Kissing Santa Claus

by Donna Kauffman, Jill Shalvis

  Hope rose from the dining room table where they’d been sitting. She supposed it could be an unexpected guest. She had six guest rooms, and only two were filled at the moment; her guests either in their rooms or in front of the fire she had roaring in the living room. She’d be happier with more paying guests, but what with the B&B being out in the boondocks two hours north of Denver, and the economy in the toilet, things were slow.

  Of course now was the worst possible time for her to be slow, what with her bank accounts emptied and all. She was hanging on by a thread—a thread that had come from her stepbrother Edward, a guy who made Scrooge look like Santa Claus.

  It was killing her, knowing she’d been forced to borrow from him, but it was also temporary.

  As in a lump payment was due to him in LA by January 1…

  Twenty-one days…

  She’d e-mailed Edward—he didn’t do personal contact—to ask for a little teeny tiny extension, but she hadn’t heard back yet.

  Don’t go there now, she told herself, and moved toward the foyer, followed by Lori. She opened the front door and was immediately assaulted by the wind and snow. She squinted past it to take in the tall, dark stranger who was dressed as if he’d just walked off the cover of a glossy man’s magazine.

  “Does it always snow like this?” he asked, stomping the snow from his boots, his voice low and husky as if he was half frozen.

  Tall, dark and irritated, she corrected. “In December, yes. Can I help you?”

  He squinted through his glasses past snowflakes the size of dinner plates. “My car got stuck about a half mile back.”

  Behind her, Lori gave her a little nudge. See? There he is, the penis I wished for.

  Hope ignored her as she eyed the guy on her step. He had his hood up. Sure his voice sounded fine, even attractive, but that didn’t make him a good guy. Until she saw his face, she wasn’t letting her guard down. “Four-wheel drive?” she asked him.

  “No, it’s a rental. I have chains on it, though.”

  So he wasn’t a local. “Yeah, not good enough, not on a night like this one.” His clothes screamed big city, from his fancy coat down to his fancy boots. Maybe New York, maybe Los Angeles—either way he was definitely not used to Colorado winter driving. “If you’d like to rent a room for the night, I can get you help digging out your car in the morning.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

  When she moved back and opened the door wider, he stepped inside, giving her a brief impression of a lanky lean build, but not much else. He smelled good, though. Woodsy, citrusy…masculine.

  He turned to her then and let his hood fall back as he opened his coat, looking at her with a hint of wariness as if he was waiting for something, which came immediately.

  Recognition.

  As it hit her, she went still. Danny Shaw, her stepbrother’s CPA. He had a striking face, she’d give him that. High cheekbones, rich mahogany eyes slightly magnified by the sophisticated wire-rimmed glasses on his nose. His hair matched his eyes and was trimmed short. With his coat open, she could see his tailored pants and shirt, both undoubtedly as expensive as his glasses. If she hadn’t known him, she’d have taken another minute to fully appreciate his fine form.

  But she did know him, and all the friendly drained from her, replaced by tension. “Did you come to give me an extension?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  She felt the air leave her lungs as if he’d hit her. “Then get out.”

  “We need to talk, Hope.”

  “No.” She hauled open the door again, ignoring the snow that pelted her. “Get out.”

  “Hope,” Lori murmured. “Who is this, another ex-boyfriend?”

  “No. Worse. Meet Danny Shaw, my brother’s lackey. And I still have three weeks left.” She jerked her head toward outside. “Good-bye, Danny.”

  “You just offered me a room.” His voice was very distinctive with its low, husky timber, and she kicked herself for not recognizing it sooner. After all, she’d met with him when negotiating the loan from Edward, because heaven forbid Edward get his hands dirty with the details.

  And the details had been dirty. Edward hadn’t exactly given her a favorable loan. Nope, he’d been less than one step from a loan shark, but she’d figured go with the devil she knew…“I’ve just unoffered the room,” she said, once again gesturing for him to go. “You’re letting out all my bought air.”

  “We really need to talk first, Hope.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t talk to rat bastards.”

  He raised a brow. “Rat bastard is what you call your brother.”

  “Yes, and as Edward’s representative, you get the same consideration. Get out, Danny. Go home. Tell him I’ll get him his money on time.” Since he didn’t budge, she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the door. He stepped over the threshold, then turned back to face her to say something.

  But she shut the door in his face.

  Danny let out a shuddery breath. Shuddery because he was a minute away from freezing his nuts off. When he’d flown out of Los Angeles that morning, it’d been sunny and a slightly chilly sixty-eight degrees.

  Ha. He hadn’t known chilly. He hadn’t known a lot of things, such as how bad the rental car would be, or the depths of Hope’s worry and fear. He wrapped his coat tighter around him and pulled his hood back up before once again knocking on the door.

  She didn’t answer, but he would have sworn he could hear her breathing through the wood. Hope, of the pretty strawberry blond hair that was slipping out of its ponytail and into her eyes, which were so blue he could have drowned in them. Hope, of the petite, willowy frame that hid an inner strength of steel. That strength shouldn’t have surprised him, after all she was an O’Brien. “Come on, Hope. Let me in.”

  More of her loaded nothing, and he sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders against the wind as if that would help. Christ, why would anyone choose to live here? “Look, I should have called first, okay? But if I had, you wouldn’t have agreed to see me.”

  As proven by the loaded silence.

  “I realize you’d like me to just leave,” he said. And he’d love to do that. Hell, he missed LA already. He was wet and cold and hungry, and as far as he could tell there was no food in his immediate future. No four-star hotels, either. Nothing but wide open spaces and the utter lack of civilization.

  He was on a whole other planet. “I’ll freeze to death out here, Hope, you know that. You don’t want my death on your hands, do you?” Okay, stupid question. She’d welcome his death and stomp on his grave.

  He’d met her for the first time two years ago when she was leaving Los Angeles. She’d come to Edward’s office to say good-bye, but Edward had been in a meeting and hadn’t bothered to come out—the guy wasn’t big on family.

  The last time Danny had seen Hope was three months ago when she’d needed money. Once again, it’d been Danny to deal with her, and he’d laid out the terms that Eddie had insisted on—the terms not in her favor.

  Danny had looked into Hope’s eyes as he’d done Edward’s dirty work and felt like a complete jerk offering her such a crappy deal. Knowing he could lose his job, he’d shut the file, gone against his duties, and advised her not to sign.

  But she’d signed anyway.

  “Letting me die out here will only make things worse,” he said now. “Come on, Hope. Open up.”

  “Just leave.”

  He wished he could. But he had a job to do and that was to protect Edward’s investment. Didn’t matter that Edward was a miserly ass who got his jollies over lording it over people, one of those people being his own sister. What mattered, unfortunately for Hope, was that Edward now held the loan on both the land and the B&B itself, and after her extension request, now wanted the situation assessed.

  Which is where Danny came in.

  Not the most comfortable situation, given that his rental car was truly stuck. Turning away from the front door, he stared out into t
he nasty storm knowing he had two choices: beg some more, or strike out on foot back to his car where he could run the motor for heat until he ran out of gas. Neither option appealed, but he had a feeling that no amount of begging would work, so he stepped off the top step and into the snow.

  Shit, it was cold.

  Behind him the door whipped open. “Are you crazy?” Hope demanded to know. “You really will freeze to death if you walk back to your car.”

  “So you’re going to let me in?”

  She seemed to gnash on her teeth over that one. She was wearing snug hip-hugging jeans that were frayed at the waist and hem, and torn over one knee. Her long sleeved v-necked tee revealed sweet curves, and proof that she was chilled. “It’s going to cost you,” she finally said.

  Yeah, he was getting that. “I’m willing to pay your rate.”

  “For rat bastards, it’s double.”

  He looked into her stubborn, beautiful face and saw that she meant it. “Fine. Double.”

  “Did I say double? I meant triple.”

  Her eyes were intense, protective, and dammit.

  Hurt.

  And wasn’t that just the crux. Edward was such an ass. So determined to rise from the gutter from which he’d been born, he was perfectly willing to walk over his own family. Even worse was the knowledge that Hope was trying to do the same, trying to change her life and circumstances, and was getting a bad deal.

  But she wasn’t his job. Good-damn, he really hated when his morals bumped up against the source of his income. “Just name the price, Hope.”

  She shoved her long bangs off her face and thought about it.

  How any woman could look so sweet and soft, and yet be so fierce, was beyond him, but somehow she pulled it off.

  “You might want to consider that I’m standing here with my wallet open and you need the money,” he pointed out.

  Okay, not his smartest move, reminding her that she was in trouble; he knew it even before her eyes chilled and her mouth tightened.

  She had a pretty mouth.

  Not that he was noticing. “Look,” he said quickly. “The roads are bad, there’s no other hotel nearby, and I’m stuck. Whatever you want.”

  “I want a better termed loan.”

  “Except that.”

  She looked at him, proud and desperate, and he felt a crack in his armor.

  Not good.

  “I’d do it if I could,” he said quietly.

  “Would you?”

  “In a heartbeat.” He shifted and lowered his voice. “I asked you not to sign—”

  “Don’t.” She pushed him back a step and pointed at him. “Don’t. I’m well aware that I screwed this up, and no one else.” A sigh escaped her, and once again, she shoved her hair back. “You can have a damn room.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Just get inside.” She shut the door, behind him this time, still looking deceptively soft and sweet. “You’re shivering like a pansy-assed little girl.”

  2

  Hope easily kept busy for the next hour, meaning she paid no attention whatsoever to her unwelcome houseguest.

  Or pretended to pay no attention…

  The only meal she served at the B&B was breakfast, but she did offer drinks in the evenings. Tonight they served eggnog to go with the festive decorations she was still working on, and in the living room people intermingled, having a good time.

  Hope was making sure of it.

  She considered that a part of her job, and she enjoyed it. She enjoyed the camaraderie, the easy alliances of perfect strangers brought together for short periods of time. She enjoyed hearing people’s stories and tonight should have been no exception.

  Except she was so painfully, acutely aware of the tall, lanky man leaning against the mantel. She eyed him critically, prepared to toss him out on his bony ass if he tried to stir up trouble, but he didn’t. He stood there in his sophisticated clothes and those wire-rimmed glasses, looking as if he could walk into a board room, or an elegant dinner.

  Or a casual B&B with a bunch of strangers.

  He smiled easily, talked just as easily, effortlessly infusing himself into the conversation with her guests as if he belonged. When asked, he said he was there on business but hoped to take some time for fun, freely admitting he wasn’t much of an outdoors person but that he was open to new experiences.

  She wondered what new experiences exactly he referred to, and how it sounded vaguely sexual to her, even as she wondered how he’d like the experience of her foot up his ass if he so much as hinted that he was here because she’d screwed up financially.

  But he didn’t.

  After the guests went up to their rooms, she was in the kitchen cleaning up when Danny came in carrying dirty glasses, setting them into the sink.

  “Guests don’t do the dishes,” she informed him.

  He merely shoved up his sleeves and dug in. “We both know I’m not a real guest.” He turned his head to look at her. Really look at her. As if maybe he could see in past the brick wall she’d so carefully built around her emotions and private feelings over the years.

  That was new.

  And not in any way welcome.

  “I pull my weight,” he said. “Always.”

  Now that she understood, and she put a hand over his in the sink, surprised to find his warm—she’d imagined they’d be as cold as his heart. Except she was beginning to doubt that was true. “You didn’t have to come, you know. I’ll get the money.”

  One way or another…

  He was close. Close enough that she could have bumped his body with hers as she tipped her head up and looked past his lenses and into his eyes, which weren’t just a solid light brown, but had gold swirling in the mix and were as surprisingly warm as his hands.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

  “Are you?”

  There was a beat of silence, and in it, much of the good-natured humor drained from him, which she found oddly unsettling. He was more sincere than she’d given him credit for.

  And tougher.

  And something else, too, something that surprised her. He was kind of sexy with that intense, intellectual gaze behind those glasses.

  “You think I want you to fail,” he finally said with a hint of disbelief.

  “I think that would suit Edward, taking this place from me even though he could care less about it. He could probably sell the property in a blink, and, poof, make condos appear, or something else with lots of concrete.”

  Danny opened his mouth, then slowly shut it again. Hard to argue the truth, apparently. After a moment he shook his head and flashed her a rather grim smile, full of no amusement at all and maybe even some hurt. “The fact is, Hope, I’m here only because your brother wants to make sure the terms of the loan are going to be met, nothing personal. It’s just the job. It’s business,” he said with soft steel. “That’s it.”

  “The terms will be met,” she said with equal soft steel. “So you can go home and report just that.”

  “As I’m snowed in, we appear to be stuck with each other for now. And since we are, maybe I can help. If you showed me your financials—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Nothing personal,” she said sending his own words back at him. “But I don’t need your help.”

  He looked at her, and she’d have sworn she saw a brief flash of empathy, even respect. And also frustration with some caring mixed in.

  Which was impossible, she told herself, since he was a rat bastard, and rat bastards didn’t care.

  As always, Hope woke up at the crack of dawn. It was a lifelong habit. When she was little, her father died from a heart attack, and she’d get up early to make toast and tea for her stricken mother.

  Later, after her mother remarried and divorced two more times, Hope still got up early to work at a resort, where she’d cook from dawn until the start of high school since Edward had gone off to college without looking back. Mother had never really recovered from her
losses.

  Hope had always kept up the early-morning habit because she liked getting things done during those hours when everyone else was snoozing away, but this morning, she suddenly wished she’d developed a different habit.

  Like flying south for the winter.

  Because this morning, lying in bed in the dark dawn, she kept thinking about the unwelcome guest she had upstairs.

  Danny Shaw. He was Clark Kent on the outside and sheer, determined Superman steel on the inside.

  And he didn’t think she could do this.

  Facing that fact made her feel better. Because facing it, she could fight it, do something about it.

  Kicking off her covers, she got out of bed and shivered. Holy smokes, it was a cold one. The thermometer on her window said five.

  As in five degrees.

  And it was still snowing like a mother. She needed to stack some more wood today. She also needed to clear snow and put up the rest of the decorations.

  But it wasn’t until she stood in her bathroom that she realized her biggest problem. She had her toothbrush in one hand and a mouthful of toothpaste as she stared into the bathroom sink; the handle cranked to full blast, no water coming through.

  The pipes were frozen.

  “Oh no, no, no, no…” Not today, not when she needed to make a great impression. Not when she needed Danny to think everything was perfect.

  Dammit.

  Obviously, the place wasn’t perfect. It was built in the 1940s by a wealthy mine owner as a vacation home, then renovated in the ’80s by the family of the original owner. Currently the place was in some fairly desperate need of more updates and renovations, which she was getting to on an as-needed basis.

  Like the plumbing problems.

  And unfortunately, there were other problems as well. Upstairs were the guests bedrooms, which needed paint. Downstairs were the kitchen, dining room, living room, and social area, and a small but quaint servants’ quarters off the kitchen where Hope lived.

  All of which also needed paint.

  And more.

  Lori and her new husband Ben, a local handyman, lived about a mile down the road in their own place. Hope could call Ben about the pipes. He’d snowmobile here in a heartbeat, but if she’d learned anything in her twenty-nine and three-quarters years of life, it was to do for herself whenever possible.