The Wedding Planner's Christmas Wish, page 11
For one brief moment in time, he was just a man. Primitive. Wanting what she offered. No, more. Needing.
His world became only sensation. Only him. And only her. The rest of the world at bay, outside this white-hot circle they had created.
She took his hand and gently guided it to the end of that cascading wave of hair, to her breast beneath it. The white-hot heat intensified. An inferno that could consume them both.
He could feel the beat of her heart and the whisper of her breath. He looked into the soft suede brown of her eyes and saw the tender, fierce invitation there.
But then, something penetrated it all. A whisper. A reminder he did not have the luxury—not anymore—of living solely for himself.
He did not have the luxury of wildly pursuing pleasure.
There was a responsibility that outweighed all other considerations. What was best for his little girl?
What did being a daddy require of him? Decency. Honor.
He moved back from Alexandra. He broke the contact between them. It felt like just about the hardest thing he had ever done, especially when she looked at him, her expression dazed, confused, hurt.
This raw passion, this need, felt so right, but it was wrong. It was wrong for her, this woman who had grown up with cottages and Christmas trees, and it was wrong for Genevieve.
This was not what he wanted to teach his daughter about life.
This was not what he wanted her to accept from a man one day. Passion without commitment.
He pulled completely away from Alexandra. He could see he had wounded her. He could see she read it as rejection.
“We can’t,” he said. “Not like this. Alexandra, we barely know each other.”
That felt, weirdly, like a lie. He felt as if he knew Alexandra to the core. As if he knew her heart and her soul. He didn’t feel as if he had met her weeks ago, but a lifetime ago. Or maybe even several lifetimes ago, if a person believed in that sort of thing.
She ran a hand through the gorgeous mess of her hair. Her lips were swollen. Her eyes were wide, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a tiny diamond of a tear was forming in the corner of one of them.
She looked utterly crushed. This was the danger of not closing doors completely. It could crush her more to follow these threads of desire. It could crush them both.
“We have to slow it down,” he said. His voice was ragged with thwarted desire.
But he could not close the door, not completely. He wanted what he had felt when he kissed her. He wanted to feel alive. She did, too. Both of them had been damped down by the burdens they carried for way too long.
Of course there was risk. He knew there was risk. She knew there was risk. You could not get through life without risk.
He threw her the lifeline, the very same way she had thrown it to him.
“You’re right, of course,” she said, looking deeply embarrassed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. As you said, we barely know each other.”
“But we can change that,” he said softly. It felt like the biggest chance he had ever taken, the most dangerous risk. And the most glorious. “Let’s get to know each other.”
Her eyes flew to his face, searching.
“Yes, of course,” she said, and she moved away from him, shoved her hair out of her face, made a move like she was going to get up.
He wanted to do the honorable thing. But he couldn’t quite let go of her, either. He caught her hand and pulled her back to him. He guided her head back onto his chest.
His hand went to the back of her head, as if he could pull her in even closer to his heart. He felt her hair, stroked it, and a finely held tension dissolved slowly in her as her muscles relaxed against him. Her breath grew deep and formed a pool of warmth on his chest.
He knew if he went to sleep like this, he was going to wake up with a sore neck in the morning.
Somehow, it didn’t matter. He could not bring himself to move out from under the sweet weight of her.
His eyes closed and he slept the deep, untroubled sleep of a man who knew he might be flawed, and he might make mistakes as a dad every single day, but in the end he had the most important quality of all. He could be trusted to do the right thing.
* * *
Alexandra startled awake to a vibration right in her ear. She had been fast asleep on Drew’s chest and realized it must be a phone going off in his shirt pocket. And if she was not mistaken, that was a little pool of drool next to said shirt pocket.
As if she didn’t have enough to be embarrassed about! She’d lost control last night. Completely. Had she actually taken his hand and... She went crimson just thinking about it.
He’s the one who had stopped it. With some variation of We should just be friends. Really, it was too embarrassing for words. She should just creep off and lock herself in the bathroom until he was gone.
On the other hand, he was still here. Did that mean something?
He was stirring, and it was too late to make her escape, so she sat up, and with all the dignity she could manage she ran her hand through her hair and acted as if everything was completely fine. It would have been easier if the motion didn’t make her think of his hands in it, unweaving the braid.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him come to life, disoriented, slapping at his shirt as if the buzzing was coming from a bothersome bee.
His hair, always so tidy, was sticking straight up. His whiskers had darkened around his face.
She wanted to touch both. Which wasn’t, apparently, within the parameters of We have to slow down and Let’s get to know each other, which, in the watery light of a new day, she read to mean Drew Parker wanted a platonic relationship, even if he had stayed the night.
With her slobbering away on his chest.
He’d found the phone and scowled at it. “I don’t know this number. Damnably early for telemarketers.”
Alexandra glanced at his phone. “It’s Shelley.”
He answered quickly.
“Daddy?” Alexandra could hear Genevieve’s voice, excited and happy, no worse the wear for her night away from her dad.
“Good morning, sweetheart.”
Did he have to say it like that? As if a light had come on in his world? Alexandra was trying to maintain some of her composure, keep her distance from him. It was much harder to do when witnessing that tenderness for his daughter in his tone.
He laughed. “No, it’s not Christmas, it’s the day after Halloween.”
This was followed by a stream of chatter that Alexandra couldn’t make out. Drew shot her a look and put the phone against his chest. “It seems I’m getting an early start on Christmas fails this year.”
He put the phone back up to his ear. “Okay, okay,” he finally said, exasperated. “It’s Christmas. What do you mean, go look?”
He lifted a shoulder at Alexandra. “She says we have to go look out the window. That it’s Christmas.”
She loved that he was indulging Genevieve. She loved the little girl’s insistent belief. She loved that they both got up and went to the window, where the shades were still drawn tight.
“Are you ready?” Alexandra said, fingers on the cord of the blind. Such was the power of Genevieve’s belief that Alexandra half expected to see a sleigh and reindeer outside her window.
As she rolled up the shade, her mouth fell open. At some point, last night’s rain had turned to snow. The world had turned into a magical place, sparkling, clean, brand-new. She felt Drew looking at her.
She was aware her hair was wavy from the braid and terribly tangled. Her sweater was lumpy. There was a slobber spot on his shirt, and no doubt the pattern of that shirt was imprinted on her cheek. So the look on his face—the look of wonder—had to be because of the snow.
Not because he had woken up beside a woman he wanted to slow things down with.
“It’s snowman weather,” Alexandra said to keep herself from blurting that he was the most handsome man she had ever woken up beside. Of course, that would be an exclusive club of two, one of those being her ex-husband.
Drew was still holding the phone, and Genevieve heard her. She didn’t ask why her daddy was with Alexandra, or even seem surprised by it. Her sigh came over the phone.
“That’s exactly what I thought,” his daughter said dreamily. “Can we build a snowman today?”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll be over to get you soon.” He disconnected, and his gaze settled on Alexandra. “You’ll come, won’t you? You probably know a lot more about snowmen than I do.”
“It’s hardly rocket science,” she said, a touch grouchily. She’d only been invited to join them because she might be an expert on something as nonthreatening as building a snowman. It was the type of activity you invited the person you’d relegated as your platonic friend to do with you.
She suddenly felt ashamed of herself as a light bulb went on inside her. The reason for his rejection was obvious to her—Drew Parker still loved his wife.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DREW PARKER STILL loved his wife, and he wasn’t ready to move on. Alexandra told herself that wasn’t something to take personally. If anything, his ability to love so deeply was admirable.
When had she become this person, who could look at a single dad, in hopelessly over his head—he already thought he was failing at Christmas—and his adorable little daughter, and say, If there’s nothing in it for me, if you can’t love me the way I can love you, forget it?
Love?
Where had that thought come from? She didn’t love him. He was absolutely right. They hadn’t known each other long enough for that.
So, she lusted after him.
There it was. The truth—as ugly as a bad Christmas sweater—that he had managed, ever so sensibly, to head off at the pass last night.
If anyone should know what a bad road lust was to follow, it should be her. She needed to be a better person than she had ever been before. She vowed to be. She sucked in her breath. She drew back her shoulders.
She looked at the green of his eyes, and the muss of his hair, and the stubble on his chin. She remembered his breath stirring her hair and his lips laying claim to her.
“I’ve got a very busy day,” she said. What had happened to her vow to be a better person? Life had a way of testing vows.
And then it tested them yet further.
He lifted a shoulder, letting her know whatever worked for her was okay. “Do you mind if I use your shower?”
“No, of course not.”
But then when she went into the shower, still steamy from him, it was as if wisps of him were in there with her. His scent, his masculinity—his nudity in this very space just moments ago—floating around her, teasing her, taunting her, tormenting her.
There was no sense trying to look gorgeous for a man who just wanted a platonic relationship, but still, she put on makeup. She blow-dried and curled her hair. She was way too careful in her selection of a creamy angora sweater, flattering narrow-legged pants.
It was good that he’d set a limit, Alexandra thought as she looked at herself in the mirror, her dark hair spilling over her shoulder in sweet contrast to the lightness of the sweater. She recognized that now. But she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t want Drew Parker to regret it.
A few minutes later, Alexandra took a deep breath as she went up Shaun and Shelley’s front step. Drew’s hair was still wet from the shower, and he was wearing the same padded plaid jacket he’d been wearing last night.
Her brother and sister-in-law were going to draw inevitable conclusions.
She knocked at the door and went in without waiting for someone to answer it, as was their custom at each other’s houses.
Genevieve, in a pair of borrowed pajamas, rocketed across the room, and Drew scooped her up.
“I had the best time ever,” she squealed.
Alexandra did not miss the slightly pained look on Drew’s face at that announcement. He was a man who had, quite literally, gone to the ends of the earth to give his daughter the best time ever. And somehow, she’d had it without him.
Shaun padded out of the kitchen, munching on a piece of toast. He was eyeing Drew with way too avid interest.
“It’s not what you think,” Alexandra whispered at him in an undertone.
He raised an eyebrow at her and made absolutely no attempt to follow her lead and keep a confidential tone of voice.
“I’ll always be your big brother, but honestly, Alex, you’re thirty-one years old.”
She glanced at Drew and blushed. Good grief. Her brother wanted her to have an affair. He’d probably be as disappointed as she was if he knew about the very platonic nature of her evening.
But then she realized, that’s not what Shaun wanted. Not at all.
He wanted her happiness.
He wanted it in the same way, she realized, she wanted it for Genevieve and Drew. And for the first time in a long time, for herself, too.
Could her happiness be intertwined with theirs? Even if she had the hots for Drew and he did not seem to return the sentiment? What if, for once in her life, she just took a chance?
She did something she hadn’t done, not even once, since she had started her business. She fished her cell phone out of her bag and called the office.
“I won’t be in today,” she said. She waited for the protests, the questions, the need, and felt irritated when it didn’t come.
“Did you just take the day off work?” Drew asked, smiling. In that smile, already it felt as if her gamble with happiness was paying off.
“Yes,” she said.
“To build a snowman?”
“Yes. This kind of snow has a way of disappearing fast.” There. That should show him. It was about the snow.
“Then why are you glaring at your phone like that?” Drew asked.
“Quite insultingly, no one seems to think the world of weddings is going to fall apart if I take the day off.”
“I guess Miss Carmichael can have the day off, too,” Drew said, and then he laughed. “And me.”
Happiness gathered in the air and fell toward them, like fairy dust.
* * *
An hour later, after going back to her house to retrieve snow clothes, Alexandra stood inside the door of Drew’s private quarters, trying not to gawk like a peasant granted entrance to the palace.
He had been right last night when he had confided in her that he had never quite achieved the ambience of home in his space.
It was beautiful, no question, with its gorgeous interiors: soaring ceilings and huge arched windows that looked toward the park. The decor echoed what she had seen in the public spaces of Parker and Parker. It was opulent, with knotted silk rugs, expensive paintings and exquisite furniture. But, even with the odd toy on the floor, it seemed more like a movie set—where the script read, extremely wealthy person’s house—than a real home, where people laughed and played and spilled juice on the couch.
“Come help me with my snowsuit,” Genevieve insisted, tugging on her hand.
“Yes,” Drew said, “you go help her. I’ll see what I can dig up for snowman accessories.”
Genevieve’s room was truly lovely: a princess room with a canopied bed and hand-painted bunnies on the walls.
Alexandra remembered Drew saying his aunt had disapproved of nonsense in general, and bunnies in particular, and so she loved it that he had given his little girl a room filled with whimsy.
The snowsuit was tucked into a large closet, and Alexandra helped stuff Genevieve into it. She had helped with snowsuits dozens of times with her nieces and nephews, but she was not sure she had ever quite felt like this before.
She had a tenderness for the motherless little girl that made her heart feel as if it was swelling unreasonably.
They met Drew in the hallway. He had found mittens and hats and scarves, both for the snowman and him and Genevieve.
He looked utterly dashing, with a woolen hat pulled on and a scarf wrapped around his throat, like the star of a Christmas movie, or the model for the front cover of a romance novel.
Alexandra didn’t think she looked quite as appealing in her padded jacket and bulky snow pants she’d pulled over the pants she had selected so carefully this morning. She might as well not have bothered finding an attractive outfit. Unlike Drew—poster boy for winter fun—she looked ungainly.
“I look like the fat little baker on bread bags,” she said.
Genevieve and Drew both eyed her appraisingly. “More like the tire man,” Genevieve decided, and Drew’s laughter was almost worth sacrificing a sexy look for.
“You have the best front yard in all of New York,” Alexandra told Drew once they were in the snow-covered park. Parker and Parker soared behind them, regal, as picturesque as a winter-bound castle in a fairy tale.
“I want a big snowman, Daddy.”
“Here,” he said, “let me show you how to start it. You make a little ball like this, and then you set it on the ground and roll it.”
Just as Alexandra had suspected this morning, the snow was perfect for building snowmen, sticky and wet. Genevieve was soon totally engrossed in the pure magic of creating the snowball. It quickly gained size, leaving a trail of bare ground behind it.
Alexandra and Drew both started their own, but soon the balls were too heavy for one person to move and they had to be on the same team. They joined Genevieve. She had given up and was resting her back against her snowball, eating snow off her mitten.
With Genevieve between Alexandra and Drew, at first they were able to roll it with their hands, but it got even larger and they put their shoulders to it. They grunted. Laughed. Slipped. Fell. And then pushed some more.
Finally, they were all satisfied with the first ball of the snowman. They joined together on the ball Alexandra had started and pushed it.
