If anyone had told Kip Sullivan a few years ago that he’d be up at the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve, lugging a fresh-cut pine tree up to his front door, he would’ve confiscated their keys and told them to sleep it off.

But that was pre-Carly.

That was when he’d still been a Christmas grinch.

The grinch’s heart had indeed grown a couple of sizes bigger since he’d found the love of his life, and now there he was, fighting both wind and pine needles in order to surprise his still sleeping fiancée.

Kip muscled the six-foot pine into a standing position and reached for the door handle. Before he could grasp it, the door flew open. Red hair sexily tousled, and looking as if she’d just stepped out of a lingerie catalog wearing a skimpy camisole and silky pajama shorts, Carly gaped at him. Or maybe at the tree which was pretty much hiding him in its pine-needle-shedding branches.

“Hey,” Kip said. “I was going to surprise you.”

Carly stepped aside so he could maneuver the tree indoors.

“Trust me,” she said, following him into the living room as he positioned the pine into the stand he’d prepared earlier. “I’m surprised.”

With the tree secured in place, Kip took a step back to check that it was straight. Perfect. His gaze skipped around the room, over the framed photos of family and friends and the two of them cheek to cheek laughing into the camera. Past the blankets Carly had knitted last winter, the stack of to-be-read paperback novels on the coffee table which Carly swore wouldn’t grow any taller, to the two empty suitcases against the wall, waiting for Kip to return them to the back of their garage. This time last year their living room had looked like a Christmas pop-up store, full of baubles and glitter and Pinterest projects run amok. To say his fiancée adored everything with a Christmas sparkle was an understatement. And this year was supposed to be the ultimate vacation…for Carly.

Instead they were temporarily grounded and Carly’s dream of a white Christmas was now just that: a dream. The reality was another wet, wild, and miserably cold Christmas Eve, which would in all likelihood lead to a wet, wild, and miserable Christmas Day.

So Kip would do his damnedest to be the grinch that saved Christmas for his woman.

He crossed to one of the cardboard boxes filled with decorations and popped the top open. Inside coiled neatly twisted strands of tinsel and a box of tree lights. He pulled out a length of sparkly silver tinsel and turned to Carly, crooking his finger at her. Her bottom lip gave a quick wobble then kicked up in the corner.

“Kip, you didn’t have to do this,” she said.

She didn’t come any closer, so he went to her, drinking in the warm, delicious smell of her. Sugar and spice and all things naughty and nice. He bent his head to brush a kiss on her forehead before draping the tinsel around her shoulders like a feather boa.

“I want to,” he said. “This morning we’re in decorating mode and we’ll have our own white Christmas, right here at home.”

She tilted her chin. “Uh-huh. I can’t see snow falling in the middle of summer, even if Stewart Island is the most temperamental place in the southern hemisphere.”

“Don’t you believe in magic anymore?”

“I believe in us.”

Carly rose on tiptoe and twined her arms around his neck, leaning in to tempt him with her deliciously soft mouth. They were pretty damn magical together. One kiss, two, but she slid her mouth to the side and scraped her lips along his jaw, arching back with a cute-as-a-kitten pout. “And I was going to surprise you with breakfast in bed this morning, birthday boy.”

He winced. “Don’t remind me.”

“Hap-py birrrth-day to—”

Kip cut her off mid warble by dipping her over his arm and kissing the Christmas stuffing out of her. By the time they came up for air, they were both breathing heavily and—oops—Carly’s skimpy camisole had gone AWOL. He cupped her warm breasts in his palms, lightly tracing his fingers over her silky skin.

She quivered under his touch, digging her nails into his biceps. “I suppose you want breakfast served to you topless?”

He dipped his head and gave her kiss-damp lower lip a little tug with his teeth. Carly let out a moan that had his lower body straining against denim.

“Nope,” he said. “I want you in last night’s sexy elf costume.”

“It’s hanging in our closet ready to go.” Carly slipped both hands into the back pockets of his jeans and pulled their lower bodies tight together. “Got a thing for Santa’s elves, huh?”

“Just one of them.” He ground himself against her.

Another sexy little moan, her long lashes sweeping down over eyes hazy with desire. “Tell me, is that a candy cane in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?”

He laughed and hauled her onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry as he had the first time they’d rocked each other’s world.

“Sweetheart, you’re about to find out.”