How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas (Kane Christmas Book 3) Read online

  “You enjoy your time with the glassblowers?”

  “Is that what they are?”

  “Indeed.”

  Had I ever said indeed before? Never. This thong was cutting off all the blood to my brain.

  “This is quite a party Wes is throwing,” he said. “He trying to convince everyone the company isn’t bankrupt? Or is it to impress Penny?”

  “Both.” I shrugged. He took a sip from his bottle of beer.

  “Have you talked to him?” I asked.

  “Nah. Saw your mom.”

  “Christmas spirit herself?”

  “She hissed at me.”

  “Well, that’s an improvement.”

  We grinned at each other. I actually couldn’t stop. He made me so happy.

  “You want a drink?”

  I want to know what you think of my dress. I want to know what you think of my ass. Of me.

  “Sure.”

  “Champagne or the usual?”

  “You know my usual?”

  He turned and ordered a gin and tonic with two limes for me, which was, in fact, my usual, and when he slipped the glass into my hand I broke. I broke right in half.

  “Notice anything different about me?” I asked, my voice strident and loud. It was like I was screaming the question at him.

  “You’re taller,” he said, ordering another beer for himself.

  “Well, it’s the shoes.”

  “Your hair is…bigger.”

  Something went sour in my stomach.

  “Your dress is very…bright.”

  It was reflecting the light from the dance floor. I was a beautiful blue disco ball. But I didn’t have the breath to say that. “You’ve never seen me in a dress.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed and took a huge gulp of his beer, his eyes going across the bar to where the glassblowers were standing. “It’s a little weird.”

  It was like one of those balloons shot in slow motion. That was actually the feeling in my stomach. In my body. I felt the terrible puncture and the slow explosion, like every part of me had lost connection to every other part of me. I gasped and gasped again, and he looked at me and then looked away.

  “So, what are the names of the glassblowers?” he asked.

  “I don’t…I don’t know,” I said, trying to gather myself up. Finding an arm over there and a leg over there, the beating of my weak heart right there at his feet.

  “The blonde is hot.”

  Tears. I hadn’t cried since we got the phone call from his mother three months ago that Sam had been hurt and that he was unconscious and alone a million miles away.

  Humiliated, I blinked the burning tears back, but it wasn’t working.

  There. That’s the answer. He never saw you like that. Never thought of you like that.

  “Sophie?” he said, like I’d chocked on an olive pit. “You all right?”

  If I opened my mouth I wasn’t sure what I would say. If I opened my mouth I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t sob, and it had already been a bad night. The stuff nightmares were made of. I didn’t have to go and add more to it. Crying because of Fucking Sam Porter was one thing. Crying in front of him was the kind of thing I would never recover from.

  So I sucked back that gin and tonic like it was medicine for a broken heart.

  “Hey, careful—”

  Yeah. Fuck him and his worry. I turned on my fancy high heel and got the hell away from him before I could do anything else I might regret. Blindly, I circulated back through the shadows, looking for my brother. Joy. Anyone who might make this feeling go away, but then I realized, it wouldn’t. It would never go away.

  The humiliation shifted, making room for the grief. The bone-deep grief that the man I loved with my whole self didn’t feel at all the same way about me.

  There was only one thing to do—leave.

  4

  Sam

  That…

  That had been the right thing to do. 100%.

  I was sure of it.

  Though it was getting harder and harder to tell what was right and what was wrong when it came to Sophie Kane. When she’d been a kid, it had been simple: protect her.

  But then she grew up and started looking at me out of the corner of her eye. And she got real interested in me and my damage, and that was a mistake no matter which way I looked at it.

  So then the mission became: ignore her. But that was impossible. It was like ignoring a 4th of July Sparkler right in front of your face. A tiny little pivot and I just had to ignore how she felt about me. Which she did a shit job of hiding. But even that was hard, because a few times I selfishly wallowed in her kindness. Her respect. The bright center of her love.

  I know. I’m an asshole.

  But, I took some comfort in the fact that I’d tried so hard for years. For years. Not to look at her that way. See her that way. She was my best friend’s little sister. She was, if I was honest, probably more of a best friend than my actual best friend.

  But goddamn…that dress.

  No. That had been the right thing to do. Maybe a little…mean? Like cauterizing a wound. She had to move past this infatuation she had with me. And all I’d done was help her along.

  By pretending her beauty was embarrassing.

  By pretending she didn’t take my fucking breath away.

  My stomach was sick. I was going to remember that look on her face for the rest of my life.

  Fuck.

  At one of the tables full of staff, a man, a boy, really, watched her as she left, tried even to stop her, maybe ask her if she was okay. But she shrugged him off and high tailed it to an elevator.

  And then after a few minutes, that same guy put down his beer and took the same path she did. He followed her.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Yeah, he could be going to the bathroom or some shit, but he wasn’t. I knew it in my gut. Now, was he going to try and comfort her? Or take advantage of a woman in distress? To hurt her? I mean, it seemed unlikely, but the thought, once in my head, was impossible to get rid of.

  Because my first rule was still the same. Protect Sophie.

  I set down my beer and went after them.

  Sophie

  I got back to the warehouse before the tears came, burning their way out of my eyes, and I tried to take off my shoes, but I couldn’t bend down in the dress, and I tried to take off the dress but I couldn’t reach the zipper, so I punched my fists down onto my old metal desk and howled. Just howled.

  I was fucking trapped in this awful idea of mine. And I couldn’t get out.

  “Sophie?”

  Startled, I turned, only to find Joe Arben standing there in his father’s suit.

  Oh God.

  I closed my eyes and turned back around. Things Can Always Get Worse: The Sophie Kane Story.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. I heard him coming down the three stairs from the doorway down to the floor of the warehouse. “I saw you leave and you seemed upset.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, not sounding it.

  He was on the cement floor, walking toward me and when his hand touched my elbow I flinched and then covered my face with my hand.

  “Sweetheart? What happened?” he whispered. It was nice to be called sweetheart, even though I knew he didn’t mean it. He couldn’t. I wasn’t anyone’s sweetheart. I was…plain old Sophie Kane and a fool for trying to be anything else.

  “Nothing,” I said, pleased that my voice didn’t sound drenched in tears. “I’m just…not having a great night.”

  “What can I do?” he asked. His breath touched my arm and I shivered with a keen pleasure pain. Had I honestly thought Fucking Sam Porter was going to take one look at me and pull me into his arms? That he’d take one look and drop his drink and put his hands on me the way that I’d dreamed for a stupid number of years?

  “Sophie,” Joe breathed again, and his fingers were on my neck. “Beautiful women should not cry at parties.”

  Yeah, well, I thought, I’m not beautiful.

  I reached again for the zipper, like my desperation would have made it move somehow but no. It was still out of reach.

  “Here,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  “Unzip my dress?” I all but screeched.

  “I just want to help.”

  “Okay, but…not in a sexy way.”

  In a get-me-out-of-the-damn-dress way.

  “Everything about you is sexy,” he said and I rolled my eyes. Honestly, I couldn’t deal with all this.

  “Please, just get me out of this fucking dress.” I hung my head, lifting my hair. It looks like you’ve rolled in hay. I flinched at the memory. What had I been thinking? Like a dress could change anything. Makeup.

  A stupid thong.

  I felt Joe’s fingers against my skin and the slow unzipping of my dress was silent, but his breathing was loud.

  Was this real? I wondered. I mean, it seemed obvious. But what if I was wrong. The way I was wrong about everything. It suddenly felt like a trick. A joke he might play on me. And I shrank inside my skin. Tears burning again.

  The door to the warehouse clanged and I heard the scuff of a shoe on the cement of the steps. I turned, only to find Fucking Sam Porter sitting on the top step, his elbows braced on his knees. Totally casual. Just having a seat. Taking in the sights.

  But his face was ominously still.

  My dress gaped around my body, the shoulder strap slipping down my arm, and I put my hand to my chest, holding the sequins against my boobs so I wasn’t flashing Sam and Joe.

  “What the fuck, man?” Joe said, bristling as he stood in front of me as if to protect me from Sam’s eyes.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” Sam said, waving his hand at us like none of this—me half naked, Joe’s hands on my skin, Sam sitting there watching—meant anything. “Seemed like things were just getting good.”

  My cheeks blazed red hot.

  “Get the fuck out!” Joe said, taking a step toward Sam, and I finally found my voice because Joe didn’t need to get a beatdown just for trying to protect me. Because Joe was young and strong and tough, but Sam was some kind of super soldier with blood on his hands. The more casual he acted, the more lethal he could be. I’d seen him, in a bar fight years ago, pulverize a guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer from a girl in a back booth, and Sam had been whistling as he walked over to the guy.

  He wasn’t whistling now, but he did stretch out his legs, leaning back against the landing like he was sitting by a goddamn river.

  “Joe,” I said, holding the dress against my chest. “It’s…fine. Everything’s fine. Why don’t you go back to the party?”

  He looked back at me, aghast. “I’m not leaving you here with some creeper.”

  “He’s not a creeper,” I said. “He’s my brother’s best friend.”

  “That don’t mean he’s not an asshole.”

  A harsh laugh scraped my throat.

  “I’m an asshole,” Sam said. He was using his military voice. Firm, but kind of soft, too. Like he understood everything Joe was feeling, like suddenly he and Joe were in something together. It was the voice I imagined convinced men to follow him into the shitty places where they might get hurt or killed. “But I’m not going to hurt Soph. Go on back to the party.”

  Joe looked back at me. He really was a good guy. And I gave him my very best smile. My Sophie Kane special. Nothing hurts because I’m as tough as they come.

  But inside, all my stupid dreams and wishes had broken edges, and they were sharp and cutting me to pieces.

  “Okay,” Joe finally said, shaking his head, like he just didn’t understand why I wasn’t picking him, and honestly, I was beginning to wonder the same thing. “But if this fucker does one thing you don’t want him to—”

  Like laugh in my face. Like tell me I look weird. Yeah, he’d already done that. I couldn’t imagine there were all that many ways left he could hurt me.

  “He won’t,” I said at the very same time Sam said, “I won’t.”

  Joe walked up the steps, giving Sam a death glare in an effort to provoke him into standing up and throwing a punch, and I wanted to tell Joe to save his energy. Sam Porter couldn’t be provoked. There was no stick I’d ever seen that got Sam to do anything he didn’t want to do.

  The door closed behind Joe and the silence in the warehouse was deafening.

  “Go back to the party, Sam,” I said and turned away. My clothes were on my desk. My hoodie and jeans, and I wanted to take off this dress so bad, but I was frozen by not wanting to reveal even an inch more of myself to him.

  “He was touching you.”

  Sam’s voice was practically in my ear and I whirled back around, still clutching the dress to my chest, only to find him a foot away. Not even. Close enough I could see the green in his eyes. The edge of that scar through his eyebrow. The muscle ticking in his jaw.

  “Joe’s harmless,” I said, exhausted by…everything. “Please go, Sam.”

  “Did you want him to touch you?”

  No, asshole, I wished I was brave enough to say. I wanted you to touch me but my being beautiful was too fucking weird for you.

  Better late than never, the anger I’d been waiting for welled up in me like a sail catching wind, and my tears and my humiliation and hurt feelings were flattened by my rage.

  “That’s none of your fucking business, Sam! What were you doing coming down here and watching me?”

  He stepped closer, the muscle in his jaw popping like he had rocks in it he was trying to crush. “Did. You. Want. Him. To. Touch. You?”

  “Yep,” I lied. “I did. I fucking wanted Joe to touch me. What the hell do you care?”

  “Is that why you wore the dress? Why you look like that? For him?” He stepped forward, crowding me into the desk at my back. I could feel the heat of his body on the bare skin of my chest, where I was holding the dress against my body.

  I shoved at him with my elbow. “Stop crowding me.”

  “Then answer,” he said. “You make yourself look like that for him?”

  He said it like I’d rolled in dog shit. Like I’d put on a clown costume and embarrassed myself.

  Like I was going to tell him. Like I was going to give him the knives to use against me. But he wasn’t budging. Standing there like he had the right. Like he was owed my answers.

  So I punched him. The way he taught me when I was sixteen. The crack of it practically echoed and my hand burned and then went numb, and on his face was the bright red imprint of my hand. The violence of it was shocking. My blood pounded in my ears.

  “Do it again,” he growled. Actually growled. I was pissed at him and hiding a disastrous amount of hurt that would have to be dealt with later, but I felt that growl between my legs, where it mattered. Where it rang me like a bell.

  And that pissed me off, too. That I could still want him after tonight. After this fucking stunt.

  So I did. I hauled off, closed fist, and punched that asshole right in the face, and it wasn’t as good as fucking him but it was something. Oh my God, it was me leaving a mark. Me making him see me.

  And then, like the universe just couldn’t have that, couldn’t let this man actually see me for me—literally or figuratively—the lights went out. And the warehouse was plunged into darkness.

  5

  I jumped. Startled. And his hand came out of the darkness to touch mine. And I flinched away from him. My body wired with adrenaline.

  “The power went out,” I said. Inane, but I could feel him close. “The snow.”

  “It will come back on.”

  He was closer. His hand squeezed my fist.

  “You want to hit me again?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  And then, suddenly he wasn’t a foot away, he was on me. I couldn’t see him. But I felt him. Everywhere. His skin touching mine, and it was so much, too much, and not at all enough all at once.

  He slipped his hand around my body. I gasped at the scrape of his calluses against the tender skin of my lower back. In the dark, not being able to see him, I could feel all of him.

  He’s touching me. Fucking Sam Porter is touching me.

  He picked me up, up off my high heels, and stepped forward so I was sitting on my desk. The jar of pens and my sticky notes, the calendar, he pushed everything to the floor. It all clattered in the dark.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped.

  “Giving you what you want.”

  “You don’t know what I want, you—”

  He kissed me. I mean, it took a second for it all to register, but he was kissing me. Consuming me. I’d been imagining our first kiss for years. I’d practiced it into the pillow on my teenage bed so many times that sometimes it felt like it had already happened. The careful clumsiness of it. The tenderness. I was sure our first kiss would be so sweet. The sweetest.

  Yeah. This kiss wasn’t that. At all. This kiss was savage. His tongue in my mouth. His hand at my jaw, holding me still, holding me open. His other hand on my back, holding me like a steel girder so I couldn’t move away.

  “Fuck,” he said into my mouth, and I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t process anything except Fucking Sam Porter was kissing me like he wanted to destroy me and save me all at once.

  And the darkness made it somehow possible.

  But there was something about this kiss, deep in its core, that didn’t feel right. Like he wouldn’t do this if the lights were on. Like if the lights were on, he’d embarrass me like he had earlier. Yeah. That. A guy who says that shit, he doesn’t get to kiss me five minutes later. I had some pride. I did. Somewhere.

  Stop, I thought. You have to stop this.

  But It felt good. So good. My devil underwear was absolutely soaked. But my heart and my body would betray me for Sam at the drop of a hat. Much less whatever this kiss was.

  A joke? Punishment?

  I tore my mouth away, my lips burning. “What…” I breathed, and he was kissing me again and I tried to resist. I did! I gave it a good college try, but I’d been dreaming of this moment for years and my spine–usually so reliable–just melted.