HE DID NOT EXPECT HOLLY TO KISS HIM. h.e.l.l, THAT WAS the last thing he expected. And his initial reaction was a sudden, desperate urge to jump out of that bed and run for the door.

He didn't act on it quickly enough, though, and so the second urge stepped up to the plate. And that one was to wrap his arms around her and pull her close and kiss her right back.

Which was totally idiotic.

And yet, he did it. He rolled toward her, twisted his arms around her tiny waist, pulled her close to him, so her chest was pressed to his, and opened his mouth to feed from hers. And she opened hers, too, and he let his tongue caress those lips and she opened farther to welcome it inside. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n, he was on fire all of the sudden. And it was dumb and made no sense whatsoever.

Finally, he lifted his head back a little, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. "I, um...this isn't a good idea, Holly."

"I think it's a really good idea," she said. "Life's too short not to embrace gifts like this. And this is a gift, Matthew. Don't think for one minute it's anything less."

"I don't even know you."

She shrugged. "You're about to."

He was tempted. Sorely tempted. This was like some fantasy out of the Penthouse Forum. But it wasn't a fantasy. It was real, and she was real, and there were real reasons not to sleep with someone you didn't know. Particularly without protection.

And that, he thought, was the one argument that might save him. Both from her persistence and his own weakness.

"We don't have any-"

"Yes, we do."

He blinked at her. She smiled at him, her head resting on the pillow, her eyes sparkling with firelight. "You know how I was saying before that it always pays to be prepared?"

"Uh-huh." It was a croak.

"Well?"

"I, um...I'm not looking for-"

"Let's not question this, okay? Let's not a.n.a.lyze it or talk about it or, G.o.d forbid, waste it. Let's just enjoy it. Right now. In the moment. Can we do that?"

He had yet to meet a woman capable of any such thing. Then again, he thought, he had yet to meet a woman quite like this one.

"I can do that," he said softly. And now he got a little braver, reached out with his fingers to stroke a wisp of a blond curl from her cheek. And then he paused with that curl in his fingers, rubbing it. So soft. And her cheek, even softer. "Can you?"

"I've spent my entire life living in the moment. It's the only way I got through, sometimes."

He felt the surprise rinse through him at that admission-the admission that she had ever been less than perfectly happy. It was something he didn't imagine she let a lot of people see. And then he looked at her, really looked at her, and he saw beyond the happy, new age, positive-energy-spouting hippie. He saw a woman who'd been gutted, just like he had been. She was empty, and searching for something to fill that emptiness. She was vulnerable and needier than she knew. And right now, what she needed was him.

Unfortunately, he couldn't handle being quite that needed.

He stroked her cheek once more, then leaned closer, and pressed his lips to it. "I can't, Holly. I'm sorry."

Her eyes slammed closed. White teeth bit down on her lower lip. She rolled onto her back and flung a forearm over her face, probably to hide it from him. "It's okay. I understand."

"I'll probably regret it for the rest of my life, if that's any consolation."

"It's not, 'cause I will, too."

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"You should be."

"It's not that I'm not...attracted to you."

"Well, duh."

He frowned at her-well, toward her. She still had her arm over her face. "I don't follow."

"By 'well, duh,' I mean, 'obviously you're attracted to me' and 'who wouldn't be, anyway?'"

"Any man in his right mind would be," he said. "Maybe I just see more than they would."

"Suddenly the Grinch is Mister Insight?" she asked. "This oughtta be good."

"Would be, but I'm not going there. You going to be able to sleep?"

"Not much else to do," she replied. Then she rolled onto her side, away from him, punched her pillow as if it had done something to make her very angry, and lay still.

"I'm sorry, Holly."

"Stop saying that."

He sighed, tried to relax into the pillow, and closed his eyes. But he wasn't a bit sleepy. Mostly, his mind was busy conjuring what it would have been like. What he could have been doing, right then, instead of lying there, bored, wide-awake, and turned on in spite of himself.

Yep. He was an idiot.

EVENTUALLY, SHE SLEPT. SHE WASN'T SURE HOW. SHE'D been pretty much embarra.s.sed to the roots of her hair to have offered herself to him so blatantly, only to have him turn her down cold.

d.a.m.n. She'd thought she had more s.e.x appeal than that.

At any rate, she lay there stewing and frustrated until, finally, sleep had claimed her. And it seemed that sleep had its own ideas about what the two of them would and would not be doing in the comfort of the sofa bed.

Because when she opened her eyes, and she saw him opening his, they were lying, face to face. Close enough to kiss. They were tangled together. Her arms were around his neck. His were around her waist. Her leg was over his, his upper one was in between hers.

And before she could move, he was kissing her. Eyes falling closed, mouth moving to capture hers, arms curling tighter, pulling her closer.

"You don't have to..." she whispered when his lips slid from hers to her neck. And once he started kissing her neck, it was all over. That was her weak spot, right there. She thought wildly that she even liked his morning breath. It wasn't bad. Just real. Raw.

"I have to," he muttered against her skin. "Trust me, I have to."

She didn't have to be told twice. She arched her hips toward his, and he pushed back, then pressed her onto her back and slid his hand down the front of her pajama bottoms. She scrambled out of them to give him better access. Then she tugged at his clothes as they kissed some more, wrestling his T-shirt over his head. He pulled her pajama top free of its b.u.t.tons, pushed it off her shoulders. And then his mouth was moving from hers, down her neck to her chest. She shivered when he found her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, mouthed them, suckled them.

Pleasure shot through her like fire through a dry forest. Heat so intense she thought she might go up in flames. He touched her, then his hand slid between her legs, not hesitantly, not timidly, but eagerly. And he groaned at the heat and wetness he felt there.

She arched against his hand, silently pleading for more, and he didn't make her wait. He rolled on top of her, slid inside her, and she quivered and sighed as he filled her. The sensation grabbed hold and wouldn't let go. She tipped her hips up to his and took all of him, until he drove the very breath from her lungs. And then again and again. He kept on kissing her the entire time they twisted and writhed and pressed into each other. Straining, reaching, taking, and giving. And all the while his mouth took hers. He kissed her as if he loved kissing her. As if he didn't want to stop. No man had ever done that before-kissed her all the way through s.e.x. Open-mouthed, hungry, wet kisses. As if he wanted to devour her. As if he couldn't get enough.

It made her feel more wanted than she had ever felt in her life. And she wondered where he'd been hiding all this pa.s.sion, all this fire. Thank G.o.d he wasn't hiding it now.

His hands slid underneath her backside, to hold her to him, tilt her up to take him, and he drove even deeper, and faster, and his kisses became more desperate. He was pushing her toward climax, and she reached for it, ached for it. And then, suddenly, he pulled back just slightly, tried to slow his pace.

"No," she whispered. "No, Matthew, don't stop."

"But I'm-"

"So am I."

She clutched his hips and rode him, moving against him as the wave crested, and crashed to the sh.o.r.e. Her entire body shuddered in sweet anguished ecstasy. She clung and she cried out, and then he was doing the same as he drove deep and held there, throbbing inside her.

They clung that way for a long time, and he kissed her again and again as her body sank into the most relaxed state of bliss she had ever felt. He withdrew after a time, rolling onto his side, pulling her close into his arms. She snuggled against him, content and sated.

Moments ticked past. Long moments as her body just hummed.

"We're very different people, you and I," he said eventually.

She stayed where she was, warm and cozy in his arms. "We have a lot in common, too, though. Not that I'm saying we have to, or-"

"I know." He sighed. She felt the rise and fall of his chest, his breath in her hair. Maybe she wasn't entirely sated just yet, she thought with a secret smile. "We had similar tragedies, centered around the holidays, when we were kids. But we reacted in entirely different ways."

"Will you tell me now? About that first Christmas without your dad?"

He was silent for a long moment. So long she began to think he wasn't going to answer her at all. And then he said, "Dad had this hat. This old felt hat he wore everywhere."

"Not a fedora," she whispered.

"Yeah. A black felt fedora. He always told me he'd give it to me one day. Like it was some kind of an heirloom or something. It was an inside joke between us."

"That's incredibly special."

"My mother sold it, along with all his things, to a secondhand shop so she could use the money to buy us kids Christmas presents."

"Oh, no."

"Yeah. It was just a stupid hat. But it meant something to me. I don't even remember what she bought me that year. Just that the hat was gone, and we couldn't get it back. And it got to me. I guess I resented Christmas over that, as much as anything else."

"I don't blame you. It must have been like losing that one last little piece of him."

She felt him nod. "That's exactly what it was like." He hugged her a little tighter. "Maybe it would have been easier if I believed...like you do. If he'd-I don't know-talked to me or showed up in a dream or sent me some kind of unmistakable sign, you know? But to me, it was like he was just gone. Just...gone."

"But he's not."

"See, that's where we're different. I don't really believe that."

"You're the kind of man who has to see things, touch them, to believe them," she said. "But I know your dad's not gone. I've been there, don't forget. And I'll bet he has sent you signs-you're just not seeing them. Because you're not looking for them. And you're not looking for them because you don't believe they exist. You think seeing is believing. But I know you have to believe first. Then you start to see."

He lifted his head and looked down at her. She met his eyes and smiled softly. He said, "I like you, Holly. In spite of myself, I think. But um...this-"

"Isn't going anywhere," she finished for him. "Because it's impossible. Because you have to go back to your life in Detroit, and I have to go back to my aunt in Binghamton. And because of a thousand other reasons. We don't have to go there tonight, though, do we? Let's just enjoy this for what it is, and not worry about what it isn't. That's what we both said we would do, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"So can I tell you something before we go to sleep?"

"Sure."

"That was the best s.e.x I've ever had."

His smile was instant and full, and she thought, pretty d.a.m.n self-satisfied. But he didn't return the compliment. He was probably afraid to, afraid she'd read too much into it if he did. But she wasn't going to put up with that. She jabbed him in the ribs a little. "You're supposed to say it was good for you, too, you know."

He snuggled down beside her. "It-"

His words were interrupted by the roar of a motor, and then a horrible crash and the sound of crunching metal. They both sat up in bed, stunned into immobility for just a second. Then they were scrambling for their clothes, lighting lamps. She ran to the window and looked out to see headlights, and the outline of a flatbed truck at a c.o.c.keyed angle off the side of the road, its nose crushed against a tree. The back of it was loaded with something, and covered in a white tarp.

"Oh, no."

Matthew was pulling on his boots, then his coat. "I'll see if the driver's okay."

"I'll grab the first aid kit and be right out," she told him, rushing for her own boots as he headed out the door. "G.o.d, who would try to drive in this?"

MATTHEW WAS WORRIED, AND TO BE HONEST, d.a.m.n GLAD of the distraction, as he tromped through a good two feet of snow toward the wreck. Maybe the driver would be unharmed and would shack up with the two of them for the remainder of the storm. Maybe having a third party there would keep him from making any more asinine blunders like the one he'd made tonight.

Sure, Holly said it didn't have to mean anything. But he'd never met a woman yet who could have s.e.x and not want it to mean something. And yeah, she was different from any woman he'd ever met before. But at the core, women were women.

And she had some kind of effect on him. Because d.a.m.n, he had never had s.e.x that good. And he never ever talked about that stupid hat. At least he never had, until tonight.

He hoped the driver was okay. And he hoped the guy would stay for a while.

As he neared the truck, the driver's door opened, and a man clambered out.

"Hey, are you okay?" Matthew called.

"Yeah, fine, fine." The man walked toward him, shaking his head. "I really thought I could make it through. Should have known better, but h.e.l.l, tomorrow's Christmas Eve."

As he spoke, he zipped up his parka, pulled up the hood, turned to look in the direction he'd been driving. "Well, it's only another half mile. My place is just around the next bend in the road. Guess I'm hoofing it from here."

"You can't be serious."

"d.a.m.n straight I'm serious. I've got a wife and kids waiting on me."

"Look, at least wait until daylight. It can't be more than an hour away," Matthew said. "If another vehicle comes along, you could end up dead."

"Matthew's right," Holly called. Matt turned to see her hurrying closer, all bundled up from head to toe, her first aid kit in one hand. "Come into the house. We've got a warm fire. I'll make you some hot cocoa, and when it gets light, you can be on your way."

He rubbed his chin. "I don't know. I was due in hours ago. She's gonna be worried."