Page 46 of Take Me Home for Christmas

“So. Much. Better. Than. I. Dreamed,” he panted each word as he drove into her.

She might have latched onto the nugget that he’d been dreaming of her had her release not been building in its intensity. It suddenly washed over, taking her over the edge with it. She cried out Hayden’s name. He stilled above her. Elle could feel him staring at her again. She forced her eyelids open.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. “So, so beautiful.”

And then he was moving again, driving into her three more times before she felt his body grow tense beneath her fingers.

“Yes!” he shouted when she clenched her muscles around him. “God, yes.”

Minutes later, they were a tangle of sweaty limbs, both still breathing fast. Hayden adjusted the pillow beneath her head before he slipped out of the bed. He used his crutch to hobble to the bathroom down the hall.

Elle would have peeked at his perfectly imperfect body again, but she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes open. She felt the mattress sag when he crawled back into bed. He drew a flannel blanket over their bodies.

“I have to meet West for the contest later.” She tried to make her body move, but it was no use.

“Sleep.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I won’t let you miss it.”

“I wouldn’t mind if we did,” she murmured as her eyes drifted shut.

“Mm.” He feathered kisses along her jaw. “There would be talk if neither of us showed up.”

A ripple of unease ran down her spine. Her sated body quickly extinguished it, however. As she dozed off, she promised to think about the implications of their rash behavior later.

ChapterTwelve

Everett sortedthrough the various bags of candies and tubes of icing he’d tasked Gidget with gathering. The other eleven teams were doing the same at their workstations. Between the contestants and the onlookers, The Queen of Hearts Bakery was jam-packed.

“Remember, you only have ninety minutes to complete your house.” At each spot, Tatum placed a tray containing the four sides and two pieces of roof made of gingerbread. There were also two baggies of frosting to be used as the “glue” for their structure. “Everything on your house must be edible. The only tools you can use are decorator tips and a paring knife to cut your candies, if needed.”

Gidget absently picked up a gumdrop and popped it into her mouth.

“Hey!” Everett scolded her. “We may need that.”

They wouldn’t. His ever-efficient babysitter had over bought. Everett had enough materials to decorate a neighborhood of gingerbread houses. But that wasn’t the point.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “I didn’t get lunch.”

He looked at the woman beside him, really looked at her. The ever-present dark circles under her eyes seemed less pronounced today. There was also a glow to her skin that could be attributed to the temperature of a bakery filled with bodies although he suspected something else. He followed her gaze across the room to the workstation where Kitty and the deputy set up their ingredients. The deputy sent a lazy grin Gidget’s way.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Everett said. “Will you be able to concentrate with your boyfriend sitting so far away?”

That got her attention. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you keep insisting he’s my boyfriend?”

Everett stared at her in exasperation. “Are you going to sit there and tell me he isn’t?”

“We’re . . . we’re just friends.”

He grunted. “Men do not look at women who are ‘just friends’ the way that man always looks at you.”

Her face went a shade pinker. She pulled the pretzel rods from the plastic container and measured them against the sides of the gingerbread house. “We’ll need a cup of water to soften the edges of these. That way, they won’t crack when we cut them.” She wandered off to the beverage station.

“The judges today will be Mrs. Dana Martin, our high school’s art teacher,” Tatum was saying. “Joining her are award-winning architect Gavin McAlister and cookbook author and chef Lori McAlister”

“Great, we have a leg up with the judges already,” he said when Gidget returned.

She snorted. “Don’t count on it. There is no free ride in the McAlister family. You have to earn your accolades and victories.”

The terse way she spoke the words had him scrutinizing her yet again. Before he could question her, however, Tatum clanged a metal spoon against a cookie sheet.

---