Or hers.
Instead, he had his hands on her shoulders, holding her away from him. Embarrassed, she started to get up but he held on. “No,” she said, “I get it. You’re . . . feeling things and you don’t like to. Not for your house, not for Petunia, and certainly not for me—”
She broke off with a gasp as he hauled her back into him, right onto his lap this time. One of his big hands palmed her ass to hold her still against an unmistakable bulge of a rock-hard erection.
“See, you’re feeling something,” she said breathlessly. “So why aren’t we running for one of our places?”
“Because by the time I got you there, you’ll have changed your mind,” he said. “You’ve had a rough morning. I don’t want this to be a spur-of-the-moment decision I push you into because of the crazy heat between us. And then there’s the work factor. We’re both on the clock in a few minutes and, Willa”—he held her gaze—“when we go there, we’re going to need more than a few minutes.”
At that low, gruff tone, she went damp.
“So,” he said firmly. “We’re going to sit here enjoying the morning and each other’s company.”
“But . . .” She lowered her voice to a mere whisper. “We could be doing that naked.”
He groaned and dropped his head to her shoulder as part of his anatomy seemed to swell beneath her. “It’s not nice to tease.”
Who was teasing?
Reading her mind, he laughed soft in his throat and it was sexy as hell. “Talk,” he said. “We’re going to talk until we both have to go to work.”
She blew out a sigh and her gaze snagged on the nearest Christmas tree. “Did you have Christmas trees growing up?”
“Yeah. My parents always hosted the holiday party for their entire department and the decorations had to be perfect. Which meant I could look but not touch.”
She turned her head and met his gaze. “Why am I getting the feeling you didn’t always do as you were told?”
He laughed again and she felt like she’d won the lottery. “I never did what I was told,” he said. “One year I sneaked downstairs in the middle of the night and tried to climb the tree.”
“What happened?”
“It fell over on me. Broke all the ornaments and I cut open my chin.” He rubbed his jaw, smiling ruefully. “I was a total miscreant. My parents told me I was going to get coal for Christmas that year.”
“Did you?”
“No, I got a one-way ticket to my dad’s brother’s ranch in Texas for the entire winter break, where I shoveled horseshit for three long weeks.”
She searched his expression, which was calm and easy. In direct opposition to the erection nudging her butt. “You don’t look particularly scarred by that experience,” she said.
“My uncle loved to build things. He had all these amazing tools and machinery.” He leaned back, one arm along the back of the bench, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair. She wasn’t even sure he was aware of doing it.
“It was the first time I’d seen anything like it,” he said. “The first time I got to watch someone work with their hands. He had an entire barn filled with antique tools.” He smiled. “He gave me one, a vintage level. I still have it. Someday I’ll collect others to go with it. I definitely got bitten by the builder bug that winter. Looking back, it’s actually one of my best childhood memories.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “Now you. Tell me something from one of your past Christmases.”
She searched her brain for a happy memory to match his. “My mom gave me a necklace when I was little once,” she said. “It had a charm with the letter W engraved in gold, with all these little rhinestones outlining the W. I loved it.” She smiled. “I wore it to school and some mean girl named Britney said it was fake and from a bubble-gum machine. She grabbed it and it broke.”
“I hope you punched her in the nose,” Keane said.
She bit her lower lip. “I stomped on her foot and made her cry, even though she was right. The necklace was fake. It turned my neck green.”
He grinned and she felt the breath catch in her throat as she watched the early-morning light magnify his beautiful smile. “Atta girl,” he said.
She laughed a little, finding humor in the bittersweet memory for the first time.
When their coffee and muffins were gone, he stood and pulled her up with him. Her phone was going off and so was his.
“Real life’s calling,” he said reluctantly.
Right. She had a business to open and he had God knew what to build today, and they both had people depending on them to do their jobs. “Thanks for the muffins,” she said and started to walk off.
He caught her.
“We still have unfinished business,” he said in that sexy voice with the smile that made her stupid.
“That’s nothing new.”
He tightened his grip on her hand when she would have pulled free. “I didn’t thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about high school.”
“I wouldn’t take it quite as far as trusting you,” she said. “I haven’t signed on the dotted line for the trust-you program yet.”
“A wise woman.” He gave her fingers a meaningful squeeze as he reeled her in and planted a soft but scorching-hot kiss on her mouth. “But I might surprise you.”
She watched him walk away and then sank back to the bough-lined bench so hard that the little bells tacked to either side jangled as loudly as her nerves.
“That was interesting.”
Willa looked up at Elle. She was wearing form-fitting black trousers, FMP’s, and a power-red fitted blazer over a white lace tee, all of which emphasized her curves and general badassery.
“You look amazing,” Willa said. “How do you walk in those shoes without killing yourself?”
“No changing the subject. I went to grab a coffee and saw you two pressed up against each other like there’d been some sort of superglue incident.”
Well, crap. “Are you sure?” Willa asked. “Because it’s pretty foggy this morning and—”
Elle pointed at her. “You know who might buy that? No one. Because that was one smoking-hot kiss. I mean I get it, the man is sex on stilts. But you keep trying to tell us you don’t like him like that so imagine my surprise to find you two out here attempting to exchange tonsils.”