A Mistletoe Kiss with the Boss by Susan Meier Read Free Book Online Page A

made such a careless comment.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it. It’s hard to remember every little detail of somebody’s bio.”
    â€œBut that’s an important one.”
    â€œNot really. I’m over it.”
    She held his gaze, her sympathetic eyes sending an odd feeling through him, a knowing that if he’d talk about this with her she’d understand.
    â€œYou’re not over it or you wouldn’t be so sure you don’t want to have kids.”
    He laughed to ease the pressure of the knot in his chest, the one that nudged him to say something honest when he couldn’t be honest. He’d never told anyone anything but the bare-bones facts of his childhood. And one woman with pretty eyes—no matter how much she seemed to be able to get him to relax—wouldn’t change that.
    He stuck with the rhetoric that had served him well for the ten years he’d guided Suminski Stuff. “Being over it has little to do with the decision not to have kids. I don’t just lack parenting skills, I also have an unusual job. In the past twenty-four hours I’ve been in two countries, crossed an ocean. There’s no place in my life for a wife, let alone kids.”
    She caught his gaze and gave him the most puzzling look for about ten seconds, and then she finally said, “You know, that just makes you all the more a challenge.”
    â€œA challenge?”
    â€œSure.” Her smile broadened, a bubble of laughter escaped. “Every woman wants to be the one who tames the confirmed bachelor and turns him into a family man.”
    She said it in jest. Her laugh clearly indicated she was teasing. But he could picture them in the master bedroom of his Albany estate, white curtains billowing in the breeze from open French doors. White comforter on a king-size bed. Her leaning on pillows plumped against a tufted headboard. Holding a baby.
    His baby.
    He shook his head to clear it of the totally absurd thought.
    She pointed to a discreet sign on a table only a few feet away. She said, “Thirty-one,” and started moving toward it.
    He breathed a sigh of relief. Not that the vision was gone, but also that she’d finally started walking. They reached their seats and he pulled out her chair for her.
    She sat. “I want lots of kids.”
    He sat beside her. The discussion might not have changed, but it had shifted off him and to her. That he could handle. “While you’re globe-trotting for your schools?”
    â€œThere are ways around that. Like nannies. And my mom.” She laughed. “I don’t have a doubt that she’ll be a hands-on grandmother.”
    His breath stalled as a memory of his own grandmother popped into his head. If she’d been “hands-on” it had been with her palm to his bottom when she’d decided that he’d misbehaved.
    He rose and shook hands when another couple arrived at their table, working to bring himself back from the memory of his grandmother paddling him for spilling milk when he was five or asking for a baseball mitt when he was seven.
    But as he frantically struggled to block his bleak, solitary childhood from his brain, Kristen said, “I can’t imagine not having my own family. I mean, I love my parents and all, but I want a crack at being a mom. Teaching someone everything I know.”
    An empty feeling filled him and on its heels came an envy so strong it was a battle not to close his eyes. She must have had a wonderful childhood. But being jealous was stupid, pointless. He’d gotten over his hollow beginnings years ago. Being lonely had forced him to entertain himself, and that ultimately had made him rich. He was pragmatic about his past. So, it shouldn’t make him feel bad that his childhood had been crap. Just as it shouldn’t make him jealous that Kristen was so confident in her decision to have kids. Or make him wonder how much fun the family she intended to