Last Chance Christmas Read Online Free PDF

of bad luck she’d had this month.
    There were worse places she could be right now than standing outside of the Peak’s with a sexy hockey player holding open her car door. There’d been a time when she’d pictured this kind of life for herself. And, unlike when she’d been in high school, she was no longer saving herself for some magical encounter with her soul mate. She’d found varying degrees of satisfaction with guys who were a far cry from perfect.
    J.C. Royce, she suspected, would put them all to shame.
    Picturing herself twined around all that male heat and muscle made her realize how far she’d let her mind wander. Shaking off the misplaced sexy thoughts, she shoved away from the streetlamp and started toward him. She needed a plan for tonight, not a teenage fantasy.
    “Crisis averted,” he assured her, reaching to steady her while she hobbled over to the car on the crutches. “Now you just need to decide where I should take you tonight.” He helped her into the car, flipping her poncho hem over her legs and stuffing the walking equipment in the back seat again. “But only after I tell you where I think you ought to go.”
    “You have a plan for me?” She tucked her scarf tighter to herself, trying not to protest that he seemed determined to tell her what to do this vacation, from letting him drive her around to resurrecting the old rink in her family’s yard.
    “I want you to stay with me tonight.”

Chapter Four
    ‡
    H e didn’t wait for an answer.
    J.C. made sure Shea’s poncho was clear of the car door before he shut it and jogged around to the driver’s side. He didn’t want to hear “no” or “hell no” quite yet. She could at least think about it for an extra thirty seconds before she lambasted him for suggesting it. Outside the car, he tipped his face up to the snowfall, inhaling the crisp, cold air that seemed full of possibilities tonight. His night had already improved about a hundredfold from when he’d been sitting alone in his basement, brooding about his first Christmas since his divorce. Brooding about the team rules that wouldn’t let him anywhere near the ice he wanted to be dominating this season.
    Heading over to Walt Walker’s house to check out the feasibility of the outdoor rink had been mostly just to escape his dark thoughts. But since then?
    Shea Walker had come home.
    Shea had dinner with him.
    Those were nothing short of Christmas miracles in his book after how angry she’d been at him for entering the draft without telling her. He’d hurt her when he’d bailed on their plans, and she hadn’t been moved in the least that he wanted her to be able to achieve her own dreams.
    She’d called him a coward and maybe he had been. But they’d been young. So damn young. A fact her father had reminded him of often enough back when he’d been trying to sort out a future.
    But tonight, he had another chance and he didn’t want the magic to end yet.
    Bracing himself for a demand that he drive her to the nearest hotel—quite possibly the ski resort next door—he levered open the driver’s side door and slid into his seat.
    “Do you get many girls to come home with you that way?” Shea inquired as he turned on the ignition and blasted the heat.
    “What way? By asking?” He shifted in the seat of a car two sizes too small for him, his knee hitting the console.
    She had her colorful wool poncho draped across her lap, her hands shoved into the kangaroo pocket in front. Her long, red hair had started curling in wild directions from being wet and then drying in the warm air of the restaurant. He wanted to run his hands through it to test the texture. See if it was as soft as he remembered from their youth.
    “By saying, ‘Hey baby, come to my place tonight,’ and then slamming the car door in her face?” She raised an auburn eyebrow, giving no quarter.
    “Did it ever occur to you I was afraid you’d say no?”
    “Afraid? This from the man who once slid