Draining her glass, she turned away from the view.
Her intercom buzzed before she’d made it to the kitchen to start dinner. Setting down her wineglass, she walked to the front door and pressed the button connected to the lobby’s video camera. She wasn’t expecting anyone. And then she spotted the man standing in the lobby talking to Tom, the security guard, and nearly had a heart attack. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought Cole would appear in person, and unannounced, at that. She pushed the intercom button. “Hi, Tom.”
“Hello, Miss Harper. You have a visitor. Shall I send him up?”
She gulped. “Yes.” The elevator was fast. He’d be here in no time. Running into the bathroom, she finger-combed her short curls, but she couldn’t change clothes or put on makeup, or—damn it! Her doorbell was already chiming.
Heart pounding, she made herself walk back to the front door, but she was shaking. She fumbled with the lock and finally managed to open it, but her head buzzed from a massive adrenaline rush. “Cole?”
Those emerald green eyes hadn’t lost a fraction of their intensity. His gaze swept over her in typical Cole fashion, as if he were taking inventory. “Hello, Taryn. May I come in?”
“Sure.” Doing her best to breathe normally, she stepped back from the door.
He strode through it confidently. His long wool coat, black as his hair, carried with it the cool tang of December in Seattle. There was another scent, too. Apparently he still wore his distinctive peppermint aftershave.
In college he’d shaved twice a day, especially if they were spending the night together. Judging from the smoothness of his square jaw, he’d used a razor sometime in the past hour. One whiff of his freshly applied aftershave rocketed her back to long winter nights spent in his bed.
Dear God, her physical reaction to him hadn’t changed. He showed up and instantly her body became welcoming, yielding and decidedly moist. How inconvenient, especially because he didn’t look particularly happy to see her. No smile, no warmth, only a strong sense of purpose, which she recognized from the old days.
He’d identified a problem and he’d come up with a solution. Once Cole Evergreen saw his way through an issue, he proceeded with single-minded intent. But she couldn’t figure out why he had come here instead of contacting her by phone or even by email. That didn’t seem particularly efficient.
He pulled off his black leather gloves and turned to her. “It’s about the database.”
“I figured.” She noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, confirming her intel about him not being married. The coat underscored the drama that had always lurked beneath the surface of this complicated, beautiful man. As he unbuttoned it, her quick survey confirmed that he hadn’t let himself get soft in the middle. “Can I take your coat?” she asked.
“I’m not here to chat, Taryn. Obviously I need your services. Knowing your talent, the job shouldn’t take long. Two or three days, at most. Can you leave tonight?”
She stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“I want to hire you, exactly as you suggested. You’re the only person who’s ever hacked into my database, so I want you to fix whatever weaknesses are there. The situation is critical. I’d like you to start tomorrow. Can you do that?”
“No, I can’t do that!” She’d expected a response, a conversation, maybe even a request that she correct the problem, but not with this kind of urgency. “Look, Cole, I—” She’d thought bringing up the past would be relatively easy, and maybe it would have been on the phone. But face-to-face, her courage failed her. “Just because I did it, don’t get paranoid and think you have a huge security problem. You don’t. I was able to get in because I know your design habits, which made it easier for me.”
“What prevents you from coming with me tonight?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You hacked into my database. That makes it my business.”
She wished that his forceful pursuit of a goal didn’t turn her on so much. But she remembered he’d been that way in bed, too. Her pleasure had been his goal at all times, and wow, had he delivered on that promise.
He sighed and glanced away. “I’m sorry. I’m going about this all wrong.”
Oh. Her heart gave a familiar lurch, as it used to do anytime he revealed the vulnerability beneath his determined exterior. With a flash of insight, she understood the motivation behind his steamrolling behavior. She’d embarrassed him by hacking into a system he’d designed.
Chances were he hadn’t kept the situation to himself, either. “Who knows I hacked in?” she asked gently. “Besides you, I mean.”
His attention returned to her, his expression resigned. “Everyone at the administration level of the business, which includes both my brothers, my sister and our new head of security. I had to tell them.”
No, he didn’t have to tell them, but she should have guessed that he would. His unflinching honesty and sense of responsibility would have forced him to admit that his database wasn’t a hundred percent secure, no matter how painful that admission had been for him to make.
She hadn’t thought of that possibility. She’d somehow imagined this would be a little game between the two of them, but instead his whole family was now involved. That was unfortunate.
“I regret pulling such a stupid stunt, then,” she said. “I have no defense, really. I was curious about what you were up to, so I poked around until I found your company, and then I couldn’t resist trying to crack your code.”
For the first time, a spark of humor lit his eyes. “Well, that’s typical.”
“I know. And I have to say, it was fun figuring out how to unlock the database.”
The corner of his mouth curved in something that resembled a smile. “You always did relish the idea of outsmarting me.”
“I did. It gave me a challenge.” She’d missed their intellectual sparring more than their sex, and that was saying something. “But I’m sorry you’re on the hook because of my prank.”
“Then get me off the hook, Taryn. Come to Colorado and strengthen my security so even you can’t get in.”
It was a gold-plated opportunity to have her personal question answered. But if she was still attracted to him, and he was over her, spending a few days working together could be hard on her ego.
He cleared his throat. “You do realize I’ll compensate you for your time, right?”
“Well, yeah. You said in the beginning you wanted to hire me, so that usually involves money.” She wished she could figure out what was going on in that excellent brain of his. “Unless you had some other type of compensation in mind?”
Heat flared in his eyes for just a moment. “No.”
Interesting. That bit of heat had indicated he wasn’t totally immune to her. But he might not be available. “Forgive me if that was inappropriate. You probably have a steady girlfriend. Maybe even a fiancée.” She could at least satisfy her curiosity on that score.
“I don’t.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She waited to see if he’d ask about her love life. He did not. So if she’d cherished a tiny hope that he had something besides business on his mind, she should kill that hope right now. Once she’d thought he was in love with her, but then he’d abandoned her without a word. She’d been hurt and confused, but she hadn’t been able to convince herself that his feelings had been bogus.
Perhaps she should finally face the possibility that he’d grown tired of her and hadn’t wanted to say so. Honest as he was, he would have blurted the truth if she’d asked him. She wanted to ask now, but she hesitated. Sad to say, he still had the power to hurt her.
He focused his green eyes with laser precision. “Are you in the middle of a project you can’t leave for a few days? Is that the stumbling block?”
“As it happens, no. I only take small local jobs in December, so I have time to celebrate Christmas and my birthday.” It was the truth, but she didn’t mind that it also served as a little dig. Ten years ago she’d invited him home for Christmas and her birthday, and he’d accepted. Then he’d bailed without an explanation.
“Right. Your birthday.” His expression once again became difficult to decipher. “I promise you’ll be back here long before then. I remember how much you looked forward to Christmas.”
“I do.”
He glanced at her tree. “But if it’s Christmas cheer you’re after, you’ll find plenty of it in Gingerbread. It’s Christmas year-round there, but winter snow adds a lot to the ambiance.”
“I saw the pictures online when I was looking up Evergreen Industries. Cute little town.” The landscape had reminded her of the long walks in the snow at MIT when she and Cole had been lovers. They’d often debated the merits of some new computer technology, and whenever they’d disagreed on some obscure point, the argument usually had turned into a snowball fight, which led to kissing, which led to racing back to his apartment to have sex.
“I’ve booked you a room at the Nutcracker Inn.”
His comment detoured her trip down memory lane. “You’ve already booked me a room?”
“It seemed like a good idea. They’re extra busy in December. The place is loaded with Old World charm. All the rooms have feather beds, and yours is one of the few with a woodburning fireplace.”
“I admit that’s tempting.”
“There’s more. The proprietor, Mrs. Gustafson, bakes apple strudel every morning. She brings a tray to your door with warm strudel, fresh-squeezed orange juice and hot coffee.”
“Sounds pretty cozy.” Too bad when she pictured staying at the Nutcracker Inn, she automatically put Cole in the picture, too. He wouldn’t be there, and she needed to remember that.
“It is cozy. Or so I’m told by anyone who’s stayed there.”
“You mentioned hot coffee as if that’s a selling point. Don’t tell me you’re a coffee drinker at last.”
“Nope.”
“Wuss.” She used to tease him about that all the time.
He smiled. “Addict.” His gaze held hers, and his voice softened. “Whatever happened to those big glasses you used to wear?”
“Got contacts.” As she looked into his eyes, she remembered another very important thing. Before they’d been lovers, they’d been good friends. Sex had been an enhancement of that friendship, at least in her mind. But sex had raised the stakes, too. At the time he’d left, they’d been so deeply enmeshed that they couldn’t have dialed back the relationship to a friendship level.
After ten years, though, they ought to be able to do that. She’d like to stay in touch. Not many people communicated on the intellectual level that she and Cole had.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take the job.”
His shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
“I’m doing it as a friend, though. I’ll be insulted if you try to pay me.”
“That’s not right. You should be paid your going rate. In fact, because I’m hauling you away during the holidays, you should get more than your going rate.”
She folded her arms. “Then you’re willing to insult me?”
“No! But let me pay you. Please.”
“Nope. Either I do it because I’m your friend or I don’t do it at all.”
He opened his mouth as if to offer another objection. Then he closed it again. “All right. I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
Her traitorous pulse leaped at that comment, damn it. She’d have to ride herd on her emotions and not allow them to get the best of her. Agreeing to this might have been a mistake, after all.
Chapter 3
Cole had what he’d come for, and now he wondered how in hell he’d survive the next few days in close contact with Taryn without doing something stupid. Like kissing her. She’d been dynamite at twenty. At almost thirty, her sexuality had gone nuclear. The men in Seattle must have been blind. They should have been lined up outside her door.
She was still tall, still slender, but her curves had a lushness that hadn’t been there before. How he longed to pull her into his arms and explore those curves. She moved with more grace and assurance than she had when they’d been in college. He knew, just knew that she’d be an even better lover now, and she’d been terrific back then.
They had to get out of her apartment and on that plane, where they’d be properly chaperoned. He glanced around her living space. Her computer was turned off and he didn’t smell dinner cooking. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”
“What time is the flight?”
“Whenever I tell them.”
She blinked. “Oh. You came in your own plane. I didn’t realize that. Is it tiny?”
“It’s the Evergreen corporate jet, which is a decent size.”
“Evergreen has a corporate jet? The Christmas ornament business must be booming.”
“We do okay. Can you be packed in about fifteen minutes?”
“Uh, I guess so. But aren’t you hungry? It’s dinnertime, and I could make us something.”
That wasn’t going to happen. Even if he didn’t have the jet waiting at SeaTac, he wouldn’t dare sit through an intimate dinner in this apartment. He’d noticed the wineglass she’d left on an end table. Wine, a little candlelight, the glow from the Christmas tree, and he’d be done for. They’d be stretched out on her pricey rug in no time.
The thought of that scene had a predictable effect. He walked toward the window and pretended to take in the view so she wouldn’t notice the state of his crotch. He had a spell for controlling an inconvenient arousal, but it involved muttering an incantation, which would make him sound crazy as a loon.
He was feeling sort of crazy, but he didn’t want her to know that. “The galley’s stocked and we can eat on the way,” he said. “It’s getting late. By the time we fly into Denver and make the drive to Gingerbread, it’ll be after midnight. We should get going.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She turned and started down a hallway. “Give me ten minutes to throw some things into a suitcase,” she said over her shoulder.
He watched her walk away and swallowed a moan of frustration. A pair of old jeans and a faded sweatshirt shouldn’t be the sexiest outfit in the world, but on Taryn, it was. Her cap of milk-chocolate curls made her look sassy and down-to-earth.
You could mess around with a woman like Taryn, because she wasn’t coifed and tailored. He’d always loved that about her. She could roll in the snow, run home to have sex, and never give a thought to how she looked. In those days, all he’d had to worry about had been her precious glasses.
Once she’d left the room, he called the car service he’d employed and told them to be waiting in front of the apartment building in fifteen minutes. Then he prowled around the living room and recorded impressions of who Taryn was, now. The fireplace mantle was crowded with framed pictures. These would be the family and friends he’d been destined to meet during that Christmas vacation when he’d abandoned her.
Knowing she was surrounded by loving people cheered him. Knowing she hadn’t found the right guy gave him an unholy amount of satisfaction. That was wrong of him, and he knew it. He should want her to find Mr. Wonderful, settle down with him and be blissfully happy.
For years he’d assumed that had happened, but after finding her cheeky message on his database, he’d investigated to the full extent of the internet’s capabilities. The evidence had been conclusive. Taryn didn’t have a man in her life.
Although she didn’t realize it, she currently had a wizard in her life. And if that wizard really cared for her, he’d keep his hands to himself and deliver her back to this apartment without ever once giving in to the urges that plagued him whenever they were together. Even if she wanted him to. And he could tell that she did.
After replacing each picture frame exactly as he’d found it, he wandered over to her Christmas tree. And there, nestled in the branches, was an Evergreen Industries ornament. He’d forgotten that he’d given her one right after Thanksgiving ten years ago, when they’d reunited after the long weekend.
He’d chosen it with care out of the hundreds manufactured that year. The round ball was green, but through a trick of the light and a sprinkling of wizard magick, it seemed to glow from within, as if it held sunlight inside. That theme was echoed in a gold filigree border circling the sphere with repeating sun symbols.
Cole loved the green ornaments most of all, because they symbolized the Evergreen family name, which in turn harkened back to the trees that stayed green all winter. The sun represented light, both physical and intellectual. He thought of Taryn as the embodiment of light, and he’d told her so when he’d presented her with the ornament.
“Yes, I still have it.”
He turned to find her standing in the living room wearing a tan parka with the hood thrown back, a khaki messenger bag over her shoulder. A small black suitcase sat upright beside her.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d gotten rid of it,” he said. He didn’t want to talk about their breakup, but he wasn’t sure how to avoid talking about it.
“I considered giving the ornament away, but quite honestly, it’s the prettiest one I have, and I couldn’t part with it. I don’t know how your company manages to make something glow like that when there’s no solar chip involved. Is the entire covering solar? Is that how it works?”
“Can’t tell you. Company secret.”
She cocked her head. “Do other ornament companies try to steal those secrets? I wouldn’t expect that, because it’s so contrary to the spirit of Christmas, but I suppose anything’s possible.”
“I doubt they could steal that particular secret.” The incantation involved was known only to the Winter Clan, and no other wizard would be able to make it work right. In the wizard world, this incantation had the equivalent of a fail-safe component attached to it.
“But maybe they’d try, and that’s why you’re so intent on shoring up your security system.”
“Something like that. Ready?”
She nodded. “Just need to put out the cat.”
“The cat?”
“Gotcha! There’s no cat, and even if there were, I couldn’t very well put out a cat on the eighteenth floor, now could I?”
“Guess not.” He’d forgotten how much she enjoyed teasing him. It was easy to do, because he didn’t expect anyone to say things that weren’t true.
“I’d love to have a cat, preferably a black one, but that wouldn’t be fair. I travel too much.”
“I didn’t know you liked cats.” Cole thought of the lodge on Mistletoe Mountain, which was chockablock with cats, especially black ones.
“In our life at MIT, it didn’t come up. Both of us lived in places that didn’t allow pets.”
“Guess so.” He was impressed with how she referred to that time so casually, as if the memories didn’t affect her at all. Maybe they didn’t. He might be the only one who had vivid color images of those days rolling through his brain. And right now that video was playing in a continuous loop.
He gestured to the tree. “What about the lights?”
“They’re on a timer. The apartment is as maintenance-free as I can make it. I’m gone so much.” She reached for the handle of her rolling bag.
He started toward her. “Let me get that.”
“Why? It’s my suitcase.” She released the handle, though, as if sensing he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“But you’re my guest.” He came up beside her and grasped the handle.
“Your guest?” Her eyebrows lifted. “I thought I was your independent contractor.”
“You would have been if you’d allowed me to pay you.” Instead of kissing her, which was what he wanted to do, he rolled the suitcase across the thick carpeting to the door. “But now that you’ve insisted on doing the job for free, that makes you my guest.”
She followed him to the door. “I think you’re bossier than you used to be, Cole.”
“No, I’m not. I’ve always been this bossy.” Or so he’d been told by his siblings.
“Maybe you’re right.” Once they were out the door, she locked up and dropped the keys in her messenger bag. “I might not have noticed it because we spent so much time in bed, and I kind of like a man to be bossy in bed.”
His sharp intake of breath was pure reflex. He couldn’t have stopped himself from doing it if someone had put a gun to his head.
“Whoops. Did I say that out loud?”
He turned to her, his heart racing. “Yes, ma’am, you did.” He couldn’t tell from her expression if she’d truly slipped up or if the comment had been deliberate, like her line about the cat. She seemed unapologetic as she met his gaze, so he suspected the latter.
She quickly confirmed his suspicions. “I’m trying to figure you out, Cole, and I’m having a very tough time doing it. Sometimes, when you look at me, it’s like the old days, as if you’re ready to gobble me up. But then you turn all logical and businesslike, and claim that the only thing you care about is shoring up the database. Which is the real you?”
He gave the only answer he could come up with. “Both.”
“What the heck does that mean?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Apparently. And you seem really stressed about it.”
“That’s because I am.” How he hated to admit that.
She took a deep breath. “Okay. Can you explain what the issues are? Because I didn’t get that explanation ten years ago, and I’d appreciate hearing it now, before we hop on that plane.”
He wondered how he’d ever expected to get involved with her on a business level and keep it from morphing into something more personal. Of course it would. They’d been together less than an hour and it already had.
Facing her, he realized he’d missed a blindingly obvious fact. “That’s why you hacked in, isn’t it? To get that explanation.”
“Yes, it is. So if you’ll tell me, then I’ll go fix your computer system. All will be well.”
If only it were that easy. “Do you trust me?”
“In some things, yes. In other things, no.”
“Fair enough. I deserve that. Let me put it this way. Do you trust me to want the best for you?”
Her answer was a long time coming, but at last she nodded. “Of course you want the best for me. You’re a nice guy. But the problem with that is you can’t always know what’s best for me. I’m a far better judge of that than you are.”
“I’m sure that’s true in general. But in this particular situation I’m confident I know what’s best. You and I aren’t meant to be together.” Even though he knew that with a white-hot certainty, saying it cut like a knife.
She didn’t seem to like hearing it, either. “Why not?”
“I can’t tell you that. You have to trust me to know what I’m talking about.”
“Okay, look, before we walk down the hallway and get on the elevator, I need to know at least this much. Are you involved in criminal activity?”
That made him smile.
“It’s not funny! I care about you, but I’m not willing to be an accomplice!”
“You care about me?” The words warmed him more than he could say.
“Of course I do.” Her voice softened. “I’ll never forget our time together. Which is why, now that I’m about to turn thirty, I wanted closure on that relationship. I hacked in to get your attention and an explanation. You probably wish I hadn’t.”
“I’m not sorry you hacked in.” That popped out before he’d known he was going to say it, but once he had, he knew it to be true. This episode promised to be a challenge, but having a chance to see her again and talk with her was worth any inconvenience. He never tired of looking into her hazel eyes and imagining the wheels turning in that amazing brain.
“I’m glad you’re not sorry. Neither am I.” Without warning, she stepped forward and pressed her lips to his.
He’d been hanging tough until that moment, but as her velvet mouth made that achingly familiar connection, he came unglued. Her suitcase toppled to the floor when he let go of the handle, but the resulting clatter barely registered because he had Taryn in his arms again. A herd of reindeer could have stampeded through the hallway and he wouldn’t have noticed.
