Chapter 24
ALEX
The Uber fishtailed the last half block, tires hissing over packed snow, and Jane’s hand shot out to grip my sleeve.
“Oh my God,” she laughed, half hysterical, half thrilled. “We’re going to die in Lake Forrest.”
“We’re not,” I said, even though I was white-knuckling the seat myself. “This man clearly does this for sport.”
The driver snorted. “You’re my last ride tonight. After this, I’m going home and not moving until spring.”
The car slid again, then straightened, pulling up in front of the iron gate and the long, snow-laden driveway of the rental. Every window glowed with warm golden light, smoke curling lazily from multiple chimneys like the house itself was breathing.
Jane leaned forward, peering out the windshield and exhaling a relieved sigh. “We made it.”
“See?” I said, discreetly flexing my fingers out of the iron grip they’d had on my seat. “We didn’t die.”
“Yet,” she said, but she was smiling now.
I paid the driver more than I should have, but he deserved it for accepting our trip in this weather. We climbed out of the car, but as I prepared to grab her arm and make a run for it, Jane tapped on the driver’s window before he could pull away. He frowned, then opened it a crack.
“Do you want to come in for a bit?” she asked. “At least until the snow eases up?”
He blinked in surprise, but shook his head with an easy grin spreading on his lips. “That’s kind of you, ma’am, but my place is only a few blocks away. I’ll be fine. You two enjoy.”
He tipped an imaginary hat and drove off, taillights disappearing almost immediately into the white curtain of snow. We stood there for a beat in the biting wind, struggling to just stand still while snow dusted Jane’s hair and the shoulders of her coat.
Suddenly, she spun to me. Her gray eyes were almost silver in this light but lit up with an open, easy kind of joy I’d never seen from her before. “Race you inside?”
She didn’t wait for my answer, digging in her heels and spinning before taking off up the driveway.
I laughed and gripped my coat. My shoes sank into the snow as I kept my head down and ran.
Jane’s laughter rang through the quiet night air, and despite how insane this was, I grinned, chuckling under my breath while also trying not to snap an ankle.
I nearly slipped on the steps as I fumbled with the door, but Jane was already inside, stamping snow from her boots with her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with exhilaration. She turned to glance at me, her hair a golden halo around her head against the firelight as she smiled.
“That was a crazy ride,” she declared breathlessly. “I’m glad we decided to leave when we did. Can you imagine how much worse it’s going to be later?”
“You screamed.” I reached for my scarf and unwrapped it, hanging it on the hook near the door before shrugging out of my coat.
Jane pursed her lips at me. “I did not scream.”
I arched an eyebrow, turning to lock the door before looking back at her. “You grabbed me like you were about to say goodbye forever.”
Her eyes narrowed, but then she laughed again, finally backing deeper into the house, closer to the fire. “Maybe I did, but you liked it.”
I had liked it. Way too much.
The house wrapped around us as we moved to the living room, heat along with the faint scent of woodsmoke and old polish wafting through the air. Wind howled outside, the old roof creaking every so often as I stepped closer to her in front of the fireplace.
She glanced up at me with questions in her eyes as I reached for the zipper of her coat. “What are you doing?”
“Hold still,” I said, easing the coat from her shoulders now that we were safely out of the storm.
My knuckles brushed her neck and the flush on her cheeks deepened. I sank my teeth into my cheek to keep from letting out a groan. I didn’t know why I kept putting myself in situations like this, torturing myself with these not-so-accidental grazes of her skin when I already wanted so much more.
It was stupid, reminiscent of a teenage boy in a movie theater pretending to stretch his arms out because he was too shy to just wrap that arm around his girl.
I’d never been that boy. If I’d wanted to hold a girl, I’d gone for it, prepared to face rejection if she should knock my arm away, but none of them ever had.
With Jane though, it was different. I couldn’t help myself from seeking out the opportunity to touch her however I could get it, and right now, these silly, adolescent grazes were all I could have.
“Thank you,” she said softly once I’d hung up her coat on a hook next to the grand staircase that curved upward from the entry hall.
By the time I got back to the living room, Jane had her arms wrapped around herself, just standing quietly in front of the fire as she looked around the room.
The furniture was heavy and intentional, plush sofas, carved side tables, and layered rugs that muffled sound and made everything feel intimate despite the scale.
“Is it too much?” I asked, sliding my hands into my pockets as I watched her. “The house, I mean. I know it’s big, but—”
“It’s perfect.” She smiled, arms releasing to slide back to her sides as she angled her body toward the flickering flames. “Seriously, Alex. It’s amazing. You really didn’t have to get a place like this just so we could go to a party, though.”
“It was available.” I shrugged just as my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I ignored it at first, but when it buzzed again, insistently, I pulled it out to see a notification waiting on the screen.
SEVERE WEATHER ALERT: BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. TRAVEL DISCOURAGED.
Sighing as I read it, I finally turned the screen to show her. “Well, I’m glad you like it, because it looks like we might not be leaving for a while.”
Her eyebrows lifted, a slow smile ghosting across her lips when her gaze came back up to mine. “I guess it’s a good thing you booked for the whole weekend.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. We’re all paid up through Monday.” I inhaled a deep breath, desperately trying to keep my mind from wandering to all the things we might do to keep ourselves busy while we were snowed in together. “Do you want to go get comfortable and then have a drink?”
“That sounds good.” She glanced down at the golden dress that had been responsible for driving me halfway out of my mind all night long. “This isn’t exactly appropriate attire for a blizzard.”
I bit back a laugh. “It was perfect for the party, though. Unlike me, you fit right in.”
“Did you really want to fit in with people who pay that much money for art that looks like emotional tax write-offs?”
I laughed as we headed upstairs together, our footsteps soft on thick carpet. “Hey, we now own one of those emotional tax write-offs.”
At the top of the stairs, the hallway split and she turned toward the room she’d taken on the left. “You own one of those emotional tax write-offs. Don’t drag me into it. I’m innocent.”
I groaned. “So innocent, you couldn’t even ride in like a goddess on a white horse to save me from overbearing artists?”
She held my gaze across the few feet of distance between us, just looking into my eyes for a moment before she smiled. “I figured you had it covered. You’re a big tough dude with a big tough checkbook. You were fine.”
No comment on calling you a goddess, huh? Is it because you think it’s not true, or because you don’t want to go there with me?
Instead of asking, I just sighed and started backing to my room. “Not even my checkbook is tough enough to handle another party like that. Next time, you’ll have to save me. I’ll meet you back downstairs in a few?”
She chuckled. “I doubt there’s anything your checkbook can’t handle, but it’s cute that you keep trying to be modest about it. Go get warm, Alex. I’ll join you downstairs in a moment.”
As I nodded, she disappeared into her room and I spun, heading for my own and changing quickly into a pair of sweats and an old college hoodie. When I was done, I took the stairs down two at a time and poured our drinks at the bar off the sitting room.
I carried the glasses to the coffee table in front of the fire, sitting down with my drink in my hand and staring at the flames until I heard her come down.
Dressed in a pair of sweats and an oversized hoodie now herself, her makeup was gone and her dark blonde hair was piled in a messy knot on top of her head.
“This is much better,” she said, flopping down on the couch beside me and glancing at the drink when I handed it over. “Bourbon?”
“The type that’s old enough to have its own kids by now.”
She took it from me, slowly moving it to her lips and taking a sip. Her eyelids fluttered shut, her head dropping back just a fraction as she swallowed. “Wow, that’s good.”
“It’s definitely better than the blue whiskey that fooled me into thinking that buying that painting was a good idea.”
Jane laughed as she thought back to my purchase. She wiped tears from under her eyes. “I still can’t believe you bought that.”
“Neither can I. I’ll never drink blue whiskey again for as long as I live.”
“Is that really what made you do it?”
“No,” I admitted on a sigh and kicked my feet up on the table, resting my cheek against the back of the couch as I turned to look at her. “It was just the painting that was in front of me when I decided I’d had enough.”
I’d wanted to get back to her, but I didn’t say that, watching instead as she leaned back, her gaze drifting toward the fire. “Did you at least have fun?”
I shrugged. “I think the artist who’ll have two hundred grand in his pocket on Monday for a painting of a cat riding a unicycle probably had more fun than I did.”
Another laugh burst out of her, bright and unguarded, and although it wasn’t the first one tonight, it was the one that undid me. Jane had never been this way around me until tonight and I couldn’t get enough.
“Do that again,” I said before I could stop myself.
She glanced at me, clearly confused. “Do what again?”
“Smile like that again.”
Jane’s breath caught. Her eyes stayed on mine like she wasn’t sure if I was being serious.
I held her gaze, so fucking tempted to just lean in, but I didn’t.
A few quiet beats passed with us staring at each other just like that, but when she tugged her lower lip into her mouth, drawing my attention to it, I suddenly realized I needed to break whatever had just settled between us before it calcified into something neither of us knew how to name.
“Another drink?” I asked, already standing.
Jane blinked, then nodded. “Sure.”
She rose with me, following me to the bar. I reached for the bottle, but I didn’t get very far. We stopped at the same time, so close together that I could smell the faint scent of the perfume still clinging to her skin.
I lifted my gaze from our glasses to find her already looking at me. For a second, I honestly thought I might be imagining it, that pull, the slow, inevitable step forward. Like magnets sliding across a table toward each other no matter how much you tried to keep them apart.
“You’re staring,” she said, but she was smiling.
I took a step closer, my feet following that pull like my brain had absolutely no choice in the matter. “Am I?”
She tilted her head. “Are you drunk out of your mind?”
“Not on liquor.” I almost wished I was, though. Because at least then, I would have a reason. An excuse. Something to blame when my thumb lifted on its own and brushed her lower lip.
Just once. One light, teasing touch that made each of our breaths hitch. I didn’t plan to kiss her. I just leaned in and took it.
Our first kiss had been for the wedding, brief and controlled. The second had been for the room full of people watching, a claim laid with intention. This one was just for us.
Her mouth was warm and soft, and when she parted her lips for me, it felt like a decision, not a reflex. I deepened the kiss almost immediately, but without rushing, just learning her the way I’d been wanting to for weeks.
She made a sound low in her throat and it went straight through me. I backed her up without thinking, one step at a time until her shoulders met the wall. Bracing my hands on either side of her head, I didn’t touch her anywhere but our lips that kept crashing together again and again.
“Tell me to stop,” I murmured between kisses, giving her one last out.
She pulled back to look into my eyes, her own dark, focused, and steady. “Kiss me again, Alex.”
I groaned but didn’t hesitate. If she wanted this as much as I did, then we were on. Even if I’d never let it go too far after all that drinking.