Page 76 of Big Santa

Which means one of two things.

One: Maverick Kane is a deeply decent man who was comforting his grieving wife and was too polite to point out that she was getting the wrong idea. Two: there is no two.

I grab my phone off the nightstand.

Me: Are you awake?

Nothing.

Me: Josie. Emergency.

Nothing.

Me: I think I tried to kiss my husband and he told me it was late.

Still nothing. It’s after midnight. Josie goes to bed at ten like a sensible woman.

I put the phone face down on the rug.

This is bad. Not because he doesn’t want me. I can survive that. I’ve survived worse. But because I live here. Because I’m going to see him at breakfast. Because Shiloh is going to look between us across the pancakes, and Shiloh notices everything, and the last thing that little boy needs is two grown-ups being weird and stiff around each other at Christmas.

Because Maverick said no expectations. He put it in writing. Section seven. I read it three times before I signed.

I don’t want him to think I’m trying to change the rules. I don’t want him to walk on eggshells in his own house because the woman he hired to love his son got confused and started thinking she might be allowed to love⁠—

Nope. Not finishing that sentence. I stand up. I need to clear things up right now. So that things aren’t weird in the morning. I’ll just go apologize. It’ll take five seconds. I’ll knock, I’ll say thank you for the hug and I’m sorry if I made things weird. Then I’ll come back to bed, and in the morning we can both pretend this never happened.

The hallway is dark except for the faint glow of the colored lights drifting up from downstairs. The floorboards are cold under my bare feet. I pull the sleeves of my sleep shirt down over my hands and walk the twenty feet to his door.

It’s open. Not much. A few inches. Enough to see a sliver of lamplight and the corner of a dark wood dresser.

I lift my hand to knock. That’s when I hear the water.

Sink or the shower, I can’t really tell from out here. A sound cuts through the hiss of the water.

Low and rough.

I freeze with my knuckles an inch from the door.

Is he— Did he slip?

My heart lurches. All I can think is that big body on wet tile, that he could be hurt, and the door to the bathroom is open too. I can see it from here. A bright wedge of light and steam spilling out across his bedroom carpet.

“Maverick?” It comes out as barely a whisper. I take one step inside. “Are you⁠—”

Another sound.

And this one is not pain.

It’s a groan. Deep and ragged and pulled from somewhere low in his chest, and there’s a rhythm under the sound of the water, and his breathing is wrong, harsh, uneven, like a man who’s been running⁠—

Oh.

OH!

Every drop of blood in my body flies directly into my face. Nope, not every drop, because I know that’s blood surging into my lady bits, making my clit pulse like that.

Okay. Okay, I am leaving. I am turning around right this second, because this is private and I am a grown woman who knows what that sound means, and I should not be standing in my husband’s bedroom listening to⁠—