The Mistletoe Motive(15)

Jonathan’s gaze travels my face—my chin defiantly tipped up, my tell-tale flush. His jaw ticks. His brow furrows. Silence stretches, raw and taut, between us.

“Well?” I ask, desperate for this to end, for space from him, because I’m livid and I’m also unspeakably aroused. Everything I fantasized last night, everything I’m feeling now—his heat, his scent, the raw energy thrumming between us, makes me want to wrap my legs around his waist and drag his mouth down to mine until we hate-kiss so hard, we black out from lack of oxygen.

I shut my eyes, mentally cutting the cord between heavenly Fantasy Jonathan and his hellish reality. “You’re in my personal space.”

“You started it,” he points out.

I open my mouth. Then shut it. He’s right, I did. “Fine. Well, I’m done with personal-space time now.”

He’s a foot away from me in one smooth step. “Better?”

“Much.” I push away from the table and dust myself off. “Now what do you have to say about my terms, Mr. Frost?”

He folds his arms across his chest and stares down at me. “Just book sales?”

“Just book sales,” I confirm.

Damn him and that condescending arched eyebrow. “You do remember some of the best psychological thrillers in recent memory came out this year or are about to be released.”

“Four words for you, Mr. Frost: children’s books and holiday romances.”

“Technically, that’s five—”

I stomp my foot. “You know what I mean! Now answer me already, do you accept these terms or not?”

Tense silence stretches between us, punctured only by the wall-mounted clock ticking down the minutes left in this miserable merry-go-round of our professional enmity.

Finally he says, “I accept them.”

“Excellent.” With a disingenuous smile, I slip by him and return to my half-destroyed display of holiday romances.

“On one condition.”

Grinding my teeth, I glare at him over my shoulder. “What?”

Jonathan leans against one of the polished wood columns that soars up to the store’s vaulted ceiling and watches me, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets. “If it turns out the financial future of the shop isn’t so dire after all, and both of us can stay on after the new year, we form a truce.”

He pushes off the column, stalking my way until he picks up one of my favorite Regency Era historical romances from the table. His fingers drum across the winter-themed cover, then slip it open to reveal the step-back—a scantily dressed couple surrounded by snow, wrapped in an epic clinch.

I stare at them, the shirtless man gazing down at the woman he holds with unbridled longing, his muscular arm clutching her waist; the woman, leaning in, so pliant, eyes hazy, mouth parted. They’re a four-and-a-quarter-by-almost-seven-inch ode to sensuality.

“A truce?” I whisper.

Jonathan nods, letting the book cover drop shut. “We co-manage…civilly.”

I snort a laugh. My laughter fades as I realize he looks dead serious. “You think that’s honestly possible?”

“Financially? Not if things stay as they are, but there’s still time for that to change. Interpersonally?” He fans open the book, this time deep into the story. I wrap my hand around his and snap it shut before he cracks the spine. “That remains to be seen.”

He peers down, where my hand clasps his, then back up, a flash of something I can’t read in those cunning pale eyes beneath thick, dark lashes. “I thought personal-space time was over,” he says.

I wrench the book out of his hand. “It was. Until you were about to damage merchandise.”

“I was going to buy it.”

“The hell you were. It’s a romance.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Ah, of course. You know everything about me, including all my literary preferences. I don’t read romance. I couldn’t possibly.”

Shit. Does he?

I glare at Jonathan as he turns back to the table and once again slides his thrillers toward the front, hating him for making me doubt myself. “Let me guess,” I tell him, popping a hip and giving him a skeptical once-over. “Your ‘romance reading’ consists of Pride and Prejudice, and you think Jane Austen was one of the earliest and most influential romance novelists.”

He falters for a second, nearly dropping a book as he straightens his thriller stacks into neat tiny towers. “I know there’s more to the genre than that,” he mutters.

“Hm.” I glance down at the historical romance he was allegedly going to buy that I’m now holding. “Maybe you do. This, Mr. Frost, is at least a proper romance novel. In fact, it’s my all-time favorite.”

In uncharacteristic clumsiness, Jonathan fumbles the stack of thrillers and sends them careening to the floor. His gaze snaps my way, then to the book in my grasp.

“That’s your favorite?” he says, voice low and tight, pale eyes boring into me.

“Yes,” I say, stretching out the word. “Why are you being weird?”

He blinks away, then stares at the shelves full of historical romances. “What are some others? Your favorites.”

It’s a command. Not a question.

I have no idea why he’s acting like this or why I’m about to humor him, but the romance lover in me can’t stop herself. I cross the space and stroll across the built in shelves containing historical romances, tapping titles like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. “This one. This one. This one. This one.” I slide my fingertip sensually along the shelf. Jonathan’s swallow echoes from ten feet behind me. “This one, too.”