A Holiday to Remember by Lynnette Kent Read Free Book Online Page B

on your résumé? ‘Storyteller,’ perhaps?”
    “No. I get paid to tell the truth.”
    She didn’t respond, and he knew he’d failed. At the same time, he realized how exhausted he was. “Anywhere in particular you want me to sleep?” He winced as he stood up. His muscles had petrified while he sat. “As far away from this room as possible, I assume.”
    “Well…” Her hesitation told him she approved that suggestion. “This is the only working fireplace. The rest of the building will be very, very cold.”
    Chris shrugged a shoulder—the wrong one, but he swallowed the groan. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve slept in colder places.” He looked at the fire, now reduced to glowing red embers. “I’ll put a couple of logs on and bring more in. But you’ll have to keep it stoked overnight, or you’ll all be freezing in the morning along with me.”
    She still didn’t move. “Yes.”
    When he brought the wood in from outside, Juliet—Jayne—was standing near the fireplace, in case he tried something with one of the girls, Chris guessed. After stacking the logs carefully on the hearth, he straightened up. “I’ll grab some blankets from the infirmary, if that’s okay. In fact, maybe I’ll just sack out on a bed in there.” He sent her a grin. “At this point, a mattress might be a better deal than mere heat.”
    He thought he saw her smile. “That could be true.”
    As he went to the door, the beam of her flashlight came up beside him, then went ahead of him out into the hallway. “The infirmary is on the second floor,” she said. “On the right.”
    “I remember, more or less.” He started toward the double doors to the entry hall, surprised to find her walking beside him. “You were waiting for the girls to bring a stretcher down.”
    “I thought you were unconscious all that time.”
    “When I land in a good place, I stay there.”
    The headmistress didn’t say anything to that.
    Chris put his hand on the door panel, but shifted to face her before he pushed. Dim light reflected from the polished hardwood, revealing her face only in the contours of shadows. Round cheeks, delicate chin. Plump, full lips, parted slightly.
    She was Juliet, he knew it. Maybe the way to convince her was…
    He bent his head and touched his mouth to hers, brushed his lips across those curves, and pressed softly. She gave a small gasp and her taste flowed into him, a familiar honey. Twelve years of wanting clutched at his chest, his gut. Chris deepened the kiss, bringing up a hand to cup her shoulder.
    And got a slap on the cheek that snapped his eyes wide open.

Chapter Four

    A huge knot of something —Jayne decided to call it anger—clogged her throat, preventing her from telling Chris Hammond what he could do with his kisses. So she jerked out of his hold and strode back toward the library, hoping his cheek hurt even half as much as her hand did after that slap.
    Then she remembered the bruises and scrapes on his face from the accident and felt guilty for making them worse.
    But he had no business doing that, she argued with herself as she put another log on the fire and then went to wrap up in a blanket on the empty couch. She couldn’t possibly have signaled that she was interested in any kind of physical contact, because she definitely was not.
    Although, a traitorous part of her whispered, his mouth was delicious! He tasted of coffee, with a dark edge that owed nothing to the brew she’d served. An exotic, enticing flavor she’d never encountered in all her history of kisses. Not that she’d kissed so many men. And most of them had been quite…safe.
    Chris Hammond was anything but safe. He said he’d seen the birthmark on her hip, had even kissed it. The intimacy implied by such knowledge left her breathless. She refused to name the emotion that left her pulse pounding.
    As for the idea that the mark identified her as this Juliet Radcliffe…
    Surely other women had birthmarks on their left hips.