Mistletoe & Hollywood (5 page)

“We’ll be sharing, Mum,” Jack said gently and set our bags down at the end of the large double bed. “Hope that’s okay. And if it makes you feel uncomfortable, we can go to the hotel.”

“Goodness, no, I’m fine. It’s just, um, this is a first for me.” She chuckled and walked over to an armoire in the corner and withdrew two fresh towels that she laid on the bed. “You’ve never brought a girl home, that’s all, and I just didn’t want Keri Ann thinking I was used to this sort of thing.”

I let out a long slow breath. My belly flooded with churning nerves. I was embarrassed. But man was I happy to hear I was the only girl Jack had ever brought home. I mean, I had an inkling, based on how separate he liked to keep his lives and protect his mother from the craziness, but it was great to hear it anyway.

“But, um, I should just add that it’s, um…” Okay now Charlotte was flushing again. This didn’t bode well. What else was coming? “It’s an old house, thin interior walls, sound carries,” she rattled out, briskly. “Just so you know.” She swallowed and cleared her throat as she headed toward the door.

I stood dumfounded. Too embarrassed to say a word.

Jack slapped his hand over his eyes, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

“So, anyway, that’s it. See you downstairs in a bit, and I’ll show you the best path to take on your walk. Cheerio,” she added, slipping out the door.

“LOOK IN THE
mirror.” Jack stood behind me where I stood at the sink, having just brushed my teeth. I was wrapped in a towel, my skin chilled in the cool air. Having access to a hot shower had been too much to resist, and I’d rinsed my body quickly so as not to waste too much hot water. I’d twisted my hair up to keep it dry since we were going for a walk outside.

“I look tired,” I responded, agreeing to his request by meeting his eyes in the mirror.

He leaned forward, placing his hands on the sink on either side of me. His hair was half sticking up and half flat. Hat hair. The dark stubble of his two-day-old growth made his green eyes stand out. Damn it, he was so sexy. “Yes, you do.”

I elbowed him in the ribs.

“But you also look absolutely beautiful.” He dropped his mouth to my bare shoulder and the curve of my neck, his unshaven face gently scraping. Eyes not breaking contact, his mouth opened, his teeth grazing, nipping my skin and his warm tongue soothing over me.

My belly flipped and swirled scalding liquid heat through my insides at the feel of him and sight of him behind me, the passion in his gaze. My breathing caught and went from slow and relaxed to shallow and choppy in an instant.

“I can’t believe you snuck in here and got naked without me,” he murmured against my skin, and his body pressed against my back.

Trying to turn to face him, I was stopped as he released one arm from the sink and wrapped it around my waist, holding me firm, my back to his front.

“Jack,” I managed, swallowing my words as I felt his arousal.

He winked at me in the mirror.

“We, I, we’re supposed to go downstairs. You heard your mom, we—” I broke off as his other hand left the sink and skated up my thigh and under the towel.

“God, I’ve missed you. So much.” His head dropped to my shoulder and he inhaled deeply.

“I’ve missed you too.” My voice was low and husky. I wanted nothing more than to be naked and wrapped up against Jack’s hard and hot body, flesh to flesh, my heart beating as close to his as possible. “But we can’t do this right now. It’s, I—”

“I know, but let me just touch you. Please, I’ve been dying to.” His hand made it around my hip, sliding across my lower belly, and skating downwards. His knee nudged my legs apart. I shuddered and he lifted his face, catching my eye again in the mirror.

“Jack.”

“Shhhh.” He drew the sound out softly. “You’ll just have to be quiet. I’ll be quick.”

A knock sounded at the bedroom door, making me jump.

Jack straightened, leaving my skin bereft and tingling in his wake. Who was I kidding? More like aching and throbbing and… a belly as nauseous as if we’d been caught in the act.

“Jack, honey?” Charlotte’s voice was hesitant.

He cleared his throat and winked at my mortified expression in the mirror before heading out of the bathroom.

I closed my eyes and released a breath. My point exactly. I finished getting dried off and putting on lotion as I listened to Jack answer the door to Charlotte. Apparently a bunch of packages had arrived for us.

Jack had told me to pack light because there was absolutely nothing in my wardrobe that could prepare me for a wet British winter. Having arrived and felt the icy, wet mist, that was almost a drizzle but not quite, I was inclined to agree. Especially now I’d seen that Charlotte practically lived in “wellies” as she called them. The closest thing I’d seen growing up in the Lowcountry were galoshes. Anyway, I knew they were available back home, but Jack had expressly told me not to bother with boots and rain jackets since they only made the best ones in England. Seemed like the stuff he’d ordered had arrived.

When the coast was clear, I came out of the bathroom.

Jack had opened most of the boxes but was hastily putting something away on top of the armoire. He turned and gave me a crooked smile.

“What was that?” I asked teasingly.

“One of your presents, so don’t you dare look.”

“Jack.” My heart sank a little. “You’re spoiling me. I can’t do the same for you. I, I feel inadequate.” It was true. I loved how excited he got when he gave me things, but I fought with myself and my reactions every time he did it.

“Keri Ann, you just being here with me is all I’ll ever need. I know that sounds…” he cleared his throat and laughed lightly. “Yeah, it sounds freaking pathetic. I know.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I whispered. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than with you.”

“But I know how hard it is for you with all the bullshit that follows me around.”

“About that…” I perched on a tufted stool in front of a small antique vanity and faced him.

His eyes slipped to my legs and the towel that had ridden up. “Jack,” I admonished with a ridiculous grin.

“Sorry.”

“So, I was going to say, please don’t feel like you can’t go and see friends and stuff because of me, okay? I can handle a few photographers. I mean, I dread it, sure, but it’s not the end of the world. And anyway,
you
could always go and I’ll stay here and hang out with Charlotte. She was telling me we could drive down to the coast one day and go beach glass hunting.”

Jack looked away, his mouth slipping into a frown.

“What?” I asked, confused by his reaction. “You don’t think I’d like to spend time with your mom?”

He looked taken aback. “No, not that at all.”

“What, then? My aversion to publicity? You already know that.”

His hand raked through his unruly hair. “I don’t know. Look, it’s not that. It doesn’t matter.” He came around the bed in long strides and sat on the end of it in front of me.

It squeaked.

Awesome.

We both cringed. “You need to get some damn clothes on before I embarrass my mother. I’m getting to the point I might not care what sounds emanate from this bedroom.”

He was deflecting from the issue at hand. The issue being more than just me not wanting to deal with a media frenzy. Something was weighing on his mind. I’d caught glimpses of it now and then. But what was it?

“IT’S CALLED A
stile.” Jack stood by the wet mossy wooden contraption, holding out his hand in the cold, damp white-misted air. Did England, in fact, even have a sky? This was our second walk since our arrival yesterday, and I’d yet to see one.

I looked at his hand dubiously, then at the nonchalant looking bull in the distance behind his head while I breathed in the faint smell of cow dung and earthy wet stone. England. I kind of always thought it would feel, smell, and look like this. I loved it. It was so different from anything I’d grown up with.

“You just climb up on the board and swing your leg over the fence,” Jack said patiently. He was wearing jeans, dark grey green wellington boots, “wellies,” a dark green waxed
Barbour
rain jacket, and a tartan
Burberry
scarf wrapped around his neck. I didn’t look much different. Although my “wellies” were dark brown as was my ladies’ version of the jacket—the spoils of the many packages that had arrived. I felt like I was in a
Town & Country
photo spread.

“Are you sure we’re allowed to?” I asked. “I mean why wouldn’t they just put a gate in if they wanted people to pass.”

“Well, they put the gates where it suits for farming, that doesn’t always gel with where the footpaths are. A stile is just saying, look, I realize this is a public footpath that goes right through my land. You can go through it, but I don’t have to like it.”

“I’m sure they don’t want anyone going through a field with a horny bull in it.”

Jack chuckled at my expression and turned his dark head toward the creature in the distance. His hair ruffled in the arctic breeze, and the tips of his ears were tinged pink with cold. “He doesn’t look horny.”

“
You
don’t look horny, but I bet I could get you there in two seconds flat.”

Jack’s raised his eyebrows, then dropped them, resigned. “That’s a challenge I’ll lose.”

“Wait. So people can own land, but anyone has the right to walk through it?”

“Pretty much. If it has a Public Right of Way through it, it’s illegal not to allow access. Hurry up, are you going over or what?”

The bull snorted. It was staring at me.

Us.

No, me. Definitely me. “But they’re letting us go into a field with a lone, irritated looking bull. And I’m wearing a red scarf!” A soft and luxurious scarf made of something called vicuña, courtesy of Jack’s twelve days of Christmas, day six gift. I loved it. It was the softest thing, and probably the most expensive thing, I owned. “Is there a warning posted?”

“I guess it’s the farmer’s way of expressing his irritation at having to let people wander through. Keep us on edge a bit. I’m pretty sure they also have to legally post if it’s a dangerous bull and not a juvenile. Or have a heifer in here with him to relieve him. Come on, already.”

The bull resumed munching grass so I took Jack’s hand and climbed up on the stile, swinging my leg over the fence, careful not to tear my jeans. I made it over and jumped down onto the thick, wet clumpy grass. Jack followed. The path, which was really more of a worn, flattened grassy line amongst the not so flattened grass, headed down a gently sloping hill along one side of the low stone wall and then curved to cut diagonally across a corner to another stile set midway through the far side. Infinitely closer to the bull.

“Relax,” said Jack and cupped my cold cheeks with his gloved hands. His long lashes came to rest on his cheekbones as his face came down to meet my mouth with his. I tilted my face up, holding his wrists and welcomed his lips on mine.

His lips and nose were cold, but as his mouth opened, I drank in the heady heat of his tongue. Heat that poured down into me and pooled low.

“Mmm. You taste good,” I murmured against his mouth. Sweet coffee and cinnamon. “Like Christmas.”

He laughed. “Maybe that’s your actual Christmas gift. Me, naked with just a red bow tied on my—”

“Jack!” I punched him on the shoulder, and we started walking down the hill. “What
would
your mother say?” But, too late I already had a vision of naked Jack in my head. “Anyway, I believe you already gave me that gift yesterday, your presence, remember?”

“But not my naked presence.” With your cheeks red from the cold, I can’t tell if you’re blushing or not.” He took my hand. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.” I grinned stupidly.

“Me. Naked. Go on, admit it.”

“Actually, I was thinking of
me
naked, with just this delicate soft red scarf draped strategically—”

Jack growled and yanked me to a stop. His lips came down hard, his hot tongue sliding inside, and my body instantly went from a slow simmer to full roar. I found the stone wall at my back, and Jack pressed hard against me, one hand tangled in my hair and the other lifting my leg against his thigh.
Wow
.