Page 90 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses

“Well, you didn’t see his face when he saw the blood. Hard to disguise alarm when it rips like a seam in a pair of trousers.”

Kate choked, Syllabub burning her throat. “I didn’t have to...see his face. I remember those looks. Charming. Concerned. Tanner Barkley has the unique ability to make you believe you’re the only person in the room. Then, you meet him the next night, and he’s using the same persuasive smile on someone else. I promise you, and thank God, let me tell you, you don’t know him as well as I do.”

“Maybe, for him, you were the only person in the room.”

Kate rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

“Are you so sure about him, Kate?”

“Sure enough.” She nodded her head, said more firmly, “Yes, very sure. Positive.”

“He saved Adam’s life once. A careless man in that situation, he was not.”

“Well, he’s even then, because he ruined mine.” Kate grasped a pine spray from the centerpiece and lifted it to her nose, inhaling the heavy fragrance.

“There must be—”

“His article referred to us as colleagues. Very formal. Not too hard to imagine the informal term used in every drawing room in Richmond.” Kate tapped the greenery against her glass. “I won’t go into detail about the people who cleared a wide path for the next year. My fiancé’s mother fainted when she heard the news. At the largest ball of the season, too, no less.”

“Fiancé?”

“My parents arranged it. I was sixteen. Our families had been close since before Abel and I were born. I wasn’t in love with him. And he did not love me. I wrote a hundred letters breaking it off before I met Tanner. I wanted, more than anything I have ever wanted, to simply love my husband. And I thought that was where Tanner and I were headed. I waited for him to open up his heart, declare his love for me. I knew I wasn’t going to marry Abel Asher before I ever let myself love Tanner. And then, well, you can guess the rest.”

Charlie rested her glass on her wrist and shook her head. “This is not the story I expected.”

“Yes, I can imagine.” Kate snapped the rosemary in two.

“How horrible, how humiliating. Why...how? What a...oh, men!”

Opening her fist, Kate examined the sprig lying in a rude twist on her palm. She shrugged with more placidity than she had ever experienced with regard to Tanner Barkley. “Deceitful scoundrels the lot of them.”

CHAPTER4

“Christ, Adam, they’re a mess.” Tanner wrenched his gaze from the doorway, his ears from the hum of voices raised in occasional song and frequent laughter. Charlie’s guffaw. Kate’s giggle. He frowned. Kate was not, had never been, a giggler.

Adam leaned to the side of the cumbersome pine tree they were cramming into a bucket of wet dirt, his mouth flattening into a scowl. “I’ll be holding Charlie’s head over a trashcan tonight and somehow, I don’t know how exactly, but somehow, this is your doing.”

Tanner reared back. “My doing?” The tree tipped forward, butting Adam’s shoulder.

“Easy, Tan!”

Tanner grabbed the closest branch and yanked. “My doing? Your wife and my...and Kate are stumbling around from too much eggnog and that Syllabub shit, both of them giving me the evil eye, and it’s somehow my doing?”

“Yes, somehow.”

“Well, hell.”

Adam glared over a limp branch, one they had broken dragging the tree up the porch steps. That side would face the corner. “You’re in love with her” —he grunted, centering the trunk in the bucket— “and all you can do is throw sophomoric glances her way and bellyache about her flirting with Tom Walker, who is so in love with his wife he can’t see that she’s chasing after you as hungrily as a bitch in heat.” In response, the tree swayed, bouncing off Adam’s chest. “You’re useless, you know that?”

“Lila Walker isn’t chasing me.”

“Ha!”

Tanner closed his hand part way around the trunk, bark biting into his palm. “And, I’m not useless. I only have one good arm to work with here.”

“Now you’re going to deny being in love with her. Go ahead.”

Tanner shut his eyes and struggled to hold the tree steady, his arm shaking so badly he almost couldn’t control the movement. Pine needles plinked off his shoulders and slithered past his shirt collar. He exhaled and whispered, “I can’t.”