Cinderella's Christmas Affair (7 page)

He dipped his head and brushed a soft kiss against her forehead. She made him want to cherish her. He didn’t understand it. He’d come into the condo with a plan—convince CJ to marry him, maybe cement that decision in bed. But this tenderness, this damned protectiveness she called from him, he didn’t understand.

“You…offered up like a feast.”

She gave him a half grin then hauled back and punched him in the arm. “Will you stop it?”

This was his old Cathy Jane. This woman he could handle. But that didn’t change the fact that something had happened earlier to hurt her and he didn’t have a clue what it was. “What happened before? I’ve never seen a woman react the way you did to a simple marriage proposal and a kiss.”

“Nothing with you is simple, Tad.”

“You’re making this more complicated than you need to. What happened to the girl I knew in Auburndale?”

“She grew up.”

“Growing up doesn’t necessarily mean barriers.”

“Well it does for me.”

“Talk to me, CJ. Tell me what that means.”

“I just forgot something that I shouldn’t have.”

“What?”

She bit her lip and looked away. He wished she trusted him enough to tell him her secrets.

“You don’t have to tell me now.”

“Tad, this isn’t going to work. I’ll call Butch and tell him to assign someone else to your account.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I told you I’m going to marry you and I’m still determined to make that happen.”

“I’m not marrying a man who isn’t my image of the perfect man.”

“Tell me what the qualities are.”

“It’s not a list of things you can go out and buy.”

“What is it then?”

“Just a feeling I’ll get deep inside when I know it’s right.”

“Love?”

“Maybe. It’s kind of this indefinable thing that I’ll know when it happens.”

She stood up and crossed to the front door. She opened it and Tad got to his feet reluctantly. “You owe me a dinner. I’ll be back at six to pick you up.”

“Do we really have to do this?”

“Hell, yes. Love is overrated and I’m going to prove it to you.”

He bent down, took her mouth swiftly and deeply and walked away.

Five

C
hristmas had never really been CJ’s favorite time of year. Mainly because her mom used to try to make them into the perfect little family during the holiday season. And that had just made her dad’s absence more obvious. She knew her mom had everyone’s best interests at heart. CJ wondered some times if that wasn’t why she tried so hard to make everyone believe she was an image of perfection instead of a real human with faults and weaknesses.

Tad had sent a car and a dozen long-stemmed white roses for her at 6:00 p.m. Standing on the street with a light snow falling, cold wind seeping into her clothing, and a bouquet of sweet-smelling flowers in her arms, she debated getting into the limo.

Tad scared her. More than she’d thought an old high school friend ever could. It wasn’t like she really had that many friends from the good old days, she thought wryly.

“You okay, ma’am?” the driver asked.

She hated being called ma’am. For God’s sake she wasn’t even thirty yet. Way too young to be called ma’am. Except today she felt old and wary.
Very wary.
Hell, too wary for a woman her age. She should be able to enjoy an attraction with the opposite sex instead of being afraid of it.

But fear was part of the allure for her. Her body was pulsing in time with the music in her head. Slow, steady sex music that she’d ignored for a long, long time. Only tonight she didn’t want to ignore it and that’s precisely why she wasn’t getting in the car.

“No,” she said to the young driver. “I’m not okay.”

She pivoted and walked back in her building past the doorman with the curious expression. The ride up in the elevator was painfully slow, but the car finally arrived at her floor. The condo she called home had never looked more like the sanctuary it essentially was.

She put her key in the lock and made up her mind. She wasn’t going to get back on the merry-go-round that had lead to her near destruction with Marcus.

If standing Tad up cost her a promotion at work, so be it. Her sanity meant more than her job. At least right now it did. And she’d started over before. It was actually something she felt she’d mastered.

Her apartment was warm and welcoming after the cold street. She changed into jeans and a thermal shirt and then lit a fire in the fireplace. Glancing in the gilt-framed mirror over the mantel, she scarcely recognized herself. She’d changed a lot in the process of trying to find herself. She’d thought she knew who she was but a wind from the past had shattered her sense of self. Now she saw a woman who vaguely resembled the image in her head and that hurt.

She put on a Christmas CD and puttered around her apartment turning on the tree lights and trying to shake off her mood with seasonal cheer. Not even a cup of apple-cinnamon herbal tea helped. Without thinking, she climbed up on the counter and opened the cabinet above the fridge.

There sat an untouched box of HoHos. Why she liked them she didn’t know. They had no nutritional value. They didn’t even taste good if you savored them. She pulled the box down along with the unopened bottle of Bailey’s.

Taking the snacks, the liquor and a snifter, she made her way to the living room. Thank God her mother hadn’t lived to see her daughter alone and afraid at the age of twenty-eight, reduced to spending her evenings with a bottle of after-dinner liqueur and children’s snack cakes.

The music inside her head changed to a frenzied Mozart concerto with layer after layer piled on top of each other. In her mind she knew the layers were job, past, Tad, family and somewhere buried deep beneath the frenetically playing music was Catherine Jane, the real Catherine Jane. Not Cathy Jane or CJ. Just a girl who didn’t really know who she was or what she wanted.

After forty-five minutes of analysis she realized she was waiting for something. Waiting for…someone.

She reached for the HoHos box but dropped her hand. She wasn’t going to eat her way back to a size 16 over some guy. Except that Tad wasn’t just a guy. If he was she’d have gotten into the limo and gone to dinner with him. There was no pressure in dating a man she wasn’t attracted to. It was only the men who touched a deep emotional chord inside her that made her quiver with awareness.

She went into the kitchen and started baking. The doorbell rang two hours later when she was in the middle of her grandmother’s famous pineapple cheesecake. She hesitated.

Checking the gingerbread cookies baking in the oven, she walked slowly toward the door.

She’d bet money that Tad was on the other side. She’d been waiting for him to come but when she opened the door she found instead a take-out deliveryman.

“I didn’t order anything,” she said.

“It’s a gift.”

He opened the heat-sealed container and handed her a bag of food and a note. She tipped the deliveryman and he left quickly.

She took the bags into the kitchen and opened them. Inside was a meal of Peking chicken and fried rice. The note had been written by Tad.

Enjoy dinner on me, since you wouldn’t have dinner with me.

She shivered a little. Felt like a big coward and knew that she’d hurt Tad. Something she’d never really intended to do. But she’d had no choice. She couldn’t risk losing herself again to the one man she’d never been able to forget.

Tad pushed himself hard in the weight room in his condo. It took the edge off his anger. Anger he didn’t have another outlet to release.

If he’d been at his folks’ place in Florida he would have visited one of his high school buddies and started a fight with him. There was nothing like a good fist-fight to get rid of rage. But they were miles away.

He’d known that he was moving too fast for CJ. But standing him up—hell, that ticked him off.

Women confounded him. He’d never really understood what Kylie had wanted from him until she’d walked away. He didn’t really understand why his mom was obsessed with grandkids. And most of all he didn’t understand why Cathy Jane Terrence—who dressed in suits, looked like she’d stepped from the pages of
Style
magazine and called herself CJ—was afraid to have dinner with him.

The phone rang but he ignored it. Leaving the weight room and going to the kitchen, he filled a glass with filtered water and drained the cup. In the other room he heard his machine pick up. Heard his own voice telling the caller to leave a message and then CJ’s voice. Soft and tentative.

He wasn’t going to listen to her message. Hell, when she was finished he was walking into the office and deleting it without listening to it. Tad Randolph wasn’t a guy she could manipulate whenever she felt like it.

But he found himself walking down the hall in time to hear her say she was sorry.
She was sorry. Damn.
It sounded like she was on the verge of tears and without really thinking about it, he grabbed the handset.

“CJ?” he asked.

She took a deep breath and then in a husky voice said, “Oh, you’re home.”

He didn’t know what to say to this woman who he wanted to marry but wouldn’t let himself love. The woman who had more walls than he knew how to scale. The woman who had become the one he wanted. “I was working out.”

“Um…I just wanted to thank you for dinner. That was really nice of you,” she said.

Tad knew he could hold onto his anger and let this relationship go no further or he could let it go and try to understand why Cathy Jane always ran. “No problem.”

Silence buzzed on the open line. Why had she called tonight?

“Listen, we need to talk,” she said, as he heard pans clatter in the sink. Then water running.

“I’ll say.”

“Are you going to listen or be mad at me?” she asked. The water shut off. He pictured her in her kitchen. In his mind she wore those tight jeans she’d had on earlier.

“CJ, I sat at a table for two in a very expensive restaurant waiting for you for over an hour.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, right. Why’d you agree to have dinner with me?” he asked. But his mind wasn’t on his anger. Lust had kindled to life the minute he’d realized she was in the kitchen where he’d kissed her. He could still feel the softness of her curves against his body. His blood ran heavier.

“You were pushing too hard.”

Not as hard as he’d wanted to or else they’d both be in his bed right now instead of in their own houses having a tense conversation on the phone. “I was, but you know I wouldn’t force you into anything you didn’t want to do.”

“I guess.”

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked. He didn’t think she was. The way she’d kissed him this afternoon told him that she didn’t fear him on an instinctual level.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not the same guy you used to know.” Whatever happened now, he refused to leave things in the weird limbo they’d been in since the last time they’d seen each other in Florida. He liked the woman CJ had become. Liked that she was a successful businesswoman. Liked that she was sassy and smart and sexy as hell.

“Well I’m not the same girl either.”

He leaned against his desk. What was she driving at? She’d hinted earlier that she’d changed. But then when he’d given her the opportunity to tell him or show him, she’d chickened out. “I know. What can I do to convince you I’m not a monster?”

“I don’t think you’re a monster.”

“Then what’s going on here?” he asked.

“I’ve never been able to deal with desire well,” she said in a shaky voice.

“I don’t understand.”

“I want you.”

His groin hardened and his entire body started to pulse in time with his heartbeat. He straightened and paced around the room. “I want you too. So what’s the problem?”

“You want to marry me,” she said.

“I’m not following,” he said. She made him feel like an idiot sometimes.

“I’ve never been able to handle a committed relationship and have a life at the same time.”

“I’m not planning on taking over your life.”

“No you wouldn’t plan on it. But it would happen all the same.”

“Why do you think that? I don’t want to run your life,” he said. He meant it, too. He’d learned a long time ago that women need their space. He just wanted someone to share the success he’d achieved.

“What do you want from me?”

“The future. Our future. Not one where we live separate lives but one where we’re together.”

“That sounds so easy.”

“It is. Trust me.”

Trust him.
There was a part of her that wanted to just give in and do whatever Tad asked of her. She’d always liked strong-willed men because life around them was blissfully effortless.

That was why she didn’t trust herself. Not Tad. Tad was still the great guy she remembered. But he made her forget who she’d become.

“It’s not that simple.” She paced the length of her kitchen searching for an escape to the memories Tad’s deep voice evoked.

“Sure, it is,” he said. His confidence nearly undid her resolve. He’d been right about other things before. Things like which schools to apply to. Which classes to take at the community college over summer.

“Tad…”

“You’re weakening. I know you are,” he said.

She smiled to herself. The kitchen counter was covered in freshly baked goods and she reached for the royal icing to assemble the gingerbread house from the pieces she’d made earlier.

Her mother, Marnie and she had made two hundred gingerbread houses one year to raise money for presents. God, she’d hated the smell of gingerbread that year. But now it made her feel nostalgic and warm inside. She’d made the house so many times over the years that the work was mindless and she assembled the house feeling her mom’s spirit with her as she worked. “What do you want from me?”

“You keep asking me that. I want marriage.” He’d been angry when they’d first gotten on the phone. She’d heard it in his voice. But now he was teasing her. He was more relaxed. She was glad. She regretted leaving him alone in a restaurant.