Page 30 of Baby It's Cold Outside

“Me, I think,” she mumbled. Why couldn’t she even kiss the guy without making an idiot of herself?

He grinned. “Okay, we’re going to have to take a rain check before we pass out from hunger.” He took her arm and began leading her up the stairs, two at a time. “Food first, fornication later.”

She laughed, a little breathless as she raced to keep up with him.

“I happen to know,” he added, “it takes stamina to do Santa’s naughty list justice.”

Chapter Seven

During the next hour, Kate discovered that Ryder Sinclair hadn’t been kidding: he was an expert at getting onto Santa’s naughty list.

Originally, she’d been keeping track of everything they took so she could inform the relevant department heads tomorrow. But by the time they’d cut a swath through the electronics department—to get two high-beam flashlights—and had a pitched battle in lingerie over the negligees, before she’d redirected them to women’s sleepwear where she’d picked out some fleecy pajamas she was actually prepared to wear, she’d gotten a headache trying to keep all their booty straight.

The trip to the store’s food hall had been equally productive—or criminal, depending on how you looked at it. With all the fresh food locked overnight in the cold storage facility, Ryder had insisted on pilfering the most expensive Christmas hamper on display and a bottle of top-priced Californian merlot—only being persuaded to forgo the vintage champagne because it wasn’t sufficiently chilled. And then of course they’d had to stop by home furnishings to pick up cutlery and paper plates and a corkscrew and… By then Kate had given up trying to do the right and proper thing—and decided she’d have to opt for the expedient thing: namely falling on general manager Gerry Garcia’s mercy tomorrow and hope he didn’t have her and Ryder hauled off to jail.

Consequently, once they reached the fifth floor and bedroom furnishings, with all their loot in tow, Kate had conceded that while she might not be as adept at petty crime as Ryder, she wasn’t as adverse to it as she had always assumed.

The thrill of doing something forbidden in the soft glow of the store’s emergency lights hadn’t just been exhilarating and fun, it had also been surprisingly seductive.

Ryd

er had flirted mercilessly with her throughout—especially while doing battle over the negligees—and she’d discovered a knack she didn’t know she had for flirting right back. To the point where she was now almost as exhausted from trying to keep up with all the verbal foreplay as she was from the zap of hormones whizzing through her system every time he brushed his fingers down her hair, or placed a quick kiss on her nose, or let his palm stray to her backside—which he seemed to be doing with alarming regularity.

The bedroom displays looked more than a little eerie, cast in the red glow from the emergency lights, but once they’d demolished a feast of Scottish oatcakes and venison pâté, ginger cookies and cold Christmas pudding, all washed down with the fruity merlot, Kate felt relaxed and surprisingly festive. She surveyed the wreckage of their picnic, as Ryder sat cross-legged with his back propped up against the base of a deluxe king-size bed made up with 800-thread count Egyptian cotton.

The low hum of arousal that hadn’t been far away since he’d kissed her so thoroughly in the stairwell pulsed harder as she studied him. With his eyes closed and his hand laid casually across his belly, he looked both peaceful and dangerous. Day-old stubble shadowed the cleft in his chin and highlighted dramatic cheekbones and dark brows. He really was an astonishingly good-looking man. No wonder all the women who worked at Sinclair’s had noticed him on the rare occasions he actually put in an appearance at the store.

And tonight he was all hers. The thought made her feel decadent and desirable. But under the hum of arousal was the sharp twist of guilt. He had a girlfriend. Didn’t he?

She’d always had a strong moral code, maybe too strong in some respects—or she would never have ended up with a killjoy like Benedict—but while she’d discovered this evening that she could bend it more than a little, she couldn’t break it altogether.

The only problem was she didn’t quite know how to ask Ryder what she had to ask, without seeming like a prude—or worse, an idiot.

Just as she was puzzling over how best to go about it, his eyes flickered open and that penetrating sapphire gaze fixed firmly on her face.

“Damn,” he said sleepily, “I almost nodded off there before the main event.” He held out his hand, beckoning her over with his fingers.

She shuffled her bum until she was sitting next to him and laid her hand in his to let him draw her closer. But when he went to slide his arm around her waist, she stiffened.

His brow lifted. “You look kind of serious. Is something wrong?”

It was the opportunity she’d been waiting for, but she still had to battle the wave of uncertainty. If he said what she thought he was going to say, they wouldn’t be able to make love, and after flirting with him all evening that was going to be the biggest disappointment of her life. But she couldn’t live with herself not knowing one way or the other, so what choice did she really have?

“Yes, I think maybe there is,” she stammered, trying to find the right words.

He straightened, his brow flattening into a frown of curiosity, but the lazy smile stayed in place. “Then I guess you better spill it…”

“Okay.” She sucked in a deep breath, heaved it out. “I know this is only casual. That we got stuck here together, and we’re both attracted and I do really want to…” She paused.

The sexy smile curled upward and became a little smug. “So far, so good.”

God, what on earth are you wittering on about? Just say it.

“But I don’t feel I can sleep with you, even in a completely casual sense,” she qualified, the words rushing out. “Knowing you have a girlfriend.”

His eyebrows launched up his forehead—and the smile flatlined. “What makes you think I’ve got a girlfriend?”

He sounded genuinely stunned. She suppressed the spurt of hope, knowing she had to clarify, to be completely clear.

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