Page 34 of A Wrong Bed Christmas: Ignited\Where There's Smoke

“I’ll take you up on it. I could audition for the Walking Dead.” Layton turned off the engine, glancing at Erik. “You need help?”

“It was a little smoke exhaustion. I’m fine.” Erik opened the door and slid out, wincing at the sharp cold and the ache in his lungs. Toward the end of the fire, he’d slipped in the gook covering the ground floor when he entered a cleared room to set up the pressure fan. He’d knocked off his mask and couldn’t get it back in place before inhaling too much smoke. He’d been cleared by the medics but had begrudgingly accepted Layton’s offer to drive him home. Being light-headed and exhausted wasn’t an appropriate mix for making it up the steep grade to his subdivision perched off Jackson Ridge.

By the time the men got to the porch, dodging the stinging sleet, Erik remembered he’d left his keys locked in the glove box of his truck. “Shit.”

“What?” Layton asked.

“My keys.”

Layton blinked in the glow of the porch light shaped like a lantern. “You’re kiddin’.”

“I have an extra. Wait here.” Erik jogged around to the garage and lifted the speckled planter bearing the Christmas tree–looking bush his sister had brought him for a housewarming gift. The bottom bore a special compartment for a spare key.

Turning, he ducked his head down and ran back to the porch. “Got it.”

A second later they pushed into the warmth of the house. Alexis had thoughtfully left on the light over the oven, casting a soft glow over the new furniture he’d picked out only weeks ago. The place still had new-car smell. Or rather, new-house smell.

“Let me grab you some stuff to change into. You’ll probably want to take a shower.” He glanced over at Layton, hoping his friend took the hint. Just about everything in the house was new, including the coverlet and sheets in the spare room his sister had been using.

“Thanks. Yeah, I do have to shower before I sleep.”

“Me, too,” Erik said, nodding toward the open door at the end of the hall. “Guest bath is through there. My sister’s not exactly neat, but it should be clean.”

“Don’t care if it’s not. I need a shower and ten hours of shut-eye. Just set the clothes outside the door. Night.”

“Night,” Erik echoed, trudging toward his bedroom with the en suite bathroom holding a steam shower. His room was dark and he didn’t bother switching on the light. His eyes ached and his head throbbed. Smoke inhalation could make a person feel crappy.

Five minutes later he padded into his room, towel over his head. One more scrub at his damp hair and he tossed it in the direction of the chair that sat by his chest of drawers. He pulled back his covers and climbed into bed bare-assed naked, hungry for sleep and the warmth of his down comforter.

The first thing he noticed was how warm the bed was.

The second thing he noticed was the body curled up in the center of the bed.

The third thing he noticed was the scent of freshly laundered sheets.

And though his brain felt sluggish, he concluded pretty quickly that the person softly snoring in the center of his pillow-top mattress was his sister’s oldest friend.

Emma Rose Brent.

His eyes adjusted to the moonlight streaming in between the curtains and he saw the outline of her body, the one he failed to see when he first entered his room. The light fell across her neck, highlighting her jawline and the loveliest pair of plump lips. For an upper-crust literature professor, Miss Emma Rose had lips that belonged in a porno.

And though his head pounded, his throat ached and his thoughts felt as jumbled as the storage room full of Alexis’s junk, he couldn’t help himself from drinking her in.

Emma had always been thin and awkward, stingy with her shy grin. She rarely spoke, seemingly content to observe those around her, a shadow outside the spotlight. When he’d been around, she’d been especially quiet, so he’d been surprised at the confident woman who’d greeted him yesterday.

“Mmm,” she murmured, turning over, pulling the covers with her.

This was so incredibly wrong, but he couldn’t stop watching her. The wrinkle impression on her cheek, the tangle of her sandy hair, the small sigh of contentment escaping as she sank back into slumber.

And then his sister’s scream shattered the silence.

* * *

EMMA HAD BEEN dreaming she was back in high school. Mrs. Vonnegut—not related to Kurt—had been fussing at her for screwing up the spring recital. She’d given Emma a piece she’d never seen before and instructed the orchestra to play along. Emma had struggled to keep up and Ertha Vonnegut had screamed at her to stop at once.

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