A Hamilton Family Christmas - Donna Kauffman Page 0,10

the kitchen, make sure the dogs and Cicero aren’t freaked out.”

“Yeah, I guess my car isn’t going to come inside out of the cold after all.”

“Do you need anything from it?”

There was a pause and she could have sworn it wasn’t a comfortable one, but given that she couldn’t see even a glimmer of his face, she couldn’t really tell.

“Nothing that can’t wait until morning.”

Whatever awkward pause Emma thought she’d detected was lost in the sudden intimacy of having a man talking about being there in the morning, his voice all deep and sexy, when they were—once again—all caught up inside each other’s personal space. Yeah. She really needed to stop that.

Clearing her throat, she stepped back, bumped into the passageway wall, stepped forward again, bumped into Trevor, who was reaching out to steady her. “Sorry,” she said, frustrated and, when he just chuckled, a little embarrassed. So much for getting outside the fog that seemed to envelop her every time he was near.

“Not to worry,” he said. He held on to one of her arms, then turned and pulled her hand to his waist. “Here, grab hold and we’ll feel our way back to the kitchen.” He pushed her hand so it slid down the rock-hard side of his torso to where his belt was looped through the waistband of his jeans. “Got me?”

If he only knew. Rubbing her hands all over him…not exactly helping her out at the moment. That he didn’t seem remotely aware of the personal nature of this kind of contact, or what it might be doing to her, didn’t make her feel much better, either. Apparently she was the only one who went into some kind of hormonal stupor when the two of them were close. Not all that surprising really, but still.

“Yeah,” she said, then cleared her throat when the word came out as a croak. “Go ahead. We need to check on the dogs.”

Her eyes had adjusted a little to the dark, but with almost no natural light filtering into the passageway, she couldn’t make out much more than his shadow in front of her.

She could feel his body heat through the fabric of his shirt, and how lean and hard his waist was as he moved in front of her. And how much she’d love to run her hands around to the front, to what was certainly to be his equally hard and flat stomach…then he’d pause, reach down and cover her hands, pull them more tightly around him, stop, and slide them around his waist, before tipping her chin up so he could dip his own down and—

“Watch your step,” he said, quite abruptly interrupting her little fantasy. “Kitchen straight ahead.”

She jerked her hand away. “I—I think I can take it from here. I have an emergency flashlight in my bag.”

“Handy. Why don’t you turn it on and we can root around for some candles or something, so you don’t burn your batteries out.”

“I’m just going to get Cicero settled, make sure the dogs are okay, then find my room.”

They bumped their way into the kitchen, where they were greeted by the cold noses and the enthusiastic whining of both dogs.

“Welcome!” Cicero called, sounding a bit panicky as he rustled in his cage.

“It’s okay,” Emma said, as she rubbed Martha’s body and crouched down to scratch Jack behind the ears. She stumbled her way to the counter and groped along, looking for her bag, but couldn’t find it. “I know I left it right here.”

“Left what?”

She jumped a little when she realized Trevor was right behind her. “My bag, with the flashlight.”

“Oh, you meant your shoulder bag? You—uh, I think you have it on your shoulder. At least you did when you walked out of the kitchen earlier.”

Even as he said it, she realized he was right. In all the commotion, she’d sort of managed to forget that little bit of information.

“I can’t find my glasses when they’re on my own head,” he told her, as she groped around inside her bag for the flashlight.

She appreciated him trying to make her feel better, but he didn’t know everything that had been going through her mind back there in the pitch black hallway. “You wear glasses?”

“For reading. Why?”

“No reason, just…no reason.” He struck her as this perfect, godlike specimen, so it just didn’t jibe that anything about him wasn’t functioning at one hundred percent. She wisely kept that part to herself. She found the flashlight and pulled it out, switched it