A Bad Boy for Christmas Read Online Free PDF

small of her back in a protective gesture Mia thought was kind of sweet.
    “My grandmother, Mary, and my grandfather, Frank,” Cutter said.
    Mia shook hands with them, unaccountably nervous. They looked like nice people. Nice, shell-shocked people.
    “Mia’s not a Nash either,” Cutter said next. “I had it wrong.”
    Why was he taking the blame for her deliberate deceit? Was it a protective older brother thing?
    “I wouldn’t say you had it wrong. I misled you on purpose,” she countered before turning to the older couple. “But he’s right—I’m not a Nash. I’m a Blake and I know exactly who my parents are. Calling Nash my brother earlier today was more fantasy on my part than fact. I met him in foster care when I was eight and I held on to him, you know? You probably don’t know.” She was babbling. Cutter had headed for the bar, hopefully to order drinks and food, something, to help this meeting go more smoothly. “Anyway, Nash is swimming out there somewhere.” Mia gestured towards the ocean glittering brightly in the late afternoon sun. “He shouldn’t be long.”
    “I’ve heard that one before.” The woman smiled a little. “You put a Jackson in the water there’s no telling how long he’ll be.”
    “You’re mighty accepting of him as a Jackson for someone who hasn’t met him yet.” Mia couldn’t help the snap in her words.
    “Shouldn’t I be?” The woman with the keen blue eyes gave as good as she got.
    Lovely thing, manners. Mia often wished she had more of them.
    “I’m sorry,” she offered. “You’re going to love Nash. Good guy. Best brother I never had.”
    Cutter had returned with her drink, which he handed to her. Praise be. She wondered if it would be okay to down it whole.
    “You’re nervous again,” he said.
    Damn right she was. “Aren’t you a master of understatement?”
    Frank coughed and Cutter promptly handed him the beer in his other hand and turned back towards the bar where another beer and a glass of wine stood waiting. He didn’t walk like Nash, Mia thought as she studied him. More swagger, less wariness. And then there was that face she thought she knew so well, only not on this man …
    “It’s very disconcerting how alike they are,” she said to Mary. “Only not .”
    By the time Cutter returned and he’d found another chair, Mia had renewed her vow to make this meeting easier for everyone, rather than harder. She looked at them all and they looked at her and she wondered what sort of questions she might be able to answer before Nash arrived.
    “So, Nash’s mother overdosed on crack a few weeks ago and died.” No judgment, just facts. “She was living in Darwin at the time. One of her johns found her.” More facts. “Nash hadn’t seen her for a while. They weren’t close. He was a ward of the state by the time he was four. His mother tried to sell him for heroin.”
    Mary made a distressed noise and Mia pinned her with a level gaze. “I agree. Not the kind of thing that promotes closeness.”
    “Go on,” said the man called Frank.
    “Nash is clean. No drugs. No drink. No crime. No kids. Women on occasion—he’s a sucker for strays, but once they’re on their feet he moves them along.”
    “Except for you,” Cutter murmured silkily.
    “Except for me.” Mia picked up her drink and drained it. She wouldn’t be made to feel redundant here. Not by him. “I’ll have another drink, please.”
    “It’ll happen. Eventually.”
    “How righteous of you.” She wouldn’t have picked him for the type. “Guess you have more in common with your big brother than you realize. Must be in the genes.”
    He didn’t like that. And Mia still wanted that drink. She stood, picked up her glass, and tussled silently with him as he too stood and held out his hand for the glass. He took it from her with a muttered curse and headed for the bar again.
    “You can leave out the scotch this time if it offends you,” she called after him, and sat