Together for Christmas (26 page)

Then he stood. He held out his hand to her. “Coming?”

She was dying to make a joke of that—to unleash the most salacious double entendre of all time and defuse the tension that suddenly existed between them. Because Casey’s overt interest in being with her was making her knees feel like jelly and her heart feel like it wanted to jump out of her chest and her breath feel stuck in her throat. Heat leaped from his gaze to hers. Need and desire swept between them. And just when Kristen thought she might still be able to connect with her more noble Christmas impulses . . . Casey
smiled
at her, and she was lost.

He knew precisely the moment when she surrendered, too.

“We can be at The Christmas House B&B in twenty minutes,” he reminded her, his voice husky and intent in the quiet room.

He waggled his fingers, urging her to her feet. Helpless to resist any longer, Kristen rose. She took his hand.

She nodded. But since she was still her—a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to say so—she also smiled.

“We can be at my place in ten,” she said. “If we hurry.”

Casey knew exactly how valuable shaving off ten minutes’ driving time could be. His cocksure grin told her so. “Then I think I’m about to set a Subaru land-speed record,” he said.

And just like that, they were on their way. But not before Kristen scooped up Casey’s first-ever paper snowflake—the one he had proudly shown her and had nearly brought her to tears with. Surreptitiously, she slid that paper snowflake into her purse for safekeeping, then she patted it in place with a smile.

Someday Casey might want it, she figured.

Once they were both thinking straight again, they might want something to remember this night by . . . just in case the love and lovemaking and—oh yeah—
love
(if they were lucky) weren’t enough to spark up the proper nostalgia all on their own.

Then Kristen caught another look at Casey’s intent face as he pulled her toward the senior center’s coatroom, and she felt the sizzle that started at their joined hands and whipped all the way through her body, and she understood the truth.

There was no way either of them was forgetting this night. No matter what. Because this
was
more than a casual encounter between them, and Kristen was about to discover exactly what experiencing more (more, more,
more!
) with Casey really felt like.

Chapter 16

MOUNTEBANK (MOUN-tuh-bangk)
noun
: an unscrupulous pretender

Lagniappe at the Lakeshore B&B
December 8

Curled up on her suite’s plush king-size bed, wearing cozy flannel pajama pants and watching a cheesy pay-per-view holiday movie while munching through a bowl of popcorn, Heather Miller caught an unexpected glimpse of herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. What she saw nearly made her heart stop.

It was
her,
the pop diva superstar of the moment, as no one had ever seen her before. Along with her pajama pants, she was dressed in sweat socks and a saggy old T-shirt from her beginning showbiz days on the Disney Channel. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in a haphazard ponytail-bun hybrid—not a cute, stylishly disheveled ponytail-bun hybrid, either, like you might see in
Vogue
with some sequins and a full face of make-up. No, this was full-on sloppy, unwashed, not-fit-for-Pilates-class hair, with a skunky streak of roots where blond hair should have been. Her face was bare. She might have been developing a zit on her chin. And her cheeks bulged with the latest handful of her high-carb (
all
carb?),
non
-detoxing, salty, bloat-inducing popcorn.

This
was her? Slovenly and zit-faced with a bad dye job?

Gripped by shock and nausea, Heather tried to stop and think things through. After all, thanks to Alex’s influence, that was what she did these days—stop and think things through before reacting. So she deliberately swerved her appalled gaze away from the mirror, tried to calm her hammering heart, then looked at the bowl of popcorn in her lap. Objectively.

This wasn’t just popcorn, Heather tried to tell herself. It was a singular room-service delicacy prepared especially for her by the chef at Lagniappe at the Lakeshore. It sported imported Piedmont truffle oil
and
fancy fleur de sel de Guérande. It came in a silver bowl lined with a designer napkin and accompanied by another designer napkin, both linens printed in a cheerful holiday pattern. This popcorn was supposed to lift her spirits, because being quarantined with chicken pox was boooring, and there were only so many pies in a jar one person could eat before going crazy and beginning to crave
other
foods in a jar.

Macaroni and cheese in a jar,
she’d raved to Alex in a fever of inspiration.
Meat loaf in a jar. Prime rib in a jar!

He
hadn’t
thought her ideas were as brilliant as Heather had. Even though she’d already texted several of those brainstorms to Kristen (because her sister was obviously missing the boat at the Galaxy Diner), Alex hadn’t been impressed. He’d only hugged Heather, then told her that her idea for various foods in a jar already existed (“it’s called baby food”). After that, he’d brought her more calamine lotion and tucked her in so she could get some more (apparently much-needed) sleep.

It had really been very thoughtful of him. If Alex hadn’t been dotted with pink calamine lotion himself at that moment, she might have been tempted to take things to the next level between them. That would have been fun. Really, really fun . . .

Back to the popcorn,
Heather commanded herself.
Focus
.

The popcorn. Hmm. It was . . . cottony. Roundish. Cold (now). Stuck for another objective observation, Heather hesitated. For inspiration, she inhaled the popcorn’s delicious salty/truffley aroma. She looked at its fluffy kernels. She ate more of it.

Strictly
as research, of course. But that didn’t help. None of this helped. Popcorn was the enemy, and Heather had been (literally) in bed with the enemy. She had to stop this somehow.

Setting aside her fancy popcorn bowl with a clatter, Heather scrambled upright. Salt sprinkled off her pajama pants and fell onto the deluxe, gazillion-thread-count, five-star comforter, but she barely noticed. All she could see in that mirror, now and maybe forever, was her own pale, unmade-up face, her own ballooning belly, and her own (ugh) gullibility.

People thought Heather Miller was dumb. She’d just proved them right. She’d let down her guard, and look what happened!

All her hard work to remain performance-ready had gone down the tubes. In a matter of days. If people could see her now . . .

Taking in the usual array of tabloids and glossy weekly magazines spread across the coffee table and the floor and the end table and the foyer table (geez, maybe she had a problem!), Heather couldn’t help wishing she really
was
pregnant, like they were still claiming. That would be preferable to sporting a supersize popcorn-baby like the one she had now. That would be . . .

Nice
. Wistfully, Heather considered it. A baby would be
really
nice. She was nurturing. Alex was wonderful. The two of them could start a little family together. They could be happy.

Except they couldn’t. Not while she looked like this!

She’d actually believed that Alex—who was only there in the first place because he’d been quarantined with Heather by force in her suite at the Midwest’s most luxuriously rustic lakeside B&B—would want to stay here with her after she was well again. But that wasn’t going to happen. Because Alex had seen her, Heather realized with a powerful sense of foreboding, like
this
.

Unadorned. Unprotected. Unlovely.

Vulnerable.

Panicked, Heather leaped to her feet. But there was no place she could go. The worst of her chicken pox had cleared up. She was no longer itchy. But she wasn’t seeing the doctor again until tomorrow, and until she received a green light from him . . .

Well, until then,
Alex
would be nearby to see her, 24/7.

Maybe, she thought in a dither, Alex had been
hoping
to see her like this. Maybe he’d been photographing her while she slept—all drooling and spotted—or videotaping her while she pounded popcorn by the fistful. It could happen. God knew, she’d had boyfriends who’d turned pretty devious the minute they got her alone with a recording device in their hands.

That stupid sex tape, for instance, still haunted her.

Heather had never wanted to make it at all. She’d thought she’d sneaked over to the video camera and slyly switched it off before all the action had started. But she’d never been very skilled with technology (her parents often joked that Kristen had inherited all the “tech savvy” in the family—along with an unfair share of “the smarts”). So all Heather had accomplished by fiddling with the video camera was capturing herself in an even
more
unflattering and embarrassing angle.

For the whole entire video-streaming world to see.

Mortified all over again at the memory, Heather paced across her hotel suite. From the bathroom came the sounds of Alex showering. But where once it had given her a cozy feeling to be sharing the mundane details of life with her crazy-for-him crush, now Heather saw the true danger she’d put herself in.

Because Alex could hurt her, too. Just like her other so-called boyfriends had in the past. Alex could take advantage of her vulnerability. He could photograph her or video her or spill his guts to the “news journalists” about his relationship with her.
Alex could betray her
. Heather didn’t need a Word of the Day calendar to realize that. He could hurt her. A lot.

For all she knew, Heather thought crazily, Alex didn’t even have the chicken pox! She hadn’t technically seen any spots on him that
hadn’t
been covered with opaque pink calamine lotion. Even those could have been faked. Especially if he was working in cahoots with one of the make-up artists. Heather knew darn well what those people could achieve. With a few brushes and some concealer and blush, they could work miracles! They could probably create authentic-looking chicken pox spots, too.

She should have scrutinized Alex more closely, Heather realized too late. For her own protection. But she wasn’t a devious person by nature. She was pretty trusting most of the time. Besides, she hadn’t had a chance to get
that
close to Alex. Not physically. Because although she’d wanted to get naked with him (and he with her), they’d both felt too feverish and unwell to start getting seriously frisky with one another.

They’d shared a few very sweet kisses, sure. They’d done a little over-the-pajama pants, under-the-mangy-T-shirt cuddling, yes. But they’d been waiting for the go-ahead, all-clear sign from the doctor before indulging in the anticipated main event.

Alex had said he wanted their first time together to be memorable. He’d said he wanted it to be
non
fevered and during a time when they wouldn’t have to stop to scratch. At the time, Heather had thought that was very sweet of him. But now . . .

Now she wasn’t so sure she could believe him. In fact, Heather assured herself, she
didn’t
believe him. Narrowing her eyes, she marched to her suite’s peninsula, where Alex had left his watch and keys and cell phone. With her heart pounding, she picked up his cell phone. Stealthily, she keyed through the menus. She pulled up his photos. She peered at the first one.

It was a hideously unflattering candid shot of
her
.

So was the next photo. And the next. And the next!

Every last photo formed a horrifying collage of career-killing unattractiveness. Taken together, they were all the proof Heather needed to know that Alex really
did
have ulterior motives. She saw herself, wan and speckled, weeping over
It’s a Wonderful Life.
She saw herself, greasy-haired and shabbily dressed, guffawing over
A Christmas Story
. She saw bad angles, awful lighting, weird poses, and bizarre expressions. She saw red-eye, zits, and how manic she looked like when pursuing a reluctant “patient” (Alex) with pain reliever and Evian water, playing nurse to someone she cared about. Under other circumstances, Heather would have had these photos incinerated.

There could be only one reason Alex had them, she knew—one reason he’d taken those photos, one after another, all while assuring her his cell phone was “off” and he was only joking around to cheer her up.

Alex planned to sell her out, Heather realized with dawning horror. And
she’d
bought in! He planned to turn a fast buck, even if she got hurt in the process.

But Heather hadn’t even come to terms with that before the usually beloved sound of Alex’s voice interrupted her spying.

“Hey! What’s up, hot stuff?” he asked cheerfully.

Heather almost jumped a foot. Sneakily, she hid Alex’s cell phone behind her voluminous pajama pants, then turned to him.

Uh-oh. At the unexpected sight that greeted her, Heather almost lost her burgeoning sense of outrage. Because Alex, lingering in the bathroom doorway, was dressed only in a towel and his own water-beaded skin, and he looked
great
. Really great. Until tonight, he’d gotten dressed before coming out of the bathroom. Ordinarily, Heather would have taken his newfound comfort level as a positive sign that they were becoming closer.

But now, in the wake of her newly awakened suspicions, she only felt . . . even more suspicious.

“Hi!” She gave him a stiff-feeling hello wave with her non-cell-phone-holding hand, wishing she’d tried harder at the acting lessons the network had insisted on. “You, uh, usually don’t run around nearly naked.”

“Yeah.” Alex gestured sheepishly at himself. “You’d think I was a little self-conscious about my chicken pox spots, huh?”