The Mistletoe Motive(25)

I’m nothing short of stunned by this admission.

There’s a thick beat of silence. I stare down at the M&Ms. Jonathan stares out at the snow.

Finally, he breaks the stillness, reaching for a stainless-steel canteen in his cup holder, drinking from it in two long gulps that make his Adam’s apple bob and infuriatingly make me think about dragging my tongue up his throat. Then he checks his phone again. After reading whatever it says, he seems satisfied. He throws the car in reverse and starts to back out.

I’m still in shock. “So…you bought these…because of me? Because you felt bad about this morning?”

Jonathan stops the vehicle with a jolt halfway out of the parking space, then turns and faces me. Suddenly this big SUV feels very small. “Is it that unbelievable?”

“Uh…Well…” I lick my lips. This feels like a test. One that I’m definitely going to fail.

“It’s not,” he tells me, because apparently I said that out loud. “And you can’t fail it. You just answer the question.”

I stare at him curiously, the strong lines of his nose and cheekbones. His striking pale eyes glowing in the faint light. There’s this…pull, deep inside me, begging me to climb over the console, straddle his lap, and kiss him until I taste bittersweet chocolate and winter air, until I breathe in the warmth of his skin, hot and clean from exercise followed by a quick scrub with soap that makes him smell like a long, snowy walk in a forest of evergreens.

And I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why it feels like something’s dragging me, inch by inch, toward Jonathan Frost. It shouldn’t be happening. Not when, in just a few weeks, I’ll meet the guy I truly care about, and this Mr. Freeze mutant I work with will be out of my life for good.

What is wrong with me?

“Hell if I know,” I mutter, answering both Jonathan’s quandary and mine. Soothing the pain of my existential crisis, I open the mint chocolate M&Ms and dump half the bag down my throat.

Jonathan sighs as he resumes pulling out of the parking space. “So much sugar, Gabriella.”

“Hush up, you,” I tell him. “You bought them for me. Out of…remorse, which, wow, that sounds weird.”

His grip on the steering wheel tightens. His jaw tics, emphasizing the hollow in his cheeks and the promise of a dimple, if he ever smiled. It’s shadowed with dark, dense stubble, and just looking at it, I can feel its sandpaper scruff abrading my thighs. My mind runs with that, imagining hot, wet kisses from that stern mouth wetting my skin, trailing higher, higher, until— “I mean it,” Jonathan says, wrenching me from my lusty thoughts. “I’m sorry. I know…I know I get short sometimes and I make abrupt exits.” He pauses, as if searching for what to say next. “It has nothing to do with you, but it affects you. And…I’m sorry.”

I stare at him, the M&Ms lowering to my lap. It’s weird, experiencing an ounce of contrition from Jonathan Frost, hearing him own his less-endearing qualities and apologize for them, but…I believe him. So, shifting slightly in my seat to see him better, I tell him, “I…forgive you.”

Eyes on the road, he says, “That sounded painful.”

“Saying ‘I forgive you’?” I laugh faintly. “It kinda was. We’ve been hostile for so long, I don’t really know how to speak to you otherwise.”

Jonathan’s silent, his brow furrowed. He looks worried.

For a moment, I have the oddest impulse to slip my fingers soothingly through his hair, to trace my thumb along that divot notched in his forehead and smooth it away. “I shouldn’t have cornered you about story time this morning and tried to guilt you into it. I’m…sorry, too.”

“It’s all right.” He clears his throat. “And for the record, the CCTV footage streams to the bookkeeping room. I had my eye on things; if it had gotten out of hand, I would have been there immediately.”

I stare at him, confused, as if a veil’s been lifted, revealing a person I barely recognize but who’s also strangely familiar, like looking at a face and knowing I’ve seen it before, nagging at the back of my brain.

“So—” he clears his throat. “What was with the weird moment with Luke? When you told him he’d played well? And he said that’s high praise, coming from you. Do you play hockey or something?”

“Oh…” My instinct is severely to guard this part of my life, but I suppose if Jonathan’s capable of an apology, I can be capable of a smidge of trust. “My dad’s Nicholas Sokolov. Needless to say, I know the game pretty well.”

Jonathan throws me a shocked double take before refocusing on the road. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke.”

He blinks slowly, stunned. “Explain yourself.”

“Well, he and my mom met and fell in love, then they made a baby Gabby—”

“Gabriella,” he warns.

I snort a laugh. “All right, I’ll be serious. My dad wants a quiet life. All three of us do. We keep a low profile so we don’t have to deal with the crowds. And I go by my mom’s family name, Di Natale. It makes things easier.”

Jonathan shakes his head slowly. “Holy shit.”

Honestly, he’s taking it better than most people do. He didn’t swerve the car. He doesn’t look about to faint. And he hasn’t asked me for an autograph.