The Magical Christmas Cat

  "I'm all about logic." Ian held his hand out for the keys she had retrieved. "So I'll have to debauch you."

  "Damn you." Bree gave him the key chain, letting her fingers slide across his bare skin. She wanted him again, immediately if not sooner.

  "I'm going to start now, right here, on your porch."

  "Don't do it," she warned him, in a voice that clearly conveyed she absolutely did want him to do it.

  "You." He pulled her up against him. "Can't stop me."

  Bree reached inside his coat and wrapped her arms around his waist. "I can scream."

  Ian laughed softly. "In pleasure, maybe."

  "Puh-leeze."

  His hands were somehow miraculously on her butt, and they were sliding lower and lower, sort of stroking in a way that made her suck in a breath at the kick of desire that sideswiped her.

  "Is that a challenge?" he asked, his head bent close to hers, his mouth inches from hers.

  Duh. "Yes. Try to make me scream." Preferably not on her front porch in thirty-degree weather, but at the moment, she was even willing to give that a go.

  "You're really asking for it, you know."

  "Yes, I am." Bree was enjoying that Ian looked more than willing to give it to her. He had an erection pressing firmly into her thigh, and he looked like he could literally eat her from the bottom up right there with no encouragement. Perfect.

  "Here it is then," he said, as he closed the distance between them and took her lips in a searing kiss.

  Bree barely had time to open her mouth before Ian was slamming her back into her front door and burying his hands in her hair as he kissed her senseless. Whoa. Hello. Bree gripped the front of his jacket for support and gave as good as she got. There was definitely amazing chemistry between them, and he could make her hot in less time than it took to sneeze. Her mind went blank, and she forgot the cold, forgot the gawking neighbor, and only registered the heat, the pleasure, the intense desire to touch all of this man everywhere, to know him, to have him inside her.

  The front door popped open suddenly from his hand turning the knob, hurtling her backwards. She would have fallen, but Ian held her steady before easing her carefully down onto the floor. He kicked the front door shut with his foot and Bree blinked up at him as he hovered over her, unzipping his pants.

  "Are we having sex on the floor again?" she asked, spreading her legs slightly in invitation.

  "I think so," he said, his fingers already shoving her skirt up. "I'm sorry, but there are just too many stairs in this house. It will take at least three minutes to get upstairs and I can't wait that long."

  Bree gave a soft moan when he slid her panties down more quickly than carefully. "That is a long time to wait."

  "And I am supposed to be debauching you."

  "You're doing a good job of it." Bree would have added a comment about the view they were probably giving anyone who happened to wander up onto her porch and glance in her giant windows—like say Edith from next door—when her breath was literally taken away from his pushing inside her with an aggressive thrust.

  Bree's eyes rolled back in her head and her entire body stood up and did the happy dance. "Oh, Ian."

  She couldn't imagine why she had ever thought it was a good idea to go twenty months without sex. Sex rocked, and she loved it, especially with Ian. He knew every way to touch, every way to take, and she liked that he never hesitated, that he just knew his intentions would be well received.

  He stroked in and out of her faster, then slower, harder, softer, teasing her until she was squirming beneath him and rocking her hips up to meet him, begging for more, for release, for him to never stop. The way she had in her dream. "Ian . . . please. God." Bree had no clue what she was even asking for, she just wanted everything, all of him, wanted him inside her indefinitely, and the blissful feeling of an empty mind to go on and on.

  She was sliding backwards on the floor, her fingers jerking across his firm chest with each of his thrusts, and she couldn't react, could only feel, appreciate, breathe.

  "What, Bree? What do you want?"

  He had to ask that, when she was too steeped in pleasure, too insensate to articulate what she was feeling, so she just pried her eyes open and met his steady gaze. "You. I want you."

  Ian groaned. "Bree."

  She felt his orgasm, felt his muscles clench, his shoulders tense, felt the pulsing of him deep inside her, and she let go herself, came together with him, so that they were wrapped in pleasure together.

  Ian dropped kisses on her forehead, her temples, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. "You are beautiful."

  Bree smiled, her body and her soul incredibly satisfied. He had said she was beautiful at least four times that day. Not that she'd been keeping count, but it was nice to hear. "And you're hot."

  "I'm going to carry you upstairs now," he said. "I need a twenty-minute nap, then the debauching will continue."

  "You can't carry me all the way upstairs. There's like seventeen steps."

  "Are you insulting my masculinity?" Ian pulled away from her and readjusted her skirt so it fell to her ankles again.

  Rolling her eyes, but with no real irritation, she said, "I'm just being practical. We're going to fall if you try to carry me. And those steps are hard. Trust me, I've had the bruised knees to prove that running up them talking on your cell phone is not a good idea."

  "I'm doing it."

  "If you drop me, I'll curse you." Bree stood up and debated whether she cared if her panties were still lying on the floor. It seemed like a hell of a lot of effort to bend back over and pick them up when she was feeling so satisfied, sleepy, and tranquil.

  Ian solved her dilemma by scooping her up into his arms, bouncing her a little to get a better grip.

  "Ah!" She clung to his shoulders, off-balance. "Ian. I'm serious."

  "And I'm tenacious. Get used to it." He started toward the stairs.

  Bree was tempted to close her eyes so if she fell, she wouldn't see the floor rising up to break her nose and knock her teeth out, but she was too enamored by his cuteness to not take advantage of the closeness the position gave her to his face. She rubbed her lips over his jaw and the corners of his mouth.

  "You think I'm going to drop you, so you go and distract me?" he asked. "Not a good idea."

  "Sorry." Bree just watched him the rest of the way up the steps, studying the fine lines flaring out from under his eyes. Enjoying the length of his thick eyelashes and the strength of his jaw. "How old are you?"

  "Thirty-two. In the best shape I've ever been."

  His breath was a little ragged, and he had a death grip on her.

  Bree laughed. "I can see that." At the risk of distracting him yet again, she brushed her finger over his lip. "But remember that you never have to prove anything to me. I know."

  She wasn't entirely sure what she meant by that, but she could sense his feelings, could sense the contentment and happiness he felt with her, the wonder he had at his attraction, attachment to her. She sensed he was falling in love with her, and she was doing the same.

  It was insane, but it was real.

  "Thank you." Ian hit the landing, and said, "Which way?" "First door on the right."

  He finished the odyssey by ungracefully dropping her down onto her bed and collapsing beside her. "Now leave me alone, Bree, I need some sleep."

  "I haven't done anything! This is all you, every time." She loved their banter, that he could tease and take it back in return.

  "Witches shouldn't lie." Ian stripped off his T-shirt.

  Bree laughed, and shed her own skirt and sweater before pulling back her comforter. "Why not? Not that I'm lying, but if I was, why can't a witch lie?"

  "I don't know. It seems deceptive." He punched the pillow to fluff it up and smiled at her.

  "Such is the nature of a lie."

  "Very true."

  They both laughed. When Ian reached for her, she gladly went into his arms and fell asleep.

  Chapte
r 6

  Ian woke up, the dream still fresh in his mind, so real that he glanced around the room to figure out where he was. Still in Bree's room, the light from the bay window was gone. It was night already. He reached for her, needing and wanting to feel her warmth. He didn't understand the dream he'd had, didn't know where they had been in it.

  "Bree?" he whispered, aware that she was probably still asleep, but not caring. He wanted to hear her voice in the dark.

  "Yes?" she said immediately.

  "Did you dream?" he asked cautiously. When he had planned this trip to Cuttersville, it had been his intent to end his dreams of Bree. Get over them, move on. Now that he'd had her, now that he was getting to know her and he saw how truly fabulous she was, he didn't want the dreams to end. In his sleep or awake. Bree had come into his life for a reason, and he wanted to explore the full length and breadth of that meaning.

  That was why the dream he'd had bothered him.

  It hadn't been sexual. Nor had it been in her house.

  "Yeah, I had a dream. Not the same one as before though, so it must have just been some jumbled thoughts cramming together." She rolled over and snuggled closer to him. "We were in some house I didn't recognize. It was kind of dirty in the living room, and there was no furniture, just a card table and a bare artificial Christmas tree. Who knows where my mind pulled that all from, but it's probably pure exhaustion." She kissed him, her tongue sliding along his bottom lip. "You wear me out."

  Ian would have liked to give that kiss and her innuendo the response she was clearly asking for, but he was too unnerved. "Bree, I had the same dream. It was the same house you're describing. There was some woman there I've never seen in my life, and I could swear you and I were actually upset with each other. What the hell could we have been doing?"

  It had been as vivid and real as his more pleasant sexual dreams, only in this one, instead of the scent of Bree's perfume, he had smelled the mustiness of a house that had been empty. He'd seen the dust on the floor, felt the cold of a room that was only being minimally heated. He'd known the sharp agony of Bree's disapproval. Toward him.

  He didn't like it, any of it. He wanted to stay together, warm, in her bed all winter, content with exploring each other's bodies and minds and hearts.

  "What? You saw the same house? Are you sure?" She went up on her elbow and looked at him in the darkened room. "That's weird. It was like it was abandoned or for sale or something."

  Ian was about to say he'd thought the same thing when his cell phone rang on Bree's bedside table. He reluctantly pulled himself away from Bree and grappled for the phone to check caller ID.

  Damn. It was Darius Damiano, his eccentric millionaire client who wanted to buy Bree's house for indecipherable reasons. "I really should answer this, babe. It's a client. Do you mind?"

  "No, go ahead. I have to go to the bathroom anyway."

  Ian said, "Ian Carrington," into the phone, distracted as he watched Bree walk across the room naked before pulling on panties and a T-shirt retrieved from her dresser. It was dark, but not pitch-black, and he could see the outline of every one of her delicious curves as she moved.

  "Carrington, it's Darius Damiano. I figured out how to get that house I want."

  "What?" That snapped Ian back to reality. "What do you mean?"

  "The Victorian monstrosity in Ohio's Most Haunted Town. I know you said the owner isn't going to sell, but I did a little digging, and she's going to want to unload it after she hears what I found."

  Ian gripped his phone tighter, glancing toward the doorway through which Bree had disappeared. This didn't sound good. "What did you find?"

  "She owes eighty grand in back property taxes. Turns out her granny had a little arrangement with the appraiser and her house value was frozen at 1989 prices. I suggested this was illegal and might land him in some trouble if he didn't reevaluate the property and go after back taxes, and he agreed with me."

  "Holy shit." It was all Ian could think to say. He was sitting in Bree's bed in the very house Damiano was talking about. Bree was going to be furious, and somehow Ian doubted she had a spare eighty grand lying around. He felt a measure of responsibility in that he should have known Darius was a wealthy businessman—he went after what he wanted, and usually got it. Ian should have seen some kind of maneuver coming, but he had been too busy undressing Bree to pay attention to the signs.

  "And I'm reasonable, you know that. I don't want to screw her. I'm perfectly willing to still give her my last offer. It's significantly higher than market value, and she'll be able to pay the tax bill and still have the same cash that she would have if she sold the house in an open market."

  It was reasonable, and wouldn't leave Bree out any actual money. But Ian couldn't support the way Darius had gone about securing himself a purchase, nor could he ever put a price on Bree's attachment to her grandmother's house. It wasn't about money, it was about emotion. And Bree's ran high. God, she was going to be devastated, and that devastated him.

  "I'll inform the owner of her options," Ian said carefully. He heard the toilet flush down the hall, and he wanted off the phone when Bree returned to the bedroom. "And I'll get back to you as soon as possible."

  "Thanks. I think we can have this locked up by Christmas. I'd like closing on January 1, and have her out of the house by February 1."

  "Okay, I'll present that request to her." Ian really wanted to ask Darius why the hell he was so determined to have a house in the middle of nowhere four hundred miles from his penthouse in Chicago, but Bree had walked back in and was settling down onto the bed beside him. There was no way he wanted to ask that question in front of her. It was going to be hard enough to tell her what was going on. "I'll call you as soon as I have an answer, Darius."

  "Great. Thanks, Ian."

  Ian turned off his phone and set it back on the nightstand. He stared at the table and tried to formulate words for what he had to tell Bree. He had none. The situation sucked, plain and simple.

  Bree touched his back. "What's the matter? Who was that?"

  "That was Darius, the client who wants to buy your house."

  Bree felt a tremor of alarm disrupt the calm contentment she had been feeling. Ian was acting strange. He wasn't looking at her, but was staring intently at her nightstand, his back arched. "What is this Darius like? And what did he want now?"

  Ian finally glanced at her over his shoulder. He was biting his fingernail. "What's he like? Well, he's . . . brisk. Efficient. He's twenty-eight and worth close to $50 million, so he has a certain confidence."

  Bree still wasn't sure why Ian looked and sounded so stiff, so she leaned against his bare back and kissed his shoulder blade. "How does someone get fifty million dollars by the age of twenty-eight? That's unreal. Did he inherit it?"

  "No. He investigates hauntings for a television show, and he's made some wise investments."

  She forgot all about her desire to squeeze the warmth of Ian's rock-solid biceps and sat straight up. "Wait a minute. Do you mean Darius Damiano? The guy who stays overnight in haunted houses on camera?"

  "Yes."

  Sure she'd seen Ian wince, Bree crawled around until she was off the bed and standing in front of him. "What is going on here?"

  "Well. He still wants to buy your house."

  "No!" Bree put her hands on her hips. "I wasn't going to say yes before but now that I know who it is, it will never happen. He's a total freak." Just the thought of his walking into her house and putting in some weird modern furniture gave her hives. She had no idea why she thought he would go for contemporary decorating, but he seemed cold, like gray and black and steel would appeal to him.

  "How can you say he's a freak because he investigates hauntings? You're a witch."

  Bree frowned, offended. "Totally different, Ian. I am not sensationalizing my beliefs, nor am I making money off them."

  "Reading tarot isn't putting cash in your pocket?"

  Damn it, he had her there. "Okay, that's true, but
I don't do it on camera. His show is like a circus act, an illusion. And you have to admit, he goes for drama. I mean, he sleeps in freshly dug graves! Who does that?" She wasn't sure why his show bothered her so much, she just knew that it did, ten times more now that she knew he wanted her house.

  Ian put his forearms on his thighs and shrugged. "Twenty-eight-year-olds worth fifty million."

  "So why did he call?" Bree was getting cold from standing in her underwear, but she knew there was bad news coming. She could feel it from Ian, There was guilt leaking off him.

  "Well, the thing is, he really wants your house. So he did a little poking around and he found out that you owe $80,000 in back property taxes. I'll have to contact the county, but I suspect they're due by the next tax quarter deadline, which is January 15."

  Bree stared at Ian. She could have sworn he had just said something as insane as that she owed eighty frickin' thousand dollars in taxes. That had to be wrong. Had to be. She wouldn't see eighty grand just lolling around in her bank account anytime in her life. "Excuse me?"

  Ian launched into an explanation about her grandmother and something about property values being frozen and some other stuff that didn't register at all because her ears were ringing and her heart was racing and she was pretty damn sure she was going to faint. "Are you actually saying that I have to come up with eighty grand m the next three weeks?"

  "Yes. You can take a home equity loan against the house to pay for it, Bree. Since you own the house, it won't be a problem securing the loan, and your payments would only be about six hundred a month, I'd think."

  "Only? Only six hundred a month. I can't afford that, Ian! I can't afford half that. I work part-time in a small-town library and read tarot cards for tourists. I'm not exactly rolling in it here." Bree clutched her throat, wondering why it felt like she could no longer swallow. "Crap, crap, crap. What am I going to do?" She couldn't even think.

  "Is there someone you can borrow the money from?"

  Was he smoking crack? Bree looked at him in disbelief. "Not $80,000! I don't know anyone who has that kind of money, except for my little sister Abby. She inherited over $200,000 from my grandmother, but she can't touch it until she turns twenty-one, which is in two and a half years."

  "Maybe you can take the home equity loan and take in renters to pay the loan."

  Oh, that sounded like fun. Sharing her house for the next fifteen years with a revolving door of strangers. "Eew," she said. "That sounds horrible."

  "Well, you can always sell the house to Darius. He is willing to give you the last offer he made, which is way above market value. You'd have enough to pay the taxes and pocket a substantial amount of cash. You'd actually end up better off than if you tried to sell the house yourself."

  Bree felt slapped as she listened to his words. So there it was. The source of his guilt. He knew that was the most viable option for her, and he was trying to list the benefits of it because if she sold the house, it made his client happy and him money. "Oh my God," she said. "You knew this all along, didn't you?"

  To his credit, he looked shocked. "No! Of course not. He just told me on the phone."

  "But you think it's a good idea?"

  "I think it's a logical one, but I know how much this house means to you."

  "You have no idea." Bree felt tears pricking her eyes. She felt panicked and, frankly, betrayed. Ian could talk his client out of wanting her house. He could find another one for him, even right there in Cuttersville. There were alleged haunted houses all over town, and hers wasn't even one of them. But Ian clearly had no interest in talking Darius out of his underhanded offer. And how did she even know that it wasn't Ian who had dug up the knowledge about the taxes at Darius's request?

  All while sleeping with her.

  Ugh.

  She just wanted to be alone. "Okay, you need to leave. I'm going to get dressed and go talk to Charlotte." Bree glanced around for her skirt. She needed a shoulder to cry on and some advice, and she didn't think it would be wise to do that in her panties, though she just might if she didn't find clothes in the next two seconds.

  "I'll go with you." Ian stood up.

  "No. No, you won't." Bree grabbed her skirt off the floor and stepped into it.

  "Why not?" He gave her a wounded look.

  "Because I just want to talk to my sister alone." She yanked off her T-shirt and pulled a turtleneck on. "Is there anything else about this Darius and his crappy offer that you need to tell me?"

  "Just that he wants to close on January 1 and he wants you out by February 1."

  Fresh tears filled her eyes, and these actually spilled up and over and slid down her cheeks. "Are you kidding me? What a total bastard."

  "He's just a businessman, Bree. It's nothing personal."

  She could not believe he was coldhearted enough to say something so callous. "Not personal? Not personal! This is my family home, Ian. I've been manipulated into a corner and I'm going to lose everything and you're acting like it's not a big deal. Oh my God. Just get out of my house. Now. Or I will scream, and I am seriously not playing this time." In fact, she felt like she might just start spontaneously screaming regardless of whether he left or not.

  "Bree . . . calm down. We'll figure this out. I'll loan you the money."

  He reached for her, but Bree dodged him. She couldn't stand the thought of him touching her, and she really, really wanted to be alone so she could break down in private. She hated feeling vulnerable, hated feeling like she was being patronized, hated worrying and wondering if he had manipulated her all along.

  "I don't want your damn money. I want you out of my house." She was crying for real now, and it pissed her off.

  Ian tried again to touch her, but she just threw his pants at him, hitting him in the face. "Get. Out."

  Maybe she was being totally irrational, but she was overwhelmed and hurt and panicked. She wanted to be alone to think, and he was not listening to her or respecting that, which said volumes about him.

  "You don't mean that," he said, pulling his pants off his head.