They worked together well. Darcy took direction and had an innate ability to find the most efficient way to do things. He could see why she’d been promoted through the ranks. By the time the store was preparing for closing they had the tree wired up and he had a tentative circuit to try out.

Next to her boss, Darcy seemed positively friendly and warm. When Miriam had come out to check on them the laughing Darcy had disappeared. Within two minutes she was back to the remote woman he was used to. The woman he hoped to banish again before the night was over.

The chattering Tiffany tried to stay after her shift, but the nighttime supervisor for the cashiers put the kibosh on that. Fortunately the girl left before he could use a string of garland to strangle himself. He was used to dealing with people in his line of work, but a tat took three hours to do at most. Seven hours of Tiffany was too much for any man to take.

And the fact that Darcy took a little too much joy in the torture left him eager to work some payback into their evening. The store emptied out and they were more than halfway finished with the swags of decorations for the registers before the last employee left. These would be on a separate channel to play on a loop from one register to the next as programmed songs came through the sound system.

He was anxious to try it out. Now if only Darcy didn’t fill out a damn pair of jeans as if they’d been made for her he’d be further along with the register setups. She slid behind him, her chest brushing against his back as she reached for the edge of a wreath.

“Sorry, can’t quite…”

He turned into her, making sure his chest slid across hers as he reached for it. He unhooked it from the plastic L-bracket. “Is this what you need?”

The soft skin of her underarm brushed against his. She was so pale, dusted with toffee-colored freckles on every inch. Every inch that he was more than willing to explore. A night of counting her freckles would be a welcome project. Instead of backing off, she moved into him, her thigh sliding between his so denim whispered against denim. He rather liked having a woman line up with him. There was something to be said for a tiny woman to make a man feel big and powerful, but this way? This woman with her surprising curves?

In dress clothes she looked tall and professional, even a little untouchable. In a pair of jeans she was miles of curves and mouthwatering temptation. He groaned as she lifted her knee and bumped his balls lightly.

“You’re not playing fair.” He glanced up to the black orbs in the ceiling that probably had video cameras going at timed intervals. He’d like nothing more than to boost her onto the counter and find out whether she was a pretty bra type or she had a no-nonsense kind that would hold up to a day’s work.

He didn’t know which one would turn him on more.

And there lay madness.

She wasn’t his usual type of woman. She was softer in some ways, but still there was something about how she held herself away from people that made her even more intriguing. She was stiff and formal with her employees. She seemed to relax only around Jaime. She watched everything. He wasn’t sure if she was taking it all in or cataloging it for dissection and an efficiency overhaul.

And she liked to watch him.

He’d felt her gaze on him all night.

And he’d been half hard since they’d been locked under the tree together.

She batted long, light lashes at him. “Were there rules? I wasn’t aware of any.”

He growled, hovering an inch from her mouth. Her makeup had faded away long ago and he found that he liked her fresh face. More freckles had bloomed along the ridge of her nose and cheeks. Hell, they were all over her. Even on her lips.

Yeah, he wanted to count them, wanted to paint her entire body with his tongue to see just which ones would line up with spots that made her sigh or moan. His buttoned-up and remote landlady was missing again. In her place was a woman he wanted to get to know in every way possible.

“Maybe there should be,” she said softly. “Maybe I’m not ready for someone like you.”

He searched her face. The tension that had bowed tight between them snapped like a frayed rubber band. “Someone like me?”

“I can count the number of men I’ve been with on one hand.”

He arched a brow. “What makes you think I can’t do the same thing?”

She leaned against the cubicle-like structure that walled in the registers and folded her arms. Arctic Darcy was back.

“Okay, so maybe I’ve had a few more relationships than that. But whatever this is, it’s just us. It’s different than any other thing between anyone else we’ve been with because it’s us.”

She relaxed, letting her arms drop before taking his hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just… Well, it’s been a while. I work a lot and I don’t like to mix work with…” She trailed off. “I’m not saying any of this right.” She stepped into him, again her knee nestled between his. “I like this feeling. I want more of it. Does it have to be complicated?”

He shook his head. It didn’t have to be. He’d hit the mother lode with this woman. Incredibly sexy and she wanted to just see where it went. No pressure. He brushed her cheek with his, the corners of their mouths touching briefly. “Let’s get this done and I’ll show you just how uncomplicated and fun I can be.”

She drew in a shuddering breath. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

Unfortunately the close quarters made for creative ways for each of them to torture the other. And he found that he liked tacking up lights for the camera and behind the counter he found ways to brush against her, smooth his palm along her ass, tangle up their legs until she was giggling around him.

He liked her laugh.

Wanted more of it.

Wanted to taste it even more.

By the time they finished the registers he was so wound up he was ready to drag her off to a corner and kiss her until breathing was optional. They agreed to take a break since he had to test the circuits he’d created and he needed to connect the control pad to the program he wrote. She brought him back to the furniture section and he spread out on one of the coffee tables.

Hip-deep in code, he didn’t realize how long she’d been gone until the quick shock of cold on his neck made him flinch. She held out a bottle of soda with a knowing grin. “How’s it going, genius?”

“Almost got it.”

“Good, because you’ve been poring over this for an hour.”

“Oh shit. Really?”

She nodded and covered her mouth as a huge yawn overtook her. “Definitely. It’s after midnight.”

He stretched his arms out and gathered everything. “I think we’re good to give it a try.”

She took his mini-laptop and left him with the circuit boards. “Let’s get going.”

 

Darcy caught herself mid-yawn again. She’d worked on a few outstanding displays she never seemed to have enough time for during her regular shift but kept an eye on Ben. He was focused—frowning over his screen, pushing back his hair, jamming his pencil between his teeth. Very distracting.

He looked massive and yet somehow comfortable on the floor. With all his bulky muscles, he was oddly graceful. And more than able to sit in one spot without moving. He didn’t have a fidgety nature, which was probably key since he had to hold weird positions for long blocks of time as a tattoo artist. She couldn’t stop staring at his long, graceful fingers.

And that was the path to destruction.

Every time he touched her, she wanted more.

She’d never been a sexual creature before, but around him she couldn’t stop thinking about just what he could do with those artist hands. And maybe he was right. Whatever she’d done and whomever she’d been with before—it wasn’t Ben.

It was a heady feeling.

And downright hard to define. She was used to meeting someone, dating, waiting at least a few weeks before she thought about taking a man to bed. With Ben, all she could think about was getting him against any available flat surface. After that kiss earlier, she could only imagine what he’d do if he was focused on her with unlimited space and time.

Just her and just him.

“So tell me, Darcy. Why oh why do you hate Christmas?”

“Do we really need to go over that again?”

“Yep. Because I’m about to make you love it. And I want to know why it sucks so hard in your opinion.”

“Making it beautiful won’t make it less of a pain in the butt. I’ve never really been all that into it. My mom always worked through the holiday. And for her, Christmas was her only day off. It was hard to celebrate when she was so exhausted. So it just became another day. And then I started working retail, and that was all she wrote.”

“But wouldn’t it be the day to celebrate that you got to spend time with your mom?”

“She was so exhausted she usually slept most of the day.”

He frowned. “You didn’t leap on her bed with bouncing blonde pigtails and demand to see what Santa brought you?”

She stopped a few feet away from the front of the store. “Santa made a really small pit stop at my house, and when I figured out he didn’t exist, well…I couldn’t see making my mom spend unnecessarily on me.”

She hadn’t meant to say so much.

What was it about Ben Hartley that made her do things that were so out of character? He didn’t need to know her sob story. What a way to kill the mood. He moved into her space and she froze. Now he was going to feel sorry for her. She was asking for a night alone the way she was going.

He lifted her chin with his finger. There was sadness in his deep, dark eyes but there was also a steady calmness. “I come from a single-parent home too.” He kept his eyes open as he leaned in. The kiss was sweet and slow. Like their first kiss, it was spring-breeze soft. Her eyes drifted shut and she fell into his taste. He kept it light and she followed his lead. Content to drift on the gentleness in his touch, she sighed when he drew back.

“I’m going to make you love Christmas again.”

She reached up to cup his face. “How about you make my store look like Christmas on crack and we’ll be even.”

He pressed his forehead to hers for a moment then stood back. “Okay, we’ve got some testing to do.”

She followed him to the displays, placing his laptop on the counter at the customer service desk. Ben had taken over a corner of it to set up the wireless circuit boards. It was the largest area and he could get at it easily if anything happened through the holidays. The things he could do with Bluetooth technology were as close to amazing as she’d ever seen.

He hopped over the desk and disappeared behind the tree to plug in whatever it was that he’d created back there. He flipped the switch and the front end literally glowed. Every light was on and without the rest of the store’s halogens it was even more pronounced. The tree was majestic with the classy white lights and huge, colorful ornaments he’d bought. Instead of the greens, purples and blues that had been on the first tree now it was all gold, red and orange. The only kaleidoscope of color was the trunk of the tree. He’d lined it with colored fat retro bulbs.

Their LED light was bright in a strangely flat way and served as a perfect base for the warm LED whites he’d bought. She thought it would dull the color of the tree, but it only accentuated the golds of the ornaments and made the whole room pop. If she didn’t know better, she’d be expecting a warm fire to be crackling bedside the tree.

He’d used a cooler-toned white light to decorate the evergreen wreaths behind each register. Fat silver bows hung from the bottoms with holly berries instead of ornaments. It was pure class. Even without the light show, the man knew how to create an amazing space. She lifted herself onto the podium Jaime used to watch over the cashiers and direct traffic on the busy days.

Ben was behind the customer service desk at the back wall, directly across from her. He was intent on his little shells of electronics and tapping on his laptop. Suddenly an updated version ofO Holy Night shot out of the speakers, making her heart jump. Christina Aguilera’s unique voice soared.

The displays fluttered then steadied. The tree light took on a swirling pattern in time with the soft song. It was as lovely as fairy wings. Surely something so elegant couldn’t be designed so easily. Just how much work had he put into this? The song drifted into a jazzy piano piece with a gospel chorus and the tree flashed and came alive.

She couldn’t stop the smile.

The man was good.

In fact, it was even better than she’d hoped for.

He came around the counter and walked to her as the song changed to Elvis. He crossed the floor and held his hand out to her. She laughed and shook her head. He circled her waist and pulled her down from the podium, drawing her into an easy box step. She laughed. “Where did you learn to dance?”

“Single mom.” He dragged her hands up and around his neck and laced his fingers at her back. Thigh to thigh, they swayed to Elvis’ smoky voice as he sang about a blue Christmas. The lights on the tree slowly faded in brightness, went back to full light, then twirled down the length of the tree and took a slow trip around the entire display.

“Impressed doesn’t cover it, Ben.”

“I told you I’d make the store amazing.”

“You did.” She laid her head on his shoulder and let him lead her around in a soft swaying circle. The song ended, but instead of another Christmas one, a heavy rock power ballad remake made her giggle. The powerful and gritty guitars flooded the room and amazingly the lights shimmered in time to the drums. “How?”

“Any song can be programmed.”

She played with the ends of his flyaway hair and rose onto her tiptoes. “George Michael is probably wincing right now.”

“I like it.”

Darcy laughed. “I’m never going to think of Careless Whisper without thinking of this.”

“Good.” He lowered his head and the dance of lights disappeared behind closed lids as he kissed her. This one wasn’t sweet. It was as gritty as the guitars that gave new flavor to an old song. Her fingers bunched into his shirt, her nails into the hard muscles of his shoulders as she held on. They’d teased each other all evening. “Come home with me, Darcy.” He breathed into her neck, nipping her clavicle.

“I don’t have a choice.”

He pulled back. “Of course you do.”

She crossed her forearms behind his neck, unable to stop herself from letting his hair sift between her fingers. “You live in my house.”

“Oh.” He nuzzled his nose against hers. “Come to my side. Stay with me tonight.”

“All night?”

“I’m going to need all night.”

She shivered. He wasn’t being boastful. She could see it in his eyes—he was going to take his time. She wanted him. She couldn’t deny it, not when she’d been a live wire of sensations since that moment under the tree. This was her last night to do something for herself. She’d have to face Mr. and Mrs. Blackstone tomorrow. And her Thanksgiving wouldn’t be her own. She would need to be at the store at three the day after to ready it for the five a.m. door busters.

She nodded. It would need to last her for a while.

She couldn’t wait any longer. The rules didn’t apply to anything that had Ben in the subject line. And she liked it that way.