A Long Hot Christmas

A Long Hot Christmas
Barbara Daly

Marketer Hope Sumner was forever dodging matchmakers, especially during the holiday season. This time, it was her own sisters trying to set her up.Their Prince Charming was apparently a drop-dead gorgeous workaholic who needed arm candy. Well, so did she. Lawyer Sam Sharkey wanted the sort of date he could take to the boss's Christmas party and not have to propose to afterward. Hope was perfect– radiant and rational. This could work out… very well.No one even suspected their lusty romance wasn't real, not after their lingering touches and hot glances started straying from the arm-candy script….

“Pipe’s a phallic symbol, you know,” Sam said

“Is not,” Hope said at once.

“Is, too.” He nodded. “All these years you’ve been working at Palmer Pipe you’ve been substituting pipe for penises.”

She half rose, reached behind her and grabbed up a pillow. “I have not!” She raised the pillow over her head.

“Hey, don’t yell at me. I’m not the one with pipe envy.” Sam rolled smoothly off the bed just as she slammed the pillow into the spot where he’d been lying.

At the doorway to the bathroom, in all his naked masculine glory, not at all shy the morning after, he turned to give her a wicked smile. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’m going to brush my teeth and get fresh supplies, and then I’m coming back to relieve your need for pipe. Forever.”

Barbara Daly lives and writes in New York City. She loves it most of all during the holiday season, when the lights, the department store windows and the first snow of winter falling on the shoppers as they struggle down the crowded streets add to the festive feeling. What better setting for a love story?

She is a newcomer to feng shui, but is rapidly putting mirrors in strategic places and flutes on the beams and is convinced it’s going to change the life she shares with her husband and Cairn terrier.

She once had a cat like the one in this book—and suspects she might not live through a second one.

A Long Hot Christmas is just the first of three books featuring the Sumner sisters. Don’t miss Barbara’s special Duets #69, You Call This Romance!? and Are you for Real?, coming to bookstores in February.

Books by Barbara Daly

HARLEQUIN DUETS

13—GREAT GENES!

34—NEVER SAY NEVER!

A Long Hot Christmas

Barbara Daly

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For Helen Daly, my mother-in-law, best friend and lifelong card partner. I love you for loaning me your son—and for letting me win once in a while.

Contents

Chapter 1 (#uf8546bcc-79d0-513c-ad89-4d4874502cee)

Chapter 2 (#u8fd2dc0e-5543-5724-9684-f42e63f40ca5)

Chapter 3 (#ube2efe2a-226d-52eb-9db6-8344ef2eddf1)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

1

HOPE SUMNER’S sisters were ganging up on her again.

“I was thinking a cat,” she informed them. “I do not need a man.”

“Just to go places with,” Faith said.

“An escort, nothing more than that,” Charity said.

“Because the holidays are coming up,” Faith added.

Hope rued the day she’d taught them to make a conference call. With Faith in Los Angeles and Charity in Chicago, for a time they’d had no choice but to attack her separately. One-on-one, she was invincible. Against the two of them, she had to fight for her life. Or in this case, her lifestyle.

And what was wrong with her lifestyle? Nothing. She loved living in New York. She was a successful career woman who could afford elegant clothes, when she managed to find time to shop, luxurious vacations, if she ever found time to take a vacation, and an apartment with a fabulous view—where she rarely was, nor was she at the moment.

“Lana says he’s a very nice man,” Faith persisted.

“Lana? The punk-rock movie star? Lana dates leather jackets on motorcycles. You told me so yourself.”

“That’s how she met him,” Faith said as though this made everything clear. “Her latest leather jacket is actually a software genius. The Shark defended him against the big software company.”

“The Shark?”

“His real name’s Sam Sharkey,” Charity supplied helpfully. “They just call him The Shark.”

“Oh. Did he win?”

“Well, of course,” Faith went on. “And while they waited for the judge’s decision, they got to talking, and Shark said he was sick of being the ‘available bachelor’ on everybody’s list, but he’s nowhere even close to wanting to get married, not until he makes partner at his law firm.”

“Anyway,” Charity interrupted, “Lana’s leather jacket told Lana and Lana said, ‘He sounds like Faith’s sister Hope, and she’s in New York, and The Shark’s in New York,’ and one thing led to another.”