Christmas Ever After. Sarah Morgan

want to throw up in my dress. It’s taken enough punishment.”

      “Stand still.” Teeth clenched, he reached for the dress, the movement bringing him into contact with warm, bare skin. She smelled like roses and summer rain. “Doesn’t this thing have a zip?”

      “No, it’s stretchy. It pulls on and off.”

      He felt as if he was being boiled alive. “You should have pulled it down, not up.”

      “I know that now, but it’s the first time I’ve worn it and I didn’t have a head injury when I tried it on.”

      The situation would have been comical if he hadn’t been so tense.

      Alec took hold of the dress, tugged gently and the fabric slid over her head. Which would have been a cause for celebration, except that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

      He caught a full on eyeful of lush, creamy breasts tipped with pink and then she grabbed a towel and covered herself.

      “That makes us equal.”

      He backed off, searing his skin on the heated towel rail. “My friend is on the way over here now. As luck would have it, he just finished a shift.” And the sooner he arrived the better. He didn’t want to be alone with Skylar a moment longer than he had to be. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

      He walked toward the door, keeping his back to her.

      “Good. That’s thoughtful of you.” The shower hissed and then she cried out. “Ow! Crap, that hurts. How do you turn this thing off? Alec, you have to help me. I’m drowning.”

      Wondering what the hell he’d done to deserve this sort of punishment, Alec stopped in the doorway and turned.

      She was naked in the shower, her hands over her head to protect it. “Alec?”

      “Yeah, I’m here.” His voice sounded as if he had a bad dose of the flu.

      “You sound weird.”

      “That’s because you have water in your ears. Stand still. I don’t want to soak my clothes. My luggage on this trip is ninety percent Christmas gifts. Close your eyes.” He picked up the shampoo, reduced the power of the jet and lathered her hair as quickly as possible. “This is your fault for having fairy-princess hair. You should have dyed it a different color and cut it short.”

      “I never dye my hair.”

      He rinsed her hair, careful to protect her wound, watching as the water slid down her body. It flowed over the curve of her hips to the shadow and light that nestled in the secret places between her thighs. The brief glimpse was enough to confirm she was indeed a natural blonde.

      Heat flashed across his skin. He fought the urge to lower his mouth to her neck and breathe her in. He wanted to trace every delicate curve with his tongue, taste every inch of her.

      “Alec?” Her eyes were shut, her lashes clumped with droplets of water. “Are you still there?”

      He stood, trying to work out how he could be dizzy when he wasn’t the one who had banged his head.

      “Yeah.” His voice emerged from his dry throat, rough and rasping. “I’m here.”

      And it was killing him.

      “Could you hand me a towel?”

      In the grip of a brutal desire, he groped for the controls of the shower and then for the towels he’d left within reach beyond the shower screen. She took one from him and tied it around her like a sarong. He used the other to dry her hair, avoiding her injury.

      “I’ve often wondered if people would take me more seriously if I dyed it black.” Her voice was muffled by the towel. “There have been studies, you know.”

      “Don’t dye it black.”

      “The weird thing is, my brothers all have dark hair. When I was little, I decided that a wicked witch had probably kidnapped me from my proper family and dropped me in the wrong house by accident. I assumed my parents would have given me back if they’d had a return address. They think I’m wasting my life doing arty things. So does Richard. What do you think?”

      His brain had ceased to work from the moment he’d walked into the bathroom, but if he’d been capable of rational thought he would have been thinking that he didn’t want to know more about her.

      As far as he was concerned, the more superficial his knowledge of her was, the better.

      “What do I think?” He dried the ends of her hair and then stepped back out of the danger zone. “I think you charge ridiculous prices.”

      “Really?”

      No, not really, but the way she was looking at him, her luminous blue eyes wistful and vulnerable, hardened his resolve.

      “Yes, really.” He slung the towel over the rail and struggled for words that would ensure she continued to think he was the big bad wolf. It was safer for both of them that way. Safer if he didn’t follow his instincts, which suggested he carry her back to the bed and this time join her in it. “Your nod to Greek mythology might be charming to someone with no depth of knowledge, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are significant inaccuracies.” Droplets of water clung to her cheek. Without thinking, he lifted his hand and wiped them away with his thumb. Her skin was as soft and smooth as the petals of a rose and he felt her still under his touch.

      “You took the time to look round my exhibition.”

      He let his hand drop. “I was killing time until I could get to speak to you.”

      “Of course you were. You planned to leave the first moment you could.” Her cheeks were flushed. “Don’t be embarrassed. I was hoping you’d leave quickly. Now I’m glad you didn’t.”

      He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

      They stared at each other for a moment and then he heard a tap on the door and stepped away from her, relieved to have an excuse to walk away.

      “That will be Michael.” He grabbed a robe from the back of the door, thrust it toward her and escaped from the steamy bathroom.

      The sleeves of his shirt were wet from the shower and he rolled them up on his way to the door. At least with someone else in the room he was less likely to commit an act of gross indecency.

      Despite the circumstances, he was genuinely pleased to see his friend and they chatted for a few moments, catching up on the main events of their lives, before Michael walked over to the bed to take a look at Skylar.

      Alec wished he were somewhere else. This whole situation was wrong on every level.

      It was too intimate, too personal.

      He and Skylar barely knew each other.

      What if Michael asked her a question Alec didn’t want to hear?

      As far as he was concerned the bar for “too much information” was set low.

      He prowled to the window and stood with his back to the room while his friend examined her. He could see the reflection of her body in the glass, so he pressed his forehead against the window and focused on the street below.

      Snow was still falling and far beneath him people and cars moved slowly.

      He heard Michael ask Skylar what had happened and heard her dismiss it as a silly accident.

      Was that true? Maybe, but something told him that Richard Everson had played a part in that “accident.”

      And even if he hadn’t, the one undisputable fact that stood out above all others was that the guy hadn’t stayed to help her.

      “Just sick the once?” Michael stood up and pulled a sheet of paper out of his bag. “Alec?”

      Bracing himself, Alec turned. “Yes?”

      Michael