Abby's Christmas

“And yeah, I have been overseas,” he said finally, getting to his feet. “But it’s after midnight and I need my beauty sleep. I’ll just take the mutt and go on back to my mom’s.”

“Wait.” Abby put her hand out as he bent to pick up the dog. “I—I feel bad about deceiving your mother.”

Noah straightened up, leaving the dog on the floor. “You wouldn’t be. Don’t worry about it.”

“But—” She grabbed his arm and held on tight. “Noah, why did you come home?”

“I…” He glanced away, rubbing a palm over his chin. “What difference does it make?”

“Because if you came to make peace with your mom, sneaking a dog into the house is not the way to go about it.”

He put his palm over her fingers where she clutched him. “Abigail, this isn’t your problem.”

Her hand turned, linking their fingers. “I’d…like to see you stay around. For…a while.”

Dangerous words. Her gold-green gaze searched his face, and Noah didn’t know what to say.

The next moment became even more dangerous, as Abby stood, stepped closer and brought the fingertips of her free hand to his cheek. She tilted her face up, looking at him through half-lowered lashes. “Would that be so bad?”

“I—” Resisting temptation had never been one of his strong points. The sane half of his brain fired every possible weapon of logic in an attempt to keep things from going any further. But Noah touched his mouth to Abby’s, and sanity popped like a soap bubble on the point of a pin.

She filled his arms sweetly, her generous breasts soft against his chest, her back supple and warm under his hands. Her kisses invited anything he chose to give, and Noah explored the entire spectrum, from tender to harsh, innocent to erotic, testing, playing…hell, resurrecting feelings he thought he’d killed years ago.

He came back to consciousness with one hand tangled in Abby’s hair and one hand under her shirt, cupping her breast, while he could feel both of her hands gripping his butt.

“Abigail.” He closed his mouth, settled for a few more innocent kisses, managed to drag his lips across her cheek, into her hair and finally away. “Not smart. Not smart at all.”

“Who cares about smart?” She pressed a deep kiss against the base of his throat, and he felt his knees start to shake.

“You. Me…maybe.” He groaned as her teeth nipped at his collarbone. She could devour him right here, right now, on her dad’s kitchen floor….

Shit. With a growl, Noah jerked his head back, gripped Abby’s shoulders and pushed her away to arm’s length. “Stop it. Just stop.”

She closed her hands around his wrists. Her lips were swollen, probably bruised, her eyelids heavy with desire. “Why?”

“Because your dad could decide to get a glass of water, for God’s sake. Because it would be criminal—” What a word to choose. “It would be ridiculous for this to go any further.”

Abby lifted her chin in defiance. “I’m not pretty enough?”

“What? Where’d that come from?”

“Not sexy enough? Talented enough? What does it take to catch Noah Blake’s interest?” She shook her head. “I wondered all through school what was wrong with me, that you wouldn’t actually ask for a date. I finally decided you just didn’t want to be seen with me in public.”

Noah swore again, dropped his hands from her shoulders and walked to the other side of the room. “Believe me, Abigail, you would have been a lot more miserable—then and now—if I had asked.”

He shut the hall door silently behind him, the front door not quite so gently. Only when he reached his bike did he realize he’d completely forgotten to take the dog with him.

ABBY USUALLY LIKED getting to the diner early on Saturday mornings to enjoy the peace and quiet before the big crowd started arriving around eight. Even in December, folks in New Skye got up early on Saturday to get breakfast before they went shopping, before the golf match or the horse show, before they spent the day decorating the house and yard for Christmas. And Abby usually enjoyed hearing about their plans for the day. This morning, after yet another sleepless night courtesy of Noah Blake, she didn’t want to wait tables, didn’t want to cook or clean up, didn’t want to hear about other people’s lives. She wanted to crawl back into bed, pull the blanket up to her eyebrows and sleep the day away.

Not an option, of course, especially when the rush started almost an hour early.

“If you’re cookin’, you’d better get hoppin’,” her dad ordered as he came into the kitchen. “I got two over medium, bacon, two scrambled, sausage, pancakes and ham, biscuits.”