Good Enough to Share (Good Enough, Book 1 - Christmas) (3 page)

“He is
abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous isn’t he?” Sophie had her hand on my knee and was
leaning so far forward that one more inch and she’d be off her barstool and in
my lap. The wistful sigh told a story all of its own. “So, cough up, I’ve known
him since primary school, but where exactly did you bump into him?”

I matched her eye
for eye. I had told her, but Sophie didn’t always listen, she was usually off
on a tangent dreaming up her next escapade. “In here, and then it turned out he
was the farrier on the yard.” She was giving me a slightly blank look. “You
know, farrier? He shoes my horse?”

“Ah yes, I forgot
he did that.” It was my turn for the blank look, what else did a farrier do?
Duh.

“He used to just
do ironwork for his dad at the forge, I forgot he’d branched out. We never
really talked about work.” She grinned and rested her chin in her hand. “So why
haven’t you snaffled him yet?”

“Well, I can tell
you have.” She didn’t take offence, just grinned.

“Well, you can’t
blame me, Dane was the hottest guy at school and he’s still pretty good to look
at. Pity…”

“Pity what?” My voice
came out sharp even to my own ears.

“Nothing.” She
shrugged, but I could tell there was something. “Just a pity he went a bit
weird after Sally.”

“Sally?” Shit,
don’t you hate it when you’re the only one in town who doesn’t know what anyone
is talking about?

“Oh, just some
girl he went off with, she had her claws deep into him that one, and then they
split and he just…”

“Went weird?”

“Well, he kind of
stopped dating as much, he flirts and everything but he’s a bit of a one date
guy.”

“And you wanted two?”

“Oh shit, no.” She
giggled. “I had him first, way before long, tall Sal. I like him just the way
he is as a laugh, but he just seems a bit, I dunno, antsy.” She drained her
glass and plonked it heavily on the bar. “Ideal for you right now, a good no strings
attached, no expectations shag.”

I sighed.
“Sophie.” Whatever Sophie wanted she went out and got, which was one of the
fundamental differences between us. Going out and getting what I wanted at work
was easy, but men were different. And even worse after James. “I don’t want—”

“You bloody do!”
She had a slightly calculating look in her eye. “You really want him, don’t
you?”

“It is possible to
look and not touch.” I tried to be huffy and failed.

“Oh, I don’t think
so. And he’s nice, and he likes you.”

I laughed,
slightly nervously because something told me that she actually meant it. “We’re
mates with a bit of meaningless flirting thrown in.”

“Flirting is never
meaningless, girl.”

I guess my problem
is that meaningless doesn’t come naturally. All my relationships have been of
the true love and eternal happiness type, not the kiss them quick and shag them
quicker type. Well, at least they had seemed that way at the time.

“Your problem—”
Here we go. “—is that you take it all too seriously. Look hun, don’t even think
about that bastard ex-husband.” Hard to forget. “Even Robin Hood, bless his
heart, probably had more than one Maid Marion.” She sat up straight and reached
for the fast-emptying wine bottle.

I wasn’t quite
sure where Robin Hood came into all of this, maybe it was being dressed in
green that had confused her. But yeah, I got the gist. I really did. It was
just that James had struck at something so deep inside me, at what I believed
in. I’d never thought of playing at relationships, I’d done them properly like
I did everything.

“More than one
Maid Marion and several merry men, I imagine.” I don’t think the man had found
a boundary yet, the only fly in the ointment had been me.

She giggled, but
it was a throaty, sexy giggle not the type of girly nervous one I normally did.
“You don’t have to be top of the class at this, Holly. Just have fun. Try it,
for me? And I can tell you for nothing that Dane is up for lots of fun.” If I
didn’t know her better I could swear there was a blush in the making just at
the point where her tunic didn’t meet in the middle. “Christmas is for sharing,
remember?”

I glanced up,
straight into the stormy eyes that were watching us from the other end of the
bar. I did want him, which was why I kept bumping into him in this bar, why I
watched his every move when he was shoeing the horses, why it felt right when
he was in my personal space. He half-smiled—just a hint of a lift at one corner
of that beautiful mouth and it was the sexiest thing I had ever seen.

“So, are you doing
the gentlemanly thing then?” Whatever faults Sophie had, prevarication wasn’t
one of them.

Dane smiled
good-naturedly. “Anything for you.” And he gave my waist a friendly squeeze
which squashed the pips right out of that gooseberry feeling.

I guess normally
there is no way I would have walked out of a bar with Dane sandwiched between
me and Sophie, I would have just left her to it. But this wasn’t normal. This
was
I’m dressed like some weird busty elf and I’ve just shared a bottle of
wine with a man eating elf who has insisted on a festive season of sharing.
Which
put a slightly different slant on things, and despite my no getting involved
with anyone-who-has-a-penis rule, I liked Dane. A lot. And I’d already broken
the rule by moving with Charlie hadn’t I, even if it was on a strictly mates
basis?

As Sophie’s place
was on the edge of town and up the type of hill that was lethal after a drink
or two, and mine, sorry Charlie’s, apartment was very much in the centre of
things she was staying over, so that’s where we headed. All the time me hoping
that I wasn’t spotted a) in this ridiculous revealing outfit, and b) as the
bread part of a Dane sandwich.

“Here.” Soph
pushed open the door with one hand, with the kind of familiarity which made me
sure she’d stayed over at Charlie’s more than a time or two, and grabbed Dane’s
shirt with the other. “Come and share a late night pizza, you’re hungry.”

“No wonder I keep
away from you.” She raised an enquiring eyebrow and pushed the door shut so
that he couldn’t change his mind. “You’re so bloody bossy.” Not that he seemed
to mind.

“I’m just a woman
who knows her mind, you complaining?”

He grinned and
settled down on the sofa looking completely relaxed and at home. “I wouldn’t
dare.” And the confident way he said it spelled him out very much as the type
of man who would if the urge took him. He winked in my direction and the
cluster of butterflies in the base of my stomach started chasing each other
round a bit faster.

Sophie laughed and
headed across the open plan space to the kitchen area, clattering about with
beer and glasses as though she owned the place. She was singing something that
sounded suspiciously like ‘Santa Baby’, with a few modifications of her own,
which was good because I could concentrate on that rather than the fact that
the most gorgeous man I’d seen for a long time was sprawled out in front of me
sporting the type of inviting smile a nun would find hard to resist.

His strong capable
hand patted the seat next to him and I hesitated. Touchy feely in the bar, in
public, was one thing, having a flirt on the yard surrounded by horses was fine
too. But here?

 “I promise I
won’t bite, not like that bloody moody mare of yours.”

Which made me
laugh and cringe at the same time. He’d been on the teeth end of my horse more
than once, which I suppose was better than a sharp kick, but left a good mark.
“I’ll show you the bruises later.” He’d read my mind which made the little knot
of nerves in my stomach tighten into something a bit harder to untangle. “Me
and Sophie were just a quick fling many years ago.” His voice had softened and
I let a little inward sigh escape and kicked off my shoes, like I always did
when I got home, and plopped next to him on the sofa. Yeah, home. This was like
a home to me because even though I’d been planning on renting my own place, I’d
been here four months and just hadn’t found anywhere. All the flats I’d seen
just seemed like places to eat and sleep. Sophie would say they had no heart,
no trace of me. And she was right in a way, but I think in my heart I just
wasn’t ready to settle—I didn’t know what I wanted, I hadn’t yet decided what
was me. I was in a kind of limbo, most things just seemed to be temporary at
the moment.

But Charlie’s
place was different, this place was heart and soul and it was hard not to relax
here, everything was slightly battered at the edges. Comfortable. And there
were scattered piles of magazines, books and bits of him everywhere. He had
achieved the impossible – turned a very smart minimalist town centre pad into a
cosy lived in bolt hole in a record amount of time. It wasn’t exactly messy,
just a reflection of wraparound Charlie and I think I was using him as a
comfort blanket.

“Less of the many,
buster.” Sophie was back, leaning over the back of the sofa and offering Dane a
bottle of beer. She brushed one finger tip along the back of his neck so that
he hunched his shoulders and tipped his head back so he could look her in the
eye.

“Big ears.” It was
hard to work out exactly what their relationship was. I could imagine her
looking out for him, like she did with everyone. Sophie collected people like a
lepidopterist collected butterflies, and she looked after them just as
carefully. Minus the pins of course. But the pair of them were flirty enough to
make me think that whatever they’d had hadn’t ever quite been closed off, and
matey enough to make me think that maybe it never would be.

“Not even I
understand it.” He grinned at me and took a swig of the beer, then she plopped
down next to him sending a splash down his shirt.

“That’s cos you’re
a man.”

“Hey less of the generalizations,
and the tipping my drink down me.”

“Might have to
strip off your shirt, and lick—” she bit his neck just above the collar “—you
dry.”

The chuckle came
deep down from somewhere in the middle of that broad chest and he settled a bit
deeper into the sofa, legs wide and the unmistakable outline of his erection
stretching the denim tight. “And I might have to give you a good spanking.”

“Promises,
promises.”

“So how do you
pair know each other?” The smoky gaze was back on me, but Sophie spoke before I
had chance.

“We met at
Sheffield, then because she is such a smarty pants she went down to the big
city to try her luck, and because I’m not I came back here.” Which wasn’t that
accurate, I’d done well on my IT course because I’m a natural geek, but Sophie
did brilliantly at her maths course because she’s got a brain that’s
practically computerized. Job offers were thrown from all directions, but she’d
wanted the actuarial job that Grove and Grove put on the table. She’d always
wanted it. And Sophie was more tenacious than a terrier.

The oven pinged.
“Yay, food time.”

“So you’re not
here to stay?” He was studying me in that intent kind of way someone does just
before they kiss you and it made me squirm inside, because I did want to kiss
him, but if I did things would change. Kissing led to more kissing or it led to
the end, and I quite liked things as they were. The wanting, the lusting after
my perfect man without all the crap that came with it. And even if Soph was
right and he was the perfect one-off shag candidate it would still change
things. I liked having him as a mate, he was good company, friendly without
being nosy. And even just looking at him made me happy, or maybe just horny, it
didn’t matter. Whatever.

“I might be.” I
shifted in my seat and traced a line through the condensation on my glass.
Unwilling to let him see that my battle with commitment and settling down was a
hard one.

The smell of
tomato and cheese wafted ahead of Sophie and gave me something else to
concentrate on.

“Dig in.” She
pulled up a footstool in front of us for the food. “She’s got EHT.” She grinned
and watched Dane try and figure it out. “Ex-Husband Tension.”

He paused mid-bite
of his pizza and looked at me, raising an eyebrow which gave him even more of a
‘come and get me’ look. They were both looking at me. “You’re married?”

“She was, I said
ex.” Sophie spoke through her mouthful of pizza. “He was a shit.”

“I’m fine.”

“She’s not.”
Sophie swiveled round so that her feet were in his lap, her head back on the
cushion.

I slipped down
onto the floor, away from the warmth of his thigh and tried to concentrate on
the food. It was uncomfortable watching Sophie wriggle her toes and the outline
of his erection firming up by the second, and I didn’t know whether I was a
gooseberry or part of the attraction.

The flames licked
in the fireplace and I concentrated on the changing colors, the way they spiraled
round trying to escape and part of me wished I could. Except I lived here.

“Well, I would be
fine, if you’d stop bringing it up.” Somehow if James had just been cheating on
me, in a normal straightforward way, I might have been able to get my head
round it a bit better. I’d found the pictures on his phone, pictures of a man
sucking his cock and I knew it was him. Not that I recognized the actual cock
because that was stuck down someone’s throat, God knows what kind of relaxation
technique it took to swallow that much, but it was the tattoo, that familiar
tattoo on his hip. The tattoo that I had touched and licked and kissed as I’d
made my way down. The tattoo I’d made love to. And for some strange reason I
couldn’t fathom, it was seeing the bloody tattoo that made my stomach churn.