Cinderella's Christmas Affair (4 page)

He’d got her to agree to dinner but little else. She’d hedged and had her secretary send regrets twice. But Tad was used to hard work.

He ran his usual five miles, but altered his route so that he jogged by CJ’s building on his way home. He’d always had a photographic memory and the image of her address on her driver’s license was etched in his mind. Could he drop by unannounced? He slowed as he approached her building.

Two women were struggling with a Christmas tree. He slowed his pace. He thought it was CJ and an older woman. He still wasn’t used to seeing her with auburn hair. In his mind she had thick ebony hair. She looked cute with her knit cap and matching muffler around her neck. Her companion looked like her secretary.

He slowed to a walk to let his breathing slow and even out and then approached her. All he could make out was her long black wool jacket, legs encased in faded denim and a pair of boots that would have done any one in Auburndale proud.

“Rae-Anne, can you lift your end a little higher?” CJ asked. The two women juggled the tree without much success. The six-foot blue spruce was a nice tree—not unlike the one that he’d ordered for his condo. For someone who’d changed so much, they still had a lot in common.

“
Madon’.
I’m trying. I’m not as strong as I used to be,” Rae-Anne said.

“Let’s set it down for a second,” CJ said, bending at the waist to set the trunk on the snow-dusted ground. Her coat slid up and Tad was treated to the full curves of her backside. His fingers tingled with the need to reach out and caress her.

Instincts older than time had his hand lifting before he could stop himself. Her buttocks looked firm and full, but he’d learned the hard way that women didn’t appreciate a man reaching out and grabbing something he liked. She straightened, still holding the tree up.

“Can I help?” Tad asked, reaching around CJ to take the trunk of the tree from her.

CJ glanced over her shoulder at him. Her breath brushed across his cheek and he inhaled sharply. The scent that was uniquely CJ assailed him. He was surprised at its familiarity. It reminded him of home and of memories best forgotten.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live up the street,” he said, gesturing to his building. “Let me carry the tree up for you.”

“Thanks, but we’ve got it,” CJ said, brushing his arm aside. He refused to let her budge his arm.

She glared up at him but he knew she wouldn’t make an issue of it in front of her secretary. “We don’t need your help.”

“
Merda,
I do,” Rae-Anne said. She put her hand over her heart and sighed loudly. “Some of us aren’t as young as we used to be. And I just stopped by to drop off the Monday files. I finally figured out your last secretary’s system.”

CJ bit her lower lip, unsure. He knew her well enough to know that she didn’t like to give ground. He sometimes wondered, if he hadn’t let her beat him in arm wrestling when they’d been twelve, if they’d have even been friends.

Tad took control, grabbing the tree and hefting it with one hand. “I got the tree.”

“Very impressive. Do the girls usually swoon when you do this?”

“You’re my first, CJ,” he said.

“I’m impressed. Are you sure you won’t drop it?”

Always the smart-ass, when they’d been teenagers she’d teased him about his choice of girlfriends. He’d forgotten that there’d always seemed to be two different Cathy Janes. The one at school who kept her head down and her nose in a book and the one at home who sassed him. He wondered what she’d do if he kissed her. Her lips were full and he was tempted more than he should be. His plan for a wife was simple and straightforward—filling a void in his life. “I can handle one tree, CJ.”

“Of course, you can,” Rae-Anne said. “You’re not a middle-aged woman.”

“Kind of you to notice,” Tad said, smiling at the other woman.

“Think nothing of it,” Rae-Anne said. “I believe in giving credit where it’s due.”

“So do I. Machismo isn’t something that requires praise, Rae-Anne,” CJ said.

“Machismo?” he asked. A man had to have a strong ego around CJ. Unlike Kylie who’d always flattered him…until she’d walked out the door with one of his competitors.

CJ tilted her head to the side and studied him. He couldn’t help it. He flexed his abs and stood a little taller. Her gaze moved over him and his blood flowed heavier. He shifted his legs trying to keep her from noticing his stirring erection through the fabric of his sweatpants. “Overabundance of testosterone sound better?”

Oh, yeah, he was going to kiss that smart mouth. To hell with her Christmas tree. “Gallant rescue sounds good to me.”

“You always did have a big head.”

“You always were a bit of a pain.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked.

Because she was the one woman he’d never been able to forget. No matter how many beautiful, intelligent women he’d dated, CJ had always lingered in the back of his mind. “I’m a glutton for punishment.”

“Follow me. I’m on the twelfth floor. We have to use the service elevator,” CJ said.

“I’m yours to command.”

“As if,” she said and climbed the stairs to the building.

Rae-Anne and CJ held the doors open for Tad, and in a short time they were standing in CJ’s apartment.

“Where’s your tree stand?” he asked.

“I can do that. I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Really that’s okay.”

“You can’t do it on your own,” he said.

“Rae-Anne is going to help me, right?” she asked.

Rae-Anne had a pile of file folders in her arms and didn’t really look like she’d expected to decorate a tree.

“Do you want me to help?” Rae-Anne asked. “My mother used to say many hands make light work.”

Tad winked at her, sensing he had found an ally in his pursuit of CJ. And he just realized it was a pursuit and nothing less than complete surrender of the saucy redhead would suit him.

Three

C
J had had enough interaction for the day. Saturdays were normally her favorite. She wanted Rae-Anne to go home and Tad to disappear back into the fabric of the past so that she could once again have control of her life. She’d make herself a nice cup of herbal tea and then climb onto the counter and pull down the box of HoHos she had stored above the refrigerator.

They were for emergency use only and after this day she knew she needed the sweet bliss that only consuming a box of chocolate cream-filled cakes could bring.

She’d talked to Rae-Anne last night and they’d discussed Rae-Anne bringing over the Monday files so they could have a head start on the week. But then Rae-Anne had called to say she’d be late and CJ had decided to go and get her Christmas tree. Bad idea. She should have gone into the office instead. Nothing was the same with Rae-Anne as it had been with Marcia.

But Tad was a different matter entirely. The purely masculine look in his eyes told her that he was interested in doing more than renewing old friendships and frankly, that made her nervous.

She was glad that Rae-Anne was here because she didn’t want to be alone with Tad.

Her weary soul said no more guys with buff bodies and yet she’d always been drawn to them. Marcus had been a marathon runner who’d spent hours in the gym. Even her dad had been a high school football coach.

“I’ll make the coffee,” she suddenly blurted.

And for some reason being around Tad seemed to reduce her normally quick tongue to banal small talk. More and more she was slipping back into the old Cathy Jane, joke of Auburndale high school.

“I’ll make it,” Rae-Anne said.

“No offense, Rae-Anne, but you have yet to make a pot of coffee that anyone would drink.”

Rae-Anne threw back her head and laughed. “
Madon’,
this woman thing is making me crazy.”

“What woman thing?” Tad asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rae-Anne said. Turning to a battered box she pulled out a tangled mess of Christmas lights.

“We’ve got our work cut out, my friend.”

“I think I can handle it.”

CJ left them to sort out the lights telling herself there was nothing wrong with escaping to the kitchen. Not long ago she’d vowed to never let a man make her cower again and here she was hiding out in her kitchen. She boiled water in her teakettle and made coffee in her French press. She had a box of cookies in the cupboard and she arranged them on a Christmas plate from the set her mother had given her the year before she’d died.

There was a part of CJ that really hated the holidays. Marcus had broken up with her on Christmas Eve five years ago and he’d changed something inside her when he left.

She’d hoped to marry him and become his wife. She’d had visions of a shared future where they had their own small ad agency and they worked together. But Marcus had needed something else in a wife. He’d been using her to get a promotion and once he had obtained it, he’d dumped her for the right woman. A corporate wife who’d put her husband first instead of her career.

Her father had run off just after Thanksgiving the year she was eleven with an eighteen-year-old cheerleader. And her mom had been diagnosed with cancer two days after Christmas when CJ was nineteen. So, the holidays always represented not just joy in a season of giving, but also sadness and a sense of loss at what could never be again.

“Rae-Anne sent me to help you.”

CJ made a mental note to talk to Rae-Anne. That woman was entirely too bossy for her own good. “I think I can handle coffee and a plate of cookies.”

Tad stepped into her “step-saver” kitchen and CJ backed up a pace.

“Did I suddenly develop some communicable disease?” he asked.

She flushed. “No, why?”

“Because you keep dancing away from me. What’s up, Cathy Jane?”

She forced herself to stand her ground when Tad came closer to her. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. It was her reactions that made her leery. Not even Marcus who she’d contemplated marrying had made her skin tingle, her pulse pound and her body ache the way Tad did.

“Nothing.”

He reached out and caressed her face. Drew his large callused forefinger down the side of her cheek. His wizard green eyes watched her carefully and she struggled to keep any sign of what she was feeling from her face. Marcus had taught her that men wouldn’t hesitate to use a woman’s body against her.

“I know you better than that.”

She shivered again as he took his hand from her face and turned to the plate of cookies. God, she hoped he didn’t really know her. Didn’t realize that her feminine instincts were stronger than her control. And that at this moment she wanted nothing more than to order Rae-Anne from the condo and beg Tad to touch her once again.

“Not anymore, you don’t,” she said quietly. The only element in her favor was that Tad was a stranger.

“The other day in your office you weren’t like this.”

“Well, we were in my office. You were a client, not a guy in clinging sweatpants lifting heavy things with one hand.”

“Did I impress you?” he asked, pivoting back toward her, pinning her between the kitchen cabinet and him.

She had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze and when she did, she wished she’d hadn’t. There was a heat there that mirrored the longing in her soul. Nervously she licked her lips. His eyes tracked the movement and he leaned the tiniest bit toward her before stopping.

“Do you want to?” she asked.

“Hell, yeah.”

Her blood ran heavier in her veins and she knew that what she wanted—really wanted—was for him to notice her as a woman. No matter how dangerous that attraction would be, she wanted it.

But she hadn’t lost her mind. This new Tad was too big. Too “large and in charge” as her ten-year-old niece, Courtney would say.

“I’m not in the ego-building business.”

“Cathy Jane, this has nothing to do with ego,” he said. He settled his hands on her hips and drew her closer to him.

“Tad, I really don’t think…”

“That’s right, don’t think.”

He lowered his head toward hers. Her hands rose to his shoulders and instead of doing the prudent thing and pushing him away, she kneaded his shoulders, leaned up on tiptoe and met his hungry mouth with her own. Oh, my God, she thought, Tad Randolph is kissing me.

Tad wouldn’t have guessed that her mouth would taste so sweet. She was shy and hesitant and he coaxed her gently into opening her mouth wider and letting him explore her hidden secrets. Ah, yes, this was what he’d been searching for.

She didn’t lie passively in his embrace. But she didn’t take charge either as he’d expected her to do. At work she was a modern-day Amazon but in his arms he realized there was still a lot of the shy, sweet girl he used to know.

Her touches were tentative on his shoulders and back. Her mouth under his was soft. Her curves were pliant against him. He pulled her more fully into his body and held her for a minute. His mouth pressed against hers in the chaste embrace she seemed to need.

He lifted his head and dropped light kisses on her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were the remembered dark brown today instead of the blue-green contacts she’d worn that day in her office. She watched him warily and he wanted to reassure her. To promise her that he didn’t want to hurt her only show her a passion that he suspected would be Heaven on earth.

“Relax, CJ, let me in. I promise it’ll feel good.”

“We have to work together,” she said.

“That sounds like an excuse.”

“It is. God, it really is. But you aren’t what I expected, Tad. And I have no idea how to handle this,” she said. Her voice rasped over his aroused senses with the same impact as silk over skin.

He didn’t have words to reassure her. Wasn’t sure that this was a good idea from his vantage point either but he knew there was no way he was leaving the kitchen having only shared one kiss.

“Cathy Jane, you slay me,” he said and lowered his mouth once again to hers. This time he took her lower lip between his teeth and suckled. He was so tight and full and needed her more than he’d ever admit.

He slid his hands down her torso, skimming the full curves of her breasts and spanning her waist. He bent his knee and thrust his leg between hers. She grasped his shoulders and her mouth opened with a soft sound.