Meet Me Under The Mistletoe (O'Rourke Family 5) (8 page)

“It’s not okay.” She sniffed, the scent of burned gingerbread mixed with his masculine scent. “You have no idea. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you because you don’t want me, but it matters.”

“God, Shannon, it isn’t you I don’t want.”

She knew that tone. Or she thought she did. He was trying to be gentle and not hurt her feelings.

“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it. I’m not your problem,” she said tiredly. In an hour she’d manage to get some
perspective, but right now she felt as if she’d crashed into a brick wall. She hated failing at anything.

Alex leaned into her. “You aren’t a problem at all,” he breathed in her ear.

She knew that tone, too.

The husky murmur.

The suggestion of awareness.

A swollen heat burned against her abdomen and she swallowed. “Alex, this isn’t—”

His mouth smothered her protest. She resisted for a split second, knowing he’d regret touching her the minute he came to his senses. But when his strong hands closed over her breasts, her own senses scattered.

His touch wasn’t the least bit hesitant, and the bold, kneading strength of his fingers sent streamers of longing through more than her body. She felt him to her soul.

Knowing that Alex didn’t feel so strongly about her cooled her response. Then his knee pressed between her legs and she lost touch with reality.

Her life had been spinning nowhere, but with Alex holding her, she had an anchor. Yet it was curious that an anchor would make her head whirl and her blood bubble like champagne.

Their tongues met, velvet on velvet, framed by the hard lines of his mouth.

The only other time she could remember a kiss being so good was when he’d held her before, that night she’d brought the tree and toy train.

Mmm…

Beneath Alex’s sweatshirt his muscles were hard and she explored the contours of a man who’d worked not only with his mind, but his body. She didn’t feel cold, though
her thin shirt and jeans were hardly protection against the bitter chill that had descended over Puget Sound.

Pleasure shimmered in wave after wave as Alex began kissing his way down the curve of her neck. Then suddenly, a loud, raucous sound pierced the air.

“What?”

Alex jerked away, looking horrified, and Shannon dropped her hands to her side.

Think fast
, she ordered her frozen brain, but it wasn’t cooperating.

“Merroooow.”

Thank God
.

She edged around Alex’s stiff figure and looked for the source of distress. A kitten, all ears and eyes, stuck its head from under a bush and cried again.

“You poor thing,” Shannon said, kneeling and holding out her hand. “Come here.”

The kitten had obviously been fending for itself for a long time, because it hesitated, looking suspicious.

“It’s all right, little one, I won’t hurt you.”

Alex stared at the ragged feline and wondered how it could resist that coaxing voice.

Damnation
. How could he have kissed Shannon again?

He couldn’t even blame her. She’d done everything but climb the wall trying to get away from him.

The cat put a hesitant foot on the flagstone patio, ready to bolt backward if the gentle voice turned out to have a mean hand attached to it.

“Come here, baby. No one is going to hurt you.”

“Meooooow.”

“Yes, I know. It’s all right now.” She cuddled the feline against her breasts and the air hissed from Alex’s chest. He
ached, but the physical pain was less intense than the torment in his mind.

Shannon O’Rourke had a filthy kitten tucked lovingly to her body, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen something so beautiful. Panic screamed through him, a warning of everything he didn’t want to feel again.

“Shannon, we have to talk about what happened.”

She glanced at him…and rolled her eyes. “For goodness sake, Alex, don’t go melodramatic. I was upset and you gave me a friendly kiss. I’m surprised you didn’t laugh your head off.”

“About what?”

“What do you think? Remember the smoke alarm going off? Black smoke filling the air? I must have looked ridiculous.”

The cookies.

Right.

His brain wasn’t working correctly, but it was a relief to know Shannon hadn’t taken him seriously. In fact, she’d been so upset, she probably hadn’t noticed the more than friendly way he’d groped her body.

“I’m not being melodramatic, I was just wondering what you plan to do with that cat.”

“Take it into your house, of course.”

His eyes narrowed. “If you’re thinking about giving it to Jeremy, the answer is no.”

“I’m planning to adopt him myself. But I don’t have a drop of milk in my house, so you’re going to have to cough up the white stuff.”

She strolled past him as if the last fifteen minutes had never occurred, and Alex shook his head. He’d missed something significant, but since he didn’t have a clue what
that significant something might be, he focused on a real problem.

“Wait, Shannon. Jeremy is going to see that cat and want it.”

“You fuss too much. I’ll explain everything to him,” she said over her shoulder.

“Men don’t ‘fuss.’”

“Yeah, right.”

She disappeared inside his house and he remained where he stood, amazed at the way the tables had been turned on him again. For a man who prided himself on being in control, he was losing it faster than a barrel sailing over Niagara Falls.

“Cats usually only clean themselves after they’ve eaten,” Shannon told Jeremy as he sat in her arms, watching the tired kitten lick his oversize feet. “That’s why he’s so dirty. He hasn’t eaten regularly for a while.”

“Is he gonna be okay?”

“I think so. I’ll take him to see my brother tomorrow. Connor is a cat doctor, and he’ll make sure nothing is wrong.”

“He looks scared.”

“I know. He’s been alone and trying to take care of himself for a while. I’m sure he wants to be loved, but it will take time for him to feel safe again.”

Jeremy released a sigh and snuggled closer. “What’s his name?”

She kissed his cheek; names seemed to be important to him. “Cats reveal their names when they’re comfortable with you. He’ll tell me when he’s ready.”

“
Shannon
, that’s too fanciful,” Alex warned.

She lifted her chin and gave him a narrow look.

Children needed a little fancy in their lives, and Jeremy had already seen too much reality. Besides, as far as she was concerned, Alex was skating on very thin ice. His relief at the way she’d dismissed their kiss had been practically insulting—particularly when she was certain that the kiss had shaken him as much as it had shaken her.

“You don’t know much about cats,” she retorted, “if you think that’s fanciful.”

“Oh?” He didn’t say anything more, just crossed his arms over his chest and reminded her with his silence that he’d gone out in the rain and purchased the supplies she needed for a feline housemate.

Well, maybe the ice beneath his feet wasn’t as thin as she’d thought.

The need to be fair did battle with her feminine pique, and fairness won. Alex
had
to be careful. He had Jeremy to think about, and she was never going to be nominated mother of the year.

The faint scent of smoke lingered in the house, and she wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry about the cookies,” she said to Jeremy. “I’m not very good at cooking.”

He twisted and put his arms around her neck. “That’s okay, Shannon. I don’t care.”

She blinked, still fighting those annoying tears. “I know a great bakery. They’d probably let us come and watch them bake a gingerbread house. We’ll ask your daddy if it’s all right.”

“Can we go, Daddy?” Jeremy asked eagerly. “You can come, too.”

It sounded like a careless afterthought and Shannon smothered a laugh. Yet she sobered quickly, remembering
the pain Alex had expressed about Jeremy wanting to spend time with her rather than him. He worried about his son, like any good father. But while Jeremy was looking for a way out of the sadness, his daddy seemed determined to look backward, instead of reaching for the future.

Like the kitten, Alex probably wanted to be loved…he just didn’t trust that it wouldn’t end up hurting him.

She looked again at Alex’s handsome features and the shadows that lingered in his eyes. He needed laughter. He needed to learn how to play and enjoy life.

He needed to stop being stuck in the past.

And so did she.

“D
own you go, son,” Alex said as Shannon opened the door of the bakery on Saturday. He lifted Jeremy from his shoulders and then held his hand as they stepped into the crisp outside air.

The scents of spice and vanilla and chocolate clung to their clothing and Shannon smiled.

It wasn’t the New Year yet, but she’d made a resolution to look to the future, instead of being afraid of what it might
not
hold. Of course, that didn’t mean she shouldn’t be careful about Alex. He’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want a permanent relationship with any woman, so falling for him wouldn’t be smart.

In the meantime, it was almost like having a family of her own, the three of them walking down the holly- and pine-decorated street. She carried a box filled with perfect gingerbread people; they would add some to the Christmas tree when they got home, and others would be eaten with milk.

Naturally Alex hadn’t let her pay for them. His stubborn pride was sweetly annoying, but she could forgive him. He hadn’t teased her once about the burned cookies, or complained about the odor of smoke in his house.

“Ho, ho, ho,” cried a sidewalk Santa, ringing his bell. “Merry Christmas.”

Shannon reached into her purse and withdrew several bills and a handful of change to throw into his kettle.

“Why’d you do that, Shannon?” Jeremy asked

“Santa is trying to help people,” she explained.

“Daddy doesn’t believe in Santa.”

She gave Alex a stern look. The man needed a kick in his scrumptious rear end.

He cleared his throat. “Actually, I said that Santa is more like a state of mind than someone real.”

“Pop psychology rears its head again.”

They stopped and Jeremy pressed his nose against a store window where mechanical figures simulated Santa’s workshop. Santa wore striped stockings and glasses and peered intently at a half-finished fire engine.

“A little fantasy can’t hurt,” she said softly. “What’s wrong with letting him believe?”

Alex pulled her farther from Jeremy’s ears. “I can’t do that, not after telling him everything would be all right when his mother got sick. It wasn’t all right, and I knew it wouldn’t be, but I still said it.”

Shannon’s heart skipped a beat. “Mom said it would be all right the day we buried my father.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen the way you miss your dad. What’s all right about that?”

“You never stop missing the people you love,” Shannon said, understanding better than ever before what her mother
had tried to tell her. Life was a bittersweet tapestry, with sorrow and joy mixing into the pattern until they were nearly inseparable. “But Mom wasn’t saying we’d forget Dad. She meant that we would go on and that there still would be good days. And there have been, even though he’s gone…and the good is better because of who he was and what he left behind.”

“Jeez, Shannon. How can you open yourself up like that?” Alex sounded almost angry. “You barely know us.”

“I’m doing it because I don’t want Jeremy to
be
like me, keeping it all inside. And I don’t think his mother would want it, either.”

Alex closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of Shannon’s generous face, the gentle light in her eyes as she gazed at his son. Her breezy sophistication hid a tender side she had trouble revealing. But not when it came to Jeremy.

His chest ached, only he didn’t know if it came from old sorrows, or the space Shannon was forcing him to make in his heart.

When they’d first met, her volatile nature had reminded him of his mother and father, but the comparison was fading. He found himself looking forward to each day, to their conversations and even to not knowing what to expect. There was a depth to Shannon that fascinated him…almost as much as it scared him.

Were
there other choices? Other possibilities than the ones he’d chosen? Or would he just fall into the same angry hell that had destroyed his parents? He didn’t believe he could ever break a marriage vow, but would he find himself stuck in the same screaming rounds of arguments and the bitter chill between those arguments?

Alex instinctively stepped backward, only to jump at the sudden blare of a car alarm.

“What the…?” He stared at the Jaguar parked at the curb. “I barely touched the damn thing.”

Shannon shook her head. “I hate those things. They’re so sensitive. I think just breathing sets them off.”

“What happened, Daddy?” Jeremy’s eyes were round and he clasped his fingers over his ears. “Make it stop.”

Before Alex could answer, a man ran from a nearby jewelry shop and yelled. “What are you doing to my Jag?”

“Breathing,” Alex shouted back.

Shannon burst out laughing, and he watched, loving the way she didn’t care that they were attracting attention. It should have bothered him; he’d hated it when he was a kid and his parents fought in public places with everyone looking at them. But this was different.

The man bent over, anxiously checking the paint of his Jaguar, and Shannon impudently thumbed her nose at him.

Laughing now himself, Alex swung Jeremy into one arm, and put the other around Shannon.

“Is that any way for the O’Rourke Public Relations Director to act?” He thought for a moment. “For that matter, is it any way for an O’Rourke to act?”

“I’m on vacation.”

She might be on vacation, but within minutes she had the Jag’s owner eating from her hand, even getting him to admit he’d been in the wrong for yelling.

In downtown Seattle, the commotion would have hardly been noticed, but in their small community, it was an event. Christmas shoppers filled with seasonal goodwill paused and chatted. A policeman stopped and asked if he was
needed. Assured he wasn’t, he stayed nevertheless and ate the gingerbread cookie Shannon offered him.

Something that could have turned ugly became a social event, and it was all because of Shannon. She had a gift for bringing out the best in people—a sincere concern for others, a loving spirit that accepted human foibles and graces alike.

“We need more of these,” she said when everyone had gone about their business. The box of cookies dangled from one finger, empty.

“Let’s go back. They’re yummy,” Jeremy said, munching the cookie she’d given him first.

Alex thought about the excuses he ought to make, the things he had to do, the term papers and projects still to grade.

“I think we need more, too,” he agreed. “And let’s get some cocoa. I’m cold.”

As they retraced their steps to the bakery, it occurred to him that he was getting too involved, but it was easy to push the worry to the back of his mind.

Because for the first time in longer than Alex could remember, he was happy.

Shannon hummed to herself as she read the new cookbook by the author of the not-so-foolproof ginger people recipe.

She’d always hated cookbooks—they seemed to be a reminder of something she couldn’t do. But even if she couldn’t cook to save her life, it was surprisingly interesting to see what was involved.

From the corner of her eye she saw the kitten, miraculously improved in appearance, sidle into the living room. He was at that awkward growing stage—all ears and brown tiger-stripe legs.

She knew if she was patient, he would eventually work his way up the couch and into her arms. It was the same every night. He’d watch from the doorway, resistant to coaxing, but by morning he purred beneath the comforter, curled against her tummy.

Would Alex be like that someday?

Cautious, guarding his heart, before finding himself in a woman’s arms and loving her completely?

Shannon closed the cookbook and clung to her new-found peace. The restlessness that had worried her family and taken its toll on her staff was nearly gone, but that didn’t mean she’d stopped wanting more from her life.

Her feelings for Alex had nothing to do with his proximity or the wonderful child he’d fathered, and they weren’t because of her physical attraction to him, though heaven knew that was intense. Just kissing him was more exciting than anything she’d experienced with another man. But more than that, he was smart, hardworking and adored his son. He had a good sense of humor and a core of strength and integrity that was all too rare.

It would be so easy to love Alex, to give him the part of herself that no one had ever seen. She hadn’t loved that boy in college; she realized that now. Not really. Not the way a woman loves a man. Her pride had been hurt, and she’d lost her girlish dreams, but there were other dreams.

A soft, warm body wriggled along her thigh, and she glanced down to see the kitten’s anxious eyes.

So needy.

So ready to bolt.

So afraid to accept that his life had changed. To believe that food and kindness weren’t a deception. That he could trust again.

Oh, Alex
, she breathed silently. If there was ever someone who needed to be loved by a woman, it was him. But that woman wouldn’t be her. He hadn’t seemed to care about her culinary disaster, but he would eventually choose someone more like his first wife, if only for Jeremy’s sake. That was what they both deserved, a real homemaker, and all the stolen kisses in the world wouldn’t change that.

“I wish I could stay with you all day, little one,” she whispered to the kitten. “But I can’t.”

He blinked and stretched out one paw, touching her arm.

A small overture that tugged at her heart.

At almost the same moment, sounds outside the front door made the feline’s ears stand at attention. He darted into the kitchen when the bell rang.

It was the McKenzies. During their cookie outing the day before, they’d talked about having lunch together, though a time hadn’t been discussed.

“Shannon?” Jeremy called. “Hurry.”

“Coming.” Shannon opened the door. “I take it you’re hungry.”

“More like cold.” Alex shivered and stuck his hands in his pockets. “How can it feel colder here than in Minnesota?”

“It’s the damp. You’ll get used to it.”

“If we stay.”

The casual words made Shannon colder than the worst arctic storm. Swallowing, she stepped back to let them inside. “I didn’t realize you were thinking about leaving.”

He shrugged. “Just keeping my options open.”

“Kitty, kitty,” Jeremy called, looking hopefully around the room.

“He’s still shy,” Shannon said, trying to compose her expression. “You have to be patient.” Excellent advice for
herself, as well, except that men weren’t cats, and they generally couldn’t be won over with food and a warm place to sleep.

Alex wouldn’t have had anything to do with her if it hadn’t been for Jeremy. She needed to remind herself of that at frequent intervals.

“We called earlier, to see if you’d prefer having brunch, but you weren’t here,” he murmured, standing close to the embers of the small fire she’d built.

“I went to church.”

“Oh.”

His flat tone confirmed what Shannon had already guessed. She would have invited them to attend the service with her, but she figured Alex had turned his back on the church, along with so many other things.

“Um, I’ll get my purse,” she said quickly.

“There’s no rush.” He crouched by the hearth. “This feels good.”

His jeans were stretched over his muscled legs and she held her breath, remembering how they’d felt, pressed against her.

Friends, she reminded herself.

Just friends.

She decided hurrying was a good idea, and she grabbed what she needed in record time. “I’m ready,” she said, in case he hadn’t noticed.

Standing, Alex closed the glass doors across the hearth—to prevent any sparks from the dying embers popping into the room while they were gone. His gaze went to the coat she wore, and she knew he’d expected to help her with it. The perfect gentleman. Just like her brothers, but it didn’t make her knees weak to have
them
ease a coat up her arms.

“So…where do you want to eat?” he asked.

“Anywhere is fine.”

Fine.

Inadvertently, Alex thought about the milk and cookies they’d eaten the evening before, made even better by laughter and talk. They’d discussed art and literature, history, travel and world affairs. Shannon was naturally curious and had asked perceptive questions about engineering and his work in less-developed countries, showing a healthy grasp of math and sciences.

His mind had shied away from thoughts that would only make him feel guilty, but the guilt was inevitable. Kim had been the dearest of women, and he’d loved her, but her interests had revolved around children and their home. Her priorities had made him comfortable; they hadn’t always challenged his mind.

Shannon wasn’t comfortable, he told himself firmly.

He still wanted comfortable. Things were comfortable the way they were, with just him and Jeremy.

Yeah?
jeered Alex’s conscience. So why are you spending so much time with Shannon?

The answer was something he didn’t want to know.

“We’re going, Jeremy. Where is Mr. Tibbles?” he asked.

Jeremy looked thoughtful, then he pointed to the rabbit, sitting by the Christmas tree. “Shannon says Mr. Tibbles might wanna stay home sometimes. He could stay here with kitty, and then he wouldn’t be alone.”

“That’s a…a good idea.” Startled, Alex looked from the rabbit to his son, and last to Shannon. She was watching Jeremy, nodding agreement, and he’d never felt so grateful in his life.

The hell with guilt, at least for today.

She’d performed a miracle and if they didn’t have Jeremy as an audience, he’d give her another kiss. A friendly one, of course.

In fact…

“Shannon, may I see you in the other room for a moment?”

“Sure.”

They walked into the kitchen, and Alex saw what he should have seen before: a room obviously not used for any serious cooking. He felt badly that he had asked her to do something she wasn’t able to handle, though it had been endearing to see her so upset when she did everything
else
so well.

“Alex, is something—”

He smothered her question with his lips.