hours, she didn’t notice when Ross stopped walking. She finally realized it and looked over her shoulder, seeing him a half-dozen steps back. He stood in the middle of a crowded Sixth Avenue sidewalk, and was gazing up toward the sky.
No. Not the sky. Those twinkling lights weren’t stars. Instead, thousands of tiny bulbs set the night aglow, their gleam picked up by a sea of sparkling ornaments gently held in the arms of an enormous evergreen.
“Can you believe this is the first time I’ve seen it?” Ross asked, staring raptly at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “It’s my first Christmas in the Big Apple, and I haven’t happened to be over this way for the past few weeks.”
Lucy might be Ebenezer’s long-lost twin sister, but she couldn’t be a scrooge when it came to seeing Ross with that delighted expression on his face. He looked like a kid. A big, muscular, incredibly handsome, sexy-as-sin kid.
She returned to his side, looking up at the tree. It was beautiful against the night sky, ablaze with light and color. Even her hardened-to-Christmas heart softened at the sight.
Saying nothing, Ross led her toward an empty bench ahead. It was night and the crowds had thinned to near-reasonable levels.
She sat beside him on the bench, giving him time to stare at the decor. But to her surprise, he instead looked at her. “Since this is probably as close to a tree as you’re going to get this year, do you want to open your present now?”
She glanced at the tattered box, which she’d lugged around all day. She could wait and open it when she got home, but somehow, this moment seemed right. “I already know what it is.”
“Really?”
“Well, not specifically.” She began plucking the still-damp packaging paper from the box. “Sam and I have this tradition.”
“I suspect it’s a nontraditional one.”
“You could say that.” She actually smiled as she tore off the last of the paper and lifted the lid. Jude might have broken her gift, but it was the joy of seeing what Sam had found that delighted her. No broken glass could take that away from her.
“Oh, my God,” Ross said, staring into the mound of tissue paper inside the box. “That is…is…”
“It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” Lucy said. She lifted her hand to her mouth, giggling. Jude’s petty destruction hadn’t done much to make this thing less appealing, because it had already been pretty damned hideous. “Isn’t it perfect?”
His jaw dropped open and he stared at her. “Seriously?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said with a nod. Then she lifted the broken snow globe, now missing glass, water and snow, and eyed the pièce de résistance that had once been the center of it. Sitting on a throne was the ugliest Santa Claus in existence. His eyes were wide and spacey, his face misshapen, his coloring off. His supposedly red suit was more 1970’s disco-era orange, and was trimmed with tiny peace signs. Beside him stood two terrifyingly emaciated, grayish children who looked like they’d risen from their graves and were about to zombiefy old St. Nick.
Hideous. Awful.
She loved it.
“Oh, this is so much better than what I got him—a dumb outhouse Santa complete with gassy sound effects.”
“Do you always give each other terrible presents?”
“Just for Christmas. He gives me snow globes, I give him some obnoxious Santa, often one that makes obscene noises.”
He chuckled. “My sisters would kill me if I did that.”
“It started as a joke—a distraction so we wouldn’t have to think too much about the way it used to be. And it stuck.”
She couldn’t be more pleased with her gift—unless, of course, it weren’t broken. But she wouldn’t let Sam know about that part. The center scene was the key.
Smiling, Lucy tucked the base of the globe back in the box, trying to avoid any bits of glass. But when she felt a sharp stab on her index finger, she knew she hadn’t been successful. “Ow,” she muttered, popping her fingertip into her mouth.
“Let me see,” he ordered.
She let him take her hand, seeing a bright drop of red blood oozing on her skin.
“We should go get something to clean this.”
“It’s okay, we’re not too far from my place…as long as you’re ready to leave?”
He rose, reaching for the now-open box, and extending his other hand to her. She gave him her noninjured one, and once she was standing beside him, he dropped an arm across her shoulders. Ross took one last look at the famous tree. Then, without a word, he turned to face her.
“I know this is cheesy and right out of a holiday movie,” he said, “but I’m going to do it anyway.”
She wasn’t sure what the it was, but suddenly understood when he bent to kiss her. People continued to walk all around them, street musicians played in the background, skaters called from the icy rink below. But all that seemed to disappear as Lucy opened her mouth to him, tasting his tongue in slow, lazy thrusts that soon deepened. It got hotter, hungrier. Both of them seemed to have lost any hint of the restraint that had kept them from getting this intense during their previous kiss.
Ross dropped his arm until his hand brushed her hip, his fingertips resting right above her rear, and Lucy quivered, wanting more. A whole lot more.
“Get a room!” someone yelled.
The jeer and accompanying laughter intruded on the moment. Sighing against each other’s lips, they slowly drew apart.
“Thank you,” he said after a long moment, during which he kept his hand on her hip. “I can check that off my bucket list.”
“Kissing in front of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree?”
“No. Kissing you in front of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.”
She couldn’t keep the smile off her face as they began walking the several blocks to her apartment building. Ross carried not only the bag with his robotic dinosaur, but also her snow globe. He had insisted on wrapping a crumpled napkin around her fingertip, but she didn’t even feel the sting of the cut anymore. Because the closer they got to home, the more she wondered what was going to happen when they arrived. That kiss had been so good, but also frustrating since she wanted more.
Much more.
Unfortunately once they reached her building, and she looked up and saw what looked like every light in her apartment blazing, she realized she wasn’t going to get it. Damn. “I guess Kate didn’t leave, after all,” she said, wondering why her friend had stuck around. It was nearly 10:00 p.m.; Kate and Teddy were supposed to get on the road hours ago.
“Your roommate’s still here?”
“Sure looks like it. No way would she leave all the lights on—she’s a total nag about our electric bill.”
Ross nodded, though he averted his gaze. She wondered if it was so he could disguise his own disappointment.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t had dates up to her place before; Jude had been over numerous times. It was just, she’d wanted to be alone with Ross. Really alone. And there was no privacy to be had in her apartment. She slept in one corner on a Murphy bed, with just a clothesline curtain for a wall, and Kate used the daybed that doubled as a couch the rest of the time.
Being with him in a confined space, under the amused, knowing eyes of her roommate, would be beyond torturous.
He seemed to agree. “What time should I come tomorrow?”
She raised a brow.