Free Christmas at Waratah Bay by Marion Lennox

when they were around was an understatement. And yet, he’d taken them in, and he cared. And now, she’d seen the way he reacted to Katie and her family, even though he was driven against the ropes, trapped in a family Christmas he didn’t want.
    She’d watched him stroke Gerome, cradle Gerome, and inside something had twisted.
    Lust? Yeah, but more. It was desire, and it wasn’t just physical. She’d fought to ignore it—how complicated could Christmas get?—but as soon as his mouth lowered onto hers, she knew she was lost. Her body simply seemed to melt. All she could feel, all she wanted to feel, was Max.
    He felt like . . . home?
    How corny was that? How sexy? Not sexy at all, she thought with the tiniest space in her brain available for anything bar sensation. This place felt like home, not this man.
    But he did. The heat of his touch, the way her body responded to him, the way his arm tugged her close, molding her against him, the way he was still aware of the pup on his knees, but his mouth was doing such things, and she was all desire, all aching need, and yet he cared about her pup . . .
    She was imploding. She heard herself whimper and thought was that me? How? Why?
    She’d been kissed before—of course she had.
    Never like this. Never remotely, close to this.
    She was simply surrendering. This was just a kiss, a touch between a man and a woman on a beautiful December night, and yet it was so much more . . .
    Enough, she told herself. Enough, enough, enough. Just let yourself go. Just kiss and be kissed.
    Just surrender to this moment and this man.
    *
    He hadn’t meant to kiss her. Of all the stupid . . .
    Yeah, well, if you thought about it analytically, before the act, it was stupid. Only, it had happened, it was no longer before the act, he was kissing Sarah and analytic thinking didn’t come into it.
    There was only sensation.
    This lady sure packed a punch.
    Yeah, well, maybe she was practiced, he thought as he tasted her, as his mouth enveloped hers. This woman was a top model, and as such she’d been hunted by some of the most eligible men on the planet.
    Only her kiss didn’t feel practiced. It felt . . . astonished. Sweet. Surrendering with wonder. Almost virginal.
    Virginal? What sort of thought was that? She couldn’t possibly be.
    But the way she melted . . . It was enough to make a man melt himself. It was enough to make a man want to pick her up and carry her inside and make . . .
    Um . . . no. Spend the night with her? Have his family find them in bed together in the morning?
    Have Katie smile at him in relief, that he’d found a woman to share . . .
    Whoa. Just focus on the kiss. It was so worth focusing on.
    But, amazing or not, and this kiss was growing more amazing by the moment, the old fears had suddenly found a toehold and were clambering aboard. Love. Commitment . . .
    It was only a kiss. It shouldn’t mean . . .
    “Max?” And suddenly, appallingly, she was tugging away. “What is it?”
    “What’s . . . what?”
    “You were kissing me and suddenly . . . I felt . . . like you were somewhere else.”
    Terrific. Not only was she achingly lovely, she was also fey. For he had been somewhere else, a teenager, surrounded by needy kids, an appalling mother, the demands and demands and demands made by love and commitment.
    “Not . . . maybe not such a good idea if we’re spending Christmas together,” he managed and she looked at him in the moonlight for a long moment. Once more, he got that impression. Definitely fey.
    “Maybe not.” To his infinite regret she tugged away, lifted Gerome from his knee and rose. “Sorry.”
    “It wasn’t,” he managed, “you who instigated it.”
    “No, but I sat on your verandah in my pajamas.”
    “Totally irresistible,” he said, and she managed a chuckle.
    “I modeled these pjs. They gave them to me after the shoot. Not bad, huh?”
    She was deliberately making the situation light