Page 27 of Theirs for the Holidays

He doesn’t say anything to that, so I take another breath. “Are you okay?” I glance down at his thighs, like I can see through his jeans if I hurt him or not.

Rhett stiffens. “What do you mean?”

“Your legs are okay, right? I didn’t hurt you or anything?”

He just stares at me, frowning. After a moment, he seems to work out what I mean, and he shakes his head. “No, you didn’t. I’m fine, Violet. That’s not why I left so fast. Don’t worry about it.”

That just leaves me confused. “Then why? I know you don’t like it when people get up close and personal like that, and I thought… I don’t know. I’m not light.”

“You’re not heavy enough to hurt me by falling into my lap,” he says, like it should be obvious. “It’s…” He sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t expecting it. And you landed right in my lap, and my body… reacted. I just needed a minute to calm down.”

It clicks what he’s saying all at once and I end up staring at him, shocked. Rhett had a ‘reaction’ to me? Because I was in his lap?

“Don’t look so shocked,” he says, almost sounding defensive. “I’m a red blooded man and there was a beautiful woman in my lap. I couldn’t help it.”

My stomach flutters to hear him say that. Rhett isn’t the kind of person who would go out of his way to flatter me like that, and even if he was, there’s no reason to do it now. So maybe… maybe he actually does think that.

It’s hard to wrap my mind around.

“I’m… um… I’m glad that’s all it was,” I say, desperately trying to rein in the blush that’s spreading over my cheeks for a different reason now. I’m not embarrassed anymore, just flustered to hear him say that.

Rhett looks at me, and our eyes catch and hold. There’s a frisson of tension, but it’s not uncomfortable. If anything it’s just intense, like the anticipation in the air before a lightning strike, and it makes my breath catch in my chest.

I think Rhett’s going to say something, or maybe I should, but before either of us can, the moment is broken by Sawyer calling out from the kitchen.

“What kind of pizza do you want, Vi?”

I swallow hard, shaking myself before going to answer him.

An hour or so later,the four of us are in the living room, eating pizza together.

Without discussing it, we all abandoned the idea of eating at the table, instead opting to enjoy the warmth of the fire and comfort of the couch and arm chairs. All of the tension from earlier in the day seems to have melted away, and the vibe is relaxed and cozy.

The brothers put away slice after slice of pizza, and I eat my own slices and fill them in on gossip from the town, since none of them have been back very often for the past few years.

“The last time I was here, Casey Waterson was pregnant,” Sawyer says. “But I definitely saw her with three kids earlier today. She must have moved fast.”

I nod, smiling as I pop an errant piece of sausage into my mouth. “Oh yeah, that was a whole thing. The rumor is only two of them are hers, the twins. Her fiancé, Brian? He disappeared for like a week right after she gave birth to the twins. Left her alone with two newborns. Then he came back and had a baby with him and no one ever mentioned it.”

“Brian Maloney?” Lennox asks.

I nod.

He snorts. “Yeah, that tracks. I remember him. He was never one to keep it in his pants.”

“Can’t believe Casey is just raising all those kids after that.”

I shrug a little. “Neither can anyone else. But she was not happy the last time someone said something about it, so everyone just lets it be now.”

“Not much you can do if she doesn’t want to hear it,” Lennox says, shrugging a shoulder. “Did anyone ever find out what was going on with Mrs. Smyth?”

“Oh!” I sit up straighter, grinning. “Yeah, that was a year or so ago, I nearly forgot. What was the last thing you heard about her?”

“Last I knew, there was the rumor she was having all that work done on her house because she was seducing all the hot young contractors,” Sawyer says, waggling his eyebrows. “But people were saying that when I was a teenager, so she’s got to be too old for that stuff now, right?”

I giggle a little. “You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.”

“She got to be like a hundred by now!” Rhett says.