Cole For Christmas. Darlene Gardner

than you are at work,” he said. “Softer, more feminine. When I look at you right now, it’s easy to forget we work together.”

      “Then you need to get a better memory, buster, because work is the reason we can’t get involved,” she said.

      She might have sounded more convincing, she thought, if her teeth weren’t chattering.

      “I agree,” he said.

      “You do?”

      “I do,” Cole said so reassuringly that she didn’t protest when he took her lightly by the forearms. His hands moved up and down her arms, creating a wonderful friction and chasing away some of the chill. “If you and I get involved, I’d find it too hard to concentrate at work.”

      “Me, too,” she admitted.

      At that moment, it was difficult to concentrate on much more than the feel of his hands on her. They were such large, wonderful, magic hands. How would they feel, she wondered, on someplace more intimate than her arms? Heavenly, she answered herself.

      She cleared her suddenly clogged throat. “Can I ask you something?”

      “Um, hmm,” he said absently as he continued the delightful massage.

      “If we’re not getting involved, why are you trying to turn me on?”

      “I’m not trying to turn you on.” His voice was husky and spiced with deep-toned laughter. “I’m trying to warm you up. It can’t be more than thirty degrees out here.”

      “Oh,” Anna said weakly.

      “Is it working?”

      That depended on whether he was talking about warming her up or turning her on. Hot little pockets of sensation were erupting in places deep inside her but the outer layer of her skin still felt as though she’d been hanging like a slab of beef inside an industrial-sized refrigerator.

      “Not entirely,” she said.

      He let her go, making her fear she’d given the wrong answer. She fisted her hands so she wouldn’t reach for him and watched in confusion as he unbuttoned his overcoat. Before she could ask if he was crazy, he drew it open.

      “Come here before you freeze to death,” he invited.

      Said the spider to the fly, she thought. But the promise of warmth plus the chance to be close to him was more temptation than Anna could withstand.

      “Oh, all right,” she muttered before letting him en-fold her in the flaps of his overcoat. Their bodies touched from chest to thigh. Delicious warmth spread through her, and she was honest enough to admit it was only partly due to the coat.

      She wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her cheek to the cool cotton of his shirt and heard his heart rate speed up. Hers was already galloping.

      “Nobody better be looking out the window,” she murmured without lifting her head. “Otherwise we’ll never be able to convince them you’re not my boyfriend.”

      “Does it matter that much what they think?” he asked. His breath was warm against her temple.

      “It’s not so much what they think as what they’ll do,” she said. “They’re crafty. They like you. They’ll throw us together whenever they can.”

      “Is that why you never brought Larry Lipinski home?”

      “I never brought Larry home because he was a chronic liar,” she said. “I couldn’t trust him.”

      He was silent for a moment. “Then why did you date him?”

      “It’s not like I knew he had a Pinocchio complex ahead of time,” she said. “But we’re getting off the subject. We were talking about why you can’t spend tomorrow with us.”

      She felt his body stiffen. “I already said I would.”

      “I have an idea about that.” She spoke into his chest, finding it easier to deliver her news when she wasn’t looking into his devastatingly attractive face. “When I go back inside, I’ll tell them you remembered accepting another invitation.”

      “But I didn’t.”

      “They won’t know that. It’s the perfect plan.”

      “You say that like it’s already been decided.”

      Realizing she couldn’t drive home her point while talking to his chest, she lifted her head. His sensuously curved lips had thinned and his eyes had hardened into chips of blue ice, not the mark of a happy man.

      “It has been decided,” she said firmly.

      “No,” he said, shaking his dark head emphatically. His jaw firmed. “You decided. I didn’t. This isn’t like at work where your word goes, Anna. Your family invited me. I have some say in whether I show up.”

      She felt her eyes widen. “You can’t mean you actually want to spend Christmas with my family?”

      “I like your family,” he said. She got ready to argue that he’d never have met her family if it hadn’t been for her but he wasn’t through talking. “And it would sure beat staying home alone.”

      The argument died on her lips. Alone, he’d said. “You mean you really don’t have plans?”

      “I told you. I’m new in town. I don’t know many people.”

      “Nobody invited you over?”

      “A couple friends in San Diego, but I decided to stay here. I didn’t think it would bother me to spend Christmas alone,” he said, then gazed at her so intently she was surprised his glasses didn’t fog up. “Until your family invited me to spend it with all of you.”

      She sighed. “You don’t play fair, Cole Mansfield.”

      A corner of his mouth kicked up. “Does that mean you’re as much of a sucker for a guy alone on Christmas Day as you are for one going solo on Christmas Eve?”

      “Not quite, but close.” Now that they were no longer at odds, she was intensely aware of her body humming in sensual awareness against his. That called to mind, once again, their problem. “Tell you what, you can come tomorrow on one condition.”

      A fat snowflake drifted down from the sky and hit her nose, distracting her from what she’d been about to say. It was followed by another and then another. She raised her eyes and saw hundreds of white flakes leisurely falling to earth against the gray blanket of night.

      “It’s snowing,” she said, grinning up at him in delight.

      Almost instantaneously, she heard voices in the distance break into “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Making sure to stay in the warm circle of Cole’s arms, she turned to watch a party breaking up across the street. The departing guests were singing. Most of them had their arms flung around each other.

      She giggled. “It looks like the Gumberts can’t restrain themselves.”

      “Neither can I. Not any longer,” Cole said in a strangled voice. His arms tightened at her back and she felt the tension in him give way as he gathered her close.

      Even before she turned all the way back around, she knew he meant to kiss her. He was so tall that avoiding his mouth would have been a simple matter of bowing her head. Instead, with her blood thrumming and her senses singing, she lifted her head and met him halfway.

      In Anna’s experience, first kisses were usually clumsy, with neither party sure exactly how to please the other. But Cole’s mouth molded to hers as though it had been designed to fit there, like the interlocking piece of a puzzle.

      His lips, warm and tasting vaguely of the fine red wine he’d drunk at dinner, moved gently, persuasively against her mouth. The lower part of his face was vaguely scratchy against her smooth skin, underscoring his potent masculinity.

      Intoxicating