You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology (14 page)

She thought wrong.

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RISE
?

FALL
, book three of the Rock Solid romance series, will be out November 1, 2016. Visit my website
www.karinabliss.com
to read an excerpt of Dimity and Seth’s story.

by

Stephanie
Doyle

Workaholic Kate never expected to find herself looking for love online on Christmas night. Then
he
happened and her whim to escape loneliness turned into the hottest sex of her life – even if it was via text.

John knew Kate was too classy for his ex-con ass. He was about to learn that Kate knew how to fight for what she wanted. And she wanted more of him.

Stephanie Doyle is a RITA nominee and two time Romantic Times winner. She’s been addicted to romance novels from the age of thirteen and when she’s not reading them, she’s writing them. That is if her cat Hermione isn’t sitting on her keyboard.

K
ate stared at
the glass of wine in front of her. Deep red, a robust flavor. She’d paid too much money for it, but hey, it was Christmas.

She looked at her phone and wondered if she was really going to do this. Then she glanced over at the clock on the wall. Eight-oh-three. Hours until she could go to bed. Hours until it would be tomorrow. The harmless, meaningless twenty-sixth of December.

She took another sip of wine and reached for the phone.

The other day, her assistant had downloaded a dating app specifically for people over forty. A more serious, more mature group of single people looking to find each other.

“You’re hot, you own a company and you’re a total catch,” Sally had said. “You just need to get out there, and this is how you do it in 2016. Welcome to the new world of romance.”

It was the perfect distraction from her thoughts—and a way to kill the night without having to watch
It’s a Wonderful Life
for the thousandth time.

Tentatively, like it might bite her, Kate tapped the screen.

“Green for yes, you like his picture, red for you’re not worthy of me and I never want to see you again,” Sally had laughed as she showed Kate how to
play.

So ridiculous, Kate thought. As if you could just look at a picture and know that you were interested in him without knowing anything about him. Of course, she imagined it wasn’t much different than going to a bar and making eye contact.

Attraction. It was the first step in the dance, really.

Keeping an open mind, Kate opened the app and waited a second before a picture popped up on her phone.

It was as simple as that. She was to look at the picture and make an instant judgment. Was she attracted to him or wasn’t she?

No.

Kate tapped the red button and tried not to feel guilty for rejecting someone for a completely superficial reason. The truth was, she thought he didn’t look very well-kept in his picture. She thought someone trying to make a first impression should have tried a little harder. The next man had a nice face, and she instantly went to green. The app told her that he had also seen her picture and liked it.

Awesome. Someone in the world found her attractive. See, Kate told herself, forty was the new thirty.

Now she had a choice. Keep playing or send him a message. Not really having any idea what to say, she chose to keep playing.

Five pictures later, two no’s and three yeses, and suddenly there was a blinking orb on her screen which, when she tapped, told her that someone had sent her a message.

“Geesh. That was fast,” Kate said to the empty room as she took another sip of wine. It was clearly best to play this game a little tipsy. She read the message.

Yum, me likee.

“Not exactly poetry,” Kate chuckled, and instantly swiped on the picture in order to delete it from her view.

While deleting someone over one sentence seemed harsh, Kate was very sure that if a man walked up to her in a bar and said such a ridiculous thing, she would have turned her back to him. The equivalent of delete.

Kate played on, acknowledging that the satisfaction she got when she got a hit was way better than wallowing in self-pity on Christmas night.

Then his picture came up. She had no idea why it struck her, but it seemed to go right through to her very core. Nothing like the pictures of men with their cars, or their dogs, or their kids. Or her least favorite: standing in the bathroom with the toilet seat in the background, trying to take a picture in front of what must be the only mirror in the house.

No, this wasn’t a selfie. This was a picture someone had taken of this man, who was looking at something in the distance. Something that made him profoundly sad. Or maybe it wasn’t what he was looking at that made him sad, maybe it was just how he’d been feeling at the time.

Sad. Or lonely.

Kate couldn’t help herself. She imagined a million stories that made up the lines in this man’s face. Around his eyes, his mouth. His actual age wasn’t listed. It didn’t matter. He could have been older than her, or younger than her, but either way she realized he’d lived more in the years he’d been on this planet. That’s what his face said. She had this crazy idea maybe he could show her how to do that.

How to really live.

Kate hit the green button and held her breath.

She smiled when she saw they matched. This time when she got the prompt to message him or keep playing, she hit the message button. A box popped up, waiting for her to type something, but again she had no idea what to say.

This wasn’t her first attempt at the online dating thing. A few years back she’d done it on one major match site, with a dismal outcome. Three bad first dates and a lot of emails that went nowhere until eventually she gave up. She knew how awkward these attempts at introduction could be.

She could go with
hello
.
How are you
.
My name is
.
I liked your picture
. Or any other boring combination that anyone on the dating site had sent her. Instead, she typed what she really wanted to know.

What are you looking at?

Kate hit send and then put the phone down. She poured herself another glass of wine and looked at the clock. Eight forty-two. Well, at least she had killed some time.

It was silly to even check her phone. Logically, she knew that. It was Christmas and other than Mr. Yum Me Likee, it was doubtful anyone else was on a dating app. No, most people would be with their families. Their loved ones.

He was probably with the person who took that picture.

Kate reached for the phone and checked anyway. She gasped when she saw there was a return message from him.

It read,
The ocean. When life gets difficult I look at the ocean and then I can breathe.

Kate replied.

I’m sorry life has been difficult.

A few minutes later there was another return message.

I think that’s sort of the point.

She smiled. Maybe he was right. Maybe
life
and
difficult
were supposed to go together.

She looked back at the phone. Another message.

I hope this isn’t rude, but your smile is beautiful. It made me smile when I saw it.

Kate winced and typed back.

I have rabbit cheeks.

A beat later he returned.

That’s why I must have smiled. Who knew I had a thing for rabbit cheeks? Are you having a merry Christmas?

It was probably because she was on her third glass of wine that she answered truthfully.

No. I hate this holiday anymore.

As soon as she hit send, she grimaced. She shouldn’t have said anything. He was going to think she was morbid and pathetic. Not that it should matter what he thought about her. She didn’t know him. He was just a stranger she had reached out to. She should probably go to bed, pull the covers over her head and wait until the morning came.

Instead she checked her phone.

Lonely?

Yes. So lonely.

Me too. My name is John.

My name is Kate.

Wow. Suddenly I’m not lonely anymore. Hi Kate.

Kate smiled down at the phone, charmed, as foolish as that might seem.

Hi John.

She wasn’t sure what to say after that. This really was pretty pathetic. Two lonely people on Christmas grasping for something. Anything.

Tell me why you’re lonely,
he wrote.

I lost my mother a couple of months ago. Cancer. She was the only family I had. Dad left when I was a kid so it was always the two of us against the world. I thought I was prepared for life without her. I wasn’t.

She shouldn’t have said that either. It was too much honesty too fast. Surely a man on a dating app didn’t want to talk about her dead mother and the fact she’d been abandoned by her father.

I know grief. I’m sorry about your mother.

He knew grief. The look on his face in the picture said as much. Strange, but she felt more connected to this man than she had to anyone in a long time. Kate could feel tears welling in her eyes, but she blinked them away.

She was tired of crying.

Thank you. But I don’t want to talk about sad things. The point of playing this game is to have fun, right?

I’m not sure what the point of it is. A buddy signed me up. I suppose I was just trying to distract myself, then I saw your picture and I’m not kidding you made me smile.

My assistant signed me up. Said this was how people meet in 2016.

Assistant?

Kate didn’t want to talk about work either. Not that she wasn’t proud of her company. Of the hundred and twenty-two people she employed. But work had a tendency of taking over everything. Mostly because she let it. Besides, some men were intimidated by her success.

She hoped John wasn’t one of those men, but she didn’t want to risk losing his attention.

Just someone I work with,
she typed.

Tell me more.

Kate read the last message and struggled with what to say.

About what?

Anything. More about your work, your life, your shoe size. I want to know it all.

I’m a size seven and a half, although I’m convinced my one foot is slightly bigger than the other. I’ve never told anyone that before.

Excellent. That’s exactly what I want to know. Okay, you have rabbit cheeks and a distorted foot. Left or right?

Right. And it’s not distorted, it’s just slightly, ever so slightly, bigger. Now you tell me something.

Sorry. I don’t have any deformities. No animal parts or strangely sized appendages.

Kate took a sip of her wine and could feel the warmth of it in her cheeks now. Talk about having liquid courage.

Really? You’re a man and you admitted you don’t have any large appendages? That’s really brave of you.

Oh CRAP! One. One VERY large appendage.

I’ll have to take your word for it.

Please do not make me send you a dick pic. I think there is something so humiliating about pointing a camera at your cock and thinking yeah, she wants to see this pop up on her phone. I’ll never understand the women who opened Anthony Wiener’s texts.

Kate chuckled, because she thought the same thing. Then she read the message again and found herself squirming over the word
cock
. A little rough. Maybe crude. Still, just the word affected her. Yeah, it had probably been entirely too long since she had sex.

Fine. Then no boob picture from me either. Although they are very nice.

I bet they are. That’s a secret I can tell you. I really miss breasts. I miss the way they feel in my hand, the way they taste. I think I could get off on that alone, sucking on a woman’s nipple, I’m so desperate.

Kate felt a jolt of desire in her stomach. The idea of a man holding her breasts, sucking her nipple. Not any man. This man. The man in the picture who liked to look at the ocean.

She started to type something, something that might take them down a different path, when she saw another message from him.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone there. I don’t want to scare you away. I was being inappropriately honest…

Kate undid what she was writing and answered him instead.

I’m not scared. I like honesty.

It was an opening. A provocation and she knew it. Maybe it would scare him away. Maybe he thought she was some slutty person who used this app for one-night hookups, and he was just one of many guys in a long line of conquests.

She hoped he didn’t think that. She hoped on some level he understood that this was different for her. Heck, she hoped it was different for him too. It was so hard to know when it was only a picture and some words.

Had they been standing together at a bar she might be able to read him better, get a sense of who he was, pick up on signs the phone didn’t allow for. But she didn’t know where he was or who he was. If she was going to do this, she supposed she had to take a leap of faith.

Talk to me, Kate. I’m not great at games. Just tell me what you want.

Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the damn holiday, or maybe she was fed up with herself and her structured little life. Whatever the reason, Kate decided to be honest with him.

I think I want you.

K
ate stared down
at the message on the phone and waited for his response. In fact she realized she was holding her breath.

Then we’re in luck. I want you too. I want to kiss that smile. I want to take it inside of me, let it feed me. Where did you come from, Kate?