She blinked, and confusion turned her sultry voice to a squeak. “Wh-what’s wrong?”
“You have to go.”
* * *
? ? ?
See, this was the problem with kissing Colton Wheeler. He turned her brains to scrambled eggs.
Gretchen’s cognitive functions froze somewhere between the caress of his fingers against hers and the moment when his lips touched hers, which is why she was having a hard time keeping up now with the sudden cessation of her latest cliff-jump into mistake canyon. “Go where?”
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, and it sounded sincere. “Fuck, you have no idea how sorry.” He dropped his mouth once again onto hers in a quick, efficient kiss. “But I have to get to my piano.”
“Your piano?” Yeah, her brains were definitely poached, because she couldn’t even remember what a piano was at that moment.
“I have a song in my head.”
A song. So, he wasn’t freaking out. He wasn’t backward crawling like a frightened hermit crab because she, like, had bad breath or something. He’d just been struck by some kind of creative inspiration lightning. The relief to both her ego and libido took over her common sense again. “Wait . . . you want me to leave?”
“I can’t explain it. Fuck.” He dragged his hands through his hair. “I just, I could tell you to wait here, but I don’t know how long this is going to take, and I have to get this song out of my head.”
Maybe she should’ve been offended, but the passion on his face drowned out every other emotion. He was transformed. Like a Holy Spirit had possessed his soul. “Right. No, I understand. I will, um, call an Uber or something.”
He was already distracted by whatever melody was playing in his head. He stared at her for a moment as if he hadn’t heard her. But then, “Wait. No. An Uber will have to wait for the gate. Just take my car.”
He dug into his pocket for the key fob and handed it to her.
She folded it into her palm. “Is this what it’s always like when you get a song idea?”
“No,” he breathed, shaking his head. “I mean, not in a long time.” He gripped her shoulders then and planted a toe-curling kiss on her lips. “I think you’re my muse.”
In the short annals of her dating history, that line was definitely going to the top of her How to Make Gretchen Melt list.
“I swear to God, I will make this up to you,” he said, still holding her shoulders.
“There’s nothing to make up. Go do your thing.”
“The gate will open when you approach it.” Once more, he bent and kissed her.
Then he turned on his heel and strode toward the hallway with a gait she recognized. Not because it was his, but because it was hers. He moved with the purpose and determination that she felt every time she got a new case.
He stopped suddenly, turned around, and jogged back to her.
“Drive careful,” he said. “These roads get really dark, and the deer dart out before you can see them.”
“Worried about your car?” she teased.
“Worried about you.”
Colton pressed his fingers to his lips and turned around for the final time. His quick footsteps faded as he disappeared into a wing of the house she hadn’t explored. She opened her hand and looked at the key fob he’d given her. Loaning her his car was perhaps as intimate as their kiss. A person didn’t just loan their car to anyone. Because it insinuated something intangible. Something she’d had precious little of from the people closest to her.
Trust.
And not as in, I trust you won’t wreck my car.
More like, I trust that you won’t wreck me.
And that’s what scared her. He could give her a hundred romance novels to read and change her mind about Christmas, but one thing wouldn’t change.
She was a Winthrop. And eventually, they wrecked everything in their paths.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Colton heard voices. Faraway voices.
“I think he’s dead.”
“Poke him with a stick or something. See if he moves.”
“What if he doesn’t? Do we have to call someone? Because I really need to get these presents wrapped today.”
Colton peeled open one eye and found the whole crew—Malcolm, Mack, Noah, Vlad, Gavin, Yan, and Del—all staring down at him as if conducting an autopsy. Each wore apprehensive expressions and blinking reindeer antlers.
“Jesus, you look like roadkill,” Mack said. “You sick or something?”
“What are you doing here?” His voice was like sandpaper.