A Wedding for Christmas Read online

  From his peripheral vision, he caught movement at the top of the staircase. A blonde. In red. Hurrying.

  Hurrying, hell, the woman was full-on running.

  Immediately, Ryder tensed, and his hand touched the Taser at his hip. He didn’t want to use it, or the concealed SIG Sauer in his shoulder holster. Discretion was a big part of his job. Diplomacy another.

  Besides, she was a woman. He was big, and she was small. Body block and chokehold ought to do it, and that was only if she was unreasonable.

  He didn’t want things getting messy.

  In two long strides, he reached her, and for a split second, he was struck by the notion that anyone watching them might assume they were lovers rushing into each other’s arms.

  Except she showed no signs of slowing down, her gaze fixed to the spot where Ketchum sat kissing the redhead. This had to be the stalker, hyped up with rage, jealousy, adrenaline, and God knew what else.

  Instinct, honed from numerous tours in the sandbox, took over, and he reacted without hesitation. It happened during the space of a single breath. Grabbing her by the arm, flipping her onto her back, falling atop her, pinning her to the floor in a four-point restraint.

  “Stand back, people!” Messer shouted. Ryder felt rather than saw his colleague herding people down the steps. “Nothing to see here. Go downstairs and enjoy the party.”

  Ryder’s hands manacled her wrists. His cowboy boots locked spread-eagle around her ankles. The woman was panting.

  And so was he, because he realized not only was she not Ketchum’s stalker, but he knew her.

  Ryder peered down into her face. A familiar face despite the fact it had changed a lot over the past twelve years.

  Katie Cheek.

  What in the blazes?

  All the air exited his body in one hard puff.

  Her features were softer, thinner, and prettier than ever. The glasses were gone, and so were the braces, and instead of frizzy untamable, dishwater blond curls, her hair was straight and lush and golden.

  Yes, she’d changed a lot, but he would recognize her anywhere.

  Yep. Katie Cheek, all right.

  It was his high school buddy’s kid sister, all grown up, and curvy in the most dangerous places.

  Chapter 2

  OMG, the boulder of a man lying on top of her, all hard muscles, tight sinew, and rugged sex appeal, was the first guy to ever break her heart.

  Ryder Southerland.

  Stunned, Katie stopped breathing, and thought, Things that make my heart pitter-patter . . .

  Kittens.

  Pretty boxes for organizing life.

  Salted caramel anything.

  Christmas morning.

  Ryder Southerland.

  Wham! Just like that, she was slammed into the past, dizzy, light-headed, her imagination tripped to the last time they were lying on the floor together. Except back then, she was on top.

  She was fifteen, and had never been kissed. After all, who would willingly kiss a bony, knobby-kneed, four-eyed, metal-mouth, frizzy-haired wallflower?

  Besides, boys like Ryder did not fall for girls like her.

  Her parents had taken Ryder in after his dad kicked him out of the house for an indiscretion he never talked about, and he had been sharing the garage apartment with her older brother Joe. She’d spent countless hours daydreaming about Ryder and entertaining romantic ideas she knew would never come to pass.

  Blistering sexual fantasies that confused the hell out of her and made her do dumb things like kiss her pillow and pretend it was Ryder.

  It had been a brilliant, bone-sweltering July day, and Katie was standing at her bedroom window watching Joe and Ryder harvesting ripe juicy plums from her folks’ backyard orchard.

  Ryder leisurely stripped off his sweat-soaked T-shirt, giving her an unfiltered view of his hard, muscled chest, and her fifteen-year-old imagination fired wild and hot.

  Swept away, she’d ended up sprawled on her bed, enthusiastically lip-planting a pillow.

  “Whatcha doin’, Miss Priss?” Ryder drawled from the doorway.

  Miss Priss.

  The nickname he teased her with because she was a rule follower who liked things neat and orderly.

  Yeep!

  Katie jerked her head around, saw him lounging against the door frame with one lazy shoulder, his arms dangling loosely by his sides, wearing nothing but cowboy boots and faded blue jeans.

  That gorgeous bare male chest in her bedroom sent Katie’s imagination—and her pulse—into hyperdrive.

  “Nothing!” Katie shot to her feet, simultaneously tossing her pillow over the other side of the bed. Oh God, what had he seen? Had she been moaning his name as she stroked the pillow, pretending it was his thick, wavy hair? “Nothing at all. What do you want?”

  Panting. Seriously? She was panting?

  One corner of his mouth curled up in a wolfish half smile. “Joe sent me.”

  “What do you want?” She knew she sounded bitchy, but it was the only way to keep from throwing herself at his handsome feet and kissing his cowboy boots.

  The half smile curved into a half moon. “Do you know where your mom put the extra bushel baskets?”

  “No idea,” she said, feeling her face flush all the way into her hairline.

  He cocked his head, and his voice bounced sly. “Were you kissing your pillow?”

  “Nooo, no, no, no . . . I was just . . . I was just . . .” She gestured over her shoulder, her face hot, heart thumping.

  “Yeah?” Half moon morphed into full-on smirk.

  Dear God, please kill me now—lightning strike, swarm of locusts, flash flood. Name your poison. Anything. Get me out of this.

  “Just?” he prompted.

  “Um . . . um . . .” Frozen. Her mind was frozen. Deer in headlights on a ten-lane freeway were more limber than her vapor-locked brain.

  Ryder cocked his head, studied her, his eyes full of mischief. “I could have sworn I saw your lips all puckered up and pressed against that pillow.”

  “Nope. Not me. You’re seeing things.”

  “You know,” he drawled, and for the first time she noticed he cradled a ripe red plum in his hand. “A pillow isn’t the best thing to practice on.”

  She’d stared at him, mesmerized. “No.”

  “A pillow is too soft and pliable. You need something that feels more like real lips.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve done my share of kissing.” He lowered his eyelids, stared at her in way that turned her knees to jelly.

  Oh wow. Her heart fluttered, a crazed butterfly in her chest, her gaze hooked on his mouth.

  “So what should I use?” she asked before she realized she was as much as admitting she’d been smooching her pillow.

  “You need something firmer, fleshier. Say . . .” He held up the fruit. “This plum.”

  “Yes?” she whispered, barely breathing.

  Her gaze hooked on to his face, mainly to keep from gawking at his naked chest as her adolescent hormones sent a million sensory messages galloping through her brain, none of them sane.

  “It’s perfect for your purposes.” Ryder’s mossy green eyes glistened, laser emeralds. “Plump and juicy, just like your lips.”

  Her lips?

  She gasped inwardly, and forced herself not to reach up and finger her mouth. Was he talking about her lips in particular or was he simply referring to the collective “you” as in everyone’s lips, all lips?

  “Okay,” she whispered, her voice coming out like warm mist. At this point she would have whispered okay to anything he said.

  “Is there anyone in particular you’re practicing for?”

  You.

  “No,” she lied. “Just general all-round kissing. I figure it’s probably a good skill to have, now that I’m in high school.”

  He nodded his head like that made sense, but narrowed his eyes. “No guy in sophomore biology class got you hot and bothered?”

&nbs
p; The guy she wanted was in senior chemistry.

  She shook her head vigorously, afraid he could see right through her. It didn’t matter. A cool guy like Ryder would never look twice at her. If she weren’t Joe’s little sister, he probably wouldn’t even bother talking to her.

  “Katie?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Are you paying attention?” he asked.

  Oh yeah. If a flash fire broke out, she’d get burned to a crisp because she couldn’t focus her attention on anything else but him.

  He had a reputation as a bad boy. She knew that. Had heard the rumors about the girls he kissed and other things he’d done. But that was not the Ryder she knew. Around the Cheek household, he was always kind, considerate, helpful . . .

  Until right this minute.

  Now, Katie saw that other side of him. The side that skipped school, and sassed teachers, and sneaked off to the bushes behind the school with whatever girl he had on his arm that day.

  How many times she’d longed to be that girl!

  “You watching?”

  “Yes.” She breathed in a shallow rush.

  “Soften your lips like this.” He demonstrated, opening his mouth slightly, parting his teeth, and giving her a glimpse of his pink tongue.

  She felt a hot thrill between her thighs, in the very core of her. Entranced, Katie couldn’t move, couldn’t even swallow. Part of her wanted to ask him to step out of her bedroom, but she couldn’t unhinge her jaw in order to get the words out.

  And then there was that other part of her that wanted to dispense with pillows and fruit altogether, fling herself into his arms, and kiss him like mad. But she was just a kid and he was her older brother’s best friend looking at her like she was the funniest thing he’d seen all week.

  Leisurely, he lifted the plum to his mouth.

  OMG, Katie’s own mouth was tingling. His lips hovered over the plum. Anticipation stole her breath, left her hanging, stunned and breathless.

  Finally, after what seemed forever, his mouth came down on the smooth, red skin, and all the blood in Katie’s body swamped to her pelvis. Deep inside she felt something tighten. Something she’d never felt before. It was both scary and glorious.

  What she wouldn’t give to be that piece of fruit!

  “The best first kisses are soft and gentle,” he narrated. “A quick, light touch down and then an immediate lift off.”

  “I see.” Her throat narrowed to the width of a coffee straw and she could barely draw in air. “What about after?”

  “After what?” He looked at her through sultry, half-closed eyelids fringed by jet black lashes.

  Katie gulped. “Um . . . you know . . . after that first kiss.”

  “Good question.” Humor simmered in those amazing green eyes, and the plum in his hand was shiny with moisture. “Are we talking a second kiss that immediately follows the first or a second kiss on a different occasion?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Oh yeah.” His voice was deep, throaty.

  Katie shivered.

  “You cold?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she lied. She was burning up.

  He stepped to her closet.

  Katie stood eyes wide, mouth hanging open, tense and thrilled and wondering what in the world he was up to. Her knees couldn’t hold her up any longer, and she sank down onto a corner of the mattress.

  He opened the door, peered in. Laughed.

  “What?”

  “I knew you were organized, but this . . .” He waved a hand inside her closet.

  Feeling embarrassed, she drew her knees to her chest, hugged them, rested her cheek on her knees, and looked away. She knew what he saw. Everything labeled, pressed, color-coded, neatly folded or hanging on wooden hangers, the garments a perfect half inch apart. She measured with a ruler. Being neat made her feel in control, and as the youngest in a boisterous family of six children, she often felt out of control.

  “OCD much?” he quipped.

  Friendly as it was, his criticism hurt. Cold shame seeped through her bones. She respected his opinion, and didn’t want him to think less of her.

  “But I like it.” He nodded. “After living with my stepmother in hoarder heaven, this closet is my idea of paradise.”

  She raised her head, skin heated, heart warmed by his analogy. Her closet equaled paradise.

  He took out her favorite pink sweater, and came across the room to drape it over her shoulder. As he settled the sweater in place, his fingers lightly skimmed her shoulders.

  Her stomach wobbled, and she forgot to breathe. Oh geez, oh wow, oh holy cow.

  “How’s that?” he asked, and patted her gently.

  She had no voice, could not speak with him standing so close to her, touching her. He’d never touched her like this before. Oh sure, he’d slapped her palm in a high-five, or accidentally bumped her foot underneath the dinner table. But never so intimately, never when they were alone.

  Katie realized then that she’d not ever actually been in a room alone with him. It felt like nine hundred kinds of wrong, and it made her heart pound so hard she could feel blood rushing through her head in a rhythmic throb of fast-paced, strobe-light energy.

  His scent, part sweat, part ripe-plum sunshine, part peppermint from the gum he liked to chew. Did he taste of peppermint too?

  He stepped back, looked jarred and out of place. He still held the plum clutched in his hand.

  She cleared her throat, trying to clear away the dizziness of his nearness.

  He tossed the plum in the air, caught it.

  “The second kiss?” she prompted.

  He touched the top of his tongue to the center of his upper lip, to the sweet part that bowed out slightly. “If the second kiss occurs after the first, you open your mouth a little wider, and lean in again.”

  “Show me,” she said.

  He winced, and a downdraft of fear passed through her. Was he upset?

  “Oh.” He blinked. “You meant on the plum?”

  “Of c-c-course I meant on the plum,” she stammered, realizing he thought she wanted him to demonstrate on her. She snorted for emphasis, mainly to still the rapid pounding. “You didn’t think I wanted you to kiss me, did you?”

  She added a laugh to show how silly that idea was, but it came out sounding kind of maniacal, like a cartoon villain plotting to rule the world.

  “Um . . . no, no, of course not.” He looked relieved.

  His relief made her stomach churn. For sure he didn’t want to kiss her. She was an ugly duckling, and he was the most handsome boy in high school. Her face burned. She wanted out of this conversation.

  Now.

  “I really don’t know where Mom left those extra bushel baskets,” she said. “But I could go look.”

  “Ditching your kissing lessons?”

  “You don’t . . .” She stirred the air between them with her hand. “This is silly.”

  “No sillier than you kissing your pillow.”

  “That’s my point. It’s all silly.”

  “You say that now. Until you’re in a position to kiss someone you’ve been crushing on. Then you’ll wish you paid more attention.”

  God if he only knew. Whenever Ryder was around, her attention was devoted to him, and him alone.

  “Okay.” She nodded like a serious student. “I’m listening. What more do I need to know?”

  “Apply light pressure and suck.”

  “Suck?” she whispered so softly she wasn’t sure he heard her.

  “Just a little. Not as if you’re trying to get a thick milk shake through a thin straw. More like you’re trying to breathe him in. Watch.” His mouth was on the plum again, that ripe, plump fruit.

  A warm, tickling sensation started in the pit of her stomach, sank low and heavy as she watched him kiss the plum. It was a feeling she didn’t fully understand, but it pushed up through her, from the bottom of her feet, spreading like rolling thunder to her spine.

  And th
en something wild and crazy happened.

  Or rather, she went wild and crazy.

  Propelled by the novel feelings coursing through her, Katie launched herself at him.

  Ryder was so startled he lost his balance. The plum flew from his hand and splatted against the wall, and he fell back on the floor with a loud thump, and she was lying on top of him.

  And she’d gone at him like a feral animal—hard, lusty, and rapid-fire. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.

  A tommy-gun attack of kisses.

  Cheeks.

  Nose.

  Forehead.

  Chin.

  Mouth. She kissed him smack-dab on the mouth.

  Justifiably, Ryder freaked, jumped up, dumped her off his lap, and ran out the door as fast as he could run without a backward glance. The following day, he’d moved out of her parents’ garage apartment, and joined the army. That’s how badly he wanted to get away from her.

  Embarrassment, bright and hot, burned through her, and she felt the wasabi sting again as she smacked back down into her adult body.

  “Katie?” asked Ryder.

  She blinked.

  His concerned voice wasn’t coming to her from the past. They were not in her childhood bedroom, but here in LA, at some nutty Christmas charity event in a strange museum.

  He was still lying on top of her, pinning her to the ground. And, oh my Lord, he had an erection. A very big, hard erection.

  Ryder stared into her eyes and she stared into his and she could tell that he knew she knew he had a boner. But he didn’t look the least bit embarrassed about it, and she was blushing enough for both of them.

  “Katie Cheek, is that really you?” He sounded incredulous.

  “Yes,” she whispered, happy to feel his erection ebbing.

  “Holy hell, woman, what’s wrong with your chest? You look like you’ve been dragged through a sticker patch and dipped in boiling water.”

  “Oh that.” She splayed a hand over tender skin smeared with green goop. “It’s the reason I was headed for the bathroom when you tackled me. Why did you tackle me?”

  A muscular twenty-five-year-old in a tight black T-shirt, who looked as if could have been The Rock’s stunt double, leaned over Ryder’s shoulder to stare down at her. “That’s not Ketchum’s stalker.”