A Match Made Under the Mistletoe

by Diana Palmer

  She gave it to him and in turn entered his into her own phone.

  “Please don’t be stubborn. If you need help, call me. I’m just a few houses away and can be here in under two minutes—and that’s even if I have to take time to put on boots and a winter coat.”

  He likely wouldn’t call and both of them knew it.

  “Are we almost done?” Will asked from the doorway, clearly tired of having only his sister to talk to in the other room.

  “In a moment,” she said, then turned back to Marshall. “Do you know Herm and Louise Jacobs, next door?”

  Oddly, he gaped at her for a long, drawn-out moment. “Why do you ask?” His voice was tight with suspicion.

  “If I’m not around and you need help for some reason, they or their grandson Christopher can be here even faster. I’ll put their number in your phone, too, just in case.”

  “I doubt I’ll need it, but…thanks.”

  “Christopher has a skateboard, a big one,” Will offered gleefully. “He rides it without even a helmet!”

  Her son had a bad case of hero worship when it came to the Jacobses’ troubled grandson, who had come to live with Herm and Louise shortly after Andie and her children arrived in Haven Point. It worried her a little to see how fascinated Will was with the clearly rebellious teenager, but so far Christopher had been patient and even kind to her son.

  “That’s not very safe, is it?” the sheriff said gruffly. “You should always wear a helmet when you’re riding a bike or skateboard to protect your head.”

  “I don’t even have a skateboard,” Will said.

  “If you get one,” Marshall answered. This time she couldn’t miss the clear strain in his voice. The man was at the end of his endurance and probably wanted nothing more than to be alone with his pain.

  “We really do need to leave,” Andie said quickly. “Is there anything else I can do to help you before we leave?”

  He shook his head, then winced a little as if the motion hurt. “You’ve done more than enough already.”

  “Try to get some rest, if you can. I’ll check in with you tomorrow and also bring something for your lunch.”

  He didn’t exactly look overjoyed at the prospect. “I don’t suppose I can say anything to persuade you otherwise, can I?”

  “You’re a wise man, Sheriff Bailey.”

  Will giggled. “Where’s your gold and Frankenstein?”

  Marshall blinked, obviously as baffled as she was, which only made Will giggle more.

  “Like in the Baby Jesus story, you know. The wise men brought the gold, Frankenstein and mirth.”

  She did her best to hide a smile. This year Will had become fascinated with the small carved Nativity set she bought at a thrift store the first year she moved out of her grandfather’s cheerless house.

  “Oh. Frankincense and myrrh. They were perfumes and oils, I think. When I said Sheriff Bailey was a wise man, I just meant he was smart.”

  She was a little biased, yes, but she couldn’t believe even the most hardened of hearts wouldn’t find her son adorable. The sheriff only studied them both with that dour expression.

  He was in pain, she reminded herself. If she were in his position, she wouldn’t find a four-year-old’s chatter amusing, either.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow,” she said again. “Call me, even if it’s the middle of the night.”

  “I will,” he said, which she knew was a blatant fib. He would never call her.

  She had done all she could, short of moving into his house—kids, pets and all.

  She gathered the children part of that equation and ushered them out of the house. Darkness came early this close to the winter solstice, but the Jacobs family’s Christmas lights next door gleamed through the snow.

  In the short time she’d been inside his house, Andie had forgotten most of her nervousness around Marshall. Perhaps it was his injury that made him feel a little less threatening to her—though she had a feeling that even if he’d suffered two broken legs in that accident, the sheriff of Lake Haven County would never be anything less than dangerous.

  Copyright © 2016 by RaeAnne Thayne

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  ISBN-13: 9781488002700

  Ms. Bravo and the Boss

  Copyright © 2016 by Christine Rimmer

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  Be sure to check out

  Diana Palmer’s next spellbinding romance, UNDAUNTED.

  When innocent Emma Copeland and millionaire Connor Sinclair bump heads, sparks fly—but a deep secret might keep them apart forever…

  Read on to get a glimpse of

  UNDAUNTED.

  Emma Copeland was sitting on the end of the dock, dangling her bare feet in the water. Minnows came up and nibbled her toes, and she laughed. Her long, platinum-blond hair fell around her shoulders like a silk curtain, windblown, beautiful. The face it framed wasn’t beautiful. But it had soft features. Her nose was straight. She had high cheekbones and a rounded chin. Her best feature was her eyes, large and brown and gentle, much like Emma herself. She’d grown up on a small ranch in Comanche Wells, Texas, where her father ran black baldies in a beef operation. She could ride and rope and knew how to pull a calf. But here, on Lake Lanier in North Georgia, she worked as an assistant to Mamie van Dyke, a famous and very wea
lthy writer of women’s suspense novels. Mamie’s books were always at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. That made Emma proud, because she helped with the research as well as the proofing of those novels in their raw form, long before they were turned over to editors and copy editors.

  She’d found the job online, of all places. A Facebook friend, who knew that Emma had taken business courses at her local vocational school, had mentioned that a friend of her mother’s was looking for a private assistant, someone trustworthy and loyal to help her do research and typing. It wasn’t until she’d applied and been accepted—after a thorough background check—that Emma had learned who her new boss was. Mamie was one of her favorite authors, and she was a bit starstruck when she arrived with her sparse belongings at the door of Mamie’s elaborate and luxurious two-story lake house in North Georgia.

  Emma had worried that her cheap clothing and lack of social graces might put the older woman off. But Mamie had welcomed her like a lost child, taken her under her wing, and taught her how to cope with the many wealthy and famous guests who sometimes attended parties there.

  One of those guests was Connor Sinclair. Connor was one of the ten wealthiest men in the country—some said, in the world. He was nearing forty, with wavy jet-black hair that showed only a scattering of silver. He was big and broad and husky with a leonine face and chiseled, perfect lips. He had a light olive complexion with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes under a jutting brow. He was handsome and elegant in the dinner jacket he wore with a spotless white shirt and black tie. The creases in his pants were as perfect as the polish on his wing-tip shoes. He had beautiful hands, big and broad, with fingers that looked as if they could crush bones. He wore a tigereye ring on his little finger. No other jewelry, save for a Rolex watch that looked more functional than elegant.

  Emma, in her plain black cocktail dress, with silver stud earrings and a delicate silver necklace with a small inset turquoise, felt dowdy in the glittering company of so many rich people. She wore her pale blond hair in a thick bun atop her head. She had a perfect peaches-and-cream complexion, and lips that looked as if they wore gloss when they didn’t. Light powder and a soft glossy lipstick were her only makeup. She held a champagne f lute filled with ginger ale. She didn’t drink, although at twenty-three, she could have done so legally.

  She was miserable at the party, and wished she could go somewhere and hide. But Mamie was nearby and might need an iPad or her phone, which Emma carried, ready to write down something for her. So she couldn’t leave.

  From across the room, the big man was glaring at her. She squirmed under his look, wondering what she could have done to incur his anger. She’d never even seen him before.

  Then she remembered. She’d been out on the lake in Mamie’s speedboat once. She loved the fast boat. It made her feel free and happy. It was one of the few things that did. She’d been crazy about a boy in her class at the vocational school where she’d learned administrative skills. When he’d asked her out, all her dreams had come true. Until he’d learned that her father ran beef cattle. They were even engaged briefly. Unfortunately, he was a founding member of the local animal rights group, PETA. He’d told Emma that he found her father’s profession disgusting and that he’d never have anything to do with a woman who had any part of it. He’d walked out of her life and she’d never seen him again. After that, he ignored her pointedly at school. Her heart was broken. It was one of the few times she’d even had a date. She went to church with her father, but it was a small congregation and there were no single men in it, except for a much older widower and a divorced man who was her father’s age.

  Her home life wasn’t much better. She and her father lived in a ranch house that had been in the family for three generations and looked like it. The furniture didn’t match. The dishes were old and many were cracked. Water came out of a well with an electric pump that stopped working every time there was a bad storm, and there were many storms in Texas. Her father was a rigid man, deeply religious, with a sterling character. He’d raised his daughter to be the same way. Her mother had died in childbirth when she was eight years old, and she’d seen it happen. Her father had drawn into himself at a time when she needed him most. That was before he’d started drinking. He’d rarely been sober in recent years, leaving most of the work and decision making on the ranch to his foreman.

  He’d never seemed to feel much for his only child. Of course, she wasn’t a boy, and it was a son he’d desperately wanted, someone to inherit the ranch after him, to keep it in the family. Girls, he often said, were useless.

  She dragged herself back from her memories to find the big man walking toward her. Something inside her wanted to run. But her ancestors had fought off floods and cattle rustlers and raiding war parties. She wasn’t the type to run.

  She bit her lower lip when Connor Sinclair stopped just in front of her. He wasn’t sipping champagne. Unless she missed her guess, he held a large glass of whiskey, straight up, with just a cube of ice in the crystal glass.

  He glared down at her from pale, glittery silver eyes. “I had a talk with the lake police about you,” he said in a curt, blunt tone. “I told them who you worked for and where you lived. Pull another stunt like yesterday’s on the lake, and you’ll find out what happens to kids who take insane risks in speedboats. I’ve had a talk with Mamie, as well.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “I didn’t see the Jet Ski!”

  “You weren’t looking when you turned,” he bit off. “You were going too fast to see it at all!”

  She was almost drawing blood with her teeth. Her hand, holding the f lute, was shaking. She put her other hand over it to steady it. “There was nobody out there when I started…”

  “Your generation is a joke,” he said coldly. “Unruly kids who have no manners, who think the world owes them everything, that they can do whatever the hell they please, do whatever they like, without consequences! You go through life causing tragedies and you don’t care!”

  She felt tears stinging her eyes. “Ex-excuse me,” she said huskily, turning away.

  But he took her firmly by one shoulder and turned her back around. “I never make threats,” he said coldly. “You remember what I’ve told you.”

  Tears overflowed her eyes. She couldn’t help it. And it shamed her, showing weakness before the enemy. She jerked away from him, white-faced and shaking.

  He frowned, as if he hadn’t expected her reaction. She turned and ran for the kitchen. She put the f lute down on a counter and went out the back door into the cool night air, desperate to get away from him. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody cared. The tears tumbled down over her cold cheeks. She’d grown up without love, without the simplest display of affection after their housekeeper Dolores left the ranch, except for an occasional hug from the women in her church. She’d lived alone, had her dreams of romance shattered. And now here she was, her pride in shambles, hounded out of her home by a relentless enemy who seemed to think she was a juvenile delinquent bent on killing people. All that, because she went a little wild in the speedboat.

  By the time she got herself together and eased back in, Connor Sinclair was nowhere to be seen. She went back to Mamie’s side and stayed there the rest of the night, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t return.

  * * *

  It had been a sobering confrontation. She hoped she never had to see Connor again. Sitting on the dock, she moved her toes in the cool water, laughing softly at the tiny fish still nibbling on them. The lake was glorious in autumn. Leaves were just beginning to turn, in every single shade of red and gold the mind could imagine. There was a soft breeze, lazy and warm, because autumn had come late to North Georgia. Emma, in her long cotton dress, with its brown and yellow and green print, looked like part of the scenery in a postcard.

  “What the hell are you doing on my dock?” a cold, angry voice growled from behind her.

  She jumped up, startled, and grabbed her shoes, too unsettled to think of p
utting them on. “Your dock?” She’d thought the house was closed up. She hadn’t seen any lights on in it for days and she’d never considered who might own it. The dock had always been deserted. She’d been coming here for several days to enjoy the minnows and the view of the lake.

  “Yes, my dock,” he said angrily. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his tan pants. He wore a brown designer polo shirt, which emphasized the muscles in his chest and arms.

  “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, her face turning bright red. “I didn’t think anybody lived here…”

  “Funny girl,” he shot back. “Mamie knows that I’m here three months of the year. You knew.”

  “I didn’t,” she bit off, feeling tears threaten all over again. She moved away from him. “Sorry,” she added. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

  “I come here to get away from people, reporters, telephones that never stop ringing. I don’t want my privacy invaded by cheap little girls in cheap dresses,” he added insolently, sneering at her off-the-rack dress.

  Her lower lip trembled. Tears threatened. But her injured pride wouldn’t let that insult go by unaddressed. “My dress may be cheap, Mr. Sinclair, but I am not.” She lifted her chin. “I go to church every Sunday!”

  Something f lashed in the eyes she could barely see. “Church!” he scoffed. “Religion is the big lie. Sin all week, then go to confession. Sit in a pew on Sunday and hop from one bed to another the rest of the week.”

  She just stared at him. “From what I hear, bed-hopping is your choice of hobbies. It is not mine.”

  He laughed shortly. “Women will do anything for a price.”

  As if in answer to that cynical remark, a beautiful brunette in a fashionable dress stuck her head out the door of his lake house. “Connor, do hurry,” she fussed. “The soufflé is getting cold!”

  “Coming.” He gave Emma’s dress a speaking look. “Did you get that from a thrift shop?” he asked insolently.