A Fairytale Christmas Read Online Free PDF

world keeps turning, and I know I’ll go on.”
    Jack couldn’t help himself. He pressed a kiss to her brow. It was almost reverent, the way his lips touched her, felt the heat and flavor of her skin. The last thing he’d expected of this evening was that Madeleine Langston would turn out to be sweet and vulnerable and wise.
    One of the kids at the shelter where Jack volunteered most of his free time had just lost her mother. He would tell her what Madeleine said about breathing. That might help.
    He handed her a Kleenex from a box on the table and stood back while she dried her face. She swayed a little, then gave a wobbly laugh. “I’d better lay off the Irish coffee.”
    He got them each a bottle of mineral water from thebar. Blake the cat made an appearance, looking haughty and sleek as he batted his paws at the Christmas ornaments. They clinked bottles and drank, looking with absurd pride at the clumsily decorated tree and chuckling at the antics of the cat.
    Madeleine leaned back against Jack, and he trailed his free hand up her bare arm. She turned, taking both bottles and setting them aside. Her arms slid up his chest and around his neck, and she bent his head down to hers. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for being with me tonight.”
    What was she, crazy? Thanking
him
for being with
her?
“Yeah,” he said with a soft laugh. “It’s been sheer torture, forcing myself to hold a beautiful woman in my arms.”
    She laughed, too, and stood on tiptoe. Their mouths brushed together and then melded, clinging, the subtle taste of sexual yearning filling Jack until he nearly lost control.
    She glided her hands down his chest, opening his shirt. Fancy silver studs dropped to the floor. So did the fancy belt—Harry called it a cummerbund, and Jack had refrained from making a rude remark.
    Somewhere, a clock chimed midnight, reminding Jack that he was a fraud. He half expected his tux to turn into a sweat suit and Harry’s truck to change into a pumpkin. But he didn’t dwell on that for long. Madeleine wouldn’t let him.
    He felt her soft palms against his bare chest and nearly lost it.
Tell her
, urged the commonsense fairy inside his head.
Hurry up and tell her the truth
.
    “Maddy,” he murmured against her mouth.
    “Mmm?” She nipped at his lower lip, and he hissed in a breath, forgetting what he was going to say.
    “I think tonight was meant to be,” she whispered.
    Lady, you don’t know the half of it
.
    “What do you mean?” he asked, tracing his tongue along her full mouth.
    “Right before I met you, I told myself to do something wild. Unexpected. Unlike myself. Then—poof!—you showed up. So …” She took his hand and led him slowly, deliberately, down a dimly lit hallway.
    Her bedroom was an interior decorator’s wet dream, he supposed. It was dominated by an antique four-poster bed that should have been marked Napoleon Slept Here.
    She pulled the tails of his shirt out of his trousers and ran her hands over his bare skin. Every muscle drew taut.
    Tell her. Hurry
.
    Yeah, right, he thought as he found a fancy comb in her hair and pulled it loose. Tell her what? That she’s seducing Jack Riley? That she’s just confessed all her personal secrets to a guy she despises? That the slob who makes her life hell at work is about to take her to heaven?
    It’s still not too late. Tell her
.
    “Maddy.” He forced it out.
    “Mmm?” she said again, feathering her lips along his collarbone.
    “Uh, why are you doing this, Madeleine?”
    Her butter-colored hair cascaded down her back. He had never seen it loose before.
    “Because I need it,” she said. “Do you ever feel like you’ll die if you don’t touch someone human and warm?”
    God, she
would
die if she learned she’d just said that to Jack Riley.
    “Sometimes I feel like that,” he admitted. And his hands, which had no self-discipline whatsoever, slid down the zipper at the back of her dress.
    He made a discovery that