Moira Rogers: A Peyton Family Christmas

His throat felt tight. “Time,” he agreed gruffly. “I can give her that. As much as she needs.”

“Yeah.” Nick laid her head on his shoulder. “This is a start. We‟re not right next door anymore, but we‟re still here for her.”

We. God, he loved that word. Loved knowing that Nick would take care of Kat as surely as he‟d fight for Michelle. The truest kind of comfort, having someone he could trust with the people most important to him. “When I left, she was teaching your sister about laptop motherboards.”

“She was not .”

“She must have had the screwdriver in her back pocket or something.

Pieces of Michelle‟s computer are all over the table.”

Nick‟s soft laugh tickled his skin, a precursor to the gentle scrape of her teeth. “How long do you think it‟ll keep them occupied?”

Over a month with her in his bed, and the barest touch still stirred him.

“Not nearly long enough for everything I want to do with you.”

“Obviously, you should make a list and start prioritizing.” She laughed again. “I‟m way ahead of you on that, because there‟s one thing I want to do more than anything else.”

She kissed him, not an easy peck or a slow exploration, but a kiss blazing with a need that took him back to the earliest days, when instinct rode every touch and the mating urge boiled over without warning, leaving them helpless in the grip of desire.

Not so different than how it felt as he groaned and eased her higher, lips parting over hers. Except it wasn‟t just the mating instinct now, but also affection and love, which magnified every touch until she threw her head back with a shaky groan.

“We have to go back,” she muttered. “And if we don‟t go now, we won’t . I swear to God, I‟ll tie you to the bed and keep you there for a week.”

Derek eased her to the ground, not because her idea didn‟t sound good, but because it sounded damn good—and now wasn‟t the time to give in to temptation. “I‟m taking the SUV into town tomorrow so Kat can do some shopping. Do you need anything while we‟re there?”

“Can you pick something up for me at the post office?”

“Sure.” See? He could talk to her. Have nice, easy discussions where no one‟s pants came off. So what if he had to take a step back to make sure it stayed that way? “Did you order something?”

“Mmm, sort of. It‟ll be addressed to you, but don‟t open it.” She smiled, the expression tinged with nervousness. “It‟s your Christmas gift.”

“How mysterious.” He chanced another kiss, a quick peck this time, and jerked his head toward the door. “Come on, let‟s go save your sister and the rest of the electronics.”

“Shit.” Nick snatched back her hand and examined her fingers. That was the third time she‟d almost sliced off her fingernail with the gift wrap cutter.

“Do you know how to work this thing? I‟m going to lose a digit.”

“Here.” Michelle held out her hand without looking, most of her attention on the perfectly wrapped gift in front of her. “I did this every year, you know.

Wrapped dozens of gifts.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.” After depositing the cutter next to her growing stack of presents, Michelle flipped the current gift over and reached for a length of wide ribbon. “I bought presents for all of the people directly under the Alpha‟s offices. Spouses and children, too, for the ones we worked with a lot.”

Nick had always bought people fruit-of-the-month subscriptions or arranged for gift baskets. “I‟m bad at this holiday stuff.”

“No, you‟re not.” With deft movements, her sister wound the ribbon around the flat box and tied it, leaving two trailing ends. It looked like something she‟d done often enough to relegate the movements to absentminded habit. “I always overdid it a little because it was one of the few things I could do. Shop online, wrap everything in the penthouse. It was my quiet, silly rebellion—giving the secretary‟s son an iPod because they never paid her enough to be able to afford one.”

“It doesn‟t sound silly at all.” Nick picked up a small box and twirled it between her hands. “Together, we can knock this stuff out. You‟re good at presents, and I‟m good at parties. We‟ve got it handled.”

“The best Christmas ever,” Michelle agreed. She finished the bow and twisted in her chair. “Except...I don‟t know what to give Luciano. It‟s all so...”

She trailed off.

Marriages of convenience had to be sticky under the best of circumstances, and this was much, much more complicated. “Do you want to give him something?” Nick asked carefully.

“It‟s the right thing to do.”

“I didn‟t ask that. I asked if you wanted to.”

Michelle‟s hand dropped to her abdomen, where a loose sweater still managed to hide signs of her pregnancy. “Yes. And no.”

There were no guidelines here, and Emily Post had never written about what to do in a situation like Michelle‟s. “You just have to do what feels right, honey. The most right, anyway, whatever that ends up being.”

“He gave me my own rooms. He bought a new car, he built a crib, he‟s even baby-proofing his ranch for a child who‟s not his own.” Michelle gestured helplessly to the table, where plenty of unwrapped presents towered on the far end. “Everything I buy for him ends up seeming shallow. Stupid.”

“Well, here‟s your problem.” Nick rose and walked over to pick through the pile of gifts. “You can‟t pay him back for doing those things with a new GPS system. You can‟t pay him back for it at all. That‟s not the way it works.”

“No, I suppose not.” Michelle sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Every time I feel grateful to him, I feel guilty. Like I‟m not missing Aaron enough.”

“They‟re two entirely different things,” Nick asserted gently. “I‟m grateful for what Luciano‟s done, but that has nothing to do with where my heart lies.”

“Rationally, I understand. Emotionally?” She laughed, sounding a little tired. “Can I blame pregnancy hormones? I don‟t feel very rational about anything right now.”

“Blame anything you want. Hell...” Nick nodded toward the bay window, where the snow outside glowed gently in the dim light. “Blame it on the moon.”

“It is pretty tonight. It‟s always pretty here, though. And peaceful.”

When Michelle said it like that, Nick couldn‟t tell if she truly appreciated the peace, or if it was just a nice way of saying boring . “Do you miss New York at all?”

“No.” It came out too fast, and Nick could tell Michelle realized it. Her sister closed her eyes and shrugged helplessly. “I miss the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Aaron always used to find an excuse for us to be there for the lighting ceremony. But everything I miss, I miss because of him, so I don‟t want to be there anyway.”

Nick went to her and curled an arm around her shoulders. “Maybe next year. Surely we could visit Dad for that.”

But Michelle shook her head. “I‟m not taking my son to New York while the Conclave is there. Not for Dad, not for anyone. He can be a normal kid here.”

“All right.” Her sister‟s pain was palpable, but so was her resolve. “What do we have left to wrap?”

“The digital camera can go to Kat. Unless you think she‟d like a Kindle? We could give her both...” Michelle rose and circled around the table to retrieve a flat package wrapped in brown paper, which she set on the table. “I had this made too,” she said, sounding a little uncertain as she pulled a framed picture from the wrapping. “One of the ranch hands took it in for me last month.”