touch.’
Her heart lurched.
‘Yeah, yeah, you say that now—’
‘It’s true,’ he said, and held both hands up at her cynical expression. ‘Just for the record… I wasn’t going to just leave.’
‘Even if you hadn’t,’ she said. ‘It would never have lasted. Nothing’s changed, Tom. I told you my views. Nothing long-term can come from something that’s grounded on sex. However hot the sex,’ she added.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a loophole for that.’ His grin was triumphant, as if he’d been expecting this from her. ‘We’re up to two now with our flings. How many do you reckon we need to have before we become grounded in something more than just sex?’
She was shaking her head at him like she thought he might have lost his mind.
‘I think we should have another fling. Right now. To take us over New Year. Then we’ll see what we both want to do – where we want to go, what our commitments are – and we’ll schedule another one. I’ll book the hotel, you meet me there. I reckon half a dozen might do it. By then I’ll have you paring down your luggage, and maybe I will have met some of your friends. We won’t be the one-night stand couple anymore. Our lives will start to overlap more and more and we’ll have a foundation. We can build a future on one of those.’
Quiet tendrils of hope began to course their way through her body. He’d come back. Christmas in Barbados hadn’t been enough of a pull to keep him through to New Year.
He tapped his head.
‘It’s mind over matter. You’re determined to view us as having no chance because you equate our relationship to your parents. That’s really unfair to us. We were lucky enough to have fate bring us back together and…’
‘Will you please stop bringing bloody fate into it!’ she said, exasperated. ‘Fate hasn’t been kind to me over the years.’
‘That’s exactly my point,’ he said, pulling her into a cuddle. ‘I think fate owes you one. Maybe it’s time we took charge of it.’
She let her arms slide around his neck. He had an answer for every damn reservation. Whispers of tentative excitement began to spread through her as she tested the idea in her mind. She, Ella Scott, was thinking long-term and including someone else in those plans. It felt totally alien and at the same time intoxicating.
Somewhere in the background the countdown to midnight began, with more and more voices chiming in. And then he was kissing her, his arm around her waist, his hand tangling in her hair.
New Year. New beginnings. Second chances.
She gave fate a chance and kissed him back.
THE END
Santa Wore Leathers
Vonnie Davis
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
To my awesome critique partners, AJ Nuest and Rachel Brimble, fabulous authors who point out when I’ve used the same phrase three times on the same page and remind me a participle looks nasty when it dangles. Thanks for your patience, my darlings.
My new neighbor is a man-whore.
Becca Sinclair peered through the window of her townhouse, her fingertips flying over the keyboard. This new post on her “The Things Men Do” blog would definitely entertain her twelve hundred followers. Comments would amass and maybe, if she were lucky, she’d increase her audience.
Marshall, her editor at the Clearwater Daily, had dangled the incentive of giving her a weekly column, but only if she secured fifteen hundred followers. The poor schmuck had no idea how determined she was. Or how much women loved reading her comical, often snarky, take on the male gender.
With her desk positioned in front of the bay window in her living room, she had a great view of the goings-on in her neighborhood. This secluded vantage point had birthed many well-read posts. She raised her tiny espresso cup to her lips, inhaled its strong aroma as she sipped and read over her first paragraph on the screen.
About an hour ago, a brunette showed up at his front door carrying a box of Krispy Kremes. Just now, a blonde parked her red car behind the silver compact of woman number one. Before woman number two’s stilettos hit the pavement, shirtless man-whore jogged out of his townhouse to greet her, no doubt in an attempt to head her off at the pass. Pardon the cliché, sistahs, but men ARE so clichéd, are they not?
Becca’s gaze swept from her monitor to her neighbor and the blonde talking on the sidewalk. Man-whore must lift weights in his sleep to get a build like that. How hard would his muscles feel if she ran her hands over them? Dismissing her thought with an eye roll, she allowed her perusal to continue. Like most Floridians, he had a deep tan which, when combined with his sculptured muscles, presented a very potent male package. If she were one to notice, which she was not.
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