She drew in a deep breath as his body pressed against hers. Her hand trembled a bit when she surrendered the star to him, and she couldn’t resist leaning back against his muscular frame as he moved forward to put the star on the highest bough of the six-foot tree. For just a second, she let herself savor the feel of him before the sounds coming from the kitchen reminded her they weren’t alone. She couldn’t lean against her stepbrother like that. She couldn’t even allow herself to think about him in any other way besides brother. With a small sigh, she stepped away from him and bent down to plug in the lights. When she stood up, she caught Cade staring at her butt in the tight jeans, and the confirmation of their mutual attraction was both dismaying and satisfying. It boosted her feminine ego to know he wanted her too, even as it made it that much harder to resist the forbidden. Pretending like it wasn’t impossibly hard to turn away from him, she left her stepbrother in the living room to join his mom in the kitchen, where Vivian was preparing the start of what would be the lavish Christmas Eve feast served later that night.
