Melody Anne - Baby, It’s Cold Outside

“Oh, I dunno. Third largest city in the United States. And you have other reasons for sticking around.”

“Such as?”

“Meddling friends. Terrifying, tatted guys who care about you. Evil grandmothers.” That one he mimed, unnecessarily as it happened, because Grams had nodded off. “A business you can do anywhere because you rock at it.” Pause. “Burn-the-sheets sex.”

Considering they’d never made it to a bed, that particular claim was not entirely legit. She turned into his chest to keep her voice from carrying in the clear night air—and oh hell, because she fit perfectly under his strong jaw—and sucked in a heady lungful of him. “Hmm, you might have something there. The pickings for burn-the-sheets sex are bound to be better in the third largest city in the United States.”

He gentled the back of her neck and kissed her, sweet and slow. His sexy jaw scruff conjured up a wash of sensation and sensual memories of how it had rasped her thighs during their steamy not-shower.

Gettin’ so warm inside . . .

“Let’s keep it PG, handsome,” she said, when he let her up for air.

“Pretty good? Think I can manage that.”

Another press of his lips, and the addition of his wickedly effective tongue, lifted her to a higher plane. This man of hers could kiss away every doubt, make her believe anything was possible. Even that she could live in the same metropolitan area as her father.

She was a much-sought-after body artist who loved her job and the freedom it gave her. She had built a good life, yet the idea of letting someone in—someone who might seem perfect on the surface, but could end up as manipulating and controlling as Sam Cochrane—seized her heart in a fist.

“Tell me why bustin’ out of Dodge is so important,” he whispered. “Because the way I see it, you have more reasons to stay than go.”

“I didn’t turn out how he wanted. The pliable daughter, the budding trophy wife. If I stick around in Chicago, he’ll find a way back into my life, and before I know it I’ll feel small again, just another cog in his machine. Look at how he tried to marry me off.”

“You should be thanking him.”

She gulped, unsure she’d heard that right. “Excuse me?”

He cupped his ear. “Do you hear what I hear?”

“You mean Mariah Carey warbling her way through one of my favorite holiday songs?”

“No, I mean the sound of your brass balls clanging, Darcy Cochrane. You’ve grown from a dependent girl into a self-reliant woman. And you have your father to thank because his dick moves set this great life of yours in motion.” He curled his hand around her neck and tunneled those rough-cast fingers through her hair, his tactile strength unbelievably sensual against her scalp. “Look at what he unleashed on the world. Look at you takin’ names, querida.”

God, this man’s support just slayed her. But as encouraging as that sounded, Beck was taking the product-of-her-environment argument a little too far. She owed nothing to her father. He had no say in how she turned out, yet . . . they were alike in so many ways. Stubborn, unyielding, hardheaded. She wanted to heal the rift between them, not go through life with this ball of negativity like a dead weight in her chest.

They were silent for a few moments, the air heavy with their thoughts and the chain saw’s whine as it cut through the ice.

“You’re pretty good at this,” she finally murmured.

“Uh-huh. PG.”

Her scarf was moved aside to reveal skin for a sensual nip of her neck. So not PG.

“I meant that you’re good at seeing the silver lining, making the best of any situation.”

“It’s the foster kid code. We live in the now, take the scraps, and hope to God some miracle can turn it into a five-course meal. Shifting your perception, choosing to take a situation that makes you afraid or hurt or angry, and see it differently—that’s the best way to move forward.”

Her Beck had become quite chatty over the years. Insightful, too. “Look at you being all wise and shit,” she said.

He grinned. “I know, right?”

“You own a suit, Mexican Dempsey?” Grams piped up, having just woken from her power nap.

“Does a birthday suit count?”

“Get one. Darcy needs a date to the fund-raiser.”

Darcy mimicked strangling her grandmother. “Grams, I can get my own dates, thanks very much! Also, his name is Beck Javier Rivera and he’s Puerto Rican, not Mexican, which you well know.” With an embarrassed head shake, she turned to find him beaming a sexy grin. Yum. “Friday at the Drake. You in?”

Surprise lit up his eyes like stones in a stream. “As my hearing has yet to be scheduled and I’ve already finished Grand Theft Auto—twice—I’m all yours.”

Waiting around for the call on his hearing was driving the poor guy screwy, but Darcy was reaping the benefit while he spent his free time with her. As for the fund-raiser, it would be a fitting punctuation to what had been an unexpectedly wonderful couple of weeks.

Something lurched in her chest at that.

He nuzzled her cold nose. “I’m all yours, not just on Friday night, but every night you want me.”

“Beck . . .”

Another kiss swallowed her protest, an invasive sweep of his tongue as he breathed his promise into her lungs.

And she let him, because it was just easier to give him his way in this. For now.

The next afternoon, Darcy shifted her weight back on the tattoo parlor’s stool and snapped a few mental candids for her memories. No one filled out the chair quite like Beck. Those beefy arms, strapping thighs, and well-built shoulders—he was every inch the powerful fighting machine.

“Can’t believe that fur ball of piss ’n’ vinegar is still around,” he said, jerking a chin in the direction of her cat, Mr. Miggins, who was curled up in a sated ball near the hissing radiator. The two had never been fans of each other.

“He’s like Grams. He continues out of spite.”

Smiling, Beck returned his gaze to his arm and scrutinized Darcy’s work. The green shamrock, like a pulsing Irish heart, bloomed on his bicep above the name of his foster father, Sean. Relatively simple in design, it might not impress her usual clientele, but pride swelled her chest at the thought of helping this amazing man commemorate his fallen heroes.

“You like?”

“I love.” He raised his eyes to snag hers as he said that. Intense, blue, romantic—and a hundred times steadier than her heartbeat.

I love.

And she did. Completely, utterly, and . . . she was not happy about it. Not at all. Every day with Beck dragged her deeper and tore her under a powerful current until she could barely breathe for wanting him.

Happy Frickin’ Holidays, Darcy!

Occupying her hands would be her best play here, and though they itched to meander south and stroke the perma-boner Beck always seemed to sport around her, she reined in her inner minx and reached for a bandage.

Beck was staring again. “How are you fixed for Christmas Day?”

One more week to the holiday, and then a few days later, bye-bye, Chicago.

Bye-bye, Beck.

“I’ll drive Grams over to Dad’s, we’ll scarf turkey while Tori tries to chitchat through the awkward silences, and then I’ll drop Grams back off at prison—I mean rehab.”

He cocked his head. “You want to come hang at the firehouse after? Gage is gonna Martha Stewart the hell out of the dinner. He’s already making paper plate angels for all the place settings. An inordinate amount of glitter is involved.”

She stood and tidied up her station, extracting ink needles and lobbing soiled tissues into the trash.

“I’ll be so busy with getting Grams settled and tying up loose ends.” Such as loading up her piece-of-shit car. Steeling herself for the journey ahead to the job she wasn’t sure she cared about anymore. Holding her ribs while her heart broke into icy shards.

Her body stilled as his masculine heat blanketed her from behind. “Querida, it doesn’t have to end.”

“We’ll have the fund-raiser on Christmas Eve, Beck. It’ll be a nice way to say good-bye.”

With a strong hand on her shoulder he turned her to face him. Those eyes blazed hard and furious, shining like bullets.

“Is that why you invited me? So you could say adios in a room full of blinged-out strangers. We’d eat some rubbery chicken and dance a sad old waltz, though God knows I’ll be crap at that. Maybe you’d get a final fuck-you in at your dad because you brought that guy he hated, then you’d wave to me as you wheeled Eleanor out the door.”

Burning emotion snarled beneath her breastbone. Damn him for making it so hard. “I was never going to stay, Beck. You knew that. I just can’t make a life for myself in the same place as my father.”

Storm clouds brewed in his eyes, myriad emotions battling beneath his usually calm surface. Kinetic energy seemed to bounce off the walls, in her chest, between their bodies.

“That’s just an excuse. So he screwed you over and you’re still pissed. Time to grow up, princesa, and figure out where you’re going instead of dwelling on where you’ve been.” He scrubbed a hand over his close-cropped skull. “You can’t deny what’s happening here with us.”

“Of course not. But it’s just chemistry, lust, nostalgia, whatever you want to call it—” She carved the air with her hand, seeking the right words to minimize the outrageous potency of what existed between them. “I’ve come too far in my career and my life to throw it all up for the special feelings caused by a return to the good old days. Besides, you had no problem letting me go before.”

“That was different.”

“How? How was it different?” She had never pried about his reasons—he hadn’t given her any insight at the time, and she had always ascribed it to the bad space he was in after Sean and Logan made the greatest sacrifice. Preferring not to know, if she was being honest.

“We were kids,” he murmured. “Now we’re all grown up.”

“You got over me, Beck.” A lot more easily than she recovered from the onslaught of him, she might add. “You threw me away seven years ago. It hurt. It really fucking hurt.”

Empathy laced with pain shone back in those terrible blue eyes.

“It was for the best. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything. Why was it for the best?”

He looked like he was weighing his options for evasion, when something clicked in his expression. Resignation. “I wasn’t good enough for you, Darcy. I was a street punk who wanted nothing more than to follow in my foster dad’s footsteps. Honest, hard, backbreaking work. Seeing you was like being blinded by a goddess. Touching your skin with my callused hands felt like sacrilege. Look at where you came from, at your people. How would I take care of you right?”

“So you did care about me—”

“I fucking loved you!”

All strength fled her legs and she gripped the edge of the counter behind her. Hearing those words spoken with such passion, even in the past tense, made her woozy.

Then, angry.

“Yet you dumped me.”

“For your own good.”

Outrage rushed through her. “You—you decided that I would be better off without you. You made that decision. Not us.”

He snorted. He may as well have said duh. “Look at how it all worked out.”

Goddamn him. “You think this is all because of you? That because you threw me away, it allowed me to flower into the woman I am today?”

Silence. Oh, the arrogant prick.

“How does your big fat head not fall off?”

A hint of a smile on his lips greeted that. “I think getting out from under your father’s thumb was good for you. We were kids, half formed, clueless about who we were. You needed to experience the world. Earn your ink.” He waved a hand around the shop, the supposed fulfillment of all her dreams. “If we’d stayed together, what would have happened? You were talking about switching to a college in Chicago or taking a year off. Already compromising yourself, maybe your future, for nothing.”

Nothing? She would have had him, her serious boy with the shocking blue eyes. Beck was all she had needed back then.

“It wasn’t your choice to make,” she gritted out.

“Get real, Darcy. With me, you’d have been making happy noises while shriveling up inside because you didn’t get out there. Travel, learn, be. I was never going to leave Chicago. You would have hated me eventually.”