The Boss's Mistletoe Maneuvers by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom Read Free Book Online Page A

returned.
    “I’d like to be honest with you.” As her eyes met his, Chaz couldn’t help but feel as if he were drowning. The look in her eyes made the crowd around them disappear.
    “I’d appreciate it if you would,” he said, slightly shaken by the intimacy of her touch and her sudden change of expression. Truly, it wasn’t a normal occurrence for him to be affected by the antics of a woman. He wasn’t sex starved. He didn’t need to count on Kim for those fantasies when the pretty brunette at the next table continuously looked his way.
    “It would be better for me if you didn’t pressure me into this,” she told him in a carefully modulated tone that deepened her accent.
    “Explain, and maybe I won’t. I am human, you know.”
    When she frowned, the delicate skin around her eyes creased.
    “I have a problem,” she said.
    Her fingers moved on his as if trying to stress a point he didn’t see. Chaz found himself listening especially diligently for whatever excuse she’d come up with next. He could hardly wait to hear what she had to say.
    She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, a provocative, erotic action.
    “It’s embarrassing to speak of, so I don’t,” she began. “If you were to fire me because of sharing this very personal confidence, I don’t know what I’d do.”
    She hadn’t removed her hand from his. His gaze lingered on her mouth.
    “I have a problem with Christmas.” As she spoke, earrings buried somewhere in her fair blond hair tinkled with a sound like stardust falling.
    “It’s not the holiday itself that bothers me,” she went on. “An objection to the commercialism of Christmas would be funny in our line of business, wouldn’t it?”
    Kim’s wan smile lifted the edges of her lips. “That’s not the source of my problems.”
    “I’d sincerely like to know what is,” Chaz said.
    In another surprising move, she slid closer to him, inching her stool sideways and leaning in so that she didn’t have to shout. With her mouth all but touching his right ear, she said, “Santa is my problem.”
    When Chaz turned his head, their lips almost met. He felt the soft exhalation of her breath. “Santa?” he echoed, his abs shuddering annoyingly beneath his shirt. “As in Santa Claus? You have a problem with Santa Claus?”
    “Yes.” Her reply was devastatingly breathy.
    Was she making fun of him?
    “How can Santa Claus be a problem?” he asked.
    “I want him,” she whispered.
    He waited for the meaning of this to hit. Then he began to laugh. She wanted Santa? This was so much better than her shunning the holiday for religious reasons, or thinking Christmas too commercial as an advertising executive, that it came off as completely unique. Kim McKinley deserved a crown for this excuse.
    She had put him on, of course, and she’d had him going for a minute. Her acting skills were applause-worthy. This was another point for her, well played.
    But she didn’t look so well, all of a sudden. Her smile had faded. Her face paled. The hazel eyes gazing into his were glazed and moist, very much as if she had just disclosed a terrible secret and was awaiting a dreaded response. As if she’d been serious.
    And he had laughed.
    Sobering, rallying quickly, he said, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I must have misunderstood your meaning. In what way do you want Santa Claus, exactly?”
    “I...”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, you see, I...”
    Her eyes held a pleading, haunted cast. She didn’t want to explain herself, couldn’t find the words. As he watched her, she began to look less like a mistress of fire, and more like a young, lost waif.
    Chaz was moved by the change. Without thinking, he reached up to cup her face with his hands in an automatic reaction of empathy, sensing real trouble in her past. She stared into his eyes, and he stared back, groping for what was going on here, and what she might mean.
    When her lips parted, they trembled enough that he could see the