each depicting a sensual pose between a man and a woman. "This is the only room Aunt Joda is interested in cleaning."

Nick looked at the statues that stood around him. Each piece was a couple enjoying their intricate pairing. Their bodies were twined around one another, faces mirroring ecstasy. "I can see why."

"I told you Jacque was very liberal when it came to his ideas on intimacy. This was the room that he used for entertaining."

The only piece of furniture in the room that looked old was a strangely shaped wood chair. "What's this?" He sat down in one side of the double-backed seat.

"It was a contraption of Jacque's. I guess he wasn't always successful at getting his romantic ideas across to his friend's wives. He called it his ‘lover's arm chair’."

"How does it work?" Nick looked at the legs and the sides of the chair.

Emilie took a seat next to Nick on the other half of the chair. "There's a lever that releases a spring." She reached to the side of the chair and pulled the lever. The powerful spring pushed the two halves of the chair together, locking in place.

"Tell me that's not the lever that releases it as well," Nick pleaded when she lifted her hand and the wooden lever came up with it.

"I'm afraid it is." She moved a little uncomfortably in her side of the chair.

They were sitting facing one another, Nick's knee wedged between Emilie's legs while her knee was in the same precarious position with his. Her dark skirt had ridden up with the pressure of his legs so that it hung around her thighs, the rough cotton of his jeans tickling the outside of her leg.

Uncomfortably aware of her bare leg in his crotch and the effect it was having on his body, Nick looked at the spring that held the two seats together.

"I think we can get out of this. I can see the spring device."

"Really?" She tried to see the spring as well. She pushed her knee more intimately between Nick's legs.

"You'll have to trust me," he said quickly on a sharp intake of breath. "It's there."

Emilie saw his predicament as well as her own. That steady pressure between her legs combined with his nearness was playing havoc with her senses. She was all but sitting on his knee, held in place by the chair. She swallowed hard as she realized the heat his body was generating against her leg. Her knee felt the sure sign that he was aware of her as well.

"I think the chair must work using our weight against us," Nick explained, tension in his voice. She was so close that he could hear her breathing and see the quick rise and fall of her breasts beneath the silk top.

She looked up at him quickly. Her gaze had been focused where her knee was wedged. She ran her tongue across her lips.

"What should we do?" Her voice was husky.

"You're the lightest," he schemed. "You put your hands on my legs and push up. I'll lift you. Maybe if we redistribute the weight, the chair might release itself."

"A-all right," she agreed, not having a better plan. She put her hands carefully on his thighs.

Nick put his hands around her waist, his touch gliding across the rose-colored silk. "Ready?" 

She felt a little lightheaded, wondering if there was a problem with circulation in the room. "Ready."

He lifted her quickly, pulling her toward him and out of her half of the chair. Emilie pushed hard, straining upward. The chair snapped out from under her, going back to its original position.

In the meantime, she had been left riding Nick's leg between her own, resting against his broad chest, her arms caught between them.

"It worked," she said in a muffled tone. She tried to get her feet under her and couldn't, floundering against him, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

"It did." His hands loosely resting where they had been pushed against her rounded backside. "Jacque was a wily devil, wasn't he?"

"He was," she acknowledged. "Now you know why they almost hanged him."

"I don't think I'd like to find my wife with him like this.” He pushed a loose strand of hair from her face, drawing her closer with one arm while bringing her legs up with the other.

It wasn't less embarrassing, but it was more comfortable, Emilie had to admit. She was cradled in his arms, her legs across his lap, her skirt still hiked above her knees.

She reached out to balance herself and ended up with her arm around his neck, pillowing the softness of her breasts against the hard muscle of his chest.

"This chair has earned its museum quality status," she told him breathlessly. "As soon as I can take it away, that's where it's going."

Nick’s hand slid up her back to lodge in her silken tresses. The knot that had held it in place on her head came loose, allowing it to fall.

She tried to laugh, embarrassed, but the sound had a strangled quality. "My hair is so fine—"

"It's like touching strands of silk," he murmured.

"It's ordinary hair," she mocked him.

His hand came to rest on the back of her head. "Emilie—"

In the dark recesses of his eyes she saw hunger and need. His gaze lock on her mouth and her pulses raced.

He kissed her lightly at the corners of her soft mouth. It was a question and an invitation that he waited for her to answer.

She stared at him as she had that first day they'd met. Her lips parted gently on a sigh. She didn't know how to tell him how much she wanted him, couldn't find the words to explain.

He brought her closer to him slowly, searching her eyes, and the worried lines of her face.

"You-you don't
have
to do this.”

"Too late," he repeated the words that had entered his brain.

He kissed her deeply, his tongue demanding entrance to her mouth and finding the honey that resided within her. There was no soothing, questing gentleness as there had been that night in the car. His mouth slanted across hers, and he drank her in as if she was a well and he was a parched man.

Emilie brought her free hand around his neck to join the other in the thick hair at the base of his head. She opened to him, moaning when his hand slid up her thigh, losing herself in the heat that was building between them.

It was madness, she reasoned. She should thank him for the embrace then walk out of the room and finish the house tour. There couldn't be anything between them. Not after David. Not after—

He held her away from him, his hand on the back of her head supporting her weight so that she felt like a doll in his grasp.

He looked at her, the dazed green eyes and kiss-reddened lips. He touched his mouth to her throat. "You are so beautiful," he whispered against her warm white skin.

"I'm not beautiful," she argued softly, in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"

"I see myself." She gasped as he bit her neck a little then licked it with his tongue. All her thoughts fled. Whatever he wanted, she wanted it too.

Nick gathered her closer and stood with her in his arms. She composed herself, telling herself that it was better for them to stop. She waited for the excitement to fade.

It sizzled instead of fading. He crossed the room to one of the red velvet sofas and sat down with her on top of him. He laid her head back against one of the arms then nuzzled her throat while he opened the first two buttons on her shirt.

He kissed her again and again. She lost track of where his hands were or how many times his lips parted hers, savoring her then moving on to another spot. One of his hands slid up her thigh beneath her skirt to trace the outline of her panties, molding and shaping her with his fingers, searching for and finding that secret place where the fire burned between her thighs.

She was lost, drugged. Her eyelids were too heavy to open, her body too languorous to move. When she felt the cool air on her warm skin, she moaned and reached for him. He was there, covering her in soft kisses.

Nick looked at her pink and white skin covered only by midnight-blue lace. His pulses ignited. Sweet pink buds peeked through the eyelets of the lace and he licked them with his tongue. He put his mouth on her breast when her back arched, inviting him for more.

"God, Emilie," he whispered, burning. "You're like sweet cream on my tongue."

They both groaned when his hand found that moist heat that opened for him where she rested lightly on his lap.

He wanted her. The rightness of it, the questions inevitably involving a relationship, was forgotten. The questions were lost in the heat, and the desire to have her beneath him, straining towards that unity that was the only way to quench that fire.

"So, here you are!"

Emilie sat up, reaching for her skirt and her blouse at once, looking at her aunt with passion glazed eyes that refused to focus.

"Easy," Nick softly advised, helping her pull her skirt up then button her blouse. "We aren't kids, Emilie."

"I know," she whispered, putting a hand to her hair.

Joda looked on in unashamed delight. She refused to turn her head or blush or even say excuse me and politely back out of the room. She grinned at Nick as he scowled at her.

"What is it?" Emilie wondered wildly. "Is it the children?"

"No, the
petites
are fine," Joda answered, obviously relishing the moment.