Cole in My Stocking Read Online Free PDF Page A

Last night it had been too dark to tell, though I had noticed the brackets around his mouth were slightly deeper than I remembered. Those lines only added to his hotness.
    “I’m here to check the shop,” he answered. I was mesmerized by those barely overlapping lower teeth, by the way it was the lowers, not the uppers that showed when he spoke. “Like I told you last night.”
    Oh, that’s right. The shop. Duh, Mandy. Try focusing on something other than Cole’s mouth. Anything other than Cole’s mouth.
    “It’s fine,” I told him. I felt myself moisten my lips as I tried not to stare at the mouth I’d fantasized about kissing too many times, including, foolishly, this morning as I’d woken on Dad’s couch. “I checked it after we got off the phone.”
    He tugged the Oakleys down his nose and tucked them in his collar by a floppy temple piece that needed tightening. One of the lenses had a scuff mark on it. The glasses had taken a beating, but if Cole was anything like Dad, he probably wouldn’t consider replacing them until they were in pieces.
    His eyes were crisply blue. The lines beside them were so faint as to be practically non-existent. Some men aged well. Cole aged like a freaking masterpiece. I watched his pupils shrink as they adjusted to the morning light. “I told you not to go up there.”
    I shook off the spell his nearness wove around me, and bristled at the implication I was under any obligation to him. “It was fine. No one had been up there.”
    “It might not have been fine. What if you’d run into someone? The whole county knows your dad’s dead by now, and he has more than fifty guns up there. That was a stupid risk.”
    Indignation made me stand up straighter. “Dad’s obituary won’t run until Sunday’s paper. A few people know he’s gone, yeah, but not the whole county, not for a couple of days. So back off. Dad didn’t raise a stupid little girl who doesn’t know how to take care of herself.”
    Wow. I hadn’t mouthed off like that to anyone in years. Not since high school. And even then, I’d usually reserved any heated words to counter the hurtful barbs my dad would throw my way on a daily basis. Between being confronted by Cole and standing in this trailer again, I’d fallen back into an old pattern I’d thought I’d left behind when I’d left Newburgh.
    I seriously missed Philly.
    I braced myself, waiting for Cole to get angry and snap at me like Dad would have, but he only assessed me with that steady gaze of his. “I never said you were a little girl. And I didn’t call you stupid. I said you took a stupid risk.”
    I felt my ruffled feathers smooth at his calm tone, but I still didn’t like the implication I’d done anything stupid . My dad had used that word far too often in reference to something I’d done. “And I told you I was careful.”
    We stared at each other for a few beats. Strangers trying to make sense of each other. Finally, he said, “Give me the keys.”
    “What?”
    “The keys. To the shop. I’m going to go up and make sure everything’s accounted for.”
    “The shop’s fine,” I insisted, my hand clamping on the door jamb. Cole had me off balance. I couldn’t decide whether I was annoyed with his pushiness or touched by his protectiveness. Not that his protectiveness was directed at me. It was Dad and the things that had been most important to Dad—his guns—that Cole was concerned about. “Everything’s there.”
    “You had a good look around?”
    “Well, no. I just turned on the light and made sure the place wasn’t trashed. It was fine, neat as a pin, like Dad always kept it.” My throat got tight as I pictured Dad up there where he belonged, where he’d never be ever again. When we happened to be in the trailer together, he’d grumble and yell more often than not, but up in the shop, he’d be almost nice. It was the one place we could have a conversation without raising our voices at each other. My eyes burned.