Holiday Wedding (Holiday Romance-Spicy Version #2)

21

Saturday, December

3 days until the wedding

Jenny

Iwake to find brown eyes with hints of gold staring at me. I must have turned to face Dean sometime during the night. Our heads are at the same level, our gazes aligned. I look back, holding my breath because he’s beautiful in the soft morning light filtered through the snow that still falls outside the window. There are tiny lines at the corners of his eyes and a freckle beneath his lower lip. His stubble has thickened, and there’s a pillow crease in the skin of his left cheek, the one that hides that charming dimple.

I let out a small sigh. Coming fully awake, I prop myself up on an elbow, my eyebrows slashing together.

“Are you watching me sleep?” I accuse.

He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. “No.” The tips of his ears redden.

Liar.

I don’t get him. I thought we had a moment at the cake tasting, and earlier he seemed disappointed when I kicked him out. I know he was feeling something in that dressing room when he pulled down my zipper. But last night, he didn’t even want to be in the same bed as me, and now I wake up to this? Talk about mixed signals.

I lie back and rub my fists over my eyes. “This stinks.”

“What?” He turns to me again, his cheek pressed to the white pillowcase.

Oops. Wasn’t meaning to say that out loud. I scramble for a reasonable answer. “This,” I say, dramatically flapping my hand at the window, which has frost in the corners, ice that clings to the glass and creates elaborate scroll-like patterns. “I had so many plans for this weekend. I was going to help with wedding preparations and then I wanted to do all the touristy winter New York stuff.”

“What stuff?” One corner of his mouth lifts in amusement. His fingers twitch as if he wants to touch something, but he holds them steady.

“I don’t know. Ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Um…” I trail off.

He bites back a smile. “Is that it? I’m going to be honest with you. That’s pretty unimaginative.”

I rack my brain for something more, something to keep him here. His mood must be rubbing off on me. I like this, lying in bed and talking with him.

“Oh! Window shopping on Fifth Avenue. I heard they have amazing displays.”

“And…” he prompts.

“And…that’s it.” I’m sad I don’t have more to contribute. “You tell me what’s good for the holiday. This is your city, after all.”

“Hmm,” he says and scratches his chin. It sounds like sandpaper when his fingers rub over the stubble.

“The American Museum of Natural History is great. They make an entire Christmas tree out of origami. Outside the front doors, on either side, they have topiaries made of pine that look like dinosaurs. They’re all lit up and hold wreaths in their hands.” He smiles softly at the memory. “Then there’s the music. The boys’ choir at St. Thomas Church, the Philharmonic, Mariah Carey pouring out of every store and bodega.” He closes his eyes and hums a tune off-key. It’s familiar, but I can’t quite place it.

“What’s that?” I ask quietly, not wanting to break this spell. Dean’s relaxed and talking to me like we’re best friends. It’s almost perfect.

“Handel’s Messiah.”

“It’s beautiful.”

The dimple makes its appearance, attached to his smile. “It’s one of my favorites,” he says shyly. “Then, of course, there’s the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and The Nutcracker at the Lincoln Center. Traffic gets crazy when that’s going on, even crazier than usual.”

“That all sounds wonderful. Too bad I’ll miss it. By the time the storm is over, all that stuff will have shut down.”

“Not all of it. I’ll take you. After the wedding. I’ll show it to you.”

I freeze. It hangs between us, talk of the future, of a day when we aren’t snowbound together in this room. If someone had told me two weeks ago that Dean Maddox would be voluntarily offering to give me a tour of New York, I’d have laughed in their face.

He must hear it, too. His lips pull tight, and his expression shutters, cutting off the warmth in his gaze.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

What’s he apologizing for? Giving me false hope that we might form a friendship? Maybe something more? It doesn’t matter, anyway. As soon as the wedding’s over, I’ll be hitching an airplane straight back to California.

He sits up, with my robe still wrapped tightly around him. “Can you—can you turn around?” he asks out of a clenched jaw. “I want to get dressed. My clothing should be dry now.”

I do as he asks, no peeking.

He clears his throat with a loud, “Done.” He’s put on his dress pants, but not the button-down shirt or suit jacket. He wears only a thin white V-neck undershirt, so translucent I can see whorls of inky tattoos on his chest through it. Wow. Who knew that was hiding under those crisp white button-downs? I look away, trying not to gape.

There’s a clatter from the kitchenette. He asks, “You want peanut butter and jelly for breakfast?”

“Sure.” I roll out of bed and make my way to the bathroom, ignoring the snicker I hear behind me.

“Nice PJs,” Dean calls out, laughing, right before the door closes.

Jerk.

Guess we’re back to this, acting out these roles, like we’re frenemies. At least I know what to expect.

I think we’ll be bored, but we aren’t. We find a pack of cards in my suitcase and spend all morning playing them. Blackjack, hearts, crazy eights, go fish. We play it all. After lunch, I dig out a couple of romance books I brought for the plane trip here and back. I lay them on the bed, face up.

“Pick one,” I tell Dean.

He takes a long time deliberating, then chooses a romantasy by Sarah J. Maas with a red cover. I’m impressed he wasn’t intimidated by the thickness of the book. That thing is over 400 pages.

“Nice choice,” I say, picking it up and flipping through the pages before handing it over. “Gwen and I read that together and we loved it, although the second in the series is my favorite.”

We sit side by side in bed, our backs leaning against the headboard, and read in a companionable silence. I always dreamed of this. Reading next to a handsome man. In my imagination, he’d be hot, like Dean, but with glasses he’d push up his nose. When we finished each chapter, we’d kiss, nice and slow. Too bad that won’t happen for me.

Dinner is by candlelight again. Chili warmed up on the stove. I have a bottle of red wine, a nice one I was going to give to Gwen the night before her wedding. I don’t think she’d mind me using it tonight instead. Despite a surprisingly pleasant day, there’s still a thrum of tension under my skin from being this close to Dean. It’s taken strength to hide my attraction to him. To pretend I didn’t notice the way he scratches his chest through his thin T-shirt when he reads or how he chews his lower lip thoughtfully before he selects a card during our games.

“Here,” I say, handing him a plastic cup and pouring a generous amount of wine into it. I doubt he’s stressed from having to spend the day with me, but I can’t drink in front of him without sharing.

“Thanks.” He takes a sip and then another.

We talk about small stuff—families, work, the gym, the upcoming wedding. “I’ve never seen anyone in love the way they are,” Dean admits. “Caleb and Gwen. On the car ride to the airport, they held onto each other as though the world was going to fall apart if they let go.”

“I know.” I roll my shoulders and yawn. The wine’s making me sleepy. “Relationship goals. I’m almost jealous of how affectionate they are.”

He nods and gives me his dimpled smile. For a minute, I forget to breathe. The candlelight softens the normally hard angles of his face, giving him a youthful, carefree expression. It flickers, sending an undulating golden glow over his skin.

It’s nice.

Seeing him here in my room, relaxed and content.

I stand to pour the last bit of wine into Dean’s cup when the radiator goes off, making that sharp, pounding sound I heard the first day I checked in.

Two things happen at once.

One, Dean stands and leaps at me like he’s protecting me from a drive-by shooter. He flies into me and knocks me to the floor. The bottle falls from my hand. Thankfully, it doesn’t shatter, but wine spills out of it, staining the thin rug beneath us.

Two, as the knocking, rattling sound continues, Dean curls into a fetal position next to me, with his hands over his ears and his legs drawn up to his chest. I look him over, noting how tightly he’s screwed up his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He rocks, muttering under his breath.

My heart pounds. It’s scary, watching Dean spiral out of control. I stare at him—helpless. No clue what’s going on besides the obvious, that he’s in extreme distress. Frantic to end his pain, I wrap my arms around him, press my chest against his back, and hold him.

“It’s okay,” I whisper over and over. “You’re safe. Everything’s okay.”

It seems like an eternity, but eventually he unfurls enough to look at me. There’s panic in his gaze, wild and raw. He turns so that his upper body is beneath me. I’m pressed to his chest, where I can feel the rapid pounding of his heart and every ragged breath he takes.

I put a hand on each of his cheeks, forcing him to meet my eyes. “Dean, you’re okay. It’s okay.” I repeat it, but he’s trembling, his expression pure misery. It hurts me to look at him, to see him like this. I need to pull him out of it, bring him back from whatever dark place he’s gone. I can only think of one thing to do.

I kiss him.

A good hard kiss, pressing my mouth to his unyielding lips. He locks up, tenses. Just when I’m about to move away and apologize profusely, he melts. His mouth falls open with a stuttering gasp, and his tongue meets mine. In a flash, he rolls us over so he’s braced on one elbow above me. Wine soaks my sleeve with its cold wetness. I don’t mind though, barely noticing it. I’m too distracted by the intense way he’s kissing me, like he’s holding nothing back.

Dean kisses the way characters kiss in books or movies. A kind of kiss I thought only existed in Hollywood, but here between the two of us, it expands into something even better. Something pure and powerful and demanding.

I wrap my arms around him and pull him closer. His lips move to my neck, where he gently scrapes his teeth over my jawline. I sigh with pleasure and turn my mouth to his. We stay like that, kissing on the floor for a few more minutes. Then Dean gives me a gentle kiss on my cheek. He says, “You know, there’s a perfectly good bed right next to us.”

I laugh, the sound breathless and happy. “Maybe we should move up there?”

“Definitely.” He stands and holds his hand out to help me off the floor. We climb onto the hard mattress and settle against one another. I rest my head on his shoulder, my body pleasantly humming just from being close to him.

My brain isn’t relaxed, though. It’s busy replaying how groundbreaking those kisses were. I sigh and snuggle closer, when I realize that I haven’t thought about my body all day. I haven’t sucked in my stomach or adjusted my shirt like I usually would. He’s seen me in my pajamas as well as in my tight-fitting jeans, and I haven’t worried about it once. Somehow, lying here with Dean, feeling comfortable with myself, seems like the most natural thing in the world.

Don’t get used to it, I remind myself.

There’s an expiration date on my time in New York. No matter how wonderful this feels, it won’t last.