He grinned quick, a flash of white teeth. More predator than friend. “Nah.”
I licked dry lips, more nervous than ever. “I’m not going on a date with you.”
His tongue dragged over his bottom lip. “I’ve already decided that you are, actually.”
“You can’t—”
His lips were on mine before I could finish my sentence, soft and warm and so very delicious. He towered over me. I had to tip my head back to reach him. He was so big, so consuming. And I wasn’t just tiny compared to him, I was fragile in his arms, delicate and soft and . . . vulnerable. Yet somehow it felt good to stand here and kiss him, kiss the man I’d grown up loving.
His teeth grazed my bottom lip and I gasped at the bite, the sting quickly made better by the swipe of his tongue. He took the opening and slid that tongue into my mouth, deepening the kiss. We were all taste and sensation and hypnotic push and pull.
His hand on the side of my face glided around to the nape of my neck, cradling my head as he dipped me backward and ravaged my mouth. His strong, broad chest pressed against mine. His legs and mine intertwined. We were fully dressed and upright, but the kiss was something intimate and sacred, so much more than two separate bodies touching. We were coiled together, giving in to each other, letting go, letting something unfurl that neither of us could tame.
I let him have his way with me. Iwantedhim to have his way with me. Maybe I would never have admitted that out loud, but our one kiss from all those years ago was my favorite fantasy to visit. Even if the night ended in disaster.
One of his hands landed on my hip, squeezing tightly, before slipping under my baggy sweatshirt to press rough fingertips against my bare skin. We both shivered at the contact.
He kissed me long and thoroughly until I was gasping for breath and wondering if we should take our clothes off now? Or wait until we weren’t in a bathroom.
But there were too many Meyers in this house to get too naked. And when Cooper banged on the door and shouted, “Are you two done yet?” at us, I pulled back, red-cheeked and bubbling over with embarrassment.
“Oh, my gosh.” I rubbed my swollen lips, desperate to settle my racing heart.
Sam only smiled gently at me. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow. After school.”
It was only after he left me alone in the bathroom that I noticed Linda had hung mistletoe from the wall sconces near the oval mirror. Also, for what it was worth, the hand towels had a pattern of mistletoe all over them, too. At this point, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the toilet paper was decorated in mistletoe.
It was the poisonous flower that kept on haunting me.
But had I even told Sam yes to his idea of a date? Something whispered that it didn’t matter. He was bound and determined. And after that kiss . . . we both knew I wasn’t going to say no anyway.
CHAPTER 10
Christmas Break Countdown
“Ms. Haden, I don’t want to use scissors anymore! Scissors are stupid! This is stupid!” Brody Perkins threw up his hands in defeat,almoststabbing himself in the eye with the scissors he hated so much.
“Brody!” My voice was serious, but still patient. If I matched his chaotic, upset energy, forget surviving the rest of the day. These kids would revolt. One slip into panicked disorganization and I would be cooked chat—as the kids say. I would have sold the bag—whatever that meant.
I had to keep my cool, not traumatize the adorable-but-oh-so-naughty six-year-old, and make sure there were no accidental stabbings of self or otherwise as I worked with the class of seventeen first graders on their cutting skills. “Please do not stab yourself in the eye.”
He gave me the fiercest look his big green eyes were capable of. They were too round and Disney-like to do too much damage. He was somewhere between Dennis the Menace and the Little Rascals, and his adorable factor was off the charts. But so was his bad behavior.
“I’d rather stab myself in the eye than keep doing this stupid thing,” he growled at me. His r sounds had not quite developedyet, and the barest lisp turned everything he did into a heart-melting moment. He sounded more like “I’d wather sthab mythelf,” and it was enough that I had to look at the ground so he couldn’t see my laughter.
It wasn’t just how cute he sounded, it was his over-the-top, exaggerated, dramatic movements, too. He’d been so aggressive that he’d knocked his project off the table. I looked at it on the ground, a massacred outline of Santa, his hat missing the fuzzy white ball at the end due to a scissors mishap.
I should have made him pick it up. and I probably should have made him apologize for using so many stupids, but last week he’d screamed that he “fucking hated using scissors!” and I’d had to send him to the office for the rest of the day. So this felt like progress.
Swooping down to pick up his very bad effort, I smoothed it out and gently set it on his desk. He crossed his arms across his body, huffed out the biggest sigh I’d ever heard, and dropped his head back.
“Hey,” I soothed in the softest tone I could muster, “it’s okay to dislike cutting.”
“No, it’s not!” he argued. This time I caught the glassy sheen to his big green eyes. “I gotta do it, or you’ll make me go to the office!”
I suppressed another smile and dropped my voice to a whisper. “You had to go to the office last time because you said a bad word, not because you hate using scissors.”
Polly, the little girl he shared a table with, made an exasperated sigh that told me she was over Brody and his antics. I’d only been here two weeks, and Polly was the third tablemate change I’d had to make, but so far, she was the best. She let her annoyance of Brody’s antics be known by rolling her eyes and groaning like she was sixty-five years old—I was just thankful she hadn’t taken a swing at him, nor had she run up to my desksobbing. She was either the toughest cookie in the class, or she had older siblings that made Brody a tolerable pest, but not a traumatic bully. Gosh, these kids were too cute for their own good.
