Page 49 of Christmas with the Cowgirl
“Yeah.”The man grinned.“Those Highwaters.Crazy, huh?”
They shook hands, looking each other up and down, and Riley caught herself wondering if every man who met someone new did that assessing thing.
“Coming in?”Slater asked, and she realized he was holding the door open, and it was getting a bit chilly.
She glanced at Miles.“Not tonight, I don’t think.We just left Valencia’s.”
Slater laughed.“No wonder you’re walking around.They forgot the stop sign on that food.”
He wished them a good evening, then turned to go inside.But then he looked back at them and said, with a gesture pointing upward, “By the way, you’re under the mistletoe.”
Riley’s gaze shot upward, and out of the corner of her eye she saw his do the same.A healthy bunch of the fabled greenery indeed hung directly over the entrance.And their heads.
Instinctively she lowered her gaze to Miles, and found him looking back at her.In those hazel eyes she saw a glint of…something.
“Well, far be it from me to break tradition here at this cornerstone of Last Stand history,” he said, and his voice had taken on a low, rough note that went with that glint she’d seen.
And then he was kissing her, his hands cupping her face, warm against her skin.Her pulse went from normal—well, as normal as it ever was around him—to a racing, pounding beat she could feel in her chest.His lips were firm but not demanding, not that he had to demand.No, she’d apparently been wanting this more than she’d ever admitted, even to herself.And it was more, so much more than the little peck on the cheek she’d given him, that had so rattled her.
When he broke away—too soon, far too soon—it took her a moment to remember she needed to breathe.And when she did it came quickly, as if she had run the two blocks from Valencia’s to here.
She stared up at him, the only thing saving her from embarrassment the fact that his chest was rising and falling almost as quickly as her own.And that his hands were now on her shoulders, as if he didn’t want her to pull away.
Then he lowered his head until their foreheads were touching.And she heard him whisper, “Wow.”
At least he didn’t say whoa.
But maybesheshould.
She almost laughed out loud at herself, standing here wishing it had lasted longer and at the same time wondering if she should call a halt to…whatever this might become.
You’re losing it, Riley.Or you already have.
She didn’t know which, and in this moment, as she stood with his hands still holding her close, she decided she didn’t care.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Miles Flint hadkissed more than a few women in his life.It came with the territory where he lived and worked.Decidedly few encounters had gone past that, however, contrary to many assumptions made.
He wondered if he even had the capability for that kind of thing anymore.It just wasn’t enough for him.He knew many others didn’t care about anything but the physical, but he’d never had the one night or less knack.Sometimes he thought that had died when his hour-old son, the result of one of those nights, had gaspingly breathed his first and last in his arms.Which had also been when he’d learned, via the DNA testing his attorney had insisted on, that it had been his own genetic quirk that had caused it.
It had been a decade ago, but it still held sway.
Since then, most of the emotional connections he was capable of went into his work.Other than with friends he already had and trusted, he couldn’t seem to connect deeply with the women he encountered.
But it seemed he had a knack for connecting to millions he’d never met.And he’d built a career many envied out of it.None of which explained why kissing Riley Garrett had about blown his new boots off.
And the only thing that did explain it was beyond unsettling.And a risk he wasn’t sure he really wanted to take.
Or at least, he hadn’t been.Until he’d kissed her.
A couple, walking arm in arm, came toward them, obviously headed for the saloon.The entrance to which they were blocking.They simultaneously moved to let the couple pass, stepping out of the doorway.
Out from under the mistletoe.
Mistletoe.Christmas.In Last Stand.That had to be it.The genuineness of it all here in this place Jackson had found such happiness had to have affected him, knocked him off-kilter.
Sometimes he had to admit the ache he felt inside looking at his friends, and seeing how they’d changed, how Jackson and Jeremy especially had changed since they’d come here.He’d wondered what it must feel like to know you’d truly met your match.And now his unruly imagination had taken off running with it, had him thinking that kiss was more than it was.
