A Hamilton Family Christmas - Donna Kauffman Page 0,50

you curious?”

“Curious? About—”

“About following up on that mutual attraction. Unless—unless, you’re otherwise—”

She shook her head. More of a jerky move, really. “No, I’m not otherwise anything. Except otherwise unsure if this—um, pursuing this conversation any further is a good idea. I mean, maybe it’s just as well to leave the teenage fantasy as just that? Why risk ruining a sweet memory?”

“Now who’s afraid?” he gently teased, his fingers still in her hair.

“Bwak, bwak,” she said.

He could feel the slight tremor beneath his fingertips as he traced them along her jaw, then slid them beneath her hair and tilted her head back with the slightest of pressure. “So,” he said, slowly leaning closer, “you really don’t want to know?”

“Is that all it is?” she asked, her voice husky and soft. “Curiosity?”

“It’s as good a place to start as any.”

“Some people—” She had to pause, clear her throat, which made his lips twitch. “Some people get to know each other first, before—”

“We’re hardly strangers.”

She shifted back a little. “We’re pretty much exactly strangers.”

“Okay…so what do you want to know? I know what I want to know.”

She actually rolled her eyes, which choked a little laugh out of him.

“I didn’t mean that. Well, not exactly that. Yet, anyway.”

Her mouth dropped open at that, and it was really almost just too much to take.

“It’s just a kiss…a hello.”

“And if it’s just…pleasant?”

“Then a hello is just a hello. We’re friends, Holly. Or, at least I’d like us to be. It doesn’t have to be more than that.”

“Awkward, though.”

“We’re the only ones who’d know. And the friendship stands.”

“I can’t believe I’m standing here, in the middle of the night, bargaining over a kiss. With you.”

He grinned, but she stepped back. And took the box of food, hugging it, almost too tightly from the sound of crinkling cardboard.

“Why don’t we move straight to the friendship part,” she said.

He lifted his hands. “Okay.” Then he shook his head. “Turns out it doesn’t feel any better fourteen years later. The rejection thing,” he clarified.

“I don’t know what I’m going to be doing a day from now, much less a week, or a month. My life is…complicated. In ways it hasn’t been in a very long time. I can’t handle further…complications. Not right now.”

“It might have just been pleasant,” he said, teasing her, wishing he wasn’t so disappointed but respecting her wishes.

Now that smile came back, and it did things to him, surprisingly intense things, which made him wonder if perhaps she hadn’t made the wise move.

“It might have been pleasant for you,” she said, “but I can pretty much guarantee it would have ranked a lot higher on my scale.”

Now it was his turn to stand there and stare.

“I really need to—you know.” She gestured her head, toward the back of the building.

“Um, yeah. Right.” He turned and walked back to the front door. “Don’t forget to lock up behind me.”

“I won’t,” she said, staying where she was.

He supposed so they didn’t risk being in each other’s personal space again. He paused at the door, though, then looked back at her. “I think you’re right. When we kiss, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more than pleasant.”

5

Holly heard the tapping on the door downstairs and immediately stopped shoving the large packing crate toward the dormer window and away from her makeshift bed. Sean?

She knew it was foolish, the little skip her heart took, the extra zip in her pulse. Even if it was him, there was no point in getting all schoolgirl-crushy about it. She’d spent far more time thinking about their almost kiss in the wee hours last night than she should have, especially considering the laundry list of things she absolutely had to be thinking about. It was more than a little mind-blowing to know, to even think, that Sean Gallagher had been attracted to her. Ever. But they were adults now, and she had some very adult responsibilities to attend to. Ones that left no room for reliving childhood fantasies. Much less contemplate trying to turn fantasy into reality.

She used her reflection in the pane of glass in the china cabinet that was shoved up against the wall behind the door to push at her hair and check her teeth. Realizing she was primping, she stuck her tongue out at herself and tried to get her head in the place it needed to be as she walked downstairs. The fantasy was pretty damn good if her dreams last night had been any indication,