All Through the Night: A Troubleshooter Christmas by Suzanne Brockmann Read Free Book Online Page B

out there,” Robin told Dolphina as he crouched to help Jules with the knot. “It’s not quite snow yet, but it’s definitely not rain either. It’s amazing.”
    â€œAmazing?” Jules laughed as he peeled off his sweater. His T-shirt beneath it came off, too, but it was wet as well, so he just left it off. “Wait until March. By then you’ll be calling it something else entirely.”
    Robin was the movie star, but Jules was quite possibly even better looking. He was dark-haired in contrast to Robin’s bottle blond, brown-eyed to Robin’s neon blue, and seemingly slight compared to Robin’s lean, muscular height. But his vertically challenged stature was deceiving—he was, in truth, extremely buff. When both men had their shirts off, as they did right now, it was like living in an Abercrombie & Fitch ad—a six-pack celebration, complete with triceps and biceps galore.
    No doubt about it, Dolphina loved her new job.
    â€œYou’ve got ice in your hair,” Jules pointed out.
    â€œYou do, too, babe.” Robin ran his fingers through Jules’s closely cropped waves. “That’s so wild. Ice is actually falling from the sky.”
    â€œIt does that now and then,” Jules said. “We call it
winter,
here in the real world outside of the Los Angeles area code.”
    â€œYour Win-Ter is strange to me, earthling,” Robin countered, then switched back to his regular voice. “You know, I’ve seen it in movies, but up close and personal, I’m finding the ice in the hair thing
really hot.
”
    Oh, dear. Although in truth, Robin found most things
really hot,
especially when Jules was in the room.
    Why Robin had hired her to work for them, Dolphina couldn’t quite figure out. Too often, especially when they were laughing together like this, she felt like Eeyore—a damp blanket of doom and gloom, willing to accept that love existed—Robin and Jules were proof of that—but convinced it would always remain well out of her lonely, depressing grasp.
    â€œCalifornia Boy wants it to snow for the wedding,” Jules told her, his eyes never leaving Robin’s.
    â€œDon’t you think that would be romantic?” Robin was talking to Dolphina, too, but smiling back at Jules. “Snowflakes falling in the silence of the night?” He started to sing. “I’m dreaming of a…white wedding!” It was a perfect mix of both Bing and Billy Idol, and it earned him more laughter and even a kiss from Jules.
    A kiss that Robin repeated, and deepened.
    â€œUm, guys,” she said, and Jules, who usually erred on the side of overly polite, at least when she was around, pulled back.
    â€œSorry,” he said, clearly embarrassed, which was silly. Surely he should feel comfortable kissing his fiancé in the privacy of his own home. She’d told him that about four hundred times, but he remained overly self-conscious.
    He liked his privacy, and was something of a Yankee when it came to public displays of affection. Dolphina kept telling him that she was not the public and, truth be told, he
was
loosening up a little. But progress was slow.
    Robin, on the other hand, had no qualms about soul-kissing his soulmate in front of other people—even out on the street. “I’m not,” he said now.
    â€œThere’s something you need to know.” Dolphina took a deep breath, ready to spill all, because clearly there were times when a surprise party should not be a surprise, and this was rapidly turning into one of them.
    But it was already too late. Robin was not paying attention as he pulled Jules to his feet with that glint in his eye that meant any second he was going to say…
    â€œTake the rest of the day off, Dolph.” But then he looked at her and blinked. “What are you doing here on a Saturday, anyway?”
    â€œThat’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she