A Steele for Christmas

He looked at her and she wished he hadn’t done that. The last thing she needed was for those green eyes to be trained directly on her. “Possibly,” he said softly. “But you know very well why I think that way.”

Yes, she knew. But she needed to make him think, get him to assume what would go down as the best kiss of her life was nothing she intended to lose sleep over. “Then rest assured you shouldn’t think that way. It was only a kiss.”

He didn’t have to know it had been a kiss with the power to curl her toes and make her stomach quiver. The less Eli Steele knew of her innermost reactions to him, the better. He didn’t have to know that even now, despite his reputation, she wouldn’t mind going somewhere to jump his bones.

He moved closer, as if he wanted to try one of the sandwiches on the tray in front of her. Instead, he leaned into her and his thick-lashed green eyes made her heat up all over. In a low, gruff voice, he said, “I’d love to prove it was more than that, Stacey. And let me give you fair warning that one day, I will.”

Chapter 5

I t was Wednesday morning and Stacey had just finished waiting on the last of her early morning customers when her cell phone rang. She smiled when she recognized the name showing up on her caller ID. It was Deidre Lewis, the woman who’d been her closest girl-pal since high school.

She clicked on the line. “Hey, what’s going on, Dee?”

In return she got her friend’s warm, vibrant laugh, with the smile Stacey knew she could not see. “Not a thing, but if little Tommy Fielder pulls Melissa Simpkins’s hair one more time to cause her to cry, I’m going to give him a taste of his own medicine and pull his.”