Page 7 of A Not So Casual Christmas

“You watch too many movies,” he chided. “It’s going to be all right.” He laid his big hand on her knee and she swayed into him to lean her head on his shoulder. It was like old times.

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re still going to have a job when all this goes down.” Tessa laid out a shaky sigh. “I won’t have enough money to pay for next month’s mortgage if Starrett goes tits up. I’ll be heading back to New Hampshire with nothing to show for it, but a really expensive coffee maker and some garment district finds.”

“Maybe you don’t have to go back home.”

Tessa snorted. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Virginia is nice this time of year.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

Breathing in the scent of him, warm male, spicy and seductive and all Ben, she rubbed her cheek on his shoulder. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I want you to move in with me. With your skills, you’d find another job easily.”

“Now I know I’ve hit my head,” she muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if you find what you’re looking for, I’m going to quit my job, spend Christmas with my family and then move in with you.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

“Sounds like a dream come true.” Tessa straightened up and sat back in her seat. “I’m wondering what the catch is.”

“No catch. My life is settling down. Now, it’s time I did as well.”

“And just like that I’m supposed to fall in line. You say it’s time and suddenly all these years of loneliness are gone.”

He winced. “I don’t mean to make it sound like that.”

“I know.” Tessa glared out the window. “It just pisses me off that I wasn’t good enough for you then.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He pulled the car over into a barely there parking space while horns blared all around them.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” she shrieked, jolting forward as the car screeched to a stop.

“When I left to go to Afghanistan, I didn’t marry you because I didn’t want you to be miserable stateside in a military base with people you didn’t know, far away from your family.” He grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I didn’t want you to be alone if something happened to me and they came to let you know.”

Tears choked her as her eyes welled up. “You’re an idiot.”

“I know, but don’t think I’ve ever not wanted you. Don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you.”

“Then why didn’t you even bother to tell me when you left the army for the CIA?”

His grip loosened on her shoulders as he rubbed them. “I haven’t told anyone. I still don’t think it’s real. I’ve been training and going on missions and while it’s very different from the army, the danger is still there. But now, I’m going to have a permanent base. I’ll still have to travel, but I won’t be living out of a suitcase anymore. And I know I don’t have any right to expect that you have waited for me while I got my shit together, but I hope you have.” Ben leaned in and kissed her softly.

She licked his lips and went for a deeper kiss and she lost all sense of time and place kissing him. Tessa wanted to be mad at him. She wanted not to be so in love with him that her heart was galloping at the possibilities. She was terrified that this wasn’t real. If she woke up now and found that she dreamed these last few hours, she would never recover. But the fact of the matter was she had waited for him and she loved him too much to let him go.

“I love you, still,” she whispered.

“Then, let’s get this night over with so we can get started with the rest of our lives.” He kissed her fiercely one last time and then pulled back out into traffic.

When they arrived at Starrett Enterprises, Tessa used her pass key to swipe into the building. The security guard looked up briefly and then went back to his phone. The overhead lights pulsed on as they passed by. The motion detectors never seemed so creepy before, but then again, she hadn’t ever felt so guilty.

In her office, she tossed her purse on her desk and moved around to sit in front of her computer. Ben pulled up a chair and watched as she logged in.

“So, what do you want to know?” she asked.

“Walk me through the implementation. What’s new?”

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