A Lot Like Christmas

A Lot Like Christmas
Dawn Atkins

A lump of coal landed in Sylvie Stark's stocking.Bad enough she's been passed over for promotion, now she learns her new boss is none other than her old love, Chase McCann. No matter. She refuses to let him distract her from her job. Easier said than done. The more office time they share, the harder it is to fight the undeniable attraction, and soon her long-ago wishes are coming true.But their clashes over the fate of the business threaten the festive spirit between them, and one of them could end up on the naughty list. Or maybe this Christmas she will get everything she wants. After all, it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Chase ran the back of his hand along her cheek

Sylvie could hardly breathe. Everything in her waited to hear what he would say, what he would do.

He gave in and pressed his mouth to hers, holding motionless, as if waiting for the spark to flare. And oh, did it flare. Just like all those years before, pure desire poured through her.

They were reliving a memory, fixing it. For once in her life, she was going for it. Arousal sparked along her nerves, like strings of twinkle lights. She felt light-headed and pulled back just long enough to take in a gulp of air. With their hands on each other’s faces, their upper bodies close, the embrace was tender and hungry and wild all at once and she never wanted to stop.

Dear Reader,

I have to confess: I’m not a good shopper. I walk into a mall and get overwhelmed. That dates back to childhood when my mother would take me shopping for a special dress and I’d find something in the first store, but she would say, “Shall we keep looking for something better?” Better? There might be something better? So off we’d go, to store after store after store. All that choice wore me out.

So why would a non-shopper write a story about a woman who practically grew up in a mall and loved it like home, its employees like family? Because malls fascinate me. A mall is a world unto itself under an air-conditioned sky. I used to have a fantasy of spending the night in the mall and exploring all the stores. You’ll see that happen in the book. Boy, did I have fun with those pages!

This story is also about family—about how family is what you make of it. With her mother largely absent from her life, Sylvie created a family out of the mall and Chase’s relatives. The book takes place around Christmas, and even I love the crazy, festive fun of a mall at Christmas. Starlight Desert Mall does Christmas right, I think.

So we’ve got malls, family, Christmas and falling in love. Can you see why this story was a delight to write? This is my first book for Harlequin Superromance, so I hope you’ll find it a worthy fit.

Let me know what you think at dawn@dawnatkins.com or visit www.dawnatkins.com.

Best,

Dawn Atkins

A Lot Like Christmas

Dawn Atkins

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Award-winning author Dawn Atkins has written more than twenty novels for Harlequin Books. Known for her funny, poignant romance stories, she’s won a Golden Quill Award and has been a several-times RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award finalist. Dawn lives in Arizona with her husband and son.

In memory of my mother, the Starr of our family

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Thomas Randall, manager of Paradise Valley Mall, who graciously squeezed my questions into his jam-packed schedule. Any errors are my own.

I’m also indebted to Paco Underhill, whose books Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping and Call of the Mall gave me enough intriguing shopping facts to last a lifetime.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

THIS MALL SUCKS!

The spray-painted scrawl across the whimsical pueblo-style exterior of Starlight Desert Mall hit Sylvie Stark like a poison dart. Starlight Desert was her second home, the store owners and employees practically family.

Now the area looked like the aftermath of a frat party. Trash bags from the Dumpster had been torn open, their contents strewn about, and festoons of toilet paper dangled from the thorny mesquite trees and soiled the silver sage hedges.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. In an hour, the mall’s owner, Marshall McCann, would arrive to make Sylvie the new general manager—her dream almost since she started working here at age fourteen.

Currently second-in-command, Sylvie was the obvious choice to replace Mary Beth Curlew, the former GM, who’d left abruptly two weeks ago to care for her ailing mother in Michigan.

Mary Beth did tend to take credit for Sylvie’s work, but she’d surely recommended Sylvie to Fletcher, Marshall’s younger son, the McCann Development liaison to the mall.

Still, Sylvie felt uneasy. Marshall was the decision-maker and he hadn’t been to the mall since before his wife, Starr, passed away from cancer three years ago. The mall had been Starr’s baby.

Sylvie had a complicated relationship with the McCanns. Her mother, Desiree, had been best friends with Starr and when Sylvie moved in with her grandparents due to Desiree’s travel schedule when she was seven, Starr had treated her like family.

Now Sylvie feared Marshall still thought of her as the teenage assistant who served muffins at mall meetings or the little girl sitting quietly at the noisy McCann holiday dinners.