Page 141 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“What’s in the basket?” he asked, gesturing toward her.

“Oh. Bread. And cookies. I thought you might be in need.” She looked around the space. “I’m surprised by how the place looks inside. It’s a bit...”

“Cleaner than you thought?”

“And newer.”

“I learned to do construction when I got out of prison. That’s a practical skill. I know how to fix things. Good with my hands.”

He didn’t imagine it. She turned pink. Bright pink. From her cheeks down her neck, a color that vanished beneath the neckline of her dress.

If he wasn’t mistaken, her response to him was a bit carnal.

But then, she’d seen him naked coming up from the creek, and she was back. To get her backpack, yes, but also with bread.

Don’t let your imagination run away with you.

Except, he wasn’t a man who did that. Not ever.

He didn’t get caught up or swept away. He was firmly planted in reality, and the reality was, this woman was looking at him and turning pink, and she was back in his house when she didn’t need to be, and she’d brought him bread.

“So you’d say...you’d say you changed your life?” she said.

“Do I rob liquor stores anymore? Is that your real question?”

She shook her head. “It isn’t.”

“Then maybe you should make your real question clear.”

She looked surreptitiously around the room, like she was checking the place out, but he had a feeling she was just avoiding eye contact. There was something on her mind, that was for sure, and it wasn’t backpacks or bread.

“You changed your life,” she said. “And I don’t know how to do that. I’m stuck.”

“I imagine you aren’t stuck in a life of crime.”

She shook her head. “Worse. I’m boring.”

He laughed. “Oh honey, there’s a lot of shit that’s worse than boring. If you’d been to prison, you’d know that.”

“Okay, that’s fair. But I still want to know how to be different.”

He shrugged. “You be different. I don’t know why I’m giving life advice to a little girl in a red dress who looks like she just escaped the local nunnery.”

It was a mean thing to say and he could see that he’d gotten her good. But why worry about that? She should leave. And if he had to poke her a bit to get her to go, that was all the same to him.

She set the basket down on the counter.

“I did not escape a nunnery. I am not a child. I am not just the preacher’s daughter. I am not boring, not on purpose. I just... I just...”

And then she did something wholly unexpected.

Right then, Little Red flung herself across the space, and against his chest, and then she stretched up on her toes and kissed him.

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE HAD NO idea what on earth she was doing. He was as unyielding as stone against her mouth, but he was hot.

Not stone. Not a mountain.

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