Page 91 of Not Your Average Vixen
“I’ve turned you into a lunatic?” he threw back, exasperation woven into each syllable.
“Absolutely,” she replied, eyes blazing. “What you’re doing to the Angels and Cupid Bakery is purescroogery. You get the chance to save the day with your work, to help people who dedicated their lives to creating a bakery that brought joy to its customers and community, and you do nothing. You’re no Rudolph.”
“It’s who I am,” he answered, a little, no, a lot more truthfully than he’d expected.
“It doesn’t have to be, Soren,” she whispered as her words hung in the chilly air.
Chests heaving and the breath hot between them, they stared at each other.
“You mentioned lingerie,” he said, needing more than anything to change the trajectory of a conversation that was hitting too damn close to home.
She glanced away and released a wry bark of a laugh. “It wasn’t officially my lingerie. I saw it in a bag at my ex-boyfriend’s house. I assumed it was a gift for me. But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”
“You’re the one who said it,” he replied with a cocky twist to his lips.
“Soren!” she chided.
He dropped the arrogant facade. “I’m sorry you caught your boyfriend cheating on you.”
She set the snowball on the ground. “I should have known it wasn’t a relationship that was going anywhere. He’d never kissed me like…”
“Like what?” He stared into her truthful eyes, allowing him to see her very soul.
“Like, how you kiss me. Like, I’m all you’re thinking about.”
Christ! How true that was.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she replied with a slight shudder.
He pulled off his glove and cupped her cheek in his hand, his heart hammering in his chest. “You’re cold.”
She gave him an adorable cringe of a grin as she brushed a bit of snow from his hair. “You’ve got to be colder. I got you pretty good.”
That was the understatement of the century.
He sat up but didn’t release her from his lap. “I’m not cold when I’m with you, Bridget.”
He didn’t mean temperature-wise. He wasn’t the cold-hearted man he despised when he was with her. She was light and warmth and gooey-delicious goodness, and he wanted to bask in her beauty and indulge in her honey-sweet radiance. He wanted her spirit to overtake his lonely soul and replace it with nights tangled together on the cusp of ecstasy and days when all he had to do was look up to find her smiling at him.
“You’re not?” she asked, twisting one of his dark curls between her fingers.
He ran his thumb across her bottom lip, then leaned in, powerless to fight the forces that drew them together.
“What is this, Soren? What’s going on with us?” she whispered, her breath warm against his cheek as the words went straight to the darkest part of his heart, threatening to let in the light.
But he couldn’t let her in there—not where the damaged little boy dwelled.
He pulled back a fraction. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” she repeated with such sorrow in her eyes, he had to look away.
He shook his head. “No, it’s—”
“Over. The game is over,” Tom said, walking over with the judge, then glanced at them on the ground. “What are you two doing?”
“Nothing,” Bridget answered, borrowing his word, her voice void of warmth as she scrambled to her feet. “I hit Scooter a few times with the snowballs. I was making sure he was okay.”
Tom reached out his hand and helped her up, then his friend turned to him.
