Ashley was nowhere in sight.
As the countdown began, he was torn. Leave his guests or seek out his hostess? It would be better to stick with the crowd, he decided, ignoring a spurt of disappointment. Foolish to feel it, especially when the last time he’d been so eager for a New Year’s kiss he’d been thirteen years old. At Tammy Martin’s house, he remembered. Her parents were out for the evening and she’d been babysitting her little brother and sister.
“Ten,” the people on the dance floor chanted, arranging themselves in a circle.
Ridiculous to want to look into Ashley’s upturned face as the clock struck twelve.
“Nine.”
No, it wasn’t imperative that he dive his fingers into her flowing hair.
“Eight.”
Would her breath hitch as his mouth neared?
“Seven.”
He’d trace his nose across her warm cheek, drawing in her crushed-petal scent.
The voices of the people surrounding him rose. “Six.”
Shoving his hands into his pockets, he rooted his feet to the ground, even though his gaze wandered, looking for any sign of her.
“Five.”
He recalled Tammy’s kiss—his first—and hadn’t that changed his life? A boy taking his first step to becoming a man.
“Four.”
Move, his gut piped up. Find out where Ashley’s been all our life.
On the crowd’s roar of “three,” he bolted from the great hall.
At “two” he saw movement in the library at the end of the passage.
“One” sounded in the distance when he breached the doorway. Ashley, who had been standing contemplating the small fire burning in the grate, whirled. The notes of “Auld Lang Syne” drifted into the room, wrapping around them like ribbons, he thought, then instantly shoved away the fancy.
Still, her big eyes and her tense posture drew him forward. Her fingers clutched the lace overlaying her skirt. Chase hauled in a slow breath as he came to a halt before her. “You’re missing midnight,” he said softly as if his voice might spook her.
She smiled a little. “The clock ticks on without me.”
It seemed to come to a standstill to Chase as he stared down at her upturned face, her sooty lashes a perfect frame for her expressive eyes. There was wariness in them.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered.
Her gaze slid to the side. “Of course not,” she scoffed.
“Or shy.”
Her gaze flicked back to his for a moment. “I’m not.”
Only with him, he thought, and for some reason he liked the idea of that.
The last notes of the song died out. The guests’ voices stopped singing and they went back to chatting. In the background, the pianist continued playing the traditional song, embellishing the original melody. Chase stepped closer to Ashley and cupped her bare shoulders in his hands. “Happy New Year,” he said, and, bending his head, placed his lips on hers.
She tasted like champagne and roses. But it wasn’t that which got him. It was the tremble that racked her frame. Something moved in his belly, lust and another emotion that reached up to clutch his heart like a fist. His tongue touched her bottom lip, and even as she trembled again, she opened her mouth. He took a tender foray inside, not pressing but trying to please instead.
When her hand came up to wrap around his wrist as if she had to hang on for dear life, it was Chase who shuddered. Sweet, he thought. So damn heady and sweet.
Because he was desperate, suddenly, to move closer, he drew back. She stared at him with those big eyes, her mouth still damp from his. That fist around his heart tightened.
His curiosity was not sated, Chase knew. His fascination with her not put to rest. It would take more than a kiss to do that. Much more.
Chase Bradley wanted Ashley Walker in his bed.
WALKERS WERE NOT COWARDS, Ashley reminded herself, sitting in the back of a limo that was taking her from the florist to her own small house. She’d dropped the van in the parking lot behind the business. Now, once again in her New Year’s Eve dress but sans the stockings, she was headed home to pack a bag for her week at the Bradley estate.
She could do this, she assured herself again, despite that midnight kiss.
Her gaze slid toward the man sprawled on the seat beside hers. “You didn’t need to escort me, you know,” she said.
He’d been looking out the window and now turned his head. “Maybe I was afraid you’d change your mind.”
“We made a deal.”
“Right.” He crossed his legs at the ankle. Today he wore a pair of black boots, black jeans and a cashmere sweater the same gray as his eyes. At least she thought it was cashmere. She’d have to touch it to be positive about that, and she sure as heck wasn’t going to be reaching out and fondling him anytime soon.
Last night she’d squeezed his hard arm as he’d taken her mouth in the softest, yet most carnal kiss she could imagine. Her toes curled just thinking about it, and she quivered.
Chase’s hand went to the climate controls. “Cold? I’ll edge up the heat.”
Exactly what he’d done the night before. Edged up the heat.
But she said nothing as warmer air blew through the vents. “Over there.” She leaned forward to speak to the driver. A driver! “The bungalow with the wreath on the door.”
The man pulled into the rutted driveway alongside her little house. She didn’t have a garage, but the one-bedroom was spacious, and she didn’t cringe too much when Chase followed her inside. Sure, it wasn’t a fancy home like he was used to, but it was hers.
He looked around as he stood in the tiny foyer, taking in the living room that opened to the updated kitchen. “I like this,” he said, and walked toward her fireplace, his gaze trained on the photos sitting on the mantel. None of Stu or of Stu and her. She’d put those away years ago in a fit of self-preservation. These were black-and-whites of the Walker ancestors, posing with shotguns, wearing low-slung hats and the wooden expressions typical of the times.
“They seem nice,” Chase commented, glancing over his shoulder with a small smile.
Even that quick flash of white teeth made her knees soft. She slipped out of her shoes to pad toward her bedroom at the back of the house. “The Walkers came to the mountains a hundred and fifty years ago, traveling up the hill with oxen and wills of iron.”
Behind her bedroom door, she quickly slipped out of her dress and hung it in her closet. In seconds she was in jeans, a sweater and a pair of suede boots. Chase’s mother had taken her themes for the house party from the designated “holidays” of the month. Besides being New Year’s Day, Ashley had been told, January 1 was “Daydreamer’s Day.” Before they’d left the Bradley estate that morning, Chase had led her to a room on the third floor, an immense space she hadn’t been instructed to fill with flowers. Instead, table after table held buckets of plastic bricks, wooden blocks and hundreds of pieces of railroad systems, including houses, trees, people and locomotives. The plan was to encourage the guests to “play” to their heart’s content by creating worlds from their imaginations.
As