The Baby Made at Christmas

“Oh.” She reached up and brushed it off.

“You know you weren’t supposed to do that, right? I was supposed to kiss it off.”

“In fact, I didn’t really have foam there at all.”

“No, you did. But you took care of it. Sadly.”

“You don’t need an excuse to kiss me, do you?”

“Valid point.” He put down his empty mug, took hers and put that down, also, peeled himself away from the edge of the counter and folded her in his arms.

They must have kissed for...oh, hours. They kissed until she was boneless, until her vision blurred, until she was practically a puddle on the floor, soft all over, throbbing.

She’d never known such kissing. So warm and strong and lazy. So hot and deep and luscious and perfect. So much an experience with her whole body. He made it totally clear that he was in no rush, and neither was she. Maybe no one had invented anything beyond kissing. Maybe kissing was the whole point, the be-all and end-all, the pinnacle.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

Finally, he took his mouth away long enough to say lazily, “Think they’ve quietened down, upstairs.”

She listened, beyond the slow thump of her heart and the giddiness in her brain. The music was turned off. There was no more laughing and yelling. She could hear a couple sets of footsteps going back and forth, and the occasional sound of a low-pitched voice. “I thought they might go on later than this. What’s the time?” She heard the creakiness in her own voice.

Mac peered over her shoulder at the microwave clock. “Midnight. Well, twenty after.” He sounded creaky, too. Rusty, as if too much kissing had clamped up their vocal cords.

She groped for rational thought. “I guess it’s Christmas tomorrow. There are some kids visiting who are still Santa age. Parents probably wanted to get the gifts under the tree, before they’re awakened at the crack of dawn. I noticed they’d corralled off the room with the big tree, and weren’t using it for the party. They’re saving that for their gift opening, tomorrow.”

“It’s Christmas today,” he corrected.

“After midnight. You’re right.”

“So...Merry Everything!” He smiled at her.

“Merry what?”

“Christmas itself is not the top thing in my mind, right now. So I’m leaving it open. Hoping there’s some merry other stuff about to happen pretty soon.”

“Well, Merry Everything back at you, then.”

“Pretty merry so far.” He pressed his cheek against hers, then turned his head a little so that he was kissing her again. “You have the best mouth....” he whispered. “The best body.”

“You’re not bad, either,” she whispered back.

“So that’s how we’re going to play it? I tell you you’re the best, and you tell me I’m not bad?”

“It’s not a competition,” she said lightly.

“And yet I really like to win.” His breath heated her ear.

“So do I.”

“I’m taking your top off....”

“Not if I take it off first.”

“You do like to win. But you won’t win this.” He peeled the red-and-green Christmas garment upward in one swift movement, taking her by surprise. When he ran his hands deliberately over the generous curves of her already acutely sensitized breasts on the way, she gasped and forgot about fighting back. How could anything feel this good?

He reached around to the back of her bra and turned his slight clumsiness with the hooks into a caress, thumbing the knobs of her spine with silky touches. The hooks stayed stubborn. “I am going to win the bra!” Lee said, because she knew the quirks of this one and had beaten them before.

Seconds later, the straps slid down her shoulders and her breasts fell into his waiting hands. “Mmm, so good,” he said. He cupped and stroked her, then bent to taste, and electric need ran instantly to her core.

There was something hugely erotic about being topless while he was still fully dressed, and they explored that for a long time, until finally she grew impatient and dealt with his black T-shirt almost as swiftly as he’d dealt with her red-and-green. His bare chest was silky and hot when she pressed her swollen breasts against him, and she couldn’t stifle the moan that surfaced from deep within her.

“Bed?” he said.

“Yes.”

They went through to it, stripping jeans and underwear and shoes on the way. There was no light on in the room, but it spilled through from the table lamps in her small living area in a soft shaft of gold. She liked the light, liked its softness, too. They could see each other, but not too clearly. They could see enough to discover that they were both smiling, not enough to see if the smiles faltered.

Because, you know, this couldn’t help but feel a little scary.

“Now...” he murmured, and she stepped into the heat of his body space once more.

He cupped her backside, tracing its curve down to her thighs, his touch light and slow, and she closed her eyes and stood motionless for several long moments, giving herself completely to the male scent of his skin, mingled with coffee and spice and beer, giving herself to the touch of her naked body against his, the sound of his breathing, the warm press of his mouth on her neck and shoulder and the slopes of her breasts.

It was beautiful. That was the only way to describe it. Funny and heartfelt and beautiful. The way they fell onto the bed together, the way he propped himself on his elbows above her and showed her just how ready he was for this.

“Tell me what you want,” he said softly.

“Nothing too fancy,” she replied, trying to tease.

He took her seriously. “No?” He whispered kisses at the corners of her mouth as he spoke. “Not?”

“Why? You?”

What do you like, Mac?

“Not that fancy, either. Gotta leave room for improvement.”

“We can start out pretty strong, even with nothing fancy.”

“We can.”

They grinned at each other in the low light. People called it “vanilla sex,” and didn’t mean that in a good way, but vanilla was a pretty popular flavor, after all. The feel of his weight poised over her, the hard heat of his body cradled in her opened thighs, the way she could hold him, wrap her arms all the way around and feel the strong, muscular cage of his chest. It was all so good, and it didn’t need to be inventive.

They didn’t need props or role play or gymnastics. Not tonight, anyhow. Not this first time.

Because she knew instinctively that it was going to be the first, not the only, and he seemed to know it, too.

He rolled her so that she was on top, and she arched upward to let him find her breasts again, with his hands and his mouth. He lavished them with hungry attention, cupping and stroking, covering her hardened nipples with his hot mouth. He lavished her with attention everywhere, in places she’d never thought of before. The creases between her arms and her body, the small of her back.

When he entered her, she was slick and swollen and ready, and the feel of him sliding against her had her whimpering and crying out so fast. It came out of nowhere. It came out of all those minutes and minutes of kissing.

But then he pulled back and swore, and it went away. “What did we forget?”

She understood, and swore, too. “I have some...”

“Good, because I don’t.”

“...as long as they’re not expired.”

“Hope they’re not.” He added after a moment, “And yet I’m sort of glad there’s a chance they might be.”

“Huh?” She was trying to reach for her bedside table drawer, but he wasn’t letting her. He was pulling her back against him, trying to pillow her head against his shoulder. “You’re glad they might be past their use-by date?”

“Yes, because I’m glad you... Well...” He hesitated, sounding gruff. “Hope you don’t mind this, maybe it sounds too old-fashioned. I’m glad it doesn’t happen like this for you all that often, I mean. Is that okay to say?”

“Of course, if it’s the truth.”

“We’re all about plain sex and honesty?”

“Sounds good so far.”

“Does,” he agreed, still gruff.

“So is it okay for me to say I’m glad you don’t carry them in your jacket wherever you go?”

“Haven’t needed any for...probably six months.” He thought a moment. “No, longer.”

“Good to know.” They lay there for a moment. “Although this whole discussion does seem like it might have killed the mood.”

“Not letting anything kill the mood,” he said.

“No?”

“I mean it! Find those suckers!”

She did. They were right in the bottom of her messy drawer, and they hadn’t expired. There was still a whole week left on the clock.

“See?” he said when she told him.

“See what?”

“See how this was meant to happen?”

“Why, yes, now that you mention it, I do....”

So it didn’t kill the mood, it simply changed it, and somehow they went from all that incredibly serious kissing in the kitchen, into a pillow fight kind of feeling. Getting the sheets and comforter into a tangle, pushing half the pillows onto the floor, laughing and chasing each other all over the bed until they were both breathless.

Until once again he was poised on top of her, looking down into her face with those dark eyes, his erection safely sheathed this time. She looked up at him, stroked the wave of thick dark brown hair away from his forehead, traced the lines of his parted lips with her fingertips and watched as he lowered himself and slid in, came back to the rhythm and push that had brought her so close so fast, before.

They never looked away. She hadn’t known that it could be so intense, watching each other. Or so intimate. She gripped his back, wrapped her legs around him, as if their locked-together gaze was a taut thread that would break if she didn’t hold on to him as hard as she could. In his face she could read the building of his release, and even at that moment they didn’t break eye contact.

He pressed his lips tight together, closed his eyes for a fraction of a second—dark lashes sweeping down, then up—and the wave of his climax broke against her body while she panted for breath, then cried out and moaned against the sudden crush of his mouth on hers.

Neither of them spoke for a long while after they were still. She lay there with his body still flung over hers, her limbs encircling him, his softening heat still filling her. After a little while, he eased aside as if he could tell the moment he began to feel too heavy on her.

He touched her lightly and almost methodically, as if to check that everything was still there and whole, cupping each breast in turn, making patterns with his touch along her sides, down to her hips, running the flat of his hand over her stomach, resting his palm against the mound that felt so swollen and sensitized.

“Four seasons in one day, weren’t we, do you think?” he said softly. “Like the weather in the mountains.”

“We were, a bit,” she agreed. “Which season is this?” She stretched and wriggled against him.

“Summer,” he answered at once. “Warm and sleepy and happy. Sun on our skin.”

“Mmm, I like summer. And winter.”

“I like them all.”

“Me, too. I like the point when it changes. First snowfall. First hint of fall. That tiny shift, but really the whole earth is turning.”

“Yes, when you feel something new in the air, and you know it’s just the start.” Was he still talking about the seasons? She wasn’t sure if she was.

Deliberately, she brought it back to concrete detail, instead of words that could have two meanings. “Love the snowmelt swelling the creeks and rivers.”

“Love a hard frost turning the leaves in one night.”

“And hiking through those deep drifts of gold and brown, when the air smells all peaty and fresh.”

“You’re a real outdoorsy gal.”

“I am.”

“Like that. Like my women athletic.”

They talked, not saying anything very much, until they fell asleep.

Chapter Four

That was day one.

Christmas took over most of day two.

Lee awoke early in the morning to hear Mac calling his family in Idaho, standing in her kitchen and keeping his voice down. “C’mon, sis, I knew you’d be up with the kids,” she heard him say.

Upstairs, the Narmans and their guests were up with the kids, too, and she knew she needed to touch base with them right away, to see what they wanted for cleaning and catering over the next few days. She called the cleaning company first, to confirm availability, using the boss’s home number, and booked them in tentatively for eight this morning. It was only six-thirty now, but the cleaner was happy to hear from her. He could charge a mint for working on Christmas morning.

Lee jumped in the shower for a two-minute scrub and then dressed quickly. Mac was still on the phone. “Doing my second job,” she mouthed at him, pointing up at the ceiling. He nodded.

The Narmans were very happy about the cleaners coming at eight. Most of the party was still in bed, just two sets of bleary-looking parents in pajamas and robes up and about, watching their impatient, early rising kids dive into the contents of several bulging stockings.

“Catering, no, not for today,” they told her. “You filled the refrigerator with everything we needed for last night—thanks so much. And for Christmas dinner we’re eating out.”

They talked through a few more details—they wanted a four-course spread for twenty people catered for later in the week, and someone had broken the glass shower door in one of the bathrooms, so could she arrange to get that replaced? Then Lee did a quick collection of bottles and cans and empty pizza boxes, and took out four bags of trash.

She was taking the final bulging bag to the little wooden trash hut that kept out bears and raccoons when Mr. Narman, Sr., found her and presented her with a list of eight more “little details” that needed her attention. More shopping, another repair job, reservations at various restaurants to make on their behalf and several more items.

“Is it always like this when they’re around?” Mac asked, when she told him she would probably be tied up most of the day, and then there was her dinner with friends to go to. She’d made coffee, and pointed to the cereal packets and the toaster and the bread.

“Pretty much. But they’re polite about it, and it’s such a good arrangement for me. Very cozy when they’re not around and I get to go upstairs.”

“Oh, you get to use the house?”

“Yep.” She grinned. “Laze in front of the open fire and drink champagne in the Jacuzzi.” She kicked off her boots and stretched her neck and shoulders in preparation for diving into all those phone calls.

“You were a cat in your previous life, I can tell.”

“Oh, you can?”

“The way you stretched and purred when you said that. The way you’re just slightly trying to get rid of me because I’m crowding your space.”

“Trying to—?”

Maybe I am.

He was grinning at her, leaning on an elbow in the kitchen doorway, with their breakfast dishes—two mugs, two plates—sitting in the sink behind him. The accusation hadn’t been made in anger. “It’s okay,” he said. “I have stuff I need to do, too.”

“I’m really not... I’m not pushing you out the door.” She felt a little panicky that he’d read her so clearly, and that she’d given the wrong impression about last night.

“It’s okay.” It must be, because he was still grinning.

“It was...” She scrambled for the right words. So she was a cat. Did he like cats? “I loved it. I loved the whole night. Sleeping beside you. And then you were still here in the morning, and that was lovely, too. It really was.”

“It’s okay,” he repeated patiently.

“I want to see you again,” she blurted out, and then bit her lip, because maybe she’d overstated her case, maybe his recognition that she was ready for some alone time had made her too honest about how much she’d liked last night.

Damn!

Or not.

He was smiling. Again. “So do I. Soon. We can make a plan now, if you want. Or if you don’t know when you’ll next revert from feline to human form, we can leave it and make a plan later.”

“Now. We can make a plan now. I’m only a cat some of the time.”

“Aha, is that a confession?” He stepped toward her and swung her easily into his arms, lacing his fingers in the small of her back and rocking her from side to side. It was as if they were dancing. “I knew it! I knew you were a cat.”

“Do you, um, like them?”

“Like what?”

“Cats.”

“What’s not to like?” he said softly. “They feel good to touch.” He ran his hand down the side seam of her jeans. “And if you treat them right, they purr for you.” He brushed the skin behind her ears and under her jaw, and so help her, she almost did purr! Her eyes wanted to close, and she wanted to rub against him and coil up and stay there. And she’d most definitely purred last night. But there were things to do and places to be....

He was still speaking. She opened her eyes again and found him looking at her. “And their eyes go big when something exciting happens.”

“Yours, too,” she whispered. Big and so dark.

“And they’re such phenomenal athletes, so fit and sinuous, the way they move. They know how to use their bodies so well. I’ve always loved that in a...cat.”

He was speaking of her, not cats at all, but all she could think of was him. She could imagine him, suddenly, out on a powder run, making effortless, snaking tracks through pristine snow with his shoulders squared to the slope and his strong legs pumping like pistons or springs.

“Let’s ski together,” she blurted out. “Could that be part of the plan? For next time?”

“And sometimes they’re just plain hilarious.”

“Wh—?”

“I’m seducing you, Lee, and you want to hit the slopes.”

“No, I...”

Shoot, how did I miss that? Of course he’s seducing me!

“We have time,” he insisted.

“Do we?”

“If we’re fast. And not fancy.” He added slyly, “I’ll set my watch.”

She laughed. “How long?”

“Ten minutes. Fifteen, by the time our shoes are back on.”

“You’re serious.”

“I totally am.”

So they were fast and not fancy, stripping and laughing and falling on the bed, and taking every shortcut they could think of....

Oh, it was so good. So short, but so hot and good. She knew they would both be laughing about it, thinking back. Laughing about the fact that you could make it into a race and still get it right.

The timer on his watch started bleeping just as he was reaching for his socks. “Damn! We didn’t make it as far as the shoes!” he said.

“Near enough,” she suggested.

“Near enough is not good enough. We’ll have to go for a rematch on this one.”

“On the fast thing?”

“Why, didn’t you like that?”

“I did,” she said.

With a look of lascivious reminiscence, he drawled at her, “Yeah, you did.”

* * *

Oh, she did, she liked it! Mac enjoyed the memories in this area whenever they wandered through his mind that day—and it was often.

He didn’t see any point in pretending about this kind of thing. He felt what he felt, and he let it show. He never made promises he didn’t intend to keep. Most of the time, this meant not making any promises at all. Better safe than sorry. She seemed to be the same, the kind of woman who played it straight, who wasn’t about games or emotional blackmail or saying one thing when she meant the opposite.

He hadn’t come to Aspen with the idea of hooking up with someone right away, and was a little surprised, to be honest, that it had happened like this.

Well, huh. So he had a woman in his bed, and it seemed to be working.

Nice.

All the same, from the word go, he kept a good lookout for danger signs and deal breakers, because even the most apparently casual fling could have a sting in the tail if you weren’t careful....

* * *

Lee didn’t mention Mac to her friends at Christmas dinner that night, but then she saw him every day for a week. He found a small apartment down valley, about twenty minutes’ drive, but told her, “You’re not seeing it until I have it fixed up a little,” so they always came back to her place. He downloaded and read A Room of One’s Own, on his eReader, “Purely so I can drink from more of your mugs.” She told him he was an idiot, and it became a running joke between them.

The Narmans left the day after New Year’s, which gave Lee a full schedule of instructing all day and then cleaning the house out until past eleven o’clock that night, with more still to do the next day. It was only when the Narmans were in residence that she called in the team of cleaners, who could be in and out in an hour. When the family wasn’t around, she did the work herself, because then it didn’t matter if it took her a day or two, and she could make sure it was done absolutely right.

But there was no time for Mac.

Two days later, when she’d closed the doors of all the spare bedrooms, replenished supplies and sent several things off to the dry cleaners, she grabbed a private moment with him at the ski school office and told him, “Guess what? We can have the house today.”

“The whole house?”

“Well, I usually just stick to one bedroom and bathroom, but, yep, they’re not due back until three days at the end of January.”

“Will we be able to find each other in that place?” He gave her a big grin. “Should we text our whereabouts whenever we move rooms?”

“We could get one of those Swiss alpenhorns that are about eight feet long.”

“Or walkie-talkies.”

“Or a 1970s intercom system.”

Another instructor overheard them. “Oh, wow, my house used to have one of those! My parents tortured us with it.” He gave a chuckle and shook his head. “We had Muzak piped into every room.” He moved on, out of earshot.

“Lucky we weren’t talking about various other possible subjects,” Mac muttered in Lee’s ear.

“I’m ready to talk about them tonight,” she muttered back.

“When?”

“Whenever.”

Having the whole house turned them both into kids in a candy store. Mac went shopping and came back with champagne, smoked salmon, caviar and anything else that had caught his eye and said luxury. Lee filled the Jacuzzi and lit the fire. They closed the drapes, which the Narmans always seemed to prefer open, even though the curtains moved back and forth at the touch of an electronic button.

“Can we have music?” Mac asked.

“Go for it.”

He strode into the side room where there was a huge bank of audio equipment, and put on a rock compilation CD. “They really don’t mind you doing this?” he said when he came back into the kitchen.

“They ask for it specifically. They hate if the place looks dark and unattended. The lights in my little cubbyhole don’t show from the street, or from the slopes.”

“How did you get this gig, anyhow?”

“I taught some of them to ski, they started asking for me for private lessons every time they came, and it went from there. The girl I was sharing with down valley got a boyfriend and wanted him to move in. There wasn’t room for three of us. Mr. Narman was looking for a live-in janitor. The timing was right, and it’s worked out really well. I’ve been doing it several years now.”

“It definitely has worked well. I think this caviar plan of mine is going to work out pretty well, too.” He thumped the side of the jar lid on a wooden cutting board to break the seal, and twisted it open. “My only question is whether we eat in the Jacuzzi or by the fire.”

“From experience, I can tell you that eating in the Jacuzzi isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Things end up floating and getting on your skin, and caviar is not my favorite flavor in a moisturizer.” She pulled a chilled bottle out of the shopping bag. “Champagne in the Jacuzzi, on the other hand...”

So they drank champagne there, using the very nice plastic picnic champagne flutes the Narmans kept for the purpose.

“They’re pretty fussy about the possibility of broken glass,” Lee explained. She lay back in the foaming water, letting the jets bounce her gently and keep her afloat.