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“Listening?” Julie looked at her blankly, then seemed to register what she’d asked. “Oh, yes, listening. Of course we were listening. Weren’t we, Drew?”
He peeled his lips off her sister’s neck and nodded sheepishly, like she’d caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “Yes. Cole in the office. You asking him to dinner.”
“Only because I felt sorry for him,” Anna emphasized. “End of story.”
“Would you get me another glass of wine, sweetie?” Julie asked her husband, reaching up on tiptoes to give him a lingering kiss on the mouth.
When he was gone, she rolled her hazel eyes at Anna. “Would you give it up already, Anna? Don’t you think we can all tell something’s going on between you and Mr. Hunk?”
“My own sister,” Anna said through clenched teeth, “and you don’t believe me either.”
“That’s because you’ve cried wolf once too often.”
“If you remember, a wolf does show up in that fairy tale and eats the shepherd boy’s sheep,” Anna pointed out with heat.
“Wolves don’t look at women the way Cole has been looking at you,” Julie said, then bit her lip. “Hey, maybe they do.” Her face creased into a wide smile. “Lucky you.”
How dare he? Anna thought as she mentally reviewed the looks Cole had been giving her. Her sister was right. They did have a wolfish quality.
“Excuse me,” she said to Julie and headed straight for Cole.
He was watching her again. Watching her and—she could hardly believe his nerve—smiling.
But not an innocent smile. His teeth weren’t visible, his lips had a sensuous curve and his eyes roamed over her with barely concealed appreciation.
Anybody who intercepted that look would probably conclude that he could hardly wait to get her alone, she thought as she stomped toward him.
“Where you going in such a rush?” Her father stepped in front of her so she had to stop or careen into him. He was in a conversational group that included her Aunt Miranda and Uncle Peter. “I, for one, would like to hear more about Cole.”
“I’m all ears, too,” Aunt Miranda said. She slanted a cool look at her stockbroker husband. “I think we could all take a break from Peter speculating about which stores in the retail sector are providing the best investment opportunities.”
“It was more than mere speculation. It was expert analysis,” Peter said, stroking his neatly cropped beard and visibly bristling. “Wonder if Cole plays the market.”
Cole. If she heard that name one more time, Anna thought she might scream.
“I really wouldn’t know,” Anna said. “Like I’ve been telling you, I hardly know him at all.”
“Don’t you two talk to each other?” her aunt asked before taking a long sip from her glass of white wine.
“Hardly,” Anna said. “If you’d been listening to me, you’d know that—”
“I say we get Cole over here so we can all become better acquainted,” her father interrupted before beckoning to Cole. “Hey, Cole, the Ziemanski women have had you long enough. Come talk to us Wesleys.”
Anna watched as Cole slanted regretful looks at first her mother and then her grandmother, as though he’d actually enjoyed talking to them. He walked up to their group and took a position next to her instead of between her father and uncle, invading her personal space.
She’d never thought of herself as small but her head didn’t reach much higher than his extremely broad shoulders. No wonder she imagined she could feel his body heat through the thick jersey knit of her dress. With his height and muscular build, he had quite a lot of body. She inched away.
“It’s Tom, Peter and Miranda, right?” he said to her father, uncle and aunt. They nodded in unison, obviously pleased he remembered their names.
“Anna tells us you two haven’t been spending your time together talking,” her aunt said, arching a suggestive eyebrow at Cole. Cole, in turn, shot Anna a speculative look.
“I did not say that!” Anna refuted, feeling her face heat.
“It’s okay, Anna,” her aunt continued. “We’re all adults here.”
“Must you always say such outrageous things, Miranda?” her husband asked testily. “Anna is Tom’s daughter.”
Her aunt waved a dismissive hand. “Come now, Peter. I’m sure my brother realizes Anna’s not an innocent little girl. She is nearly thirty years old.”
“I’m twenty-seven,” Anna said. “And I didn’t—”
“So, Cole,” her father interrupted smoothly. “Seems to me I heard your family was from California.”
Cole nodded. “San Diego.”
“Is it a big family like ours?”
“I’m not as lucky as Anna,” Cole said, moving the hand on her back in a caressing motion. Anna would have shifted away if it hadn’t felt so good. “Growing up, it was just me and my parents. Their families were spread all over the country so we didn’t see them much.”
“Then you’re an only child?” her father asked.
“I’m my mother’s only child.” His hand was on her shoulder now, kneading gently. She nearly closed her eyes with pleasure as he rubbed away her tension. “My father has two stepdaughters from his second marriage but I didn’t meet them until recently.”
“Does your father live in San Diego, too?” Aunt Miranda asked.
He hesitated before answering. “No.”
It took Anna a few moments to figure out Cole didn’t intend to elaborate. In the month he’d worked at Skillington, Anna hadn’t asked him a single personal question. But now a dozen crowded her brain.
“Where does he live?” she pressed.
Again, he took his time answering. “Not far from here.”
Interesting, Anna thought. “Is that why you moved to the Pittsburgh area? To be closer to your father?”
“I moved here to take the job at Skillington Ski,” he said, which made her remember why she shouldn’t let him touch her with such familiarity: he was after her job.
“If your father’s in town, why did Anna say you didn’t have anywhere else to go tonight?” Uncle Peter asked, frowning.
“My father and his wife are vacationing,” Cole said. “My stepsisters live in Texas, and my mother and her husband are in the Bahamas on a cruise.”
“So that left you ripe for Anna’s picking,” Aunt Miranda observed, looking pointedly from one to the other.
“Miranda,” Peter said in a warning voice.
“Get with the times, Peter,” Aunt Miranda said. “Women pick up men all the time. It’s a perfectly acceptable dating practice.”
Anna ignored the delicious sensations Cole’s gentle massage was causing and figured she’d better distance herself from him, both physically and verbally.
“I didn’t pick him up,” Anna said, stepping away from him. “I asked him to dinner.”
“Am I glad she did.” Cole reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather be.”
The tenderness in his touch was reflected on his face, which was quite a feat considering it was made up of hard angles and planes. Not that there wasn’t a certain softness around his mouth, which was really quite beautiful when you examined it closely.
The sheer loveliness of that mouth had the power to draw her in. Closer and closer. Until she wondered what it would be like to kiss him.
“What does everybody say to some Christmas carols? Rosemary? You up for some piano playing?” Her grandfather’s voice boomed the questions, causing Anna to jerk back.
Her eyes flew to Cole’s, which she couldn’t read because of the twinkling Christmas tree lights reflected in the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.
Had he guessed that she was thinking about kissing him? More to the point, why had she been thinking about kissing him? He was hardly her type.
“Oh, no. Not the Christmas carols.” Her father let out a melodramatic groan, then whispered to Cole out of the side of his mouth, “My dear wife plays the world’s worst piano. And my mother-in-law has a singing voice that could sour wine.”
Uncle Peter shuddered. “Never heard anything worse than the two of them together.”
“Quick, Cole. Say you’d rather we didn’t do the Christmas carols,” her father urged. “You’re a guest. They might listen to you.”
Cole laughed, such a joyous, infectious sound that it seemed to run through Anna’s veins along with her blood.
“Not on your life. I might not be much of a singer but I like to sing,” Cole said before he walked toward the gleaming mahogany piano at the corner of the room.
Five minutes later, while her mother pounded enthusiastically on the piano keys, Cole led their group in a truly tuneless rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
The tassel from the Santa hat he’d plucked from Grandpa’s head swung as he swayed to the music, such as it was. A few bars into the song, her mother stopped in midstanza.
“Those are the wrong lyrics,” she said crossly and tapped the music on her stand. “Can’t you read? I’m playing ‘All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.”’
A great belly laugh escaped from Grandpa Ziemanski and suddenly Anna couldn’t stop herself.
She looked from her indignant mother to her roaring grandfather to a puzzled Cole and burst into laughter. His lips twitched and, after the barest pause, he joined in.
The result was contagious. One by one, everybody in the room began to laugh until there was no sound save the combined chortling of ten people.
Anna’s eyes watered and her sides ached. She leaned her head weakly against Cole’s chest, thankful when his arms came around her shoulders to support her.
She felt the rumbling inside his chest through her ear and unthinkingly put a hand on his shirt to feel the vibrations.
She could feel the heat coming off his body through his clothes. Experimentally, she moved her hand over the crisp material of his dress shirt. He felt warm and solid, hard muscle covered by smooth flesh. Flesh that no longer vibrated with laughter.
She raised her head to look at him. Her eyes lingered on his mouth, which was no longer laughing, then lifted to his eyes. Even through his glasses, she could see the heat in them.
He was looking at her as though all he wanted for Christmas was her.
Sexual awareness shimmied through her, the same way it had in the office when he’d flirted with her. She’d ignored it then, but she couldn’t any longer. Not when it was as plain as the Santa hat that covered his lush, dark hair.
Wrenching her gaze from his, she stepped back. He let her go but not so far that she wasn’t still in the loose circle of his arms.
“Don’t go, sugarplum,” he whispered. “You felt good exactly where you were.”
She started to pull back despite his words, but her body tingled everywhere it came in contact with his. She hesitated at the same time that her mother crushed the piano keys and the family belted out the lyrics of “Jingle Bells.”
She knew she was right about the identity of the song because she glimpsed the music on the piano stand. Cole grinned at her, then sang along in his truly awful baritone.
By the time they were well into another carol, Cole’s arms circled her from behind. Before they’d finished for the night, her back was against his chest with his chin resting on the top of her head.
Somehow, she never did muster the will to move.
“I HAD A GREAT TIME,” Cole said as Anna’s family gathered around him in the foyer. “I can’t thank you enough for having me.”
Anna’s mother handed him the black wool overcoat she took out of the coat closet.
“We’re the ones who should thank you for impressing Anna enough that she wanted us to meet you,” she said.
Anna didn’t rise to that particular bait, possibly because she was occupied with helping him put on his coat. She applied pressure at the small of his back, the better to shove him out the door.
He stubbornly held his ground. He’d bonded with her family over dinner, caroling and midnight services. He’d be damned if he cut his goodbyes short.
“Me, impress Anna?” he asked rhetorically. He ignored the warning look Anna shot him. “You got that wrong. Anna’s the impressive one.”
“What a nice thing to say,” Grandma Ziemanski offered. “Anna, you better keep this one. When you’re as old and set in your ways as you are, there aren’t many good ones left.”
“Thank you for that thought, Grandma,” Anna said wryly. She tapped the face of her watch. “It’s late. Cole needs to leave so we can all get to sleep. If we don’t, we’ll be too tired to enjoy Christmas day.”
She pushed at his back but not hard enough to budge him. He didn’t spend hours at the gym for nothing.
“Say good-night, Cole,” Anna said.
“Good night, everyone,” he said, mostly because he couldn’t prolong his leave-taking indefinitely. “And Merry Christmas.”
“Speaking of Christmas, Cole, what are you doing tomorrow?” Miranda asked. “Peter and I are having everybody over to our house. You’re more than welcome to join us.”
“Yes,” her husband immediately added. “We’d be happy to have you. You and I never did get a chance to talk about the stock market.”
Cole’s lifting spirits had nothing to do with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He realized he was reluctant to leave because spending the rest of the holiday alone had lost its appeal.
“He can’t come,” Anna interjected, shooting him a dagger of a look. “He’s busy.”
“What could he be busy doing that can’t wait until after Christmas?” Rosemary asked incredulously.
Cole kept his mouth shut, especially because Anna’s mother had directed the question at her daughter. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched Anna sweat.
“He’s busy…working,” she said, wiping her brow. Her big, doe eyes flew to him for help, but her mouth flattened when she realized he didn’t intend to provide any. “He needs to finish up what he was working on tonight. He can’t have any distractions.”
Cole sent her a sharp look before it dawned on him that she couldn’t possibly know he’d waited until the office was deserted so he could go over the company’s marketing plan.
Anna wasn’t the retiring type. If she’d guessed what he was doing, she would have said something.
