by Kati Wilde
He winks at me, his faded blue eyes twinkling. “You’ll notice that even though she’s leaving me, I’m not crying that the sky is falling.”
Marianne harrumphs. “You should have seen him last month, worrying we weren’t ever going to find someone to fill my shoes. Yet here you are, Emma, and doing just…oooh boy.”
Flattening her hand to her stomach, she purses her lips and draws in a long, slow breath.
Bruce’s face goes pale. “Did your water break?”
“Her tiny feet just gave my lungs a good kick.” Rubbing her belly, Marianne awkwardly lowers into the seat facing my desk. “Maybe I shouldn’t head over to the workshop right away, though. Do you mind running out there before you head to the bank, Emma?”
“Not at all.” Pushing back my chair, I reach for my coat. It’s only a denim jacket, hardly warm enough for the weather, but the dress code at this job runs to jeans and flannel so I’ve got a hoodie layered beneath it. “What do you need me to do?”
I’m being trained to step into Marianne’s position as general office manager for Crenshaw’s Custom Woodworks, which means that I’ll pay the bills, take care of the payroll, and answer the phones. I won’t have much reason to leave the small main office, and in the past two weeks I’ve only been to the workshop once—during the tour of the company on my first day, when the builders were out on a home installation.
Which is fine by me. Because one of the men in the shop unsettles my composure so badly, I’d rather avoid him.
Not that I have to put in much effort, since it seems as if he’d rather do anything than talk to me.
“Secret Santa,” Marianne says, holding up the fuzzy red hat. “The guys each need to pick out a name. We’ll be doing the gift exchange at the Christmas party.”
Which is scheduled for next week—on the day before Christmas Eve, which is also Marianne’s last day of work. I can’t imagine how much of a party it will be, considering that only three people work in the office and four more in the shop, but if free food’s available, I’m all in.
At the window, Bruce says, “Actually, Emma, it looks like my son’s about to save you a trip. He’s probably coming in to look over those new estimates. Marianne, will you sit in with us while we go over them? And when Logan heads back to the shop, he can take the Santa hat with him.”
Nodding, she begins pushing up out of her chair. They start off toward Bruce’s office, and for a long second I’m rooted to the spot, looking out the window at the man coming from the workshop on the opposite side of the parking lot.
Logan Crenshaw doesn’t move like he’s in a hurry, but his long strides are eating up the distance. Snowflakes glitter in his dark hair and dust his wide shoulders. He’s not wearing a coat, just a faded red T-shirt that clings to his thick arms and broad chest, along with black jeans and steel-toed boots, but he doesn’t seem to mind the cold, anyway. His face lifts to the sky as he walks, and through the dark his white grin flashes—as if in sheer pleasure at the sensation of the snowflakes drifting across his skin.
The sight of that grin sears something deep and unnamed inside me. Chest hurting, I turn away from the window and look blindly down at my desk.
I don’t know why Logan Crenshaw affects me like he does. Well, part of it, I know. He’s gorgeous. Rugged and masculine, with cheekbones as sharp as a knife’s edge that could have been honed on the chiseled stone of his jaw. But whenever Logan comes into the office, he barely does more than grunt and growl his responses. And he looks at me as if… as if…
The truth is, I don’t really know what to think of the way he looks at me, because I’ve never seen anything like it before.
He’s got his dad’s light blue eyes, but they’re icier—and more intense. When he turns that glacial stare in my direction, I feel like the smallest, insignificant idiot who ever walked the earth. My tongue tangles up and internally I shrink like a mouse cornered by a snow leopard. A giant, gorgeous snow leopard.
But a mouse is not what I am. Not usually. It’s just that when Logan’s around, I can barely even squeak. And when Logan looks at me, he never grins—with pleasure or otherwise.
I think a part of me would give anything to be the one who made him smile like that.
It won’t be today. Whatever enjoyment he found in the falling snow has darkened into a scowl by the time the office door swings open.
I catch that forbidding expression with a quick glance. And there goes the mouse inside me again, shriveling up into a tiny ball. My gaze immediately drops to the deposit slip on my desk, but I’m aware of Logan’s every step as he comes closer. Neck aching with tension, I wait for him to pass by on the way to his dad’s office.
But he stops in front of my desk. Heart thundering, I look up.
God, he’s so big. The reception area where my desk sits isn’t small, yet he threatens to overwhelm the space simply by standing there. It’s not just his height—his dad is almost as tall—or the strength in his thick muscles, but the sheer presence of him. As if there’s so much more to Logan than what I can see, and the magnitude of that unseen portion takes up all the room.
With snow melting in his dark hair, he stares down at me with that intense, unreadable gaze.
I’m not a mouse. I’m not. Forcing steel into my spine, I tell him, “Mr. Crenshaw is expecting you in his office.”
Beneath straight black brows, those icy blue eyes narrow. His voice is a deep growl as he echoes, “‘Mr. Crenshaw?’”
My cheeks heat. Now I sound like an uptight, mousy idiot. No one in this office is so formal. “Your dad.”
Still scowling, he watches me for another long second, gaze slipping over my face. A muscle works in his jaw. Finally he nods and, without another word, heads for Bruce’s office.
Immediately the tension gripping my body loosens, and I draw in a deep, shuddering breath. Every inch of my skin feels prickly, tight—and covered in gooseflesh as if I’d been running naked out in the snow.
As if I were cold. But I’m not. I’m burning, and my panties are so wet that if there was ever any ice inside me, it’s long since melted.
Which is why Logan Crenshaw unsettles me so badly. Around him, I don’t just transform into a tongue-tied little mouse. I become a tongue-tied little mouse with a drenched pussy.
I’ve never responded to any man this way—which is the reason I’m still a virgin at the age of twenty two. It’s not that I’ve never noticed men, or never found them attractive. But from the moment I graduated high school and left my last foster home, trying to make a living always took priority, and I was too occupied with getting by to give more than a fleeting thought to sex.
I shouldn’t be thinking of sex now, either. My priorities haven’t changed. After being laid off from my last job and months of unemployment, I’m still just getting by. My overdue rent, my electric bill, my dying car—those are what I should be prioritizing. My body just hasn’t gotten the message. Either that, or it’s sending a message of its own.
Time to get laid, girly. Too bad it chose someone who scowls and growls at me instead of smiling and flirting.
Then again, maybe it’s for the best. Screwing around isn’t going to pay the bills. Neither is sitting here in sopping wet panties and staring blankly at a deposit slip, as if the form will fill itself out. With a sigh, I force myself to focus on work, and try to pretend that every cell within my body isn’t attuned to the man sitting in Bruce’s office.
I almost manage to convince myself. Still, when four-thirty rolls around and it’s time to head to the bank, I drag my feet while collecting my coat and car keys. I need to knock on the office door to let them know I’m going. But poking my head in means Logan will probably scowl at me again, and then I’ll be obsessing over his reaction all weekend—wondering what I ever did to deserve that response…and wondering why it hurts so much.
Too late, though. Because I’ve only just picked up my purse when the office door bangs open and Logan strides through, his icy gaze fixed o
n me.
He’s looking pissed again, as if seeing me standing here irritates the hell out of him.
Why? What did I ever do?
My throat tight, I tear my gaze from his face and scoop up the deposit envelope. Marianne’s right behind him, so even though my chest is aching, I force a chirpy, “I’m heading to the bank, unless there’s anything else I need to do before taking off for the weekend.”
Logan’s deep growl answers me. “Have you picked a name yet?”
“A name?” I echo stupidly, because he’s stopped right beside me. So close, I can smell him—the warm scent of pine and sawdust, deeper and warmer than the fragrance of the office’s Christmas tree.
In response, he shoves the Santa hat under my nose.
For the Secret Santa gift exchange. Oh shit. My gaze darts past him to Marianne. “I’m not part of that this year, am I?”
“Of course you are, honey,” she says brightly. “You’re an employee of Crenshaw Woodworks now, aren’t you?”
“So you already put my name in the hat?”
“I did.”
“But…” I scramble for an excuse, trying not to stare at the steely tendons flexing in Logan’s forearm or his strong fingers crushing the hat’s fuzzy white brim as he continues holding it out to me. “I barely know the other employees. I wouldn’t know what anyone likes.”
“Oh, everyone’s easy. If you pick one of the guys’ names, you just bring them a six pack of beer or make some cupcakes. Just something to celebrate the spirit of the season—and there’s a ten-dollar limit, so no one’s expecting anything fancy.”
Except I don’t have ten dollars to spare. I don’t get my first paycheck until the thirty-first. Ten dollars means choosing between gas money or grocery money the last week of December. It means choosing between driving or eating.
And I need this job, so I’d probably choose driving.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I meet Logan’s icy gaze—and only feel shittier when he grinds out, “I’m not going to bite you.” He gives the hat a shake and the dangling white puffball swings wildly back and forth. “Just pick a fucking name.”
Why is he so angry with me? Sparked by raging frustration, the timid mouse inside me burns to a crisp. I hiss at him, “I’m glad to see the spirit of the season has infused you with so much fucking patience” as I reach into the damn hat.
And oh my god. I thought his stare was intense before? I was wrong. Now the look he gives me pierces straight through my skin and sears me with a promise of…something.
Something that leaves me utterly frozen and helpless, tension riding my every muscle, my nerves on fire.
His gaze holding mine, Logan steps closer. His voice is a low rumble of gravel as he tells me, “You think I’m impatient, Emma? You have no fucking idea how patient I’ve been with you.”
Why? What have I done? I search his face, but don’t find an answer. My hand is buried in the velvet hat between us, and as he steps even closer, my senses are overwhelmed by his woodsy scent, his dominating size. Liquid desire pools deep inside me. If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to dissolve into a puddle of arousal at his big, booted feet…where he would probably just scowl down at me.
I snatch a slip of paper out of the hat and flee.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
THE MIDWINTER MAIL-ORDER BRIDE
Copyright © 2017 Kati Wilde
Excerpt from “Secret Santa” © 2016 Kati Wilde
All rights reserved.
First Digital Edition, November 2017
katiwilde.com
