Once Upon a Christmas (50 page)

“It’s you,” Nick said again. “Just you. And I’ve
been an idiot not to realize it sooner.”

Yes!
Yes, yes, yes
. Well, not yes, Nick was an idiot,
but yes—oh, how she wished he’d taken a closer look at her sooner. Maybe he
would have, if he’d ever been between what’shernames long enough. Or if she’d
ever had the guts to make a move without Kahlúa courage and comfort-giving for
an excuse.

She’d never know what it might have taken to bring them
together. Right now—with her whole body pasted to Nick’s and his fingers making
magic—Chloe didn’t much care to ponder the question.

She nuzzled his neck and kissed him again, happy and wanting
and filled to bursting with love, and desperately needing to transmit every jumbled
emotion through her kiss.
I love you
, she thought.
Love you, love
you…

Beneath her busy hands, Nick’s body stilled. She felt his
hands, motionless at the front clasp of her bra. She felt his breathing,
harsh-sounding but gentle as a kiss against her collarbone. She felt him
withdraw from her, lean back a little and spread the two halves of her
unbuttoned shirt in his hands.

His forehead crinkled. Dread crept in her heart and set up
shop. What was he waiting for?

Releasing one half of her shirt, Nick reached behind him and
grabbed one of the citronella candles from the tabletop. Chloe couldn’t move as
he held its flickering light to her chest and looked closer. If he’d had
another hand free to tap his lips in his patented thoughtful pose, she felt sure
he would have.

“Haven’t I seen that before?” He gestured to her
chest. His gaze flashed to her face, then back to her…bra, she realized. Her
sheer, orange push-up bra.

The same one she’d worn the morning after the night he
thought they’d never spent together.

“Now, where would I have seen your bra?” he asked,
still looking puzzled—for the moment.

Knowing Nick, it wouldn’t last. He’d remember their night
together…and realize her lie. Damn, damn, double damn! Given away by her
weakness for fancy date lingerie. Chloe tugged her shirt out of his hand and
wrapped it around her torso, hugging it over her belly. Maybe a joke would
distract him? She decided to try sounding flippant—as though they weren’t still
halfway stuck together in a heated clinch.

“I dunno, Nick.” Chloe hugged her clothes close as
she slid down from his lap. “In your dreams, maybe?”

He didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked sort
of…deflated. Exactly the way she felt. But thankfully, Nick didn’t look that
much closer to a solution, either, now that she’d safely hidden away the
incriminating evidence.

The minute she got home, she was burning that damned bra.

Chapter Eight

“Oh, darling,” Nick said, pacing across Chloe’s
living room almost a month later, “I just can’t go on without you. Since
you left, I’ve thought of nothing but you. Night and day, day and night—”

“Eastern time, Pacific time, Standard time!” Chloe
added dramatically. Sighing, she bounced her pencil off of the notepad in her
lap and crossed her arms over her chest. “This letter is killing me.”

She watched her freshly sharpened number two ricochet off
her paper on its eraser and spin end over end toward the opposite arm of her
red plaid sofa.

Nick ducked. Her deadeye aim wasn’t doing him any favors,
either. How had she gotten so much loft on that thing? The pencil thumped into
the wall behind him, then dropped harmlessly to her wildly colored,
flower-splashed rug.

“I’m not writing something stupid and sappy, Nick. I’m
not. It’s just not me.”

“You’re right. You’re very intelligent.”

“Har, har.”

“Too intelligent to let the father of your child get
away. Now concentrate,” he ordered, handing her the pencil.

She took it, smirked, and saluted him with it. Damn, he
hated it when Chloe turned flippant. Probably because it reminded him of the
pat answer she’d handed him on his patio that night.

I dunno, Nick. In your dreams?

Ha. That sexy orange bra of hers—along with the curvy,
Chloe-worthy rest of her—had haunted his stupid dreams ever since then, as sure
as if she’d predicted it. Never mind that he didn’t want them to. Never mind
that he had other things to concentrate on—mainly his growth accelerator, which
still hadn’t come together properly. Never mind that becoming lovers would
probably ruin their friendship and her chances with Bruno alike. All he’d been
able to think about was her.

Somehow, Chloe had gotten under his skin that night and
stayed there. Memories tortured him…of her soft, warm body curved against
him, of her breathless whispers, of her dangerous roving hands. Memories of the
cute way she’d wiggled when he’d kissed her and the husky way she’d moaned in
the back of her throat when he’d slipped his hands inside her eye-popping,
silky shirt. Memories of the shy surprise in her face when he’d told her she
looked beautiful.

Yeah—beautiful. Another fella’s beautiful girl.

Specifically, Bruno’s.

Damn him.

And damn the last month Nick had spent being platonic with a
capital “P.” It was making him cranky.

He swiveled past a stack of cardboard boxes bearing the
pictures and pastel-printed names of more baby paraphernalia than even he—a
four time uncle—had known existed, and looked straight at Chloe.

“Look. You’ve put off writing this letter long enough.”

“Hey, I—”

“Uh, uh, uh.” Nick held up his hands and shook his
head. “No more excuses. I’ve heard them all.”

She pouted her perfectly lipsticked mouth. It was just his
bad luck the motion made him want to kiss off all that glossy, shimmering pink.
It was just his bad luck he had an overactive, out-of-practice libido aimed in
her direction. It was just his bad, miserable, luck that just when Chloe had
finally found someone she cared about enough to make babies with—he wasn’t
fooled for a minute by her “We talked, we laughed, we’re over story”—he’d
started falling for her, too.

Whoa
. Falling for her? The hormonal soup surrounding
Chloe must be getting to him, too. No way was he falling for her. Not with his
invention’s production dependent on this summer’s work, and not with her
Bruno-the-Marine waiting in the wings. Not with her future happiness—and her
baby’s—riding on patching together her temporarily off-track relationship.

Was he her friend or wasn’t he? Friends wanted each other to
be happy. They did not necessarily want to drag each other off to the big comfy
sleigh bed that just happened to be right in the next room. They did not
typically imagine ripping off each other’s clothes, sinking on the pillow-piled
mattress and…. Hell. It was past time to end this and get down to business.

Nick tried to look stern. “No more excuses,” he
repeated.

She gazed up at him with one hand on her rounded pregnant
belly, as innocent as a newly minted angel. “But Shemp really did need
some fresh air the other day. That wasn’t an ex—”

“Right. And I suppose Curly needed those home-baked
hamster treats last week.”

“I—”

“And Larry was just dying to have his toenails—dog
nails—claws!—painted purple yesterday?”

“It wasn’t purple.”

He raised his eyebrows, feeling his blood pressure approach
the redline. “Oh, no?”

“No,” she said, all earnestness and precision. A
saint, doodling on a notepad. “It was fuchsia. And anyway—”

“Arrgh! Write. The. Letter!”

Flinching, Chloe flipped her notepad to a new page. “You
don’t have to yell,” she grumbled, eyeballing the huge burbling aquarium
separating her living room from the dining area.

“Quit looking for another excuse. Your fish don’t need
fresh air or a manicure, and don’t even try to tell me they do. I won’t believe
it.”

She mumbled something under her breath about
stick-in-the-mud scientists who needed proof to find their own pants, then gave
him a brilliant smile. “Okay. Dictate.”

“You didn’t like
my
letter.”

Unimpressed by his resistance, she ignored him and doodled
hearts along the top of her paper. For some reason Chloe’s patience—her surety
that he’d come through for her with a stupid Dear Bruno letter—annoyed the hell
out of him. Nick would have shaved his head before admitting it.

Tapping her eraser against the paper, she looked up at him. “I’m
waiting, oh professor of love.”

He glared at her. She snickered.

He crossed his arms. “The professor of love has left
the building.”

“Aww, come on. I’m only kidding! Sheesh, what happened
to your sense of humor?”

It got smothered beneath a month of wanting you.

“What happened to
your
sense of practicality?”
he shot back, feeling out of control. And hating it. “You’re what, four,
five, six months—”

“Five and a half months.”

“—pregnant now, and you still haven’t told Bruno. You’re
more than halfway there, Chloe! Do you want to patch things up with the father
of your baby or not?”

Her eyes widened. For an instant, she looked twice as
vulnerable, twice as alone, and twice as tempting snuggled against the
outrageously bright pillows littering her sofa. Then the old Chloe returned.

“I dunno, mister mind-meld. Do I? Do I really want to
set things straight with junior’s daddy?”

Beneath her notepad, she rubbed her palm over her belly,
probably without even knowing she was doing it. It had become a habit as her
pregnancy progressed, he’d noticed. Now, at the worst possible damned moment,
Nick found himself wondering exactly what it would feel like to put his own
hand there. To feel her baby growing and kicking and—

Something dangerous flashed in her eyes, burying his tender
thoughts along with it. “Why don’t you tell me? Do you think getting in
touch with…with Bruno is the right thing to do?”

“Yes, dammit!”

She paused, staring at him, then flipped back to the page
she’d been writing on. “Fine.
Oh, darling
,” she started
reading. “I just can’t go on with—”

“Hold it.”

Something niggled at the back of his mind. Some…hint, some
clue, some…
thing
hovered just on the edge of his memory. Damn. What
was it?

“Read that again.”

“Oh, come on, Nick. A line-by-line critique? This isn’t
meant to be read aloud, you know.”

“Humor me.”

Chloe put the pencil in her mouth, gazing up at him
thoughtfully while she ran the eraser back and forth over her bottom lip. Her
eyebrows dipped, as though she were trying to remember something.

“The professor of love always gets his way,” Nick
said. “It’s one of the perks of the position.”

She shrugged. “Okay, okay.” Clearing her throat,
she raised the notepad like a Shakespearean preparing for a soliloquy. “Oh,
darling!” Chloe intoned, flinging one arm wide. “I just can’t go on
without—”

Moe yowled and fled from beneath the coffee table. The drama
of the moment vanished along with Nick’s tip-of-the-tongue sensation. Whatever
he’d almost remembered, it was gone now.

“Never mind. Let’s start over.”

“Good idea.” Chloe ripped the letter they’d
drafted out of her notepad. She crumpled the paper with a flash of her
yellow-painted fingernails and added it to the wadded-up pyramid on the coffee
table. “I never call anyone darling, anyway. Except maybe you,
darling
,”
she added with a wink.

There it was again
. That niggling sense there was
something he ought to have remembered, something…awww, the hell with it, Nick
decided, setting his glasses straighter. It was probably just the strain of six
months’ worth of celibacy, finally getting to him. Ever since his heartbreak
over what’shername—
dammit, what was her name, anyway
?—he’d been spending
too much time taking care of Chloe to date.

And not enough time working on his inventions. He had to get
Chloe’s love life squared away, so he could quit worrying about her and get
down to business.

“Okay,” he said in his most dog-determined voice. “Here
goes. Dear Bruno—”

“Original opening.”

He made a face at her. “As you so succinctly put
it—har, har.”

She laughed in earnest and threw a pink-fringed pillow at
him. Nick ducked. In Chloe’s house, they weren’t called “throw pillows”
for nothing.

“Pick up your pencil,” he commanded, “and get
busy.”

Dutifully, she picked up her pencil again. And balanced it
on the bridge of her nose. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was trying
to distract him from finishing the Bruno letter.

“Very nice,” he deadpanned. “For a trained
seal. Come on, Chloe. It’s just a simple letter.”

The pencil rolled off. She caught it. “Yeah. With a
not-so-simple message.”

So that was it. “Well, we’ll make it simple then.”

Nick paced to the window, thinking. Outside, Danny and Larry
the Wonder Beagle played in the yard, tugging a battered blue Frisbee between
them. For the past few Saturdays, Chloe had invited Danny to her place for half
the day—ostensibly so his Uncle Nick could get some inventing done. Nick
suspected their time together was more of a “life with kids” preview
than anything else. Which was actually kind of endearing, when it came right
down to it.

Danny glanced up and waved. Nick waved back, then turned his
attention to the problem at hand. “A simple letter. Simple. Okay.”
Tapping his finger against his bottom lip, he said, “Dear Bruno. I’m
writing to tell you that you’re going to be a father. The baby is due around
Christmastime, and—”

“Maybe I ought to tell him to sit first? That might
come as kind of a shock.”

Her voice came from the wrong direction. He looked for Chloe
and found her, not on the sofa writing, but at the other end of the room, bent
over Curly’s hamster cage as she refilled his water container. She leaned a
little closer, and her short stretchy sky blue skirt rode up her thighs. Her
toned, shapely enough-to-drive-a-guy-crazy, half-naked thighs.
Thank God for
power walking
, Nick thought.