Kissing Under the Mistletoe (18 page)

“Christ, maybe you should. Then you wouldn’t be such a tight-ass all the time,” said Nate, the tight-ass of the family, getting up for seconds.

Gabe was the easygoing one of the brothers. A difficult task since he was also the oldest and had to deal with his family’s crap all the time. But he took a lot of pride in his ability to not let things rile him. This, though—invading a woman’s life and lying to her on the off-chance that she had some kind of information on Richard—got him fired up. And not in a good way.

“As far as I know, she has had no contact with Richard. And there is no way she is sitting on a pile of cash. The woman doesn’t have a damn bed for her kid.”

Gabe shoved Trey’s feet off the coffee table, went for another beer, and that’s when he realized that no one was speaking. They were all staring at him like he’d grown another head. He dumped his plate in the sink, wiped down the counter, and inhaled three fortune cookies. Still, no one said a word.

Gabe sank back into the couch. “She’s a single mom. I don’t even date single moms. And somehow I have managed to screw up this one’s life at every turn.”

“She slept with our sister’s husband,” Nate said quietly.

“So did half of the women in this valley,” Gabe said, feeling suddenly tired. “Why aren’t we hounding them?”

After Richard had disappeared, their investigator discovered that the bastard had conducted dozens of affairs. He loved them young, and he loved them often. But the only one he’d kept around for more than a few months was Regan. And now that Gabe had gotten to know her, he understood why. She wasn’t the kind of woman you got casual with and walked away. She got under your skin and stuck there.

“He lived with her for a year,” Trey said, as if Gabe didn’t already know. As if he hadn’t thought about that fact every time he saw her.

“And when he said he was going to Santa Barbara to make sure things were running smoothly, he went to Oregon instead. Three weeks later he and the money disappeared. He only made one call that day, Gabe. Only one. And it was to Regan,” Marc said, stating nothing new. “For all we know she helped him take the money.”

“What part of her kid sleeping on the floor didn’t you guys hear?”

Nate’s face turned serious. “Broke or not, those are the facts, Gabe.”

“Regan didn’t do it.” That much he knew. But arguing with his brothers about it didn’t feel right. Arguing with his family never felt right. It felt like a betrayal of his parents’ memory.

“You’re willing to bet Abby’s future on that?” Marc challenged. “Half the people in this town still wonder if Abby was covering for her husband. A husband who she doesn’t want and can’t divorce. The other half are taking bets on
how fast she’ll tank Ryo. She’s under enough pressure without running into Regan buying groceries or on her way to rehearsal for the musical.”

“You were the ones who said we should keep Regan here, not me.”

“Because you were supposed to be finding out what she knows,” Nate reminded him. If his brother was going for the guilt angle, it was working. Gabe had stuck himself between a woman and his family. What the hell kind of mess had he gotten into?

“Maybe I should step in,” Marc said. “She’s working at the hotel. I could use the boss-employee angle. We already know she has a thing for her bosses.”

Gabe glared at Marc out of the corner of his eye. It was a silent warning to shut his pie hole, but instead Marc kicked the footrest of the recliner down and leaned forward, his face going hard. “Maybe I’m a little young for her, though, seeing as she tends to have a thing for older guys.”

Gabe jumped to his feet, his fists curled as he towered over Marc. “Maybe you should shut the hell up.”

Marc stood, moving until they were chest to chest, shoving his kid-brother bullshit all up in Gabe’s face. Marc was five years younger, but he outweighed Gabe by a good twenty pounds and at least two inches. Had ever since he’d turned sixteen.

As a kid, Marc had been a handful. His act-first, think-about-it-later personality intensified after their parents died, landing him in trouble with school and with girls. By the time Marc had graduated and gone off to college, Gabe felt like a middle-aged father. By the time Trey had left the nest, Gabe was done being a parent.

Which was why when Marc said, “Maybe you should start thinking about Abby instead of thinking with your dick,” Gabe lost it.

He was done. Done being a parent. Done sacrificing everything on the chance that it could make his siblings’ lives run a little smoother.

“Maybe Abby needs to grow the fuck up and get over it. And maybe, just maybe, Regan was as much of a victim as our sister.” He grabbed the remote out of Marc’s hand, punched the off button, and threw it across the room. It hit the wall and shattered. “You know what? I’m tired of wasting my time trying to fix this mess.”

At that, all three of his brothers exchanged a look. Gabe didn’t need to be a genius to figure out its meaning. They thought he was in over his head. And they were right.

“You slept with her,” Marc accused.

“No. I did not.”

“But you want to.”

“What I want is to let this woman go on with her life. And for you guys to stay the hell out of my business.”

Already grabbing his keys, Gabe headed for the door. If this was what it felt like to have a sibling meddle in his life, he was cured. ChiChi was right—it was like being smothered.

“My house better be clean and you guys gone when I get home.”

By the time Gabe made it to Regan’s apartment his temper had cooled some, but his guilt had kicked up a few dozen notches. The last time he and his siblings had had a blowout like that was the Christmas when Richard proposed to Abby. Gabe had been the only one not adamantly opposed
to the union, and for three weeks leading up to the wedding, not one of his brothers had spoken to him.

“And look how that turned out, genius.”

He’d assumed that it was his brothers being overprotective as usual, but maybe they had sensed what he’d been too blind to see. That Richard had had an agenda from the start.

He flipped his seat forward and leaned into the back of the truck’s cab, pulling out several bags of ornaments and a box of tinfoil.

If he were smart, he would have gone to his office, cooled down while riffling through the piles of paperwork and endless e-mails that he’d been too busy following Regan to deal with, then called his brothers to apologize. But for the first time in a while, he didn’t want to do the smart thing and he didn’t want to babysit his siblings. He wanted to spend a nice evening making tissue-paper snowflakes and decorating a Christmas tree.

With his brother-in-law’s former mistress.

Crap!

Shoving the bag back in the car and telling himself that this was as stupid an idea as kissing Regan had been, Gabe got behind the wheel. He shouldn’t be here. And if she had wanted him there she wouldn’t have cut and run.

Turning the key in the ignition, he flicked on his headlights and everything inside him stilled as he watched a shadow dart across the parking lot and duck behind a shrub manicured to look like a giant wine bottle. Through the thick fog that had settled on the ground, he couldn’t see who was there or how big they were; all he knew was that they’d come from the general vicinity of Regan’s car and had something slung over their back. And it wasn’t a tote full of toys.

Reaching behind the seat, he blindly grabbed his ax and a Maglite. As he crept around the side of the building, he was acutely aware that no one was around and that Regan’s new place, although right off the main drag of town, was extremely isolated. Back pressed against the cold concrete wall, he glanced down at Regan’s car and noticed the trunk slightly ajar. Using his elbow, he cracked it open and peered inside. It was a disaster. Magazines, papers, flares, and CDs were scattered around. Her taillight was broken and the carpet had been ripped up.

He shifted back to the shrub he had seen the suspect disappear behind. Carefully, he made his way toward the giant wine bottle. Half of him hoped that the son of a bitch was there so that he could beat the crap out of him. The other half, the half that registered that he was a winemaker and not a PI, hoped the guy had fled. And yet a small part, a part he didn’t want to acknowledge, was afraid that maybe it was Richard. And if it was, then what did that mean?

He could hear heavy breathing coming from the other side of the shrub, followed by a rustling of leaves. One hand on the Maglite, Gabe took a deep breath and, wondering why in the hell he didn’t just call the cops, leaped out from behind the wine bottle, ax blazing.

“Don’t move!” he yelled.

He heard a shriek and branches snapping, then a bright red light began flashing, followed closely by a cheery little, “Merry Christmas to one and all.”

Dressed in black tennis shoes, black sweats, a black hoodie, and her hair pulled up in a messy knot on top of her head, Regan was stuck ass first in a shrub shaped like a
corkscrew, clinging to Randolph and muttering some very choice words under her breath.

“God, Regan.” He squatted in front of her. “Are you all right?”

“What in the hell are you doing?” she snapped. “And why are you holding a persimmon roll over your head?”

“Me?” He dropped his “ax” to the ground and shrugged. “Hostage negotiations. This in exchange for the deer.” He pulled the Eiffel Tower key ring out of his pocket and dangled it in front of her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He shot a look, just one, at Randolph. She snatched the key chain and shoved it in the pocket of her hoodie. “You’re trespassing and you should leave.”

He started carefully untangling Regan from the branches. “Says the woman hiding ass-backward in the bushes with America’s Most Wanted Deer in her clutches.”

Even though she was only lit by the moon and his flashlight, he could see her cheeks heat as she fiddled with the strings of her hoodie. “I think I’m cursed.”

“Cursed?” He laughed. She didn’t. She was serious.

Setting Randolph on the concrete, he eased her out of the bush. She dusted herself off, and since the majority of the debris was on that sweet backside of hers, he helped with that too. When she realized he was doing more touching that dusting, she batted his hands away.

“Don’t laugh.” She paused dramatically, lowering her voice when she continued. “But I think I did something to piss off the Ghost of Christmas Past or something.”

“Like obliterating the town Christmas display?”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” He reached out and rested his hands on her hips. He couldn’t help it. Whenever he was around Regan he had to touch her. Based on the way she shimmied closer, running her hands up his chest, she suffered from the same affliction.

“I swear, Gabe, I have tried five times to return this damn reindeer. Every time, someone shows up. Or there is a vigil going on. Or your grandmother calls me.”

“Merry Christmas to one and all,” the deer said.

Regan just stared at Gabe as if that was solid proof of a curse.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?” He ran his hands up her sides, loving how her breasts pressed tightly against the snug black top she wore. He continued heading north, pulling her shirt as he went, exposing that little patch of skin above her belly button.

“No,” she said, her eyes going heavy when he paused to remove a branch that was stuck to her sweats before pushing her shirt high enough to display a very pretty yellow bra—and not much else. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t have any more branches stuck to you.”

“Under my shirt? I landed ass-backward, remember?”

“We’ll get there.” Nudging the hoodie over her head, he pressed his mouth to the curve of her neck. Slowly made his way down her collarbone.

“We can’t.” She dropped her head back, giving him room to work. “We have a problem”—she gasped when he ran his tongue over the swell of her breast—“upstairs.”

“I guarantee you”—he took her hand and placed it over the bulge in his pants—“that we have a much bigger problem downstairs.”

“I told Holly I’d be back in five minutes. I let her watch
Miracle on 34th Street
on my laptop to keep her busy, but I don’t like to leave her alone.”

“I can deal with five minutes.” He kissed her long and hard, taking his sweet time. He wasn’t about to be rushed. Not now. Not when she was moaning into his mouth and had her fingers sliding over where he needed them most.

They couldn’t have sex in five minutes, he thought, as his hand glided over her stomach to toy with the elastic on her sweats, but they could definitely round third.

“Five minutes ended five minutes ago,” she whispered against his mouth, still tracing the outline of his erection through the denim. If she kept that up, they both might walk away feeling a whole hell of a lot more relaxed.

“Then we’d better get up there.” He kissed her again, one hand coming up to cup her breasts. He could feel her nipple stiffen beneath her bra and had dipped his thumb inside to pull the lace aside when a bright light blinded them.

He blinked into the headlights, trying to make out who was driving the car, and then saw spinning hubcaps, a D
ELUCA
1 license plate, and groaned.

“Shit, you really are cursed.”