Cinderella's Christmas Affair (6 page)

She tilted her head back and looked up at him. “No, you’re not.”

He cupped her face in his hand. “Is that the problem then?”

“There is no problem. I’m just not the marrying kind.”

“Why not marry Tad?” Rae-Anne asked.

CJ pulled away from him. Tad had forgotten the older woman’s presence. He wished he and CJ were by themselves in her apartment. They communicated more honestly when he was touching her than at any other time. He was sure once he had her alone and in his arms, he could convince her to marry him.

“He’s a pain in the butt,” CJ said.

“Perhaps he just knows what he wants,” Rae-Anne said.

Having the older woman as an ally was definitely going to be an advantage. But then maybe Rae-Anne had regrets that she couldn’t go back and change. “Thanks, Rae-Anne.”

“Why are you on his side?”

“I just don’t want to see you end up like me.”

“Is that a sin?”

“Some people think so,” Rae-Anne said.

Rae-Anne’s phone rang and she answered it. After a terse conversation, Rae-Anne disconnected the phone. “Some people just don’t know when to leave well enough alone. Do you need anymore help from me?”

“No. Thanks for bringing by my files and for your help with the tree. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon with the rest of the staff for the tree decorating party.”

Rae-Anne left and an awkward silence fell between them.

“What have you got against marriage?” Tad asked, propping one hip against the armchair. CJ’s apartment was tastefully decorated in a feminine way. Lots of light colors and baskets for magazines. But he felt comfortable here. Something he’d never felt in any other place except his parents’ home.

“I’m not willing to give up everything for a man.” She was staring down into her coffee cup.

“That sounds bitter,” Tad said.

She shrugged and finally glanced up at him. “Not bitter—realistic.”

He left his perch on the chair and sat down next to her. Leaning back, he placed his arm along the top of the loveseat over her shoulders. She started and jerked away from him. Sloshing coffee onto her hands.

She put the cup on the table and wiped her hands on a napkin but didn’t relax. Just sat there tensely waiting for him to pounce. Gee, that made him feel good. What had he done to make her believe he was the enemy?

“In the kitchen you asked me about love. Anyone who believes in love can’t be totally against marriage.”

She started gathering items on the coffee table as if cleaning up the cookies and coffee cups were the most important thing in the world.

“Aren’t you going to answer me?” he asked.

She glanced over her shoulder at him and he regretted pushing her. He knew one of his greatest faults was impatience.

“I’ll admit I want to find someone to love me—not just an image that I represent.”

“Cathy Jane, you’ve always been in your own playing field.”

“Don’t say things like that. You don’t mean them,” she said.

But he did. And convincing her of it would take considerable effort. But then everything worth keeping in his life had taken hard work. Why should CJ be any different?

He thought about his best friend, Pierce, who’d lost the woman he loved when he’d lost the use of his legs. His friend’s devastation in the aftermath of losing Karen had confirmed to Tad that he never wanted to feel that way. He’d learned that it didn’t pay to let a woman close. Tad had vowed to never let himself be affected so deeply by any woman.

But even that warning wasn’t enough to sway him from wanting CJ. She turned away from him and he had the first doubts that his plan for a simple marriage of convenience might not work.

“Come to dinner with me tonight and I’ll prove that I’m the only man you want.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, gathering the tray with emptied coffee cups and leftover cookies. She couldn’t focus on Tad and his insane desire to have her as his wife. It didn’t matter that she was tempted, hell more than tempted to be Mrs. Tad Randolph. All that mattered was that she’d found a way of living that worked for her and she wasn’t willing to rock the boat for some buff blond guy.

“I’ll help with that.” Tad stood to take the tray from her but she turned away.

She didn’t want to make this decision with her hormones and just those few minutes in his arms earlier told her that saying no to Tad was the only sane option. She’d learned at Marcus’ hands that she was a slave to her body and heart. And she wasn’t going to live through that again.

“No, thanks.”

He blocked her path to the kitchen. Determination written in every line of his body. Dammit, she wished he were still the ninety-pound weakling he’d been when they were twelve. Then she’d have brushed right past him and outrun him. But now, he looked like he could take on Mt. Everest blindfolded and she felt like she’d be doing good to get through a thirty-minute yoga class.

“I’m not leaving until you agree to have dinner with me,” he said, drawing one finger down the side of her face. He toyed with a tendril of hair at the back of her neck. Her hands trembled.

“Why’d you dye your hair?” he asked, leaning forward around the tray. He brushed his nose against her head and breathed deeply. “You smell good.”

She was shaking now, the coffee cups clattering on their saucers. Tad took the tray from her and put it on the coffee table. “Answer me.”

“What?” she asked, totally rattled. All she wanted was to grab his hand and take him down the rather short hallway to her bedroom. She wanted to push him back on the bed and have her way with him.

“Your new hair color, why?”

How could she explain to this very attractive man that being an average mousy-brown-haired woman wasn’t what she wanted the world to see of her? He wouldn’t be able to understand that physical image was the easiest thing to change and still the most important to her. It was one more facade between her and the rest of the world.

She shrugged, trying for nonchalance, which she was far from feeling. “I needed to make a clean break with the past.”

“Was it really that bad?” he asked.

He was too close. She could smell the sweat that had dried on his body. She wanted to do what he’d done, lean in and breathe in his essence but she couldn’t. One lungful of his scent wouldn’t be enough.

She wanted to indulge all her senses with him. To forget all this talk and communicate in the most essential way men and women could. Except she knew such communication was the most dangerous of all. “No. It didn’t fit with the new me.”

“I like the new you,” he said, brushing his lips against hers. “But, then, I liked the old you too.”

It wasn’t enough. That brief brush of lips. She stood on her toes and kissed him. She closed her eyes, held his head in her hands and tasted him. She thrust her tongue past the barrier of his lips and teeth. The flavor of coffee and cookies deluged her taste buds.

She tilted her head to the side, pulling back then returning again to his mouth. He kept his hands at his sides letting her control the embrace. Seeming to know that she needed a chance to be in charge. Or maybe he knew this was the key to her weakness. She backed away abruptly. When was she going to learn?

He licked his lips, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes watched her and she didn’t know what to do next. This situation was not her comfort zone. She wanted him out of her house.
Now.

“It’s been a long time since…”

“Me too,” he said, rubbing his thumb over her lower lip.

She ached for him in the most primal way. Her breasts were full and heavy. Her nipples taut. If she leaned forward just an inch she’d be able to rub against his chest. That hard well-developed-buff-sports-guy chest of his that called to her like the HoHos in her kitchen cupboard. But she wasn’t ready to surrender everything for him. “I’m not sleeping with you, Tad.”

“I don’t really want to sleep,” he said blandly.

She couldn’t help but smile. “Please, just let it go.”

“I can’t. You’re going to be my wife, CJ. You know I don’t say things that I don’t mean.”

“Stop it,” she said, backing away from him. He did so say things he didn’t mean. He’d been the one to promise her at age twelve that he’d always rescue her and then he’d hurt her.

The next condo she bought was going to have a huge labyrinth of rooms. In it she would be able to stand at one end of the maze and have to yell to be heard at the other.

In such a complex, a six-foot tall man couldn’t dominate any one room. She could easily escape not only a person, but the feelings and memories they evoked. “You don’t know the real me. I don’t think
I
do.”

“That might be true. But I’m not leaving until I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you’ll avoid me from now on unless we clear the air.”

“Clear the air. Is that all you want to do with me?”

“Hell, no. I want to take you to bed and break down all the barriers you’ve put between us.”

“Tad, go away.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not the girl you want.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Because I like the same Christmas tree you do.”

He gave her a half smile that took her breath away. “No, because you’re beautiful and sexy and you’ve haunted my dreams since the last time I saw you.”

She took the tray and left the living room. She couldn’t think when he said things like that. When he made her believe that forever and happily ever after might still exist. It was as if everything Marcus, her ex-lover and ex-boss, had taught her disappeared. But she knew better.

“I’m not your dream woman, Tad. I’m no man’s.”

No man’s dream woman. The words echoed in his head and Tad realized he’d unintentionally hurt CJ. The woman he thought had no weaknesses had just revealed one. And it was a deep wound. He felt like he’d callously torn the scab off of it.

As badly as Kylie had hurt him when she’d left, Tad had never been bitter toward women. For one thing Pierce wouldn’t let him. He’d said one sour apple didn’t make the whole pie bad. And Pierce had been right. There had been other women since Kylie, but now Tad acknowledged that he’d kept them at arm’s length. Something he wasn’t going to be able to do with CJ.

He knew a gentleman would leave but he’d never held that title. He was a businessman and sports enthusiast. He’d been a farmer and a brainiac. But never a gentleman.

Since she’d reentered his life she’d become his dream woman. He wasn’t going to tell her, but other women paled when compared to her. Which was why he’d decided to marry her.

The music had switched off sometime when Rae-Anne left. And it didn’t seem very festive in CJ’s apartment anymore. But it did feel wintry and cold. And he wondered how he was going to make things right. His father’s words rang in his ears.
It’s our job to protect the women.

Tad knew he’d done a poor job of that today. He lit a fire in the fireplace and put on a Bing Crosby Christmas CD.

He didn’t like to hear CJ talk about herself like she wasn’t good enough for any man. He only hoped his long-ago comments weren’t to blame. What the hell had happened to her while they’d been apart?

He wasn’t leaving until he had an answer. He pushed his way into the kitchen stopping when he saw CJ leaning against the counter with her arms wrapped around her waist and her head tucked down. His arms ached.

“Are you still here?”

“Yeah, and I’m not leaving until we get some things straight.”

“What things?”

“One—I’m not like every other guy you’ve ever met. Two—you don’t have any idea what my dream woman looks like. And three—you promised dinner.”

“Not now. Okay?” she asked. The vulnerability in her eyes made him want to find the bastard who had hurt her and tear him apart. He stopped thinking about questions and answers and instead went to her and took her in his arms.

He held her tight, savoring the feel of her against his chest. She kept her own arms wrapped tight around herself.

“We are going to talk.”

She drew an unsteady breath and he knew she wasn’t going to acquiesce to his wishes easily. Too damn bad. Somehow he was responsible for making the spitfire he’d met in the office into this quivering mass of femininity. He had no idea how to change her back. But he was going to try.

This was precisely why he’d decided on an unemotional entanglement with the opposite sex. A marriage of his convenience and her pleasure. It was simple really.

“Cathy Jane, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Women always like to talk about how men don’t communicate but y’all could give lessons.”

“You sound like your dad.”

“Hell, I feel like my dad must when my mom is giving him the cold shoulder.”

“I’m not giving you the cold shoulder. I’m just asking you to leave me alone.”

“Same difference,” he said. His dad wasn’t one to talk about emotions but last spring when his mom had had a breast cancer scare, his dad had told him that he couldn’t live without his wife. Tad didn’t want to believe that he couldn’t live without CJ but he knew that Cathy Jane had touched something deep inside him years ago. Something he hoped was mutual that bound them both together.

“We’re not married,” she said quietly.

The crackle of the fire and the lighted Christmas tree made him wish things weren’t complicated with CJ. Made him wish he could take that afghan off the back of her couch, the one he knew her Aunt Bessie had made, and lay it on the ground. Then he’d lower her down on it and make love to her until the shadows in her eyes had disappeared. “I’d like us to be.”

“You are making me crazy. Please don’t mention marriage again.”

“Give me a good reason not to,” he said.

“We don’t know each other.”

He leaned closer to her and brushed a soft kiss against her lips. “Then let’s get to know each other.”

He scooped CJ up in his arms and walked back into the living room. He sat in the armchair nearest the Christmas tree and put her in his lap with her legs over one of the arms and her head resting against the back corner.

“This is more like it,” he said.

“What is?” she asked, her eyes were glassy and he knew whatever she was battling was overwhelming.