That Christmas Feeling by Catherine Palmer, Gail Gaymer Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

breath. “I’m okay, too. You?”
    “Other than you just about scaring me to death, I’m fine.”
    Looking up into his eyes, she smiled. “Well, Rob West. It seems we’ve just completed our second project together.”
    He couldn’t resist stroking his hand down the side of her face. “That is the last time I ever let you climb a tree.”
    “You can’t keep me from climbing trees.”
    “I’m pretty good at getting what I want.”
    “Are you, now? Well, I certainly know what I want.”
    Her words rushed through him with all the force of adam breaking. When he spoke, his voice came out husky and breathless. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
    Hesitating, she closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened again, he saw that they had gone soft and dark. “Not much, really,” she whispered. Her lower lip trembled, and she cleared her throat. “Actually, I was thinking about pizza.”
    He laughed. “Pizza?”
    “Over at Dandy’s in Bolivar.” She sat up and tugged her cap back down over her ears. “They make the best mushroom-and-onion pizza I’ve ever tasted.”
    “Mushroom and onion? Whatever happened to good ol’ pepperoni?”
    “Fine, we’ll order two.” Standing, she took his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Go haul that poor cat out from under the porch, and I’ll meet you at your car.”
    Claire was going with him to Bolivar. Rob stared after her as she headed for the open window through which her great-aunt continued to heckle them. Claire Ross was going with him to Bolivar. They would drop the cats at the shelter, and then they would drive to Dandy’s and eat pizza. Just the two of them.
    It would be like a date. Only, he had vowed not to date again. This was only geeky Clarence, he reminded himself. So it didn’t count. Not really.
    He watched her standing at the window talking to the older woman, assuring Flossie that she would drop by to check on her tomorrow and that she’d return a couple of cats to the mansion within the week. Claire’s auburn curlscovered her shoulders, tumbling over her green coat and down her back. Her slim hips and long legs looked just about too good to be true. As she turned to face Rob again, the setting sun flashed in her green eyes.
    Maybe just one sort-of date wouldn’t matter too much. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Just two old friends having pizza together and talking. What was the harm in that?

Chapter Three
    C laire wiped her fingers on a napkin and sighed as she settled back in the restaurant booth. Nothing like warm toes and a full stomach on a cold winter night. Three hours earlier, she had left Aunt Flossie still hurling insults through the open window of Ross Mansion and had driven home to shower and change out of her filthy duds into clean jeans and a forest-green sweater. Half an hour after that, Rob had picked her up in his squad car.
    Back seat filled with yowling, hissing cats in small cages, they’d left Buffalo for the twenty-minute drive to the nearby town that boasted a charming courthouse square, a small Christian university and an abundance of quaint nineteenth-century homes. The manager of the Bolivar animal shelter took the cats, promising to restore them to health and try to find them good homes. And then it was pizza time.
    “You only ate three slices,” Rob said, starting on his fifth.
    “Enough, already. I’m as stuffed as that crust.”
    Chewing, he grinned at her. “You always did like pizza.”
    Uncomfortable with the ease of his statement, she knitted her fingers together under the table. They had spent most of the evening chatting about the past—his memories of the football team, her recollections of their different teachers and their mutual reminiscences about the joint history project.
    But Claire couldn’t deny that it was disconcerting to have Rob West seated across from her in this dimly lit restaurant booth tonight, his blue eyes gazing into hers and his hand