Blame It On Christmas

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“You,” Mazie said, finishing her meal. “Every other day.” She wiped her hands on a napkin. “My...conversation with J.B. got derailed when my brother showed up. I’m sure I’ll hear from him soon. J.B., that is.”

“And what will you say when he asks you again?”

Mazie flashed to a mental image of the real estate developer’s chest. His tousled hair. His eyes, heavy-lidded with desire. Her throat tightened. Her thighs pressed together. “I don’t really know.”

Unfortunately, the afternoon crowd picked up, and Mazie never found a moment to scoot home and restock her wardrobe. By the time the shop closed at five, she was more than ready to call it quits.

The Tarleton family had lived for decades on the tip of a small barrier island just north of the city. They owned fifteen acres, more than enough to create a compound that included the main house and several smaller buildings scattered around.

An imposing, gated iron fence protected the enclave on land. Water access was impossible due to a high brick wall Mazie’s grandfather had erected at the top of the sand. The beach itself was public property, but he had made sure no one could wander onto Tarleton property, either out of curiosity or with dangerous motives. Hurricanes and erosion made the wall outrageously expensive to maintain, but the current Tarleton patriarch was by nature paranoid and suspicious, so security was a constant concern.

At times, Mazie felt unbearably strangled by her familial obligations. Perhaps that was why being around J.B. felt both dangerous and exhilarating all at the same instant.

She punched her security code into the keypad and waited for the heavy gate to slide open. She and Jonathan both wanted to move out, but they were trapped by the weight of love and responsibility for their father. She suspected her brother kept an apartment in the city so he could have a private life, but she didn’t pry. Someday she might find a place of her own, as well.

She had let the long-ago debacle with J.B. cast too long a shadow over her romantic life. Heartbreak had made her overly cautious.

It was time to find some closure with J.B., one way or another. Time to move on.

The house where she had grown up was a colossal structure of sandstone and timber, on stilts, of course. Supposedly, it had been built to withstand a Category Four hurricane. Though the family home had suffered damage over the years, the original structure was still mostly intact.

An imposing front staircase swept upward to double mahogany doors inlaid with stained glass. The images of starfish and dolphins and sea turtles had fascinated her as a child. When she grew tall enough, she liked to stand on the porch and trace them with her fingertips.

The sea creatures were free in a way that Mazie couldn’t imagine. All her life she had been hemmed in by her mother’s illness and later, her father’s paranoia. Jonathan and Hartley—when they had been in a mood to tolerate her—had been her companions, her best friends.

And J.B., too.

The Vaughan family was one of only a handful in Charleston as wealthy as the Tarletons, so Gerald Tarleton had condoned, even promoted his children’s friendship with J.B. But Mazie was younger, and Hartley was a loner, so it was always Jonathan and J.B. who were the closest.

Mazie had adored J.B. as a child, then had a crush on him as a teenager, and finally, hated him for years. No matter how she examined her past, it was impossible to excise J.B. from the memories.

Mazie found her father in the large family room with the double plate-glass windows. The ocean was benign today, shimmering shades of blue and turquoise stretching all the way to the horizon.

“Hi, Daddy.” She kissed the top of his curly, white-haired head. Her father was reading the Wall Street Journal, or pretending to. More often than not, she discovered him napping. Gerald Tarleton had been an imposing figure at one time. Tall and barrel-chested, he could bluster and intimidate with the best of them.

As he aged, he had lost much of his fire.

He reached up and patted her hand. “There you are, pumpkin. Will you tell cook I want dinner at six thirty instead of seven?”

“Of course. Did you have a good day?”

“Stupid doctor says I can’t smoke cigars anymore. Where’s the fun in that?”

The family physician made twice yearly visits to the Tarleton compound. Mazie wasn’t sorry to have missed this one. “He’s trying to keep you alive.”

“Or take away my reasons for living,” he groused comically.

Her father had married later in life, a man in his midforties taking a much younger bride. The story wasn’t so unusual. But in Gerald’s case, it had ended tragically. His bride and her parents had hidden from him the extent of her mental struggles, leaving Gerald to eventually raise his young family on his own.

Mazie and her brothers had each paid an invisible price that followed them into adulthood.

She ignored his mood. “I’ll speak to cook, and then I’m going to change clothes. I’ll be back down in half an hour or so.”

“And Jonathan?”

“He’s home tonight, I think.”

After a quick word with the woman who ran the kitchen like a drill sergeant, but with sublime culinary skills, Mazie ran upstairs and at last made it to the privacy of her bedroom. She stripped off her clothes, trying not to think about J.B.’s hands on her body.

His touch had opened her eyes to several disturbing truths, not the least of which was that she had carried a tendresse for him, an affection, that had never been stamped out.

She had spent a semester in France her senior year, only a few months after he had rejected her. The entire time she was abroad, she had imagined herself wandering the streets of Paris with J.B.

What a foolish, schoolgirl dream.

Yet now, when she stared in the mirror and saw her naked body, it was impossible to separate her former daydreams from the inescapable reality. She had allowed J.B. Vaughan to caress her breasts, to touch her intimately.

Had Jonathan not intruded to rescue them, would she have regrets?

Confusion curled her stomach. She wasn’t the kind of person who jumped into bed with a man. Especially not J.B.

Something had happened in the vault.

Yet however she replayed the sequence of events, J.B. didn’t come out the villain. Mazie had been the one to accidentally close the door and lock them in. Mazie had been the one to kiss J.B. Mazie had been the one who decided that a nod to her past infatuation would serve to distract J.B. from his claustrophobia.

Was it any wonder he had taken her invitation and run with it?

She stayed in the shower a long time, scrubbing and scrubbing again, trying to erase every vestige of his touch from her skin. She still wanted to hate him. He was still off-limits. And damn it, she still wanted to see him squirm.

Today had weakened her position in their face-off.

J.B. was a highly sexual man. When a woman gave him every indication she wanted sex, it was no wonder he had obliged.

Mazie had to live with the knowledge that she had done something extremely foolhardy. Self-destructive even.

Circumstances had saved her from the ultimate humiliation.

She didn’t have to face J.B. as an ex-lover. Thank God for that.

But the unseen damage was worse, perhaps.

Now she knew what it felt like to be in his arms, to hear him whisper her name in a ragged groan that sent shivers of raw pleasure down her spine. Tonight when she climbed into bed, she would remember his hands on her breasts, her bare body, her sex.

How could she think about anything else?

Five (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)

Even now, her hands trembled as she dried herself with a huge fluffy towel that smelled of sunshine and ocean breezes. The housekeeper liked pinning the laundry on an old-fashioned clothesline when weather permitted.

Mazie put on soft, faded jeans and a periwinkle cashmere sweater with a scoop neck. A short strand of pearls that had been her mother’s dressed up the outfit enough to meet her father’s old-school dinner requirements.

Sooner or later, J.B. would call about the property swap. She would have to speak to him as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And she would have to give him an answer.

His offer was generous. There was no denying the truth.

But she didn’t want to give him what he wanted.

Though it was childish and petty on her part, something inside her wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt her. For J.B., that meant she needed to hurt his business. She was certain he didn’t have a heart or real emotions. All he cared about was stacking up more money and more accolades for his financial acumen.

If he really cared about her, he’d had plenty of years to make up for the past. But he hadn’t.

At last, she could delay no longer. The sun had set in a blaze of glory, and darkness had fallen over the island. She heard a car in the driveway and recognized her brother’s voice as it floated up from the foyer.

This mess with J.B. would have to wait.

She had time. Time to come up with a plan. When she saw him again, she wanted to be in control.

Passionless.

Absolutely calm.

There was a very good chance he had used their interlude in the vault to sway her to his side. Though he had not instigated the encounter, he was intuitive and fiercely intelligent. If he had sensed her weakness where he was concerned, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use it against her. Nor would he in the future.

She had to be on her guard. She couldn’t let her vulnerabilities where J.B. was concerned fool her into thinking he might really care about her.

Troubled and unsettled, she made her way downstairs. Jonathan might quiz her about the incident earlier in the day when she and J.B. had been trapped, but her father would be oblivious. If the subject came up, she would steer the conversation in a safer direction.

She walked into the dining room, ruefully aware that as usual, the full complement of china and silver and crystal adorned the table. A low arrangement of red roses and holly nestled in a Waterford bowl. Despite the fact that there were only three of them, the Tarletons would dine in style.

Grimacing inwardly, she stopped short when she saw the fourth place setting.

“Who’s coming to dinner?” she asked Jonathan, a dreadful premonition already shaking her foundations.

Behind her, a familiar velvet-smooth voice replied.

“It’s me,” J.B. said. “I hope you don’t mind another mouth to feed.”

J.B. was accustomed to women’s flirtatious maneuvers and their attempts to secure his attention. Rarely had he seen a woman with an expression on her face like Mazie’s. She recovered quickly, but for a split second, she was startled, her unguarded look revealing a mixture of dismay and sensual awareness.