A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,143
would probably be exhilarating but the landing might kill her. When she’d jumped in the past, she’d always fallen badly.
And that old saying about difficulties making a person strong was BS. Bad experiences made people brittle. If she fell hard this time, she might never put herself back together again.
And even knowing this, her stupid heart wanted to take Jim home.
She pushed him back a little, and he broke the kiss but didn’t retreat very far.
“I wish I knew where this was going,” she murmured.
“Well,” he said on a long breath, “not back to my house, because Dylan is there.”
Oh yeah, Dylan. Who didn’t like her much. The few times Brenda had crossed Dylan’s path over the last few weeks, the young doctor had been barely civil. Another good reason to turn around and run for the hills.
But she couldn’t move. She was scared of being hurt, but not nearly as frightened as she was at the prospect of spending the rest of her life alone. It came as a sudden realization: Life is short and this was one last turning point.
“I guess we could go to my place,” she said, her words coming out in a whisper.
“Are you sure?”
She looked up into his bright blue eyes and shook her head. “No.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “It’s okay. We can—”
“No,” she said pressing her palms against his chest. The soft cotton of his shirt felt like a barrier. She suddenly wanted to touch him. Skin to skin.
The thought was terrifying and electrifying.
“No?” he asked, one eyebrow rising.
She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath to steady her runaway heart. “I guess I’m confused, you know. My head tells me to run away and my heart…” Her voice got thin and she opened her eyes and gazed up at him. The twinkle in his blue eyes had gone dark and serious. That wide-eyed look gave Brenda the impression that Jim was actively listening to her.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
He nodded. “I was hoping we could get used to sharing secrets.”
“I want to…” She hesitated, feeling like a teenager in a forty-something body.
“What?”
“To be honest, I really want to undress you,” she said, playing with one of his shirt buttons. “But I don’t want you to…”
“What?”
“Oh, crap. I’m just an old lady,” she said. “I never had very many good body parts, and now most of them are somewhat worse for the wear.”
He leaned in, the twinkle returning to his eye. “For the record, I’ve seen some of your body parts in a low-cut dress, and I would like to get better acquainted with them.”
Every square inch of her skin heated in that moment and her knees almost gave out. She had to lean against him, forehead to sturdy chest. And damn if it didn’t feel as if she fit there. As if that spot had been made for her.
They stood that way for a long time, until the sound of someone out in the hallway pulled them apart. “Come on, let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“Wherever you want to take this.”
“My place.” It wasn’t a question.
“Your place,” he repeated as he took her by the hand and led her out to school parking lot, where they kissed again for a long time before he followed her home.
Chapter Ten
Jim slept at Brenda’s house five out of the next seven days, and now he felt as if he was walking on air. All these years, he’d mourned his wife and thought that love would never happen again. And here he was, discovering that even a guy his age wasn’t too old for love.
It was a little past five thirty in the morning a week later when Jim left Brenda’s house, dashing to his Jeep in the predawn cold.
Cold was not really a good enough word to describe the freezing temperatures that had settled in over the weekend. The tips of Jim’s fingers were almost numb by the time he fired up the Jeep and started the heat. He still hadn’t found his gloves.
The heated seats kicked in, warming his butt as he drove back to town and the house on Redbud Street that he shared with Dylan. He’d made this drive five times since last Monday, but today he’d overslept. Brenda’s bed had been warm, and the weather outside was frightful for coastal South Carolina, which rarely saw temperatures in the teens.
So it had been particularly hard to wake up this morning. And Brenda hadn’t been in any hurry to kick