The Nights Before Christmas

“I like your tree.” He gave her another smile.

“Thanks.” This time she smiled back, but she still looked very nervous.

He was impressed that she had a tree at all, though, considering that last Christmas she’d been part of a couple and this year she was alone. Apparently she wasn’t about to let that stop her from celebrating, and he was glad to discover that. Her perky little evergreen shone like a badge of courage in the corner of her living room.

He’d expected the place to be immaculate, and it was. The red pillow sitting in the middle of her white sofa was fascinating, though. From the psychology texts he’d read, that pillow in the middle of all the virginal white said something about her sexuality. An erotic nature might be hiding under the sensible surface.

But he wasn’t here to uncover her erotic nature. First he’d tighten the pipe connection that she probably loosened on purpose, and then he’d listen to her complain about her ex-boyfriend. Maybe he’d suggest ordering up some Chinese food. He’d be a shoulder for her to cry on—figuratively in this case—reassuring her that she was too good for the chump who’d left her.

Still, her appearance threw him. She didn’t look like a woman about to let her hair down.

“The pipe’s been leaking for three days.” She led the way toward the bathroom. “This is the first chance I’ve had to call you.”

Another unexpected comment. She didn’t strike him as the type to make up a story about a pipe that had been leaking for three days. That was carrying the charade a little too far. But maybe she had more imagination than the other women he’d dealt with. Or maybe she loosened the pipe, lost her nerve and then had to spend three days working up to the call.

If so, then he’d enjoy helping her rebuild her confidence. Platonically, of course. Always platonically.

In order to get to the bathroom, he had to walk through her bedroom. It was very girly, with rose-printed fabric covering the quilt, armchair and curtains in shades of red and pink. But there, nestled against the pillows, was the devil himself.

He was a cute little doll dressed in bright red velvet, with a mischievous grin on his face and The Devil Made Me Do It written across his chest. Uh-huh. As he’d suspected from his first glimpse of Suzanne, still waters ran deep.

Her bedroom held the subtle scent of roses, but her bathroom was drenched in it. When he walked in, he was bombarded with an image of Suzanne, naked, spritzing the perfume in strategic places. The Devil Made Me Do It. The devil was having a field day with him right now, thumbing his nose at all those platonic vows Greg had taken.

Trying to calm his libido, he crouched in front of the cabinet under the sink and opened the oak doors. A steady drip had made a round spot on the pink towel she’d laid under the pipe. There was nothing erotic about that spot, and yet his mind leaped from damp towels to the image of Suzanne stepping out of a steamy shower, glistening and wet.

He could assume that Suzanne had called him because she needed a shoulder to cry on. He’d known she was shy, so meeting him in full career-dress mode made sense, now that he thought about it. Suzanne wouldn’t be the sort to let down her guard easily, but he had a knack for helping women open up and confide in him.

Assuming he used that talent with Suzanne, he wondered how well he’d be able to control himself once she opened up to him and became soft and vulnerable. He wondered if he’d be able to ignore the implications of that red pillow and that suggestive doll in the middle of her bed. He wondered how much trouble he could get into if he ignored the implications, if he broke all his rules, followed his instincts and took this fascinating woman to bed.

A lot of trouble, no doubt. But this time it might be worth the risk.

“Is it a bigger problem than I thought?” Suzanne asked from the bathroom doorway.

“No.” He cleared the huskiness from his throat. “Minor stuff, it looks like.” He got to his knees and fumbled with the latch on his toolbox. After getting it open with far more awkwardness than usual, he took out a small flashlight and beamed it up toward the source of the leak. That’s when he found the rust that was causing it.

Suzanne certainly hadn’t rusted the pipe. Much as he hated to admit it, she hadn’t booby-trapped her sink in order to lure him into her apartment. Her call had been legitimate.

Damn.

THE MINUTE GREG STEPPED into her apartment, Suzanne realized she should have announced that she had an urgent appointment and vamoosed. She thought about asking him to fix the sink while she was gone, but she was…curious. Besides, her apartment was too private a place to let somebody she barely knew walk around by himself, especially someone with a reputation like Greg’s.

For one thing, he might find her stash of sexy novels. Jared had made great fun of those. He’d insisted that reading them meant she’d rather get her kicks vicariously than with a living, breathing man. He’d also claimed that no real guy ever acted the way the men did in those books. He was probably right about that, because she hadn’t found any so far.

But she should have risked having Greg poke around by himself, because being here with him was a colossal mistake. He smelled too good, too masculine, a combination of lime-scented shaving cream and Old Spice. Nothing fancy for this guy. Much as she didn’t want him to, he was turning her on.

She could still leave, of course. She could, but she was already entranced, a deer in the headlights. When he leaned in to turn off the water valve under the sink, his biceps rippled. She’d seen plenty of rippling biceps at the gym both nights she’d dragged herself there with Terri this week, but the guys at the gym were flexing on purpose. A casual, unconscious ripple was so much sexier.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Water, coffee, a soft drink?” A condom?

“No, thanks.” He sat on the floor and chose a wrench from his toolbox.

The authoritative way he grasped the wrench caused little jolts of excitement to dance in her stomach. Her ideal lover would have sure hands like Greg’s, a firm yet gentle touch. She admired his long, tapered fingers and the fine sprinkling of dark hair on the backs of his hands.

He wore a utilitarian watch, the kind you could buy at the drugstore, and no rings. The lack of rings came as no surprise after what Terri had said. He was a Don Juan of the big city, a man who wanted no entanglements.

There would be a certain freedom in making love to someone with that attitude. She wouldn’t have to worry about whether he would make a good husband or a good father, or even a good impression on her mother. Most of all she wouldn’t have to worry about whether he would leave her, because no commitment would exist in the first place. The sex would be about mutual pleasure and nothing else.

It was a whole new concept for her. Up to now she’d scrutinized every man in her life for warning signs that they would eventually treat her the way her father had treated her mother. No wonder she hadn’t ever fully relaxed sexually with a man. So much had been at stake. With Greg, nothing at all would be at stake, and she might finally have the kind of experience she’d read about in her novels.

He glanced up at her. “Maybe you should go ahead and have dinner.”

She looked away, afraid that with his experience he might be able to guess her thoughts. “That’s okay. I had a late lunch.” Maybe he’d misinterpreted her hungry look. Food was the last thing on her mind right now.

“My plan is to dismantle this baby and take it downstairs to see if I have a replacement part. I’m not sure how soon I’ll have it back in operation, so I hope that’s not a problem.”

She couldn’t keep avoiding his gaze forever, as if she lacked any self-confidence. So instead she looked at him with the same directness she’d use with a colleague at work. “No problem.”

There were questions lurking in those green eyes of his. He probably wondered when she’d start getting personal. He might even be giving her more time to feel comfortable with him by drawing out the repair process.

She’d never feel that comfortable. Suzanne Talbot did not fall into bed with a man she hardly knew. “What’s your last name?” The question popped right out of its own accord.

“Stone.” Warmth flickered in his gaze. “Thanks for asking.”

Heat flooded her face. “I’m not sure why I did. I guess it doesn’t really mat—”

“Sure it does. It always does.” Without giving her a chance to respond, he leaned back and squirmed under the sink until his head and shoulders were nearly out of sight.

She appreciated his tact in partially disappearing so that she could pull herself together again. Now that she’d asked his last name, he probably thought it was only a matter of time before she invited him to spend the night. He might expect her to use this moment to change into something more revealing.

She wouldn’t be doing that, but maybe she’d indulge her curiosity a little more by checking him out when he couldn’t see her do it. It wasn’t every day that she had a chance to study a certified loverboy up close and personal.

He wore his navy T-shirt tucked into the waistband of his jeans, and no belt. Well, belts were an unnecessary impediment, after all. This looked like a man who appreciated simplicity when it came to clothes that might need to be shed quickly in the heat of passion.

As she watched, he lifted his pelvis and shifted to the left to get a better angle on the pipe. The front of his shirt came untucked and rode up, exposing a neat belly button. An insy.

Saliva pooled in her mouth as she stared at that belly button. Such an intimate part of a person, a belly button. A smattering of dark hair decorated the area around it. He inhaled, causing a slight gap between his flat belly and the waistband of his jeans. A gap just big enough for a woman to slip her hand into, if a woman were so inclined….

She moistened her lips. She wasn’t even remotely that daring. Besides, he wouldn’t be expecting something like that, and he’d probably sit up suddenly and bean himself on the water pipe.

But she could imagine doing it, and that was enough to get her juices flowing. His jeans were old and the denim looked soft. As he shifted his weight again, the material tightened over his crotch and she gained an excellent idea of exactly what lay behind that button fly.

Greg looked like such a bad boy, and now that Terri had confided in her, Suzanne knew that he was absolutely as bad as all that. Even if she had the courage to come on to him, which she didn’t, she wouldn’t know what to do with such powerful badness.

But Terri had said that he was understanding and very romantic. In that case, she wouldn’t have to know everything. He would know everything, just like the men in the novels she loved.

Yet if she managed to start an affair with Greg, who had become a legend in her apartment building, and she still turned out to be an anal-retentive ice queen, what then? She’d probably never date again. She’d channel all her energies into her career, become the best financial analyst in Chicago, make piles of money and live alone in some opulent penthouse with her twenty-nine cats. Rich but pathetic.

If there was the slightest chance she’d blow it with Greg, she’d be far better off blundering along as she’d been doing. The situation reminded her of when she’d had a funky Honda Civic with lots of miles on it. She’d loved that car, but one day it wouldn’t go. A boisterous jock from high school, somebody much like Jared, had talked her into letting him give her a jump. He must have done something wrong, because he’d burned out the electrical system.