Cupcakes and Christmas - R.J. Scott Page 0,45

pulling off gloves and then in frustration handing the phone back.

“It’s Insta-gold,” she said on a laugh.

“Delete them.”

“What? No, you’re being unreasonable—”

“All of them, delete them now.”

The woman was shouting. Justin was shouting, and that was my cue to leave. I’ve never run so fast in snow before, sliding to a halt at the door and then slowing my roll as I headed for the stairs and casually walked up them as if my entire world hadn’t just shifted in an instant.

Back in my room, I slid down the door and sat on the floor, my legs out in front of me, shivering and uncomfortably wet. Normally after a snowball fight, there would be a change of clothes or a shower and a hot chocolate waiting at my parents’ table, but what I had here was a soaking wet coat, pants dripping water, and an iciness on my skin that was at odds with the fire in my belly and the erection that was not diminishing.

I’d just about got my heart rate back to normal when my cell vibrated with a text from Marc.

Can we talk?

I sent back an immediate Why?

I’ve been thinking about you.

Fuck off. I sent back and realized where Marc was concerned, I was actually justified in telling him how it was. At least, my sudden bitterness and anger took my mind off Justin.

A knock on the door startled me.

“Brody? It’s me.” Justin was outside my door. I didn’t move. I had to stay absolutely quiet otherwise he might ask me to open the door and then I wouldn’t be able to resist him, and that wasn’t the best thing to do now. Right? I had to think this through, consider all the options, not act on what I thought I knew. I mean had that Erin woman known we’d be there?

How could she have known? We hadn’t planned the snowball fight? Or the snow? Or everyone disappearing into the hotel.

“I hope you’re in there, and I don’t have the wrong room,” Justin said, clearing his throat. “If you can hear me, I didn’t plan that, I don’t know what she was doing there, I thought she’d gone home.” I heard a thud that sounded as if he’d hit his head on the door, and I felt awful for not opening it. “She was supposed to have left. I deleted them, all of them.” Another thump and I scrambled to stand and shrugged off my wet coat, straightening myself. I owed him a face to face after the hottest kiss of my entire life. “The kiss was real,” he added. “It was real for me, okay?”

I steeled myself, worked out what I was going to say, thought that maybe I could invite him in to talk and I opened the door.

But there was no sign of Justin.

Seemed as if thinking had gotten me exactly freaking nowhere.

What if I’ve lost my chance to say anything at all?

Chapter Thirteen

We all know who is really a person’s best friend. Yours sincerely, Chocolate cake

Justin

Dinner was the weirdest hour I’ve spent in my entire life. Well one of them at least. It involved me and Brody sitting facing each other and not talking about what had happened at all. Not one mention of the extra snowball fight or the way we ended up lying in the snow, or that we’d wrestled, or that we’d kissed.

He’d leaned down enough to let me know he was interested and I was lost to the sensation of his weight on me. I tugged him the rest of the way, desperate to get a proper taste of him, and the kiss had been everything I thought it would be. He kissed as he baked, with ferocious intensity, and if he’d suggested we go to his room, or mine, I would have given him an immediate yes. It wasn’t like I’d been with loads of guys. One actually. To me, sex was something that happened after a while and only when it could be called making love.

Only one other man had gotten to that point where I got to know them as a person, and when the attraction was so strong that I couldn’t stop myself. So God knows how I’d ended up wanting Brody as badly as I did. I’d had an hour in my room to think, and it wasn’t pretty. When I was fourteen, Rick was the boy I’d been placed with at my final foster home. We’d been friends for a year before we’d