Cinderella's Christmas Affair by Katherine Garbera

her arms wrapped around her waist and her head tucked down. His arms ached.
    “Are you still here?”
    “Yeah, and I’m not leaving until we get some things straight.”
    “What things?”
    “One—I’m not like every other guy you’ve ever met. Two—you don’t have any idea what my dream woman looks like. And three—you promised dinner.”
    “Not now. Okay?” she asked. The vulnerability in her eyes made him want to find the bastard who had hurt her and tear him apart. He stopped thinking about questions and answers and instead went to her and took her in his arms.
    He held her tight, savoring the feel of her against his chest. She kept her own arms wrapped tight around herself.
    “We are going to talk.”
    She drew an unsteady breath and he knew she wasn’t going to acquiesce to his wishes easily. Too damn bad. Somehow he was responsible for making the spitfire he’d met in the office into this quivering mass of femininity. He had no idea how to change her back. But he was going to try.
    This was precisely why he’d decided on an unemotional entanglement with the opposite sex. A marriage of his convenience and her pleasure. It was simple really.
    “Cathy Jane, what’s wrong?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Women always like to talk about how men don’t communicate but y’all could give lessons.”
    “You sound like your dad.”
    “Hell, I feel like my dad must when my mom is giving him the cold shoulder.”
    “I’m not giving you the cold shoulder. I’m just asking you to leave me alone.”
    “Same difference,” he said. His dad wasn’t one to talk about emotions but last spring when his mom had had a breast cancer scare, his dad had told him that he couldn’t live without his wife. Tad didn’t want to believe that he couldn’t live without CJ but he knew that Cathy Jane had touched something deep inside him years ago. Something he hoped was mutual that bound them both together.
    “We’re not married,” she said quietly.
    The crackle of the fire and the lighted Christmas tree made him wish things weren’t complicated with CJ. Made him wish he could take that afghan off the back of her couch, the one he knew her Aunt Bessie had made, and lay it on the ground. Then he’d lower her down on it and make love to her until the shadows in her eyes had disappeared. “I’d like us to be.”
    “You are making me crazy. Please don’t mention marriage again.”
    “Give me a good reason not to,” he said.
    “We don’t know each other.”
    He leaned closer to her and brushed a soft kiss against her lips. “Then let’s get to know each other.”
    He scooped CJ up in his arms and walked back into the living room. He sat in the armchair nearest the Christmas tree and put her in his lap with her legs over one of the arms and her head resting against the back corner.
    “This is more like it,” he said.
    “What is?” she asked, her eyes were glassy and he knew whatever she was battling was overwhelming.
    He dipped his head and brushed a soft kiss against her forehead. She made him want to cherish her. He didn’t understand it. He’d come into the condo with a plan—convince CJ to marry him, maybe cement that decision in bed. But this tenderness, this damned protectiveness she called from him, he didn’t understand.
    “You…offered up like a feast.”
    She gave him a half grin then hauled back and punched him in the arm. “Will you stop it?”
    This was his old Cathy Jane. This woman he could handle. But that didn’t change the fact that something had happened earlier to hurt her and he didn’t have a clue what it was. “What happened before? I’ve never seen a woman react the way you did to a simple marriage proposal and a kiss.”
    “Nothing with you is simple, Tad.”
    “You’re making this more complicated than you need to. What happened to the girl I knew in Auburndale?”
    “She grew up.”
    “Growing up doesn’t necessarily mean barriers.”
    “Well it does for me.”
    “Talk to