Page 98 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses

Tanner grasped her chin, drawing her gaze to his when she would have pulled away. Soft skin, the softest he’d ever encountered, her pulse skipping beneath his fingers. “You weren’t something I planned on, Princess. Things would have been much simpler had I never met you.”

Her mouth formed a startled “oh” as she wrenched free. Tanner prided himself on rarely making mistakes, but he realized this one, and rounded the desk, blocking her exit. He closed his hands around her arms and pulled her to him, forcing her up on her toes. Standing chest to chest, their harsh breaths mingled.

God, he loved her. Loved her raw courage, her frank intelligence. Loved the proud tilt of her jaw and the way she worried her lip rather than give in to tears. While thoughts of what he could say circled in his mind, surprisingly, he heard himself say this: “I will never regret the time we spent together, Kat. Never. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. And I knew it. I always knew it. I planned to tell you about my family, the newspaper, anything, everything you wanted to know. But I was close, so close to finishing the damned story, one I’d worked on for almost a year. Just one more day, I kept telling myself. Just one more day. I thought I had time. I thought we had time.”

Her throat worked, her chin trembling as she tried to lower it. “Time for what? More...intimate discussions in your tiny bed? A rousing game of chess sitting on feather pillows stacked on the floor? Quiet dinners on that coffee table held steady by a pile of books? I remember that microscopic apartment. Really, I found the place terribly charming.” A shot of laughter lifted her lips. She twisted for release but he held firm. “Let me guess. You own the building.”

Tanner clicked his teeth together and feigned a look of pique.

Truthfully, he did own the building, but he would crisp in the pits of hell before he admitted it. He made a mental note to sell the thing the day after Christmas. “Don’t be silly. Own the building?”

Her lids drifted as her bones seemed to melt. She sagged, her slim shoulder settling on his chest. Her breasts lifted, warm and full, then fell on a sigh. “Tanner, it just doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t love you anymore,” she said, voice muffled against his coat.

His breath caught. Tanner. She’d called him Tanner. Perhaps, she didn’t love this Crawford fellow after all. Maybe he had a chance: a second chance to make her love him. “It does matter. We matter. I want you to understand.” He paused, staring at a crack in the wall. Now or never, old man. “Kat, I—I want to tell you, always meant to tell you, that I...how much I—”

She angled her head, up and away. “Whatever it is, you’re too late.”

“Too late?” He set her back, searched her face.

Kate faced him squarely, pain radiating from her eyes. But she also looked awfully certain of something.

Certain enough to have Tanner’s stomach knotting.

“I’m marrying Crawford, Tanner. I telegraphed him this morning. He’s been pushing me to accept his proposal. So I did. A bit rushed, I admit, but he had a rather public scrape with a colleague’s wife a year ago, and his family is desperate to secure loose ends. One of the loose ends being marriage. To a woman with her own scandal skulking about, but not one as harmful as his. And not as recent.” The words tumbled from her lips in the most emotionless stream he’d ever heard.

“Are you doing this because I kissed you? Because of what happened last night? Because of what you told me?”

Her head wobbled, back and forth, side to side.

What the hell did that mean?

“Do you love him? Tell me you do, honestly, and I’ll leave.”

She blinked and tried to lower her gaze. Tanner cupped her cheeks so she couldn’t look anywhere but into his face. “Do you love him?”

Her lips moved, he felt the drift of air but heard no sound.

“Do you, Kat? For God’s sake, do you love him?” Do you still love me?

She nodded weakly, her brow bumping his chin. “Yes...yes, I love—”

He captured her lips beneath his, desperate to halt her rash admission.

You love me. A dizzying chime, a maddening recitation. Ringing in his mind, resounding in his ears as her lips bloomed beneath his, as her fingers danced over his chest, his ribs, her hands locking behind his back. A groan he could not contain surged from his throat. She responded with a sigh and a wiggle, unintentionally nestling his erection firmly against her.

Oh, Princess. You don’t love him. Can’t love him.

I don’t love him. I...do...not...love...Tanner Barkley. She repeated this even as she brought her hands to his chest, fisted her fingers in the coarse material, nudged, and with his help, propelled his coat to the floor.

God, she remembered him in just this way, handsome, aroused. Vivid images flooded her mind as his hands cupped her bottom and brought her flush against him. Her head dropped back, exposing her throat to his lips, his teeth. She gloried in his familiar touch, his familiar scent.

So enticingly familiar that he slipped past her defenses as easily as a hushed whisper.

“You don’t love him.” He nibbled at the tender patch of skin beneath her ear as his knuckles skimmed her breast. “You love me.”

She tugged at his shirttail. “Lust.” A button, then two, plinked to the floor. She recognized his goal. He used what had always been, in his mind, his greatest source of power over her. Thank God he didn’t know she had lied about marrying Crawford.

He was right; she did love him. Too much to ever marry another man.