Kissing Under the Mistletoe by Marina Adair Read Free Book Online Page B

been five months pregnant. They’d been at the restaurant celebrating that they were having a girl.
    “Oh. My. God! Is Holly
Richard’s
?” Jordan whispered.
    Regan nodded. Trusting Richard had been the biggest mistake of her life. Too bad she hadn’t been the only one affected. Their relationship had not only broken up a marriage, it put Holly in a place no child should ever be in—unwanted by a parent.
    It also got Regan wrapped up in a business venture she should never have been a part of. But she got Holly out of the deal. And that was what was important.
    “Richard isn’t involved in Holly’s life.” At all. “He pretty much took off after...”
    She looked over her shoulder at Gabe. A slow churning started low in her belly, and when he winked in that I’m-watching-you way, it dropped south. She hated that he hated her, but she understood why. Even more, she hated that she wanted him. How sick was that?
    “And pretty much, that’s why Gabe is out to ruin my life,” she said, turning back to the table.
    “Ruin your life?” Frankie snorted. “Girl, you screwed with
the
DeLuca Darling and you still have all your appendages. Impressive. I mean, in the third grade I accidently nailed Abby in the face with a pile of grape pulp.”
    “How do you
accidently
nail someone in the face?” Jordan asked.
    “I was aiming for Trey, who retaliated by holding my head in a vat until it turned my skin blue. Nate pulled us apart, eventually, but we all looked like Smurfs for our school pictures.” Frankie glared at the DeLuca table before going on. “And that was before the accident.”
    “Accident?”
    Jordan remained silent, as if speaking of the DeLucas to “the enemy” was a betrayal. Maybe it was. But when she crossed her arms and sat back, purposefully distancing herself from Regan and taking with her any warm fuzzies they had shared, Regan’s heart sank to her toes.
    Is this what living here would feel like every day? No matter how much she had changed or how many times she tried to right her wrong, was she going to be a constant disappointment?
    “I was in college, so Abby must have been sixteen or so. Her parents were driving her back from a music recital when a car veered over the divide on Silverado Trail, killing them.”
    “Oh, my God. That is horrible.” She wondered how old Gabe had been and how losing his parents without warning had affected him. She’d lost her mom to cancer, and it was the most painful experience of her life, but at least she’d had time to say good-bye.
    “It gets worse,” Jordan finally spoke. Any sign of judgment was replaced with sorrow—for the DeLucas. “No one found them for hours. So Abigail was stuck in the car with her parents as they...” She trailed off, her eyes misty. “They were such a great family. The whole town felt their loss.”
    Which explained why people were so willing to denounce Regan at one man’s request.
    “Gabe was back East in grad school,” Jordan went on. “The funeral hadn’t even ended and already he was thrown into his father’s shoes, figuring out how to run a pretty massive wine business and making sure that what his family had spent a century building didn’t fall apart.”
    And that his family didn’t fall apart
, Regan silently added.
    This was not what she needed to hear. The more she learned about Gabe, the harder it was to stay angry at him. And the last thing she needed was to start feeling some kind of kinship with the man who had caused her so much pain.
    She knew what it was like to lose a parent. More importantly, she could connect emotionally with how hard it was to be responsible for a family at such a young age. The only difference was that he’d had his grandmother and siblings and this town. After her mother died, Regan had no one. And just as Gabe would do whatever it took to protect what was his, so would she.
    “I’ve been on the receiving end of the DeLucas’ games, and when riled they can be jerks.