Home for the Holidays Read Online Free PDF

it sounded?  This man who had been the boy she’d wanted since she knew how to want?  The boy who’d watched her get linked to every one of his three brothers?
    “Really,” he smiled.  “Beth, don’t you remember?”  His face was so dark, his eyes so narrowed, his lips so full and half-open, she didn’t need to ask him what he meant.  Until now, she always thought she dreamed it.
    “Yes,” she said.  “I do.”
    “It was only a week or two before the thing with Mark.  I always wanted to wait, ‘til you were finished with school.”
    Beth smiled.  “And you were back from...the place.”
    He nodded , and his face flushed slightly.  “I’d cleaned up my act.  It was kinda hard, growing up without parents.  Pa did his best, but...”
    She nodded.  She knew how it had been for him. For all of them. No wonder they were so wild.
    “But I was different by then,” he said.  “And so I came to you, that night.”
    “I remember,” she said.  “What did you want?”
    She remembered it so well. He stood there, outside Sweethearts, the little cafe she’d been working in over the break.  Wearing his best jeans and lace-up shoes. 
    He leaned on the streetlight and asked her how she was.  She’d been so tongue-tied, so over-awed by the fact of him, there in front of her, talking to her, she hadn’t been able to say anything.
    He ran his fingers through his hair. “I wanted to ask you out.  I had a whole speech prepared.”
    She frowned. “But you didn’t.”
    “No.” He said it quietly.
    “Why not?” Good God, why not? How different might everything have been if he had just asked her?
    He looked frankly into her face. “Because you blanked me.”
    “No, I didn’t.” No way.
    “You did.  And then after Mark.  Well, I figured maybe it was him you wanted...”
    “I was nervous,” Beth said.  “So nervous.”
    Jim leaned closer – slowly, slowly.  Like he was afraid Beth might bolt if he made a sudden movement. 
    But Beth wasn’t going anywhere. 
    She’d wanted this for twelve years.
    Her mouth opened even before his lips touched hers.  And when they did, every nerve ending stood up and sang an aria.  His lips were sweet and hot and pushed against hers.  When his tongue slid inside her mouth, her tummy slipped and swooned like the teenage girl she had been, watching him leaning on the lamp-post in his lace-up shoes, waiting to ask her out.
    He kissed her and kissed her like he was never going to stop.  And her skin responded, lighting up under his attention.
    His big hands held her face, and then an arm slipped around her back and dragged her down under him on the couch.
    The hot press of his body on hers was heavy and satisfying.  She wondered if Beth would approve of her necking with this man here, on her father’s couch.
    Then she realised she didn’t give a damn.
    Lizzie wanted Jim. And Beth was just going to have to lie back and enjoy the ride.
    Before she had time to form a coherent thought, Jim moved off her.  Her body protested his absence bitchily, and her eyes fluttered open to see what manner of offence might have caused him to do something so cruel.  But it was okay.  He was still there, standing in front of her, the zipper of his jeans agonisingly at eye level.  Before she could ask what he was doing, he slid his arms under her and picked her up.  His chest was warm and his breath ragged.  He carefully kneeled and brought her onto the rug on the floor, laying her down in front of the fire.
    “I want to kiss you here, on this rug, in front of the fire,” he said, his voice satisfyingly raspy.  Before she could say you can kiss me wherever you want , he spoke again. “I’ve been thinking about doing it since I stepped in here yesterday. I want to see your face properly, in the firelight.”
    She lay back on the thick shag, her mother’s one nod towards decadence, and closed her eyes again.  “You look like a sculpture,” he said, his voice hoarse.