Page 6 of Mountain Man's Christmas Star
“Stop.” He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. “It’s not crazy.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “It’s not?”
“No.” His thumb traced over my knuckles. “But are you sure? This isn’t something you can take back.”
The gentleness in his voice, the way he was giving me an out even though I could see the want in his eyes—it only confirmed that he was exactly the kind of man I’d been waiting for.
“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
Something shifted in his expression, heat replacing the careful concern. “Then we should probably get out of here.”
I laughed, feeling giddy and nervous and excited all at once. “What about dinner?”
Gunnar’s eyes never left mine as he signaled for the server. “We’ll take it to go and eat it at the festival grounds. I have some plans for our stakeout.”
4
GUNNAR
Iwas still reeling from what Ivy said at the diner.
I want it to be with you.
The words had been playing on repeat in my head for the past half hour. A beautiful, intelligent woman had just told me she wanted me to be her first, and instead of taking her straight back to my place like every instinct demanded, here I was suggesting we sit in the cold and play detective.
But maybe that was exactly what we both needed. Time to let the weight of her confession settle, to make sure we were both thinking clearly before we crossed a line there’d be no coming back from.
Still, having her this close, knowing what she wanted… It was taking every ounce of self-control I possessed not to forget all about soap thieves and Christmas tree vandals.
It was pretty moronic to sit here staking out the vendor booths like some pair of low-rent cops who hadn’t been properly trained for the job. Now that we’d eaten our dinner, we’d be better off heading back, sitting in the warmth of my truck with the heater blasting, because whoever was stealing her soaps and cutting wires likely hadn’t come here on foot.
But I wanted to be here with her. And this was a damn good excuse. The only excuse I could think of right now.
“I’ll head to Hartsville tomorrow and see if I can grab a security camera,” I said. “We could position it near the entrance and point it at all the booths.”
“You’d do that for me?”
She looked over at me. We were seated side-by-side, our feet dangling off the riser they’d installed to act as a makeshift stage for the tree lighting ceremony tomorrow night.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sitting out here in the cold for you.”
“Yeah, we probably should go,” she said.
I winced. I hadn’t meant that to be a complaint, but she’d apparently taken it that way. I didn’t want to give her a reason to leave.
“No, this is great,” I said. “Plus, it’s an important cause. We worked hard to get this lighting up and going again. The last thing I want is to spend all day tomorrow redoing it.”
“But we can’t sit here all night. We both need sleep.”
She was right, but damn if I would be able to sleep after what she’d said at the diner. It still hung in the air between us. She was a virgin—not just that, but she wanted me to be her first. The knowledge had my cock pressing urgently against my zipper, and having her seated right next to me, our arms touching through our thick coats, was only making it worse.
“We can go if you want, but I’m kind of enjoying spending time with you,” I said.
Honesty was the best policy. Or so I’d been told all my life. But in the seconds that passed as she said absolutely nothing, I started to question that old wisdom. Maybe I’d said too much, too soon.
“Have you been picturing me naked?”
At her words, I sucked in a deep breath. If I’d been drinking something, I would have choked on it. Talk about honesty. It was an honest question, and I needed to give an honest answer.
