Meet Me under the Mistletoe

“Yeah,” he said tightly. “They were mostly single.”

Shannon’s gaze flicked over him, seeming almost as tangible as a touch. “I may be single, but I promise not to bake you any cakes or cookies.”

“Skip the Jell-O salad and casseroles, too, okay?” Alex muttered. He didn’t want anything that reminded him of the food at Kim’s wake.

“I promise.” Once again something unknown flickered in Shannon’s expressive face, but he couldn’t begin to guess at the meaning. “And you can skip the offer of Thai food, if you prefer. I may be single, but I’m not on the prowl like Lisa or the others.”

“What’s ‘on the prowl’?” Jeremy asked.

He was examining them both with his serious eyes, and Alex saw that Shannon was as nonplussed as he was over the question. For some reason it reassured him. She was so darned confident about everything, it was nice to know there were some things she wasn’t certain how to handle.

“It means that Shannon just wants to be our friend,” Alex said.

“That’s right,” she added quickly. “Just friends.”

The emphasis she put on the words drained some of the satisfaction from Alex, which just proved how illogical he could be. The last thing he needed was a neighbor who saw him a potential mate, particularly a neighbor as unsettling as Shannon.

Chapter Three

“Actually, Thai sounds good,” Alex found himself saying to his astonishment. “But Jeremy may not like something so different.”

“That’s all right. I can ask the delivery guy to pick up a hamburger on the way over. Does that sound good to you, Jeremy? We’ll have him get french fries, too.”

Naturally, Jeremy looked thrilled. He loved fast food, particularly since his mother hadn’t allowed him to eat any. Alex had tried to stick to Kim’s rules about their son’s diet, but convenience foods were called convenient for a reason…they were convenient.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t cook. His work had taken him to some remote parts of the world where restaurants didn’t exist. You learned to cook or you didn’t eat. But between work and trying to spend time with Jeremy, it was easier to grab a bag of precut salad mix and a microwave dinner. Now that things were becoming more settled, they would have to start a routine that made them both comfortable.

“That would be fine,” Alex said. “Except I doubt you can get the delivery person to run an errand for you.”

Shannon’s smile turned even more beguiling. “Wanna bet?”

No.

He definitely didn’t want to bet.

She could probably charm a perfect stranger into doing something they had no intention of doing. Like him, for example. He’d fully intended to keep his distance, and now they were having dinner together again. He had to be out of his mind.

“You can try the Thai food if you want,” Shannon told Jeremy as they went up her walkway. “I just love the peanut chicken. It’s sweet and yummy.”

“Uh…okay.”

They chattered away and Alex nodded in resignation as his son agreed to try a few of the exotic dishes Shannon enthused about. One of the few discordant notes in his marriage had been Kim’s lack of culinary adventure, and Jeremy was just as stubborn about trying new things…or had been until now. His son had done nothing but talk about Shannon ever since meeting her, so he’d probably eat live worms if she asked.

“Any preferences?” Shannon asked Alex as she hung her coat in the entry closet. Unlike her orderly living room, the closet was an untidy mess of winter gear and sports equipment. He supposed it was a sort of metaphor, representing the variable sides of her nature. “I like almost everything, so speak up for whatever you want.”

Spicy, he wanted to say, but was afraid it would come out sounding seductive. Curiously, her sexual impact was both subtle and overt. The overt part didn’t bother him. It was the subtle, vulnerable part of her that had him ready to bark at the moon.

Yet even as the thought formed, Alex shook his head in denial. He doubted there was a vulnerable cell in Shannon O’Rourke’s delectable body. She was bright and fiery, like the shining surface of a diamond. Sure, she had a soft spot for his son and seemed to care about people who were less fortunate, but vulnerable?

Not a chance.

“I’ve learned to like most everything, too, with all the traveling I’ve done,” he said. “But if you hope Jeremy will try something new, I’d get mild.” He nearly added and don’t get your hopes up, then decided Shannon would find out soon enough about his son’s preference for unimaginative food.

She picked up the phone. “That’s fine. I’ll ask them to put some crushed red pepper on the side.”

In a short time she’d ordered a number of dishes and sweet-talked the manager into having the delivery driver pick up a burger, fries and a carton of milk.

“I think you ordered too much,” Alex said.

“Not if you have a big appetite like my brothers.”

Shannon’s comfortable references to her family made Alex uneasily aware that he rarely spoke to his own relatives, even during the holidays.

“You’re close to them, aren’t you?” he asked curiously.

“Of course I am. Naturally they drive me crazy trying to interfere with my life. And Kane takes his position as head of the family way too seriously, but they aren’t bad for big lugs with the mentality of cavemen.”

His eyebrows shot upward. “Cavemen?”

“Completely. You should have seen the way they acted when I started dating.”

Alex smiled. “That bad, eh?”

“Worse. I swear that Kane or Neil or Patrick followed me on every date for the first six months. Even Dylan and Connor were weird about it. Do you know what it’s like to be unable to enjoy your first kiss for fear one of your brothers is going to pounce?”

“Not really.” Alex choked, fighting a laugh.

Shannon was trying to sound aggrieved, but he could tell she was touched by her brothers’ protectiveness. Yet he sobered quickly, wondering if his own sister had ever had trouble when she started dating, and if she’d ever wished her brothers were there to protect her.

He’d been long gone to college and building his career by the time Gail was old enough to start going out with boys.

“Did you ever have trouble on a date? One you needed help handling?” he murmured.

“Me? Not a chance. I take care of myself.”

Something flashed through Shannon’s eyes so quickly, it was gone almost before it registered.

She was lying.

Not in a bad way. Just covering up something she didn’t like remembering, or didn’t want to confess.

It bothered him that Shannon might not be as tough as she appeared—maybe because her brothers were still protecting her, while he’d seen Gail just once in the past three years. Gail was tough, too; you didn’t grow up in the McKenzie household without developing a protective shell. But what if his sister wasn’t as tough as he thought?

Because it raised a confusing array of emotions that Alex didn’t want to feel, he sat next to Jeremy, who was playing once again with Shannon’s Christmas train set.

“Choo, choo,” Jeremy chanted. Mr. Tibbles had been leaned up against one of the miniature Victorian houses, and he looked decidedly tipsy with one of his long ears flopped over a black button eye.

Sometimes Alex hated that rabbit.

It represented the dark days, the loss his little boy never should have suffered. Only the introduction of Shannon into their lives had lessened his fierce attachment to Mr. Tibbles.

Shannon…

Sighing to himself, Alex glanced across the room. She’d knelt by the fireplace and was lighting a neatly laid stack of logs. The sway of her hips beneath her formfitting jeans made him uncomfortably warm. Her impact on his senses was the most likely explanation for his agreeing to dinner, but knowing that didn’t make him happy.

He cleared his throat. “I’m surprised you don’t have a gas fire. It’s more convenient.”

She turned and smiled. “I prefer the light and warmth of a real fire.”

“Gas puts off heat and light.”

“Not like this.” Shannon gazed into the new flames licking across the wood, a dreamy expression on her face. “Every year I visit Ireland with my mother. The cottage she grew up in has a fireplace that fills most of a wall in the kitchen. The light bounces off the polished copper pots and kettles, and it feels so safe and secure, as if nothing will ever change.”

“Everything changes.” The words came out sharper than Alex had intended, but it was the truth. Things changed, no matter how much he disliked the process.

The corners of Shannon’s mouth turned down, and the soft light of memory faded from her eyes. “I know. That’s a lesson I received when I wasn’t many years older than Jeremy. Anyway, my grandparents still live in the cottage, though Kane wants to build them a modern house with modern conveniences, either in Ireland or here in Washington.”

Alex found himself moving closer, drawn partly by the warmth in his lower extremities, and partly by the unguarded emotions he’d seen in her face. “They refused?”

“Yes. Generations of Scanlons have grown up there, and they’re not ones to be goin’ anywhere that God didn’t put them.” She said the last in a distinct brogue, and he knew she was repeating something she must have heard often from her faraway grandparents.

“I take it your grandparents didn’t approve of your mother going to America.”

“It was my father they didn’t approve of. That is…” Her voice trailed, and to Alex’s surprise, Shannon looked shy, as if she’d revealed something she thought should have stayed private. “They’re good people, but my father was wild before he married my mother, and then he took her thousands of miles away.”

Wild?

“You take after your father, don’t you?” he asked before he could think better of the question. He didn’t need to know those kinds of things about Shannon; they weren’t even friends, much less lovers.

“Yes, though my third-oldest brother is the most like Dad. Of course, Patrick is settling down now, too. He got married a couple of months after Kane.”

“Is marriage the answer for your family? Like a ship’s anchor for all that wildness?”

“Maybe.” Shannon flipped a curling lock of auburn hair away from her face, and shrugged. “But probably not for me.”

Once again there was a confusing emotion in her green eyes, quickly concealed. A man could get whiplash trying to figure her out, and for the hundredth time Alex’s head warned him to get out, now, before he got involved. Women like Shannon might be fascinating, but they were also too disturbing.

Despite the warning, he leaned forward. “Why not you?”

“Lots of reasons,” she said lightly. “I’m too independent and want things my own way. I enjoy working and keeping my own hours, that sort of stuff.”

Once again he had the oddest sensation, as though she’d told him something that wasn’t entirely true.

“Seeing how good you are with kids, I’d think you’d want a family of your own.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know I’m good with kids? Maybe it’s just a fluke with Jeremy.”

Alex laughed. “I don’t believe that. Why else would he respond to you?”

“It’s…complicated.” Shannon’s smile trembled and she looked at Jeremy playing with the train set. Her voice lowered. “I think it’s because I understand what he’s going through. You see, my father died in an accident when I was eight. One minute I was a happy, carefree little girl, and the next…”

Her eyes blinked rapidly, unnaturally bright, and he winced. “Don’t, Shannon.”

She shook her head. “No, I want you to understand, because if there’s anything I can do to help Jeremy, I want to do it. I know how it feels to be young and have your world fall apart, and to hurt so much you want to crawl in a hole and hide,” she said, sounding as if the words had been dragged from a deep place in her soul, a place she didn’t usually reveal.

Alex felt like a heel for causing her to speak about something so painful. Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing to ask for her phone number to give the day-care center. Jeremy came first, and Shannon obviously wanted to help.

He raked a hand through his hair, his need to stay uninvolved battling with the seductive desire to be close to a woman as tempting as Shannon. And right in the middle of the battle were his son’s needs, more important than anything else.

“Actually, there is something…well, there’s a favor you could do for us,” he said slowly.

Shannon raised one eyebrow when he fell silent. “Yes?” she prompted.

“The day-care center has been asking for an emergency contact in case they can’t reach me. I know it’s a lot to ask, but they’re right about needing someone local. I understand if you don’t want to. It’s really all right if you say no.”

Alex sent up a prayer she would say no, or seem reluctant, or say something else that would get him off the hook. Then he could honestly stall the day-care center again.

“Of course,” Shannon said, reaching for her purse and taking out a business card. She scribbled something on the back and handed it to him. “This has my office number, and I put down my home and cell, along with my executive assistant’s phone. She can always reach me. Really, if there’s anything you need, just call.”

God in heaven…

She was so generous, and Alex gazed into her green eyes for an endless moment, then down at the curves of her mouth. Panic lapped at the edge of his consciousness; he didn’t want to be attracted to Shannon or be pulled into her world. He wanted things to be calm and sane, with everything in its proper place. He needed things to be that way.

The doorbell rang before Alex could sort through the emotional minefield he’d stumbled into, and he let out an unconscious sigh of relief. “That must be dinner.”

He pulled out his wallet, but Shannon shook her head.

“It’s my treat, remember?”

Letting a woman pay for dinner went against the grain. “But—”

“No ‘buts.’” Shannon got to her feet. It had been years since she’d had so much trouble keeping herself from blushing, yet something about Alex was making her say things she never planned on saying.

And those eyes of his…they were too darned intent. She’d bet anything that he wasn’t thinking about her the way she kept thinking about him, but that was the story of her love life. Men always had a different agenda, and how was she supposed to figure out a man who’d lost his wife and was worried about his son?

“So, how is everything going with your classes?” she asked after they’d settled at the dining-room table and spooned various portions onto their plates, the food steaming and spicing the air with the pungent fragrances of lemongrass and other herbs.

Alex groaned. “Okay, but I didn’t have any idea how tough it was teaching basic engineering principles to undergrads.”

“I thought you’d been teaching for a long time.”

“No, this is my first year. I used to work on engineering projects all over the world. But now that it’s just me and Jeremy, I realized that moving every few months for a job wasn’t the right life for him.”

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