I shrugged, because that was as close to an answer as I could have come up with. I was definitely in love, but this was bordering on something more than just that. This was my love for him mixed with a hell of a lot of lust. Sure, I’d wanted Harris before, but after last night when he’d kissed me senseless over dinner and then nearly caught me on fire with that goodnight kiss, parts of my sexuality were coming to life that I’d never experienced before.
“Just be careful, Lucy.” Kin’s face tightened. “I know how wonderful it feels to be in love like that. It’s like you’re walking on a cloud. Nothing could possibly bring you down. Until he breaks your heart.”
“Kin—” I began, ready to defend Harris. He wasn’t like Jace. Harris would never hurt me like Jace had hurt her. He loved me too much to break my heart like that.
“Look, I’m not trying to bring you down, babe.” She gave me a grim smile and adjusted her messenger bag on her shoulder. “Just warning you to be careful. Okay? Take things slow.”
“You didn’t take things slow with Jace, did you?” Kin hadn’t told me just how close she and Jace had gotten during their brief relationship, and I hadn’t asked. She’d been so determined to forget about him that I hadn’t wanted to push.
Kin looked away, her jaw clenching and unclenching several times before she answered. “No, things went at warp speed for us. That’s probably why we didn’t last. I gave it up too soon and he lost interest. Why else would he have found it so easy to leave without a backward glance?”
“Because he’s an idiot who doesn’t realize what a good thing he had,” I informed her and wrapped my arms around her tiny waist. After a small hesitation, Kin leaned against me, hugging me back. “Harris isn’t like Jace, though,” I told her when I pulled back a few moments later. “He’s one of the good guys.”
“Even good guys can have their douchebag moments.”
I didn’t comment. Turning back toward the exit to the parking lot, I started walking again before changing the subject. “What are you going to do over the next month? You can spend as many nights at my house as you want, you know.”
With today being the last day before our month-long break, I was kind of sad that I wouldn’t get to see Kin on a daily basis. I’d come to rely on her. She was my voice of reason at times when I was losing my mind.
“I know what I wish I was doing,” Kin said as we left the building. “Every Christmas we would go to Aspen for at least a week. Carter has a cabin up there and we go out and cut down our own tree then decorate it with all kinds of stupid things. My mom saved every handcrafted ornament that we made in grade school, so it has a lot of bells, construction paper, and Styrofoam-cup reindeers.” She paused and I watched as her throat worked before she let out a sad-sounding laugh and shook her head. “When I asked my father if I could do that this year with Carter and the twins, he refused to talk about it with me. Apparently, Jillian has a big social calendar this time of the year and I’m expected to go to all the parties with them.”
My heart ached for her. This was the first Christmas Kin would be without her mother. She couldn’t even have a reprieve from her father to go see the three people who would be sharing the same pain that she was feeling right now.
We were getting closer to my Range Rover and I could see Georgia and her younger sister, Carolina, sitting in their car waiting impatiently. I slowed my steps when Kin did, neither of us wanting to say goodbye just yet.
“Step sandwich!”
I nearly jumped out of my skin when a beautiful blond chick came out of nowhere and wrapped her arms around Kin. Seconds later, Kin completely disappeared when a pair of massive arms wrapped around her from behind. I tensed up and Marcus moved to stand between me and the craziness that was suddenly taking place before my eyes.
Kin didn’t seem all that worried about being smothered by the two people holding onto her like she might disappear at any second. She was laughing—and maybe even crying from the sound of it—as she and the two newcomers jumped around, still holding each other.
I took a small step to the left to see around Marcus’s shoulders better. I stood there for what felt like forever but was really only about a minute before the big blond guy stepped back, grinning down at Kin. “Miss us?”
Kin scrubbed her now free hands across her cheeks, scrubbing away at twin rivers of tears. “Miss you? So much it hurts.” She kissed the blond chick’s cheek and hugged her hard before pulling back. “What are you two doing here?”
“Daddy said that your step-monster wouldn’t let you come to us for Christmas, so as soon as the semester ended, we grabbed the first plane out to be with you. You have to put up with Caleb’s ugly face for four full weeks. Daddy will be here on Monday. He had some business to take care of before he could get here, but we couldn’t wait to see you.”
Kin wasn’t normally the kind of girl to jump up and down and squeal but she did exactly that even before the blond chick had stopped speaking. “Yes, yes, yes!”
Marcus cleared his throat loudly enough to catch the threesome’s attention and Kin finally remembered that I was standing there. The grin that was splitting her face in half was probably the brightest I’d ever seen from her. “Lucy, come and meet my brother and sister.”
I’d thought that that was who these two were, but now that Kin had confirmed it,I felt stupid for not making the connection sooner. Angie and Caleb Jacobson were exactly as Kin had described them to me. Angie with her long blond hair, blue eyes, and happy smile—the chick was drop-dead gorgeous. Caleb with his killer grin, matching blue eyes, shaggy blond hair and looks that belonged on the freaking cover of GQ would have had any
girl in our school drooling in a heartbeat.
Angie was the first to offer me her hand. “Lucy? I’ve heard so much about you.” Her hand tightened on mine and she pulled me in for a squeezing hug. “Thank you so much for taking care of Kin for us.”
Unexpectedly, a knot clogged my throat and I had to swallow hard before I could speak. How could she thank me? Kin was the one who had been taking care of me. “Don’t thank me. Kin’s been my life saver.”
Angie pulled back, a knowing smile on her gorgeous face. “Maybe you’ve been taking care of each other, then.” She winked and turned to face Kin again. Reaching out, she grasped her stepsister’s hand and gave it a loving squeeze. “It’s so good to see you, Kin. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Can I hug you, too, or is tall, dark, and dangerous over there gonna kick my ass if I try?”
Caleb’s question had me raising my head. He wasn’t as tall as Harris, maybe six foot two at the most, but it felt like I was stretching my neck forever to look up at him. That smile on his face was just as beautiful as his sister’s was, in a masculine kind of way. It didn’t make me melt like Harris’s smile did, but I could tell that he had left a whole string of broken hearts behind him with just that smile.
“You willing to risk it?” I teased him with a smirk, feeling like I already knew him from everything Kin had told me about her stepbrother. He stepped forward, shooting Marcus a raised eyebrow as he did. Whatever he saw on my bodyguard’s face must have been approval enough for him because he wrapped his thick arms around me and gave me a single, tight squeeze.
“Don’t want to give him too much of a reason to go all CIA on my ass.” He laughed as he pulled away. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he turned to face Kin once again. “Are you really grounded? Your email to Angie said you were but you didn’t know for how long. What the hell did you do, Kin?”