Page 35 of Take Me Home for Christmas

Just put your arm in the sleeve and button up, my inner voice said.Do it now.

But then I made the mistake of looking into her eyes. Those big, green, mesmerizing eyes that I just fell into. I fell into the honesty, the feeling, the pure transparency that made me understand one thing alone—that she wanted me just as much as I wanted her.

But I saw something else—that she’d been hurt. I sensed it and saw it, and I still didn’t leave.

Mia was a time bomb—my personal time bomb. She made me feel too much, and if I continued, I knew this would lead to disaster. I wascertainof it. And yet I remained there frozen, unable to move, unable to look away.

“Don’t go,” she said. Those two short words were all I needed to step forward and erase the distance between us, take her into my arms, and press my body and my lips to hers. She was soft, and she smelled fresh, like lavender, and tasted wonderful, and I couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop. I was addicted to every single thingabout her, every enthusiastic caress, every deep but quiet sigh. We kissed, kiss after endless kiss, until all my good intentions dropped from me along with my coat and my keys, and I was lost.

For the next two weeks, we had a great time together, and not just in bed. She was intelligent and funny, and we shared the same views about a lot of things. We never ran out of topics to talk about. And the sex…well, that was over the top. I found myself riding on a high that I’d never felt with anyone before.

When I reported for duty two weeks later, the head of the Peds department handed me a list of all the residents in the program. As I perused it, my blood turned to ice. One name stood out as if it were set in flashing lights.Dr. Mia D’Angelo, third year, right smack in the middle of the page. Please, God, I prayed. Let there be two Mia D’Angelos who were pediatric doctors in the city. Not the green-eyed, curly-haired beauty I couldn’t get out of my head.

I knew in my heart there wasn’t. And I also knew I had to cut things off immediately.

I didn’t want to watch our relationship fade away and dissolve in the middle of our workplace, in front of all our colleagues. How would I keep the residents’ respect if I was involved with her, even if I wasn’t directly in charge of her? I didn’t want angry emotions and hurt feelings when we had to perform jobs that needed us unquestionably to be at one hundred percent.

The truth was, I wasn’t being honorable. I was running away, as I’d always done, from every relationship I’d ever had. Things were getting to be too much—too intimate. Too…everything.

So I deserved not knowing about the important events and people in Mia’s life.

Bitterly, I realized that good ol’ Charlie and I had something in common. We’d both been assholes to Mia.

Mia

Dina and I burst into the barn, sleds trailing behind us. The three guys were sitting around a barrel-and-bale setup, and they’d done some serious damage to a bottle of Crown Royal.

Whoa. My brothers were beer people, so where did that come from? I couldn’t say, but from the chilled-out smiles on their faces, it appeared that Brax had passed the initiation phase.

I bit my lower lip and raised a silent prayer that they’d spent the time discussing books, good booze, fly fishing, politics, or literally anything else besides me.

Dina handed Liam a toboggan rope. “Come on, you guys. The snow is perfect.”

The three men looked at each other. “I’m in,” Caleb said without hesitation, standing right up.

“Ready?” I asked Brax, giving a nod toward the sturdy red toboggan I’d left near the door. I knew he’d grown up in the city, but even city kids went sledding, right? But I was coming to sense there were a lot of normal kid things he never got to do. “You’ve been, right?”

One corner of his mouth tugged up enough that I could glimpse his dimple. Drat, those dimples. Every time they appeared, they made me a total goner. “Does sneaking trays out of the cafeteria at college and using them to hurl ourselves down a hill behind the dorms count?”

I grinned. “Counts. Want to give it a try?”

“Yes?”

“Yes, with a question mark?”

“Well, I usually never drink and sled.”

“I got you.” I grabbed his arm and led him out of the barn. As soon as we were out of earshot of the others, I asked, “Did my brothers behave?” What I really meant wasWhat did they say about me?

“The convo went down as smoothly as the Crown Royal.”

Nothing like confidence, I guess. “So, did they spill any secrets?”

The snow crunched below our feet as we headed out. “If they did, I won’t remember them in the morning.”

I couldn’t help laughing. They’d probably just been discussing guy stuff anyway, and Dina and I had likely gotten here before the conversation turned serious. We trudged the short distance to the hill, our breath making puffs of white in the moonlit night. Everyone was laughing and talking, making me miss all the times we came out on nights exactly like this.

The stars above were like Christmas lights in the sky, lit just for us. And our house glowed in the quiet darkness with colored lights that outlined the rooflines and dotted the pines in the yard. Brax’s sudden “Holy shit” made me smile.

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