Christmas Ever After (Puffin Island 3)

As he put his phone down, he heard Skylar’s voice.

“Alec?” Her words were muffled. “I’m stuck.”

Swearing under his breath, he walked back into the bathroom and found her with her arms up, the dress covering her head and leaving the whole of her lower body exposed apart from a thin wisp of silver silk that covered the most vulnerable part of her.

Alec averted his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to take my dress off like you told me to.” She wriggled, her hips moving. “My arms are trapped and I can’t see what I’m doing. I’m feeling dizzy and I don’t want to throw up in my dress. It’s taken enough punishment.”

“Stand still.” Teeth clenched, he reached for the dress, the movement bringing him into contact with warm, bare skin. She smelled like roses and summer rain. “Doesn’t this thing have a zip?”

“No, it’s stretchy. It pulls on and off.”

He felt as if he was being boiled alive. “You should have pulled it down, not up.”

“I know that now, but it’s the first time I’ve worn it and I didn’t have a head injury when I tried it on.”

The situation would have been comical if he hadn’t been so tense.

Alec took hold of the dress, tugged gently and the fabric slid over her head. Which would have been a cause for celebration, except that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

He caught a full on eyeful of lush, creamy breasts tipped with pink and then she grabbed a towel and covered herself.

“That makes us equal.”

He backed off, searing his skin on the heated towel rail. “My friend is on the way over here now. As luck would have it, he just finished a shift.” And the sooner he arrived the better. He didn’t want to be alone with Skylar a moment longer than he had to be. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

He walked toward the door, keeping his back to her.

“Good. That’s thoughtful of you.” The shower hissed and then she cried out. “Ow! Crap, that hurts. How do you turn this thing off? Alec, you have to help me. I’m drowning.”

Wondering what the hell he’d done to deserve this sort of punishment, Alec stopped in the doorway and turned.

She was naked in the shower, her hands over her head to protect it. “Alec?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” His voice sounded as if he had a bad dose of the flu.

“You sound weird.”

“That’s because you have water in your ears. Stand still. I don’t want to soak my clothes. My luggage on this trip is ninety percent Christmas gifts. Close your eyes.” He picked up the shampoo, reduced the power of the jet and lathered her hair as quickly as possible. “This is your fault for having fairy-princess hair. You should have dyed it a different color and cut it short.”

“I never dye my hair.”

He rinsed her hair, careful to protect her wound, watching as the water slid down her body. It flowed over the curve of her hips to the shadow and light that nestled in the secret places between her thighs. The brief glimpse was enough to confirm she was indeed a natural blonde.

Heat flashed across his skin. He fought the urge to lower his mouth to her neck and breathe her in. He wanted to trace every delicate curve with his tongue, taste every inch of her.

“Alec?” Her eyes were shut, her lashes clumped with droplets of water. “Are you still there?”

He stood, trying to work out how he could be dizzy when he wasn’t the one who had banged his head.

“Yeah.” His voice emerged from his dry throat, rough and rasping. “I’m here.”

And it was killing him.

“Could you hand me a towel?”

In the grip of a brutal desire, he groped for the