She clung to his broad shoulders, the fabric of his T-shirt bunching under her fingers as she tried desperately to hold in any whimpers or moans. Aware of just how many people were still milling about the inn who would be able to hear her.

  “You’re tryin’ so hard to be quiet, aren’t you, firecracker?” He bottomed out inside her and rotated his hips, gripping her ass tight as he worked her clit against the base of his cock. “Tryin’ so hard not to let anyone know what you’re doin’ in here with me.”

  She moaned low under her breath, then bit her lip to attempt to stifle it, the thought making her pussy flutter around his length.

  Cole grunted in response, his fingers digging into her flesh as his thrusts sped up. “What would someone think if they came lookin’ for you and saw you ridin’ my cock like this? I may have you up against this door, but there’s no denyin’ it’s you who’s fucking me, is there? Workin’ that tight little pussy down on me and drivin’ me out of my goddamn mind.”

  “Cole.” She sobbed his name on nothing more than a breath, her entire body tightening around him until she broke into a thousand blissful pieces, her pussy pulsing in time with his thrusts.

  “That’s it…fuck.” He settled deep inside her, his mouth open against her neck as he spilled himself inside her, his groan caught in the space between them.

  She held him to her as their bodies came down from the high they’d given each other, grateful for the darkness still surrounding them. Because as sure as she was that one night with him hadn’t been enough, she was even more certain now that two wouldn’t do either.

  Chapter Nine

  Cole didn’t know what the hell he thought he was doing. He had no business taking Sadie to bed, and he had no business fucking her up against the door to the inn’s pantry, and he had no business dragging her back into his room nightly.

  But more than any of those, he sure as hell had no business thinking about her near constantly throughout the day and wondering things like if she enjoyed Mexican food because he was considering picking it up for dinner, and maybe he should get some for her too.

  He hadn’t made it more than five minutes without his thoughts circling around to her. And they weren’t even acceptable thoughts, like how irritating or self-righteous she could be. Nope. Instead, he focused on how soft her skin was, how sweet she tasted, how much he loved when she pushed back and made him work for it. After sleeping with her the first time, he’d made the mistake of spending the following day in the inn’s conference room. And it’d been too much—he’d known it would be, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. Having that much unfettered access to her had crushed his normally rock-solid focus.

  So, he’d—perhaps naïvely—assumed that if he simply went back to business as usual and spent his day in the office, the near-constant thoughts of Sadie would leave him the hell alone. Because there was no denying that he had to do something. It’d only been a few days, but if he didn’t get control of the situation, his work was going to suffer, and that was unacceptable.

  Well, he most definitely didn’t have the situation under control. He didn’t have anything under control—least of all his dick—and it pissed him off.

  She’d wrecked him. Plain and simple. Though he shouldn’t have been surprised. The little witch was wily like that.

  He’d skipped lunch today, so he left the office a little early…absolutely not because he wanted to get back to the Starlight and to Sadie all that much sooner. Besides, his evening was already spoken for. He had some Christmas shopping to do for his mom, sister, and niece. And if Sadie happened to have suggestions for him, well, he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He wasn’t a complete jackass, despite what she thought.

  He strolled into the inn, hating how his gaze immediately shot to the front desk and where he usually found her every day after work.

  Except today, she wasn’t there.

  In fact, the entire inn was empty and silent, something that never happened this early in the evening. He walked farther into the space and then heard voices coming from the back of the inn. Cole headed in that direction. In the direction he’d walked the other day when he’d found Sadie in the kitchen, looking like a walking wet dream and making him lose all rational thought.

  Today, however, when he poked his head around the corner, it wasn’t Sadie who greeted him. Well, not Sadie alone, anyway. Instead, several apron-clad people surrounded the large island in the center of the room, and Sadie stood at the head of it all, a bright smile on her face.

  “Just like that, Mr. Cartwright,” Sadie said to the older, balding man on her right who was using a rolling pin on some cookie dough. “I told you you’d be able to bake these.”

  The overwhelming scent of cinnamon hung in the air, and it transported Cole straight back to his momma’s house on Christmas Eve. She loved to bake, and every year, she spent the days leading up to the holiday preparing, all so she could assemble tins for friends and neighbors. Christmas Eve was the final day in her baking marathon and reserved for her—and thus his—favorite cookies.

  Next to the man, an older woman with chin-length gray hair said, “You’ve managed something I haven’t been able to in forty years. He’s always content to wait for the holiday baking to commence before he participates.”

  Sadie grinned at the couple. “I have heard the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, so I guess that’s true with you. Did you win him over with cookies, Mrs. Cartwright?”

  “No, she won me over with—oof.” Mr. Cartwright rubbed his stomach where his wife had smacked him.

  Mrs. Cartwright looked down her nose at her husband. “Nobody here needs to hear any of your tall tales.”

  Across the island, a woman in her late forties smiled. “No offense to you two, but I’d rather hear about what men the lovely Sadie has been able to snag thanks to her baking skills.”

  “Ohh, me too!” Mrs. Cartwright said, completely abandoning her slab of dough. “I like how you think, Glinda.”

  “Since when do you need to live vicariously through someone else?” a short, stocky man next to Glinda said.

  “Since we got here, Harold, and I saw that this gorgeous woman doesn’t have a ring on her finger. And that is, quite frankly, ludicrous. Are the men of Havenbrook a little slow?”

  Sadie laughed, and Cole felt something pinch deep in his chest. Glinda was right—Sadie was gorgeous, and any man in his right mind would be lucky to call her his. So then, what did that make him? Because as much as he thought about Sadie, and as much as he couldn’t deny their sexual chemistry, he had absolutely no intention of pursuing this any further than the bedroom. That was all he could do.

  He wasn’t a forever kind of guy anymore. He had been at one time, but he had no plans or intentions to return to that kind of life. Not when the last time ended like it did.

  “Not slow so much as just the same group of men I’ve been around my whole life,” Sadie said. “If I haven’t dated them, there’s a reason for that.”

  “Ahh,” Mrs. Cartwright said with a knowing smile. “Small-town living at its finest.”

  Sadie offered a single-shouldered shrug. “Pretty much. Normally I love it, but it does make things challengin’ in the romance department.”

  “Well, there must be someone who’s snagged your interest,” Glinda said, and Cole stepped closer.

  He had no idea what part of him craved hearing his name from her lips right now. Especially when he had absolutely no intention of pursuing a real relationship with her, but he couldn’t deny he did all the same.

  “There’s, um… There’s…” Sadie paused, darting her gaze around the space until finally it landed on him where he stood in the doorway, eavesdropping like a creep. “Cole.”

  And even though he knew it wasn’t in response to the question Glinda had asked, his gut still clenched over his name on her lips.

  As if on cue, all the other heads in the room whipped in his direction, and he cleared his throat, offering a wave. “Hi.”

  “Oh! Well now… It seems she’s been holding out on us,” Mrs. Cartwright said under her breath, though he had no trouble hearing her from where he stood.

  “What are you doin’ here?” Sadie asked him. “I don’t remember seein’ your name on the sign-up sheet for the class.”

  Right, the baking class that he’d heard murmurs about since he’d started staying there. A baking class that he’d written off, but now he sort of wished he’d had the foresight to sign up for, if only to have an excuse to be in Sadie’s presence.

  Cole cleared his throat and adjusted the strap of his messenger bag from where it hung on his shoulder. “I didn’t. I just—” couldn’t find you and had to go and search… “—heard voices, so I came to see what was goin’ on.”

  “Well, you should come in,” Glinda said. “There’s plenty of room.”

  “Yes! In fact, you can take our spot. My back’s acting up. I think I should go lie down,” Mrs. Cartwright said, already untying her apron.

  “But we haven’t even baked the cookies yet,” Mr. Cartwright said before his wife not so subtly jabbed an elbow into his side. She hissed something under her breath that Cole probably did not care to know about, considering the speed with which the older man removed his apron. Mr. Cartwright cleared his throat. “Yes, and I have to find ice for her back. Sorry we can’t stay.”

  “Thanks, Sadie! We learned a lot.” Mrs. Cartwright waved before pushing her husband out the door.

  Glinda watched this play out before slapping a hand to her forehead. “Oh, darn it! I forgot we signed up for…that thing. In the…um…Square.” She removed her apron and then did the same for her husband, who looked on with questioning eyes.

  “There’s nothing going on in the Square tonight,” Sadie said, her brow pinched.

  “No, I’m sure of it,” Glinda said. “I’ve got my notes about it in our room. So we’re just going to go get those now. You two have fun!”

  Without another word, the woman dragged her husband behind her, flashing Cole a smile and a wink as she passed.

  “But what about all the cookies?” Sadie asked to their retreating forms, but it was just her and Cole now, the other couples long gone.

  “Is this where you tell me I sure know how to clear a room?” Cole asked, stepping into the space.

  Sadie breathed out a laugh and shook her head, glancing down at the abandoned sections of dough rolled out on the island. “Well, there’s no denyin’ you do.” She heaved out a sigh, her shoulder slumping. “Now I’ve gotta bake and frost all of these myself, I guess, even though I already baked mine for the day.”

  “Maybe I can help,” he said, his mouth three steps ahead of his brain, because there was no way he would have spoken those words if he’d given himself half a second to think about it.

  But instead of doing the logical thing like leaving as quickly as the other couples did and locking himself in his suite where he couldn’t be tempted by this siren, he hung up his messenger bag on the hook just inside the doorway and removed his suit jacket. He turned to Sadie, unbuttoning his cuffs, then rolled up his sleeves as he walked toward her.

  “You’re gonna help?” she asked with a heavy dose of skepticism in her tone.

  “You should know by now I’m a man of many talents, and I’m very good with my hands, firecracker.”

  Much to his smug satisfaction, Sadie’s cheeks flamed, making him wonder if she was recalling the evening activities they’d shared.

  “So, what’re we makin’?” he asked, slipping one of the discarded aprons on and tying it at his back.

  She shot him a disbelieving gaze. “I doubt you’re familiar.”

  “Try me.”

  She was silent for long moments before finally relenting with a sigh. “If you’d know them as anything, it’d be by the name Cinnamon Stars. But what they’re actually called is—”

  “Zimtsterne.” Just like he’d thought. He’d recognize that scent anywhere.

  She snapped her gaze up to his, surprise—and maybe delight?—on her face. “You know them?”

  He grabbed the discarded rolling pin and went to work on the slab of dough that wasn’t quite even. “Not only do I know them, but I’ve baked probably a thousand in my life.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep. My mom makes them every year for Christmas. Family tradition.”

  Sadie was frozen for long moments before she seemed to knock herself out of it and round the island to stand on Cole’s side in the spot Mrs. Cartwright vacated. “Elise and I used to make them with my grandma right here in this kitchen.”

  Cole hummed and made a point of glancing around at the otherwise empty room, save for them. “And yet, Elise is nowhere to be found.”

  Since he’d started staying at the Starlight, he’d noticed Sadie’s sister had been exceptionally absent from the inn. Elise seemed to burden Sadie with the vast majority of the responsibilities, something that rubbed him the wrong way. But that wasn’t so hard to understand—Cole hated when things weren’t fair, and this was no exception.

  Sadie shrugged and went to work on the other pieces of dough, making sure they were rolled out evenly. “She’s not much of a baker. What about you? Bakin’ with your mom—that’s unexpected.”

  “Yeah, well, there are a very small handful of people in the world whom I’d do anything for, and she’s one of them. So, when she says bake, I say how much.”

  Sadie’s face softened right before Cole’s eyes. “That’s sweet. And not at all what I imagined when it came to you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Hard to picture me with a family?”

  “Little bit. You don’t exactly scream family man.”

  Well, that was something they could agree on, at least. And it was important to him that she knew just exactly how much of a family man he wasn’t. He wouldn’t mind having her warm his sheets for the foreseeable future, but he had absolutely no intention of her doing so under any illusions.

  “I’m not. But it’s my mom,” he finished with a shrug, because that was all there was to say.

  “Tell me about her. What kind of a woman raised Cole Donovan?”

  He plucked one of the star-shaped cookie cutters from the bowl in the center of the island. “Comin’ from you, that sounds like an insult.”

  Sadie huffed out a laugh and held up her hands. “No, I’m genuinely curious. Objectively speakin’, you’re hardworkin’, tenacious, and confident.”

  “Otherwise known as too involved in my job, stubborn, and arrogant.”

  “Hey, you said it, not me.”

  As much as he tried to stop it, he couldn’t keep his lips from tipping up in the corners even while he focused his efforts on pressing the star cookie cutters into the dough. “Everything I learned, I learned from her. She’s a single mom and the strongest person I know.”

  Silence descended on the room for so long that Cole finally glanced in Sadie’s direction, only to find her staring at him with a look he couldn’t quite decipher.

  He cleared his throat, ready to take the spotlight off himself. “What about you? Has it been hard on you and your sister now that your folks spend half the year in Florida?”

  “It’s not too bad. We stay pretty busy at the inn, plus they’re happy.” Sadie’s brow pinched as she glanced up at him. “Wait…how’d you know that?”

  “I might be new to Havenbrook, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the goings-on of the townsfolk. Not much is a secret around here.”

  And if it was, it didn’t stay that way for long. Which was something they would both do well to remember.

  Cole didn’t think his clients would care much about who he spent his after-hours time with, but he had no doubt hers would be horrified to find out she’d involved herself with someone whose job was the antithesis of hers.

  But what Cole couldn’t figure out was why he even cared.

  Chapter Ten

  Every year in mid-December, the Starlight Haven Inn hosted a space for the townsfolk to gather and watch a moonlit holiday movie. In the two weeks leading up to the event, they held a vote on what that year’s movie would be, and this year, Elf had won out, much to Sadie’s delight—never mind that she wouldn’t get a chance to see more than a passing glance of it.

  She loved their property every day of the year, but it was something extra special during the holidays. White lights draped the gazebo, as well as the pine trees surrounding the vast backyard. Wreaths hung on each fence post, and strings of bulbed white lights surrounded the area in front of the inflatable screen where townsfolk settled in with their chairs and blankets for an evening of fun.

  No matter the temperature, this night was always attended by a vast majority of residents, and Sadie did all she could to make it as comfortable for them as possible. A hot chocolate and coffee bar with various fixings was set up on the patio next to the inn for attendees to help themselves, The Willow Tree provided spirits to warm the guests in another way entirely, and strategically placed fire tables gave off some heat for the years it got a little chilly.

  “You outdid yourself this year,” Rory, Sadie’s cousin and Nat’s eldest sister, said as she walked up, two steaming cups in her hands.

  Sadie smiled and gave her a hug. “You’re too sweet. Are the girls here too?”

  Rory lifted her chin to a spot on the lawn where her boyfriend, Nash, sat with her two daughters, the three of them laughing. “Yep, and they’re desperate for me to get my butt over there because they haven’t had enough sugar today.”

  Sadie chuckled. “Well, tell them all I said hey.”

  “Come tell ’em yourself. It’d do you some good to take a little break.”

  Sadie snorted. “You’re a fine one to talk. Was it just my imagination, or did you rearrange the drink bar while you were over there?”

  Rory shrugged, completely unrepentant. “Just makin’ it more efficient so you could get twice as many people through the line in the same amount of time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gettin’ the stink eye from Ella ’cause I’m holdin’ up her hot chocolate. And I meant what I said—take a break and come see us if you get a chance.”

 

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