Secrets to Hide 2: Naughty Little Christmas (17 page)

“No! God.” She buried her face in her hands. “How do I explain this? We…um…”

Cassie paused a moment, probably studying the top of Harley’s head. Or considering why she was hiding her face. The latter must’ve been the clue she needed, because suddenly she got what Harley was trying to say without the actual words. “Oh my God. You didn’t.”

Harley, face buried, simply nodded.

“You did.”

Harley moaned, the blanket absorbing the sound. The heat in her cheeks flamed into an inferno. “Cassie…”

But Cassie wasn’t listening. She tapped Harley on the head. When Harley finally lifted her face to peek through her fingers, Cassie dropped her head on level with Harley’s, daring Harley to meet her eyes. “You had sex with Damien?”

Harley’s eyes went wide, then dropped to the baby. “Cassie, shhh!”

Cassie pushed up to sit cross-legged on the blanket. “She’s three months old, Harley. She doesn’t understand the word ‘sex’ yet. And there are more important things than pussyfooting around here.”

“There are?”

Harley’s words broke the tension building between them. Slowly she sat up, facing her friend. Klio, her playmates distracted, laid her head on the blanket and stuck a thumb in her mouth in preparation for a nap. The baby’s sweet, sleepy eyes caused a tingle of tears at the back of Harley’s eyelids. “I know I shouldn’t have. I know. It was stupid.” But her words lacked conviction. Sex with Damien might be a complication in an already complicated situation, but she’d never regret knowing him like that. Sharing herself with him had been worth every heartache she was sure would come down the road.

Cassie’s voice returned to her usual soft tone, a balm that soothed Harley’s fevered conscience. “Just once?”

“Oh no. Not just once.” A hiccupped laugh caught in her throat as tears clogged it up. “I guess Sonny and I are more alike than I ever would have acknowledged. I wanted him from the first moment I saw him.”

“No, not like Sonny,” Cassie said with a shake of her head. “You might both be attracted to the same kind of men, but Sonny didn’t even try to go back for more. You’re nothing like her, Harley.”

She wanted to believe that; she really did.

Cassie nodded toward the cell phone now lying on the edge of the blanket. “So what did he want?”

Harley allowed a small bit of smile to escape. “He asked me out. On a date.”

“A date? Doesn’t he have this a bit backward? The date usually comes before the sex.”

“Ha. Ha.” Harley had never been accused of doing anything the normal way.

The quiet between them settled in as deeply as Klio had settled into sleep. Finally Cassie asked, “You haven’t told him?”

“God, no.” The longer she’d waited to talk to him this past week, the more she’d needed the perfect moment, only that perfect of a moment would never come. Imagining Damien’s face when he learned the truth about his daughter kept her up at night. The only time she could really forget was when he held her in his arms.

“Harley…”

“I know, all right? I know it’s important. I look at her”—she gestured to Klio’s sleeping form—“and I know, the sooner I explain everything to him, the better. And then I wonder if he’ll think…”

“Think what?”

Harley struggled to get more than a mere whisper out of her constricted throat. She barely succeeded. “If he’ll think I only slept with him because of Klio.”

“Oh, hon.” Scooting quietly over, Cassie reached for Harley, pulling her into a hug. “This is more than just sex to you, then?”

Harley whined. “Would you stop saying ‘sex’?” But when she glanced at Cassie, a small smile played around her friend’s lips. “I’m afraid it is much more than just sex,” she whispered, trying to hide the shaking in her voice.

Cassie nodded, a wealth of knowledge in the gesture. Harley didn’t know where that knowledge came from, didn’t know if Cassie would ever be able to share it, just as there were some things Harley would probably never talk about. She hoped, though, that someday she could help Cassie as much as Cassie had helped her.

“Most things can be worked out, you know.”

Can they?
Harley didn’t know if she believed that or not, but there was one thing she couldn’t get around. “He wants us to spend Christmas Eve night together.” She threw a meaningful glance Cassie’s way. “All night.”

“Well, I can watch Klio.”

“And let my daughter spend her first Christmas without her mother? I can’t.”

“Of course you can. She’s not five years old. She won’t remember. But”—Cassie threw up a hand at Harley’s instinctive protest—“but we both know that even if that worked for her, it wouldn’t for you. So let’s compromise. What if you meet Damien after you put Klio to bed that night? You can go spend time with him, and when you get up in the morning, you can come home and open presents with the baby. I’ll even stay at your place so you can have Christmas morning with your own tree. Klio won’t notice if you open presents at her six-o’-clock feeding or at eleven, not this year.”

Harley turned the idea over in her mind, trying to decide if it would work. From the moment she’d known of Klio’s existence as a tiny little bundle of cells in Sonny’s womb, she hadn’t felt this torn. “You really think it would be okay?”

“I do. But I have one condition.”

“And what’s that?”

Cassie reached out and settled her hand on top of Harley’s, squeezing lightly. “You have to tell him about her. It will only hurt more later.”

“It already hurts,” Harley admitted quietly. The amount it hurt scared her shitless, because she knew there was probably much, much more to come. Still, she knew Cassie was right; Damien deserved to know about his baby this Christmas. And so she said the only words she could say: “You have a deal.”

Chapter Eight

Mist shrouded the road on Christmas Eve, the night not quite cold enough to snow and not quite warm enough to dry up the moisture. Damien concentrated on the road, but his mind was full of the woman in the seat beside him. They’d had dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant just around the corner from his apartment. Harley had never been there, yet, sitting across from her at the candlelit table, sharing chicken parmigiana and warm, soft bread, sipping wine and avoiding shoptalk in favor of their favorite music and movies and all the stereotypical “relationship” particulars, it seemed as if they’d done this forever. As if the past three weeks had lasted a lifetime—a good one. The idea scared the hell out of him, but a part of him basked in the familiarity of it, like a favorite old T-shirt or a friend he’d known since preschool. It was finding a place to fit in, a place that wasn’t work and sure as hell wasn’t his family, but it was the right place. With Harley, he was simply Damien, and it felt good.

One hand gripped the wheel, while the other gripped Harley’s knee, linking the two of them in the semidarkness. He needed to touch her, needed some connection when he couldn’t be inside her right now. His gaze was on the road, but his mind was full of the image of Harley when she’d come to her door tonight. A loose poet’s shirt had draped her shoulders, its creamy sheen matching the cream-colored stripes in her hair. Her soft leather skirt ended well above the knee-high leather boots that choked him with lust. Silky stockings covered her soft skin in between, greeting his fingertips now with warm, yielding welcome. Thigh-highs? God, he hoped so. Just imagining that gossamer material firmly anchored by a garter belt, the sweet center of her barely covered in a miniscule thong, shortened his breath and tightened his dick. He wasn’t conscious of sliding his hand upward along the smooth muscle of her thigh until Harley’s breath hitched and her hand settled on his.

“I think you might need to focus on driving.”

“I think you’re right,” he reluctantly agreed. If it were up to his dick, he’d have said fuck the crappy weather, found a dark, secluded spot, and had her stripped in two seconds flat. But it wasn’t up to his dick; it was up to him. So he tucked his fingers into the inner bend of her knee and told them firmly to stay put.

He was not about to rush this, not tonight. He wanted to savor it all—Harley, the way she made him feel, the way she responded to his every touch. Maybe Ian was right. Maybe he was pussy whipped, but damn, if he was, he didn’t want it any other way.

“So how many brothers do you have?” Harley asked. Her words dropped into his thoughts like pebbles into water, the ripples jolting him out of his self-reflection. Probably a good thing, considering his balls were beginning to retreat from the estrogen in his system.

The thought brought a self-deprecating chuckle. To hell with it. He squeezed his fingers, kneading Harley’s satin-soft flesh. “Two. One sister.”

Harley shifted, tucking her left ankle under her right leg, moving her knee closer and allowing him a firmer hold. He took advantage by pressing the width of his palm against her leg.

“This is the sister that had the baby?”

He nodded as he eased onto the brake at a stoplight. “Shaw. We’re very close.”

Harley was silent for a moment, her stare heavy in the darkness. “I bet that was nice.”

He remembered their first meeting, how he’d confronted Harley about working for him when she could be with her band. She’d said her sister died. “You and your sister weren’t close?”

The swish of her hair against the seat told him she was shaking her head. He put on his blinker for the turn into his apartment complex. “Sonny was my twin, and no, we weren’t close.” Harley’s voice came out strangled.

“A twin, huh?” Something stirred in the back of his mind. “Your tattoo, the one over your heart. It’s a—”

“Gemini symbol,” Harley said. “I got it after Sonny died.”

“Were you exactly alike?”

“Not hardly, at least personality-wise. More like mirror opposites.” A wisp of longing threaded her words. “Sonny wanted the distinction between us to be clear.”

“She didn’t play?”

Harley snorted, the sound sharp in the quiet. “She played musicians.”

Oh
. As Damien braked at the gate to enter his security code, he glanced at Harley, who was fingering her hair.

“She used to dye hers too, all the time.” Her eyes were blank as she delved into her memories. “Any color but red. Couldn’t be red, not like mine.”

Damien had no idea what to say. Shaw loved him, encouraged him. She was his rock. Obviously Harley’s experience with her sister had been much different. “You have no other family?”

The gate opened, and as he wound his way through the complex toward the back, away from the noise of the road, Harley continued to talk. “My mom left when I was a teenager. She was a singer, just about to make it big.” Her tone held a sarcastic note. “She packed her bags one day and walked out. My dad wasn’t even home from work yet. He was a mechanic.”

“A mechanic?” He thought about that as he parked. Instead of getting out when he turned off the ignition, he looked to Harley. “That’s where your name is from. Harley. Harley-Davidson.”

A bit of pleasure returned to her eyes. “That’s right, Harley and Sonny, for his favorite motorcycle.” The pleasure dimmed. “Mom didn’t want anything to do with naming us.”

Leaning toward her, he brought their lips close, a featherlight brush of skin to skin, breathing when she breathed, tasting her in the very air in his lungs. Their eyes locked. “Sounds like she wasn’t much of a loss, Harley. I’m glad you had your dad when she left.”

Harley gifted him with a sad smile, the pain in her eyes touching him deeply. “He never stopped loving her. Three years after she disappeared, he died. Cirrhosis. He drank himself to death.”

“Jesus.” The thought that this woman who gave as good as she got, who was steadfast, reliable, independent, and caring, had dealt with so much shit in her life made him see his own family in a new light. No, they didn’t truly see him, didn’t understand him deep down, but at least he had family. Reaching up to cup her jaw, he leaned his forehead against hers. “You deserved better,” he told her, meaning every syllable.

That same sad smile reappeared, but deep in her eyes, he could tell Harley wondered if what he said was true. He wanted her to know it for a fact, see herself the way he saw her, but words could never do that, so he simply dipped his head and took her kiss.

The pleasure of her silken mouth against his, the surrender when she opened to him, allowing him to delve inside, to slide his tongue against hers, overpowered him. She made him weak. She made him need. He pulled her close, closer, hungry for her body against his, and as her arms slipped around his neck to hold on tight, he felt the weakness surrender to strength—the strength of passion, of taking everything she was and demanding more.

He couldn’t give her a new family or a different past, but he could give her this. A gift to both of them this Christmas. Any doubt he’d been feeling disappeared at the thought.

When he pulled back, Harley moaned his name. Her fingers clenched where she’d delved into his hair. The slight twinge made him want to moan as well. He swiped his finger across her moist lower lip. “Soon, sweetheart. Let’s go inside.”

It took every ounce of self-control to lift his hands from her body and turn away, to open the door and step into the cold December night. The misty rain washed some sense into him. He sucked in a deep, hard breath. Two. Adjusted himself roughly in his pants, then forced his feet to work.

Harley stared up at him, her emerald eyes flashing in the glow of the streetlight at his back. Her hand in his felt like the last piece of a puzzle falling into place.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said as he pulled her from the car.

“Really? What kind of surprise?”

He grinned, his mood shifting with every step away from the car. “The kind that’s no longer a surprise when you tell what it is.”

Harley humphed, but she kept walking. He led her up the stairs to the second-floor apartment he kept in town. Hotels got old damn fast. The apartment wasn’t a house, but at least the tastefully masculine decor was inviting. And spacious. The wide-open living room held just enough floor space for his surprise.

Harley gasped as she entered the softly lit room. One end of the long rectangular space held a grouping of leather furniture centered around a wide-screen TV. A gas-log fireplace dominated the far corner, and opposite, a glowing Christmas tree towered to the twelve-foot ceiling, lights twinkling in the gloom. Just in front of the tree lay a king-size mattress from Damien’s guest bedroom, piled high with a fluffy comforter and enough pillows to please even the girliest girl—or a man intent on propping hips to just the right height. Eyeing the pillows and then Harley’s swaying hips as she moved toward the scene, he salivated. Oh, the plans he had.