Kissing Under The Mistletoe (The Sullivans #10)(24)

Trying to keep things light between them—even if she knew she was only delaying the inevitable—she dropped her gaze to his beard-in-the-making. “You look good scruffy.”

“Now that I know you think that, I’ll never shave again.”

She laughed again. “Remind me to look you up in two years to see how long your beard is.”

“All you’ll have to do is roll over in our bed to see that.”

She’d never been with a man this confident—so sure they were meant to be together. And she’d never wanted to kiss anyone this much, either.

In order to distract her lips from the kiss they were dying for, she said his name instead, meaning it as a warning. “Jack.”

He distracted her right back, not with her name, but by saying, “Angel.”

It was an endearment that made her knees wobble every single time.

So when he slid one hand into her hair and another around the curve of her hip to pull her closer, she didn’t have the strength of will to keep fighting this kiss any longer. All it took was the press of his lips against hers to dissolve the fierce reminders of how she’d been hurt before. All her intelligent thoughts vanished, as well.

“Mary, I know you said you were cutting back on caffeine, but I brought you—”

Gerry was halfway into the room by the time he realized she was wrapped around Jack like a teenage girl stealing a kiss from her secret boyfriend when she thought no one was looking.

“Sorry about that, folks,” he said in his easy, seen-it-all way. “I’ll just go take care of that film that needs changing.”

The second Mary heard Gerry’s voice, she should have jumped out of Jack’s arms. Especially given that she shouldn’t have been in them in the first place. But his kiss had made her limbs feel too loose and rubbery to do anything but stay right where she was.

Finally, she gathered up enough self-control to make herself shift away, one inch at a time until Jack had no choice but to let her go. “I can’t believe we were doing that…and that Gerry caught us. Thank God, it was him and not your partners.”

“What if they had seen us? We’re not hurting anyone, or anything, by kissing each other.”

But what if you do end up hurting me?

Mixed into her fear of being hurt again by someone she worked with was the lingering memory of how humiliated she’d been by the knowledge that everyone in her circle knew just how foolishly she’d given her heart…and then been tossed aside. She couldn’t stand for that to happen again, not when she was supposed to be older and wiser.

“Have you told them about Friday night, about what happened between us at my house?”

Jack looked more than a little insulted by her question. “Of course I haven’t. I don’t kiss and tell, Mary. What happens between us is private.”

A moment later, Howie and Larry poked their heads into the room. “Hey Jack, Mary, we brought back a sandwich for you both.”

She could easily read the frustration on Jack’s handsome face as she told them she’d join everyone in the common area in a couple of minutes. They all left the room and her hands were trembling as she sat down at her mirror and picked up her hairbrush. A moment later Gerry walked in and closed the door behind him.

“I thought something was going on between the two of you.” Gerry grinned at her in the mirror. “Now, before we start shooting again, tell me everything about that gorgeous man who can’t keep his hands off you.”

As she ran a straightening iron over a lock of hair to get ready for their second set of shots, she had to work to keep her hand steady so she didn’t burn herself.

With another photographer she might have tried to hide what she was feeling. But, with the man who had known her for her entire adult life, there was no point in pretending Jack’s touch had been innocent. Besides, there was a reason Gerry was such a great photographer—he saw things other people didn’t.

“Jack is different from any other man I’ve known,” she admitted.

She knew she shouldn’t say anything more, but she was dying to talk to someone about Jack. She couldn’t possibly have discussed him with the young models she was looking after, not when she was trying to set a good example for them. But Gerry had watched her grow up. First, from behind a camera lens, and then later when they became friends. He’d held her hand and let her cry when her various romances hadn’t ended in happily ever after. If anyone would understand how confused she was right now, he would.

“The men I’ve been around have always been so self-aware, so conscious of everything they did and said, and especially how they looked. But Jack’s brain is working so fast all the time—he’s so different. He told me that sometimes he doesn’t even remember to shave.”

“Adorable,” Gerry said, echoing her own thoughts.

She sighed. “Agreed, but I still shouldn’t have kissed him just now.”

His eyebrows went up. “Why the hell not?”

“Because we’ve agreed to keep things strictly professional between us for now. As I’m sure you recall, last time I mixed business with pleasure, things went horribly awry.”

Gerry frowned. “Romain Bollinger was a worthless piece of scum. I thought you were over him.”

“Of course I am,” she insisted, horrified that anyone would think she was still pining for that horrible excuse for a man. “I’m just trying to be careful.”