Page 46 of The Christmas Tree Farm
‘No way.’
‘You going to skate back?’ He raised an eyebrow in challenge and Kira glanced across the rink. They’d made it halfway and it had taken a hell of a long time to get here.
Kira frowned but relented. ‘I will allow it.’
He laughed and started to head toward the exit. And it was fine, totally just a friend helping a friend, until Kira leaned her head against his chest andsighed. Sighed like she liked being there. His fingers tightened on her thighs. First her hand in his, then all this talk about her ass, and now this? Kira in his arms, her silky hair tickling along his throat, her scent washing over him? And all he could think about was the soft skin of her wrist and how he’d wanted to replace his thumb with his tongue, how he’d wanted to explore a lot more than her wrist.
What the hell was he doing? He’d resolved to stay away from her, to tamp down his ‘rescuer’ instincts, and he’d ended up with Kira in a bridal hold as he escorted her off the ice. He was obviously failing epically.
‘Uh, the ice-skating lifeguard is blowing his whistle at us,’ Kira said, distracting him from his thoughts.
‘Ice-skating lifeguard?’ Bennett looked in the direction Kira was pointing. ‘Oh, the high-schooler with a whistle and a safety vest? I’m not worried about him.’
‘He’s yelling that you have to put me down,’ she said with a smile in her voice.
‘I’ll put you down when we get there.’
‘Uh-oh, Bennett, I thought you were a rule follower,’ she teased as they approached the exit. ‘A good boy.’
He slowed down, ignoring the way she’d purred those last words, and stepped carefully off the ice. He lowered Kira to the ground and tried desperately to ignore the way her body pressed against the entire length of his as he did. She didn’t pull away, just looked up at him with a mischievous grin.
There were so many rules he wanted to break when it came to Kira, mostly the ones he had made for himself. He wanted to take her home, he wanted to take her to bed, he wanted to dive headfirst into this thing with her that made no sense and would land him exactly where he always landed, alone and confused about what he’d done wrong this time.
But the answer was clear: he kept doing the same thing over and over again. Falling for women that he had no future with. His home wasn’t here. His life wasn’t here. He’d already been down this road before, and he couldn’t do it again.
Kira was not the one for him.
And he needed to remember that, even as she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
‘Thanks for rescuing me,’ she said, her voice light and teasing in his ear. ‘I hope it was good for you.’
He bit down on a groan. This woman was going to kill him. She was so close; her delicious lips wereright there. A slight turn of his head and his mouth would be on hers. It took all his strength to pull away.
Kira raised an eyebrow, a playful smirk on her face and damn, did he want to play with her. But it just wasn’t meant to be.
‘Real good,’ he said, and Kira’s smile grew. ‘But I have to get going.’
Her face fell. ‘Oh.’
‘See you around, Kira.’
‘Right. See you around, Bennett.’
ChapterThirteen
The sky was white this morning. According to her weather app, they were under a winter storm warning which to Kira sounded quite ominous. What did one do to prepare for a winter storm warning? Did she need to stock up on toilet paper and canned soup? She already had plenty of those.
She probably just needed working heat.
But that was still a pipe dream, so instead of preparing she just stared forlornly out the window at the eerily white sky. She didn’t love the idea of being trapped here alone for whatever this storm might bring, but she didn’t have much of a choice now, did she? What was she going to do? Trap Bennett here when he, hopefully, came for a walk? Bat her eyelashes until he agreed to stay and keep her company?
Ha, ha. Nope, of course she wouldn’t. That would be crazy.
And Kira was done manipulating people like that. Or she was trying to be. She’d replayed the whole scene from last Sunday over and over in her mind, searching for evidence that she’d somehow conned Bennett and his friends into helping her when her employees didn’t show up. But she hadn’t found any. She was pretty sure they’d all just stayed out of the kindness of their hearts. Which was … odd. And made an uncomfortable, but decidedly warm feeling settle in her chest. Uh-oh, maybe her Grinchy heart was growing.
She shook her head and reread her sister’s text message from this morning.
Morning, Kiki!
