Christmas on Main Street Read Online Free PDF

had been at one time. But something had changed for her this year. Try as she might, once the decorations had started going up all over town, she hadn’t been able to get last year’s encounter with Cole out of her mind.
    She’d always been easygoing—some would even say
perky—
Kelli. But despite realizing that Cole thought of her more along the lines of a cheerful puppy who was always trailing after him, she’d steadfastly believed that once she grew up, once he opened those Hershey brown eyes and realized that the freckle-faced girl with hair that always frizzed when it rained had matured into the woman he’d been waiting for all his life, everything would change.
    Which had been why, for that one heart-stealing moment when he’d taken the jewelry box out of his parka pocket, although they’d never so much as kissed on the lips, she’d just
known
that he’d bought it for her.
    She’d been so wrong.
    And worse yet, the intended recipient of that pear-shaped diamond just happened to be her high school nemesis. The woman anyone with even a halfway working brain could see was totally wrong for him.
    Unfortunately, although he might be a big bad Marine who could—according to the local press coverage regaling the act of heroism that had won him a medal for bravery—catch bullets in his teeth and spit them right back at the terrorists, that entire Christmas Cole had been home on leave, he’d acted as dumb as Dudley Do-Right, her family’s ancient basset hound.
    “He’s a Marine on leave, honey.” Matt had defended his lifelong best friend when she’d complained about the way Marcia Wayburn, whom Cole had dated off and on his senior year of high school, had him wrapped around her acrylic French-manicured finger. And that wasn’t all that was fake. Kelli knew that for a fact, because Marcia had bragged all over school that her high school graduation present from her doting daddy had been a boob job. “Makes sense that he’d be thinking with his little head instead of his big one.”
    He’d flashed a grin that showed Cole wasn’t alone. Which wasn’t something Kelli had wanted to think about. At all.
    “Guys who know they’re going back to war are looking only for no-strings sex.” He’d told her what she’d already figured out for herself. “And despite you always putting him up on a pedestal, Cole’s still just a regular guy.” He’d ruffled her hair the same way he had when she was six. “He’s just reliving old high school days. He’ll get over her.”
    Since her brothers had never lied to her, Kelli had believed him. Until the Christmas tree lighting when he’d flashed that diamond and informed her that he planned to give it to a girl named after that snobby, know-it-all Brady Bunch big sister, who, to Kelli’s mind, was the most annoying character ever on television.
    She’d never lost her temper. Ever. Until that night. Although much of what she’d shouted at him was a blank, she could remember throwing the pretty white jewelry box at his chest, where it bounced off and landed on the ground.
    Which would’ve been bad enough. But before Cole could retrieve it, Ken Curtis’s yellow Lab puppy snatched it up, slipped her collar, and had a dandy run around and around the tree, chased by seemingly every male in Shelter Bay before Cole finally caught her with a running dive that sent them both smashing into the tree. Fortunately, since her father and brothers had secured it well, the tree hadn’t toppled over, where it could have crushed nearly the entire town who’d gathered for the annual holiday lighting.
    But it had created a scandal that kept Shelter Bay talking well past the New Year. And if that debacle weren’t bad enough, Cole and Marcia’s breakup a mere four months later had only added grist to the gossip mill. Even now she cringed thinking about it.
    Although Cole had been in Afghanistan at the time—thus avoiding all the talk—Kelli knew that he would’ve hated having