Christine Rimmer - Married Till Christmas

“What now, Nellie?” he asked, his voice so gentle suddenly, the intimate sound tugging on a tender place inside her, a place she used to be so certain he had killed stone dead all those years ago.

Why wouldn’t it die? This...feeling she had for him, this stupid, impossible yearning for a man who had turned his back on her twice after promising she would always be the only one for him?

He just stood there now, close enough to reach out and touch, waiting for her to make her next move. Oh, she just ached to open her mouth and yell at him to leave her alone, get the hell away from her. But yelling would not only bring security running, it would be admitting that he was actually getting to her.

Which he was. And which he knew already. She could see that in his gleaming, watchful eyes.

It was bad enough that he knew. Losing her temper over it would only prove how powerfully he affected her. “Who told you I would be here?”

“Have dinner with me and we can talk about that.” He took a step closer.

“Forget dinner.” She stepped back. The ficus tree was right behind her. A trailing branch brushed her shoulder. “And I already know the answer to my question. Garrett told you I was here, am I right?” Her brother and partner in Bravo Construction liked Deck, damn it. Plus, there was the big, high-end house Deck had hired BC to build. Generally speaking, it was good business for Garrett to help an important client get what he wanted—but not when what he wanted was another chance with Nell. Garrett had no right to take a customer’s side against his business partner, who also happened to be his own flesh and blood. “I’m going to kill Garrett.”

Deck stuck his hands in his pockets. She read the move as an attempt to look easygoing and harmless. As if. “It wasn’t Garrett,” he said.

“Then who?”

“Your mother told me.”

Now Nell really wanted to start yelling. Willow Bravo had turned into a matchmaking nightmare over the past couple of years. She’d become obsessed with seeing her children married and settled down. At least until now Willow had shown the good sense to leave Nell out of all that crap.

But, one by one, Willow’s other four grown children had found marital bliss. That meant only Nell remained single and Willow just couldn’t let well enough alone.

“You pumped my mother for information about me?” Nell kept her voice low, but barely.

“Whoa. Settle down.”

“That’s just plain wrong.”

“True,” he said with zero remorse. “When it comes to you, I’ll do whatever I have to do. But I didn’t go to your mother. She called me. She said she hasn’t forgotten how much you loved me once.”

Nell pressed her lips together and expelled an outraged breath through her nose. “Admit it. She called you after you let her know that you’ve been trying to get something going with me.”

“Think about it, Nellie.” He looked way too pleased with himself. “How could she not know that I’ve been chasing you?”

He had a point.

In recent months, Deck had made himself famous in their hometown of Justice Creek with his relentless pursuit of her. He’d started his campaign to get her attention by going to the places she went—her brother Quinn’s fitness center, her half sister Elise’s bakery for coffee early in the morning and her friend Rye McKellan’s pub. His constant presence at McKellan’s had really annoyed her. She not only liked to hang out there—she lived above the pub in the loft next door to Rye’s.

After a month or so of turning up just about everywhere she went, he’d called her and asked her straight out for a date.

She’d said, “Absolutely not and do not call me again.”

He hadn’t called again. But he had shown up at Bravo Construction to ask her to build his new house. She’d handed him over to Garrett.

Then he’d begun showering her with flowers and gifts. She’d refused to accept them. He’d hired a skywriter to blaze their names in a heart across the Colorado sky. She’d pretended not to notice.

Every time he would come up with a new way to get her attention, she would shut him right down. She’d never imagined he’d follow her all the way to Sin City.

Yet, here he was again.

“I’ll be having a serious talk with my mother,” she said. “And you should be ashamed of yourself, pumping her for information about my whereabouts when I have told you repeatedly that once was more than enough when it comes to you—I mean, twice when you count how you came back to me after breaking up with me, only to break up with me all over again.”

“I’ll say it once more. I didn’t pump your mother for information. She called me and volunteered it. And as for me dumping you, that was more than a decade ago. It was high school. We were only kids. I was messed up and not ready. We’re different people now.”

“No, we’re not. I’m still the girl who would have taken a bullet for your sorry ass. And you’re the guy who fooled me twice. That’s two times too many.” And yet, here she was, backed up against a ficus tree, arguing with him when there was supposed to be nothing she had to say to him.

And he still wouldn’t give it up. “If you won’t have dinner with me, how about a drink? We can discuss how much you despise me in comfort—and in depth.”

“I never said I despise you,” she muttered grudgingly. Was she weakening? Oh, all right. Maybe a little. She added more firmly, “You just need to catch a flight back to Justice Creek and leave me the hell alone.”

“One drink, Nell.” The man had some kind of radar. He knew he was getting to her. “One drink won’t kill you. And I get it. You don’t want to be seen out with me. You don’t want anyone to imagine you might be thinking of giving me another chance.”

“Because I’m not.”

“But look at it this way.” He lowered his already velvety tone even more, down to an intimate, just-you-and-me growl. “This is Vegas and you’ve heard what they say about Vegas. No one ever has to know...”

It was a really bad idea and she needed to walk away.

But she just couldn’t help comparing him to Ron the tile man—to every man she met, as a matter of fact. He wasn’t the guy for her, but he was kind of her gold standard of what a man should be—well, aside from the way he’d smashed her heart to bits two times running.

No, she couldn’t trust him. But he was hot and funny and smart. He was that perfect combination, the one she couldn’t resist: a big, down-to-earth blue-collar guy with a really sharp brain. And he’d been after her for months now.

Okay, it made her feel like a fool to admit it, but lately she’d been having these crazy urges to go ahead and let him catch her.

She wouldn’t, of course. He would never catch her again.

But it was Friday night in Vegas, and going back to her room seemed beyond depressing. Friday night in the second week of November and she was alone when all of her siblings were happily married—half siblings, too—and there were four of those.

She was the only single Bravo left in Justice Creek. Too soon, it would be Thanksgiving and then it would be Christmas, with all those family get-togethers where everyone would be coupled up but her. Even her aggravating widowed mother was getting remarried.

And, one of these days, Nell wanted to be married, too.

Unfortunately, only once in her life had she found a guy who really made it happen for her. That guy was standing in front of her now. And he just wouldn’t let it go. He kept coming after her. With him constantly popping up every time she turned around, how was she supposed to stop comparing every guy she met to him?

It just wasn’t right. It needed to stop.

But running away from him had gotten her nowhere.