Mistletoe Match-Up (Romancing Wisconsin #3) (4 page)

Her gaze remained locked on his cousin. “No offense, Janelle, but it seems a little silly. I mean, we’re not in high school anymore.”

Derek relaxed and fell into their old pattern with ease. “What’s the matter, Lisa, afraid you’ve lost your magic touch? Are you not up for the challenge?”

That got her. Her spine stiffened and fire gleamed in her eyes. “Of course I am.”

He fake frowned, nodded his head with understanding, and stage whispered, “I get it.”

“Get what?”

Derek glanced at their captive audience. “Nothing.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. He valiantly avoided staring at her increased cleavage. It wasn’t so hard with his grandparents and her brother watching. And her silent demand for an answer.

“I probably shouldn’t say it now. Not in front of everyone.”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “Please, do enlighten us—all of us.” Her condescending sarcasm stroked the blood-thirsty devil on his shoulder.

Their audience of respective family members waited in expectation. Grandpa, in particular, appeared to enjoy the exchange immensely. This next part would almost make high school worth it. Derek shrugged. “Obviously, it’s me.”

“You?” She infused the single word with an appropriate amount of humorous disbelief and disdain, only she avoided looking him in the eye.

“You’re scared you can’t handle me all grown up.”

The outrageous statement produced the desired laughs—only Lisa’s sounded forced.
Her right hand rose to flick her hair back over her shoulder, then smoothed down the length of her burgundy satin dress.
Hmm.
He hadn’t dreamed his intentional bait would be remotely close to the truth.

Derek moved in for the kill. “That’s why you chickened out under the mistletoe.”

The words
‘bite me’
resounded in his head as she glared at him and took a breath to speak. He waggled his finger in the air between them. “Uh, uh. Careful.”

Lisa stepped forward and grabbed his hand. He fought to keep his expression impassive while she bent his finger back just enough to make her point. She leaned close, her breath hot on his lips as she ground out, “You’re on, buddy. I’m going to kick your butt so bad you’ll wish I’d never moved back.”

Too late for that.

****

Derek thanked Jim Newel for helping load the last of the wedding presents into his truck. One final check to make sure no one left anything behind and he could go home. He paused when he saw Lisa standing just inside the doors, dressed in the boots, jeans and jacket she’d been wearing when she rushed into the church.

“Stupid snow,” she muttered.

“Talk about déjàvu,” Derek quipped. He glanced at the cell phone in her hand. “Who are you calling?”

“No one. There’s no reception because of the storm.” She peered outside at the swirling snowflakes and flipped the phone shut before stuffing it in her pocket.

Derek dug his cell out to check the signal. “Mine’s good. Here.”

After a slight hesitation, she accepted it with a quiet thanks. Derek went to make his rounds of the reception hall to give her some privacy. All the while, curiosity drove him crazy. Who was she calling after midnight on Christmas Eve? Friend or boyfriend? He shook his head in annoyance. Why did he even care?

She didn’t appear any happier when he returned to the hall entrance.

“Wasn’t he home?” The question escaped before he could clamp his mouth shut.

“Who?”

“Your boyfriend.”

“I wasn’t calling my boyfriend,” she said with a little huff of annoyance. He noticed she didn’t deny
having
one.

“My parent’s left before I could ask them for a ride home, and I just remembered they’re staying at Eric’s tonight. But I can’t call Eric because I’m afraid I’ll wake up the twins.”

“For crying out loud, Lisa, I can give you a ride home.”

She lifted one shoulder and handed back his phone. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“How is it a bother when I’m already here and everyone else is probably in bed by now?”
Unless
…maybe she didn’t want to spend any more time with him than she had to?

Her gaze still shunned his. “How about I just say thank you and we leave it at that.”

If anyone had asked him, he would’ve insisted he felt the same way. So why, exactly, did her clear avoidance slash at his ego and fuel disappointment? With an inward growl, he shoved the unwanted feelings aside. “Fine. I don’t care.” He scooped up her duffle and dress bag and slung them over his shoulder.

“I can carry my own stuff,” she protested.

“I got it.” He shoved open the door and waited for her to pass. After a brief moment, she set her jaw, gathered the edges of her coat closed against the cold, and stalked past in her calf-hugging fleece-edged boots.

At the truck, he leaned close and reached past her to open the passenger side door. Her sweet scent, reminiscent of cotton candy, swept past his nostrils on a gust of wind. A glimpse of the elegant line of her neck revived the attraction he strove to suppress. Heat zipped along his nerve endings, stoking his desire. Heaven help him, but he’d love for her to tell him to
“bite me”
right now.

Once she climbed into the passenger side, he stuffed her things on her lap and shut the door.
Geez
. He had to get his lust under control. She didn’t like him. He certainly didn’t like her. End of story.

He rounded the truck and settled into the driver’s seat. As he navigated across the drifted parking lot, he asked, “Did you leave your car at the church?”

“You of all people know I’m not stupid. If I had my car I would’ve brought it here.”

Oh, yeah. This was going to be so pleasant. “I only asked because you might have chosen the limo to spend time with your family.”

She didn’t bother with a reply. Derek made a right turn out of the lot, toward her parent’s house, located about five miles outside Pulaski on a side road off Highway 32. The plows had been through earlier, but at least three more inches had fallen, so he drove slow. Not far from town, he spotted a snow covered maroon car in the ditch on the other side of the road. A blaze orange sticker on the antenna told him the police had already checked for the driver and any passengers.

“Looks like someone had a worse Christmas Eve than you,” he muttered.

Her outburst of genuine laughter surprised him.

“What?”

“Remember when Mark asked why I was late to the church, and I said it was a long story?”

“Yeah?”

She waved a hand at the ditched car. “Well there you have it, long story short.”

Derek braked. The truck slid a few feet before coming to a stop on the deserted road. “That’s
your
car?”

“Yep.”

“I take it you’re okay? You weren’t hurt, were you?”

She gave him a funny look. “It was awhile ago, and clearly, I’m fine.”

He took a deep breath to ease the sudden knot in his stomach. “How’d you get to the church?”

“I started walking—”

“In the
storm
?”

“No, in the bright, warm sunshine,” she retorted. “I had my boots, coat, hat and mittens. I’m a big girl, Derek.”

“Walking along the highway while it’s snowing is not a smart thing to do.”

“I didn’t walk the whole way. I got a ride.”

The stubborn knots bound even tighter. “You
hitchhiked
? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Some psycho—”

“Oh my God, would you relax already? You sound worse than my dad. The cop who tagged my car gave me the ride.”

Derek breathed a little easier. Lisa pushed her things from her lap onto the console between them and opened her door.

“Now what?” he demanded.

She pulled the door closed enough to keep the wind from whistling in, but the dome light still illuminated her face. “As long as we’re here, I might as well get my suitcase.”

“Why didn’t you call someone earlier?”

“Besides the fact that my phone doesn’t get any service around here, I didn’t want to ruin the wedding. My dad and brothers would’ve rushed out to help and that wouldn’t have been fair to anyone—especially Janelle.”

In light of that new information, Derek felt bad for thinking the worst about her at the church. “How about I call a tow truck and—”

“No!” Dismay laced her protest. “That’ll cost a fortune on Christmas Eve.”

“It’ll cost just as much Christmas Day,” he reasoned. “This way you’ll have all your stuff at your parent’s house tonight. You remember Chad Hansen, right? He’s got his own auto shop and—”

She shook her head. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. I’ll just go grab my suitcase, and my Dad and Eric can pull my car out in the morning.”

Derek reached across the console to grasp her arm when she pushed on the door again. He didn’t want her getting hit crossing the road if a vehicle should happen to come along. Which reminded him—he turned on his emergency flashers and checked the road in front of them and in back. The wedding presents blocked his rearview, so he gave the side mirror a quick glance. “I’ll get it—give me your keys.”

“You don’t know which one I want.”

He retained a firm grip against her resistance. “So which one is it? You got a color, a size, backseat or trunk…what?”

She stared at him for a moment, but he refused to concede.

“Fine.” She slammed her door and put them back in the dark. Keys dangled from her fingers in the dim light of the dash. “It’s the medium gray one in the back seat.”

Derek got out into the storm and squinted both ways before slip-sliding his way across the single-lane highway in his thread-bare formal dress shoes. By the time he wrestled her suitcase up out of the ditch and back to his truck to stow amongst the wedding presents in the back, melted snow soaked his feet.

He opened the driver’s side door but didn’t get in. “You have presents in there.”

“I’ll get them tomorrow.”

“If they’re still there.” He headed back across the road. When he turned around with his first armload of presents, Lisa stood right behind him.

“Still stubborn as can be,” she groused, pushing past to her car.

“Small town or not, you’re just asking for someone to steal them if you leave them overnight. Besides, you were supposed to stay in the truck.”

“Right.” She stacked two more presents in her arms and straightened to frown at him through the swirling snow. “Because your chances of getting hit by a vehicle are that much less than mine.”

He shrugged, but she’d already started back up onto the shoulder of the road. One more trip and all her things were safely stowed in his over-packed, covered truck bed. He cranked up the heat to thaw out his feet on the way to her parents’ place, but they re-froze the instant he stepped outside.

Lisa located a spare key inside the small utility shed next to the garage and they trudged back and forth through the snow between the truck and the house with her packages.

“That’s everything.” He swung her suitcase through the door to rest inside the foyer.

“Thanks for all your help,” Lisa said. “You went way above and beyond.”

“No problem.” He turned to leave, giving an involuntary shiver when a gust of frigid air slipped under his tux jacket. He hunched his shoulders to keep the chill from going down his neck. “I’ll see you around.”

“Derek, um, I could make a pot of coffee, or hot chocolate, if you’d like to come in and warm up.”

A glance over his shoulder produced a simultaneous realization. She looked unsure of herself for the first time all night, and in the doorway above her head hung a sprig of what could only be mistletoe.

He’d had hot chocolate to warm up last Christmas Eve—but sharing a cup with Lisa sounded so much better than sitting in the woods with his Grandpa. He made his way back onto the porch of the ranch-style house. When she stepped aside so he could enter, he caught sight of the grandfather clock behind her, only minutes from striking two a.m.

What was he thinking? That they’d sit down and talk over the good times like old friends? Good times didn’t exist between them because they’d never been friends. A smart man would leave now, before something she said or did reawakened his inferiority complex.

Surprising regret blew in with the snow when he halted. “On second thought, I should probably get going.”

Lisa followed his gaze and noted the time. “Wow, I’m sorry.” She moved back into the doorway. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”

Something about her tone of voice kept his feet rooted to the porch. Regret? Disappointment? Recalling her uncertainty when she’d invited him inside, he capitulated to his self-destructive curiosity and took another step so only two feet separated them. “I do have one question.”

Wariness flitted across her face. She grasped the edges of her unzipped coat and pulled them together before crossing her arms in a gesture of defense. But she met his gaze and held her ground. “Just one—and nothing personal.”

Spoken like someone with secrets. Derek filed that information for later, then pointed skyward without breaking eye contact. He tried, but couldn’t hold back a smile. “What’s the deal with the
mistletoe rules
?”