Page 31 of Take Me Home for Christmas

“But you are angry.”

“I believe I just explained why I’m stressed out tonight. Making matters worse, West is sitting out there on a date with my aunt.”

She studied his face. The square jaw and straight nose were so familiar. The closed-off expression in his blue eyes was not. And she didn’t dare even let her gaze land on his full lips. Lips she now knew from her embarrassing episode were firm and quite intoxicating. She shook her head slightly, attempting to refocus her thoughts.

“Yeah. Weird,” she said.

“Are we good here? Because . . .” He gestured with his thumb at the door.

“Sure.”

He turned to leave without even giving her so much as a smile. And that seemed to detonate something inside her. Elle wasn’t good. She wasn’t good at all.

“Why did you disappear the other day? When you took me to the ER?”

He froze with his back to her, his hand on the doorknob. “Can you just let that go? It didn’t mean anything.”

“Seriously? You made a whole scene. Dropping out of the race. Rushing me to the ER as if my life depended on it. And then, boom, you ghost me. That didn’tmeananything?”

Hayden turned back around to face her. “Yes, Elle. It didn’t mean anything. Just forget it ever happened.”

“Like you forgot about me kissing you?”

Oh, hell.Why was she bringing that back up again? She should be grateful he didn’t want to make a big deal about the way she’d thrown herself at him that night. Why couldn’t she just forget it like he asked?

Because it stings that he could just “forget it.”

“I mean, was it that bad?” she babbled on, her brain clearly on a suicide mission. “I haven’t had any complaints before.”

He was so still that she wasn’t sure he was breathing. “You don’t want to have this conversation, Elle.” The words were spoken so quietly, she almost didn’t hear them over the noise from the party going on right outside the door.

You’re right. I don’t,her brain cried.

Too bad her heart was driving the crazy bus right now.

She jerked her chin up, willing it not to tremble. “Clearly, I’m doing something wrong if men forget me so easily.”

“Don’t you dare lump me in with that asshole, Jeremy,” he growled.

“It’s kind of hard not to when you both rejected me.” She hated the hiccup in her voice.

“Dammit, Elle.” He closed the distance between them, his body pressing hers against the wall. Her nerve endings sizzled to life at the contact. She’d known this man for decades. How had she not realized the exquisite pleasure his muscled body was capable of? He reached up and trailed a finger along her cheek. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

He was right. She didn’t know anything right now. The only thought in her head was that he must keep touching her.

Everywhere.

“Hayden?”

Her whispered plea got his attention. “Mm-hmm.”

An instant later, his lips crashed down on hers. She was pleased to discover she hadn’t imagined how full and firm they were. When she’d let herself go back to the memories of that night, she’d always remembered his kiss had been the type to make her stomach drop—as though she’d just gone over the first hill of a roller coaster.

This one was no different.

Best of all, Hayden wasn’t kissing her like a man repulsed. Nope. His lips were greedy and demanding as they feasted on her mouth. It was almost as though if he didn’t kiss her, he might expire on the spot.

She could relate to that feeling.

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