Once Upon a Christmas (31 page)

“Play with fire and you might get burned.” Dylan’s
gaze roved lower. “Or maybe that’s me getting burned. God, you’re
gorgeous.”

Gorgeous? Wow, nobody had ever called her…no, she wasn’t
falling for this. Remembering her theory that Dylan only wanted her to sleep
with him and repair his studly dating record, Stacey hardened her resolve and
stared back at him. “Let go of me.”

Dylan eased his hold on her hands long enough to caress her
fingers and smile. He looked so boyish, so openhearted, that she wanted to
throw caution to the wind and abandon her suspicions. Lulled by his smile, she
sank a little deeper against the mattress. When his answer came, his voice was
just another soothing lure, easing her against the tangled sheets and further
into her tangled emotions.

“Are you sure?” He slid his fingers up, down, in
between hers, gliding over each sensitive fingertip in turn.

Shivering, she tried to get a hold of herself. For Pete’s
sake, only their fingertips were touching. That wasn’t enough to make her
tremble, to make her want him, like this. Yet when Dylan looked down at her
again, Stacey felt his gaze touch her like the softest of caresses. She wanted
to sigh beneath it.

“Ummm…” Of course she was sure. Wasn’t she?

Her moment’s indecision cost her the choice. His hands
tightened on her wrists and pushed them into the plump pillow beneath. Her
breath caught.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure! I’m sure.”

“Sure of what?” Dylan’s head lowered, and his
stubbled jaw whisked past her cheek. Stacey couldn’t move, couldn’t think, as
his mouth found her earlobe, nibbled gently, then kissed below it. “Sure
of this?” he asked, moving his lips against her neck. “You only have
to tell me what you want, Stacey, and I’ll give it to you. Do you want this?”

He kissed her neck, her jaw, brought his hand low to cradle
her head and hold her still as he sucked the place where her neck and jaw met,
doing things with his mouth and tongue and teeth she’d never dreamed could feel
so good. “Do you want this? Because I swear I’ll stop if you ask me to.”

Please don’t make me stop
his body said as his hand
tightened in her hair.
Love me. Let me love you
. Smiling, Dylan looked
deeply into her eyes and stroked his thumb across her cheek. “You make me
crazy. God, I should have never let you go.”

Let her go
. No, she didn’t want that. Stacey knew
that much, despite the warning bells in her brain telling her that was exactly
what she ought to be asking for.

No, what she wanted was to arch against him, to tangle her
legs with his and feel his hairy calves tickle hers, to stroke his back and
feel him shudder beneath her touch. She wanted to feel him kiss her again, to
let him take her mouth, her heart, her soul, and make her his.

“Please.” She dared to bring her hands to his arms
and grasp the finely wrought, muscular support she found there. “Please…”

She felt languid yet taut as a strung wire, sleepy yet more
alive than she’d been in months. Looking into his eyes, Stacey dug her
fingertips on his arms and levered herself closer. Her gaze drifted to his
lips.
Kiss me
, she thought.
I need you to kiss me
. Dylan’s weight
shifted as he moved to comply, reading her desires in her eyes or her mouth or
maybe her plaintive cry.
Please…

His lips neared hers. A thud sounded at the door. Someone
knocking. The sound roused Ginger. She barked—just once, but it was enough to
make Stacey aware of her situation again. She tightened her hold on Dylan at
the sound, realized he’d already released her hands and it was she—she—who’d
practically attacked him yet again, and the spell was broken. Another knock
came. Dylan’s mouth brushed hers…and Stacey bolted from the bed.

“No!” Shaking, she yanked down her T-shirt and
leaped onto the carpet just as Dylan’s head thunked onto the mattress. There
was an odd popping sound. Something powdery and sweet-smelling puffed up around
his head.

“Ahhh! My eyes!” Yelling, Dylan scrambled upright,
swabbing at his eyes with both fists. White powder drifted like a cloud in the
air above him, then gradually sifted back down on his head like an
exceptionally even-spaced—and exceptionally bad—case of dandruff.

Her aromatherapy powder. Stacey snatched the broken paper
sachet from the indentation in the mattress where Dylan had landed just as
another knock came at the door.

“Room service!” someone called. Ginger snuffled at
the bottom edge of the door then pranced in front of it, eager for some human
company that might pay attention to
her
. She cocked her head when nobody
moved and gave a blowsy doggie sneeze instead.
Hey, somebody’s here
!

Dylan coughed loudly to cover the sound, his gaze darting
toward Ginger. “Shhh!”

“Room service!” came a suspicious-sounding voice
from the hallway. “Mr. and Mrs. Parker?”

“You broke it!” Stacey waggled the smashed and
empty sachet toward Dylan.

For some reason, the sight of it made her want to weep. It
was a foolish reaction, she knew, but no less true. Geez, she was a mess, her
emotions too close to the surface to be trusted. Blinking hard, she waved the
paper at him as though he could repair it somehow—make it whole again.

He grabbed the sachet with one hand and peered at it,
temporarily abandoning his attempts to wipe his face clean. “Gingerbread
Dreams?” he asked, reading it.

“It’s aromatherapy, Christmas style.” She crossed
her arms. “It’s
supposed
to be relaxing.” She’d needed it last
night after her encounters with Dylan, but he was the last person on earth she’d
admit it to. “I use those sachets sometimes to wind down at night. I must
have forgotten it was beneath the pillow.”

Another knock came, along with a more urgent, “Room
service!”

“Just a minute!” Dylan called toward the door of
the honeymoon suite, sounding surprisingly polite for somebody who was wearing
boxer shorts, an even dusting of ginger-scented powder, and nothing else.

“Wind down, huh?” he asked as he headed to the
door, brushing drifts of Gingerbread Dreams from his head and shoulders as he
went. He ushered Ginger into hiding in the suite’s bathroom with a push to her
wagging rump and closed the door. “No wonder I feel so calm right now.”

He grinned and nodded toward the bed. “Better get in
bed, snookums. Otherwise, you’ll give the room service guy an eyeful.”

Joking. He was actually joking about being the victim of yet
another of her accidental disasters. Stacey couldn’t believe it. Did
nothing
get Dylan rattled?

Only you
, a part of her whispered. Ignoring it, she
dove for cover, hefted an armload of black silk comforter, and made it into bed
just as a uniformed hotel employee wheeled his room service cart into the
honeymoon suite.

“Good morning, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Parker.” He
sniffed, wrinkling his nose at the conspicuously ginger scented air, then
parked his cart and turned to address them. The poor man nearly jumped a foot
at his first sight of Dylan’s powder-whitened face.

“Aromatherapy accident,” Dylan said solemnly. “Dangerous
stuff.”

“I’m sure.” The hotel employee peered at the
amazing whiteness of Dylan’s face. He’d seen stranger things, Stacey supposed,
during his tenure at the hotel. “Would you like me to send up someone from
our spa to help you?”

Dylan waved his hand. “Nah. I’ll just take a walk—”

“Ruff!” barked Ginger from inside the bathroom.

“—down there after breakfast if I need to,” he
finished, his eyes widening. His gaze met Stacey’s, and she had the feeling
they were thinking the same thing.
The ‘W’ word
. Walk—walk—walk.

Whoops.

The hotel employee’s attention veered from Dylan’s face to
the closed bathroom door. His frown made his face look a little like an unhappy
mustachioed fist. “Is that a—”

“Hack, hack!” Loudly—very loudly—Dylan started
coughing. A lion with a hairball caught in its throat couldn’t have been louder.
Finally, the hotel employee whacked Dylan on the back, and his coughing fit
subsided.

“Thank you,” Dylan croaked. “Terrible, being
hit with this rotten cold on our honeymoon and all.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” With one parting glance at the
bathroom door, the man shrugged his shoulders. He clattered the silver-covered
dishes on his room service cart. “I hope you’re not under the weather,
too, Mrs. Parker.”

Stacey stared at the bathroom door, wishing it were possible
to mind-meld with a dog.
Be quiet
, she tried anyway. It couldn’t hurt to
try.

“Mrs. Parker?”

“Honey?”

“Mrs. Parker!”

“Sugarcakes?” Dylan kicked discreetly on the
bedpost, jolting Stacey back from her mind-meld attempts. She looked up to see
the room service guy stroking his mustache with narrowed eyes—eyes aimed
suspiciously at her.

“She’s a little hazy before the caffeine kicks in,”
Dylan explained.

“Oh! Ha, ha,” Stacey managed. She glared at Dylan
for the kick—couldn’t he have found a less jarring way to get her
attention?—and clutched the covers to her chest.
Hazy, huh
?

“I guess you’re right, Dumpling,” she purred. “A
girl’s gotta have
something
to get her motor running in the mornings.”

Behind the room service guy’s back, Dylan pantomimed a
dagger to his chest. With a silent howl of pretend anguish, he staggered
backward, then grinned. Stacey stifled an answering smile and turned her gaze
toward their visitor.

“So sorry we kept you waiting in the hallway earlier,”
she said sweetly.

“Oh, that’s all right.” He winked at Dylan.

Dylan whipped the imaginary dagger behind his back and gave
him a leering sort of man-to-man grin. Stacey could’ve kicked
him
, never
mind the bed post.

“The honeymooners are always that way. Sometimes we
just give ‘em a few minutes, then leave the food at the door if they don’t answer.”
The hotel employee picked up a delicate white china cup and saucer, then poured
coffee into it from a silver pot. “Of course, with a special order like
this one, we didn’t want to do that.” He carried the steaming coffee to
Stacey. “Here you go, ma’am.”

She took the saucer in her hands and inhaled the rich brewed
scent appreciatively. “Thank you,” she said, and realized it was
really Dylan she thanked most.

Even after spending the night with his six-foot frame
cramped on the loveseat, even after being walloped, evaded, out-raced, and told
to leave more times than she could count, he was still dedicated to pulling off
the pretend-honeymooners thing for Richard and Janie.

In his own overbearing, take-charge way, of course.

Still, Dylan
was
trying to help. Unfortunately, the
fact that he was being nice about things only made it twice as hard to resist
him, which made it twice as hard for Stacey to keep her mind where it
belonged—on the honeymoon ruse. If she couldn’t handle the honeymoon deception
better than she’d handled Dylan so far, her family’s peaceful coexistence was
doomed.

They were almost all she had left now. Four stifling years
spent married to Charlie meant she’d socialized more with his business
colleagues and their wives than with her own friends. Since her divorce, Stacey
had started rebuilding her old friendships, but they were still a long way from
the solid, just-us-gals relationships she used to enjoy. The last thing she
wanted was to wreck things with her family, too.

She wouldn’t. Not if there was any way to prevent it.

Grimacing, Stacey sipped her coffee just as Dylan emerged
from the bathroom and shut the door behind him, looking clean and better than
he had a right to after all he’d been through since showing up yesterday. The
moment the door shut, Ginger started scratching. Dylan coughed to cover the
sound. Stacey, trying to be helpful, did too. The hotel employee only raised
his eyebrows and went on working.

Before long, Ginger apparently got tired of the game and
quieted. Stacey imagined the dog chewing up the plush pink bathmat and grinned.
Maybe Dylan’s dog went everyplace with him, but she’d bet Ginger got him into
his share of trouble, too.

Just like her, unfortunately.

Dylan ambled to the room service cart and lifted lids from its
covered dishes, releasing the delicious aromas of toast, scrambled eggs, maple
syrup, coffee, and the sharp tang of citrus.

“Smells good.” His gaze shifted to her, and an
appetite wholly unrelated to food rose in his expression. “Hungry?”

Her pulse leaped. How in the world did he keep doing that to
her, with only a glance and a handful of words?

She ought to be nice to him, Stacey knew. She ought to make
their honeymoon façade look good. But the way Dylan looked at her made her
heart perform a sudden, unsettling mamba in her chest, and the only thing she
really wanted to do was run.

“Actually,” she wound up saying, “I’d hoped
to go out to eat, rather than have overpriced room service food.”

Dylan appeared crestfallen.

So did the room service guy. Banging the silver dishes, he
poured a cup of coffee for Dylan and sloshed it in his hand. “Everything
else will be along in a minute, sir.”

“Thank you.” Dylan held his cup in one hand and
shook spilled coffee from the other. He sucked the outer edge of his thumb,
looking over his wrist at Stacey. “This won’t just be overpriced room
service food,” he promised. “This will be something special. You’ll
see.”

Setting his cup on the room service cart, Dylan picked up a
plate and spooned what looked like scrambled eggs on it. He added two strips of
bacon, stabbed a pancake with a fork and plopped it on the plate’s edge, then
poured maple syrup over the whole thing.

“Sit up.” He nodded toward the headboard. “You’re
about to be served breakfast in bed.”