All Fired Up (Hometown Heat 1)

I have to get out of here before I start sniffing his coat or humping his leg or something even worse—though I honestly can’t imagine anything worse than leg-humping.

Spontaneous strip tease, maybe?

But thankfully it’s too cold for that.

“Naomi told me about Neil,” he says. “He sounds like a big hairy asshole.”

“The biggest and the hairiest,” I say, wrapping my arms tighter around my body, determined to get a hold of myself. “Actually, he’s more like a dingle berry clinging to an asshole. Wouldn’t want to give him too much credit.”

Mick laughs, a sexy rumble that does nothing to help with the “getting hold of myself” thing. “You haven’t changed, have you?”

I shrug and exhale a puff of crystalline fog, wondering why the question hurts a little. “I don’t know. I guess not too much.”

“Here, take my coat.” He shrugs out of his tuxedo jacket and swings it around my shoulders before I can insist that I don’t need it. And once it’s on, it’s too wonderfully warm to give it back. “You’re turning blue.”

“Thanks.” I peek up at him, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have to look up at Mick Whitehouse. Senior year, he barely came to the bottom of my chin. “You certainly have changed, though,” I finally say, motioning up and down with one hand before I tuck it back inside his coat. “When did you do this whole…turning into a giant thing?”

He smiles. “Freshman year of college. I grew six inches in ten months. I was a human string bean. Took me all of sophomore year to get some muscle on, but I managed.”

Boy had he managed…

“Well, it looks good on you,” I say, careful to keep my tone purely friendly, just a casual compliment from the girl who used to shove him off the monkey bars in elementary school.

Which reminds me…

“Sorry for pounding on you back when we were kids,” I say, meaning it. “I don’t think I ever apologized for that, and I should have.”

“Afraid I’m going to take my revenge now that I’m the bigger, stronger one?” He steps closer, a teasing twinkle in his eye that makes me smile no matter how hard I fight it.

“No.” I roll my eyes, acutely aware that Mick is now standing less than a foot away. “I just wanted you to know I’m sorry. I was going through some crappy stuff back then and I took it out on you. And that wasn’t right.” I sigh. “So maybe I’ve been too hard on Neil. Maybe he’s going through something, too, and I’m the asshole.”

“You’re not the asshole,” he says, catching a hair the wind whips into my lip gloss before I can and tucking it carefully into the rest of my loose up do, making my throat feel tighter than it did before.

“Yes, I am,” I confess. “I really liked pounding on you. It made me feel tough. Or at least less…small and helpless. I was a horrid child.”

“You weren’t. And I could have fought you off if I’d really wanted to.”

I snort. “Doubtful, small fry.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to start something.” He braces one hand on the arbor above my head, his face shifting so close to mine that I can smell the mulled cider on his breath. My mouth goes dry as he adds in a husky voice, “And that wouldn’t be a good idea, seeing as you’re the small fry now.”

I swallow hard, my lips tingling from the electricity crackling in the air between us. “Small, but deadly. Don’t underestimate me, Whitehouse.”

“Never. I’ve heard all about you, Miller.”

“Oh, yeah?” I ask, my voice so breathy I barely recognize it. “What have you heard?”

“Enough to know you’re probably going to punch me if I try to kiss you right now,” he says, pushing on before I can talk my heart down from where it’s suddenly lodged in my throat. “But you’re standing under the mistletoe.”

My gaze flicks up to spy a sprig of mistletoe dangling from the top of the arbor, the sight sending my heart diving down to collide with my flipping stomach.

“And your pal Neil just stepped outside,” he continues, cupping my face in one big hand, sending a rush of heat spreading from his warm skin to every inch of me. “And I’m not the type to let a chance to kill two birds with one stone slip through my fingers.”

I start to protest, to tell him I don’t kiss people that I don’t know—or barely know, considering that until tonight I haven’t spoken five words to him since grade school—but before I can convince my tongue to cooperate, Mick’s lips are on mine.

For one crystal-clear, breathless moment, time stops.

It just…stops, something deep inside me paralyzed by the recognition that I’ve never felt anything like this. A man’s kiss has never ignited something combustible in my core even as it sends sweet, easy warmth spreading through my chest like molasses. I’ve never known from the moment a man’s mouth met mine that I never wanted him to pull away.