Kissing Under The Mistletoe: The Sullivans (Contemporary Romance) (5 page)

“Yes, they were.” His eyes were gentle as he
said, “She had you.”

It took Mary a few seconds to push away the
emotion his simple words evoked. “Do you have any sisters?”

“Nope, three brothers.” Her eyes widened at
the thought of all that testosterone in one family as he asked,
“Why do you ask?”

“Because if you had had sisters, you would
have known that headstrong young girls and their mothers are rarely
a conflict-free combination.” Feeling that she’d already said too
much, and knowing she should change the subject before her emotions
got the best of her, she asked, “Did you and your brothers grow up
here?”

“Born and raised. I went to college locally,
too, and haven’t really had much time to travel.”

“That’s another great thing about San
Francisco,” she said, pausing in her extremely enthusiastic bites
of pie, “between Chinatown, Japantown, the French Quarter, the
Mission and North Beach, it’s like having the world at your
fingertips. The people, the traditions, and especially the food.”
He was so easy to talk to that she realized she’d gotten off track
again. “What about your family? Are they all close by?”

“I wish. My oldest brother is up in Seattle
with his wife and toddler. Another brother has a house in San
Francisco but he is usually in a skyscraper overseas concluding
another major business deal. My youngest brother is probably locked
in his studio back east painting a masterpiece, and my parents are
happily wintering in Florida.”

It amazed her how their conversation was so
effortless and yet so totally full of sparks.

“What do you do?”

“I’m an engineer. I’ve been working on a
product I invented for most of the past decade.”

Sexy
and
smart. Now
that was a wonderful combination in a man, she thought as she took
another bite of pie and ice cream. A cherry popped on her tongue,
and the combination of sweet and creamy, warm and cool sent a soft
moan of pleasure falling from her lips.

“You were right,” she said after she’d
swallowed. “This is amazing cherry pie.”

Jack’s dark eyes were intense as they held
hers and he agreed, “Amazing,” though he’d hardly eaten any pie at
all yet.

“Help Me,” the hit single from Joni Mitchell,
was playing from a portable radio set up in a corner of the diner.
And with Mary’s heart pounding hard for a man she barely knew but
already wanted so badly to know better, she felt as if Joni were
singing about her.

Because after only fifteen minutes with Jack,
Mary could tell that she was already falling too fast…with hopes
about the future and worries about the past circling inside her
mind and heart at the same time.

What if she didn’t let those worries imprison
her this time? What if she trusted her instincts, the same way she
had when she was a nineteen-year-old girl? And what if, for the
very first time in a long, long while, she let herself believe that
true love might actually be possible?

“A decade is a long time to work on one
thing,” she said softly. “You must have incredible focus.”

“When I’m passionate about something and want
it bad enough, I always make sure I get it.”

Her breath caught in her throat at the
pulsing sensuality behind his statement. An impulse to lean close
and kiss him wound through her, and she might have given in to it
had she not noticed out of the corner of her eye that some of the
other diners were pointing at her.

Mary wanted her first kiss with Jack to be
special. So instead of a kiss, she simply leaned slightly forward
to try to get closer to him across the bright yellow Formica table
and said, “Tell me about your invention.”

She could tell he was pleased by her interest
in his engineering career. She wanted to know everything about
him—his passions, his dreams and his fears. And if things worked
out between them, maybe she’d tell him about her passions, dreams
and fears, too…something she’d never done with any man before.

He pulled something out of his pocket and
placed it on the table between them. “We call it the Pocket
Planner. It’s an electronic calendar and personal organizer. It
even has reminders built in for the items on your to-do list. After
a decade of trial and error, my two partners and I have finally not
only got it working, but technology has made it small enough to be
able to carry it around without a forklift.” He was even more
gorgeous with the look of pride on his face.

“May I?” When he nodded, she picked it up and
ran her fingers over the very interesting machine. “I think it
sounds fantastic. In fact, I can think of half-a-dozen ways I could
have used something like this in the past few years.”

He beamed at her. “I can’t tell you how glad
I am to hear you feel that way.” She smiled back and was about to
ask him more questions, when he added, “In fact, that’s one of the
things I wanted to talk to you about.”

Mary felt her smile falter on her lips. Years
of holding poses regardless of whether she was happy or under the
weather were the reason she was able to keep it in place. “It
is?”

Jack pushed his plate away in his excitement.
“We’re hoping to get it onto shelves this Christmas, and there are
thousands of units waiting in a warehouse already but, though the
retailers like the product, they’re convinced we need to add some
se—” he cut himself off “—mass appeal to it. As soon as I saw you
in Union Square I knew you would be the perfect person to represent
our product.”

Her lips flattened, and the cherries that had
tasted so good just minutes ago now felt like little round bricks
in the pit of her stomach. She worked to keep her voice steady. “So
that’s why you asked me here for pie? To see if I would consider
representing your product?”

His eyes searched her face for a long moment,
and she could see his sudden confusion at her cool reaction. She
could almost read his mind, the way he was asking himself how he
could have misplayed things with her already.

Especially when he clearly thought he needed
her to make his dreams come true…

“Mary?” Jack shook his head, the tips of his
hair moving over his broad shoulders. “No.” He shook his head
again. “Yes, but it wasn’t the only reason.”

Of course he had to say that. With as much
elegance and pride as she could still muster, considering she’d
been gazing at him like a love-struck teenager when he’d simply
been calculating his potential gains all the while, she carefully
slid out of the booth. “Thank you for the pie and coffee.”

Jack reached for her hand before she could
take more than a step away from the table. She looked down and saw
how tanned his skin was against hers, how large his hand was as he
held hers.

“Please, Mary, don’t go.”

God, it was pathetic how much she wanted to
stay, even now that she knew the real reason he’d wanted to meet
her. It now seemed as if the idea that she could eventually
convince him to want more than that was mere fantasy.

But that wasn’t how love worked. She’d
learned over and over throughout the years that there was no point
in wishing for a miracle…even at Christmastime.

“Today was my last shoot. I’m not modeling
anymore.” She didn’t owe him any explanations, but she hated to
come across as a spoiled princess who was storming out because she
hadn’t gotten her way…or because he’d inadvertently hurt her
too-delicate feelings. “I’m sure you’ll find someone perfect to
represent your product.”

She waited for him to lift his hand from
hers, but he only gripped her tighter. “I already have found
somebody perfect, Mary.” She couldn’t help but lift her eyes to
meet his as he said, “You’re perfect.”

It was what she’d fought so long—the false
perception that she was perfect. “I’m not.”

She steeled herself for his protests. The
last thing she expected him to do was smile at her and say, “You’re
right. How could anyone be perfect with ice cream and cherry juice
on her face?”

He brushed the corner of her mouth with the
tip of his index finger and so much warmth flooded her from the
tiny touch that she was amazed all of the ice in the diner didn’t
melt into a puddle right then and there just from the heat being
generated between the two of them. And then, in the most shockingly
sexy way, he brought his finger to his own lips and ran his tongue
over his fingertip to lick off the cherry juice and ice cream.

“Please, Mary, let me start over and get
things out in the right order this time.”

They’d been standing by the side of the table
for long enough now that people were starting to stare. A few of
them pointed to her and she heard her name in loud whispers. But
none of that mattered.

Only this man standing before her did.

He’d had her at the surprisingly sweet
comment about cherry juice and his gentle touch to her lips, but
she would never forgive herself for folding that easily. “The right
order?”

He nodded and moved closer, his body lean and
muscled and warm against hers. “My invention isn’t the only reason
I wanted to take you for pie and coffee.”

“It isn’t?”

“You’ve got to understand, Angel, a man like
me looks at a woman like you and it’s inevitable that I’m going to
screw things up.”

He had no right to make up a nickname for her
or to say it in such a warm and inviting voice. And she had no
business enjoying both those things.

But, for all her vows to protect herself from
men like him who only wanted her for the improvements she could
make to their bottom line, instead of walking away from him, she
found herself saying, “It is?” in a breathless voice that hardly
seemed to belong to her.

He nodded, his eyes growing darker still as
they dropped to her lips for a split second, then moved back to
meet her gaze again.

“You’ve got class. Beauty. Intelligence.” He
gestured to himself. “All I’ve got is a degree that took me too
many years to finish and a dream that I’m praying will finally
become real one day.”

If he had gotten down on one knee to praise
her beauty, if he had rhapsodized about her “charms,” she would
have forced herself to slip her hand from his and walk away.

But talk of dreams?

Dreams were the one thing she’d always
understood, how they could take hold of you and make you risk
everything.

Besides, she thought as she studied him, she
had a feeling that once Jack Sullivan made up his mind about
something, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. And the truth was
that the reason she hadn’t chosen a new direction for her career
yet was because she wasn’t terribly excited about any of the
opportunities that had come her way.

Representing a new technology like this would
be fresh. Exciting. Yes, it might fail, as models and technology
had rarely been paired successfully. But Mary hadn’t let herself
step into a position to fail in a very long time.

Maybe, she thought, it was time to take a
risk again.

The biggest question remaining was whether
the risk would be strictly professional…or personal, too? Because
when he’d called her
Angel,
the sweet
endearment had warmed her in places she hadn’t realized had grown
so cold.

“Your ice cream is melting,” she finally
said. “Why don’t we sit back down so that you can eat some of your
pie before it drowns.”

Relief flared in his eyes, but beneath it she
thought she recognized the same desire she hadn’t been able to push
down within herself. Which was why, as he finally let her hand go
and they both sat, she said, “Before you tell me more about your
product, there’s something you need to know about me. I don’t mix
business with pleasure.”

Jack looked surprised, and she got a sense
that women hadn’t turned him down very many times in his thirty-two
years. And why would they, she asked herself, when he was not only
extraordinarily gorgeous, but he had a smile that could instantly
make you feel as if you were the only woman in the world who
mattered.

“So if you agree to represent my invention,”
he clarified, “you won’t let me ask you out?”

Her stomach fluttered at the sheer thought of
a proper date with Jack. One that would likely end in a kiss.

Or more…

“It makes things too complicated.”

She still remembered the pain of having to
continue working with a man she could barely stand to be in the
same room with, of having to listen to Romain’s endless critiques
and demands. She’d been too much of a professional to tell him
where he could stick it and had had to make do with the vivid
fantasies of what she’d wished she’d said to him.

Jack studied her for a few moments. “In that
case, we’ll have to take care of business first.” But he reached
across the table for her hand again and brushed his thumb across
her palm. “And then we’ll move on to pleasure.”

It took every ounce of self-control for Mary
to slide her hand away from his and to convince herself it was
better this way. Instead of jumping into a sizzling-hot affair that
could burn out just as quickly as it flared up, they’d get a chance
to know each other better by working together first. And then,
after they’d concluded their business affairs, if the sparks were
still there between them, perhaps they could see about starting
another kind of affair entirely.

Only, as Jack showed her how the Pocket
Planner worked, instead of being able to keep her distance, she was
increasingly seduced not only by how gorgeous he was—and she’d seen
plenty of handsome men in her career—but also by his incredible
intelligence.

And his passion.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to work with
us, Ms. Ferrer,” Larry said as he pumped Mary’s hand
enthusiastically in the lobby of Walter Industries the following
day.