“You called me that when I was a kid.” She frowned. “In case it’s escaped your notice, I grew up.”
“Trust me. It really, really hasn’t.” How could it, when he’d been pressed so damn close to every inch of her very grown up curves, had felt them against every part of him. And she had to be aware of exactly how his body had reacted to them, too.
He wanted her. Jake was man enough to admit that. He wanted Molly Mackenzie in a way he hadn’t wanted anyone in a long time.
But life was rarely as simple as just getting what you wanted. Even when it was being served up to you in robin themed pyjamas.
“So. We kissed. Again.” Molly raised her eyebrows expectantly.
“I noticed.”
“Seems to keep happening.”
“Twice in one year doesn’t really count as—”
“Jake.” Her voice was mild but serious.
Jake sighed. “Yeah. Okay. I know.”
“So? What do you suggest we do about it?”
Oh, he had plenty of suggestions. Most of them involved a bed, but to be honest, at this point he wasn’t really all that picky. Up against the wall of the landing, the back seat of his car, hell, he’d take her anywhere he could get her.
Except… this was Tim’s baby sister. Glen Mackenzie’s little girl. And he couldn’t touch her.
“Molly, we can’t. You know we can’t. It would tear up your whole family.” And almost certainly get him quickly and efficiently exiled from the only family he had.
“Only if they found out,” Molly said with, he felt, rather undue optimism.
At least she was admitting the basic problem, he supposed. “I heard what Tim said last night.”
“Yeah, I figured.” With a sigh, she sank down off the table and onto the chair beside him. “And what I said too.”
“I did.” It’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve heard all year. Her mocking laugh hadn’t faded one bit in his memory. “And you were right. It’s ridiculous.”
“It didn’t feel ridiculous upstairs.” And wasn’t that just the hell of it? Molly inched her chair closer. “It felt right.”
“But that doesn’t mean it is right.” Jake leant back in his chair, gaining a couple of inches between them as Molly sighed.
“Do you really believe that?” she asked, and Jake bit back on the instinctive, immediate urge to say, no!
“Deck the halls with boughs of holly!” Tim’s voice echoed through the darkened hallway, followed by Dory’s answering, “Shh!”
“Fa la la la la, you two,” Tim added, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen. Did he look suspicious or just half asleep? Jake honestly couldn’t tell anymore. “Apparently we’ve got a tree to decorate. You coming?”
“Of course!” Molly leapt to her feet and headed for the lounge, without even glancing back at Jake. Which should have been a good thing but somehow it wasn’t.
“I’m gonna need coffee for this. You in? The tree thing, I mean.” Tim asked, halfway through a yawn, as if it were a natural thing that Jake be there, decorating the Mackenzie Christmas tree. As if he were just another one of the Mackenzie siblings.
But he wasn’t, and he could never forget that.
“Yeah.” He stood up, tried to give his best friend a convincing smile. “I’m in.”
Chapter 8
Dory had already pulled all the boxes of decorations out from behind the sofa where their mum had hidden them, and Molly squealed with excitement as she saw her favourite decoration sitting half unwrapped from its tissue paper, on the top of the first box. With gentle fingers she picked it up and let it spin, the delicate coloured glass beads glinting in the fairy lights.
“Is that the one I bought Mum from that school trip to France?” Tim asked, appearing with a cup of coffee in hand. “Can’t believe that hasn’t been broken yet.”
“No,” Dory said, peering at it. “Yours was green and gold. That’s the one Jake bought.”
“What did I do now?” Just the sound of Jake’s voice from the doorway made Molly’s insides tighten. God, she was in trouble.
“Bought this bauble.” She turned to hold up the delicately wrought wire framed bauble, each strand of it strung with red and white glass beads that left the perfect circle swirling with colour as it turned in the light. “Although how either of you got them home without bending or breaking them amazes me.”
Tim, Molly knew, had bought Mum hers purely in the hope that she’d forget how much trouble he was in for getting caught smoking on that trip. He’d been fifteen, and not really the most thoughtful of boys, so he hadn’t brought anything for the rest of them.
Molly had been ten, and cross that she didn’t get a present, so Jake had given her his bauble – presumably bought for his own mother for the same reasons. She could still remember the way her heart beat faster when he’d placed the box in her hands, silver tissue paper poking out of the top.
Maybe she’d been wrong, when she told Jenna she’d never thought of Jake that way until after last New Year’s Eve. Perhaps he’d never seemed like a real possibility, but the moment he’d handed her that box… her little pre-teen heart had definitely fluttered.
She half expected Jake to come closer, to look at it with her, for them to share a moment with the memory. But instead, he just nodded over his cup of coffee and stayed firmly in the doorway – practically outside. “So I did.”
Molly turned to face the tree so the others didn’t catch her scowl, and hung the bauble front and centre. “There. I declare the great Mackenzie early morning tree decorating session open.”
“Then let’s get to it.” Dory appeared at her side with decorations hanging from each of her fingers, and Molly raced back to the box to choose her own.
It was always the same, every year – a competition to see who could find the best, most prized decorations and give them pride of place. Dory, Molly could see, already had the tiny wooden nativity scene, and the pompom robin, and Tim was rooting around in the boxes already. Which meant she’d have to be quick if she wanted to find the jingling Santa or the sequin Christmas tree – and not get stuck with the job lot of glass icicles Mum had bought a few years ago.
Molly paused, her hand already inside the box, as she spotted Jake still leaning against the doorway. “I thought you were helping.”
“You three seem to have it all under control,” Jake said, one eyebrow lifted.
&n
bsp; But that wasn’t the point, Molly wanted to say. He wasn’t holding back because they didn’t need him. He was staying out of it because he felt he didn’t belong. And that was stupid.
Especially if he thought he didn’t deserve to be part of the family because he’d been feeling her up on the landing less than an hour ago.
Pulling out the next decoration, Molly unwrapped the tissue paper to find another of her absolute favourites. This one, a glittering silver star, had been brought back from a family holiday donkeys years ago and, to be honest, was starting to look a little worse for wear. But it wouldn’t be Christmas without it.
Standing up, she handed it to Jake, who stared at it with confusion.
“You’re supposed to put it on the tree,” Molly said, helpfully.
“Where does it go?” Jake asked.
Molly shrugged. “Wherever you want it to. It’s your tree too, remember.”
His gaze met hers at that, and the longing there touched her even deeper than the wanting had earlier. Being part of her family mattered to him – so much that he was willing to deny everything that was between them to make sure he still had a place here by the end of the holidays.
Was it unfair of her to ask him to risk that, just for one night with her? Almost certainly.
But as Molly watched Jake hang the silver star, hidden slightly on one side of the tree, she couldn’t help but feel it was an inevitability. If Jake wanted to belong here, they had to move past the insane attraction that was driving them both crazy, one way or another.
And Molly could only think of one way.
Jake tried not to watch as Molly stretched up to place the angel on the top of the tree, but given the way her top rode up providing him with a glimpse of her smooth white skin above her pyjama clad bottom, he couldn’t help himself. Besides, he’d just hung countless glass icicles all over the damn tree. Didn’t he deserve some sort of reward?
Feeling eyes on his back, he glanced round and found Tim watching him. Damn. Caught. Jake looked down at his watch in a feeble attempt to pretend he hadn’t just been caught ogling his best friend’s baby sister. Still only just eight thirty. He had hours until he could legitimately get away to his meeting, and a horrible feeling that tree decorating wasn’t the end of the family activities he’d be expected to take part in today.