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“F-for me?” I asked.
“Yeah!” all the kids shouted.
After swallowing hard, I crouched to their level and set the bag on the ground. I pulled out some tissue paper and gazed inside at all the small canvases, covered in globs of paint.
I took the first one out, and a small boy raised his hand and leaned forward. “That one is mine!”
“Wow,” I breathed out, a smile on my face. “I love it.”
“Do you know what it is?” He beamed.
“What?”
He pointed to two large figures in the center. “That’s you and Miss Sierra.” Then, he gestured to all the smaller stick figures next to us. “And that’s us! Miss Sierra said that you both don’t celebrate Christmas with anyone, so I wanted to draw us as one big, happy family.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I stared down at the painting, attempting not to cry in front of all these kids and in front of Sierra. I continued to pull out more and more canvases, each similar to the first, but us cooking or playing in a pool, at the beach or having a party.
After I pulled out the last canvas, I wiped tears from my eyes and glanced up at Sierra, who held the girl with pigtails in her lap. She rested her head against the girl’s but stared at me with a soft smile.
“Why don’t you open your gifts?” she said, nudging the girl toward the sack of gifts that the other kids were getting into.
And when the girl ran off, Sierra walked over to me slowly, fiddling with her dress.
“Come here,” I murmured, taking her hand and drawing her closer to me. “Why’d you bring me here?”
“If you don’t want to stay, I can meet you back at your place before six,” she said.
I drew my thumb across her cheek. “Why’d you bring me here?”
“Because …” She shrugged and peered down at her shoes shyly. “I wanted you to experience what Christmas with a family feels like. Even though they’re not related to you, I thought—”
Before she could finish her sentence, I pulled her closer and pressed my lips to hers.
She sucked in a surprised breath. And then she placed her hands on my chest, her fingers curling into my shirt, and kissed me back softly. Warmth exploded through my chest, and I seized her waist.
Why had I kicked my gift to her underneath the couch earlier? Why had I been so scared, so afraid that she’d leave me? She was … more than I could have asked for. The best damn thing that had ever happened to me.
Whispers erupted around us, and I slowly pulled away to see the kids had stopped playing with their toys to watch us. Sierra giggled and rested her head on my chest, staring at the children.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered breathlessly to me.
I pushed back even more tears building in my eyes. “Merry Christmas, love.”
42
sierra
“So,” Heather said, sipping her champagne after Christmas dinner, “how was your day?”
I drew my finger across the rim of my glass and bit back a grin. “Good.”
She arched her brow. “Just good? Steven didn’t ask you anything?”
“No …” I glanced over at her. “What would he ask me?”
Heather stiffened and grabbed my hand, leading me all the way across the room and toward the leather couch near the floor-to-ceiling windows. We had just finished dinner with Michelle and her submissive as well as Hector, and I was feeling tired already.
She glanced over her shoulder at the brothers. “Hector said maybe Steven would …”
