The Christmas He Loved Her (Bad Boys of Crystal Lake 2)

She looked at him quizzically and cocked her head. Jake smiled down at her and shrugged. “Well, it’s what you told Mrs. Lancaster.”

She moistened her lips. “I want to go with you.”

She held her breath as Jake shifted, and what she saw in his eyes made her heart skip. With his five o’clock shadow, wild crazy hair, and lazy brown eyes, he was sexy as all hell without even trying.

And he loved her.

“Good to know,” he said, and reached for her, his mouth closing over hers. Jake kissed her slowly, with great care, as if she were the most precious thing in the world. Their bodies melted into each other, and when they came up for air, he leaned his forehead against her and wrapped his arms around her possessively as he held her close.

“So you want to go together,” he said slowly.

She nodded, and kept her eyes lowered. “Is that going to be weird for you?”

“No,” Jake said carefully. “I was planning on going anyway,” he said, and something in the tone of his voice got her attention. Raine squirmed until she could see his face.

“You were,” she said.

He nodded and couldn’t hide the grin. “Yep, I need to hook up with the Lancasters and get my boxers back.”

“What?” Raine popped up out of his arms and glanced around, her hands on her cheeks when she realized that, in fact, Mrs. Lancaster had left with Jake’s boxers. She groaned and whirled around. “You think this is funny, don’t you?”

He was on his feet, the look in his eyes changing and making her all hot and bothered in seconds.

“I don’t think this is funny at all,” he replied. “In fact, that’s not where my head is at the moment.” His voice was husky, hitting a tone that sent shivers rolling across her skin.

“My head is as far away from funny as you can get.” His hands went for his jeans and he slid them over his hips in one motion. “My head is thinking of naughty things.”

Her mouth went dry as he strode across the room. “Naughty, wicked things that would make Mrs. Lancaster’s head spin.”

“Really,” Raine managed to say.

“Yeah.” He was in front her now, his dark eyes intense. “Really.”

Jake Edwards spent the rest of the morning showing Raine exactly what he was thinking and feeling, and it was in fact naughty.

And more than a little wicked.

Chapter 23

It was nearly six in the evening, darkness had long fallen over the lake, and with the lights twinkling from the many homes that lined its shore, the view was postcard perfect. Snow fell, but the flakes were huge and fluffy, the kind that signaled a return to milder temperatures.

Jake leaned against his mother’s chair, a beer in hand, as he gazed out across the still-unfrozen water that he’d spent so many hours on as a kid. He and Jesse and Cain and Mac.

He smiled a bittersweet kind of smile. It seemed like a lifetime ago. The Bad Boys, they’d been called, which was not really the case. They hadn’t been bad so much as—what had his mother called them? Rambunctious. Spirited.

He snorted and took a long drink. Who was he kidding? They’d raised hell Monday to Saturday and gone to church on Sunday. If not for an overabundance of charm and bravado, they would have landed in a heck of a lot more hot water than they did. Christ, Jesse could talk his way out of most anything, and Mac? All he had to do was bat those long lashes, and every woman within miles would melt.

God, to be able to recapture some of that ease. Some of that youth.

“Hey.”

He turned, spied Lily, and motioned for her to join him.

With her hair thrown up in a messy ponytail, and dressed in old jeans, a sweatshirt, and a pair of fluffy rabbit-ear slippers, she looked like a kid.

“Where is everyone?” she asked as she joined him near the window.

He shrugged. “Mom left a note. She and Dad are running some errands in town but should be home soon.”