McDonald_MM_GEN_Dec2013 (3 page)

“Oh good,” she said sweetly, batting her eyelashes.

Sighing long and loudly, Sam headed to the garage.

***

In the too hot kitchen, Eve pulled her sweater away from her chest and blew out a breath. She wasn’t sure which was more surprising, the fact that her lips had yet to stop tingling or that Sam had caused the sensation. How had she not seen that simmering sexuality in a man she shared coffee with most mornings?

His mouth on hers had been confident and precise. She could have sworn Sam had been on the verge of slipping his tongue between her lips just before he backed off. But that was just crazy. She had to be overreacting.

“Earth to Mom,” Rick shouted.

Eve heard her son laughing as she jumped and squealed.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you away from your daydreaming. The pasta water is boiling away and you seemed not to notice,” he said.

“Boiling. Right.” Eve scrambled to get the still uncooked spaghetti out of the box. Trembling hands made a joke of her efforts and had the skinny, yellow sticks flying out of her fingers. They scattered across the counter, the stove, and the floor. “Well—shoot.”

Rick laughed as he stooped to pick up the noodles now rolling across the tile floor. “Geez, Mom. Did you have too much coffee this morning? You’ve got the shakes.”

Before Eve could answer, a large laughing male appeared beside her, taking his time to inspect the mess she’d made. Saying nothing about it though, Sam quietly started gathering up the spaghetti that had gone skidding down the granite surface of the countertop. But she could see he was grinning about it—the bastard. He probably knew exactly what he’d done to her.

“It wasn’t the coffee, Rick. Your mother is very predictable about her drinking,” Sam said calmly. He turned and proudly held out the handful of spaghetti he had gathered. “Here Eve—I think this much is still usable.”

“Gee—thanks.” Eve’s fingers reached out to take the spaghetti from her torturer only to end up wrestling with Sam’s fingers as she tried to grab the loose handful from him. When he laughed at her struggles, the husky, sexy sounds coming from his throat spiked sexual awareness through her as bad as the kiss under the mistletoe had.

What the hell was wrong with her today? She’d known the man in front of her for years. It hadn’t even been a real kiss.

What would a real kiss with him be like?

To her mortification, while she stared at Sam’s mouth deep in thought, uncooked spaghetti once again escaped from her grip. This time it rained onto her son’s head as he crawled around at her feet.

“Unbelievable. I did it again,” she said, looking down at her son.

“Mom, seriously—where is your mind today?”

Eve watched her son rake broken raw noodle pieces from his shoulder length hair. Her head snapped up though when she heard Sam laughing in that deep throated way he had that brought everyone’s attention to him. She must have been glaring because he stopped laughing and turned his face from hers. He crossed his arms and leaned back on the counter.

“My clumsiness isn’t
that
funny,” she complained.

Sam smiled. “It is if you have a sense of humor. Need some help with dinner before all the water boils away?”

Eve lifted a fresh box of spaghetti from the counter and held it out to him. “Yes, smart ass. Put these in the pot while I fetch another box from the pantry.”

“Sure. Anything you want,” Sam teased, allowing himself a wink as he took her offering. Eve’s instant flush had him biting his lip to keep from laughing again. Her anxiety over their tiny kiss was making him dizzy drunk with anticipation. What would she do if he kissed her for real?

“Mom, snap out of it. You’re doing it again,” Rick said.

“Doing what?” Eve demanded, watching her oldest climb to his feet. He looked so much like David did at twenty-four that it was sometimes disconcerting to her. She watched Rick shrug and grin.

“I don’t know, but you’re staring at Sam like he’s an alien with two heads.”

Eve blinked. Was she doing that? Sam moved away from the counter until he stood towering over her. He seemed so much bigger to her suddenly.

“Rick, will you pour me a glass of wine after you sweep up the mess? Maybe it will combat my caffeine shakes.”

She heard the two men snickering about her absentmindedness as she walked out.

***

In the storage closet she used for a pantry, Eve stood on a stepping stool and moved boxes around until she found the extra pasta she was looking for. She turned and called out in alarm when she saw the large man leaning in the doorway.

“My God Sam, are you trying to kill me today? You’ve already made me a nervous wreck.”

Eve put a hand to the middle of her heaving chest where her heart was thumping wildly.

“It was just a tiny kiss under the mistletoe, Eve. No reason to get so wound up over it,” Sam said, smiling at her glare.

“I’m not wound up, Sam. If you must know, I haven’t been kissed in a while. But please don’t tell my listeners that the voice of
Delight After Dark
doesn’t have a love life,” Eve said. “Maybe I should just take a page from your book and start dating again. Megan and Rick are both harassing me about it.”

Sam smiled as he walked forward. “Maybe you should, but I have to tell you, dating is not all that great. Lots of interested people are willing to go out, but there’s not a lot of chemistry happening. Trust me. There’s way more sizzle going on in this pantry than I’ve found on any date I’ve gone on.”

“I really don’t want to discuss your dating experiments. Truthfully, I get enough of that doing my show,” Eve said.

Her body went rigid at Sam’s continued approach.

“What are you doing?”

He filled up the room way too much for Eve to pretend she didn’t notice him closing the physical distance between them. In the tiny closet, there wasn’t anywhere to escape.

“I went out a few times, but it wasn’t like real dating,” Sam explained. “I just went to dinner with other women while I was waiting for you to wake up and notice my interest. The others—they were just me trying to put a backup plan into place in case you rejected me.”

“Sam, we’ve known each other for ages. I think I would have noticed if you’d felt that way about me. That’s just not true. The holidays just make it harder to be alone. So stop teasing me.”

“Actually, my interest in you is very real and true. What I’m feeling has nothing to do with the holidays. I felt this way months ago.”

They stared at each other, almost eyeball to eyeball again. Eve tried to keep her composure around the suddenly intimidating man. Standing on a stool was not the most dignified position to be in for an argument, but she lifted her chin and glared.

“Okay. This is me rejecting the idea then. Why does anything have to change between us? Why can’t we just continue to have coffee together and be good friends? I don’t think I’m ready to wake up. I don’t want to deal with knowing you want—knowing you might—
damn it, Sam
,” Eve said.

Her eyelids drooped heavily as his face moved closer to hers.

“Come on, my blonde sleeping beauty. Kiss me for real and let’s see if you’re ready to wake up or not,” Sam whispered.

He lifted a hand to her cheek again and used his thumb to caress Eve’s full bottom lip.

Then groaning, he plunged a hand into her hair to hold her while his mouth descended hotly. It took all the control he possessed to keep the pressure light when he wanted to devour. He nibbled her bottom lip and pulled it between his teeth to suck it gently. Eve tasted every bit as good as he’d imagined she would.

Her answering moan of pleasure from what they were doing soon made him forget his intentions to go slowly. Which was just as well because his tongue had a mind of it’s own anyway. Slipping between Eve’s lips, it traced her teeth before plunging hard against hers. A couple times of that and he yanked away from her mouth to swallow hard over the wave of desire crashing over him. Eve’s face was pink with arousal and he could smell her perfume floating up from her breasts. To save his sanity, and to keep from attacking her, Sam gripped her chin as he slipped the extra box of spaghetti from her limp hand.

“I think you’re more awake than you realize. Or maybe you’re just awake with me. I really like the idea of my kiss being the catalyst. Damn, Eve. I want you and I’m tired of not telling you.”

“No . . . please don’t say that. My head is spinning. How long have you wanted to be more than friends?” Eve asked.

“Since I decided my life was going to go on and figured out that being alone was a choice. Having coffee with you is better than having dinner with any other woman. Two months ago I figured out that you were the reason I never wanted to take any of my dates to bed.”

“Sam—”

His thumb stroking her lip again silenced her and turned the denial she was going to make into a lie before it left her mouth.

“I listen to your show every night. I fall asleep hearing your voice, but when I wake up, you’re not there to talk to. That’s why I come for coffee every morning. If it shocks you that I’m interested, I’m sorry. I was trying to let you come to terms with our attraction to each other on your own.”

“
Attraction to each other?
Are you kidding me? This is all so—
sudden
,” Eve said, the trite phrase totally applicable in her case.

Sam snorted and backed away. “Only sudden for you because you’re in denial, babe.”

When he got to the door, she called out to stop him. “Sam—wait.”

With one hand on the doorway, he looked back expectantly. The familiar action was both reassuring and yet strange to her today. After kissing him, she just couldn’t see him in quite the same way.

“Are you sure this isn’t just some kind of mistletoe madness? We’re both lonely. Maybe your interest is just something that will pass in time. Maybe when the holidays are over you’ll feel differently.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Life—as we’ve both learned the hard way—is too damn short not to live fully. If I start sleeping with someone else, I’ll be having coffee with her and not you. That’s just how I work as a man. That’s what’s stopped me from accepting any of the offers I’ve gotten in the last few months of dating. I wasn’t ready to have coffee with another woman.”

Eve sighed. “You kiss well, Sam. I’ll give you that.”

Sam snorted again. “I do a lot of things well. I might be a wee bit out of practice, but it wouldn’t take me long to figure it all out again. I did make you moan twice today. Maybe you should give the reasons why that was possible some thought.”

“That’s pretty arrogant of you. Maybe I was just groaning in frustration,” Eve declared, fisting hands on hips.

Grinning and not answering a protest they both knew was false, Sam headed back to the kitchen, spaghetti box in hand.

“I don’t believe you. You’re making this up,” Hilde said.

“Why would I make this up? Sam kissed me under the mistletoe—in front of witnesses—and then slipped me tongue later in the pantry when we were alone. The kids teased us about the mistletoe kiss all through dinner. I’m starting to think they’re trying to get us together,” Eve said.

Hilde Peppercorn, her best friend since kindergarten, gaped at her over her cappuccino.

“Your children are trying to hook you up with him? Never mind. That’s weird, but not relevant to this conversation. The main question is, what do you want to do about your attraction to him?”

Eve felt the breath all leave her. She’d been doing that a lot lately. She’d even done it on the air last evening with a caller. It hadn’t helped knowing Sam had likely been listening to the second night of on-air discussion about how risky it was to have sex with someone who was a long time friend. When intimacy of that sort didn’t work out, it often ruined the best of friendship situations, which had been her ongoing caller’s problem. As far as Eve knew, caller Cassie had declined her chance so far.

But her own dilemma was her focus today. Sam hadn’t shown up for coffee this morning and she had no idea what his absence meant. She had never worried about that before, not once since he’d started doing it a few months after Angeline died. Now she wondered how badly her discussion with the caller had bothered him last evening. He hadn’t mentioned having other plans this morning. And damn it, she had missed him. After his passionate—yes and arrogant—declarations in the pantry, somehow she’d thought Sam would be more persistent in trying to kiss her like that again.

“Earth to Eve,” Hilde said loudly.

“Sorry,” Eve said, sighing again. “I don’t know what I want. Sam kisses well, but the thought of having sex with him—I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready.”

Hilde shrugged. “Okay. So let him move on then. He can take his pent-up urges to one of those other women he’s been dating.”

Eve frowned into her cooling coffee. “I know. That’s only fair. Right?”

“Screw fair. This is your love life, girlfriend. It’s every person for his or her own self these days. How would you feel if Sam didn’t come for coffee anymore because he was having it at home with someone else?”

Eve laughed at the frustration on her best friend’s beautiful, mocha face. “You look just like Halle Berry today. It’s a good look for you, Hilde.”

“I look like an old Halle Berry with lots of gray streaks. You can’t afford pricey color jobs on a college professor’s salary,” Hilde complained.

“Forty-seven isn’t old,” Eve protested.

“Agreed. So what’s happened to you? We’re the same age. Did you go through the change early and decide you hate sex? That’s happened to a lot of my other friends,” Hilde said, sipping her drink.

Eve shrugged. “No. I thought I just didn’t want sex anymore because there was no available man. With David gone, I figured that ship had sailed and left me high and dry at the port.”

“Hell of a metaphor,” Hilde said.

“But mostly true. Men in general haven’t affected me that way in a long time,” Eve said, grinning at her friend’s wince.

“If Sam didn’t get your engine started again, then tell him so, Eve. He’s even older than you. Life’s too short to be lying about that kind of stuff. But if you even think you want a sexy man to spend your golden years with, you better start looking before they’re all taken or dead. I found Stuart on one of those Internet sites. He rings my chimes every time—and I mean
every time
. That’s what you need. You’d see the world with very different eyes. Trust me.”