It's in His Kiss Holiday Romance Collection Read Online Free PDF Page A

all those years after he’d deserted her and her mom. How difficult it was watching her mom try to make enough money to put food on the table. How she’d worked long hours while Rose locked herself safe and alone in the house. She’d cleaned to help keep the fear away. Fear that someone would break in and hurt her, or kidnap her. She’d cleaned so her mom wouldn’t have to. As if cleaning gave her purpose, as if she were contributing. She’d cleaned to avoid crying over missing her dad, over missing his love, and him telling her how pretty she was.
    Picking up her phone she dialed her dad’s number, ready to let loose, ready to unload her pain.
    But instead she had a better idea.
    * * *
    It was almost three in the morning when Max stumbled back to Rosie’s place near the marina on the bay. All he wanted was to flop in bed and sleep for about twelve hours. He hadn’t worked so hard in years. A busy bar was easy, a dead one was work. You had to be both bartender and entertainer … neither of which he was in the mood for.
    Ever since Saturday night when Rosie-Rose had run off to her room crying, he’d felt like absolute shit. He even contemplated leaving, but he didn’t really want to. Not without talking to her first. He hadn’t meant to make her cry, he merely wanted to help her relax, which was something she truly needed.
    He could hear her cleaning every morning like there was going to be some kind of inspection of the dust and grime in her already spotless condo. It was crazy how she buzzed around the house before she even had a cup of coffee or tea or whatever the hell she drank in the morning … if she even took time to have tea or coffee in the morning. He didn’t know what she drank or ate because he was too damn scared to confront her. He couldn’t take more tears.
    Yeah, he was a softy when it came to a crying woman. It got him every time. If one tear even slipped down a feminine cheek he was ready to lie down and beg for mercy. He instantly had to find a way to make everything right. He figured it came from when he was growing up and his mom would cry over arguments with his old man. Things got a little tough for her for a few years, but once she dumped his worthless father and found her footing playing with the big boys in the stock market, and money started pouring in, she never cried again. At least not that he’d seen.
    Rosie had graciously left him his own key, so he didn’t have to wake her when he came in late. Each night he did his best to open and close the door without making a sound. Difference was, tonight as he stood in front of the door trying to get his key to turn in the lock, he could hear music coming from inside her condo.
    He opened the door slowly and there, standing in front of the windows facing him, wearing shiny red heels, sheer white stockings that stopped three-quarters up her lovely thighs, the tiniest of pink panties, and matching pink bra that barely covered her perfect breasts, holding a full martini glass in one hand, the shaker in the other was Rosie-Rose Cupido, looking about as cute and sexy as he could ever have imagined.
    “Rough night?” she said as a devious grin stretched across her incredibly beautiful face.
    “It’s better now.”
    “Martini?”
    She held out the glass. The color of its contents matched her enticing underwear. He took the glass, and eagerly gulped down the liquid without really tasting it. When he was finished, he said, “Are you having one?”
    “Already had two.”
    “I need to catch up.”
    “You seem fine with one.”
    “It’s an illusion. I’m really sober as a judge.”
    “Are judges sober?”
    “Not the ones I know. They’re all alcoholics.”
    “Sounds about right then.”
    “Perfect.”
    He put the empty glass on a nearby end table, took the shaker from her, put that down and proceeded to take her in his arms and kiss her, deep and hard, as if he’d been starving for her his entire life. She tasted of cranberries