Christmas came and went so quickly, I barely noticed it. My parents kept things pretty simple, as usual, and other than a few phone calls from friends it was a quiet and private day. Despite my parents trying to make the holidays festive for me, after so many years of being disappointed at Christmastime, I usually bypassed all the hoopla.

In my experience, good tidings to all men didn’t always include kids in the system. I had one or two caseworkers who really tried and went out of their way to make sure I got thoughtful presents, but I stopped asking Santa for stuff pretty early on when he failed to deliver on the whole “family” request.

My fingers itched to call Gage, but I didn’t want to interrupt his own family time. Bobbie had sent me a “Merry Christmas” text full of holiday emojis and mentioned that Gage was in the mountains with her and Aaron and both their mothers.

My NYE resolution is to appreciate my family more. So I don’t kill them. LOL she wrote. I doubted that she was actually laughing out loud, though I did.

But her text made me think.

In my insecurity about my own birth mother, I had lost sight of the generous gift that my parents had given me—themselves. I spent the day after Christmas wallowing in a pity party, followed by a shame shindig. Then I made a kickass turkey casserole for dinner and apologized to my parents.

The next day my mother and I spent the day hitting sales to get stuff to decorate my room. It wasn’t until I got home and unpacked all the bags that I realized I’d subconsciously replicated the colors in Gage’s bedroom. By the day after that I couldn’t hold off on texting him any longer. I thought about calling him, but was half afraid I would clam up once I heard his voice. In the end, what I came up with was:

Hope you had a good holiday. Any big plans for New Year’s?

His response was almost immediate. About to drive back from lodge. Where are you?

Home

Can you go to the office?

I blinked at the phone, puzzled. Like Ebenezer Scrooge himself—or maybe Scrooge McDuck—Gage had given everyone the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. As far as I knew, nobody was in the office except for a couple of IT people working overtime because they would be working from home anyways.

Is there something you need?

I’ll let you know when I arrive.

It looked like I was headed to work, then. I didn’t mind, really. There was only so much online shopping I could avoid sitting around at home.

The brutal truth was that I missed Brian Gage—a lot. I missed the dark slashes of his frowning eyebrows, the lines around his eyes and mouth when he grinned at me, the overwhelmed feeling I got when I was around him.

He made me feel like I was the only person in the world, but at the same time like he needed me more than anything. It was a heady sensation, especially when coupled with his smell, taste and touch.

He’d thrown an improvised Festivus party at the office on the twenty-third, and that was the last time I’d seen him. We took turns raising our glasses in celebration in front of the aluminum pole, and were surprisingly restrained in our airing of grievances.

My personal feat of strength was not attacking him after a glass or two of liberally spiked eggnog. Gage hadn’t made it easy—laughing easily and praising everyone for all the hard work they’d done since the mountain retreat a few months before.

When he got down off his high horse, as Aaron put it, and offered to photocopy his own ass for the sake of tradition, I wasn’t the only one who was shocked. Susan was quivering with anticipation and there was a lot of cheering from Nikhil and the IT department. It’s always the quiet ones.

But he looked over at me as I shook my head, silently discouraging him from doing it—and he recanted. His gaze drove into me like, well, an unadorned aluminum pole. He mouthed, “Okay” at me, and I realized that mine was the only opinion that really mattered to him.

I fell in love with him all over again. It seemed to happen daily since I’d gone back to work for him, but it wasn’t until after the confrontation with Aaron that the squeezing sensation in my chest felt less painful and more optimistic.

By the time I got to the office, thinking about him had just made me miss him more keenly. I decided to use my laptop in his office, sitting in the big chair behind his desk. When I sat down, I thought I could smell his scent on the chair, but then I realized it was just the leather. Perhaps Gage smelled more like his chair than anything else.

The floor was quiet. Everyone else had been only too happy to stay home for the week. I hadn’t bothered turning on the fluorescents overhead, opting instead for the little halogen desk light to cast a sharp circle of light around my computer. I was so busy catching up on some follow-up correspondence that I didn’t notice him standing by the open door.

“Jesus Christ!” I jumped. “You scared the shit out of me, Gage.” I needed to get him a bell or something; he was always sneaking up on me.

My heart thumped wildly as he walked toward me. I couldn’t see the exact blue of his eyes as he approached me in the shadows, but the desk lamp carved the line of his clenching jaw as he rounded the desk to where I sat in his big boss chair. It wasn’t until I saw him tracking my movements that I realized I was slightly spinning myself from right to left and back again.

I blushed, stopping myself with my toes. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be working in here.”

He tilted his head, looking confused. “Why not?”

“It’s your office.”

“So? It’s a comfortable chair. I wasn’t here. Go ahead. I trust you.”

I looked at him as he began taking his coat off. There wasn’t an ounce of expectation in his expression, or a hint of disingenuousness. He meant it. He trusted me, implicitly. Explicitly. What had I done to deserve that trust?

“Why?” I blurted out as he tossed his coat over the corner of the desk.

The zipper clinked and something else in his coat clunked on the glass surface—probably his phone in his pocket. He wore the same faded college hoodie that I’d seen on him in the mountains, and it made him look so much younger and carefree. The sweatshirt I was wearing was from my school as well, but it made me feel older for some reason. We were both teetering, trying to stabilize on the same level in life.

“Why what?” he asked.

“Why do you trust me?”

He hesitated, rubbing his neck. The hem of his hoodie rose to expose the waistband of his jeans. He was actually casual today, not even business casual. “Why do I trust you?” he repeated to himself. “I don’t know if I have a good reason.”

“Try.” Suddenly it was very important to me.

“Because you’ve been there for me when I didn’t even know I needed somebody. Because you’ve taken my bullshit over and over again and still have a smile on your face. You took my sister’s side over mine because it was the right thing to do. You saved Aaron’s ass and the resolution campaign, despite being pissed off at me—rightfully, I might add.”

I stared at him, my mouth dry.

He leaned over and braced his hands on the armrests of the chair I was sitting in. Because my forearms rested there his fingers wrapped around my wrists. The chair tilted back a little, making him grip a little tighter to prevent it from moving.

“I didn’t save—”

“Yes, you did.” Now that his head was bent toward me I could see that his eyes were currently the color of the late afternoon sky outside—a blue-gray slate that reminded me of the denim cover on his bed. “And you saved me from myself, which is no small task.”

Heat crawled up my face. The way he looked at me made me feel as though the tiny halogen spotlight was centered directly on me. Could he see the pounding of my heart in my throat? My jeans felt tight, my body ripe and pulsing. Every nerve ending was aware of him, like a force field was closing in around us.

“Gage, I—”

“Did you make a New Year’s resolution, Madeline?” he interrupted.

I’d once wondered what the difference was between a resolution and a wish. Now, looking into his eyes, I understood.

Only I could make a resolution come true.

“Do you want to know what mine is?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. There was no rum-laced eggnog to blame this time around.

“I resolve to make you understand that I love you. I love you, Maddie, and I am not making any excuses for it.” He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “So to speak. I want every part of you—your brain, your heart, your soul and your funny bone.”

My lips parted as his gaze narrowed on them. I felt his focus on me like a physical touch, his fingers running across my lower lip and nudging inside. I inhaled deeply, his crisp, masculine scent swimming around my head like a cartoon cloud. Maybe it was all just pheromones. Maybe I didn’t really love him. Maybe I was just grateful for the job and the vote of confidence.

Maybe I was full of shit, even in my own head.

“Damn it, Gage.” My voice cracked. “How am I supposed to respond to that?”

He knelt to the floor in front of me, his hands rubbing up and down my forearms. “You’re the communications expert. You tell me.”

Tell him what, exactly? Inside, I knew that the truth was a good place to start. I inhaled then blew out a frustrated burst of air. He closed his eyes as my breath hit his face. And he waited. He didn’t push me—just sat before me, ready to accept whatever I said. It was that quiet patience that was my undoing.

“You want me?”

He nodded, his lips pressing together. There was a lump in my throat that wasn’t going away anytime soon.

“You forgot something.”

His eyes widened in panic, then his lips softened at my wobbly smile. “Please.”

My attempt to hold in a choked sob resulted in an inelegant hiccup. “Oh god, I love you too.”

“I keep telling you people not to call me God,” he joked weakly. “I have feet of clay.”

I nodded. “They’re practically play dough.”

“You love me?”

I swallowed hard, biting my lip as my chin jerked up and down.

“Tell me again.”

“I love you. I don’t know when I didn’t.” An elastic band inside me snapped, and I hadn’t even realized how stretched out it was.

His relieved smile seemed to expand the circle of light around us far beyond the reach of the little desk lamp. He laid his head on my lap, his arms reaching around my waist.

“Can you email me that?”

“Huh?”

“I want a hard copy for the file.”

My giggle came out with a sigh attached to it. My hands went to his coal black hair, my fingertips massaging his skull with reverence. I’d missed touching him.

“I’ll print it out. I’ll text it. I’ll Tweet it. I’ll change my status on Facebook. I’ll send a passenger pigeon if you want.”

He raised his head along with one eyebrow. “Let’s not get all Jurassic Park here—they’re extinct for a reason.”

I fucking adored him, this closet geek billio—millionaire. I’d gone from fearing him and being nervous around him to being aroused and enamored by him.

He was close to being my best friend already, and I trusted him. He was a role model when he wasn’t being an asshole, and thankfully he was gracious enough to let me tell him when he was.

“What about my job?” I asked as his hands gripped my hips.

“We have an excellent benefits package.” He propped his chin on my thighs.

“I bet.” Although I had the feeling we were talking about different kinds of benefits.

“It just so happens that we have an opening in the Marketing department.”

I gasped. “Is Aaron leaving?”

“No, but I think he needs some extra support from someone like you.”

“And I’m not sleeping with him,” I thought out loud. That just might work.

Gage growled, tugging me closer until I almost fell off the chair into his lap. “Damn right.”

“Okay, okay!” I yelped.

With one arm snaked around my waist and one hand pushing on the bottom castors of the chair, he pulled me onto the floor beside him.

He covered my mouth with his. His body was warm, no trace of coldness from outside lingering on him, but I shivered nonetheless as his hands roamed over me. He traced the line of my collarbone with his fingertips, brushed his knuckles down my spine, and when he slipped under the hem of my shirt I gasped.

God, he could touch me all day and all night long, and I would never complain. How had I gone for even one week without him? How had I gone my whole life without him?

I kissed him feverishly. He sucked my lower lip between his teeth just long enough to make it swollen and his tongue sought entrance. A low moan escaped me, making him groan in reaction. His need was intoxicating, but his kisses made me dizzy. My regret at not replacing my stash of fresh underwear in my desk was overwhelming.

“I need you,” I whimpered, a hot blue flame blazing everywhere he touched me. I felt so delicate in his arms that I thought I would see the whorls of his fingerprints imprinted on my skin.

At the same time, he held me with purpose and passion, lifting me up to meet his hungry mouth and hands. He didn’t treat me as lower than him, fragile or weak. He used me to brace himself, as though he knew that I was stronger than I appeared. And yeah, I was. But he was part of what gave me that strength—the knowledge that I was valuable to someone. I was worth having, worth keeping.

“Madeline, please.” His plea was not for forgiveness or for understanding. It was simply an entreaty for me.

And I was only too happy to trade him—my love for his. Tit for tat.