Emma was sitting in the middle of her living floor on Sunday morning amid piles of colorful paper, bows, gift bags, and wrapped presents when the question came to her for maybe the dozenth time.
What the hell happened on Friday night?
One moment, Caine had been all over her, literally devouring her. And the next, there’d been a mile-wide gulf between them.
“We should leave it at that…”
Trying to figure it out had left her distracted all weekend. Not to mention confused, equal parts irritated and hurt, and feeling like somewhere along the way she’d missed something obvious but was being too clueless to know what it was. Ugh!
And the frustrating cherry on top was that she couldn’t stop thinking about how freaking amazing he’d been. The aggression of his kisses and touch. The surprising fervor with which he’d worshipped her with his mouth. The way he’d tormented her after her orgasm, licking her over-sensitive clit until she thought she’d cry but even then she hadn’t wanted it to stop.
The feeling that she could’ve said or done or admitted to wanting anything, and he would’ve given it to her no questions asked. And, damn, how she’d wanted the opportunity to put that feeling to the test.
The only thing that made any sense to her was that realization she’d made over dinner—that he seemed to be trying to make an argument about why they couldn’t work. And if she was right, then perhaps in the cooling off that’d happened while they took Chewy out, dealt with his escape attempt into the alley, and then cleaned up dinner, Caine had revisited that argument. And that time it’d won.
If that’s what happened, it didn’t bode well for her. Because it meant he’d made up his mind about them, and he’d done it after they’d fooled around. Which…ack!…really sucked. Especially because her body craved more of what they’d shared. Emma just couldn’t stop thinking about how good it’d been, how hard she’d come, and how much she ached for more.
More with him.
Putting the finishing touches on another gift, she wrote Alison on a tag and stuck it on the top of the wrapped box. And then she realized she’d been staring at that gift for ten minutes while her mind spun on Caine McKannon.
Man, she needed a distraction, bad. She put the movie Elf on while she did the rest of her wrapping, because it was so ridiculous that she could never resist laughing even though it was also really, really stupid.
But at least it pulled her out of her head and she managed not to obsess about her Tall, Dark, and Mysterious Oral Sex God for a few hours. And then she had Alison and her husband to help, too, because she met them at a matinee showing of “The Nutcracker” and then they had dinner afterward.
It was eight o’clock by the time Emma returned home, the night bitter cold but clear. Christmas Eve’s Eve. As she sat in her living room, Chewy on her lap, a little pang of sadness squeezed inside her chest. Her grandmother had been such a lively, kick-ass kinda lady. Always cooking and telling stories and wanting to learn new things right up until the end—like the guitar lessons she’d started taking two months before she died because she’d read an article about how playing an instrument helped keep seniors’ minds sharp. She was always helping people and had a kind word for everyone she met, whether she knew them or not. She’d always made Christmas so special for Emma, and maybe that’s why Em suddenly missed her so bad.
And that little bit of sadness was why Emma called it a day and went to bed before nine o’clock.
She woke up in the middle of the night, unsure what she’d heard but sure she’d heard something. Chewy confirmed it, because he sat alert amid the rumpled covers, his ears perked, his tail giving a few lazy wags. “What was it, boy?”
The dog didn’t seem alarmed, so she took some solace in that as she slipped out of bed. The LED screen on her alarm clock read one AM. She went to the front windows and peered out. Darkness stretched in both directions along the street, interrupted only by circles of light cast by the street lamps and the traffic lights she could just glimpse down at the intersection.
All was quiet.
She went to step back from the window when she saw it. A motorcycle. Parked on the opposite side of the street from her house. Branches from the tree right in front of her house prevented her from seeing it clearly, so she went downstairs, Chewy rushing ahead of her, curiosity making Emma need to know: Was it Caine? And if so, why was he here?
Sure enough, her living room windows gave her a better view. It was Caine’s motorcycle, the all-black frame familiar to her from the night he’d sat at her curb, but he was nowhere to be seen. She frowned. What the heck was he doing? It couldn’t be coincidence that he was parked near her house, could it?
Thump thump.
Emma froze, and the hair rose up on her arms under the sweatshirt she’d worn to bed. She turned, her gaze raking over dim rooms she knew so well. Padding quietly through the living and dining rooms, she strained to listen. But everything was quiet.
She peered out the dining room window that looked down on the narrow walkway running between her and the next row house, a cut-through from the street to the alley. And then she went to the kitchen and flicked on the back porch light. Nothing.
“What did you expect? Stop freaking yourself out, Em,” she said, the sound of her own voice comforting in the quiet.
One last time, she returned to the tight space between the tree and her living room window when her eyes caught movement on the street. A figure with a hood up over his head stepped out of the shadows. The height, the lanky swagger, she knew it was Caine before he even straddled his bike. Her pulse spiked at seeing him, at remembering what they’d done the last time they’d been together, at the mystery of what he was doing now.
Of course, her instinct was to go out to him. To ask. To invite him in out of the cold. But she shoved that instinct into a dark room and locked the door. Because she’d been the one to make a move first quite enough. Inviting him in to wait that first night. Getting word to him through Haven and Dare that she wanted to talk. Inviting him to stay for dinner. Flirting with him until he’d let himself off the leash and came at her with all kinds of pent-up want.
Every step of the way had been thrilling.
But after the way he’d left, she didn’t want to be the one to put herself out there again. It was his turn to decide he was interested and make a move.
Would he really be out there if he wasn’t interested? And if he wasn’t interested, what other reason did he have to be hanging out near her house?
Nope. Nopenopenope. She did not want to know what was behind door number one or door number two, thank you very much.
So she went back upstairs to bed and pulled the covers over her head, literally and symbolically. And when she woke up on Christmas Eve morning, Caine was gone. Emma had no idea what to think.
Luckily, a day of shopping last-minute Christmas sales with Alison helped take Emma’s mind off Caine’s strange behavior, at least until Alison asked about him over lunch. Emma hadn’t been fully honest, saying only that she’d seen him again when he’d dropped off the cookies. She’d hated holding back on Alison. It was just that Emma was so unclear on exactly what was going on that she wasn’t ready to try to explain it. To anyone.
She and Alison emerged from the mall to find big, fat snowflakes falling, the kind you just knew were going to lay. The forecast predicted four to six inches.
“It’s gonna be a white Christmas,” Emma said, catching a big flake on her tongue as she and Alison made their way to Alison’s car.
“Isn’t it great? I’m so glad we got Riley his first sled. That’ll be so much fun tomorrow.”
Alison unlocked the trunk where they stowed their bags, and then they got in the car and waited for it to warm up. “Are you sure you don’t want to spend the night?” Alison asked. “We’d love to have you for Christmas morning, too.”
Emma shook her head. “I’m sure. You know I appreciate it. But Riley’s only five, and Christmas morning is so special at that age. I’ll look forward to seeing you all for dinner.”
It wasn’t the first time Alison had asked, nor the first time Emma had turned her down. She appreciated the invitation, of course, but she didn’t want to horn in on their family time that way.
The drive home took a little longer than usual with the roads already getting slippery, but before long, Alison was dropping her at home again. “Merry Christmas, Alison.”
“Merry Christmas, Em,” Alison said as they hugged over the center console.
“Don’t get out,” Emma said. “Just pop your trunk so I can grab my things.” When she was done, she stood at the curb and waved as Alison pulled away.
Darkness was descending earlier than usual due to the storm, but Emma still took a moment to look up and down her street. Shaking her head at herself, she went inside, where she had to fight her way in against the huge pile of mail that’d been dropped through the slot in her front door.
She kicked off her boots, dropped her bags and purse onto the dining room table, and then went back for the mail, smiling at all the red envelopes that indicated Christmas cards. Feet aching, she half fell into one of the carved chairs at her grandmother’s cherished table and worked her way through the dozen or so cards that’d arrived. Photo cards showing friends’ children. Holiday letters that caught her up on college classmates’ lives. Sparkly cards that left glitter on her fingers.
Emma was enjoying her sparkly hands as she opened the next-to-last red envelope. She pulled the card out. It had a silly cartoon Santa peeking from behind a curtain and read, You Better Watch Out!
Snorting, Emma flipped the card open. The interior had the same picture, but focused more tightly on Santa’s eyes through the curtain, and it read,
I see you when you’re sleeping!
Merry Christmas!
There was no signature. She turned it over and looked at the envelope, but there was no identifying information. Silly kids. How many times had she gotten cards or pictures at school where the kids had forgotten to sign them, and she had to go around asking so she knew who to thank.
The last card had a pretty picture of a church in a snowy field, lights on a small grouping of trees to the side. It was from one of the fifth-grade teachers Emma didn’t know well, and she set the envelope aside so she remembered to add the lady’s address to her card list for next year.
Chewy paced to the kitchen doorway and gave a little bark. Then two more urgent ones.
“Sorry, sorry,” Emma said, retrieving her boots. “I should’ve taken you out right away, shouldn’t I? But Mama’s feet hurt, little man.”
Chewy’s tail beat on a double time, and he began barking and dancing in circles.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said, stepping into her boots near the back door. She grabbed a sweatshirt off a hook and slipped into it. “Okay, let’s go see how deep the snow is.”
Chewy took off like a shot to do his business, but Emma couldn’t pay him any mind. Because there were faint footsteps leading from her gate, through her yard, up her steps, and onto her porch. They were recent-ish, judging by how the heavy falling snow had covered and filled them in. But even in the near-dark, she had no doubt that they were definitely there.
Twin reactions erupted inside Emma: anger and fear. The first because someone had trespassed on her property. Had it been Caine? If so, why? The footsteps were under the kitchen window and near the back door. And the second because someone had trespassed on her property. And if it hadn’t been Caine, who had it been?
“Come on, Chewy,” Emma called. He came right away, a little pile of snow clinging to his black nose. But just then, Emma didn’t have time to pay attention to Chewy’s cuteness.
Instead, she grabbed her cell phone, fished out the business card from her purse, and dialed Sheriff Martin. It went to voicemail.
Emma left a message. “Hi, Sheriff Martin. This is Emma Kerry. We met last week when there was vandalism at Frederick Elementary. I’m calling to follow up on the conversation we had about my mugging. This might be nothing, but I just found footsteps in my yard and on my porch, congregated near my back door and kitchen window. There’s no damage or anything, but after the mugging, I thought I’d let you know. Maybe you could have a patrol or two come by over the next few days? Okay, that’s all. Thanks. And Merry Christmas.”
She disconnected. And then she realized that her boots were dripping melted snow all over her dining room floor. On a groan, Emma cleaned up and made herself a cup of hot chocolate in an oversized mug so there was plenty of room for the metric-ton of mini-marshmallows she liked to have.
And then she felt at loose ends.
But she wasn’t having it. She wasn’t letting a little weirdness overshadow her enjoyment of her favorite time of the year. So she put on Christmas carols, lit a few candles, and grabbed some of the chocolate-drizzled caramel popcorn she’d grabbed from the candy store at the mall. She added a few packages to the space under the tree, and then spread out the blanket and a stack of cushy pillows on the floor. The moment she was lying down, the festive tree looming tall in front of her, all felt right in Emma’s world. She opened a book on her e-reader, tossed a handful of popcorn in her mouth, and read until her eyelids grew heavy.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying there when a plow rumbled past her house, waking her from a little catnap. She stretched against the blanket, accidentally disrupting Chewy, who gave a little groan against her side.
The clock on the wall said that it was quarter ‘til ten.
Emma rose and went to the window, curious to see how much snow had fallen. It looked to be a good four or five…
Her mouth fell open. Because there was a motorcycle out there again. Parked a little farther down the block and shrouded in a light gray cover that clung to the bike underneath enough for her to know for sure what it was. Now the question was: whose bike was it? As far as she knew, there was only one biker who’d ever hung around her house…
“What the hell?” she asked, going from sleepy to wound the hell up in about two-point-five seconds. She thought about the tracks on her porch, and that they’d worried her enough to call the sheriff. If that was Caine… She shook her head, anger making her heart beat hard inside her chest. “No, I’m putting an end to this once and for all.”
She jammed her feet into her boots, tugged a coat on, and grabbed her phone and keys. “Stay here, Chewy.”
Snow fell in fat, wet flakes and crunched under her feet. Emma had no idea where Caine was, but she began looking by going down the little walkway along the side of her house to see if he was in the alley, which was where those footprints in her yard had come from. She thumbed on the flashlight on her phone to guide her way, but found the alley to be empty.
Shining the light on the ground near to her gate, she found lots of footsteps, but then there were more than a few sets all along the alley, which some people used as a short-cut to the next block. She pushed on the gate itself, but the latch held. Reaching over, she wanted to see if she could grab the release mechanism that would allow someone to let themselves in, and she just managed to reach it. She pushed the gate part-way open and peered into her yard.
“Caine? You back here?”
Silence was her only reply. A chill raced down her spine.
On a frown, she closed the gate and squinted against the whirling snow. “Caine?” she called louder. “I know you’re here somewhere!” Frustrated, she retraced her steps back up the narrow walkway. At the street, she looked right and left. “Caine?” The wind seemed to swallow her words.
Suddenly, across the street, he stepped out of another walkway like the one right behind her.
Emma didn’t hesitate. She marched through the snow—which required not a little effort given the mounds that the plows were already building along the parallel-parked cars—and stalked right up to him. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Just as he said, “What are you doing out here?”
“Since I live here, I’m pretty sure that’s my question.” Her gaze ran over his face, half in shadow under the hood, those icy blue eyes glinting in the street light. He wasn’t wearing his Ravens’ jacket, but instead some sort of bad-ass-looking black and gray motorcycle coat that made him look like one of the shadow Stormtroopers from the newer Stars Wars movies. She braced her hands on her hips and hated herself a little for noticing how freaking sexy this man was. And for reacting to it, too.
He peered around them. “Emma.” His tone was almost as if he were pained.
And that did nothing for the turmoil that had been bubbling up in her gut the past few days. “What? How is you hanging around outside my house every night leaving it at that? Isn’t that what you said?”
“There’s something you need to know.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, which was when she noticed that they were bright red and raw.
Concern for him stirred within her, but she was too angry to give it the voice it deserved. “Oh, if it’s that you’ve been prowling around on my back porch, I’ve seen the footprints in the snow. I’m quite aware, thank you.”
A storm rolled in over his expression. If she’d ever thought him intense or intimidating or a little scary, it was nothing compared to how he looked at that moment. He came at her until they were nearly chest to chest. “There are new footprints?”
The agitation rolling off of him took her aback. “Uh, no, not new. I saw them yesterday.”
He nodded. “That’s what I need to talk to you about.” Seriousness. Anger. Regret. Those were what she heard in his voice.
“Tell me,” she said, hugging herself against the cold—and against whatever it was he was about to say.
He tucked a strand of her blowing waves behind her ear, and the little touch was so unlike him that she nearly leaned into it. But what she most noticed was how painfully cold his hand was. “Jesus, Caine.”
He flinched and yanked his hand back. “Fuck, sorry.”
“No, no,” she reached for him, and he angled away, his whole posture going rigid. He stuffed his hand in his pocket. She ached at the possibility that he thought she hadn’t liked his touch, so she did the touching instead. Slowly, carefully, she took that harsh face in her hands, her thumbs stroking over frozen cheeks, her fingers cradling high, pronounced cheekbones. “How long have you been out here? You’re like ice.”
His gaze blazed at her. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here for however long it takes.”
“However long what takes?” she asked.
“Catching whoever’s been prowling around your house,” he said with a swallow that sounded thick and hard, full of regret. “Those weren’t my footsteps in your yard and on your porch. My money is on your attacker, and since I let him get away, I’m gonna take care of him. Once and for fucking all.”
Emma’s heart tripped into a sprint and her belly took a sickly tumble. “You think someone’s prowling around my house?”
A single nod. “I didn’t leave your kitchen window open, Emma. And someone opened your gate that night that Chewy got out. And in addition to those footsteps…” His hesitation almost killed her, but finally he continued. “…someone tried to break into your basement.”
“What?” She whirled and looked at the house, as if a giant neon arrow might suddenly appear to point out all the things that had been done to the place in her absence. But of course, no such signs existed. And everything looked just like she expected. The big tree in front of the red brick façade of the 1940s-era row house, Christmas lights glowing from the double front windows, the carved wooden door festive with its big, round wreath.
“Through the rear window well,” Caine said. “He put the well cover back in place to hide what he’d done, but I found the window broken while you were out on Sunday. The opening was probably too small for a man to get through, though.”
Emma could barely process everything Caine was saying. “I…I have to call the police.”
“I already have,” he said. She peered over her shoulder at him. “Henry Martin is a friend of mine. I know you talked to him. He’s apprised of the situation, but he’s out of town until Wednesday. In the meantime, I bolted down the well cover and one of Martin’s men is riding regular patrols. And I’ll be out here watching.”
She shook her head. “No, Caine. No, you won’t.”