No Bunny But You (Holiday Romance Series) (6 page)

“That’s not necessary, but I do appreciate your
enthusiasm.” A smile cracked his expression as he lobbed first one
of his shoes and then the other, at her.

Catching his shoes, Molly dropped them out the
window, glad he’d begun to see the funny side of this.

“I’d offer to help, you know, unzip you and ease you
out of your pants, but I probably shouldn’t get on the floor. There
may be damp spots.”

“So kind of you to think of offering help.” He
grinned in response to her silliness. “You’re probably eager to
return the help that men have offered you over the years.”

“Absolutely. And I’m looking forward to
watching.”

“Then we should get on with the show. Cue the music.”
Drake loosed the button at the waist of his pants and unzipped as
she began humming the stripper song again. Of course, that was the
easy part. Holding the waist band as open as he could, he began
scooting backwards out of his pants an inch at a time.

Taking off a pair of pants secured to the floor
wasn’t easy, she could see. Drake stopped every few minutes to jerk
the fabric down his legs little by little as he backed out of
them.

Soon a strip of his flesh was seen, followed by his
shorts.

To her own surprise, Molly began feeling heat inch up
her chest. This was so un-sexy a moment, but she was lusting after
the man.

When they dated in high school, both were somewhat
conservative, never having gotten to stripping. At least, not down
to their skivvies.

It was suddenly very hot. She took a breath, trying
not to hyperventilate and fall out of the window.

As Drake slowly backed out of his pants, the briefs
or boxers question was answered. He clearly was a man who liked to
cover all his bases, but not be hemmed in. Other than their furtive
make-out sessions—which suddenly came back to her in vivid
detail—she’d always tried to think of him no more intimately than
any other friend.

At least, most of the time.

And here he was taking off his pants in front of her.
Molly told herself to act naturally, but she didn’t know what was
natural in a situation like this.

Finally, he’d painfully scooted back against the
wall—not a far distance—extricating himself with difficulty from
the pants, now seen to be glued to the floor next to where her bed
would go. The thought streaked through Molly’s brain that she could
leave them there and always have a piece of Drake nearby when she
slept.

“A little breezy?” She asked, trying to sound perky,
despite the urge to clear her throat as he leaned against the wall
to pull his foot out of the pants.

“Yes.” Wearing just a t-shirt and dark blue boxer
briefs, he cat-walked along the edge of the floor to the window.
“This is why my doing a television segment is a bad idea. I suck at
this kind of thing.”

* * *

A week later, Molly dodged a little boy who came
charging around the edge of the brick and white stone house where
she was doing a birthday party in the backyard. “Whoa, there!”

In a big, big backyard behind a beautiful Austin
mansion. Some kids had all the luck.

She heard shrieks coming from the bounce house at the
back of the garden and made her way into the screened porch where
most of the party guests sat amid big hanging paper poufs and
balloons, nibbling on Molly’s rainbow Jello squares.

One of the guests came up. “These are beautiful. How
did you make them?”

Smiling at the woman, she continued shifting things
on the table to make room for the birthday cake, saying
automatically, “They’re simple to make. Pour cherry, orange, lime,
blue coconut and blueberry Jello with milk-flavored plain gelatin
between the colors. You’ll need to refrigerate the Jello between
layers, so they don’t mix. Then, you have a rainbow!”

“Well, they’re great.” The woman took another rainbow
square and drifted away.

Across the porch, Jenny, the birthday boy’s mom was
cool and beautiful in an expensive casual outfit of a sleeveless
top and cropped pants. She and her banker husband sat chatting with
the guy’s boss while Molly shifted the cake on the table and again
looked over her shoulder, searching for her super hero.

The guy she’d finally hired to be her costume
character person was nearly an hour late. She hoped vengefully that
he’d had a bad accident. His tardiness didn’t bode well for future
ventures.

Jenny sidled up to the refreshment table and took
just one small Jello square from the tray there. “Mmm. These are
great. Simple, but different.”

She nodded toward the bounce house, complete with a
big slide. “That was a good idea, too. Sebastian and his friends
seem to really love it.”

“Kids do.” Molly smiled. “Give them simple foods and
a way to make themselves sick and they have a great time.”

“I hope so.” The perfectly-coifed woman looked to be
a good fifteen years younger than her husband and way too young to
have a six year-old. “I really want Sebastian’s sixth birthday
party to be terrific. The smallest thing can set a kid’s feet on
the wrong path.”

Chuckling, Molly responded reassuringly. “Well, he
seems to be having fun.”

Personally, she didn’t think a sixth birthday party
could make and break a kid’s future, but she was in no position to
dispute the woman having hired her.

Taking a nibble of Jello, Jenny swallowed and said,
“Annalise Murphy, Bryston’s mom, recommended you highly, so this
going so well is no surprise.”

She frowned. “Didn’t you say that you’d have a Spider
Man, too.”

“Yes,” Molly responded candidly, “He’s late. I can’t
imagine what happened, but I’ll go call him again.”

She made her way into the kitchen and dug her phone
out of her bag. Hissing into the voicemail that the call switched
to immediately, Molly said “This is Molly Stanhope. Where the heck
are you?”

Just then she looked through the window into the back
yard and saw her missing superhero, surrounded by bouncing kiddos.
She put the phone back into her bag and went out the door.

Ty Michaels wasn’t a kid. At thirty-three, he had a
resume with acting credentials and professed a love of working with
kids, but Molly had a sinking feeling as she walked across the yard
toward him and the kids. His Spider Man suit was wrinkled—amazing
for a stretchy polyester material—and his head piece/face mask was
rucked up on one side, showing a glimpse of pale neck.

“Hey, kids. Want me to spray you with web stuff?”

Getting closer, she thought she could detect a whiff
of beer, covered up by heavy cologne, but Michaels was spraying web
goo at a nearby tree and the kids seemed thrilled, so she stood off
to the side, watching him work.

“See. Spider Man can do amazing things. Come on,
let’s go in the bounce house and you can see me jump high.”

“I’m glad Spider Man finally got here.” Jenny’s
husband—wearing the standard rich, white guy casual outfit of a
pink polo shirt and plaid shorts—stopped next to Molly. “Silly, but
my boss loves Spider Man.”

“Yes. The kids are excited to see him.” Ignoring the
sinking feeling in her chest, she smiled at the older man and
turned back toward the house. “We should probably get the cake
ready for the birthday boy to blow out the candles.

* * *

“Drake! Drake.”

Molly’s voice and a knock at the open door, brought
his head around. Turning from the screen that he’d been staring at,
Drake got up as she came in.

“Hey, what’s up?” He hadn’t seen her since the
embarrassing urethaning-his-pants-to-her-floor incident and he felt
a little weird about it.

True, Molly knew about most of his limitations, but
this screw-up had made him look silly and had thrown him
off-balance. The blog about how to refinish wood floor was on the
screen and he had the urge to tell his readers some of the
potential pitfalls, but he wasn’t sure he should.

Standing in his foyer in her pretty party dress, he
assumed she’d just come from a gig.

“Another birthday party or a dry-run for the Easter
Picnic?” He leaned against the end of his couch. “ Sit down.”

She sank down on the red microsuede seating unit
she’d picked out for him several years before.

“It wasn’t good, Drake.” Looking up at him with
uncharacteristic self-doubt, she said, “I’m good at this, right? I
usually make things work? Even when the beer keg at a summer
barbeque blows up or a retiree forgets his reading glasses and
can’t read his speech? I usually make it come out all right, don’t
I?”

“Of course, you do.” He slid down onto the couch next
to her. “You made a game of which of the retiree’s friends wore the
same reading glasses. It was a hoot. What’s going on? Why are you
so worried?”

Shaking her head, Molly said, “I’m not sure I’m up to
this whole Easter Picnic thing.”

“What? Why not?”

“You know I’ve been looking for a replacement cartoon
character guy, right? Since the other one I’d been using got a full
time job and Cheryl’s can’t really be available, what with raising
his grandson?”

“Yeah, of course. And you found one.”

“I thought I had.” She shook her head. “But he showed
up to a kid’s birthday party an hour late and I thought I smelled
booze on his breath. He worked out okay in the end. I mean, the
kids and the parents were happy once he got there, but he didn’t
look quite right. He was wearing some kind of colored socks,
instead of the standard Spider Man shoes and, like I said, he came
late. Really late. I wasn’t even sure he was going to show.”

Turning toward her, Drake felt a little of his
tilting world straighten with her being there. This was what he and
Molly did—they supported one another. “But the character guy did
show. Even if he was a little late. And you said the kids liked
him.”

“They did.” A grin briefly dispelled the worried look
on her face. “Even the dad’s boss—had to be in his fifties—liked
the Spider Man. After he got out of the bounce house, the men kept
wanting him to shoot out spider web goop from his wrists.”

“So it worked out fine.”

“Yeah, after I spent most of the event worrying about
where he was and wondering if I picked the wrong guy.” The worried
expression was back on her face, which wasn’t like Molly. “This
really could have derailed everything. What if he hadn’t just had a
couple of beers? What if he came completely smashed? The whole
thing could have blown up in my face.”

“But it didn’t.” He reached out, drawing her into his
arms for a companionable hug.

Molly looked up in his face. “What if I
really
picked the wrong guy to be the Easter bunny at the picnic. I
interviewed a dozen possibles and I chose this guy, not that I had
a lot of options. But what if I picked the wrong one? My instincts
might have really sucked.”

“Your instincts are fine,” he soothed, dropping a
kiss on her cheek.

The troubled expression stayed on her face. “Maybe
I’m just not ready for this big a job. Maybe Cheryl should give it
to one of her more experienced competitors. I could blow this
event! Maybe I can’t trust my judgment. You know most of the party
planning stuff is instinct. You have to know what’s a good idea and
what isn’t.”

Tucking her against his body for a tighter hug, he
said, “You can do this. You’re smart and you have great ideas.
You’ll be great.”

She turned her head, looking up at him, their faces
only inches apart. “I know I always act tough, like nothing gets
the better of me, but this is a really big deal, Drake. I blow this
picnic and I might as well get out of the business. Go back to
interior design or waitressing or something.”

“You’re not going to blow it.” He gave her another
squeeze. “You usually look like you’re confident because you know
you’ve always managed before.”

“I know, I know.”

Molly’s words were soft and anything but
confidant.

“Hey,” he said, putting a finger under her chin to
turn her face towards him.

“You’ll be great. I know you will.”

Then he did something without even thinking. He
kissed Molly Stanhope on the mouth.

In his mind, he’d meant it to be a little, reassuring
peck between friends.…

And then she kissed him back and all hell broke loose
inside him.

Molly’s lips suddenly moved beneath his—hungry and
eager—and Drake felt it through every cell of his body. What he’d
meant as a reassuring peck shifted into something very
different.

She kissed like a wanton, like she’d been hungry for
him forever and he pulled her closer, angling her in closer, taking
her mouth over and over. His body roared into response, craving
her, needing the touch of her skin beneath his—

--and then it was over. Just like that.

She pulled away sharply, her chest rising and falling
with rapid breath in echo of his suddenly labored breathing. He
felt as if he had run the hundred meter dash. And he wanted her,
wanted more.

He sat on the couch still, staring at her, his body
feeling as if he were sixteen again and had just touched her naked
breast.

“I need to leave,” she said tightly, the passion in
her expression now shuttered away from him.

“Okay.” It was all he could think of to say, but he
wanted to kiss her again.

He really wanted to kiss Molly again.

* * * * * * * * *

Damn, damn, damn.
How could she have let this
happen? Molly drove through the streets automatically, not even
seeing the other cars. If she hadn’t been afraid Drake would see
her, she would have sat in her car outside his house, stunned and
trying to catch her breath.

Whew.
The guy could kiss.

After all these years, he’d kissed her again. When
she was sixteen, she’d been a hotbed of hormones. While anything,
but expert, she’d been an enthusiastic partner in the backseat
action between her and whichever boyfriend she was dating at the
time.