Ensconced on the world’s coziest sofa, in the butt-shaped niche he’d carved for himself through repeated visits, Nate held a pack of frozen peas to his groin and watched Angela pace.
“Ohmigod! I’ve been banned from the grocery store, Nate! How am I going to buy food for me and Kayla? Christmas is coming up! I promised to bring a ham to my mom’s house for dinner.” She shafted him a forlorn look. “My mom told me ham was foolproof, even for me. But now…” With a groan, she threw up her hands. “We’re going to starve to death. At Christmas.”
“You’re not going to starve to death.”
“Yes, we are! We’re going to starve. There are only two grocery stores in Kismet, and I can’t afford the prices at the Olde Towne Gourmet Emporium on the lakefront.” She headed past the gaily decorated Christmas tree near the TV and beelined for the kitchen with a determined expression on her face. “I know. I’ll inventory everything, then ration it. Maybe if my mom chips in for gas money, we can drive to Grand Rapids to stock up.”
“You don’t have to stock up.” Something about her worried expression and frazzled hair got to him. Even though she’d made him woodenly practice meeting women and “chitchatting,” Nate wanted to make Angela feel better. “You’re not going to starve.”
She came back around the corner with a can of vegetable soup. She turned solemn eyes toward him. “We’re not?”
“Nah. I’m making you fudge, remember? Just as soon as I get some feeling back in my johnson. It might be broken.”
“Broken?”
“Yep. Or at least sprained.”
“Oh my God. That can happen?”
Angela rushed to the sofa, setting down her soup and bringing with her the fragrance of the soap she’d bought during their last trip to the mall with Kayla. That soap smelled like gingerbread, Nate remembered, but it hadn’t smelled like this in the store. Now, on Angela’s skin, it smelled different. Better. It smelled good in a way that made him think of how much he enjoyed nibbling something sweet.
Just as he was considering that, Angela’s gaze fastened on his crotch. In a very attentive way. In a very attentive way that might call Nate’s bluff, if she didn’t knock it off.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I really am.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She fluttered her hands a few inches above his zipper, as though itching to rearrange his frozen peas. Or examine the troubled area in more detail. Which might be nice actually.
For a fleeting instant, Nate imagined Angela’s gentle, caring hands settling on his thighs. Then sliding upward, her fingers touching the edge of his zipper, teasing it downward…
“You just don’t want me to feel bad, that’s all,” she said.
“You’re right.” With effort, he snapped out of his reverie. Angela was a good person. A kind, loving, nurturing, curvyassed person. She didn’t need his horndog thoughts smutting up her living room. “Right now, I want you to feel very, very good.”
Suspiciously, she stared at him.
Had he said that out loud?
“About all you’ve done to help me, I mean. Not everyone would do that.” With effort, Nate removed his bag of frozen peas so she wouldn’t worry about him anymore. “You know, helping me get in good with my dream girl, Rachel Porter, and all.”
A slight frown. “I’m happy to help.”
“Angela…”
“Yes?”
“Stop staring at my crotch. It’s distracting.”
Her head snapped up. A pink glow suffused her cheeks. “I’m just concerned. Maybe you need medical attention.”
“If I do, it’s for my bruised ego.” He squinted at her, remembering. “Demonic Dennis the Menace? Come on.”
“Uhh…”
“And I’m not Lurchlike. I can’t help being big, but I’m not going to squash myself down either. I just need a woman who can keep up with me in the physical sturdiness department.”
Sagely, Angela nodded. He recognized that pose. She used it in class with her students, too. Which kind of galled him.
He was not a teenager, damn it.
To prove it, Nate took his time examining her. “I need a woman like you, for instance. Although, strictly speaking, you’re a little too curvy”—he squinted assessingly—“and a little too lacking in outright brawn to match up with me perfectly.”
“Humph. I can match up with you any day.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She looked a little panicked. “Just try me.”
Her dare—because clearly that’s what it was—kicked his heartbeat into overdrive. Suddenly, being on the couch with Angela felt exactly like trotting onto the gridiron, desperate to impress the coach and be on the winning team. Except Nate hadn’t made the winning team. And no coach had ever wriggled beside him with quite so much preparatory jiggling.
How had he gotten himself in this situation in the first place? Oh yeah. Pride. He had that in spades.
“Fine,” he said. “I will try you.”
In stupid quantities of spades. Whatever they were.
Preparing himself, Nate cleared his throat. He eyed Angela, who sat primly and expectantly beside him with her chin in the air. He smacked his lips to check his breath surreptitiously. All clear. He raised his hand, whipped off his knit cap—which he’d been too distracted to remove until now—and then leaned in. No doubt Angela would appreciate his chivalrous gesture in removing his cap. Of all the women he’d known—
A sputter of laughter escaped her.
—Angela was the most sensitive, the most thoughtful—
“What in the world is the matter with you?” she asked.
He frowned, halted in the midst of his planned move. He wasn’t the world’s most suave guy—he’d be the first to admit that—but most women did not giggle at him unless he told a joke.
“What happened to your eyebrow?”
Stiffening, Nate crumpled his hat in his hand. With dignity, he raised his clean-shaven chin. “I had them waxed.”
“‘Them’? I’m sorry to break it to you, Boy Band, but you’ve only got one eyebrow there. One. Uno. Ein. Un. Um.”
“Cut it out, United Nations.” He held up his hand. “You might not be aware of this, but waxing your eyebrows hurts.”
“Poor baby. How do you think giving birth feels?”
“Not a consideration for me.”
“Or having your, um…” Angela gestured vaguely toward the zipper on her jeans “…bikini line waxed? Hmmm?”
“You’ve done that?” He couldn’t help but feel intrigued.
“Well, no. But I’ll bet it hurts like the dickens.”
They lapsed into silence, Angela staring pink-cheeked toward her Christmas tree. Its lights sparkled, its ornaments (some of them gifts from Nate over the years) shone, and its homemade construction-paper chains wound around the whole thing in a haphazard fashion that suggested (although Nate already knew) that Angela let Kayla have a strong hand in decorating.
Embarrassed, Nate looked at the knit cap dangling from his fingers. A niggling sense of disappointment poked at him, almost as though he were sorry not to have finished showing Angela what he meant about needing a good, sturdy, curvy woman.
He should have finished the stupid eyebrow waxing. He was the kind of guy who committed to something and stuck with it. But for some reason, his resolve had wavered with the first rip of that wax-coated cotton strip. He hadn’t been the same since.
How was he supposed to get close to Rachel Porter if he couldn’t even work up the nerve to make himself appropriately Hollywood-ready? He wanted Rachel to be impressed with him. Impressed with him in the way Angela usually was, when he wasn’t showing off his freaky monobrow and accosting innocent women in the grocery store when he’d rather be making holiday fudge.
As though on the same track, Angela blinked.
“Condoms, Nate?” she blurted. “You asked that woman where the condoms were?” She swiveled to face him, bikini-line talk clearly over with. “What were you thinking?”
Oh, man. A minute ago, Nate would have sworn he’d rather discuss anything except his eyebrows. Anything…except this.
“I wanted her to know I was into safe sex. You know, that I was responsible. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Her skeptical expression made him scramble for more.
“Look, I choked, okay? I know it sounded bad.” The ornaments on the tree blurred in his vision. All he could smell was Angela’s gingerbread soap. “But I was trying to impress you. After all those tries, I…didn’t want you to think I was lame.”
“Nate, you know I’d never think that.”
Self-consciously, he pushed to his feet, hating his lumbering footfalls for making the Rudolph and Santa ceramic bric-a-brac on her end tables rattle. He just knew he was going to break something around here. Angela’s place was feminine and cozy, like her.
“Please. Wait.” The frozen peas in the bag rattled as Angela scooped them up, then followed him. “You can’t really think—”
Shaking his head, Nate charged into the kitchen.
Angela appeared right behind him on cue. “Now you’re walking out on me in midsentence?” She set down the peas. “That eyebrow scalping of yours was just the beginning, wasn’t it?”
“The beginning of an awesome relationship with Rachel Porter, maybe,” Nate heard himself gloat as he rubbed his eyebrow. “Which is more than I can say for you and The Prick.”
Angela gasped. “That’s not fair. You know I put off my dates with Patrick in order to help you.”
Nate did know that. But right now he felt all mixed up. Embarrassed, irked, and kind of hot and bothered, too. Defiantly, he grabbed the chocolate chips from the bag on the counter. The store had generously let them pay for their purchases before making them leave. He stomped past her to grab a wooden spoon.
“Nate, talk to me!”
“Hey, I’m not a girl. I just reached my quota for sharing.” He pulled out a saucepan. “Let’s make fudge instead.”
A sigh. “You know I can barely boil water.”
“Come on. I’ll let you lick the spoon.”
The idea conjured up all sorts of enticing images. Images he had no right to be considering with his best friend’s sister.
On the other hand…
“And I’ll let you kiss me.” He backed her up to the refrigerator, pinning Angela between him and the magnet clips on Kayla’s first-grade artwork. He held her arms. “Go ahead.”
Her astonished gaze met his. Beneath his hands, she felt soft and warm, enticing him into stroking up and down. At his touch, she shivered. He didn’t want to admit it, but so did he.
“Look, I’ll help you.” Nate leaned closer. His breath fanned over her lips, and his gaze dropped to meet it. “See?”
“If this is one of your idiotic dares—”
“It’s not.” With every second that ticked past, he knew it wasn’t. It might have been crazy and unexpected and sort of dangerous, but it wasn’t just a dare. It wasn’t just anything. “I want you to kiss me, Angela. I want you.”
“I…ummm.” She licked her lips. She gave the merest nod.
He might have imagined it. “Aren’t you curious? I am.”
“I’m a teacher,” she said. “It’s my job to be curious.”
“That makes two of us.” Warmth reached between them, seeming to knit them together in the close confines of the kitchen. It was dim in here, lit only by the light over the stove, but Nate would have recognized the sensation of having Angela near him even in pitch blackness. “Go ahead. Do it.”
“Don’t…you want to do it?”
He almost groaned. Yes. Their mouths were only a few inches apart now, Angela’s face blurred in his vision because they stood so close together. He could feel her quiver in his arms. He wondered what she would do if he did take charge.
“Hell, yeah, I want to do it.” He trailed his hands down her arms to her fingertips. Their hands clasped. “But more than that, I want you to want to do it. There’s only one way to make sure that’s what’s happening. You have to be the one to do it.”
“How did we even get here?” A puzzled smile curved her lips. “A second ago, you were mad at me. And now…”
“Stop procrastinating. Just do it. Kiss me. Do it.”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“God, Angela. You’re killing me. Please?”
“Mmm. I can’t refuse such a polite request, now can I? It would be setting a bad example. But this is a big step, Nate. What if—”
“In ten seconds, I’m going to forget I’m a gentleman.”
Another shiver. “Okay, you asked for it. Here we go.”
He heard her indrawn breath, felt her rise upward to meet him, then…ohhh. The tiniest brush of her lips against his. Her kiss felt like a gift, like something he’d treasure forever, and before Nate could quite reconcile the fact that he was actually thinking in sappy phrases like treasure forever, Angela kissed him again, and all thought pretty much ground to a halt.
Her hands squeezed his. Their breath met, mingled, then flew away as their mouths met again. Slowly. Gently. Nate’s whole body clenched with need and longing and want, hard enough to make him gasp. He moaned against Angela’s tongue, unable to stop himself from cupping her backside the way he’d dreamed.
Mmmm. That was more like it. With both hands he cradled her, tilting her away from the fridge and toward him until their hips touched. Pure pleasure bolted through him at the contact, sharp and perfect, and if he hadn’t been sort of dizzy with the realization that this was Angela kissing him, he might have lost control right then. As it was, it was all Nate could do not to kiss her harder, to grind himself against her, to lift his hand to her sweater and experience the sweet curve of her breast.
Okay, so he did do that. Hell, he was only human.
But touching Angela made fireworks explode inside him, made his breath come in raspy, grateful pants and his ears ring with joy. Ring, ring, ring. It was funny how vivid the experience was. He’d have sworn he actually heard bells.
Angela jerked her head sideways. “The doorbell!”
All at once, Nate came to his senses. Evidently so did Angela. Both their gazes centered on his hand. On her breast. On her lush, perfect breast as though it had been made for the job.
Awkwardly, Nate pulled his hand away. He stared at it.
Nice job, hand. It knew what he wanted more than he did.
With a few guilty swipes, Angela straightened her clothes. She lifted her gaze to his as the doorbell chimed again, then she touched her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get that.”
She pattered away, leaving him in the kitchen all aching and confused. What the hell had just happened? He’d thought he’d been in control of the whole thing—thought he’d been creating a diversion from their stupid argument and his stupid eyebrow(s).
But the moment their lips had met…
A murmured conversation drifted to him. A male voice, then Angela’s engaging, slightly husky reply. Intimate laughter.
Frowning, Nate shoved his way around the corner. Patrick the Prick stood in the living room with one arm audaciously around Angela’s waist. She seemed to like it, too.
“Oh, Nate! I’m sorry, but it completely slipped my mind that Patrick and I made plans for tonight. It was his consolation prize for delaying our date earlier this week.”
The smug jerk smirked at Nate. “Baked any cherry pies lately, Kelly? Or are you too busy trying on aprons?”
“I gave up on aprons. They’re all too small to contain me.”
“I’m not surprised, with an ass that big. You should quit eating your own cupcakes and let your students have some.”
Nate gritted his teeth. They were both guests here after all. Patrick stepped glibly around Angela. With an idle gesture, he picked up her prized collectible Christmas plate—the one her grandmother had given her ten years ago—and turned it over in his smarmy, irritating, obnoxiously manicured hands.
Geez, Nate hoped Rachel Porter didn’t expect men with shiny fingernails. He wasn’t sure he could cope with that.
“Put that down.” Nate strode across the room. “Angela doesn’t like people touching her plate. It’s special.”
“Special?” The Prick chuckled. He turned over the plate, making holiday lights glint from the pattern of an old-fashioned Christmas tree piled with gifts. “What’s so special about this?”
“It’s got a lot of history behind it.” Carefully, Nate reclaimed the plate. He put it back. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Patrick shrugged. Obviously he didn’t understand and didn’t care to try either. He offered Angela one of his arrogant, annoying smiles. “Ready to go?”
“Sure. Just let me get my purse.”
Angela headed for the kitchen. Ignoring the rudeness of leaving Patrick on his own to potentially wreck everything of sentimental value in Angela’s place, Nate followed.
“What are you doing? I thought we were making fudge!”
“I’m sorry, Nate. Really.” Looking flustered and impossibly pretty, Angela sorted through her purse, looking for something. “But I knew Kayla would be with Reno at the Christmas tree farm for a few hours—and our lesson at the grocery store was kind of spur of the moment—so tonight was good for me.”
He waited until she glanced up. “It was good for me, too.”
A fresh blush brightened her cheeks, but Angela only came near him, squeezed his biceps, then smiled. “See you later. You can still make fudge if you want. I trust you in the kitchen.”
He boggled. “But it’s Wednesday! Pizza and TV show night. We always spend Wednesday nights together. Did you forget?”
“Umm. I guess I did. Whoops.” With a conspiratorial air, Angela leaned toward him, her eyes sparkling. “But did you see? Did you? Playing hard to get with Patrick is totally working!”
“Yeah,” Nate said peevishly. “Really good.”
“I’ve got you to thank for that. So thanks!”
He frowned. “You’re welcome.”
Hastily, she applied some lip gloss. Not the puffy-lips kind, but another brand, one he didn’t recognize as hers. He couldn’t help but feel sort of bereft as shiny pink obliterated all traces of the kiss they’d shared. The magical, surprising, leaving-him-wanting-more-and-more kiss that—
“Bye, Nate. See you tomorrow.” Angela patted his arm in a sisterly fashion. She winked. “Don’t eat too much fudge. And don’t worry—we’ll get you ready for Rachel Porter yet. It never occurred to me to practice kissing though. You’re a genius!”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t admit that he hadn’t been strategizing. From the instant he’d looked at Angela’s lips, the last person on his mind had been Rachel Porter. “Totally brilliant.”
In fact, Nate wasn’t so sure he wanted Rachel Porter now at all. Not when Angela was here, all ripe and juicy and…leaving.
He trailed her to the living room, where The Prick helped her on with her coat, then engineered some shady bit of business during which he pretended to have trouble putting on Angela’s scarf for her—necessitating lots of up close and personal contact. Their faces nearly touched. When Angela gazed up at Patrick and dreamily smiled at him, Nate almost lost it.
“She likes it like this.” Huffily, he twined her scarf securely. He patted it in place, then nodded with satisfaction. “If you do it any other way, she loses it. Always has.”
They both gawked at him.
“I’m not ten years old anymore,” Angela said.
“I’ll say you’re not,” The Prick added. “You’re all woman.”
Nate wanted to take the man’s head off. Especially if he didn’t quit smirking like that. But with Angela right there…he felt equally driven to just kiss her and kiss her and kiss her.
And okay, so maybe he was making an ass of himself, but Nate didn’t know how to stop. He hadn’t known how to call it quits when he’d been in over his head in NFL training camp with Reno years ago, and he didn’t know how to turn Angela happily into another man’s arms now either.
Maybe because he didn’t want to.
“Good night, Nate.” She waved. “Bye.”
Not that it mattered, because Angela left him behind all the same. Just him, some chocolate chips and marshmallows, and a whole lot of cheerful, empty household that felt like nothing without Angela in it alongside him.