Chapter Ten
Nikki had never been more humiliated in her life. She’d tried so hard to be tough and strong, to hold it all together. He’d said one nice thing about her baby sister and she’d turned into a blubbering mess. If she’d been worried about him wanting to stick it out with her, that had probably sealed the deal on his walking papers. What guy wanted to get tangled up with a hot ass emotional mess?
She pushed herself off him, but stopped in the circle of his arms. Mostly because he’d tightened his grip and didn’t seem inclined to let her go any further. “I’m sorry about all that,” she said quietly. “I don’t really… I’m not a crier. I don’t do that.”
“You do. Not often, and probably not enough, but you do,” he stated firmly. “We all do. And seems like you needed it.”
She hadn’t let herself cry since the day they’d buried her parents. “There hasn’t been time for it. I had to get their stuff packed up, sold off, or stored. I had to take care of their bills, the funeral, the life insurance, getting Sarah’s stuff packed and moved in here with me, finding a preschool, a babysitter. It’s just been one thing after another… And now you. It’s just more change that I’m not ready for.”
“Change happens, baby, whether we’re ready for it or not. I was crashing at a friend’s house during the holidays because I didn’t have anywhere else or anyone else to go to. And then you walked in. I wasn’t looking for it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll walk away from it.”
Nikki started to protest, but before the words could even escape her lips, he was there. He kissed her in a way that no one ever had. There was heat, but there was a tenderness with it that she hadn’t expected. He didn’t push, he didn’t try to get into her pants or even cop a feel. Instead, he just kissed her like his life depended on it. His tongue moved against hers slow and easy, like they had all the time in the world and there was no reason to rush.
She felt herself sinking into it, feeling the tension drain from her body as he held her. Her hands came up and tangled in his hair, wrapping the silken strands around her fingers. She wanted more from him—for him to take, to demand, to make it about the heat and the sweat and not this achingly gentle thing he was building between them.
Breaking the kiss, she pulled back from him. “What is it that you want from me?” she asked.
He smiled at her, sweet and maybe even a little sad. “Everything. That’s what I want from you and that’s what I want to give you.”
Nikki shook her head a little as if trying to clear it. “You almost seem too good to be true, and that scares me.”
Joe moved his hands up so that they cupped her face. “I could say the same thing about you, sweetheart.” She started to protest, but he didn’t let her. “All that sass and fire, it turns me on. Your determination to protect your sister, I respect that. Best of all, you guys are like the ready-made family I never knew I needed. I haven’t had a family in so fucking long it’s not funny. But here you two are, and now I realize you and Sarah are exactly what I was missing. And now that I’ve found you, I’m damn sure going to do whatever it is I have to do to keep you.”
He dropped his forehead to hers and she felt that connection all the way to her soul. Her doubts started to melt away, just a little bit, and hope bloomed in her heart. Maybe this could work. Maybe Joe was just what she and Sarah needed.
Only time would tell… And he had three days to prove it to her.
She just hoped that at the end of three days both she and Sarah weren’t suffering from broken hearts on Christmas.
Pulling back, Nikki took a chance and snuggled into his side, loving the way he wrapped himself around her as if to keep her warm. “Tell me about you,” she whispered.
He ran a hand through her hair and she almost purred at the sensation. Both Nikki and her cat were in agreement that Joe could just keep petting her, and it wouldn’t hurt if he called her pretty, too.
His voice rumbled in his chest as he started to talk and Nikki loved feeling the vibration of it against her face. “I grew up in Arizona in a lion pride-run community. As the only cub of two lion shifters I had a normal happy childhood with two parents who loved the hell out of me until I was ten years old. That year, my parents went out to do some last-minute Christmas shopping and were in a fatal car accident on Christmas Eve. I haven’t really had a family since then.”
Nikki felt sad for the little boy he must have been. “Did no one adopt you?”
Shifters were all about their kids. She couldn’t believe that a shifter-run community would actually let a cub be orphaned.
Joe kept running his hands through her hair as he spoke. “The family of a friend stepped up and took me in, but it wasn’t the same, you know? I wanted my mom and dad growing up and they were gone. The Andersons, that’s who took me in, they were great. Treated me like one of their own cubs, and as much as I appreciate them for doing that, it still didn’t matter to the little boy who had lost his family. I just couldn’t feel that connection with them that I had before. After I graduated high school, I joined the Marine Corps. It gave me a chance to get away from there and see the world. Bury my past and my pain.”
Sensing the need to change the subject, she asked another question. “What did you do in the military?”
“I was a mechanic.”
Picking up her head to look at him, she inquired, “Were you deployed?”
Joe shrugged. “Show me a man or woman in the military that hasn’t deployed sometime in the past ten years.”
Nikki could see in his eyes that he was holding things back from her. There were shadows there—dark, ugly, and painful. “Was it dangerous?” she whispered. It was a stupid question, of course. He’d been sent to a war zone. What she’d really wanted to ask was how he’d survived it, had he been injured, did it haunt him still—but the answer to that was evident in the way he’d just glossed over it. There were some wounds you just didn’t poke.
Joe smoothed a hand over her cheek. “At times, but I’m here now, and isn’t that all that matters?”
She let it go at that, sensing just how uncomfortable talk of his past service was. Propping an elbow on the back of the couch, Nikki’s curiosity couldn’t stop her from asking even more questions. “What will you do now that you’re out of the military?”
“Probably get a job as a diesel mechanic.”
“What’s wrong, don’t want to be Santa for the rest of your life?” she teased him.
Joe was shaking his head before Nikki finished her sentence. “Hell no. Kids like Sarah are sweet, but I’ve been farted on, cried at, and had my fake beard pulled on too many times to count these past couple of days. This Santa gig is a one-time deal as a favor to my buddy, Sam. After that, never again. I guess that makes me a bad Santa, but oh well.”
Nikki looked at the adamant horror on Joe’s face and couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of all those kids driving him nuts was sort of hysterical. She didn’t necessarily think he was a bad Santa though. Maybe just a mediocre Santa with good intentions. That was okay—they didn’t need a perfect Santa to make this work between them.
Maybe just a small Christmas miracle instead.