Cinderella's Christmas Affair

“No offense, Rae-Anne, but you have yet to make a pot of coffee that anyone would drink.”

Rae-Anne threw back her head and laughed. “Madon’, this woman thing is making me crazy.”

“What woman thing?” Tad asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rae-Anne said. Turning to a battered box she pulled out a tangled mess of Christmas lights.

“We’ve got our work cut out, my friend.”

“I think I can handle it.”

CJ left them to sort out the lights telling herself there was nothing wrong with escaping to the kitchen. Not long ago she’d vowed to never let a man make her cower again and here she was hiding out in her kitchen. She boiled water in her teakettle and made coffee in her French press. She had a box of cookies in the cupboard and she arranged them on a Christmas plate from the set her mother had given her the year before she’d died.

There was a part of CJ that really hated the holidays. Marcus had broken up with her on Christmas Eve five years ago and he’d changed something inside her when he left.

She’d hoped to marry him and become his wife. She’d had visions of a shared future where they had their own small ad agency and they worked together. But Marcus had needed something else in a wife. He’d been using her to get a promotion and once he had obtained it, he’d dumped her for the right woman. A corporate wife who’d put her husband first instead of her career.

Her father had run off just after Thanksgiving the year she was eleven with an eighteen-year-old cheerleader. And her mom had been diagnosed with cancer two days after Christmas when CJ was nineteen. So, the holidays always represented not just joy in a season of giving, but also sadness and a sense of loss at what could never be again.

“Rae-Anne sent me to help you.”

CJ made a mental note to talk to Rae-Anne. That woman was entirely too bossy for her own good. “I think I can handle coffee and a plate of cookies.”

Tad stepped into her “step-saver” kitchen and CJ backed up a pace.

“Did I suddenly develop some communicable disease?” he asked.

She flushed. “No, why?”

“Because you keep dancing away from me. What’s up, Cathy Jane?”

She forced herself to stand her ground when Tad came closer to her. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. It was her reactions that made her leery. Not even Marcus who she’d contemplated marrying had made her skin tingle, her pulse pound and her body ache the way Tad did.

“Nothing.”

He reached out and caressed her face. Drew his large callused forefinger down the side of her cheek. His wizard green eyes watched her carefully and she struggled to keep any sign of what she was feeling from her face. Marcus had taught her that men wouldn’t hesitate to use a woman’s body against her.

“I know you better than that.”

She shivered again as he took his hand from her face and turned to the plate of cookies. God, she hoped he didn’t really know her. Didn’t realize that her feminine instincts were stronger than her control. And that at this moment she wanted nothing more than to order Rae-Anne from the condo and beg Tad to touch her once again.

“Not anymore, you don’t,” she said quietly. The only element in her favor was that Tad was a stranger.

“The other day in your office you weren’t like this.”

“Well, we were in my office. You were a client, not a guy in clinging sweatpants lifting heavy things with one hand.”

“Did I impress you?” he asked, pivoting back toward her, pinning her between the kitchen cabinet and him.

She had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze and when she did, she wished she’d hadn’t. There was a heat there that mirrored the longing in her soul. Nervously she licked her lips. His eyes tracked the movement and he leaned the tiniest bit toward her before stopping.

“Do you want to?” she asked.

“Hell, yeah.”

Her blood ran heavier in her veins and she knew that what she wanted—really wanted—was for him to notice her as a woman. No matter how dangerous that attraction would be, she wanted it.

But she hadn’t lost her mind. This new Tad was too big. Too “large and in charge” as her ten-year-old niece, Courtney would say.

“I’m not in the ego-building business.”

“Cathy Jane, this has nothing to do with ego,” he said. He settled his hands on her hips and drew her closer to him.

“Tad, I really don’t think…”

“That’s right, don’t think.”

He lowered his head toward hers. Her hands rose to his shoulders and instead of doing the prudent thing and pushing him away, she kneaded his shoulders, leaned up on tiptoe and met his hungry mouth with her own. Oh, my God, she thought, Tad Randolph is kissing me.

Tad wouldn’t have guessed that her mouth would taste so sweet. She was shy and hesitant and he coaxed her gently into opening her mouth wider and letting him explore her hidden secrets. Ah, yes, this was what he’d been searching for.

She didn’t lie passively in his embrace. But she didn’t take charge either as he’d expected her to do. At work she was a modern-day Amazon but in his arms he realized there was still a lot of the shy, sweet girl he used to know.

Her touches were tentative on his shoulders and back. Her mouth under his was soft. Her curves were pliant against him. He pulled her more fully into his body and held her for a minute. His mouth pressed against hers in the chaste embrace she seemed to need.

He lifted his head and dropped light kisses on her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were the remembered dark brown today instead of the blue-green contacts she’d worn that day in her office. She watched him warily and he wanted to reassure her. To promise her that he didn’t want to hurt her only show her a passion that he suspected would be Heaven on earth.

“Relax, CJ, let me in. I promise it’ll feel good.”

“We have to work together,” she said.

“That sounds like an excuse.”

“It is. God, it really is. But you aren’t what I expected, Tad. And I have no idea how to handle this,” she said. Her voice rasped over his aroused senses with the same impact as silk over skin.

He didn’t have words to reassure her. Wasn’t sure that this was a good idea from his vantage point either but he knew there was no way he was leaving the kitchen having only shared one kiss.

“Cathy Jane, you slay me,” he said and lowered his mouth once again to hers. This time he took her lower lip between his teeth and suckled. He was so tight and full and needed her more than he’d ever admit.

He slid his hands down her torso, skimming the full curves of her breasts and spanning her waist. He bent his knee and thrust his leg between hers. She grasped his shoulders and her mouth opened with a soft sound.

Holding her head in his hands, he tilted her face back and took her mouth the way he wanted to take her. Fast, hard, deep and so thoroughly that she’d never again touch her lips and not think of him.