Page 11 of Merriment and Mayhem
Everleigh smiled. “That sounds like fun.”
“Good. Because you’re coming.”
“Oh, I am, am I?”
“Mm-hmm.” All it took was one measured step, and the toes of his heavy-duty boots bumped her sneakers. He lifted his right foot to rest on the rear step of the engine, his knee bumping her thigh, and with his left hand braced over her head, his big, broad body boxed her in against the back of the truck. She fisted her hands at her sides against the urge to reach up and knot her fingers in his shirt, drag him down, andseal her mouth to his. “This Friday. Six o’clock. I’ll pick you up.”
She shut her eyes. “Griffin—”
“We don’t have to call it a date if you don’t want to.”
As if calling it a date was the issue and not that every time she was alone with him it became that much harder to remember all the reasons why this was a bad idea.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she murmured, needing him to understand that, however trite it sounded, this wasn’t about him. It was all her. Her baggage and her zip code and what she wanted. “I just ... I just think it would be better if we didn’t”—she swallowed over the tight knot in her throat—“call it a date.”
He hummed. “Let me see if I’m understanding this right.” His thumb swept against her cheekbone, and against her better judgment, she opened her eyes. Griffin was gazing down at her with an intensity that somehow left her both hot and cold. “You want it to be a date, but you don’t want tocall ita date.”
Heat crept up her neck. When he put it like that, it sounded silly. “Right.”
“Because you don’t do casual.”
“Mm-hmm.”
The furrow that appeared between his brows was less perturbed than it was thoughtful. “What if I said I don’t do casual, either?”
She turned her head to the side. “Griffin—”
He captured her chin in a firm but gentle grip, making it impossible for her to look away, to hide. Her breath quickened, pulse racing at the way his eyes had morphed into blue flames. “I’m serious, Everleigh.”
If anything, that made this whole thing worse. “I still don’t live here.”
His thumb traced the contours of her mouth, dragging down her bottom lip. An almost violent shiver rolled through her, and his eyes darkened. “If you did?”
If she lived here, she’d have taken Griffin up on his offer to take her out on that first Wednesday. If she lived here, she probably would’ve dragged him off to a storage closet by now, a bunk room, maybe, and they probably wouldn’t be talking.
But as Grandma Dangerfield loved to say,If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.
“I don’t.”
He lowered his hand and Everleigh instantly mourned the loss of his touch.
“Six o’clock?” He smiled, bittersweet and soft, and Everleighached.
“Hold on, let me get this straight: you work two consecutive twenty-four-hour shifts, so forty-eight hours, followed by ninety-six hours off?”
Griffin guided her through the surprisingly large crowd with a hand on the small of her back. “That’s right.”
“Andapparently you like to pick up extra shifts this time of year so your coworkers can have more time with their families.”
The tips of his ears turned an endearing shade of pink. “I’m a single guy without kids in his late twenties whose parents live twenty minutes across town. I can see them whenever I want. And my nieces and nephews? God love ’em, but they’re at that age where they couldn’t care less about their uncle Griffin when they’ve got presents from Santa waiting under the tree.” He shrugged easily. “It’s only fair Itrade a few shifts so Harris and Nelson and Perez can spend time with their families.”
Fairandrightandgoodandkindweren’t givens, but Griffin acted like they were. Like it was no big deal for him to sacrifice his Christmas so his coworkers could spend time with their children. Just like it wasn’t a big deal to finish hanging the lights for a disaster of a girl trying to do her grandmother’s memory justice.
“Tell me, are youstrivingfor canonization, or are you just hoping it’ll be by happenstance?”
Griffin slipped his arm around her waist and bent, dropping his voice to a near whisper, his lips brushing her ear. “If you knew half the thoughts I’ve had about you,saintwould be the very last thing you’d dream of calling me.”
A thrill shot through her, her thighs clenching at the thought of Griffin lying in his bed, a bunk in the firehouse, maybe, thinking about her in the middle of the night between calls, the heel of his hand pressed against his hard cock.
